Chapter 4 #3
I had watched some of The Tiger Crew, but I still couldn’t place him. The show had aired right when I got home from elementary school: kids in neon vests and sparkly bowler hats singing about math homework, baking brownies and going roller-skating and doing sketches about passing notes in class.
“I did—” He started, stopped, shook his head. Decided to suck it up and tell me. “After the other day, I did want you to call.”
I didn’t have a witty retort to throw back at him; instead, I’m pretty sure I blushed.
“But now you get why I can’t sign,” he continued.
“Wait, what?” I was thrown by the agility with which we moved from pleasure to business. Looking into his eyes had slowed me down to half speed, and now I struggled to catch up.
“Yeah, I’m not going to let you put a clip of me gawking at Maggie onto her TV show. It’s a terrible look.”
How should I play this? I sensed much more to Gabe than his physical restlessness, his sincerity, or even his good looks, a below-the-surface self that intrigued me. I liked this guy. I wanted to deliver for Dan. I needed his signature.
There was no way for me to ask if Gabe was jealous of Maggie and not have it come off mean-spirited.
I still couldn’t place him, not short or smushed-faced or at all, and assuring him that nobody on our crew had recognized him either was clearly not going to win me any points.
Instead I said, “Were you friends with her?”
Gabe sighed. He faced some inner turmoil, a shadow passing as he considered what to say.
“I had,” he told me, “the universe’s biggest crush.”
I waited. “And do you still?” This was bold on my end. He’d come somewhat clean about our chemistry, but I hadn’t.
Gabe looked at me. His lip twitched. I found myself anxious for his answer.
“Nah,” he said. “It was forever ago. But to have worked together and been, you know, on equal footing, and then the next time I pop up on TV it’s her own show and I’m the creep watching her leave the shopping mall—”
“So you do remember being there.”
“—that might be even more embarrassing than what just happened in the studio.”
We were at the front door by now. I paused. I could use all this: the awkwardness, my growing attraction. It was all still just story, even if I unexpectedly found myself playing the lead. “What just happened in the studio?”
“I was cocky and assumed that you were angling for a date.”
“And do a lot of girls . . . angle?”
“You might be surprised.”
I was not surprised in the slightest. “Bad news for them, then. You’re really only in the background of our shot. No big star moment. I’m not asking you to sign your life rights away.”
“Can I take a look before I agree?”
“Unfortunately, no.” I wasn’t even going to ask Dan—he’d prefer a blurred-out face to the precedent this would set.
“Well, then I guess we’re at an impasse,” said Gabe. He was still watching me intently.
“Okay,” I said. “Well, if these other girls are onto something, I don’t want to miss it.
What if you just hold on to this release, read it over, and we can revisit it the next time I see you?
” My whole body was tingling, part boldness and part increasing desire to touch him.
Instead of his hand, I took one of the business cards production had made for me out of my bag and offered it. Gabe grinned.
“That sounds like an excellent compromise.”
I might have kissed him then, if we were actually in a TV show. I certainly wanted to kiss him. Instead, we walked outside to see a fire hydrant and an empty curb. My car was gone, the hydrant newly accessible.
“Oops.” I almost started laughing. The lack of car was not especially funny, just Gabe being involved in yet another of my vehicular debacles. And it could have been worse—I could have been caught carless on my own instead of standing with a guy I did not especially want to say goodbye to.
“That’s where you parked?” Gabe winced. “I should have warned you that they tow here all the time.”
“That is indeed where I parked,” I said. “Also I feel like your impression of my driving is now probably not a good one.”
“Well, you’re not giving me a ride.” Gabe pulled out his cell phone. “I have the number for the company saved. Like I said, happens all the time.”
“Girls angling, companies towing. What a life.”
“You don’t know the half of it.”
I felt neither guilt about flirting on company time nor a pressing urge to be immediately back in Calabasas. What I did need, though, were those paint samples. The towing company was still processing my car, and the guy said it would be at least an hour before I could go pick it up.
After hanging up with the lot, I turned to Gabe. “If you want to make all this up to me, maybe we should go to Home Depot.”
We found all the Sherwin-Williams navy and dark blues and some lighter ones besides.
“Imagine being the person who names all these colors,” Gabe said, grabbing a swatch. “Loch Blue. Scuba Blue. Blue Nile. Adriatic Sea. How do you decide which one is Adriatic and which one is, say, Balkan?”
“Well, someone clearly couldn’t,” I said, holding up a pale blue that had simply been named Watery.
“This is for a balcony?” asked Gabe. He seemed much surer of himself here at the hardware store, now that we had a task to accomplish and we’d somewhat clarified our aims.
“I think a balcony railing.”
“Okay,” he said, turning to face me. “Important question. If you were painting your own balcony railing, which color would you choose?”
“Ah yes, a very important question,” I said.
“Gets right down to the good stuff.” It meant the world to me that Gabe didn’t break. He blinked at me, expectant, Charlie Rose to Bill Gates.
“Well, first let me consider my nonexistent balcony,” I said. “Is it a Juliet or more of a porch thing? Can it fit a hot tub?”
“Why shouldn’t you have it all?” Gabe had moved closer to me on the pretense of looking at the neutrals. His arm brushed mine, and I tried to play it cool.
“I guess it doesn’t really matter, given that the average person paints their railings black,” I said. “Until today, I didn’t even realize you could pick another color.”
Gabe smelled like pine needles. I hoped I didn’t smell like KFC. We meandered together toward checkout.
“Black,” he said. “You have the soul of an artist.”
“I had Tori Amos on repeat all through high school,” I said.
“The sensitive artistic type, that’s me.
” He didn’t know me well enough to know that I was kidding, and for a moment, I considered the glitter of reinvention, the potential of a relationship where I could be someone brand new.
But I wasn’t a performer. “I’m joking,” I said, hoping he already sensed it.
“But tell me about your art. Does your band make the perfect bop, or are you, like, soul searching?”
“You don’t like Tori?” Gabe put on being wounded/surprised. He was avoiding my question.
“I’m sort of neutral. I don’t dislike her, I just never Kool-Aid dyed my hair.”
“Ah yes. Whereas I am a proud member of the Kool-Aid dye fan club,” said Gabe. I laughed. I couldn’t remember the last time I had so genuinely enjoyed someone I also found attractive. I wondered if working on a show about love was turning me soft.
“Soul searching, then.” I answered my earlier question.
“Why shouldn’t we have it all?” Gabe echoed himself.
He looked up, and I realized we were in the lighting aisle, surrounded by various chandeliers.
Hardware store dust in the air, the beeping of a dolly as it lifted someone to the hard-to-reach cabinetry.
Bronze and gold lanterns at a hodgepodge of angles, bare bulbs and black lattice and, everywhere, white light glimmering through. I wanted him to kiss me then and there.
Gabe the musician. Well, why shouldn’t I have it all?
Gabe dropped me off at my car, and had I not had to pay the towing company a large chunk of my paycheck, I might have considered this the most successful first date I’d ever been on.
When I got home that night and filled Celia in, she threw a piece of popcorn at me.
“How could you not have told me that Gabe is Gabriel Leighton? Unbelievable.”
“I literally did not know his last name until you said it just now.”
“Oh my god, you totally know him. He was the really dinky one, super scrawny, the nerd who was always paired with Sam C.? In the ‘Where Are They Now’ in Us Weekly, I think he said he was doing music.”
“He’s definitely doing music,” I said. “That I know.” During our time at Home Depot, I had learned that Gabe was, like me, a fairly recent transplant to Los Angeles. He was working on an album, which I assumed meant that somebody was funding him but might have meant that he was making demos.
“We have to find old clips,” said Celia. “Remember how they were always like, ‘Until next time, I’m so-and-so’ and then did those weird little a capella harmonies? Is there a box set of The Tiger Crew? I wish it was easier to find things that used to be on TV.”
We couldn’t find any footage that night, and Gabe’s internet presence just confirmed what he had told me.
Born in Sacramento, three seasons on The Tiger Crew, and had been songwriting in Nashville for the past several years.
We dug around for a minute and couldn’t easily find any of his music, but we did go down a rabbit hole of Tiger Crew alumni.
Most of the kids who’d joined the Crew had gone on to live fairly normal lives—there were a few, like Maggie, who’d parlayed their child stardom into reasonable careers, and one or two who’d hit true diva, but the majority of the names Celia remembered and searched were now parenting or doing real estate or running wellness camps for rich Los Angelenos.
Celia kept bubbling, feeding me questions to ask Gabe.
Did they all make out with each other behind the scenes? What was the food like on the studio lot? Was it hard to transition away from child stardom? Would he do the show again if he could go back in time? Where should we do our double date?
I was not going to ask any of this. I assumed that I would see Gabe again at least once.
Continuing on after that seemed unlikely.
He was a celebrity. What were the chances he’d want to hang out in my crappy apartment, eating Cup Noodles?
Like Romeo and Juliet, we came from different worlds.
Our attraction would never hold up against the scrutiny of Hollywood cameras.
But in the back of my mind, I had the terrifying suspicion that if I let him, Gabe could be my Jason Dean.