Page 51 of Knocked Up By the Silver Foxes

Sophia looks at the floor plan. Looks at the space. “Left corner,” she says, like she thought of it.

I make the note.

The main door opens and Lorenzo comes through backward, holding one end of a clothing rack, Raphael on the other end. They’ve got two more racks visible behind them through the door and what appears to be a flatpack table situation that I’m going to need to supervise very carefully if it’s going to end up level.

“Calm down ladies, the men are here,” Raphael announces, “and we have sacrificed our Sunday morning for you.”

“You were playing video games,” Sophia says.

“I was winning at video games. There’s a difference.” He grins at me over the rack. “Harper. You look significantly more awake than I feel.”

“I had coffee.”

“That’s the secret. I knew there was a secret.”

Lorenzo sets down his end of the rack and goes straight to Sophia, kissing her temple and looking over her shoulder at the floor plan with the attentive interest of a man who has learned that taking Sophia’s projects seriously is both the right thing to do and significantly better for his personal life. She immediately starts explaining the fitting room decision and he listens with his chin resting on top of her head and honestly they’re so disgustingly cute about it that I have to physically look away before I say something sentimental.

Raphael appears beside me. “If we left right now,” he says, very quietly, “they wouldn’t notice for at least forty minutes.”

I press my lips together. “We’re not leaving. This is too important for Sophia and Lorenzo.”

“I’m just saying the option exists.”

“Stop being lazy and go get the tables.”

He sighs profoundly and goes to get the tables.

We spend the next hour building things. The racks go up faster than expected because Raphael is surprisingly competent with assembly instructions, which he tells me is because he spent two years touring and setting up his own equipment and learned that nobody else is going to do it right. The tables are flatpack and I was correct to be suspicious of them, but between the two of us we get them level and stable and positioned where Sophia wants them, which is in three different places before she settles on the first one.

Lorenzo and Sophia drift into their own world at some point, standing in the center of the space talking about something with their heads close together, and Raphael and I end up at the far wall wrestling with a display unit that has opinions about being assembled.

“Hold this side,” I tell him.

He holds it. I tighten the bracket. He’s quiet for a moment in the particular way he gets when he’s noticed something and is deciding whether to say it.

“You seem off,” he says.

“I’m fine.”

“You’ve said ‘I’m fine’ like four times today. Surely, you’re aware that ‘fine’ isn’t an emotion or a level on the pain level meter.”

“Those have smiley faces on them,” I argue.

“Okay, well, which face is ‘fine’?”

“The, uh, straight-lipped one.”

“So you’re in moderate pain?”

I look up at him. He’s watching me with the straightforward, non-judgmental attention of someone who is genuinely asking rather than fishing for something to say. That’s the thing about Raphael. He doesn’t have an angle.

I look back at the bracket. “Can you keep a secret?”

He considers this with more sincerity than the question probably requires. “Depends.”

“That’s not reassuring.”

“From you? Yeah, probably.”