by Sam Mariano
“This is not your business,” he counters.
“It absolutely is my business,” I fire back. “You fucking up the relationship I handed you on a goddamn silver platter? That is my fucking business. I’m making it my business. You have been with her for a week, and you’re already fucking around on her?”
“First off, I am not with her. Laurel made it very clear to me and her sister that we’re only ‘testing the waters’ to see if we want to be in a relationship. I can’t even fuck her because she has a defective fucking uterus. This is not cheating. Secondly, her name is Marlena, not ‘the waitress’ and I am not fucking her either.”
“I don’t give a fuck what her name is.”
Pointing his finger at me and lifting his eyebrows, he says, “Lastly, it is not your motherfucking business. You didn’t hand me anything, and I am not wronging Laurel. All I did was repay a little kindness to a woman who was nice to me for no reason. That’s it. I’m not moving Marlena into the apartment so I have unfettered access to her. That is not what this is. In case you didn’t notice when you stormed into my house, Laurel is the one I’m spending the evening with. Laurel is the one I had dinner with, and Laurel is the one I stayed in with when she said she didn’t feel like going out tonight. Again. Laurel is the one I will go to bed with tonight and the one I will wake up with tomorrow. I am not going to abandon Laurel.”
“That doesn’t mean shit,” I say, shaking my head. “You have the financial resources to take care of her; I’m not worried you’re gonna abandon her. I’m worried you’re not respecting her, and I’ve gotta be honest, that really pisses me off.”
“Well, that sounds like a personal problem you need to take care of,” he tells me. “Laurel’s mine, not yours. You don’t decide how I treat her. And she has no complaints, so—”
Gesturing at the front door, I ask, “She knows, then? If I go in there and tell her you’re moving the woman you bought a dress for into an apartment, she won’t be surprised?”
The look on his face tells me that is not the case.
“This is bullshit,” I tell him, shaking my head. “You like Laurel. Why are you doing this? Why are you fucking it up?”
Sighing and raking a hand through his hair, he tells me, “It’s one thing after the next, Sin. Yes, I do like Laurel. I like her a lot. But it’s one fucking struggle after the next. This isn’t a relationship, it’s a damned ordeal. First I’m an asshole and I fuck it up, I fully admit fault there. Then you get in the way and she leaves. I make her come back physically, but she’s still stuck emotionally, then we can’t even work through our shit. She doesn’t like to go out, and I don’t want to stay in all the damn time. At the end of a long day, I can’t even fuck her. It’s just… this isn’t fucking fun. I’m sorry, but you wouldn’t be having fun either.”
“Bullshit,” I say. “I did have fun in the same fucking circumstances. If the only ways you can have fun with Laurel are going out or having sex, I feel sorry for you. She can’t have sex with you because she’s trying to carry your child, you asshole. Give her a few weeks.”
“It may not just be a few weeks. It could be the whole pregnancy.”
“So what? You can’t have sex for a few months and she’s not worth having?”
“You’re putting an awful lot of words in my mouth, Sin. I am trying to make this work. I’m doing my best. It just isn’t easy, that’s all. It’s one obstacle after the next when it should be the easiest. This isn’t our seventh year of marriage, this is a new relationship. It should be fun at this stage, and when it isn’t fun, there should be memories of when it was. I have a few damn days of nice memories—that’s it. We don’t have enough of a foundation to weather this kind of crap.”
He’s not wrong, but it still feels like an excuse to me.
“Tell me you don’t want to fuck the waitress.”
His eyes narrow. “I’d like to fuck someone, sure. Laurel has had sex more recently than I have, and now she’s closed for business.”
“No, she damn sure has not. Laurel hasn’t had sex since Easter.”
He rears back briefly, then frowns at me. “What are you talking about?”
“I didn’t fuck her. She didn’t tell you?”
Clearly, she did not, because he laughs. Not with real amusement, but a tired half-laugh. “Yeah, okay.”
“I didn’t. We fooled around, that’s it.”
Seeing I’m serious, he stares at me. I expect relief to follow, but this seems to piss him off more. “Are you fucking kidding me? You didn’t even have sex, and she’s this hung up on you? I fucked her for three days straight and she cut me off the first time I was mean to her. I gave her the first vaginal orgasm of her life, and you…” He trails off, shaking his head. “What the fuck?”
I know I would be more relieved in this scenario than he is, but his sincere surprise knocks a little bit of the wind out of my sails. I don’t know why Laurel didn’t tell him that. I specifically told her to.
When I paid the doctor a little visit and persuaded him to feed them the weak uterus bullshit, I figured it might make things a little hairy, but Laurel needed more time and I didn’t want to risk Rafe steamrolling over her.
I know he has to sleep with her if this is going to work, but knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to swallow. I guess I can’t claim complete selflessness here, because there was no reason to add the part about how they shouldn’t fool around either except that I didn’t want them to.
“I’m in the way,” I say more calmly.
Rafe sighs, but he seems calmer now, too. “You are, but that’s not all it is. I thought that was it at first, but it’s more than that. I’m trying to build a relationship with just the broken pieces. Most people having a baby together get a chance to fall in love first. We didn’t get that. I never even wanted any of this in the first place, and maybe I could get on board with it with someone I loved first, but Laurel and I barely knew each other. The timing here is not good. We skipped right past falling in love and fell straight into the kind of rut it should take people years to sink into. It certainly doesn’t help that I look at her sometimes and I can see her thinking about you. She might as well be projecting her thoughts onto my wall for how clearly I can see it.”
“Do you want this to work?” I ask, simply.
“I don’t know,” he admits. “I like Laurel. It’s not… she has plenty of appeal, the problem isn’t her. It’s everything, and everything is a lot to deal with.”
“You have to want it to work,” I advise him. “It won’t work if you don’t. You’re just wasting each other’s time at that point.”
“Yeah, well… I don’t think she wants it to work. She was open-hearted when she came here, but bit by bit, we’ve closed her off.”
I notice he says we, not letting me off the hook, and he doesn’t even know how much I contributed to that. I do, though. I know exactly how much I contributed to it.
“She’ll open back up if you work at it,” I tell him. “It’s still fresh. She’ll come back around if you earn it. The ball is in your court at this point, but… you’re right, this isn’t my business. I need to take a step back. We need to give Laurel a break from me. If you and I need to meet up, let’s do it away from the house for a while. If you two go out, don’t invite me. Give her a chance to clear me out and make room for you. And be nice to her. Don’t do shady shit like this. You need to stay away from the waitress. I’ll stay away as long as you do, but this won’t work if your eye is already wandering. You have more focus than that. Laurel is great, and she deserves your full attention, not whatever scraps you can cobble together at the end of the day.”
He’s not angry now, but I can see my words still irritate him. “That is not what I was doing. But yeah, that sounds like a good idea.” He misses a couple beats, and I don’t say anything either, so he adds a far too knowing, “You still want her, don’t you?”
There’s little point answering such a stupid fucking question, but I
do anyway. “Of course I do.”
Since I’ve said far more than I meant to and I have a shitload of work to do, I turn and leave without another word.
16
Laurel
Over the next few days, more things change.
The doctor called me to say he was reviewing my chart and he found an anomaly in what he had written down, so he needed me to come back in for an exam. Rafe brought me, this time without Sin, and the doctor let me see the baby on the ultrasound screen again. Added another few minutes of runtime to my DVD and made me a happy girl. He also gave me another pelvic exam and discovered, somehow, what he had taken for uterine weakness must have been something else, because my uterus was strong, healthy, and fully capable of holding the baby safely if I wanted to start having sex again.
That should have been a relief. It certainly was for Rafe, but while he looked like a dying man someone had just healed, I felt dread sink inside me. The weak uterus bought me several days, but I thought it was going to buy me several weeks—at minimum. I had a whole plan in my head, and I budgeted the time. No longer racing against the calendar, I could go at my own pace. I would surely get over Sin—since I only spent days with him—in a few weeks.
But suddenly, I have no more days. Rafe was immediately more affectionate, but that sort of annoyed me. Sex is great, but it isn’t everything. These past few days when he knew he wasn’t getting sex, he has been markedly less affectionate with me, and I definitely noticed. Sin knew he wasn’t getting sex out of me (his choice, not mine) and he found me no less interesting.
So, while a few nights ago I felt closer to wanting to sleep with Rafe, the days since the first doctor’s appointment have made me want him less, not more. I also really wanted him to be more excited about the baby after that appointment. It changed everything for me, and if he had responded with some kind of eagerness at the prospect of us having a baby together (and kept up the same affection, like the night he gave me the massage and talked to me in bed) then I think I would be willing to sleep with him now that the doctor has cleared me.
But he didn’t.
If it all comes back now that he can have sex with me, it will feel insincere. Will he lose interest in me all over again when the baby is born and I can’t have sex for several weeks? His interest now just doesn’t feel real or dependable, and as much as I try not to compare him to Sin, I can’t help comparing. Back in Chicago after Easter, I compared the guys I met to Rafe and found them lacking, but now I compare Rafe to Sin, and… well, he doesn’t stack up. As a man, yes, Rafe is absolutely appealing. If I had never met Sin, or I hadn’t met him until I was already in love with Rafe, maybe I wouldn’t feel this way. But I did, and I do. At the end of the day, no matter how attractive Rafe is, I don’t think he will ever compare to Sin in my eyes.
Because of all that, I no longer want to sleep with him, and I can already see that’s going to be a problem.
So, on the way home from that appointment, I text Mia. I tell her that I don’t think things are going to work out in Vegas, and ask if she is positive about her offer to let me stay at her house for fall semester. I already sent her the video of the ultrasound and she freaked out about how cute it was with me. I guess you just need a fellow girl for that, because neither of the guys were adequately excited. She didn’t find it at all odd that Sin was at the appointment with me to record the video, but when I sent it to Carly, she did.
“He invited one of his thugs into the exam room with you??” she demanded.
With misplaced indignation, I informed her, “Sin is not a thug!”
Which I guess is a lie. Sin is technically one of Rafe’s thugs, but he’s so much more than that, so it feels like an insult to refer to him that way.
I have yet to explain Sin to my sister. I don’t think she would like him, and I will want to jump all over her about it, so I’m just avoiding telling her. Not to mention, as much as Sin still occupies so many of my thoughts and so much of my heart, it doesn’t seem to matter. We have no future together, so it’s irrelevant.
My future is in Chicago, apparently.
Maybe I really will end up with Alec.
The thought makes me smile with wry amusement, but men are the last thing on my priority list. If Chicago ignited my interest in them, Vegas has just about cured me.
“Who are you texting over there?”
I glance at Rafe in the driver’s seat. “Mia.”
“Are you two best friends now, or what?”
I shrug. “She’s easy to talk to. Normally I talk to Carly about everything, but I can’t talk to her about you. She already doesn’t like you, so she’s too biased. Mia likes you, so I don’t feel the need to protect you when I’m talking to her.”
His lips tug up in a faint smile. “So, you’re complaining about me. What did I do now?”
“I didn’t say I was complaining about you.”
“I’m not a moron, so I was able to deduce that from what you just said.”
I sigh. “I’m not complaining about you.” I’m not sure now is a good time to tell him I’m hauling ass back to Chicago, but I have to offer him something. “You’ve been less attentive since the doctor told us we couldn’t have sex. I was inquiring as to whether or not Mateo loses interest in her in the post-baby days when she can’t have sex, and if so, how does she not resent him for it. Turns out, he likes her whether he can fuck her or not, so she can’t help me.”
His smile falls and he looks caught somewhere between alarm and offense. “I did not lose interest in you because I couldn’t fuck you.”
I hike up my eyebrows. “Really? Sure felt like you did.”
Now he frowns slightly, reaching over and resting his free hand on my thigh. “No, of course not. I’m not that big of an asshole.”
“Well, that’s how it felt. Don’t take this the wrong way, but if you don’t agree with me, this is not the first time since I arrived in Vegas you have been in denial. Remember when I told you I was pregnant and you didn’t believe you were the daddy? I’m not really an insecure woman, and I have felt distance from you since that appointment. If it wasn’t the sex, maybe seeing the baby freaked you out. Maybe it’s something else I’m just not privy to. I don’t know. Something happened. You backed right off. You can deny it all you want; I know what I’ve felt. I know how guys act when they withdraw, and I know when they deny acting that way, they’re just being dicks. You aren’t the first guy who has ever made me feel unwanted, just the first one I didn’t dump immediately when I realized how shitty he was making me feel about myself.”
Rafe is quiet for a long time after that. Men hate being called out on their shit, so I’m not surprised. I’m not even disappointed. It is what it is, I’m just not going to sit here and keep my mouth shut so he can put all the blame on me later for this not working out.
I’m not sure the blame needs to be on either of us, honestly. I think this isn’t working for bigger reasons than incompatibility—I actually think we are compatible on many levels, and under different circumstances this relationship might have blossomed into something great. Namely, if I had fallen in love with him. The ability to tolerate the ugly side of a person and still love them only comes after you’ve fallen for them. I know Sin is an asshole who plays games with my mind—which should make him far worse than Rafe, who simply loses interest in my company if he knows I’m not going to get him off—but it doesn’t change my feelings for him. Seeing Rafe’s ugly side before falling for him has made falling for him much harder. This is the opposite of how dating and relationships should work.
I read a book about the nature of love once, so I know it’s not magic, I know there are logical, scientific explanations for the way I’m feeling or not feeling, they just don’t matter. You can’t logic yourself into love, you have to fall, and Rafe is not touching my triggers. There is no release of dopamine in his company. His hand on my thigh doesn’t rain oxytocin down upon me. Meanwhile, if I hear Sin’s name, I feel a clenching in m
y heart, like it’s trying to hold onto even the mere mention of him.
I’m super fucked, and not in the way Rafe wants me to be.
I just have to figure out how long I can reasonably stay here pretending to give this a shot. Now that I’ve called Rafe out on his disinterest, he will probably grow even more distant. A few more days of distance, and he probably won’t object when I tell him I want to go home.
It’s a cowardly escape plan by normal relationship standards, but when dealing with a mob boss who has proven spiteful and territorial in the past, one has to tiptoe out of the non-relationship.
When we get back to Rafe’s house, he is the one on his phone. I don’t know who he’s texting, but the way he smiles before catching himself makes me think it’s a girl. Fuck him. Since I’m completely wasting my time in Vegas, I decide to waste it in a more fun way. I head to the library with my ultrasound DVD. Rafe has a computer set up at a desk in here and the office chair behind it is actually really comfy. Plopping down on the chair, I fire up the computer and pop in my DVD. I’ve watched it a million times already, but now I have a few minutes of new footage. I figure I’ll pick out a book to read, and when I glance up between chapters, I’ll see my wiggle worm on the screen. That’ll make me smile.
As I peruse the shelf, I wonder what Mateo’s library looks like. When Rafe showed me his, he told me his cousin has a much more impressive library in Chicago. He said he would show it to me next time we visit, but I already knew about its existence, since it was one of the selling points Mia mentioned. I grab my phone and text her, asking if she can send me a picture of it next time she’s there so I can envision my future study spot.
I’m kind of excited about it, really. If I can’t have what I want, I’ll just want something else.
My mind drifts to Sin’s house. He certainly didn’t have a library, but he did have three empty bedrooms and a room with a fireplace that was probably supposed to be a family room, but could easily be turned into a library. I don’t know why he has such a big house for just him and his three pieces of furniture. He seems like the kind of man who could live in a studio apartment and be happy. I could be too, if I lived there with him.
