Lionel’s agitation has decreased by the time I get off the phone, but Mom never leaves his side, not even when Saul gets home. They talk to him, try to find out the root of the problem, but he keeps saying he doesn’t know what happened, why he was so upset. He looks scared and sad, sitting between our parents in the middle of his debris-filled room, and I wish there was something I could do besides watch from the sidelines.
We don’t talk that night, Lionel and me. He doesn’t talk to anyone, really. We eat dinner, but no one is hungry. We all end up pushing food around our plates until Lionel says he’d like to be excused. Mom and Saul don’t want to let him go; I can tell by the way they look at each other. But they can’t keep him down here all night, either.
Later, after everyone is supposed to be in bed, I creep down the stairs to listen outside Lionel’s room. When I slowly turn the knob, he’s asleep. No late-night projects or lists to be made or whatever else he would do in here until the early hours of the morning. I’m not relieved, though. Something is wrong. Mom and Saul tried to disguise their worry, but they’re clearly just as concerned as I am.
Saul and I picked up some of the mess in the room after dinner while Lionel took a shower, giving him enough space to get around without tripping over the books and their shelves. Still, Lion looks like he’s sleeping in a cave made of books.
I close the door and tiptoe across the hall to Mom and Saul’s room. Their light is off, but their voices murmur behind the door. I press my ear closer to hear what they’re saying.
“… one of the scariest moments of my life,” Mom is saying. “I didn’t know what he was going to do. And he didn’t, either. He looked so… outside of himself.”
Saul sighs. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t here, Nadine. You shouldn’t have had to go through that by yourself.”
“Don’t apologize. He’s my child, too. I just… I’m worried.”
He sighs again and I hear rustling, like he’s turning over. “We’ll figure it out. Dr. Carver is going to get us in first thing tomorrow.” He pauses, then says again, “We’ll figure it out.”
There’s no space to sleep on the floor in Lionel’s room, so I pad silently into the guest room and shut the door behind me. I don’t sleep much, if at all, but that just makes it easier to get up and check on Lionel throughout the night.
I do so every hour until the sun rises. I have to leave before my parents get up, so I make the bed and close the door and slip back to my room without making a sound.
thirteen.
When I walk into Castillo Flowers two days later, I stop as soon as I see Rafaela.
I dreamed about her, and I forgot until now. We were at Dinsmore and we were rooming together and there was no Iris. Rafaela and I held hands in public and kissed in public and when we were alone, I wasn’t shy about touching her first. It was so real, not like a dream at all. I haven’t ever dreamed about Emil, not like that, and I wonder if that’s my subconscious trying to tell me something.
My neck and cheeks are hot, and I take a few seconds to catch my breath. When I walk over to the counter, I’m sure she’ll ask me what’s wrong. But she says nothing.
“Hi.” I dump my bag on a shelf in the back room, squeeze behind the register to grab my apron, and still, she doesn’t respond.
She barely looks up. Her gaze never quite makes it to me; she’s staring at the bonsais across the room and her expression is confused, as if she has no idea why she’s not still looking down at the counter.
“Hello?” I try again, waving a hand in front of her face until her eyes snap into focus.
“Hey.” She attempts a smile, but I’m not convinced.
I tie my apron around my waist and notice hers isn’t even fastened. The strings dangle freely on either side of her. My eyes travel upward, to the black tank she’s wearing with the oversized armholes that reveal the sides of a hot-pink bra underneath. I start talking so I’ll look away.
“Everything okay? You seem a little out of it.”
She leans against the wall behind the counter, her curls twining around a pushpin in the corkboard. The board is pinned with notes from satisfied customers, scrawled on everything from notebook paper to fancy monogrammed stationery. Most people send an email, but Ora is old-fashioned enough to attract customers with the same appreciation for handwritten praise.
“You know that guy… from the Palisades?” Rafaela sighs. “He’s becoming a real problem. As in, he won’t leave me the fuck alone. He—” She stops to look at me. “Are you okay with me telling you this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?”
“I’m going out with your brother tomorrow, and I know you guys are close, so… I just don’t want it to be weird.” She looks at me with raised eyebrows. “Is it weird?”
“God, no.” And I probably sound a bit too chipper, considering she’s talking about people she was or is interested in, and neither of them is me. But there’s no point in her knowing how I feel, or that I’ve had dreams where she was with me instead of my brother. “Lion and I are cool about that stuff.”
“Lion?” she repeats with a soft laugh. “That’s damn cute. Anyway, this dude called me at Ora’s—on her landline. And she answered the phone and I told her I didn’t want to talk to him and now she’s all upset because she’s afraid—”
I think she’s going to interrupt herself to ask if I’m still okay with her telling me this, but she doesn’t finish. And when I prompt her, she shakes her head.
“It’s nothing. She’s just afraid I’m going to fuck up.”
There’s an again on the end of that, I know it. But the word never falls from Rafaela’s lips, so I pretend it isn’t dangling in the air between us.
“Let’s just say that my date with Lion couldn’t come at a better time.” She flashes me an expression halfway between a smirk and a proper smile, and I decide to let her use my nickname for him just this once. A freebie. No one calls him that but me, not even DeeDee, and it would be just as strange if someone else started calling me Little.
The bell above the door comes to life and jars something in Rafaela. She finishes tying her apron and steps from behind the counter just as a man wearing sunglasses enters and announces he’s looking for something “exotic.”
I came in later today, so for the first time since I started working here, I help her close up the shop. I even see the elusive Héctor, who rarely makes it farther than the back room when he’s restocking for deliveries. He drops off the keys from the van and sticks his head in to say good night before he leaves.
Rafaela hums as we sweep the floors and wipe down the displays. Her humming grows louder as she looks at the delivery log, making sure everything is in the proper order for tomorrow. And then, by the time she removes her apron, she’s singing under her breath. Even at such a low volume, it’s clear she has a good voice.
“You sing?”
She looks up, startled, as if she’d forgotten I was in the room. “Oh. Sorry.”