Chapter 26
Gabriel
River’s got her arms crossed, like she’s about to get all lunch lady on Lunch Lady Liz.
“Liz, no!”
she says, and then bends down to pat the flattened air mattress. “No.”
She repeats it again, like she’s trying to teach the dog a thing or two. Liz is not going to make the connection that she had anything to do with what happened.
In case you couldn’t tell, Lunch Lady Liz popped my new air mattress.
“Don’t take it out on her,”
I say. “I was the one who allowed her to jump up on it.”
I don’t mind River trying to defend me, though. It’s kind of cute.
“We can’t let her think she can get away with it!”
She throws her arms wide and when they come back down to slap against her thighs, that purple bathrobe flies up a little at the edges, showing more of her shapely legs than should be legal.
“I think that’s a losing battle.”
I stand and walk to her, wanting to clasp her hands in mine. But I don’t. “Don’t fret.”
“Fret? Is this a Jimmy Stewart movie? I keep getting the sense that you think this is a Jimmy Stewart movie.”
“Come on. You worry about so much.”
I bring my finger up to smooth her scrunched up forehead. “You have a lot of burdens on your shoulders.”
“Yeah, I’ve got to figure out how to spin a certain someone’s reckless behavior in Europe.”
She’s squeezing her cheeks together in a fake pout. Still, she can’t hold back a smile.
“See? You’re worrying about things you can’t control,”
I point out.
“It’s literally my job to try to control things. That’s sort of what PR is. I know I might not be able to, but I’m going to try.”
Her eyes snap into thin slits. “Besides, how come you’re so loosey goosey about all this now?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
I realize that my lungs haven’t threatened to fold in on themselves once these last few hours. “Maybe Lunch Lady Liz is having an emotional support dog effect on me.”
I still care about my reputation and about getting back in my dad’s good graces. But right now? River’s taking up all the space in my head.
“She does her magic on Skye, too.”
She holds my gaze. “Look. What about the air mattress? Did it come with a repair patch?”
“It’s a gash.”
I laugh. “A patch isn’t going to cut it.”
Her eyes widen and take me in. There’s a softening happening in her. And I don’t want to say I’ll sleep on the floor, or heaven forbid, one of the love seats in the great room.
I don’t want to. Is it so bad that I want to sleep on the bed? “I won’t bite, I promise.”
It’s more of a whisper than I intended.
Her expression looks as though she’s weighing her options. I catch her gaze drifting to the floor and then the sofa. She’s thinking what I’m thinking.
“Fine.”
Her eyes dance for a moment before she’s hardened again. “But Lunch Lady Liz is in the kennel no matter what.”
I maybe took the bull by the horns and insisted I sleep in the bed with her, but I still set up the blanket barrier between us.
Once it’s firmly in place, and a quiet and perfectly contented Liz is securely in her crate, I settle in. The sheets are cool and crisp. River’s vanilla scent is mixing with the smell of freshly laundered bedding. High above us, the moon is shining through the skylight windows. The dog is quiet. The bed soft.
And my wife is next to me.
This is the life.
“Lunch Lady Liz is happy now?”
River scolds the dark night air with a disgusted sigh. “So that was her problem? She had to be in the same room as both of us?”
“Looks like it. She seems happy again.”
In the dark, I can barely make out River’s facial features. But there seems to be an openness there, so I decide to start talking.
“So what’s up with Antonio?”
“This again? The last time we talked about him, you and I . . . kissed. I would have thought that would make it clear to you what I think about Antonio.”
“You kissed me because my dad was standing there. You were trying to prove something to him.”
“I panicked when I saw him. We have to sell this, remember?”
A pause. “And that’s all it was?”
It’s a leading question, I know. Still, the memories of how she acted around Antonio have caused a jealousy I didn’t know I was capable of. I don’t like needing her reassurance but here we are.
I can imagine us together. On the screen of my mind, I see us continuing this marriage past the one-year mark and settling in a place of our own. The more time I spend with her makes one thing clear: there’s a perennial gap between the time I get with her and the time I want to spend with her.
She takes too long to answer, and all sorts of things come to mind to fill in the blanks. Is she thinking of a way to let me down easy? Did she and Antonio used to date and she doesn’t know how to tell me that?
Finally, she whispers. “You know that wasn’t all it was.”
“I wasn’t imagining things, then? It wasn’t just about my father?”
“No. And if you don’t know that by how . . . intense . . . it was, then I can’t help you.”
Memories of the heated and heady kiss threaten to weaken me. “It was intense,”
I whisper. “In a lot of ways.”
“He’s just a friend, Gabriel.”
“That’s not what he wants.”
I’d like to put this weapon down, I really would. “But I’m glad to hear where your head’s at.”
“I think, at the reception, he had some nostalgia for college life.”
She doesn’t understand what she can do to a person, does she? She doesn’t see it.
“We can agree to disagree about that.”
I reach out my hand across the divide. “Handshake? Truce?”
“I’ll never have a truce with you,”
she teases. “The arguing is too fun.”
I laugh. “It’s enjoyable, yes.”
I hesitate, and she senses why.
She sighs and shifts in the dark so she’s lying on her side. I can barely make out the outline of her facial features. “Besides, what does it matter? If this marriage is just a ploy to get your father’s company, then why do you care about Antonio?”
Her words are weighty and suddenly, I realize that I wanted her to ask that question. I want to go there with her. That doesn’t necessarily mean I’m ready.
The mind is willing but the flesh is weak.
“My dad—”
She cuts me off, swiveling her legs to one side and kicking the blanket barrier over. “No. Beyond what your dad thinks. We both agreed to this situation, the least we can do is be honest. What do you think? What do you feel, Gabriel?”
You mean I can’t hide behind my dad? “Seeing you with Antonio pissed me off.”
She bites down a smile. “Why?”
Now she’s sitting up on her knees, and she’s so close to me that I want to call foul. Yet, I’m drinking this Kool-Aid—engaging in this act of rebellion like I’ve been brainwashed by a cult.
“Because you’re my wife.”
“Is that the only reason?”
Her voice is strained. Delicate.
“Because I like you.”
She seems to weigh my words a moment, and then she sinks over, her legs curled up on the other side. “Can I tell you a story?”
“Sure. I like stories.”
Except, if it’s a story about how she doesn’t feel the same for me, then I don’t want to hear.
“Once upon a time, there was a teen girl, living her best life in Longdale, Colorado.”
“Was this teen girl you?”
Shhh!”
she scolds and presses her finger against my mouth. “No interrupting.”
“Sorry,”
I mumble against her finger before she takes it away and continues on.
“She was fourteen and her parents uncharacteristically gave her permission to go to a late-night party at the high school and she didn’t even have to bring her older sister with her this time. It was the traditional, end-of-summer bash. There was a rumor that some of the Tate brothers might even be in attendance. Which was a particularly exciting prospect because the Tate brothers attended school in Denver.”
“The Tate brothers did go to school in Denver.”
I nod. “Admit it, though. Was this girl hoping Sebastian would be there?”
She makes an “Uh”
sound like How dare you assume that? “No, this girl was hoping the middle one would come, what was his name? Grant? Gary? Hmm. Something with a ‘G.’”
“Gween. I think his name was Gween.”
She giggles. “That’s it. Gween. So anyway, she was hoping Gween would show up because she’d tried all summer to get to know him and she’d seen him at Shake, Shake, Shake a few times, but he was always busy with other people.”
“Gween did like the mint chocolate chip shakes there,”
I add. I have a feeling of where this is going, but if she’s telling a story about us both back when we were kids, that wouldn’t make sense because we never met back then.
“The girl preferred marshmallow fudge.”
“What was the girl’s name again?”
“Roberta.”
I laugh. “Ah, got it.”
She claps her hands together. “Imagine Roberta’s excitement when Gween was spotted at the party, and she even scored a seat right behind him in the auditorium for the movie.”
“Huh. Lucky Roberta.”
“You’d think so. But then this Roberta gal got a text from a friend. The point is, she was sad and fled the movie.”
“Oh no. Roberta!”
She snorts a laugh. “The cool thing was, pretty soon after, Gween also went out into the hall. Roberta never knew why he came out, probably to go to the bathroom.”
I’m shifting through memories of summers here in Longdale, trying to place this story. “Probably. If I know anything about Gween it’s that he often had to pee,” I say.
Her laugh is stronger now. “I’m sure that was it. But regardless, you heard me
crying. I’d climbed up that steep, narrow staircase in between the men’s and ladies’ rooms. It was the way the tech crew accessed the area above the stage.”
“Wait. You’re Roberta?”
She gives me a light shove on my shoulder. “Careful, or I’ll call you Gween from now on.”
I laugh, shifting in the bed, sitting up and crossing my legs so I can see her better. I want to reach over and trace the skin of her knee. But it would be difficult to stop something like that once I started.
“So you climbed up the stairs onto the platform above the stage,”
she says. “It was dark. And you asked me if I was okay. And I tried to play it off because I was like, Gabriel Freaking Tate heard me crying like a big baby and I’ve ruined any chance of being my cool, bad self around him. But then that thought made me even more teary-eyed and I was sort of a hot mess.”
“You poor thing. Except, I thought his name was Gween?”
She ignores that. “Feel free to interrupt if you start remembering what I’m talking about.”
I feel a stone sliding in front of her. A block.
“I—”
And just like that there’s a trickle of a memory. Of tanned knees. Of a splash of a tear on those knees. Of her eventually biting back a giggle. “That was you?”
“Yes, it was.”
In the dark, I can feel, more than see her leaning toward me, like she’s trying to map me out to discover what I remember.
“You?”
I smack my forehead. “You told me to go away!”
Her laugh is quiet. “I did. I was embarrassed. Why would I want Gabriel Tate to witness me crying over some mean girl?”
“You didn’t tell me what was wrong. And for the record, I couldn’t see you very well. That’s why I never put two and two together.”
“I know.”
The way she says it is pointed, like there’s some deeper meaning here that I’m supposed to figure out.
“What? Why am I in trouble?”
I ask her quietly. There are a lot of gaps in my memories of this. If I’d known that was her, I would have remembered.
“Because we talked for a long time,”
she says. “We missed the rest of the movie. You were so nice. And then when I saw you the next week at Shake, Shake, Shake, you had no idea who I was.”
“Did you talk to me at the shake shop?”
“Yep. And you didn’t remember me . . . at all. It hurt.”
“I remember skipping out on the movie and talking to a girl named . . .”
I snap my fingers. “Marie. You told me your name was Marie!”
“I was in my I-hate-my-name stage. So I went by my middle name for, like a month.”
She tugs her bathrobe down.
“You looked so different back then. I mean, Marie was—”
“A frizzy-haired brace-face who was a little on the heavy side? I know. I felt invisible back then. But that’s not even the worst part.”
“Oh no. I don’t even want to know.”
I feel my face pinching as I brace myself.
“I tried to talk to you at the shake shop and then when your girlfriend came out of the bathroom and grabbed your hand, you left. And that was that.”
I scoot closer to her and grab her hand. “I am really sorry about that, River.”
“Was she your girlfriend?”
“I don’t know who you’re talking about.”
“You were holding hands. How could you not remember?”
I don’t respond and that’s when she sighs. “Ugh. It’s because you held lots of girls’ hands, huh?”
I feel shallow. A little ridiculous, like I’m the quintessential representation of all teen boys everywhere. “I guess so. I was immature.”
It’s become harder to breathe as easily as it was.
“But you were sweet with me the week before. You were nice enough not to be like, What’s wrong? and demand I tell you my embarrassing story. You sort of tried to take my mind off it and then you told some story about when you—”
I lift a finger. “—When I sneezed on the girl I had a crush on and she wiped her arm off with her shirt and walked away.”
“Yes! See? You do remember!”
Her smile does something to sift through the little rocks in my chest. “That anecdote? I felt so seen.”
“Why were you sad that night?”
Her eyes rotate up. “My friend said she was glad Skye wasn’t there and if I brought her to the next party with me, I couldn’t hang out with her anymore.”
“Unbelievable!”
Disgust hits my gut. How could someone be so mean? And it hurts even worse thinking of a young, vulnerable River being harmed because of prejudices against her sister.
“Yeah. I eventually got the courage to say ‘forget you,’ and found some better friends who liked having Skye around. But yeah, it hurt.”
“I’m sorry. And sorry I didn’t realize you were the same person at the shake shop.”
The sting of it all zips down my windpipe and spreads throughout my lungs. “Knowing I treated you so callously . . .”
She lifts a shoulder. “It was a hard summer. I was fourteen years old, for one thing. And my parents kept insisting I bring Skye with me to social events, and I had a terrible attitude about that. I didn’t want my sister tagging along. And so then when I mentioned to you at the shake shop that you and I had talked during the party the week before and you looked like I was . . . not worth remembering, I just—”
Her gaze darts down to her robe’s terry cloth belt. She grabs it and starts tapping it against her hand. “You became the fall guy for all that was wrong in my world.”
The set of her jaw and far off look feels like turning the page in a book you’ve never read before, only to see that it’s blank. She’s reliving something. Haunted.
“You are worth remembering, River. I’m sorry I didn’t before. The details are hazy, but I do remember a girl named Marie and thinking she was cool. But I don’t have any reference in my brain for what ‘Marie’ looked like, so I was confused the next week. And was too wrapped up in myself and in whoever I was holding hands with at the time to handle it well.”
I grit my teeth, trying to temper the shame for being such an idiot.
“So there you go,”
she says. “We actually met well over a decade ago, even though you’ve thought it was when you barged into my office—”
“There was no barging,”
I say cooly. “I knocked.”
Her grin lights up the dark. She’s quiet and that’s when I give in and reach over to place a hand on her knee. I brush my fingertips along her impossibly smooth skin. “You should know that . . . I like your body, okay? You have no idea.”
“Oh really?”
Her voice purrs. “This feels very good considering I’ve spent all this time being humiliated about your rejection of me.”
“Perceived rejection,”
I correct. “Or misinformed rejection.”
“Potato. Pa-tah-to.”
“And you’re beating yourself up over not wanting Skye to be involved in things with your friends.”
“It was wrong of me,”
she insists.
“But understandable. Like you said, you were fourteen. Look at all you’re doing for her now. You’ve given her the world. You’re an incredible sister.”
The tension between us tells me she’s not completely convinced. Hopefully she’ll come to realize there’s nothing to feel shame over anymore. “What can I do for you, River? Or is it ‘Roberta?’ Or maybe ‘Marie?’”
A barely there laugh, and then she scratches the top of her head.
“I want you to figure out what you want.”
Not what I was expecting her to say. “I know what I want.”
“Not with Foundations. With other things.”
“Other things? Like a certain marriage?”
She tilts her head as if silently saying, You said it, not me.
“There’s no need to figure it out. I already know.”
“And . . .? You should probably enlighten me since I’m your wife and all.”
I take a deep breath, in and out. “I don’t want to be married like this.”
She straightens. “Oh.”
“I think it’s pathetic that I roped you into this.”
“It kind of was.”
She cracks a cautious smile.
“I had blinders on. I was too proud to let go of Foundations.”
“So you don’t want to be married to me. So how about . . .”
She pauses to give a quiet laugh. “. . . You call your dad and tell him the truth?”
I let out a long, slow breath and lie back down on my back. “I think I should. This was wrong of me. In trying to prove to him I have integrity, I did something so completely outside of my integrity.”
“So, do we tell everybody we’re a couple of frauds? Or do we just quietly end it now?”
I do not want to end this. Does she want to?
“Are you ready to end it?”
I hold my breath.
“Not exactly.”
What kind of an answer is that? “What do you want?” I ask.
“I want to know what it would have been like between us if . . .”
She gestures to me and then to herself. “. . . We could have removed your dad from the equation entirely.”
“We can still find that out. Let’s remove him from the equation. Start over.”
She scoffs. “Impossible.”
“Why?”
I feel it now. Panic. Because everything in me wants this to not be impossible.
She draws her eyebrows together. “Because we can’t go back in time and what we have is tainted.”
“Tainted?”
Okay that hurts. “I like what we have.”
“It’s tainted by the fact that we came together for business. We’ll never know if we would have chosen each other if we hadn’t been forced to walk into this.”
“So what? Let’s make it real. A real marriage.”
Her eyes flicker over me. “Why?”
I blow out a quick breath and sit back up on my forearms. “You do realize you ask ‘why’ more than my four-year-old niece, right?”
“You’re stalling. Why do you want this to be real?”
As confident as her words are, there’s an undercurrent of vulnerability that is making it hard for me to not tug her into a hug.
I’m sorting out what to say when she crawls over the barrier, kicking it off the bed and onto the floor in one swift jab of her leg, and sits right on me, straddling me, pushing me back onto the bed. I try to sit up. Not because I don’t like the physical contact but because this is getting real . . . very fast. But she pushes me back down. “Gabriel. I can’t force you to say anything that you don’t mean.”
“But you can force me to lie down?”
A wicked smile plays about her lips. “Exactly.”
She laughs but eases off me a bit. “What do you want, Gabriel?”
she whispers.
“I want to stop pretending.”
“Pretending that we’re married?”
“Yes!”
I grunt in frustration. “No. I want to be married to you for real, River.”
“Why?”
“Did you ask questions like this when you were a kid? Geez.”
Her eyes plead with me, her voice vulnerable. “Please Gabriel. Why?”
“Because I like how fiercely you love your sister. How fiercely you love everyone in your life. And I like how your hand feels in mine. Cliché? Yeah. True? Indescribably, stupidly true.”
“Stupidly?”
Hovering above me, she’s no longer trapping me under her, but she’s not moving off me, either.
Thank the heavens, the moon, and the stars.
“I like the values you have and how because of them you wouldn’t take any of my BS when I wanted you to fix my problems without any accountability from me.”
Now I’m somehow talking with my hands. Lying on my back and talking with my hands isn’t easy, but I have to. “You make me want to be better. And because when you do that one thing with your tongue, it drives me so crazy, I want to scream.”
“What thing?”
she breathes.
A growl leaves my throat. “I can’t describe it. You put your tongue on your top lip, and—”
“Like this?”
And then she does it, she darts her tongue to the tippy top of her mouth and, heaven have mercy on my soul, I might actually die right here, right now.
I grab her hips with my hands. “You’re flirting with me, River.”
She swallows and grunts in protest. “We are way past flirtation.”
Squeezing her hips, I spin her off of me, and the shock pushes out a big whooping laugh from her as we collide and rotate in the bed. Now I’m on top. “I like you. But I don’t want to be married like this.”
Her head twists away from me. “I know. You’ve said as much.”
She’s protesting, like she doesn’t get what I’m trying to say.
“No, you don’t know. I’m sick of playing games and of making this about what everyone else around us thinks or needs. Being married to you is the single most insane thing I’ve ever done, and I don’t want it to ever stop.”
She’s breathing heavily and when her gaze darts down to my mouth, that’s all the permission I need.
I lean down and devour her lips with mine.
There’s something indescribable when you kiss someone you love. And it registers in my mind, as I’m tasting her lips and tangling my hands in her hair, that I do. I think I love her.
I have to love her, right? That has to be what this is.
I do sort of a pushup move as both of my hands are on the bed on either side of her head and my body stretches out.
As quickly as it began, I pull my lips away. I climb off her and over to my side of the bed, hastily pulling the messed up blanket barrier off the floor and back in place. She lies there, on her back, her mouth dropped open a tad and her eyes on the ceiling.
Our heavy breathing eventually slows and the next time I glance over, she’s smiling. It’s small, but it’s there. Nothing more is said. There doesn’t need to be.
How will I fall asleep, with my mind racing and stealing glances at her every twenty seconds? Eventually, I hear her long, slow breaths turn to a light snore. Which makes me smile.
Of course she snores. Because River is perfectly imperfect, which adds up to this: I love her. And I meant what I said.
I don’t know how she feels about what I said. And first thing in the morning, I’m going to ask her.