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AUGUST• NINETEEN SEVENTY-FIVE
"Are you going to eat your food or watch me the whole time? Stella remarked before the canines of her teeth sank into a truffle butter cheeseburger. Raphael quietly laughed, taking a sip of his diluted coke that was overpowered in flavor from the melted ice cubes. "Why can't I admire your beauty?" He inquired and awaited a response as he waved down their waiter for another coke. Swallowing the thick bread and meat down, Stella sipped her water to moisturize the dryness of her chops. "Are you not tired of being a cornball?" She questioned with curt.
Raphael ignored Stella's impertinence, already used to her behavior. "Tell me something; it's been nearly a month since our last date, though I have constantly been asking you out, which you blatantly ignored. I'm curious about what made you call me randomly wanting to go out."
Stella thought of Michael and tried her best to push him to the back of her mind. "I just wanted to see you outside of school." She lied, and Raphael knew she was lying. He knew some other guy had her attention; what guy? Raphael didn't care to know.
What he did know was that he wanted whoever Stella had been dissing him for out of the picture and fast.
"I know it's another guy you're dealing with, Stella. You don't have to lie to me, baby." Stella watched their waiter sit a fizzy coke in front of Raphael's full plate of food; he thanked him before diverting his gaze back onto her. "I'm sure you're dealing with other girls, baw. You don't see me questioning you like the damn police, do you?" Shifting her eyes towards her plate, she dipped some crispy fries inside a round tiny tin cup filled with honey mustard.
"If you stopped playing with me and finally agreed to be my woman, I would drop em' in a heartbeat."
Their eyes aligned, and Stella couldn't help the smile that grew on her plump lips. For the first time since she met Raphael back in her Sophomore year of Parker High, she thought of him as a potential love interest instead of some cover-up for her sinful dalliance with Michael. "I want you to be mine Stella, and I'm not giving up." Reaching his hand over the table, Raphael placed his palm over Stella's palmar.
Maybe it was time to move on from Michael after all.
-
Grabbing a handful of popcorn, Raphael dropped his head back to the roof of his car and cackled at a scene in Cooley High where characters Preach, and Cochise was cutting up together and getting in some comical mess. Stella was humored, not at the movie, but at how Raphael laughed.
It was an obnoxious theatrical laugh that sort of reminded her of one of those rich guys from the vintage films she and her grandmother would watch together on some Saturday evenings.
