Raphael /BoyxBoy/

||Twenty-Five||

"Maybe," I said. "Do you mind?"

They were staring again. I had half the urge to close the store, make them quit their curious glances, just to see how they would react.

But Ben would most likely find out and leave me jobless.

And I'd be alone with Raphael with nothing holding me back. Just like the other times, when he would drag me from my chair and curl his fingers around the hem of my shirt and tug me to the very end of the store, where it was dark and too far away and too covered up for anyone to see or hear.

He looked around, too, his fingers buried in the pockets of his ripped jeans.

I wondered if he was remembering it too.

"When do you close?"

"In a few hours."

"What time?"

I checked the clock. "Ben didn't say specifically."

"So, hypothetically speaking, if you left right now you wouldn't get in trouble."

I pretended not to notice the way he licked his lips at the end of the sentence. "Hypothetically. Why would I leave right now?"

He shrugged, and ran his fingers through his hair. "I would ask you to."

"And I would comply?"

He inched towards the desk, pretending to examine the sunglasses stand with outdated frames and scratched lenses. "Don't you want to?"

"I remember distinctively asking you to stay away."

He snuck a glance to his left, where all the customers suddenly found interest in something else. "I remember you pushing me against the wall."

"That was before I asked you leave me alone."

His fingers reached out to play with the sunglasses. "Were you drunk?"

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"You were," he stated. "Did you mean it?"

"Yeah," my eyes fell to his fingers again.

They slid away from the sunglasses and disappeared into his pockets again. I looked up and found him looking at me, like he was trying to solve a riddle. I didn't think I was that difficult to figure out.

A man with graying hair edged towards the desk and gave me a smile as he placed a locket on the desk. I glanced at Raphael, who stepped to the right and turned so he was staring outside the window.

After the man left the store, the other customers slowly trickled out as well. Raphael wandered towards the gramophone, leafed through the records, then moved to the rear end of the store and worked his way between the shelves until he was back at the front of the store.

I was constantly aware of his movements, as he twisted around the furniture, traced his fingers along the dusty shelves.

When the the store was empty, and the clock ticked a late hour, Raphael was skimming through a catalogue as he hovered near the counter.

"You should call it a night," he said, not looking up.

"I will," I said, "once you leave."

"I'm not a customer."

"You look pretty interested."

He looked up then, at me, so quickly I wasn't sure how his neck remained intact. "In the furniture."

"Of course."

He set the catalogue aside. "I'll walk out with you."

I flipped the sign and locked the door behind us, stuffing the keys into my pockets and clenching my fingers around them to keep them from wandering.