So We Can Glow - Stories - Leesa Cross-Smith Page 0,23

me once after a party and one other time I gave him a blowjob in his car. I liked thinking about both those nights a week apart, before the spring weather showed up. We’d been together in our own way from around Christmas until after Valentine’s Day when he gave me some roses and a bottle of champagne and gave the same gift to another girl too. I knew because she told me and even though I “broke up” with him because I was embarrassed about it, I stayed obsessed with him and we kissed at parties sometimes, but never went any further than that again. He never told me to stop texting him or to leave him alone. Even when I’d text him late at night, even when I’d write him boring texts about how bored I was or how I didn’t have very many friends left in town anymore. How I was working at the coffee shop up the road, but didn’t want to be a barista every summer. He didn’t want to be anyone’s boyfriend, but in a way he was everyone’s boyfriend because he never told girls no. Rafael was a yes-man.

His mother was black and Puerto Rican, his dad was some country white dude. Rafael had this beautiful black hair that could swoop down over his eye like a feather, like a God-touched thing. He wore skinny gray pants and his thin patterned shirts unbuttoned. His style waffled between rock star and just crawled out of a dumpster after a long night of drinking, but he made it work. And I liked them both.

* * *

“You smell so good,” Rafael said, leaning against the frame of the bathroom door.

I was putting my leave-in conditioner in my hair and the bathroom was still heavy with Chanel and pink. I was a deep, thick, fecund garden. Rafael had his nose up in the air, sniffing like a dog.

“I didn’t know you were coming back home,” I said, knowing how bad he wanted me, because I wanted him that bad too. I thought of Jordan out back and what he wondered about Rafael and me here in the house. If he imagined Rafael touching me in here. Even if Jordan was like the best guy ever he would think about it for at least a second. It wasn’t even all that pervy. It wasn’t like I was underage. He wouldn’t have to be a creep or anything.

Rafa met my eyes in the mirror. That’s what the girls called him sometimes. Rafa. I’d heard his buddies call him that too. And maybe his brothers. He had two brothers, like me. I’d met them both when they came to pick him up at school for Christmas. I watched them load up his brother’s car from my dorm room window. Watched Rafa tie his hair back with a red bandanna and share a can of beer with his little brother before they took off and tossed it in the recycling bin by the front door. He was responsible, how hot. Most guys would’ve tossed the can on the ground or in the trash. Rafa was a recycling hero.

“Do you want to know why I came back home?” he asked.

“Do you want to tell me why you came back home?” I asked, scrunching my wet curls with my slippery fingers.

“I had to testify against my dad for…hurting my mom. Me…and my brothers had to,” he said. Softly. He wasn’t looking at me in the mirror anymore, he was looking down. I gasped and turned around.

“What?!”

Rafa pressed his index finger against the wood of the door frame like he was purposely leaving evidence for someone to find later. Rafa was here.

“It smells exactly like pink bubblegum and flowers in here. It’s like…calming me down,” he said. And as soon as he said it, my brothers whooped and hollered from the living room. I heard one of them go into the kitchen, open the fridge, close it again. Someone out back turned on the circular saw, but not for long. They hammered and hammered and hammered. They were listening to Tom Petty and I could hear it too. Wildflowers. I loved that album, that song. It reminded me of my dad and being a little girl. Rafa was right. The smell was so calming and Petty’s voice was gentle and calming, too.

But! We were talking about something awful and when I remembered, my legs got kind of wobbly and hot.

“Are you okay?” I asked.