Murder To Excellence

20.

“Is that you?” Raphael’s voice startled her. He had been standing right behind her for a while, but she hadn’t noticed.

“I’m so sorry you have to see this. The outfit is hurting my eyes,” she tried to lighten the mood. He chuckled behind her, his chest moving against her.

“What are you doing here by yourself?”

She shrugged her shoulders while still staring at the picture and answered, “I don’t know. I just want to be alone.”

“You don’t,” he replied sternly. He knew that feeling all too well. “Otherwise you’ll become like me.”

She turned around to look at him. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“You don’t want to be alone, especially now. You’ll start to enjoy it way too much… and then you become like me and there’s no way out, trust me.” He caressed her cheek with his thumb as she was a little speechless. “What were you doing?” he referred to the picture. He knew exactly what he needed to do for her not to shut down and he was going to do anything to prevent it from happening.

She turned back around and started to explain, “We were at this park, but they turned it into a strip now. My mom’s mom took this picture. Speaking of which, you’ll probably meet her soon since she’s coming to town…” she drifted off, noticing he wasn’t even listening anymore; he was on his phone.

The phone calls had become more and more frequent. He had tried to ignore it more than ever, hoping they’d get the point, but they didn’t. He knew he’d have to pick up eventually, he just didn’t feel like doing it now.

“You aren’t even listening!” she elbowed him and he tucked his phone back into his pocket.

“Sorry, what were you saying again?”

“Never mind,” she huffed. Her mood changed completely since his interest didn’t seem to be evident.

They stood there in complete silence, both not knowing what to say. It was sort of wrong of him to do so, but it wasn’t like he wasn’t interested. Normally she wouldn’t get as agitated as she was now at him not paying attention. But he basically forced her to talk to him about the memory of two people she loved dearly and he wasn’t even listening.

“What do you want to do now?”

“I told you already. I want to be alone,” she said, her voice flat.

“And I’m not going to let you, I told you already,” he replied the same way she did. “So I’ll ask you again. What do you want to do?”

“Let’s get married,” she smiled, Pa’s smile in the picture being extremely contagious. “Now.”

“You want to leave right now to get married?” he asked in disbelief. He wasn’t complaining though, he had been waiting for her to tell him ever since he offered to get eloped.