by Tamara Lush
“My dream isn’t putting me in danger. My dream isn’t taking me all over Miami’s worst neighborhoods. My dream is for you and me.”
“You know I love crime reporting. You know I want to impress the editors at the paper so I can get a job there when I graduate. I need to start somewhere, and covering crime at night is the best way to begin a career. That’s what all my professors say.”
Rafa sighed. “I don’t like it.”
“Get used to it.”
He reached his hand across the table, threading his fingers in mine. His gorgeous eyes blazed, but not with anger. Something else. A promise? A declaration?
“There’s going to be a day when I make enough that you don’t have to work.”
I swallowed. Is that what I wanted? Now probably wasn’t the time to tell him of my latest dreams of being a foreign correspondent.
I’d never given much thought to being a wife, much less a wife who didn’t work.
I wanted him, and I wanted a career in a crazy, demanding business. A tiny voice inside me wondered whether I’d be able to accommodate both.
30
Ghosts of the Past
That night, hours after Rafa left and after I’d picked out a mint-green blanket made from organic hemp for Diana’s baby at the market, I mill around the rental villa, perusing through closets and poking in every nook. I’m a reporter at heart, which means that I’m insanely curious. Okay, nosy.
I find nothing of Rafa’s, save for a few of his expensive suits neatly hung in one closet and some underwear and workout clothes in a bureau drawer. Of course he wouldn’t have much here since he’s renting the house for only a month. Why would he need more? This is a temporary stop.
The thought slays me. There isn’t much time left. A couple of weeks. And now three days will be spent apart. But our earlier conversation makes me wonder if he’s open to something more.
Wrapped in my favorite fuzzy bathrobe, I flop down on the sofa. I’m armed with a glass of red wine and a new novel. If we were really together, this is what it would be like. He’d be gone, and I’d be at home. Wondering. Waiting. Attending to his needs and not my own life.
Before his reappearance, I’d carved out something satisfying here. Tons of friends and acquaintances. And despite my grumpy bitching, there are so many things I love about the newspaper. It’s like an eccentric family to me. Normally I have a busy schedule, serving on boards and committees and overseeing everything at the Times. But I’ve put everything on hold since we announced Rafa’s involvement in the paper. Eventually, I’ll have to reenter the world. But tonight, I’m content here in this luxury. Alone.
I sip my wine and read, enjoying the silence. After about an hour, my phone rings.
“¿Mi amor, como estas?” Rafa asks. “What are you doing? Please tell me you’re at my house and not yours.”
“Yes. I’m at your place. Lying on the sofa, reading and drinking wine.”
He growls. “I wish I was there with you.”
I beam into the phone. When he returns, I’m going tell him how I feel. It’s time to be a damned grownup about this relationship.
Because I still love him.
“Did your dinner go well?”
“It went perfectly. We sold the building. David and I are going out for drinks to celebrate now. We’re about to walk into the Shore Club.”
I hear the click of a car door and feminine laughter in the background.
“Oh, well, that’s great. Have fun, baby.”
“I will—” Rafa’s words are interrupted by a woman’s voice in Spanish and English.
“Rafael, are you coming? Ven, ven aqui conmigo.”
I swallow a lump at the sound. “I’ll let you go.” My throat tightens, and my voice turns murky. “You sound busy.”
“Listen, I’ll text you later when I’m done. I shouldn’t be late,” he says briskly.
“Okay. Um. Have a good night,” I whisper and hang up.
I hurl my book across the room, and it strikes the stone fireplace.
It’s the following afternoon, and I’m navigating my twelve-year-old Toyota through the crowds of tourists in downtown St. Augustine, past the historic fort and the alleged Fountain of Youth. I’m still dressed in my simple pink sundress from the baby shower held at a park near the ocean, and I pull into the publisher’s spot at the paper so I can run across the street and grab an iced tea.
I feel like imbibing in something stronger, but three in the afternoon seems a little early to be drowning my melancholy in a bottle of wine. Seeing Diane’s big belly, all the presents, the excited anticipation of a baby—it’s all bittersweet.
The entire day had been a lovely torture. Diana was thrilled with the organic hemp baby blanket, and I’d laughed along with the silly party games we’d played for hours. But inside, the reality of life gnawed at me, especially when Diana put her arm around her husband and he kissed the side of her head with a tenderness that made me want to bawl.
I want a baby shower. And a baby. And a husband. And a newspaper.
But having it all isn’t possible, at least not for me.
In reality, I have nothing. My shoulders slump when I jerk open the café’s door, the attached bells clanging and jolting me out of my melancholy.
“Hey, beautiful,” Mark, the owner, calls out. “What’s the occasion for the formalwear?”
I smile reflexively. He’s always flirtatious, and I’d actually been thinking of possibly accepting his invitations…before Rafa came back into my life. Now, benignly handsome Mark is about as interesting as an old fleece blanket.
“Hey, you.” I wave my finger up and down my bright pink Lily Pulitzer sheath dress. “Diana had her baby shower today.”
He nods, still grinning. “Your usual?”
I call out a yes. I take a seat at the café window and pull out my smartphone. When I’m in the middle of reading an email about a problem with an advertising client, I debate whether to sprint across the street to the paper to handle the issue. Then I feel someone nearby. Looking up, I smile into Mark’s warm blue eyes.
“As you like it. Super-sweet and iced. I also brought a chocolate croissant. On the house. Mind if I sit?”
“No, not at all,” I reply, taking my purse off the empty chair across from me. Even though I’d stuffed myself at the party, the croissant is too tempting and I try to daintily tear off an end and put it in my mouth.
“Damn, Mark. This is delicious.” I bite into the entire pastry and glance at him. He does have a really cute smile. And he can bake.
Mark talks for a bit about his new method for pastry making. I zone out, enjoying the chocolate and weighing my life. My eyes drift to the artfully mismatched furniture and the perfectly curated coffee table books strewn on various surfaces.
Things would be so much easier if I dated a guy like Mark. He’s cute, he’s nice, he’s local, he bakes. He’s got a good design eye. He’d be a great catch for anyone. Even though I might become a diabetic if I ate these croissants every day. I finish the pastry and lick my thumb. Mark beams at me eagerly.
Unfortunately, he’s not Rafael.
I remind myself to straighten my posture, even though I feel like crumpling to the floor and curling into a ball right there in the café.
Mark studies me with twinkling blue eyes and ends his monologue about the perfect temperature for croissant baking. “So, Justine, I was wondering if you might want to have dinner with me sometime soon?”
I put my lips to the straw and don’t look at him while I take a long sip. I swallow noisily and wonder how we got from croissants to a dinner date invitation. “Oh. Uh…” I stuff my face with another bite of the croissant, which is suddenly too saccharine for my liking.
My stomach churns. I could blurt a no, but I feel cornered and don’t want to appear impolite to someone I see every day.
“Tonight? Next week? Any day, whatever’s good for you,” he says. There’s so much hope in his eyes. Ugh.
I
set the glass on the table. “Tonight’s not great for me. Um, Mark, I’m pretty busy with a big project. I don’t know if you’ve heard, but I’ve sold seventy percent of the paper to an investor.”
“Oh. The Spanish guy?”
“Cuban.”
“Right. The one from Miami who keeps coming in here. What’s his name? Rafael? The one who all the baristas flirt with?”
I nod, my heart thumping hard. “Yeah. Rafael. He’s the one.”
“It’s so strange. He’s probably the only customer who hasn’t flirted back with the girls. God knows they keep trying and keep talking about how good-looking he is. He seems very… I don’t know. Focused. Almost in an arrogant way. He mentioned to me that you two went to school together.”
“That’s Rafael. Focused and arrogant,” I say, my heart soaring at the news that he doesn’t flirt with the cute, young college students. “So, yeah. I need to spend the next couple of months on that deal. That’s where my head’s at right now. And honestly, I’m not ready to date anyone, not after…” My voice trails off. I’m thinking I should say the name of my ex-boyfriend, but I’m really thinking about Rafa.
“We’ll talk about it in a few weeks,” Mark says, his eyes hopeful.
I smile weakly, annoyed that Mark is ignoring my brush-off. Then I stand up, and the annoyance is replaced by a tsunami of exhaustion. A faint dizziness overtakes me, as if the ground underneath has shifted in a mini-earthquake.
“Thanks again for the tea and the yummy croissant. I need to run to the paper now.” I hurriedly gather my things, say goodbye, and half-run across the street and into the Times.
I greet the security guard with a wave, then go through a back corridor to get to my office on the second floor. I need to look at the advertiser’s file in my office and try to resolve the company’s complaint about a coupon insert in the paper. Why the ad exec hadn’t been able to resolve this was an annoying mystery.
I walk past empty office after empty office, silent cubicles that once had been alive with ad executives, circulation managers, and reporters. I even climb a staircase that’s rarely used. It smells musty and damp, like mold. It’s lonely here, and it turns my mood even darker. There’s no banter, no conversation, nothing. The hum of a still-plugged-in computer is the only sound.
While the paper’s never laid off employees, we’ve never replaced openings when people left. The result is that the hundred employees and the print run of 35,000 daily copies is a fraction of what the Times once boasted. Entire floors of the building are spooky and quiet, and stacks of left-behind newspaper copies have yellowed over time in corners of abandoned offices.
When I was a little girl, it seemed as if the paper was a city unto itself, a buzzing, vibrant place where magic was made in the form of a five-section daily newspaper every morning. I’d run through the building in the hours after elementary school, past stacks of documents taller than me. Editors smelled of cigarette smoke and sometimes the tang of whiskey. Caroline—then only in her forties—would set me and my brother up at desks with giant pieces of blank newsprint and some markers, and we’d pretend to scribble our own articles while we waited for Daddy to finish his workday.
“We’re fighting for truth, justice, and the American way,” Daddy would joke to me and my brother, ruffling our hair as we giggled. Someday, we’d do the same thing as our dad, we figured.
Now, as I walk past offices that haven’t been used in years, I feel like the ghost of newspapers past. I don’t visit this part of the building often, because whenever I do, I become teary-eyed for what the years and change has done to my family’s paper. And to the journalism industry as a whole. It’s now unrecognizable and lost forever, a relic similar to a typewriter in a digital world.
Once in my office, I shut the door and sink into the new leather chair Rafa bought. I gnaw on my thumbnail until I see blood. When had my life gotten so off-track? In college, I’d assumed that by thirty-four, I’d be married to Rafa and on my way to having children. I’d expected that I’d always be in the newspaper business, that I’d write the important stories that people would read—not be consumed by the nasty comments and criticisms from bloggers and idiots on Twitter, which hadn’t even existed back then.
I’d never dreamed the industry, or my relationship with Rafael, would tank hard and fast like it did.
If I don’t get the finances of the Times straightened out with Rafa’s money and expertise, the paper will close in a few years. I imagine myself in a decade, staring down middle age without a husband, without children, and without a career.
Sniffling a sob, I touch the edge of a picture in a frame on the desk. It’s of me and my father at my college graduation. Rafa had taken the photo, in fact, which was probably why my father wore a sour face.
And now my father is dead and Rafael’s back in my life with the full force of his passion and his declarations of…of what, exactly?
Only you, Justine.
Is that his way of telling me he still loves me? After years of learning to actually like myself, these old feelings of insecurity make me feel like a caged lioness, eager to haul ass but unable to escape.
I dig my phone out of my purse, intending to call him and ask. I toss the phone back into my bag.
No, I’m not going to reveal that I care. Rafa let me go eleven years ago. If he wants me for something permanent now, he’s going to have to grovel and beg.
31
A Gift, A Kiss, and the Truth
I had planned on staying in my own house that night, but talked myself out of it. I tell myself it’s so I can take a bath in the bone-white marble tub in Rafa’s master bathroom. And it will feel good to swim in the still water of the pool in the morning before work.
Also, Rafa had bought a tin of my favorite ginger-pear tea…
I shuffle up the steps to the second floor. I’d been in the sun too long at the baby shower and feel lightheaded from the day’s heat, the massive quantities of sugar, and the endless amounts of caffeine. Regardless, I’m carrying a fat glass of red wine because I’m beyond giving a crap about healthy self-care habits tonight. I set the goblet in the bathroom and run the bath in the oversized whirlpool tub, then head into the bedroom.
I haven’t made the bed, and I flop down, the cool cotton soothing my flushed cheeks. The feel of the fabric makes me shiver, and I take in Rafa’s scent that still lingers—his crisp, beachy aftershave mixed with his sweat and the aroma of sex. I idly wonder if his scent will remain in St. Augustine once he goes back to Miami for good. My joints ache when I get up and head to the bathroom.
I take off my colorful sundress and remove my contacts, putting on my glasses. I pin my long hair up and grimace at myself in the mirror. The dark circles under my eyes are a dead giveaway for the sleepless night, but the faint, dual lines in between my eyebrows are another matter altogether. I trace them with my index finger. Am I too young for Botox? It doesn’t matter, because I don’t have the money anyway. I sigh, light a candle, and flick off the light.
Rafa had also bought me a bottle of expensive bubble bath that smells like whipped cream, and I pour a capful into the water. I slip into the hot suds, sucking in a breath as I inch into the scalding water. Then I turn off the faucet and allow silence to wash over me. I allow myself a rare moment of nothing, delighting in an empty mind. I try to forget about everything: Rafael, the newspaper, a childless and loveless future.
Shutting my eyes, I half-doze in the warm cocoon of the water. My eyes flutter open when I think I hear a thunk downstairs. Is that the door?
Then, footsteps. My heart quickens, and my eyes sweep around the bathroom for a makeshift weapon.
“Honey, I’m home.”
Rafa. No way. In my mind, I picture myself standing in the huge tub, doing a little dance and punching the air.
I sigh and grin at the bubbles, relieved it’s him and not an intruder. My heart pounds even faster. He used to say that all the time—honey, I’m home—because he liked that old
TV show, I Love Lucy. He even used to call me his Lucy and loved that Desi Arnaz and Lucille Ball were the first interracial couple on American television.
“Justi, I’m hoooome,” he calls out. I laugh out loud. He’s returned from Miami two nights early. A surge of glee goes through me.
The bathroom door opens, and Rafael stands there, smiling.
“Now, this is what I like to come home to.”
“Hola, guapo,” I say, using the Spanish word for handsome. He looks mouthwatering in his untucked, white linen button down and jeans. “Want to join me?”
From downstairs, I hear a door slam. Then voices—a man and at least two women. I sit up straight, my shoulders tensing toward my ears, and recall the woman’s voice on the phone the previous night. My grin fades. “Did you bring people here?”
“Yeah. It’s David and his girlfriend. And David’s sister. When I decided to come back early, they decided to fly up here with me in the jet. They’re renting a car and will be gone tomorrow. They’re on their way to Savannah.”
“Oh. I don’t want to interrupt your double date with David’s sister. I can go home.” I slap both hands on the side of the tub and start to lift myself out of the water.
Rafa shakes his head. “I don’t think so. Get back in the tub. I have a present for you.”
He’s holding a small paper bag in his hand. My mouth plumps into a pout.
“Don’t you have to go downstairs to entertain?” I sink into the bubbles.
He slowly unbuttons his shirt, appraising me with those amused, foxy eyes. “I’m going to be very entertaining. For you. In this bathtub. With my gift.”
He shuts and locks the bathroom door and sets the bag on the ample lip of the tub. I skim bubbles off one arm and hand and reach for the bag.
