I flopped back on the bed and stared at the ceiling. Without looking at Rayna, I said, “He doesn’t act like he’s my soulmate. Sometimes I think maybe he liked the other women more. I think maybe he wishes I was one of them.”
Rayna was silent. This was something I’d never heard. “This is seriously deep,” she finally said. “You’re feeling insecure because you’re jealous …of yourself.”
“I didn’t say I was jealous …”
“You’d rather think he’s a serial killer than risk being with him and finding out he doesn’t like you as much as he liked … you!” She scrunched her brow and thought, then tried again. “Yous? Anyway, you know what I mean—the other yous.”
“Forget the jealousy thing, okay? There are other reasons to doubt him too. Ben doesn’t trust him at all. He thinks Sage is some kind of demon. He said there’s a spirit called an incubus that comes to women in their sleep, and—”
“Of course Ben said that.” Rayna shrugged. “He’s jealous.”
“Of what?”
“Ben’s crazy in love with you, Clea. I’ve been saying that forever!”
“And I’ve been ignoring you forever, because it’s not true. You just want it to be true because it’s romantic.”
“Did you not see the pictures of you from Rio?”
I narrowed my eyes. “What are you talking about?”
Rayna pulled out her phone. “Honestly, I don’t know how you survive without Google Alerts on yourself. The paparazzi were out in full force for Carnival.”
She played with the phone for a minute, then handed it to me. It showed a close-up of Ben and me at the Sambadrome that could only have been taken with a serious zoom. I felt violated.
“I hate this,” I muttered.
“Why? You look cute!”
“I hate that people are sneaking around taking pictures of me!”
“I know you do. Ignore that for the moment. Just scroll through.”
There were five pictures of Ben and me. Four of them were moments I vividly remembered, pictures of the two of us facing each other, laughing as we did our best to imitate the dancers shimmying and strutting down the parade route.
The fifth one I didn’t remember. I wouldn’t have; in it I had my camera up to my face and was concentrating on lining up the perfect shot. Ben stood behind me, but he wasn’t wearing the goofy smile he’d had in the other pictures. He was staring right at me with those big puppy-dog eyes, and his smile wasn’t goofy at all, but …
“Uh-huh,” Rayna said triumphantly. She had climbed onto my bed and was looking at the picture over my shoulder. “Knew that one would stop you. There is only one word for the look on that boy’s face, Clea: love-struck. Which is probably why a bunch of websites are reporting he’s about to propose.”
“What?”
“Messenger. Don’t kill the messenger.”
I looked back at the picture. Ben did look love-struck. Very love-struck.
“It could just be the picture,” I said. “They caught him at a weird moment.”
“Yeah, a weird moment when he thought no one was looking so he showed how he really felt.”
I gave Rayna back the phone and shook my head. “Ben and I are like brother and sister. That’s gross.”
“Hey, I read Flowers in the Attic. It was kind of hot.”
“Shut up!” I laughed.
“I’m just saying, think about it. Really think about it. Is it that hard to believe that Ben’s in love with you?”
I reflexively scrunched my face at her words—it just seemed so weird to me. Ben and I didn’t have that kind of relationship. He teased me about everything, and I gave it right back to him. That’s what we were about. The picture was one thing, but Ben never looked at me like that in real life.
Or did he?
I remembered the Copacabana beach, after the Sambadrome. The way he’d held his arms around me. The way he’d looked at me after he pushed back my hair.
He’d said he wanted to tell me something … was that it? Was he going to tell me that he was in love with me?
And if I was being honest … hadn’t I kind of felt the same way? Maybe not in love, but I remembered being in his arms and liking the way it felt … and even wanting more …
“Oh my God, Rayna … I think something almost happened with Ben and me in Rio.”
“What? Wait, back up. When? You mean, ‘almost happened’ like … what? What exactly almost happened?”
“I’m not sure,” I said. “It all went really fast. I was feeling all these things, and he was looking at me like … like he was in that picture, and then …”
“Yeah??”
“I saw Sage.”
“Ooooh.” Rayna winced. “What did Ben do?”
“Nothing. I mean, I ran after Sage and … you know everything that happened then. We haven’t even talked about it.” I looked at her plaintively. “What do I do?”
“What do you want to do?”
I thought about it. “I don’t know.”
“Well … how do you feel?” she asked.
“I don’t know that either. I never even thought about Ben that way except for that split second in Rio, and even then I wasn’t thinking of it seriously. And Sage … with Sage it’s all I think about, but it’s all jumbled up with the most insane things: dreams, and other lives, and other people’s memories, and … I don’t even know what’s real.”
Rayna took it all in.
“I love Ben,” she said. “You know that. I think you guys could be great together. I also believe in soulmates. Not just as romantic flings, like the guys in Europe, but true soulmates, destined to be together forever because they’re perfect for each other. Are you and Sage true soulmates? I don’t know, but I do know you’re cheating yourself if you don’t at least try to find out.”
“How do I find that out, Rayna?”
“I want you to do me a favor. Promise on our friendship.”