Dangerous Love Affair

Monalise and Rafael

I wiped my eyes and took a napkin from the table to blow my nose. This was the life I wished I had.

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I mixed the yellow paint with the red paint to get the color of my sunset. We were meant to paint a beach with a sunset and I was failing miserably. I peeked at the child next to me to see a watery mess of colors. At least someone was doing worse than I was.

"I messed mine up!" I heard a girl shout from the other side of the room. I stood up to go to what was wrong since I was the only volunteer in the room.

I peeked at her canvas to see a giant blotch of blue where the sunset was supposed to be, "What's wrong, Anabella?"

She pointed at the big blob on her canvas, "I put blue when I wanted yellow. It was an accident."

I nodded my head and bent down so that I was eye level with her, "Do you want to keep this one or do you want a new canvas?"

Her eyes got watery, "I just want the blue paint to go away."

I looked around to see a few of the kids looking at her. I grew panicky at the fact that I was the only volunteer with all of the kids, and I wasn't sure what I was going to do if she started crying.

I rubbed her back, "We can't erase the blue, sweetie," I thought for a second before an idea popped into my head, "Do you want to finish mine? I haven't started the sky."

She rubbed her eyes and nodded her head. I rushed back to where I was and grabbed the canvas before bringing it back to where she was. I replaced hers with mine. It hadn't even been down for a second before she started painting again, this time with the right color.

I sighed in content and went back to sitting down. After Sophia's baby shower, I came straight to the library to volunteer. Lately, I've been thinking about how alone I was for a lot of the time. I didn't have any true real friends and my husband was mentally worlds away while only being physically thirty minutes from where we lived. I needed something to keep me occupied and to keep the feeling of somber from coming back.

When it was time to go, I stalled in the library, trying to find something to do. I helped put books back where they belonged and even helped decorate the bulletin board for spotlight authors. Eventually, I ran out of things to do and I figured I had to get back to my solitude. My heart leaped out of my chest when I saw Rafael leaned up against his car with glasses over his eyes looking down at the phone in his hand. I stopped in my tracks trying to think quick for an excuse of why I would be here.

"I've been calling you." His voice sounded deeper than it usually was. He didn't seem upset which put me at ease a little.

I walked down the stairs to where he was standing, "My phone was in my purse."

He locked his phone before putting it in his back pocket. He took the sunglasses off of his face. The way he was looking at me was like he was scanning my soul for all the secrets and lies I've told him. He raised an eyebrow and was about to say something but changed his mind. Instead, he reached into my purse to get my phone out. He checked for something on it before dropping it back in my purse.

He grabbed my hand and pulled me to the other side of his car,. He looked both ways before opening his car door and helping me into the passenger's seat. I could practically feel the heat radiating from his skin when his hand was in mine.

He slammed the door before walking around back to the driver's side. He got in, and still, without a word to me, he started the car and pulled off.

I dug in my purse and pulled out my phone. I saw that I had eight missed calls from him and two from my mom. I doubt my mom really had anything to say so I didn't even bother thinking about calling her back.