Constant Craving

by Tamara Lush

  Rafael’s eyes are glassy with tears.

  I’m full-on sobbing now. “I never said that. I never wanted you to feel that way.”

  “I know. Back then, I was confused, Justine. I didn’t want your father to disown you. He was the only family you had. But I was also enraged at his racism and wanted to distance myself from it.”

  This made me sob harder. I couldn’t speak, as shame pooled in my belly.

  “If I could go back and do anything over again, I would have told you what he had said, how he didn’t want us to marry. I would have explained my feelings more and reassured you that I loved you, no matter what. I did then, and I still do. I’m sorry that I wanted to punish you for leaving me.”

  I struggle to get out of his grip, but he holds his hands tighter around my face.

  “What do you mean, you wanted to punish me? You kept saying that when you first got to St. Augustine. Punish me for what my father did?”

  His face draws closer to mine, and he speaks in a whisper. “No. Not for that. Look at me. When you called my company, I entertained plans to close the Times, to get back at you for hurting me. And maybe there was a bit of satisfaction in buying your father’s paper, after all he did to me. To us. But over this past month, I realized that I never stopped loving you. I could never hurt you because I love you too much. I will always love you too much.”

  Giant, sloppy tears snake out of my eyes and roll down my face. “I don’t know what to say. Should I thank you for your help with the paper? Hate you for being so evil that you would even think about revenge? Or tell you that I love you? Apologize on behalf of my father? You know I never felt the same way he did.”

  He blinks several times. “I know that.”

  “I feel like you’re not finished punishing me, though.”

  “You’re the one who keeps punishing me, Justi. All I ever wanted was you.”

  He drops his hands from my face, stands up, and walks out of the bedroom. When he shuts the door, I feel another pain shoot through my chest.

  I’m now alone with the relics of our past, and I hate every single one of them. I tear the check and my father’s letter to Rafa into pieces. I hurl them in the air, and they land on the gleaming concrete floor like fallen palm fronds after a hurricane. Then I flop down on the bed and weep.

  I’m on the bed, in my red gown, staring at the ceiling. It feels like he’s been gone forever. But about a half-hour after he stalked out, Rafael enters the room silently and climbs on top of me.

  He cages my body with his arms and legs. His kiss is so soft that it makes me start crying again. I run my hands down his chest.

  We kiss for a long time. Soft and hot at first, then urgent and scorching. Almost as if everything’s normal.

  But it’s not.

  I sit up and slip the dress over my head. I’m wearing only a red lace thong. He pulls me into his lap, and I wrap my legs around his waist. I sniffle.

  “Please tell me this isn’t it.” I put my forehead to his. “Please. We’re not over, are we? I don’t want to lose you.”

  “I don’t know. I think I need to let you go, mi cielo, for my own sanity. I need to find happiness. I can’t be tormented or obsessed with you anymore. I need to find love somewhere. I want a healthy, normal relationship.”

  “But maybe we can do a long-distance.” I wrap my arms around him. “Come to St. Augustine. Live with me.”

  Rafael gently removes my arms from his shoulders. “My life is here. And you don’t want me in your life that badly. You don’t want to make any concessions for me. You don’t want to give up what you have in St. Augustine.”

  “But you need to understand why. It’s not for me. It’s for everyone who works at the paper. It’s for the paper itself. For my profession. I can’t close my business. It’s too important for the city.”

  Rafa sighs.

  “So this is it?” I sob harder.

  “Maybe we’re both too much alike. Too stubborn.” Pressing me down on the bed, he strips off my panties. His fingers go deep in me, and I gasp. He slides onto his stomach and roughly spreads my legs with my hands.

  His tongue finds my clit, and he consumes me with his mouth. As if he wants to drink me in and use me up. I gasp, working my fingers in his hair. He replaces his tongue with his fingers and moves up my body, studying my face as I come violently. I’m shattered and weeping, and he wastes no time entering me. We’re now sloppy with kisses and tears and my wetness.

  “I love you,” he whispers in my ear.

  I sob harder and bury my face into the hollow of his shoulder. He comes, a groan exploding out of his mouth. I roll onto my side away from him, and he clicks the light off. It’s two in the morning, and he has to be up in three hours to make his flight to Madrid. I want so badly to take him in my arms, but I can’t. I’m crying and he won’t comfort me and we lie in bed next to each other, lonely.

  This is it. The end of us.

  39

  A Storm on the Sun

  I awake with a jittery head and a fuzzy mouth. Am I hungover? I drank a few glasses of champagne the previous night, but not that many. It must be the emotional fight I had with Rafa that’s making me bone-tired. My retinas feel like they’ve been kissed by a chainsaw.

  I stretch my arm to the other side of the bed, expecting my fingertips to land on his chest or maybe the top of his head.

  When I touch the pillow and it’s empty, I sit up and scowl. He’s gone. What time is it?

  Scrambling to check the phone on the nightstand, I swear under my breath.

  It’s eleven. Rafa’s flight was at eight. He’s on his way to Madrid.

  And he left without saying goodbye. I must have passed out hard if I didn’t hear him leave.

  I slump back into the pillow and think of how my father treated Rafael. How he tried to buy him off. After a minute, I launch myself out of bed and into the bathroom as a wave of nausea travels from my stomach and up to my mouth. I vomit into the toilet. Goddamned champagne.

  “Rafa?” I call out hopefully as I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand. My voice echoes through the near-empty condo. He’s long gone. Why would I even fantasize for a minute that he’s here?

  After brushing my teeth and splashing water on my face, I walk around the condo, edgy, my nerves bubbling. A folded piece of white paper with my name written in Rafa’s precise handwriting lies on the black marble kitchen counter. Taking it to the sofa, I sit and read, panic rising in my chest.

  Justine—

  I’m sorry I didn’t wake you. It was probably for the best, because it would have been too difficult to look into your beautiful eyes and say goodbye.

  I’ll be traveling for the next month. As per your wishes, I am not going to close the paper.

  The consultants will help you transition to a five-day-a-week digital schedule in the coming year, and we will immediately sell the building. I hope this will save the business, which is your ultimate goal. We will have to reevaluate in six months, and again, in a year. I will be in touch on this through the consultants. They will handle most of the paper’s affairs on my behalf.

  I wanted to also tell you that the past month with you has been the happiest I’ve had since college. I wished we could have turned it into a lifetime.

  Please know that I will love you always.

  —R

  P.S. The card for the driver is on the counter. Please call him and have him take you to the executive airport so the jet can fly you back to St. Augustine.

  I run to the bathroom and throw up again. When I’m finished, I wash and grab my smartphone to peck an email to Rafael. I’m an imbecile. Why would I sacrifice the person I love for an industry that’s dying? In a flash, life seems so clear when it hadn’t before.

  My hands shake as I try to type. Even though I’ve written a thousand news articles in my career, I’m having trouble choosing the right words now. It’s so important that I must think harder, be smarter, work more, over the coming weeks to make ever
ything right again.

  I can fix this.

  Rafael—

  I woke up and reached for you this morning and you weren’t there. Please don’t make me go through this every morning for the rest of my life. I’ve made a horrible mistake. I am sorry. I want you more than I want my newspaper. I just need to figure out how to make it all work—perhaps Diana can take over as publisher when she returns from maternity leave. Give me time to get everything in order so I don’t leave the people I love at the paper hanging. I know one thing: I must stop running away from you. Let’s talk more. I need you. Most of all, I love you. You should be arriving in Madrid in about five hours, and hopefully you will read this email first. Please call me.

  • J

  Sunday comes and goes without a call or an email from Rafa. I go home, and the sun sets, the darkness matching my mood.

  I don’t eat, don’t bathe, don’t do anything but recline on my sofa with my phone in my hands, refreshing my email account for hours. I doze off and have fitful, sweaty dreams that involve car crashes and roses and parties where I know no one. When I wake up, I stare at the ring I took from Rafa’s house. I’d slipped it on the ring finger of my left hand. What would it have been like to have worn it for more than a decade?

  Every so often, I drink a glass of water and at least twice have dry-heaves.

  Having the flu on top of everything else sucks.

  Early Monday morning, I choke down a piece of wheat toast and orange juice. By the time I’m at the paper, I feel like hurling again. I stand in a bathroom stall at work, gasping. I notice that the toilet in the next stall is leaking water onto the tile floor. One more broken thing at the newspaper.

  I don’t think I’ve been this stressed out ever.

  I still haven’t heard from Rafa.

  His two consultants walk into my office shortly after nine a.m. As far as I’m concerned, they’re interchangeable, two youngish Cuban guys from Miami. I stare at them blankly.

  “Justine, we had a call with Mr. Menendez this morning. He told us to contact a commercial real estate agent so we can begin the process of selling the building and finding new space for the paper,” the one named Mario says.

  I grimace. Rafael’s talked to his consultants and not me. I try to summon anger but can’t. Fatigue is eating at my body and mind, and all I want is my bed.

  “We’re also putting together the plan for taking the paper digital on the weekdays. Mr. Menendez says we shouldn’t tell the staff about this move until we have a launch date,” says the other, a wiry guy named Max.

  I sigh. I’m hesitant to discuss my plan to ask Diana to be publisher because I haven’t actually talked with her yet. Will she even want the job, with a newborn? My mind spins at warp speed.

  “The next time you talk to Mr. Menendez, can you pass along a message? Tell him that I’m working on having Diana take over as publisher. And please tell him to call me. On my cell phone. Anytime, day or night.” I try to sound stern, but instead my voice is weak.

  The two consultants exchange a glance.

  “What?” I nervously fiddle with the engagement ring on my left hand.

  They shake their heads in tandem. “Nothing,” one says.

  “Did he tell you that he didn’t want to talk to me?”

  “Not exactly,” the other says gently.

  I grit my teeth and nod.

  The men leave, and I sit in my office the rest of the day with the door closed, reading and rereading my email. I debate whether to send Rafa another note, but realize that I already seem too desperate for him.

  Then, a knock on my door.

  “Hon, you okay?” It’s Caroline.

  I wave my hand dismissively. “I’m feeling a little sick. The flu. Don’t get too close.” I attempt a wan smile, but Caroline’s eyes widen in concern.

  “Justine, this is about Rafael, isn’t it?”

  I nod, trying to work out how I’m going to tell her that Rafa’s never coming back here again.

  Caroline stands in the doorway. “Hon, I never told you this, but your dad tried to do everything he could to break you two up. He told me all about it.”

  “So I’ve learned.” I feel like retching as I recall the letter.

  “Your father was a wonderful man, but he didn’t want his little girl marrying someone who wasn’t like her. Or him. I tried to talk him out of it, but Edward was set in his ways. When I saw Rafael here this past month and saw how you looked at each other, I felt like I needed to weigh in.”

  I fiddle with a pen.

  “That man loves you, Justine.”

  “Not anymore,” I whisper. “I screwed everything up. Again.”

  Days bleed into weeks, and I operate on autopilot, going through the motions of work. I’ve switched to espresso to keep me awake—why am I so damned exhausted—and I vomit violently and often. How much longer can I eat only bagels and bananas? Dark circles under my eyes are like charcoal smudges in my paler than normal skin. I also feel blazing hot all the time, but that could be because the liquid humidity of Florida’s nine-month summer has arrived with a vengeance.

  Or I’m under-slept and my body’s rebelling. No, I’m dying. That’s it. I’m simply dying. I will die without the newspaper, and I will definitely die without Rafael.

  I scold myself on the regular for being so melodramatic. I need to start exercising again, juicing and meditating. I vow to begin all three once I feel better. Diana says she’s considering taking over as publisher after she’s done with maternity leave, but any changes are probably moot because Rafael still hasn’t called or emailed and I won’t be going to Miami—so it looks like I’m going down with this ship.

  He sent word through his assistants that he would be in touch soon, after his business was finished in Madrid. Which means he’s either making me wait so he can tell me to get lost in person or is avoiding me altogether.

  It’s early on a Tuesday morning, and after I finish throwing up for the third time, I break down and finally call Rafa’s cellphone. It immediately goes to voicemail. Angry, I type a terse text and strike the “send” button.

  Rafa, Call me. I need to hear your voice.

  Please. Please? Please…

  Yours always,

  Justine.

  An hour later, with shaking legs, I walk into a meeting with the newspaper’s managers. I take a seat at the conference table and quickly suck down a triple espresso. My tongue skims around my spongy, coffee-stained mouth as I look around the room, which is filled with the people I’ve known my entire life. The mold smell has cropped up here—a new location—and the odor is thick today.

  I catch Ethan’s eye, and he smirks. I’d been sure he was going to take a job with Saint Augustblog, but maybe I was wrong because he’s still hanging around like a bad smell. I briefly wonder whether I could get along without a managing editor and hire a part-time photographer with the cost savings of his salary.

  See, Rafael? I am thinking of the bottom line.

  Jittery, I stand at the head of the conference table. My hands clench into fists in an attempt to stop shaking. My thumb snakes between the middle and ring finger of my left hand and twists the small diamond down, toward my palm.

  “I’m sorry to tell you all this, but we’re selling this property. The new co-owner, uh, owner, believes that letting it go will give us much-needed cash, and we’ll find a new place to work. We have too much space in this building, it’s costly to cool in the hot summers, and the whole place is falling apart. As you know, one of the elevators doesn’t work, there’s a mold problem in the stairwell, and we don’t use two entire floors. We received an offer from a developer who wants to turn the historic building into lofts.”

  I scan the dozen people in the room. Everyone looks horrified or miserable, and some, like Ethan, stare at me with unabashed pity. My cheeks feel aflame, and my head’s throbbing.

  “I’m doing this so we don’t have to lay people off. I’m doing this so we can try to save the paper.
I was dreading telling you this, and it’s an awful day. I’ve been in this building my whole life. It’s a terribly sad day.”

  This is the end of my family’s legacy. The end of the paper. I’ve killed it, and everything else.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper.

  The room goes fuzzy, and the last thing I remember is my forehead striking the hard edge of the table.

  40

  Craving

  When I come to, I’m in a hospital bed. Caroline is at my side, massaging my hand and smiling.

  “There you are. I’m glad you’re awake.” She leans over and kisses me on the forehead. “But I’m also glad you got some rest.”

  “What… Why am I here? What happened?” My mouth feels like a pumice stone. Everything aches. I smack my lips.

  “You passed out in the conference room and you have a mild concussion.”

  I try to sit up, and my hand goes to my forehead. My fingers skim over a lump above my right eyebrow. “Ow. What the hell?”

  “You hit your head on the table when you fainted.”

  “What? I’ve never fainted before. What’s wrong with me?”

  By the time I get the words out, Caroline’s fingers are on the call buzzer at the end of a little cord that rests on the bed.

  “Relax. We’ll get the doctor here.” Caroline strokes my arm. “You’re going to be fine.”

  I rub my lips together. They’re chapped, and I bite a piece of skin on my bottom lip as I absorb the news that I’m in the hospital. “Did Rafa call? Has anyone heard anything from him?”

  Caroline looks at her watch. “You fainted at around noon. It’s about four now.”

  I sigh. That means it’s ten at night in Madrid. He’s probably out at some swank bar or something. This makes me even more miserable. “But did he call?” I turn in the hospital bed, attached by the IV in my arms, to look for my phone.