17 Gabriel
17
Gabriel
Kierra: Ava is going to be staying home today. She has a small cold.
Gabriel: I hope she feels better.
Kierra: A day of rest will do it.
Gabriel: Wild question for you.
Kierra: Shoot.
Gabriel: Do you want to eat a cinnamon muffin with me this morning?
Kierra: Be there in twenty.
***
The problem with Kierra was that there weren’t any problems with Kierra. The more time I spent around her, the more time I craved. I knew it was an issue, and I knew I was making up a million reasons to be in her presence, but I couldn’t help it. She felt like sunbeams in the middle of the night. Unusual and bright, showing up at the oddest of times, but still it felt right. My whole life has felt like darkness. I didn’t even know it until her light came around me. It was ridiculous how I felt, and I couldn’t stop it. That fact alone was extremely alarming.
One Saturday, Ramona and I had planned to help Henry and Kierra pick out fixtures for their property. Normally, Ramona handled the interior design aspects of projects, but I couldn’t help but want to be involved this time around. Was it an excuse to spend a full Saturday with Kierra? Perhaps.
We’d met up at the first stop—bathroom fixtures at Arch Tubs Supreme. The four of us had stood in front of the shop, and I’d rolled up the sleeves of my button-down before shaking Henry’s hand.
“Good to see you both,” he said as he shook hands with me and Ramona.
“You too,” I replied. “Good morning,” I said, smiling toward Kierra.
She smiled back and nodded slightly. “Good morning.”
I clapped my hands together. “Today is going to be a long day, but a successful day if we tackle it right. We’ll start with the bathroom fixtures and move on to the fixtures for the kitchen. This area is packed with all those types of stores, so we’ll be able to walk to a few of them from here. Lastly, we’ll end up at the marble shop for countertops and tiles. How does that sound?”
Henry was looking down at his phone, half listening to me. “Sounds good,” he said, tapping away at his phone. “Sorry, work never ends.”
“Gabriel knows that better than anyone,” Ramona mentioned.
Kierra raised an eyebrow. “A bit of a workaholic?”
“It keeps me on my feet,” I joked.
“Yeah, not everyone works a basic nine-to-five like you, Kierra. Some of us have careers, not jobs,” Henry said as he opened the door and held it open for us all to walk through.
“I’d confidently say her job is the most important out of all of ours,” I said, feeling annoyed at how he tried to undercut Kierra and her position. She was the one with a PhD, after all.
That little comment was enough to make me realize it was going to be a long, long day.
And a long day it had been.
After watching Henry downplay every choice that Kierra picked out, I had watched him completely gaslight her out of choosing the options she wanted to go with—the better options if you’d asked me. Unfortunately, whenever I had tried to vouch for Kierra, Ramona would go into deep interior-design talk about why Henry’s option was the better one.
The only time Kierra seemed to be enjoying herself was when she and Henry split up in the stores. As Ramona and Henry went off to discuss sink faucets, I found Kierra completely laid out in an oversized tub that seemed big enough to fit a football team. Her eyes were shut. She seemed so relaxed that I almost felt bad interrupting the moment.
“Comfortable?” I asked, making her open her eyes. The soft smile on her lips showcased that.
“Oh yes. This is my kind of heaven.”
“It’s in your price range.” Truthfully, everything was in their price range. “And it would look amazing with the other items you chose,” I said, stepping into the tub and sitting on the opposite side of her. We still had ridiculous amounts of room surrounding us both.
“Oh no. Henry would definitely not go for something like this.”
“Why not?”
She laughed slightly. “Because I like it.”
I didn’t laugh. That seemed to be the theme of the day. Anything she thought was amazing, her husband was quick to shut down. I disliked the guy more and more with every passing second.
“Does he do that a lot?”
“Do what?”
“Undermine you and speak down to you.”
Her eyes flashed with surprise for a moment. Then her lips parted and she said, “Yes.”
I stared at her for a moment, not saying a word. I found myself doing that often. Getting lost in the mere existence of her.
Kierra released a timid chuckle. “What is it that you’re thinking about?”
“Nothing. It’s just that you remind me…”
“Remind you of what?”
“Everything.”
Before she could reply, Ramona and Henry reappeared. Ramona smiled at the tub. “Holy big tub!” she remarked. “You could fit a whole football team in that thing.”
“It’s pretty large,” I agreed, standing up from the tub. “A nice one, though. I think it’s the best of the bunch,” I confidently stated, feeling as if Henry would take my opinion with more weight than his wife’s.
“What do you think, Kierra?” Henry asked with his brow furrowed.
Kierra looked at me before darting her eyes back to Henry. She shrugged. “I think it’s too much.”
Henry grumbled slightly and rubbed his chin. “I think it’s perfect. Let’s go with this one, Gabriel.”
“You got it,” I said, smirking toward Kierra, who was biting her bottom lip to hide her snicker. What a damn idiot Henry was.
“Henry and I were discussing… We still have a lot of stops to make, and he has to go into the office for work tonight, it turns out,” Ramona mentioned.
“I thought you had the whole weekend off,” Kierra said to Henry.
“I know, but things came up. I have a big call next week with executives in China. I need to prepare for the meeting,” he explained.
“You’re so hardworking,” Ramona said. I almost rolled my eyes to the back of my head. “Regardless, maybe we should split up to handle the tasks. I can take Henry to the marble shop if you two want to finish up here and hit up the hardwood flooring.”
We agreed.
I felt the difference in Kierra when Henry wasn’t around as we finished all the tasks of the day. She seemed…happy.
***
Kierra came over to my house to sketch for a few hours once a week. Her talent was blowing my mind, and I couldn’t help but want to see one of her pieces come to life. Bentley seemed to be her biggest fan, too, because he always chose to lie on her feet instead of mine. Some nights, we’d just sketch without talking. Others, we’d talk over sketching. She was becoming more and more a part of my life, and I loved it.
“You really need to add some life to your house,” she said one night in my kitchen after we ordered a pizza. “There’s no artwork or color.”
“I haven’t gotta around to decorating it yet.”
“How long have you lived here?”
“Ten years.”
Her eyes widened. “Ten years and you haven’t found anything to decorate the house with?”
I shrugged. “It wasn’t at the forefront of my mind.”
“You just need someone to come into your life and add a bit of color,” she confidently said. “It just needs a little bit of a woman’s touch.”
I didn’t tell her that she was the woman that I wanted to touch my life. But the thought crossed my mind.
***
“I want to see one come to life,” I told her another night, after she packed up her things to head home. “One of your dresses.”
“Oh gosh, no.” She shook her head. “I haven’t actually sewn in a very long time.”
“I’m sure it’s like riding a bike.”
She bit her bottom lip.
I wished she wouldn’t do that.
It made me want to bite it, too.
“Maybe,” she said with a weighted sigh. “Maybe I’ll try.”
“Please do,” I said. “And then I want you to wear it for me.”
***
Summer was coming to an end, which annoyed me, because that meant Ava would be going back to school, spending less time at GS Architecture. The whole team was getting used to having the kid around, and I was almost certain it would feel a little emptier with her gone. A part of me debated telling her to drop out of school and become a part of the staff, but I had a very strong feeling her parents would be against that idea.
Still, the kid would be missed.
“How was today?” Kierra asked both Ava and me as she walked into the office space. “Any new adventures?”
“I got to shadow Bobby for the whole day and he taught me how to use the computer programs. Mom! Can you buy me the programs for at home? I need them. Oh! And I’m helping plan the baby shower for Eddie and his wife, Sarah! Do you know they are having a girl? Oh, Mom, you should come to the baby shower! Gabriel, can my mom come to the baby shower? Oh! And Mom, can you—”
“ Slow ,” Kierra laughed, seeing how excited Ava was growing from sharing the details of her day. “This all sounds amazing. And rumor has it that a certain boss man is gifting you the programs for you to use,” she mentioned, gesturing toward me.
I’d texted Kierra earlier about the programs. They weren’t cheap, but I wanted Ava to have the best of the best. Over the past few weeks, she’d shown her passion for architecture, and I couldn’t help but want to give her all the keys to help on her journey. She’d be ahead of most people before she even hit sixteen years old.
“No way.” Ava’s jaw dropped open before she darted into my arms. “Thanks, Boss Man!” she exclaimed hugging me as tight as possible. “Oh man, I have to go tell Bobby before we leave! He’s going to be stoked that I can practice at home.” She then darted out of my office and hurried off to go tell Bobby the news.
Kierra’s smile didn’t slip after Ava’s departure. “I think you just made that girl’s life complete.”
“I’m glad I could do it. She’s extremely driven. I’ve never seen a fourteen-year-old as focused and talented as she is. She has a gift.”
“She’s much more organized than I was at her age, that’s for sure.”
“I’m not even that organized at my current age,” I joked. I leaned back against my desk and crossed my arms. “So I was wondering—”
“Can we be friends?” she blurted out.
I arched an eyebrow. “What?”
“Sorry. That was random, but the best nights I’ve had in a long time are going over to your house and sketching with you. The best I’ve felt lately is in situations where you and Ava are present. You’re a good person, and I have no doubt that you’d be a great friend, so I’d like that. I’d like to be friends with you.”
I chuckled slightly and shook my head.
She bit her lip again.
Fucking stop that shit, Kierra.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
“Nothing. It’s just that I thought we were already friends.”
She raised an eyebrow. “You did?”
“I did.”
“Oh. Well. Okay.” She grinned from ear to ear, and that smile was enough to make me want so much more than a friendship with her. I wanted to spend the rest of my life somehow making those lips of hers curve up in that way. I wanted to spend the rest of my life working to get a chance to taste those lips, to feel that smile against my own. I wanted her to be mine and mine alone.
But for now, friendship would work.