I finish scooping Tucker’s litter box, which didn’t turn out to be the horrific task I anticipated, though I found it somewhat insulting that he watched me the whole time from three feet away. “Sorry? You have an amazing voice.”
She doesn’t deny the compliment, but instead says thank you. I like that there’s no false modesty. “I used to sing. I was in choir. At my old school… and my old church.” She opens the register to begin removing the money, which she’ll put in a locked box until first thing tomorrow morning when Ora drops it off at the bank. Then she looks at me and grins. “Just how amazing?”
“Really amazing.” I’m tending to Tucker’s overnight provisions now: fresh water and half a scoop of dry food in his stainless steel bowls. “But you know that.”
“Yeah, maybe.” I can tell she’s still smiling without looking at her. “I like hearing it from you, though.”
My skin burns like the moment I walked in, and I conjure my brother’s face, force myself to think about how much he likes her. He sat in my room for thirty minutes last night, asking my opinion on everything from what he should wear on their date to whether he’ll look cheap if he doesn’t spring for valet.
There’s a pause as Rafaela waits for me to respond. And I’m tempted to flirt back with her. Because it feels good to be open about it, and because I dreamed of her, and because of those gorgeous purple lips. But I don’t. I scratch my fingers along Tucker’s cheeks and ask her, “Are we just about done?”
“Yeah.” She clears her throat as if she’s realigning her train of thought. “Is Lionel picking you up tonight?”
“My mom,” I say, relieved that I don’t have to sit in a car with my brother and my guilt.
“Oh. Well… do you have to go home right away? Ora is going out tonight and… I’m probably being paranoid, but I can’t stop thinking about how that guy called her house and he knows where I live and—I make really good pasta. I could cook dinner and drive you home later.”
I’m surprised to see the anxiety is not just in her voice but reflected on her face, too. I know so little about Rafaela, but I never expected she’d be so vulnerable in front of me.
My family eats dinner together most nights, but I’m really thinking of Lionel. How he’d react if he knew I was feeling this way about Rafaela. How I’d worry that it would make him quieter and quieter until I never saw him anymore, until he lost interest in her and his books and the rest of his life, until he was so low that I wouldn’t see even a couple of hours of sleep unless I was close to him, staying a few feet away in the guest room.
But just because I like her, that doesn’t mean I have to act on it. I get the feeling she had to swallow a lot of pride to ask me to come over, and the guy from the Palisades clearly has no sense of boundaries. She shouldn’t be alone when she’s so scared.
I say yes and she smiles and I tell myself it’s okay to stop thinking about Lionel’s well-being for a few hours. I tell myself it’s okay to take a break.
Ora’s house is cute, a pale blue bungalow with comfortable furniture and art everywhere and just enough room for the two of them. It smells good, like someone dusted cinnamon around the rooms. Rafaela hangs her bag on a hook by the door and gestures for me to do the same. I instantly spy two cats, a small calico and one with lots of gray fur.
“That’s Hall and Oates,” Rafaela says as she heads toward the kitchen with them trotting along behind her. “It’s their dinnertime now, too.”
“Doesn’t Tucker miss them?” I follow her to the kitchen, which is painted a warm yellow and has a checkerboard floor and a window box filled with potted succulents and cactuses, but no flowers.
Rafaela reaches into the pantry for a can of wet food and pops the top, splitting it evenly between two bowls with a fork. “Tucker lives at the shop because he’s an asshole to other cats. Ora says he used to terrorize these two.”
“Where is Ora?”
“At a movie. She’s been out twice in the last week.” Rafaela washes her hands as the cats devour their meal. “You could be single-handedly responsible for saving my aunt’s social life.”
She sets a big pot of water on the stove and assembles a cutting board full of vegetables. I offer to help, but she refuses to let me and instead pours us both a glass of white wine.
“Dump it if Ora comes in” is her only stipulation, so I try to relax and tell myself there’s no reason at all to feel like I’m on a date with the girl my brother will be taking on a date tomorrow.
She chops and stirs and dices and sautés, and she does it all while talking, without missing a beat. She tells me about Castillo Flowers, how it was started by her grandmother, Ora’s mom. How it’s barely changed inside since it opened forty years ago, and how Ora threw herself so fully into her work after her mother died because the best way for her to grieve was to make sure she kept the family business alive.
Rafaela warms a loaf of bread in the oven while she takes down dishes and a pair of water glasses from cabinets with no doors on them. She’s so confident in the kitchen, moving around as if she does this every day. She’s good at a lot of things: singing, cooking, working with flowers. And there’s still so much I don’t know about her.
A couple of minutes later, she’s placed a bowl of steaming pasta in front of me, bow ties surrounded by broccoli and bell peppers and zucchini and carrots and squash in a light sauce. It’s delicious, as good as if it came from a restaurant.
When I tell her so, Rafaela doesn’t look at me, but she smiles as she tears a piece of bread off the loaf. “Thanks, but if you think this is good, you should taste my mom’s. Her pasta primavera is the best.”
I sense an opening, and I don’t know if I should go for it, but I do. “Did she teach you how to cook?”
“She taught me a lot of things. My dad took off when my sister was a baby, so she was obsessed with making sure we knew how to do everything for ourselves. I know how to cook, change a tire, drive a stick shift, and change a baby’s diaper.” She pauses. “I used to help out with my little sister.”
She follows that up with a laugh, but it’s strained and it makes me hold my forkful of pasta too long. I feel like she’s talking in riddles. Part of me thinks she wouldn’t have invited me over if she didn’t trust me in some way, but the other part wonders if I’m going to have to dig for every piece of information about her life.
“How’d you end up here? At Ora’s, I mean.” I spread a generous amount of creamy butter onto my bread and take a bite.
Rafaela doesn’t say anything, and I wonder if she was too lost in her own thoughts to hear the question, but no. She stares at the wood grain of the table for a few seconds, then sets down her fork and looks at me.
“I don’t know why I’m telling you this, but you seem like one of the good ones, Suzette.” She doesn’t break my gaze. “You are, right?”