Raymond & Raya: Forbidden Passion
Copyright© 2025 by R.R. Ryan
Chapter 5: Whiskey and Revelations
Raymond Alexander’s Laptop Journal
A little after ten pm, I walked into the house.
With thoughts and emotions jumbled together. Leaving me with no clear idea of what to do. The living room barely held up under the weight of the night. I’d left the lamp on its lowest setting. A little trickle of yellow, only enough to keep the shadows from staging a coup.
The world, my world, turned thick with the ghosts of every rotten decision I’d ever made. All of them jostled for a place at the table. The previous evening started with nothing but good intentions. Or at least the closest thing I had left to them.
Immediately, I nursed a glass of Jamison, the label peeled halfway off by my sweaty hand.
The house lay dead quiet.
So noiseless, you could hear the bones in the walls settling. The foundation groaned with every shift of wind outside. The house turned 90 years old, constructed in the year Boris Karloff starred as the Monster in Frankenstein, when my grandfather built it.
Somewhere upstairs, a faucet leaked with the tenacity of a lie you told yourself. The lie, I only love my daughter as my daughter, not as a woman, comes to mind. Trying not to think about anything, but the bottle was a poor distraction. Pouring another finger while letting the glass rest on my thigh.
The rim caught the lamp’s yellow as I tipped it back and forth.
Drifting to yesterday evening, I remembered the look on Raya’s face when she’d said what she said. Truthfully, I’d replayed it at least fifty thousand times. Each time I tried for an exit ramp that didn’t exist. Now the memory just lay there, curled up at the base of my skull, purring like a mean cat.
I love you, I’m in love with you, not something as simple as, I have a boyfriend, and Daddy, you won’t like him. That would be manageable and not at all strange for a daughter and her father.
I heard the stairs before I saw her. Light, precise, almost apologetic creeks and moans. Soft feet treading lightly, she’d always moved that way. Even as a kid, as if she were trying not to disturb the floor. The glass balanced in the air, I waited, letting her come to me.
Hesitating at the threshold, her shadow slanting in from the hallway. With her hair up this time. A rough knot pinned with what looked like a pencil. The effect, although accidental, proved to be a perfect accessory.
She saw me, the bottle, and the empty glass beside mine. When her mouth twitched, she started to back away. Thinking she’d walked in on something private.
“Hey,” I said, before I talked myself out of it. My voice raw and rough, shorn to the wire by all the whiskey and not enough sleep. “You want to join me?”
“Isn’t it past my bedtime?” Not sure if I joked, Raya blinked, smiled a little, a real one.
I grinned back, or tried to.
“You’re old enough for me to let you. Besides, it’s Sunday. The cops are on a break. So, they can’t arrest me.”
Drifting into the room, she moved slowly, arms wrapped around herself. At the edge of the couch, she stopped, not sitting, not standing, hovering in that in-between space.
Motioning for her to sit, I picked up the second glass and poured. Being careful to measure it out precisely the same as my own. My hands shook more than I wanted to admit. The whiskey glowed in the glass, alive for a second before it settled into the usual gloom.
She watched the bottle, me. “Mom never let me have any. Said it’d rot my brain.”
“Your brain’s fine,” I said. “Maybe too fine.”
She laughed, a sharp exhale, perched on the arm of the couch. With her knees pointed in, like she folded herself up for storage.
When I held out the glass, Raya took it. Fingers grazing mine, a spark, nothing more, but enough to short out a city block. Trying not to react, I didn’t pull away. And she didn’t pull away. Turning the glass in her hand, Raya held it up to the light.
“What do I do?” she asked.
“Just taste it, baby. Let it roll over your tongue.”
At first, she sniffed, nose wrinkled at the burn. Afterward, she took a sip, too big, too eager, and nearly choked. The coughing fit that followed sounded epic, even by my standards. Tears sprang to her eyes, and she thumped her chest with her fist, wheezing.
I lost it, couldn’t help it. Laughing so hard I nearly spilled my own drink.
She glared at me, eyes streaming, and broke into a grin.
“Dad, you asshole. You knew that would happen.”
“Everyone does it once.” And I shrugged, still laughing.
With the back of her hand, Raya wiped her eyes and tried again, this time barely wetting her lips.
“Okay, your turn.”
I sipped. Easy. Truthfully, I’d been training for this moment for eighteen years.
She watched me, eyes narrow.
“Show off.”
“Veteran,” I said.
Swinging her legs up, Raya curled into the cushion next to me. There wasn’t much space, but she managed to fit herself in, knees tucked tight against her chest. Her toes grazed my thigh, and I pretended not to notice.
Rolling it in her palm, she stared at the glass.
“It’s not as bad the second time,” she said.
“Nothing ever is,” I said, and immediately wished I hadn’t.
The silence that followed was thick, but not uncomfortable. We sipped, letting the whiskey do its work. Glancing at me, Raya waited for something, but every time I looked back, she dropped her eyes.
After a while, she set her glass down and flexed her hands, as if they’d gone numb.
“Do you ever get used to it?” she asked.
“Which part?” I said.
“The taste. The burn. Any of it.” She shrugged, staring at her hands.
“You get used to the burn. Never the taste, at least I haven’t.”
She nodded, thinking it over.
“Why do you drink it, then?”
I thought about that. Really thought.
“Because it makes you forget the things you can’t fix.”
“Does it work?”
“Sometimes.”
She picked up her glass and took another sip, this one measured, controlled. Her face didn’t change. She swallowed and set it down.
“You know, I lied earlier.”
“About what?” I raised an eyebrow.
Almost shyly, she smiled. “I’ve tried it before at a party. Vodka ... and it was awful. But I wanted to do it with you, at least once.”
She slid her hand across the cushion, slow and deliberate, until it touched my knee. Just a fingertip. A point of contact so small it could have been an accident, if I let it.
But I didn’t move. I sat there, staring at Raya’s hand. At the chewed nail on her thumb. The little scar on her ring finger from when she’d tried to slice a bagel with a steak knife. The urge to grab her hand, to pull her close, overwhelmed me.
But I held still.
She moved her hand away, folding it into her lap.
“Sorry,” she said, breathing the word to life.
“Don’t be.” I cleared my throat. The whiskey caught up to me. My head buzzed, my skin felt too tight, and every word hung between us ten seconds longer than it should have.
At that point, I wanted to say something, something fatherly, something that would set the world right again. But all I could do was watch Rayanna as she finished her drink and leaned back, her head resting on the cushion next to mine.
“You okay?” I asked.
She closed her eyes, smiling to herself.
“Yeah. I’m good.”
I nodded, though she couldn’t see it. We sat there, the two of us, nothing but the ticking of the house and the slow, inevitable burn of whiskey in our veins.
She opened her eyes and looked at me, close enough now that I could see the gold flecks in her brown irises. She seemed so much like her mother, and not at all. In fact, Rayanna appeared more mature, sharper, and more dangerous than her mother had been at her age.
“Thank you,” she said.
“For what?”
“For not making it weird.”
“Give it time,” I said, almost choked on it.
She smiled, reached over, and squeezed my hand. For a second, but it was enough.
I squeezed back.
After a moment, we went for the second pour. I told myself hospitality demanded nothing less. The narrative slipped away from me. The bottle, a third lighter than it had been, and the atmosphere in the room turned a third heavier. The space grew closer, as if the house itself breathed us in. I watched the whiskey thread its way into the glass, a living vein of gold. The more I poured, the steadier my hands became, but the rest of me lost structural integrity fast.
With her chin on her knees, Raya examined me. A scientist cataloging every new crack in my façade. Was she keeping score, I wondered, or waiting to see how long it would take for the whole thing to fall apart.
With one subtle move, she shifted her weight, enough to bridge the gap between us. Her thigh pressed against mine, not a casual bump but a deliberate, slow-motion collision. The skin burned warm through the thin fabric of her shorts, and I could feel every microfluctuation in her muscles as she moved. Rayanna didn’t apologize for the contact. Didn’t even acknowledge it. She just settled there, like we’d always sat this way.
It took every molecule of discipline I had not to flinch.
She lifted her glass and held it up, studying the way the light moved through the amber. “You ever notice how it looks like honey?” she said.
Not trusting my voice, I nodded. Rayanna sipped, this time with no drama, and let the silence settle around us. We drank together, not in rhythm but not out of it either.
After a while, she set her glass down and curled her fingers around my wrist. Just the tips, just enough to feel the pulse there. She smiled, a private little smile, and leaned her head against my shoulder. Her hair smelled like rain and smoke and some kind of citrus shampoo. The contact short-circuited all my higher brain functions.
“Dad?” she said, her voice gone small and soft.
“Yeah?”
“You remember that time we went to the lake, when I turned nine?”
I tried to swallow, but my throat was too tight. “I remember.”
She snorted.
“I almost drowned. You jumped in with your boots on.”
“They were old boots,” I said, but the memory caught me in the teeth. The look on Raya’s face, blue-lipped and furious, as I yanked her out of the water. The way she’d cried afterward. Not out of fear, but out of rage at being helpless.
“I used to think you could fix anything,” she said, squeezing my wrist, and let go. Her head still on my shoulder.
I stared at the wall. At the ugly ring where the lamp’s heat had burned the paint. At the shelf with the missing bracket. At the photograph of the three of us on the mantel, forever smiling at the wrong moment.
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