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It wasn’t entirely selfless either. Devoting his time and attention to Raphael meant he wasn’t thinking about Wilder. It meant he wasn’t sending his brain into a tailspin wondering if every time they had sex, it would end in disaster. It meant he wasn’t second guessing whether or not Wilder would think he was worth it after all.
* * *
After the third text from Wilder saying he was going to be even later, Luca bustled Raphael into the car and they drove to the little shopping center with a massive Kroger to pick up dinner from a Chinese restaurant that had a menu Raphael could eat from.
After his long sleep, Raphael was moving around better, and his color was returning to his cheeks, which made Luca feel like he’d done some good. They grabbed the food, then Raphael pointed them to a little park next to an old but not-quite-famous cemetery, and they decided to picnic in the car and eat out of their take-out boxes.
“Jayden will be happy,” Raphael said, leaning back in his seat. They had the top of his car open, and the seats reclined. Everything smelled a little bit like his shumai, which was sitting in the Styrofoam container only half eaten, and the breeze across their face was still humid, even with the setting sun.
“How so?”
“I think I can go back to work tomorrow.”
At that, Luca scowled and turned his head to look at his friend. “Don’t let him force you back to work if you’re not ready.”
Raphael laughed, rolling his eyes. “That man has never been able to force anyone to do anything. No, I’m ready. And he hates answering phones. I don’t want to think about what my schedule looks like right now.”
Luca snorted and shook his head. “Well, if you’re sure…”
“I like working. I know it’s not some big, grand career you see in California or maybe New York. That life seems so miserable. I didn’t want any part of it.”
Luca watched his friend’s profile for a long, quiet moment. “What did you want to do? Like, when you were a kid?”
“I wanted to go to space.” Raphael lifted his hand and traced his finger across the sky in a pattern over the stars. “My mother was very practical. When I was born, they didn’t know a lot about CP. They told her I would never walk, that I would never talk. She saw these pamphlets with these children who couldn’t dress or feed themselves. For so long, she thought it would have been better if I died.”
“Jesus, that’s…who thinks that about their kid?”
“A lot of parents, I imagine,” Raphael said, a sort of dark resignation in his tone. “Even now, a lot of people don’t understand it. They think if you can’t be like everyone else, you can’t be happy. She grew more confident as I got older, and she stopped trying to hold me back. Mostly. I told her I wanted to go to space, and she told me they would never let me.”
“Did you try to prove her wrong?”
Raphael’s sigh was very soft, carrying over the quiet breeze. “No. I was trapped in a cycle of endless doctors and surgeries to help loosen my tendons. I fell behind in school because I was constantly out, and I barely passed. University was a pipe dream.”
“So, how’d you get here?”
Raphael laughed softly, and he set his box of vegetables back into the bag at his feet. “I fell in love with a woman who wanted to travel. So, we did that for a while, but my physical limitations were holding her back and making her miserable so I let her go. Then I fell in love with an American man, and he talked me into moving here before it ended.”
“You dumped him?” Luca asked.
Raphael laughed. “Ah. No. The other way around. He wasn’t thrilled when he realized he couldn’t love me into becoming able bodied.”
“Seriously?”
Raphael snorted. “I wish I was joking, but I’m not. He truly believed that love would be enough to make a difference.”
Luca’s brows dipped into a scowl. “That’s…”
“It’s reality,” Raphael said. “But reality changes shape every second of every day. Like space, for example. I’m too old now for NASA, but there’s a child being born sometime soon—just like me—who will be in a rocket. They’ll go to the moon,” he brushed his hand across the sky, “and they’ll touch the stars.”
“It should be you,” Luca declared.
Raphael shook his head. “I found joy in this simple life. I don’t want anything as grand as space. Not anymore. I just want this.” He dropped his hand on top of Luca’s. “I want to feel love and be loved. I want good friends and bad Chinese food that would never be served in China.”
Luca laughed so hard he snorted. “Fair.”
“I want to meet the love of my life someday—but even if I don’t, I still want this life. With my little job, and my little house, and my beat-up old car.”
Luca drank in the words, letting them wrap around him, settle under his skin, because it was everything he’d needed to hear. It was a small something that meant everything, but he didn’t know how to put it into words to make sense.
