After she and Rafe got through a meal characterized by incredible food and awkward silence, she prepared to face the rink. Once she’d rented a pair of skates and moved along the wall to enter the arena, excitement took over, making her irritation with Rafe vanish. Her heart thundered as she took her first step onto the glistening ice.
As Ari skated out further on the rink, now moving faster, she felt her arms flail as she began to slip. She was going down and it was going to hurt. Just as her foot began sliding out in an upward arc, strong arms wrapped around her waist from behind and she felt the solid wall of Rafe’s chest pressing against her back.
“It’s not as easy as it looks, huh?” he said, his laughter pealing softly next to her ear.
“No. It’s definitely not,” she agreed as she soaked up the warmth of his body. He pushed forward and the two of them slowly began to glide, one of his legs between hers.
The heat of his breath took the chill from her neck as she looked around her, thinking the moment was too romantic. How could he be so hot one moment, and then so cold the next? How was she expected to guard her heart when he literally swept her off her feet?
The two of them laughed as they circled the rink and watched people from beginners like her to experts glide across the ice. When it was time to leave, she did so with an almost childlike reluctance. The night was too perfect and she didn’t want it to end.
Rafe helped her off the ice, and then, when they sat down, surprised her by lifting her feet onto his lap and untying her skates. Their eyes connected as he removed her skates and took a moment to rub the sore soles of her feet.
“Your feet will most likely be a little tender after skating for the first time. If you truly enjoy it, we’ll have to get you a pair of your own skates so you can break them in. Once you’re used to them, it’s like wearing a comfortable pair of sneakers.”
“How do you know so much about ice-skating?”
“Rachel loved to skate when she was little. I would take her to a rink close to our home, and that little girl could stay on the ice all day and night. She could have pursued the sport seriously, even professionally, had she really wanted to, but it requires a lot of hours and dedication. She never took it beyond a hobby, but I found myself enjoying it with her.”
“You really are a good big brother, aren’t you?”
Rafe handed over her shoes, then removed his own skates and put his leather dress shoes back on. Ari had never yet heard him acknowledge a compliment.
“We should make our way to the hotel now. It’s been a long day,” he said as he held out his hand for her.
Ari reached for him without hesitation. Forced, as she was, into a relationship with him, she’d thought she’d be miserable all the time, but being with him wasn’t turning out to be a hardship. Yes, misery surely awaited her — she’d grow too attached and Rafe would grow bored — but she hoped she was strong enough when that moment came.
*****
Rafe watched as executives took off in helicopters to get to work. He’d done that himself. He truly loved New York; the bustle of the city seemed never to slow down, not once throughout the day. Even on the weekends, businesses ran, and people worked — as he should be doing.
Instead, he was sitting on the esplanade overlooking Manhattan’s Financial District while men and women in business attire rushed to and fro on their way to earn another dollar, give or take a few.
Ari sat next to him as she munched on a pastry and sipped coffee. It was early in the morning and he’d promised her a tour of the city. His business plans had stalled as he took time to entertain his wide-eyed mistress. Normally, he wouldn’t have cared what the woman in his life wanted — after all, he was the employer, she the employee. But with Ari, he couldn’t seem to say no.
She wanted to see the city, so that’s what they were out doing, no matter how hard he tried to talk himself out of wasting his day. Was it really a waste of time? It was certainly enjoyable, and he had devoted himself to the pursuit of pleasure.
When they started a leisurely stroll, a homeless man sitting there against a building caught Ari’s eye. Rafe grabbed her hand and tried to usher her away.
“One minute,” she said as she pulled away from him. Walking over to the man, she removed a few dollars from her purse and placed it in his cup.
“Bless you,” he said with a toothless smile filled with sadness and the look of a hard life.
“You, too,” Ari replied in a choked voice. When she turned away, Rafe pulled out a hundred-dollar bill and slid it into the cup. When a tear fell down the man’s face and he opened his mouth to thank Rafe, he held his finger to his mouth. He didn’t want a big deal to be made out of his gesture, and he didn’t want Ari to see.
Though Rafe had grown up more privileged than the average person, he’d never forget how much his best friend, Shane, had gone through. It had changed the way Rafe viewed the world. Rafe felt people should work hard for what they got, but he also understood that sometimes life threw unexpected turns that were hard to recover from.
The man might use the money to buy his next bottle of booze, or he might just use it to go and buy a new pair of clothes and get a shower so he could apply for a job. Rafe chose to believe that his gut always steered him in the right direction. He had to hope that this was a person needing that one small break to pick up the pieces of his life.
Their morning passed quickly as they strolled through the city and entered Times Square. Rafe couldn't take his eyes from Ari’s face as she looked all around her at the thousands upon thousands of people pushing past them on the wide sidewalks.
“I’ve seen this place in movies, but I can’t believe how many people are out here. It feels like if I blink, I’ll be lost forever. How does anyone ever find their way around this city?”
“Very carefully. You can usually tell the difference between the tourists and the locals by the way they move. Tourists are slower and look in every direction at once, while the locals keep their eyes on target and move swiftly in between people on the street. There’s a lot of business in this town and if a person doesn’t want to get left behind, he or she had better learn how to adapt.”
“I wouldn’t want to live here. It’s just too fast for me. I do, however, want to try some of the local pizza. I’ve heard it doesn’t get better than here.”
Pizza was hardly Rafe’s first choice for lunch, but once again he found himself unable to say no, so he found himself at John’s Pizzeria. Seeing Ari’s eyes light up at her first gooey bite made the extra grease he was ingesting well worth it.