Jojo’s off-the-books background check on Raph was a little more interesting and revelatory than Yuko had expected. It took Jojo a few days to come up with the goods, but when he had them, she and Jojo met up for coffee and he went over the results with her. Raph been arrested twice in the past five years. Both times outside the state capitol in Florida. Both times no charges had been filed and they’d been released. Jojo cross-referenced the dates and found that one was a protest for claim-reversal rights and one was an environmental protest, both protests having been legally permitted and carried out and neither having involved any criminal misbehavior other than allegedly blocking a right of way which was, Jojo told her, code for “they told us to arrest somebody for something so the governor wouldn’t cut our budget more.” So, Florida being Florida, really.
That was about the extent of it. Raph had indeed obtained a degree in geochemistry. They did own their own acupuncture practice. They were licensed. They did fly frequently, presumably as a part of that practice. They lived where they said they did. They had no marriages and no divorces. Their name appeared on no birth certificates other than their own. Not a single red flag. Yuko considered those arrests to be more like giant green flags. They put their money, or their body, really, where their mouth was. She felt a little bad about Jojo poking into their life, but she actually didn’t think Raph would care much. They were such an open book. She wouldn’t have blamed Raph for checking into her, either, although she knew they’d never bother because they could read her feelings or whatever. Hell, they probably knew of a spot on her left elbow that could make her spew the whole truth and nothing but the truth if stimulated. They definitely knew a spot on her foot...
Jojo had declared Raph tentatively acceptable, even if ridiculously crunchy by reputation. This was pending an in-person vibe check, of course. Yuko had put her foot down on a first-visit introduction, however. When Raph finally arrived, she was keeping them all to herself. Nachelle and Jorge would have to wait a turn or two for their chance to cross-examine them.
Yuko was already fiercely protective of even her phone time with Raph. Sure they texted back and forth, but she also felt the need to hear their voice at least once very twenty-four hours or so. Some of their calls were video, some audio, and they mostly just covered normal content— how was your day, what’s your favorite color, what position do you sleep in, getting to know you stuff… Banalities, but pleasant ones. There had been that one call where she’d just gotten out of the bath and had had a couple of glasses of wine and was feeling especially warm and fluffy, and Raph had zeroed in on her mood even long distance. Turned out she still didn’t need any maca root and she got a gold star for following directions. She was counting down the hours until she saw them again, and it sounded like Raph was in a similar place. Everything continued to flow so naturally that sometimes, she’d look at the clock and realize that their conversation had officially spanned two dates on the calendar. These were ‘phone plugged in to the charger’ conversations. No one battery could bear the burden of their chats.
It was challenging to focus on work at present, but Yuko had still written up a detailed report about the retreat center and sent it off to her client. She’d told him it looked like a pretty solid investment opportunity if he was willing to put in the work and funds needed to update the place a bit and to start creating some branding and promotion for the business. The client was now interested enough to go down to Asheville himself and have a look-around in person. Yuko crossed her fingers for Dan and Rainbow, hoping everything would work out well for all involved. She thought it might.
With that job off of her to-do list, she moved on to the next major question: what to wear when she went to meet Raph in three days. Three long days. She and Nachelle went to Bergdorf’s and she found a dress. The kind of dress where you get a confidence boost, but a bank balance plunge. It was a deceptively simple navy blue shirtdress with a clever tie-waist that nipped in to give you an hourglass and kept you from looking like you were running around in just your boyfriend’s shirt. It also showed off her legs, since Raph was a legs person, and had a friendly, liftable hem. The placket of buttons running down the front could be as friendly as she wanted it to be, and since she was helping Raph develop in new, breastier directions, she wanted it to be pretty damned friendly. Outright welcoming. She had a pair of peep-toe espadrille wedges at home that would look perfect with it, and a little straw clutch that would finish things off nicely.
Raph hadn’t seen her in anything but active wear and jeans, and most of the time, nothing at all. She wanted to make a strong second first impression. She checked her watch. They talked every night, usually starting around seven. It was five now. She and Nachelle had time to hit up the lingerie department and she’d still be back at her apartment in plenty of time.
“Nachelle, want to go look at bras with me?”
“Yes, since you’re one of the few people I know who can buy off-the-rack bras that always fit, I enjoy living vicariously through you and your perfect thirty-four Cs. My double Gs, Glorious and Glamorous as they are, cannot relate. You sure you wanna wear a bra? You don’t really need one and if you left some buttons undone they could look right down into your cleavage and it would probably make them drool.”
“Ok, they don’t always fit. I am a woman. If you hand me an ill-fitting bra, do I not get quadra-boob? They do mostly fit, though, I admit it. It’s a hell of a lot easier now than it was when I was wearing those sweaty-ass chicken-cutlet falsies for over a year. Remember when one fell the fuck out of my bra on the subway? Jesus. I put in my time in the tiddie trenches, I’ve earned easy bra shopping. Anyway… I do want to wear one, but not much of one. All style, no substance.”
“Ooh, this is gonna be fun bra shopping! Let’s go pay the maximum amount per square millimeter of lycra that we possibly can. You ever notice that with lingerie pricing, less is literally more? Like white cotton granny panties that cover you from no-no to navel? Five dollars. A v-string with a tiny triangle of lace that would have your taco fillings spilling way out of the shell? One hundred and five dollars. They’re fucking with us.”
Yuko’s laugh flew out of her nose, painfully. “Bitch! We are in Bergdorf’s right now! Try to act right! Don’t even worry about my taco fillings. I’m going shell free. It’s just the bra. So the bra has to count.”
“Heeey-ey! That’s what I like to hear. So are you meeting them at the hotel?”
“Yeah, I’m supposed to be. I was kind of thinking about surprising them at the airport.”
“Do it! Why not! You can canoodle on the bus on the way back or go crazy and get an Uber. It’d be faster.”
“I don’t know if I can wait the time it takes for them to get to the hotel before I see them again. I’m dying over here.”
“You glow when you’re dying, then. You are totally sparkly around the edges.”
“That might be the glitter of sleep deprivation. We’ve talked every single night. Talked a long time. Texted during the day. I can’t find anything wrong with them, and I’ve tried. Jojo tried, too. I keep liking them more and more. I’m feeling around for the brake pedal, and I can’t find it.”
“You don’t need it. Let’s go find a bra that hits the accelerator. Yuko and Raph sittin’ in a yurt, railing her until it hurts…”
“Lovely. They were actually very good at going right up to that point but never quite reaching it.”
“Mmm! That’s a keeper.”
“I know.”
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