II:
"Why do you still have your sunglasses on?" his mother asked. Her voice was tinged with barely veiled disdain and disapproval; it was far from the first time in his life he'd heard it and Rafael was sure it wouldn't be the last. He grunted a non-committal noise and shoved them up onto his head, ruining his already rumpled hair. "Mijo, are you hungover?" she scolded.
"Is it Saturday brunch?" he shot back irritably. "Fine: yes. Yes, I am hungover. I won a case yesterday – a big case. Maybe you heard about it? Anyway, we went out to celebrate and I might have overdone it just a little bit." Rafael pinched his fingers together till there was no space at all between the pads of his pointer finger and thumb. "And now I need a bloody mary."
Lucia clucked her tongue. "Rafael Eduardo Barba –"
"Mami, save the lecture," he muttered. "I get it. I got it a long time ago. Saying it again won't make me stop rolling my eyes."
She frowned at him. "The sass from your mouth," Lucia huffed. "See if I pay for brunch today –"
"I keep telling you, brunch is on me," he said, unceremoniously tearing the sunglasses off his head and flinging them onto the table.
"You spend $8,000 on that apartment, the least I can do is buy you food," she countered.
"Fine, mami, buy my scrambled eggs and coffee," Rafael muttered. The harried looking waitress appeared and pulled a pen from behind her ear and an order pad from her apron. "I'd like coffee and the shakshuka, sourdough toast, and if you could throw some extra spice in there, I'd be really grateful."
Lucia leveled him a glare that would have sent her students taking cover but left him nonplussed. "The french toast with fruit as my side, please," she requested. When the waitress was gone, she said, "So, when were you going to tell me that you threw what's his name out?"
"Tom?" Rafael said. "That was almost three months ago."
"My point exactly," she said. "You didn't say anything."
"There was nothing to say." He slumped into the corner of the booth and crossed his arms defensively. "He blasted our relationship – or lack thereof – all over a public forum in such a way that I couldn't refute it or defend myself and he came out looking like a king. All the while, he'd been stepping out with the lead of one of the hot new musicals and boy, don't I look like an idiot for paying all that rent for him." Rafael shrugged. "It's fine. It's over. God knows it wasn't meant to last anyway. The pretty boys burn out fast when they realize hard work makes you old."
Lucia pursed her lips together. "When did you get so cynical?"
"When I realized that love is a fairy tale?" he shot back.
"Don't you want to be happy?"
"How do you know I'm not?"
"Rafi." Her voice softened; she reached out to him over the table and he sighed, taking hold of her hand. "A mother knows." She waited for a long time for him to say something and when he didn't, she finally added, "Do you date men because you think it's going to shut me up about you just having somebody in your life?"
He huffed a low chuckle. "Maybe. I don't know. They're easier to get rid of when I don't feel anything anymore," Rafael admitted. "Women… women are complicated."
"And you don't like complication."
"I don't like it when I can't control my own emotions," he tried to explain, but even that fell short of what he truly meant. "I don't know. It's like since dad beat it into me to hold that rigid control – I can't let go. Not really." He doubted that he would ever know what love truly was. He knew that, theoretically, his mother loved him, but it felt more like manipulation than anything else. Smothering manipulation and passive aggression. Somewhere in there, there might be a genuine kernel of affection, but he really had to hunt for it. "So… whatever. It's fine. I like my $8000 space."
"Can you afford it?" she questioned, raising a brow.
He shrugged. "Does it matter?"
"Mijo –"
"I'm locked into the contract for another year," he said. "So I commute and I pretend I'm fine in my terraced loft. I'm fine, mami. I'm fine." He hesitated a moment, then said, "I'm thinking about a transfer."
She raised her brow again, studying him. "What kind of transfer?" she inquired.
"Temporary demotion with a quick promotion to Chief ADA within six months," he said. "I would be tied to sex crimes for that time."
She sighed. "Isn't that why you –"
"I met one of their detectives a couple months back," he commented. "If she's anything like she was in the bar on the job, I can imagine why they have the reputation they do."
"And what's that?" she inquired.
"Fight like hell for the victims and take no prisoners." He quirked a little smile. "I used to be like that before the bloom fell off the rose."
"Before you burnt out, you mean," Lucia sighed. "Think about why you left sex crimes, Rafi, why you –"
He took a deep breath and said, "Mami, I think about the people I've failed every day. I don't need you to remind me."
The waitress brought out their meals and set them down in front of them. Rafael went to town on his eggs, getting the runny yolks out into the tomato ragout to scoop up with his toast. His coffee was hot and black and the combination of the food and caffeine was heavenly to his hungover body.
"So, tell me about this detective you met," his mother prompted.
"Ma," he muttered, "it wasn't like that."
"Mijo, it's always like that," she replied, stabbing a piece of cantaloupe with a smirk on her lips. "Pretty? Tragic backstory? Flirting with you like she didn't have a thought in her head?"
He rolled his eyes. "Actually, she was pretty closed off," Rafael said, taking a thoughtful bite. "Gorgeous. You know that case I didn't take because abuelita…" He hesitated, then frowned, swallowing hard before he continued. "Ah, the William Lewis trial where charges were dropped and then he went on to take a police detective hostage and – well… that was her. The detective." He pressed his lips together, weighed the words like a penance as they tripped off his tongue. "Olivia Benson."
"You can't still blame yourself for not taking that case," she said, reaching over to cover his hand with hers. "He would have found a way to do what he did regardless."
"He slithered through a legal loophole," Rafael snapped. "My job is to close those loopholes so the jury will convict without reasonable doubt – and Manhattan asked me to co-chair the case and I declined because my grandmother was dying. I almost got that woman killed because I was too busy crying over my abuelita to do my fucking job."
"And now you're crying over spilt milk."
"Her name was familiar. Yeah, I looked her up after I met her in the bar and – mami, I could have –"
"Mijo, I could have done more to protect you when you were a boy and I didn't," she said. "It haunts me every day. And sitting here, seeing you torture yourself makes me question everything." Lucia sighed heavily. "You are not to blame for the evil in the world. That monster did what he did and what he would have done no matter what. It is not on you. You are only human, Rafael."
He frowned and dropped a crust into the tomato. "What if I could do better?" he asked.
She shrugged. "Better isn't a tipping scale, Rafi. Better is what you do for other people to make their lives easier, to bring balance and joy and… peace." Lucia smiled sadly. "It's been a while since you've been to Mass."
He rolled his eyes. "Mami –"
"We let the gays in now," she reminded him cheerfully.
"Wow," he drawled, low and slow. "Bisexual. Not strictly gay."
"Not strictly heterosexual either."
"Are we arguing semantics?"
She narrowed her eyes. "When God says it's a sin –"
"Strictly speaking, there's nothing in the Bible about homosexuality, but go off," he said, waving dismissively. "I flirted with Detective Benson and she wasn't interested."
"Maybe because you reek of the bisexual," Lucia said delicately. "What were you wearing at the time?"
"A suit and tie. I was adequately dressed: she was not interested." He smiled wanly. "Too bad."
"Do I sense –"
"Nope," he said, popping the 'p' with extra emphasis. "Anyway, I have a date tonight with a nice yoga instructor in my building named Tony. He's very flexible. It's going to be a great time." He grinned wickedly and stood up, leaning over the table to give his mother a quick peck on the forehead. "Gotta run – groceries won't buy themselves. See you next week, mami." He had taken exactly two steps away from the table before he turned back and grabbed his sunglasses. "I'd forget my head if it wasn't attached."
Once out on the sidewalk, he made his way to the subway station, glad of the early afternoon breeze to blow away the smell of festering garbage and piss on the curb. The Bronx was nothing if not still a mess, and he hated that his mother still insisted on calling it home.
Rafael tucked his hands into the kangaroo pocket of his hoodie and headed down into the subway, pausing long enough to swipe his metro card before running to catch the train back to Manhattan. He was tired. There was no date that evening, hot yoga instructor or otherwise, unless you counted the one he had with his oversized bathtub and a bottle of bath salts. It had been a long week.
A very long week.
And as he stood on the balcony of his apartment – which he paid far too much for – looking out over the streets of Manhattan, he wondered what it would take to actually feel something aside from the soul-crushing numbness and guilt that seemed to overwhelm him.
He dug in his wallet for a moment, eventually coming up with her card, dog eared from as many times as he'd thumbed it over before tucking it away again. He dialed the number into his phone and pressed Send, then waited.
"Detective Benson," Olivia greeted softly.
"Olivia – this is Rafael. Barba, Rafael Barba," he amended. "I don't know if you remember me – we met in Garrett's on 58th a couple months back." Why did he sound like a nervous teenager?
"I remember."
She wasn't giving him anything at all to work with and he felt even more out of his element than he already had been. "I… ah… can we grab a coffee sometime?" Rafael inquired.
He heard the quiet noises of files shuffling and a chair rolling, then she cleared her throat. "I'm off work in an hour if nothing goes crazy. There's a diner down here by the precinct if you can stand to be seen with a cop – or we could go somewhere else."
"The diner is fine," he agreed quickly. "Unless you want –"
"The coffee is shit but the pie is to die for," she replied.
"Then we'll have pie," he said with a small smile.
He could almost hear her smiling back. "I'll see ya," Olivia casually dismissed before hanging up.
Rafael immediately tugged off his hoodie and went in search of something smart casual that didn't look like a homeless hoodlum had inhabited his body. No need to advertise that he went slumming with mami unless it was absolutely necessary.
It wasn't until he was most of the way to the 16th Precinct that he decided that he was just going to do something impulsive for the first time in his life – well, since he had crashed his father's car in 10th grade, that is – and take that transfer.
The only thing it could do is change his life.
TBC...
