Chapter 7 #3
“How are you feeling?” Gabe stood in the doorway holding a grocery bag. He hunched a bit, as if unsure he would fit through.
“Better,” I said. “Now.”
He came fully into the room. “They work you hard, huh?”
“It’s very stupid.”
“I brought you—this is going to seem weird, but—I brought grapes.” Gabe came closer, and I scooted over so he could join me on my unmade bed. There was really nowhere else to sit down. His weight shifted the mattress, and I shivered.
“I guess that is kind of weird.”
“I was going to freeze them, so we could do, like, a rain-checked Spanish New Year’s Eve. Or put them in cocktails. I don’t know. Some guy was selling them on the side of the road, and they looked good.” Gabe was nervous. There went his jittering leg.
“That sort of makes it even weirder,” I said. My hand inched out toward his. “But very sweet. I’ve never had a frozen-grape cocktail.”
“As a garnish,” he said, lacing our fingers. “They make a good garnish.” Gabe moved closer. “I would kiss you,” he said, “if . . . ?”
Then I knew that, despite my headache, despite Jen there on the other side of our paper-thin wall, we were going to have sex. I leaned over and brought my lips to his. The pleasure and relief of even this seemed almost unbearable.
I’d already learned the superficial terrain of Gabe’s body: a birthmark on his upper thigh, the tattoos on his bicep and back shoulder.
I knew the pleasure point at the small of his back, and how if I nuzzled his neck, he would tighten his grip on me.
Each time there’d been the social lubricant of alcohol, if not already in play, then warming up off the bench.
Earlier that evening I had taken three Advil, but that hardly counted.
Here we were, sober, absolutely ourselves.
I lifted my arms, and Gabe helped me off with my T-shirt. I pressed my face into his chest. We had sex solemnly, careful and deep. Afterward he held me, the two of us squeezed into my twin bed.
“So,” he said into my hair. “What’s your deal?” I laughed and turned around to face him.
“You mean in general or with this?” I gestured to the two of us, together.
Gabe tilted his forehead toward mine. “I don’t mean to be a fifteen-year-old girl about it—”
“Though that’s a totally valid thing to be,” I interrupted.
“True. You’re right. But you know what I mean.”
“I do. Go on.”
He swallowed. “This was actually much easier when you weren’t looking at me.”
I laughed again. “Despite the fact you’ve built a whole career on being looked at?”
“Listened to. But still, touché.” He pulled back a bit to see me, his fingers hovering by the hair that had fallen across my cheek. When he spoke, his voice was low, the growl of one of his love songs. “I really like you, Cassidy.”
I froze completely. This was exactly what I’d wanted him to say, exactly what I’d planned to say to him.
He’d started to tuck my hair behind my ear when suddenly my stomach grumbled so loud Jen could probably hear it through the wall.
“Sorry,” I said. “I passed out earlier without eating dinner.” The apology was not just for my stomach, but also for making him wait. Gabe made a sound like he was trying not to laugh.
“You want a grape?”
We ordered a ten p.m. pizza and ate it out of the box while sitting on my bedroom floor.
“This is romantic,” I said. Gabe guffawed. “No, I mean it.”
“Good to know you’re a cheap date.”
“Oh, no,” I said. “This only works once. You pull the same move next week and it’s cliché.”
“Noted.” Gabe caught a falling pepperoni before it hit the rug.
“Can I ask you a question?” From my tone I knew he couldn’t tell how serious I was being.
“Sure.”
“Are you ever going to invite me to come hear your music? It seems like this whole other life you have. It makes me nervous.” I was counting on him knowing me well enough to read between the words. Am I enough for you? Who are you, really?
“Cassidy.” Oh no. I’d ruined things. I took an impulsive sip of Diet Coke that went down wrong and had me sputtering. “Cassidy.” Gabe waited until I was done. He wiped his hands and reached them out to hold my face. “Of course you’re invited to my shows, when they happen.”
“If I can get off work,” I joked.
“If you can get off work, you nutjob.” Gabe kissed the top of my head. We sat in a mostly comfortable silence.
“I have a confession,” I said.
“Oh?”
“I found a bootleg recording of you that I’ve listened to incessantly.”
“I like this confession,” said Gabe. “Solo stuff from the past few years?” I nodded. “Excellent.”
“And I genuinely like it.”
Gabe laughed. “Even better.”
“And I have one more confession.” I swallowed.
Might as well. “Well, not a confession. Maybe a confession? Something that I haven’t told you.
” I’d never opened up about my dad, not even to my ex when we’d officially dated in college.
It felt so cliché, so predictable. Like I was someone’s cheesy pop song.
How many girls had damage from their shitty fathers?
I wasn’t special. Still, if we were going to make a real go of this, it seemed better Gabe should know from the start.
“Yeah?” He was waiting.
“I’m bad at relationships,” I said. “But it’s kind of not my fault? My dad ditched me and my brother and my mom when I was eight.”
“I’m sorry,” said Gabe. “That sucks.”
“Yeah, it did and it didn’t. Well, it did, but not as much as it sucked later, when I was fourteen, and he got back in touch with us and then decided he’d made the wrong call, and then bailed again.”
“Woof.” Gabe’s hand inched toward mine. I closed my eyes against the memory of my mother sitting me down on the side of her bed to explain that while my dad had loved our time catching up, he wasn’t in a place to make it a regular occurrence.
Andrew had known how it would end from the start, declining the trips to Virginia, icing my dad out.
I hadn’t seen the reversal coming any more than I had that first time he left us.
“So, I might not be the best at this.” I opened my eyes.
“Makes sense. That’s pretty fucked.” Gabe let us sit for a minute, in silence. Then he took my hand. “Thank you for telling me.”
I felt less like a weight had been lifted than like a sandbag had been slit, its innards leaking slowly out.
“You might be shocked to hear I’m not that great at trusting,” I said.
“I’m maybe scared that this is too good to be true.
” I waved my hands to signify all of it, the greasy pizza box and his mismatched socks and the way that our thighs pressed together.
“You think it’s good?”
“Stop teasing me.”
“I’m really asking. You’re a hard woman to read, Cassidy Baum.” But now he’d read me, and he knew it. I could tell by his grin.
“It’s been good ever since that day at the studio when your band thought that I was a call girl.”
“Not a call girl,” Gabe corrected. “A groupie.” He nudged the pizza box out of the way and moved to sit in front of me, his back to my overfull desk chair. “I raise you it’s been good ever since you hit my car.”
“Excuse me, you hit my car.”
“A technicality. Anyway, I didn’t care because I was like, ‘Who is this sexy thing who has no time for me?’”
“Because you’re used to girls just throwing themselves at you.”
“False.”
“You’re this rock god who has his choice of any woman.”
“Absolutely false.”
“But you can see why I’d be nervous.”
Gabe looked at me, considering for a moment before he spoke. “I told my mom about you.”
“You didn’t.”
“I did. I told her I’d met someone special, and she told me not to screw it up.” The teasing cadence was gone, Gabe giving me his own confessional. “The last time I was in love, it was with somebody who didn’t want to be with me.”
The last time implied there was another time. Meaning, right now, Gabe was in love. I resisted the urge to respond with a joke. Instead, I said, “That sucks.”
“It does. It did.” Gabe was still actively looking at me, and I could feel my heart beat faster.
Here came the charisma, the celebrity wattage.
Or was it just him, now that he knew me?
Not something put on for a crowd, not a performance where the stage lights bleached the audience into a faceless mass.
This was Gabe, unvarnished. He was simply a human being who shone. “Don’t go breaking my heart,” he said.
“I wouldn’t if I tried.” I’d fucked it up by misquoting the lyric, but Gabe didn’t mind.
“Oh, you could. You absolutely could.” He took a rascally bite of my leftover crust, then tossed it and scrambled toward me, a happy puppy, all long limbs and affection.
Part of me wanted to get so close to Gabe that I might smother him. Another part wanted to run before we ruined things, got bored with one another or sniped in front of the help about the right way to take out the trash.
“The only thing is—” Gabe began, but I held up a finger, sealing my own fate. I thought I knew this song. I kissed him.
“Let it be.”