Chapter 19
GAbrIEL
Monday morning, Gabriel opened the refrigerator and closed it again.
The shelves were full. Tessa had stocked them before the Plaza event, her handwriting on masking-tape labels. Leftover risotto. Salad greens. The good cheese. He shut the door and drank water from the tap instead. The thought of food turned his stomach.
“Sit down. I had Maria make tea.”
“I’ll stand.”
“Gabriel.”
“I’m seeing a woman.”
“Knox told me.”
“Her name is Tessa Thorne. She runs a catering company in Brooklyn. You cornered her in the hallway at Ashford years ago. You told her she wasn’t Sterling material.”
His mom went very still.
“Mother.”
“I remember her. Of course I do.”
“I’ve been with her for three months. I’ve been hiding her from you all this time. That ends today.”
His mother sat. The tea on the coffee table went untouched.
“You’re telling me now.”
“Yes.”
“Not asking.”
“No.”
She looked at him for a long moment. He had seen her look at his father this way. He had seen her look at the household staff this way. He hadn’t, before, seen her look at him this way. It was the first time he had said something to her she couldn’t negotiate around.
“I see.”
She took a long breath. The negotiation pivot was beginning. He had watched her use it on his father, on charity boards, on the household staff. He braced for it.
“Gabriel. I want you to think about this clearly. The Lawrence girl is back from London. You and Anne grew up at the same dinner tables. Her father was named to the Federal Reserve advisory panel last month. There are reasons these matches happen, and they aren’t cruelty. They’re practicality.”
“I’m not interested in practicality.”
“That’s the privilege of being thirty-six and reckless.
” She set her cup down. “You think I disliked Tessa Thorne because she was poor. I disliked Tessa Thorne because at fifteen she was already a woman who would never, in a long marriage, be content to be Mrs. Anyone. I knew it the day I met her. She’s likely the same woman now.
She isn’t going to spend her life arranging your dinner parties, Gabriel.
She’s going to keep building her business.
You’re going to wake up one morning at fifty and realize you married a partner instead of a wife. And then where will you be.”
“Married to a partner.”
“That isn’t what people in our family—“
“Mother.”
She paused.
“With respect. I don’t care what people in our family have done. I care about her. And I care about being someone who chooses to love her.”
“Your father, Gabriel—”
“Loves you. I know.”
“He sacrificed—”
“He sacrificed nothing. He let you carry the marriage on your own terms because that was easier for him than disagreeing with you. I’m not going to do that to Tessa, and I’m not going to do that to myself. There’s a difference, Mother, between being protected and being stalled.”
She didn’t respond for a long moment. He watched her recalibrate.
“You’ll regret speaking to me like this.”
“I might, but I won’t regret marrying her.”
The word marrying sat between them like glass.
She picked up her teacup. Set it down. Picked it up again. The tea must’ve been cold by then. She drank it anyway.
“There’s something else. I’ve been carrying fast food gift cards in my wallet for the last few months.
McDonald’s, mostly. I hand them out when I pass someone who’s hungry.
I learned it from Tessa. She does it with granola bars.
Now I do it with gift cards. I’m telling you because the next time you ask what I’ve been doing with my time, that’s part of it. ”
She set the teacup down very, very carefully.
“You give McDonald’s coupons to homeless people.”
“I give McDonald’s gift cards to people who are hungry. I don’t check whether they’re homeless. It isn’t my business.”
“Gabriel.”
“I’m telling you these two things, Mother, because I’m done lying about my life. I don’t need your approval. The only opinion that matters to me is hers.”
The silence was the longest of his life.
“And if I told you, I wouldn’t receive her in this house.”
“Then I wouldn’t be in this house either. Christmas or otherwise.”
She looked at him for a very long time. He had never spoken to her like that. He hadn’t known he could.
“You’re in love with her.”
“Yes.”
“She’s going to expect to come to Christmas.”
“She is.”
“What’s the catering business called?”
“Thorne Events.”
“Thorne Events.” Camille turned the words over. “I’ll look into it.”
“Don’t bother mother. She doesn’t need you for her success. She earned that without you. Be careful. If you chase her away again, you’ll lose me too.”
“I’m not stupid, Gabriel. If you bring her here, I’ll be civil.”
“That’s all I’m asking.” She picked up her teacup. “Go. You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
He rose and let himself out.
Tuesday passed and then it was Wednesday. He still didn’t eat. By Wednesday morning, the hunger had become a hollow ache in his chest, indistinguishable from the rest of the emptiness.
He was starting to understand. Finally. Too late, maybe, but starting.
Wednesday afternoon, Gabriel stood outside the bodega on the corner of Avenue C and Sixth Street.
She had mentioned it once, years ago, a throwaway detail during one of their late-night study sessions in high school. He had remembered. He had always remembered everything about her.
The building was a walk-up. Brick facade. Fire escapes rusting at the joints. The store had bars on the windows and a neon sign advertising lottery tickets. Gabriel looked up and counted floors.
Third floor. She had complained about the stairs once. Sixty-two steps from the street to their door. She had counted them every day for eight years.
This was where Tessa had grown up. Where she had learned that wanting something desperately didn’t make it appear. Where she had discovered that love wasn’t enough to keep the heat on, because that required money.
He walked into the store. The bell above the door chimed. Behind the counter, an older man with gray stubble looked up from his newspaper.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m just looking.”
The shelves were narrow, cramped, the prices marked in faded sticker labels.
He moved through the aisles slowly, taking inventory.
Single rolls of bathroom paper. Travel-sized everything.
Small bags of rice. Individual cans of soup.
Nothing in bulk. A person couldn’t stock up for tomorrow if they didn’t have money for today.
This was shopping when every dollar mattered. When you bought what you needed for tonight and hoped tomorrow would take care of itself.
He picked up a can of soup. Chicken noodle. Ninety-nine cents. Enough for one meal if you stretched it. Maybe two if you were creative.
“You buying or browsing?”
The man behind the counter was watching him.
“Do you remember a family?” Gabriel asked. “They would have lived upstairs about twenty years ago.”
The man’s expression didn’t change. “Lots of families live upstairs.”
“The mother worked several jobs. The father, too. They had a daughter.”
“That describes half the building.”
“Her name was Tessa. Tessa Thorne. The mother was Carol.”
The man set the newspaper down. “Carol’s girl.”
“Yes.”
“You a cop?”
“No.”
“Boyfriend?”
“Trying to be again.”
The man looked at him, took in the expensive coat Gabriel had forgotten to change out of, and the watch on his wrist that cost more than a month’s rent in the building above. He didn’t bother to hide the assessment.
“You’ll never understand,” the man said. Not unkindly. “Not from the outside looking in.”
“I know.”
He left the store and stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the third-floor window. He pulled out his phone and typed.
Gabriel: I went to Avenue C today. Saw the building. I’m trying to understand what you survived to become who you are. I’m sorry it took me this long to try.
He hit send.
The message showed delivered, then read.
No response. But she had read it. That was something.
Knox called at seven.
“Have you eaten?”
“Not hungry.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re punishing yourself, and it isn’t going to win her back.”
“I’m not trying to win her back by punishing myself. I’m trying to feel something I have never felt.”
“Three days without food isn’t going to make you understand poverty.”
“No. But it’s a start.”
Knox was quiet for a long moment. “Eat a piece of bread. Tomorrow is Thursday. You’re going to need your strength.”
“I will.”
“For what it’s worth, I think she’ll listen.”
“How do you know?”
“Because she hasn’t blocked your number.”
He held onto that.
He ate a piece of bread.
Thursday morning. It’s been five days since she found The Oath. Five days of silence, unanswered texts, and phone calls that went straight to voicemail.
She had an event today. She’d be finishing up around five.
Gabriel stood on the corner of Fifth Avenue and Fifty-Ninth Street, watching the crowd flow around him. Businessmen with purpose. Tourists with cameras. Office workers escaping for late lunches. Everyone moving with the certainty of people who knew where they were going.
Gabriel knew where he was going. He wasn’t sure what would happen when he got there.
The Oath sat folded in his pocket. This was either going to work or destroy whatever dignity he had left.
His phone buzzed.
Knox: Are you sure about this?
Gabriel: No.
Knox: Good.
He turned off his phone, took a breath, and pulled out the sign Knox had helped him make at three in the morning.
WILLING TO STARVE FOR LOVE.
It was ridiculous. He knew it was ridiculous. Sometimes ridiculous was the only language that made sense.
He stepped into the middle of the sidewalk, held up the sign, and waited.
The reactions came fast. A woman in yoga pants paused, read the sign, and laughed. “Honey, I’ll feed you. What are you in the mood for?”
“Waiting for someone specific.”
“Lucky girl.”
A group of tourists took photos. A teenager yelled something in a language he didn’t recognize. An older man in a business suit shook his head and muttered about millennials.
“You’ve been standing here twenty minutes,” a woman with a stroller observed. “Either she’s worth it, or you need therapy.”
“Both.”
She gave him a thumbs-up and walked on.
By the time Tessa’s event would be wrapping up, Gabriel had been offered food by six different strangers, photographed approximately forty times, and asked twice if this was a social media stunt.
It was desperation dressed up as romance.
She came around the corner at five thirty in a black coat, her stride tired, the expression she wore when a job had gone well but had taken everything out of her.
He was sitting on the sidewalk now. His legs had given out an hour ago. The old jeans and worn sweater Knox had dug out of his closet made him look like someone who needed help.
Tessa didn’t slow down. She reached into her bag, pulled out a water bottle and a protein bar, and crouched down beside him.
“Here.” She pressed them into his hands. “There’s a shelter on—“
She stopped. Her eyes found the sign first. WILLING TO STARVE FOR LOVE.
Then they found his face.
“Gabriel?”
He looked up at her. Unshaven. Exhausted. Holding a water bottle and a protein bar she had given him out of pure instinct. “Hi.”
She stood up so fast she nearly stumbled. “What are you doing?”
“Waiting for you.”
“On the ground. Dressed like a homeless person.”
“I noticed.” He pushed himself to his feet, reached into his pocket, and pulled out the folded paper. He held it out to her.
She took it. Unfolded it. Her expression changed as she recognized the signatures.
“I’ve seen this.”
“I know. I want you to see what it means now.”
People were stopping. A couple holding hands paused mid-stride. A man in a suit lowered his phone. More phones were coming out, of course they were, this was New York and public drama was free entertainment.
“A long time ago,” Gabriel said. “Long enough after we broke each other’s hearts that I should’ve known better. I signed this because I was sure I’d never love anyone the way I had loved you. I told myself it would protect me.” He shook his head. “All it did was give me an excuse to stop trying.”
“But you walked back into my life, and everything I thought I knew about staying safe and staying distant fell apart. I should’ve told you. The first week. I should’ve shown you this and explained it. I was scared.”
“Of what?”
“Of you seeing who I really am. A man so terrified of losing someone again that he built his whole life around never having anyone worth losing. I don’t want to be that man anymore.
I don’t want to be someone who keeps reminders of his fear in a desk drawer.
I had lunch with my mother on Tuesday. I told her about you.
I told her about the gift cards. I told her the only opinion that matters to me is yours.
She asked me what your business was called.
I told her. Whatever else happens, that part is done. ”
He looked down at The Oath. “This is just paper.”
He looked at her.
“I’m done hiding.”
He reached out and took the paper back from her hand and tore it in half.
The sound was louder than it should’ve been. Or maybe that was the silence around them. He tore it again. And again. Until The Oath was nothing but confetti in his hands. He threw the pieces into the air and watched them scatter down the street.
The crowd had grown into a circle of strangers witnessing something they’d tell their friends about later.
“I love you,” he said. “Not despite my fear. Because of it. Because you’re worth every terrifying thing I’ve felt since you came back into my life. I’d rather be scared with you than safe without you.”
Tessa stared at him.
Then at the pieces of paper drifting across the sidewalk.
Then back at him.
“You destroyed a historical document.”
“It wasn’t that historical.”
“People are filming.”
“I noticed.”
“This is going to end up on the internet.”
“Probably.”
“You’re insane.”
“Possibly.”
A long pause. The city moved around them.
“I finished a twelve-hour day.”
“I know.”
“What do we do now?”
His stomach chose that moment to growl. Loudly.
She looked at him. “When did you last eat?”
“Sunday.”
“Are you serious? That’s five days.” She grabbed his arm. “We’re getting you food before you pass out.”
“Does this mean you forgive me?”
“It means we’re going to talk.” Her eyes held his. “Just talk. I’m not saying I forgive you. But I’m not saying I don’t.”
He let her pull him toward the street. Toward food. Toward whatever came next.
She hadn’t forgiven him.
She was still holding his arm.
For now, that was enough.