Chapter 10 Gabriel
GAbrIEL
Ihad no business texting Taylor as much as I did. Or, at least as much as I did while also telling myself it was casual. And he was texting me as if he liked me. Taylor was perfect, and he deserved more.
I wasn’t sure I was willing to risk that. Yet, whenever he texted, I found myself replying within minutes.
Taylor
Do you have plans after work?
Gabriel
Looks like I do now ;)
That’s how we ended up at a small table in a trendy bubble tea café I’d seen on social media.
I was dressed casually, in gym shorts and a tie-dye hoodie I changed into after work, but Taylor looked shockingly put together for a guy who was taking time off. The navy dress pants and button-up with rolled-up sleeves worked for him, though, so I wasn’t going to complain.
“I’m going stir-crazy in the apartment by myself all day,” Taylor grouched. “I can feel my brain atrophying.”
“Want to do my accounting for me? If I never had to do math again, I would be happy.”
“Yes!” Taylor practically jumped out of his seat, and I burst into laughter.
“I was kidding. You do not have to do my accounting.”
Taylor crossed his arms over his chest and frowned, which only made me laugh harder. “What if I want to?”
I considered his offer as I sipped my taro milk tea. I really hated all the numbers involved with making the bitters, and it was only going to get worse if I decided to make it an official business like I’d been daydreaming about. “Eh, I mean, I won’t stop you.”
“Thank god.” Taylor slumped back into his seat. “If I had one more day of doing nothing, I would have lost it.”
“You are a weird dude.” I smiled, and he narrowed his eyes at me. “I like weird.”
Taylor’s face relaxed. “Send me what you have, and I’ll take a look at it.”
I stood and stuck out my hand. When he took it, I pulled him up from his chair.
“Now that we’ve made a business deal, let’s get to the fun part.” I pointed to the prize machines lining the store’s wall. “You pick one for me, and I’ll pick one for you.”
Taylor released my hand to survey our options. Some of the machines had small plushies, while others had keychains and figurines. “Ok, but you can’t look. Otherwise, you won’t be surprised.”
It was harder than I expected not to follow Taylor’s magnetic presence with my eyes, but he looked so cute, bent over to peer into the different machines, his tongue barely peeking out. When he caught me looking, he pointed an accusing finger in my direction.
I stuck my tongue out in return. “You can’t peek either.”
After five minutes of chasing each other around the store, stealing glances, and pretending we weren’t, we reconvened on the store’s patio with our loot.
“Now you have three hundred and one oranges to deal with,” Taylor said with a wry grin.
I was confused until he pulled a small keychain from behind his back, revealing a cartoon orange making a cute little winky face. My face broke out into a wide grin. “It’s perfect.”
Grabbing the keychain from Taylor, I immediately added it to my keyring.
“This made me think of you.” I revealed a small tuxedo cat plushie from where it had been hiding in my hoodie pocket. “I thought you could keep it on your desk when you go back to work.”
Taylor took it with a soft smile and threaded his fingers with mine. “Thank you for meeting up with me tonight.”
He pulled me close enough that our chests bumped together, and his gaze was all tender and sweet. I licked my lips, and his eyes followed the movement.
“You know, I—”
“I found a bar in West Hollywood that does cosmic mini golf,” I blurted, overwhelmed by how intense this moment felt.
Cosmic mini golf was fun. Fun was my comfort zone.
Taylor’s eyes widened. “I’m afraid to know why you’re telling me that.”
“It’s my turn to pick our next date.” I smirked.
“Doesn’t this count?” Taylor grumbled. “That means it’s my turn to pick next.”
“Nope, this is a bonus.” I threaded my arm around his waist. “Friday night is still my choice, and I say we’re going to cosmic mini golf.”
“Fine, fine.” Taylor looped his arm over my shoulder with a sigh, but his smile betrayed that he was only giving me a hard time.
I already couldn’t wait for Friday to arrive.
Later that week, I worked on my bitters, and Alex perched on a bar stool on the opposite side of my kitchen counter, filling out a Sudoku puzzle with enviable focus.
The only things we had in common at the start of our friendship were the volleyball team and our taste in women, but when I’d told her about the first glass IKEA cabinet I was planning on rigging as a greenhouse, she’d gotten excited and told me about her plans for a goth garden.
That immediate support had cemented her bestie status.
We’d made her very own cabinet greenhouse the following weekend.
In return, she’d bought liquid eyeliner and taught me how to perfect the cat eye.
“I think I’ve decided on a name for this thing,” I said. I liked that she and I could shift between catching up and sitting in companionable silence. “Plant Daddy Botanicals.”
Alex snorted, which was as close to a belly laugh as I could expect from her, so I counted it as a win. “Where’d you come up with that? And you know, you can call it a business. You have the paperwork and everything.”
To start supplying the bitters to my friends at the Whiskey Sour, I’d had to apply for an in-home cottage food license and take a food handling test, but I hadn’t filed an LLC or a business name. Somehow, that made it more real, and nothing had felt right yet.
“Someone said it as a joke the other day, but I kind of love it.”
“I think it works for you,” she said. “I’m going to start sending you links for the LLC application until you finish it.”
I sighed.
I didn’t want to go through all the trouble of paperwork and applications if it wasn’t going to stick.
Things never stuck, no matter how badly I wanted them to.
I was a little bit like a tumbleweed, getting tossed around from idea to idea with no control over when my brain would latch onto something else.
The fact that I’d been working on this same project for a few years now didn’t seem enough to prove a lifetime of evidence wrong.
I had a whole closet that I called the craft graveyard to show for it.
The remnants of hobbies past lingered there, haunting me.
“I dunno, girl. Do I have to?”
“Um, yeah, you do.” She pointed her pen at me. “It’s beyond time for you to make it official.”
My phone buzzed from the other room, and my mind went to Taylor.
“That was just me,” Alex said. “With the link to the LLC paperwork.”
“Fine, you win. I’ll do it tonight.”
“I’m going to text you daily until I get receipts.”
I huffed as I cleaned the mason jars I used to ferment the orange bitters. Once the peels were soaking in vodka, they’d go into the cabinet under the kitchen sink, shaken daily for two weeks until they were ready to be sweetened and bottled.
“Hey, do you have plans this weekend?” Alex asked. “I’m going to see a burlesque show at Bar Sinister, and I have an extra ticket.”
“Busy, sorry. I have a date on Friday, and then I have to head out to Santa Ana to visit my parents. They’ve been pestering me. I don’t think I can put it off any longer before they put in a missing person’s report.”
I was both willing the weekend to come sooner and dreading its arrival for those exact reasons. I couldn’t wait to kiss Taylor again, but I could wait another lifetime to hear my mom compare my life choices to hers.
Alex eyed me skeptically. “I didn’t think you dated.”
I refused to make eye contact in case she saw too much. “Yeah, well, turns out this guy is very dateable.”
“Same guy we met at the tournament? Taylor, right?”
I nodded.
“I’m intrigued, but I’ll let you keep your secrets for now. I’d better be the first to hear the details once you make it public, though.”
“We’re keeping it pretty casual.”
“Mmhmm.”
“Look, I just—I’m not cut out for serious relationships. People are with me for a good time, not a long time, ya know?” I pulled on my nose ring before huffing in frustration at contaminating my hands and heading to the sink to wash them. “Casual is better.”
I had my back to Alex, but I could imagine her unimpressed expression. “I know that girl in college messed you up, but at some point, you’re going to want to let someone love you.”
“She got engaged to someone else,” I cried. “Six months later!”
“Sounds like she was a shitty person. Do you really think Taylor’s playing you?”
“I don’t know.”
Alex gave me an unimpressed look before returning to her puzzle, letting my answer hang in the silence.
Usually, I got so much more done when someone was keeping me company. Tonight, with Alex’s questions floating around in my head, it felt like hours until I finally finished preparing the bitters and stored them in one of my kitchen cabinets to infuse.
On her way to her car, Alex helped me carry the trash to the apartment dumpsters. “Let me know if you need me to manufacture a crisis this weekend to get you out of your parents’ house.”
About once a month, I needed to bite the bullet and head home for the weekend to help Papá with house projects, ensure their DVD player was still connected to their TV, and reassure Mamá that I wouldn’t die alone and poor.
My time was up.
“Thanks, but I think I’m good,” I said with a laugh. “I am afraid of the type of crisis you’d manufacture.”
Alex frowned at me. “Ungrateful.”
After walking Alex to her car, I looked up at the moon.
With all the light pollution in the LA area, we couldn’t see many stars, but I’d always loved the moon.
Goose bumps ran along my bare arms as the winds kicked up.
Abuela used to tell us that whenever she felt homesick, she gazed at the moon and remembered how it looked over the mountains near her tiny hometown in Michoacán, how the rabbit had been put there by Quetzalcóatl to be honored.
The whole family was Catholic, of course, but I always found Abuela’s myths and legends more comforting than the rote prayers and readings at Mass.
I could never quite pin down where I was supposed to be homesick for.
Taylor
Are you absolutely sure we have to go mini golfing tomorrow?
Gabriel
Don’t worry. I’ll make sure you have a good time ;)
…
I trust you.
My stomach dropped like I’d crested the top of a rollercoaster. I trust you.
How could he, when I wasn’t sure I could trust myself?
At this exact moment, everything felt too perfect. I had a job I loved, amazing friends, a house full of plants, and a handsome man who wanted to wish me goodnight.
But if I let my mind drift to the future, everything felt changeable and tenuous.
I was glad I’d get to see Taylor again before I left for Santa Ana.
He had this grounding energy that calmed down my frenetic mind.
If my time with my parents left me too overwhelmed and sad to continue to be his appointed shenanigans instigator, at least I would have succeeded in getting him out of the house one more time.