Chapter 5 #4
Though he’d expressed disinterest in coming out to the house when the show was filming, the next morning Gabe jumped at the chance to join me while everyone was gone.
I gave him the code for the entry gate, and he came up the main walk around two p.m. carrying Chinese takeout and a six-pack of beer.
He noticed the camera by the front door immediately.
“Don’t worry,” I said. “I turned them all off.” I took the beer and stuck it in the fridge, next to Jason’s open Muscle Milk and Maggie’s uneaten Tupperware of chef-made low-calorie dinner.
Gabe did a three-sixty spin to take in the house.
In a month, everyone in America would know the layout of this open-plan kitchen / living room, but right now it was just for us.
“Maggie’s done well for herself, huh?” Gabe had told me his crush was long healed, but I was struggling not to pick at the scab. Maybe I wanted him to tell me I was more interesting than Maggie McKee.
“Helps to marry a pro athlete,” Gabe said. He pulled me over to the sunken living room. “I’d say that they have questionable taste here, but it’s excellent for this.” And then we were falling onto that questionable couch, and he was kissing me.
I forgot that I was at my place of work, on a couch that, before yesterday, I’d never actually sat on, because it was behind the camera line and I was indisputably crew.
Gabe kissed my clavicle, and his perfect lips moved up my neck to nip my ear.
When I’d had sex with other guys, I’d thought too much about power: why I was agreeing; what it would mean if we didn’t both get off; what I could say no to and what they’d feel obliged to give. With Gabe, I was simply in the moment.
“We should go to your room,” Gabe murmured into my neck.
“Yes,” I said. But we were too far gone. We didn’t.
There was the tattoo I had noticed the first day that I met him, some sort of coat of arms across his bicep.
The long lines of his thighs, the knock of desperate teeth.
It was better for having waited, for the freedom of being alone in this house.
Gabe’s hands had not misled me. We fit together with ease.
Afterward, we lay naked on Jason Dean and Maggie McKee’s massive white couch. Gabe took a lock of my hair between his fingers, a lazy cat in the perfect patch of sun.
I figured our enthusiasm could be forgiven. We hadn’t made a mess. Everyone else was either in Mexico or thrilled for their time off. I sighed, content.
It was three p.m., and we had nothing to do for the rest of the day but ensure that all the lights stayed on their timers. There was no need to get up. I’d double-checked all the cameras and turned off the breaker for the butler’s pantry, just to be safe. I was giddy with sex. Reckless.
We got dressed. I poured us each a finger of whiskey from the bottle on the bar cart, then another once we’d finished that. Gabe found one of Maggie’s guitars.
“You know what’s funny?” I said. “Those have been sitting out ever since I’ve worked here, and I’ve never heard her play.”
“She’s gone pop star,” Gabe said, tuning. “She probably doesn’t play anymore.”
“They’ve also got that piano in the dining room.
The family room? That room past the stairs.
” Once my fascination with Maggie was unleashed, it was hard for me to reign myself in.
I hadn’t told Gabe that I, too, had known Maggie before she was famous.
I burrowed my feet under the cushions. I sipped my whiskey.
“I wonder if she does play other instruments.”
“Stop talking about her,” Gabe instructed. He had the barest tip of his tongue between his lips, off to one side, a tic I’d noticed from whenever something required his focused attention. I was about to go kiss him, but he started to play the guitar.
I was no musician, and at that point I was more than slightly tipsy, but even I could tell how talented he was.
I’d half expected Gabe’s guitar playing to be like that of the guys who’d bring their acoustics to show off on the quad, the same four chords and an off-pitch rendition of Guster, everyone politely pretending not to hate the whole thing.
This was different. Deep down I’d always known it would be different.
This was whatever emotion Gabe had bottled up inside him, all the shaky legs and jittery fingers replaced by the dance of his fingerpicking, his voice quiet and confident.
He was good. He was very, very good. What had I done to myself?
I’d never thought that I’d be into a musician, particularly one who wrote their own songs. Hearing him play felt like being touched somewhere secret and vulnerable, being made to feel in a place and way that I was not used to feeling.
I was incredibly into Gabe, even with his guitar. Especially with his guitar.
He sang softly, his voice gravelly as always.
The song was about opening a birdcage, which meant that it was really a song about letting someone go.
I kept sipping my whiskey. He kept playing.
I tried not to imagine what success would be for Gabe when he inevitably found it.
Gabe making a music video; Gabe playing his guitar shirtless for some other girl he’d just slept with.
He was with me right now, and that was what mattered. I closed my eyes and listened.
Later that day we looked at Jason’s collection of sports memorabilia—a shrine mostly to himself—and leaned the recliners in the private basement movie theater all the way back until Gabe almost fell off his.
We accidentally found a bright-pink lacy thong shoved in one of the cushions.
We read the labels of the bottles in the wine cellar, and I grabbed one that I thought they wouldn’t miss.
I was absolutely drunk by the time we got outside, and I assumed that Gabe was too.
As the sun set, lights burst on across the patio, around the rim of the pool.
The hills hovered, warm dark mounds. I shimmied out of my shirt, unhooked my bra.
By the time I was unbuttoning my pants, Gabe had joined me, his chest tan and muscular, his grin delicious.
When we dove into the pool, I wasn’t sure if I’d grabbed his hand or if he had taken mine. We hit the water together.