"Ever," he says. "Understand?"
There’s a whole video called 'believing men when they tell you who they are' and I've watched it four times and I don't know if I believe him right now, but I want to, which is somehow worse.
"Okay," I say.
He moves to his side of the bed. Sits on the edge. Looks over at me, at the cardigan and the socks and the entire polar expedition I've constructed on top of his mattress, and something shifts in his expression.
"You’re trying so hard to hide," he muses, his voice dropping an octave. "But the body doesn't know how to lie the way the tongue does. I could check you right now. I could slide my hand between your legs and find you soaking through those leggings, begging for the very thing you're pretending to run from."
He holds my gaze until I’m the one forced to look away. "Don't play the martyr with me, Gia. We both know."
The heat that hits my face makes me want to crawl under the earth.
"Absolutely not," I say.
"No?"
"I will find another slipper."
Rafael throws his head back and actually laughs. He's laughing, quiet and genuine, and it does something to his face that I am categorically not going to think about.
Stop it. Stop laughing. You were terrifying thirty seconds ago and I had a whole strategy built around you being terrifying and you are dismantling it.
I get underneath the covers with all my layers intact. I lie down. I face the wall.
Behind me I hear him settle above the covers on his side. Not underneath. Above, maintaining the distance without being asked, and I note this and file it away although I don't know what to do with it.
The light goes off.
The room goes dark and quiet and I lie there next to a man I don't know who just told me he wouldn't force me and then laughed and I stare at the wall and I do not sleep for a very long time.
I wake up to sunlight and the immediate knowledge that I am in the wrong life.
Married. Still happening.
I sit up.
His side of the bed is empty. The covers undisturbed because he slept above them, and I can see the exact distance he kept all night. I refuse to think it meaningful.
I find him downstairs.
He's in what I can only call a breakfast room that is nicer than any restaurant I've ever eaten in, sitting at the end of a long table with coffee and a newspaper and the quality of stillness that means he has been awake for hours and accomplished several things I don't know about. Dark shirt, no jacket, irritatingly well-rested for a man who slept in his trousers on top of the covers.
He doesn't look up when I come in.
Good morning to you too. Jerk.
I pour myself coffee and sit down somewhere in the middle of the table.
He turns a page.
I drink my coffee.
"We need to talk about how this works," he says, still looking at his newspaper.
"Good morning to you too," I say.
He looks up. Looks at me. Looks back at his newspaper. "Good morning. We need to talk about how this works."
