"He promised we'd look for a house and guess what? Nothing, that was last week, and he hasn't said anything else about it. He doesn't listen..." Rafaela complained.
"Shouldn't you be there with him?"
"I just want to be away..." Rafaela said while her mother pampered her hair. Cynthia knew they were broken and unable to communicate.
"Why do you want to leave the house?" Her mother asked.
"I don't want to leave..." Her eyes watered. "I just can't stand to be there... I can't..." Rafaela shook her head while tears began to fall. "I can't stand being inside the house mom..."
"Oh sweetie..." Cynthia breathed feeling her daughter's pain.
"All I want and wish for is to have my boy back..." Her lips trembled and she sobbed low. "It's so hard... when does this pain stop? I can't take it, I can't. Everyone says time heals but it's not doing anything for me. The more time goes by the more I miss him. I miss him so much..."
"You have to be strong baby." Cynthia bent down over her and kissed her forehead.
"I'm trying... I am really trying but I really can't focus on anything. I thought about going back to work, but they told me not to, they told me to stay two weeks more at home. I can't be there... it's just so... unbearable."
"Painful. Look, insist. You two are living a very difficult time. We all are, but the two of you more, but I know James loves you."
"I wonder how much he loves me now. All he does is to be locked up in Liam's room or outside on the porch drinking beers. He doesn't even look at me, it seems like I don't even exist." Rafaela complained. Then she took a deep breath. "I am being unfair... I know he loves me. He's just as broken as I am."
"He lost his son, just like you did. So, he's hurting too, and people hurt in different ways. Your way to deal with it is being far away and his is to be there. You need to talk because if you keep doing this, both of you, living the pain alone, you will grow apart." Cynthia warned.
"It's easier said than done." Rafaela stated and then she got up. "I need to go. I need to meet Kelly."
"Are you sure Rafi, maybe James is expecting to stay at home." Cynthia advised.
"What for? We don't talk. We don't sit together... there's just this painful silence, his absent stare, my mind yelling at me to leave. It's not easy mom." With that she kissed her mother's cheek and left.
When she got inside her house, it was the usual, James was in Liam's room and she didn't bother to go there. Instead, she went straight to their room and put her outfit to wear on the bed, then she went for a shower. James, seeing she wasn't going there, and hearing the shower running, he went to their room and stopped looking at her clothes on the bed. Gently he opened the door of the bathroom and entered it.
"Are you going out?" He asked.
Rafaela closed the water and then reached for the white towel. "Yeah..." She simply said.
"It's dinner time Rafi." He said.
"Girls night out with Kelly. We're going out for dinner and then some club, I don't know." She shrugged and sounded cold.
James turned around without saying a word. Her heart ached for doing such thing, but the thin air inside that house was already suffocating her and she had been there for twenty minutes. Fast, she went to the room and got dressed, put some makeup and grabbed her purse. When she got to the living room, surprisingly, James was on the couch and the TV was on, that must have been the first time the TV was on for the last two weeks.
"See you later." She said, but he didn't say a thing, nor did he look at her. When she tried to open the door, she found out it was locked. She looked for her keys on the phone table, where she usually left it and they weren't there. "You have got to be kidding me!" She turned around annoyed.
"You're not going anywhere." James got up and faced her.
"You can't lock me up in the house!" She argued.
"I just did!" He defied her. Rafaela took giant steps towards him and extended out her hand.
"Give me the keys." She ordered. James remained still. "Give me the fucking keys James."
"No." He affirmed.
"Are you insane? Have you lost your mind for good? I want to go out! Kelly is waiting for me."
James pointed at the phone. "You call her, and you tell her you're not going."
"Why are you doing this?" Rafaela yelled.
"Because it's late, you're my girlfriend and you're bound to stay with me. WITH ME!" He yelled back losing his mind.
"What for?" She yelled. "So, I can sit here all alone and you don't even talk to me and don't even look at me, or to see you drink beer after beer. What for? Tell me..."
"Because that's what you're supposed to do, to stay with me! We talked. I told you what I thought it was wrong and nothing changed. You kept doing the exact same things, so I had to come to this point, to force you to stay in the house." James sounded mad.
"And I told you that I couldn't stand to be here. I have been here for half an hour and I already have this lump on my throat and this willingness to cry. I can't stand to be here. I told you I wanted to move, you even proposed so and what have you done about it? NOTHING!"
"I am sorry if I am not in the mood to go out and look for a house. I JUST LOST MY SON!" He threw it in her face.
"I LOST MY SON TOO!" Rafaela yelled even louder. "Can't you see that?" She gave a step closer to him. "I lost him too. I am hurting as much as you are. I want to get out of this house." She cupped his face with her hands, her eyes filled with tears. "I miss him as much as you do, can't you see that?"
"No..." He pulled away coldly. "What I see is you going out all dressed up, makeup and ready to have fun. Guess what? You're not going anywhere." With that he turned his back at her.
She approached him again. Rafaela raised her hand to run on his back but refrained and put her hand down again. "Are you jealous?" He remained silent. "James..."
"Is that why you're doing this? To get my attention?" He asked her, turning around to face her.
"So, you know you're not paying any attention to me." She stated.
"You know why!"
"We are alive. As much as that costs us, but we are alive and we're a couple. It's alright to hold hands. It's alright to talk. It's alright to cry together. It's alright to make love. It's alright to still be a couple, that doesn't have to change at all, but it did! We don't do any of that. You don't even look at me, you don't even notice me. I asked you something, James I am crying for help here, I hoped you understand what is going on with me and all you gave me was a false hope. You said you'd do it and then you did nothing about it. You ignored my request. I need to get away from this house. I am going insane here!"
"All you want to do is erase his memories of our life!" He accused her. They were grieving in many different ways.
"No... he'll always be in our heart and the memories we live it in our head. To be here is beyond that. I must look at the fucking pool every day when I step out of the house. I miss him James... I cry every day because I miss him, more than once. I had been crying in my mother's house just a while ago. I need distance from here. I need to miss my son and mourn his death away from the place where he died. This is what this place represents to me now, the place where Liam died."
"Stay here with me." James breathed. With tears probing in his eyes. "Please...stay here with me."
Rafaela gave another step ahead. It hurt her to see that way. She grabbed his face with trembling hands and pressed her lips against his. His eyes closed but he didn't kiss her back and she pulled away to look in his eyes.
"Kiss me..." She asked him and she made it to his lips again.
That time, his lips responded to her kiss and soon their tongues entwined. Rafaela felt her body catch on fire while his tongue played with hers and dived her hands under his shirt. Though her palms burned good on the skin of his stomach, James grabbed her hands and pulled them down, breaking the kiss and giving a step back.
"Don't you want me?" She asked him hurt with his gesture. Once again, her tears prompted in her eyes. "I WANT TO HAVE SEX WITH YOU!" She yelled at the top of her lungs. "I miss having sex with you and that I can have... I want you; can't you see that? I want to have sex James, with you! I want to have sex!"
"I'm sorry." He simply told her.
"Open the door." She ran to it and then turned around to him. "Open the door, James." He didn't move. "OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!" Then she looked at the window, of course... he missed that detail and so did she. "It's ok... don't bother... I can leave through the window." She went to it and ran the window of the living room, it led to the porch.
"Rafi!" He called her but she sensed a warning tone in his words.
"It's easier for both of us if you open the door." She defied him.
He gave up. James went to it and unlocked it, then he gave her back her keys.
"You know what? I don't blame you for anything, but you do blame yourself for it and you're punishing yourself, you're punishing us. We lost him but we don't have to lose anything else if we don't want to." With that she turned around and went to her car. Even inside it, she heard the door the house slamming really hard. She drove away but crying. They were doing everything wrong. She was also failing; she was aware of that.
Already with Kelly inside the car, Rafaela began to drive downtown. "I want to have dinner and then go out to dance." She told her friend.
Kelly looked at her. "Is everything alright Rafi?"
Rafaela nodded but her tears began to run down her face and Kelly noticed something was not alright at all, despite the tragic period in her friend's life. As Rafaela wasn't looking, she smiled softly but then she turned to her again.
"Pull the car over." Kelly asked Rafaela. "You're crying..."
"I'll be fine." Rafaela said trying to stop the tears that didn't stop falling. Instead she was crying even more.
"Pull over Rafi." And blinded by her tears, Rafaela did so and buried her face in her hands. "What's the matter Rafi?" Kelly asked taking a hand to her back. "Talk to me...tell me what's wrong."
"We fight. We fight all the time. We don't seem to understand each other." Rafaela complained. Mentally Kelly rejoiced on the fact. They were broken but she played along.
"Rafi...you two are living such a rough period. You two need to cling unto this together. I haven't been telling you anything, but you're living strangely. I don't know how to say this, but maybe you're also not reacting as good as you want. Going out and distract yourself is something I approve, no matter how hard that seems to other people, but you have been unstoppable. Ever since the funeral that you have been unstoppable, you run in the park, you go to the beach, we go out, and you're never home, you're never there with him."
"He doesn't even look at me Kelly. Do you think that's easy for me? I love him... I expected him to be my support, but thing is I can't be in the house and he doesn't want to be anywhere else but there. We talked, last week I told him I wanted to move to another place, he didn't do anything about it. I tried to kiss him, just before I left the house, because he locked me up in there... I kissed him and I tried to make love to him, because I really miss him, and I don't think there's anything wrong with us acting like the couple we were. THAT would make things easier for us for sure. I did not just lose my son Kelly; I feel like I lost him too and that is too hard to take. I don't know if I am making myself clear..."
Kelly nodded. "I know what you mean, but going out with me after that fight won't help things between you two, does it?"
"I guess not..."
"Go home..." Kelly suggested. If being at home hurt her, then that's where she should be and maybe things would get even more complicated between them and they'd fight.
"But you're ready to go out." Rafaela stated.
"I'll be just fine. Take me back home and go home Rafi. You know you're not going to have any fun and at least there you are near him."
"Oh God... I just hate him so much right now!" Rafaela cursed and Kelly smiled.
"No, you don't."
Rafaela started the engine and turned around, coming back home as Kelly suggested. When she entered the property and parked the car near her house, she noticed the light in the living room on. She opened the door and entered the house, making James jump off the couch, and they stared at each other.
"Turn the lights of the pool off." She asked him first thing and while he did so, she went to Liam's room, closing the door and turning the key and she took it away. Then she walked up to the fridge and he went to meet her there. One by one she began to put all the beers down the sink.
"What are you doing?" He asked.
"You don't drink anymore, you hear me?" She said looking at him.
"Are you out of your mind Rafi?" He stopped by her side.
"Liam's room is locked up; you're not allowed to go there anymore. I hid the key."
"WHAT?"
"Don't yell at me, I am doing this for us. And tomorrow James, tomorrow we're going out. You're going out of this house with me not even if I must drag you and don't fucking dare to say you're not. We're going to a real estate and we're going to find a fucking house where we can live. And another thing, from now on, you sleep in our bed with me, besides Liam's room is closed so you can't sleep there anymore."
"You came back home even more insane than when you left." He accused.
"No... I came back home to fix things. We can be fixed. We can't have him back, but we can have us back. So, for Christ's sake if you love me, stop ignoring me. You blame yourself, don't you?" She asked him. It was not just the hurt of having lost another important person in his life. There was something else corroding him.
James looked down at his feet. "It's not your fault." She told him venturing a hand to caress his face.
"I was the one supposed to watch him!" He cried. "I miss him Rafi... I miss him so much..." Rafaela put down all her guards down and pulled him to her and embraced him while he sobbed. He was so broken, she feared for him, but she also didn't have the strength to be strong for them both.
"I miss him too." She sobbed. "It's not your fault, James. It's not..." She insisted feeling his arms squeezing her against him. That had to be the moment where she felt he really needed her around ever since Liam's death.
"I lose everybody..." He whispered.
"Don't say that..." She patted his hair and kissed his cheek. James pulled away and looked in her eyes. His blue eyes red and filled with salty water.
"It's true." He said. "I lost my mother... I lost Cliff... and now my son..." his shoulders shook more there, and he began to cry again.
"James..." She cupped his face between her hands and rested her forehead against his. She smelled bear in his breath, and she shook his head.
"You need to stop drinking. You are destroying yourself." She whispered and pecked him after. He just nodded.