Chapter 58
CHAPTER FIFTY-EIGHT
Cleo
Her name was Maya.
In addition to being pretty with big, dark eyes and long, wavy hair, she made excellent margaritas, was genuinely nice and seemed cool, and as if that weren’t enough, she was also brilliant.
She was working on her Ph.D. in Environmental something or other, at Columbia, of all places. Way to make me feel like a loser dropout.
But to add insult to injury, she’d helped Gabriel plant his wild garden.
The wild garden that he was so proud of and bragged about at every opportunity, constantly delighting in its many wonders.
Do you hear those songbirds?
Look at those Red Admirals! Check out those Black Swallowtails! Butterflies, as I’d come to learn.
Maya was a wildlife conservationist and because of her, Gabriel knew all the names, including some of the Latin ones, of everything that grew in his garden and all the birds and butterflies that frequented it.
Because they’d planted the garden together.
After hanging out in the pool for a while, we’d whipped up a pitcher of margaritas and cobbled together the ingredients for a tray of nachos.
Now we were enjoying the fruits of our labor. Me, Gabriel, and his female bestie.
I hoped they were just friends, but that was merely conjecture on my part since their status remained unclear.
All I knew was that they were close, seemed very familiar with each other, and Maya knew exactly where to find everything in his kitchen.
This whole scenario felt eerily similar to those months when Gabriel was with Annika, and I was the odd man out getting serenaded by rhinestone jumpsuit Elvis.
I shoved a nacho into my mouth and washed it down with the margarita in my hand, trying to drown out my dark thoughts.
“Did Gabriel mention his gig next week?” Maya asked.
A perfectly innocent question. Nothing nefarious about it. But my mind went straight to those condoms in the drawer and now my imagination was running wild.
Maybe Gabriel was with Maya when I called him last Saturday. Maybe that’s why he didn’t call me back until after midnight.
I nodded. “Yep. Can’t wait.” I sounded about as enthusiastic as a five-year-old being forced to eat their vegetables.
Gabriel’s hand landed on my thigh under the table, but I shoved it away.
He sighed and ran his hand through his hair, mussing it up even more than it already was. I glared at him. With a shake of his head, he threw up his hands and stood from the table.
“So how did you two meet?” I asked Maya when Gabriel went inside to change the music and get his cigarettes.
“This house used to be my grandparents’, so my mom asked me to stop by and meet the new owner to ensure it ended up in good hands,” she said with a laugh. “When Gabriel answered the door, he told me his name was Jimmy. It was embroidered on the shirt he was wearing.”
Of course. The shirt he wore to that summer party at the cabin a million years ago.
I checked to make sure Gabriel wasn’t within earshot and pumped Maya for information. “What was he like back then?”
How sad that I had to get my information from outside sources.
Maya looked over at the doorway before scooting her chair closer to mine. “He looks like a different man now. He was really thin, way too thin, and completely paranoid.”
“In what way?”
“He thought I was stalking him. He thought I was the one leaving all those gifts and letters.”
“Gifts and letters?”
“Yeah. Turns out it was a girl from New York whose family has a house out here,” she said, gathering her hair into a ponytail and securing it with the elastic on her wrist before leaning in conspiratorially.
“One day she saw him on the beach and started screaming and crying because she thought he was dead.
I guess she held a vigil in the city for him and everything.
“We found this all out later. But she followed him home and knew where he lived so she started leaving presents for him. Luckily, she turned out to be perfectly harmless. Just a superfan. But he was really freaked out about it for a while.”
God. Who could blame him? That was a level of fandom no one would ever want, especially not Gabriel who had always guarded his privacy.
But what struck me most was Maya’s use of the word “we.”
We found this all out later .
I picked at the cuticle of my thumbnail until it bled. “Does she still leave gifts?”
Maya shook her head. “No. He had a talk with her and told her it wasn’t cool. She was really young. I think she’s headed to college now.”
“Well, I’m glad it all worked out,” I said faintly.
I tried to tell myself that it was no big deal. Gabriel and I had been apart for three years so of course, I wouldn’t know every little detail about his life any more than he would know mine. But it stung that Maya knew so much about his life, yet he’d never once thought to mention her.
“Yeah, he’s a good guy,” she said with a smile I didn’t return.
“So…do you two hang out a lot?” I asked. I was aiming for a casual tone but failed.
“I wouldn’t say a lot, but—” She cut herself off and put her hand on my arm. “Oh, no. You think we’re together?” I shrugged. “No, no, no. It’s not like that, ” she assured me. “We’re just friends. Nothing’s going on. At all.”
Despite her reassurance, I only felt slightly better.
I forced a smile. “No, I mean, it’s fine…I just…” I took a sip of my margarita and tried to shake it off. “I was just curious, that’s all,” I muttered when Gabriel joined us on the deck.
The following morning, when I heard Gabriel leaving for his run with Otis, I got dressed and cycled into town for breakfast.
The pancake place was jam-packed with families and tourists, so I ordered mine to-go and sat on a bench out front to eat.
I couldn’t pinpoint why I was so upset.
Even though Maya and Gabriel weren’t sleeping together, she knew him in a way that I didn’t.
She knew this version of Gabriel. The guy who had a stalker I knew nothing about. The guy who came out to Montauk, seeking solitude and bought her grandparents’ house. The guy who ran with his dog every day and swam laps and smoked like a chimney and kept condoms in his junk drawer.
They’d spent weeks working side by side planting that garden. She swam in his pool. She knew Eddie and Devin, who had made frequent trips to Montauk over the past couple of years to jam with Gabriel and helped him find his way back into music.
All facts I’d learned last night over margaritas and ska music.
And it wasn’t that I didn’t want him to have friends. On the contrary. I’d been worried that he might have been lonely living out here on his own.
So, it was a good thing that he had someone he could trust.
If Maya were a guy, would I still feel threatened?
I don’t know. Maybe a little, but not as much.
As I was tossing my garbage into the trash can, my mom called. I answered and returned to my seat on the bench.
“How’s it going?” she asked.
Two steps forward and ten steps back.
“Great,” I said, forcing cheer into my voice. “Montauk is beautiful.” This, at least, was true.
“I was more interested in how you and Gabriel are doing.”
“We’re learning new things about each other every day,” I said, which was also true. No lies in this conversation. “So where are you now?”
“Bar Harbor. We’re going to Acadia National Park today.
” She filled me in on their trip so far and gave me the entire menu of every dinner they’d eaten along the way.
A lot of chowder and lobster, by the sounds of it.
“We just finished breakfast and now Sean’s raring to go.
The man can’t sit still for a minute. We’ll see you Saturday,” she said cheerily.
“You’re coming here?” I asked in surprise.
“Well, of course, we are. This is Gabriel’s first live performance. He’s going to be nervous so I’m glad you’ll be there for him.”
“I’m sure he’ll be fine. He’s done this hundreds of times. He performed in front of a hundred thousand at Glastonbury.”
“Maybe so but he doesn’t remember that. For him, this is his first gig. He tried to talk Sean out of booking it, but Sean thinks it will be good for him. He thinks it will help him hone the new music he’s written.”
“He’d better have new music written,” Sean bellowed in the background. “Get on his ass if he doesn’t. That asshole Barry will be sniffing around, and I don’t wanna have to deal with him.”
My mom laughed. “Sean can’t stand Barry. Okay, baby. My battery’s about to run out. Talk soon. Love you.”
She cut the call before I could say it back. My mom never remembered to charge her phone. It was a miracle she’d remembered to take it on the trip.
But I just loved how everyone was giving me instructions on how to take care of Gabriel.
Maybe Maya could give him the words of encouragement he needed , I thought bitterly.
Okay, now I was just being petty.
When it came to Gabriel, I was still a jealous lover.
But this wasn’t really about Maya.
It was about us.