Chapter 31 - Gabriel | Varazze
THIRTY-ONE
GAbrIEL | VARAZZE
The rental car smells horrible, and I grip the steering wheel tighter than I need to while Zale slouches in the passenger seat like he’s being forced to be here, as if he didn’t beg his way into the seat.
“You know,” he says, adjusting the air vent toward himself, “you don’t have to sit that close to the wheel. You're not eighty.”
I keep my eyes on the road. “And you don’t have to touch things that aren’t yours.”
As if on cue, he twists the radio knob from upbeat music to a monotone Italian news broadcast. I immediately twist it back and shoot him a glare.
“Touch it again,” I warn, “and you’ll lose your fingers.”
He smirks. “You’re so high-strung.”
“I’m driving in a foreign country with my girlfriend’s little brother who’s actively trying to piss me off. Forgive me for not being relaxed.”
“I’m not little,” he mutters, folding his arms across his chest.
“You’re younger.”
“I’m only two years younger than Zalea.”
“Still younger.”
He huffs and sinks lower in his seat as the Mediterranean ocean flashes blue through the windshield, and the road curves along the coast. It’s breathtaking, and it would be so peaceful if he would just shut up.
“You missed that turn,” he says.
“I did not.”
“Did too.”
“Did not.”
“Your GPS is recalculating.”
I glance down at my phone and see that it is indeed recalculating. Gritting my teeth, I follow the new directions while Zale bursts out laughing as he watches me.
“Relax, Gabe. It’s not a competition.”
I refuse to answer to that nickname, and the bickering finally fizzles out as silence stretches between us.
“So,” he says after a few minutes. “I hear you changed your mind.”
I keep my eyes on the road. “About what?”
“Everything.” He pauses. “She mentioned you want kids now.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“Are you scared?”
“Of what?”
“Being a dad?”
The question catches me off guard, but I swallow and choose the truth. “I’m terrified.”
He nods, as if he understands. “You were scared back then too,” he says.
I release a heavy sigh, the ocean to my right blurring as we round another bend. It’s not that I want to forget that time in my life, in fact my punishment should be the constant reminders, but I just don’t know how many times I can apologize for the same thing without it breaking me.
“Yeah,” I agree. “I was, and you hate me for it.”
Zale shifts in his seat, not looking at me anymore. “Well, you didn’t just leave her,” he says, voice tight. “You left me too.”
I frown. “What do you mean?”
“You were like…everywhere that summer,” he continues.
“At my competitions, at the house, teaching me, yelling at me when I wiped out. And then suddenly I found out my sister was pregnant, that she lost her baby, that she wanted to die—” his voice cracks and he takes a pause to recollect himself.
“And you were nowhere to be found except for on my television, winning gold, while I was watching my family fall apart in real time.”
I swallow, a painful lump forming in my throat. Before now, I never considered the weight that my decisions left on Zale’s shoulders. How I not only ruined his sister's life, but also a part of his.
“She went through hell,” he says.
“I know.”
“She needed you.”
My chest tightens and I take deep breaths to chase away the growing discomfort.
“I know.”
“I needed you,” he mutters. “And you weren’t there.”
The words land like a punch to my gut and I can’t hold back my frustration anymore. He already hates me anyway, there’s no point keeping it all to myself.
“I live with that every day, Zale,” I say. “You think I don’t? You think I don’t imagine what our life could’ve been like if I’d just stayed?”
He doesn’t answer, so I pull over and turn to face him because this conversation needs our full attention.
“What if I’d stayed and I’d convinced her to see a doctor the minute she felt the pains she was feeling? What if that could have saved our baby? What if I could have saved our baby?” I blurt out.
He watches me, a crease growing between his brows, but I don’t give him a chance to speak.
“I’m terrified to even ask your sister about it because I don’t know if she can talk about her, or if it hurts too much to think about,” I say, my own voice breaking, but I don’t care. “I can’t fix what I did, Zale,” I continue. “But I can try to make up for it every day for the rest of my life.”
He’s quiet for a moment, glancing out the window deep in thought. “What do you want to ask her?”
“What?”
“The baby,” he says, looking at me again. “What do you want to know about her?”
I shrug. “Well, for starters, I want to know if she gave her a name.”
“Gabriella,” he answers without missing a beat.
“W-what?”
“She named your daughter after you,” he says, staring straight ahead. “Her name was Gabriella.”
My chest caves in like someone’s driving a sledgehammer straight through my ribs. My vision blurs instantly as my tears spill over, and my breath becomes laboured and painful.
She named our baby after me. After the man who wasn’t even there.
A broken sound escapes my throat before I can stop it and I shove the car door open so hard it slams against its hinges as I stumble out onto the dirt.
My knees nearly buckle as I brace my hands against the hood, the metal hot under my palms, and my stomach lurches violently as my grief crashes through me in waves too big to contain.
I stagger around the back of the car just in time before everything in my stomach comes up onto the shoulder of the road, humiliatingly loud. When it’s over, I stay bent forward, hands on my thighs, dragging in shaky breaths that feel like they’re scraping against my lungs.
Gabriella.
Her name loops in my head and an ugly sob tears out of me, swallowed by the wind off the sea. I squeeze my eyes shut against the burn and I try to picture her tiny fingers, dark hair, and Zalea’s eyes.
I don’t know what she looked like, and I don’t know how much she weighed, and I don’t know how long she lived. I don’t know anything, and the shame nearly knocks me back to my knees.
Footsteps grow closer and I hear Zale’s heavy sigh, as if he expected this. He doesn’t say anything at first as he steps up beside me and presses a cold bottle of water to my arm.
“Rinse,” he mutters.
I take it, my hands shaking, and twist the cap off. The water sloshes as I lift it to my mouth, swishing it around before spitting it onto the rocks below. Zale hops up onto the trunk and sits there, arms braced behind him, staring out at the ocean like this is just any other pit stop.
“You shouldn’t ask questions you’re not ready to hear the answers to,” he says after a minute.
I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand, still bent forward. “I needed to know.”
“Did you?” he shoots back. “Because you look like you’re about to pass out now that you do.”
I straighten slowly, leaning back against the car instead of facing him. The sun feels too bright against my face, and the world feels too loud.
“How long was she alive?” I ask hoarsely.
Zale exhales through his nose. “Gabriel—”
“How long?” I repeat, turning my head to look at him.
His jaw tightens as he holds my gaze, and after a minute he looks away.
“A few hours,” he finally says. “They realized pretty quickly that there was nothing they could do to save her.”
The words slice clean through me. “Zalea said she held her.” My voice barely works.
“Yeah,” he says, softer now. “She held her the whole time.”
“She mentioned that someone took pictures,” My voice breaks. “After she passed.”
He studies me carefully, like he’s trying to decide how much I can handle.
“There are pictures,” he says slowly. “Mom made sure to keep them. Zalea couldn’t look at them for a long time.”
My stomach twists again but there’s nothing left to lose. “Does she still have them?”
“Yeah.”
I nod, staring at the gravel. Of course she kept every piece of our daughter.
“What was she like?” I ask, even though I’m not sure I deserve to know.
He pauses for a long time, and I think he isn’t going to answer but with a shaky voice, he does.
“She looked a lot like how Zalea looks in all her baby pictures,” he says quietly. “Except she was tiny. Like…really tiny.” He swallows. “But she squeezed Zalea’s finger so tightly like the little warrior that she was.”
That’s what breaks me.
I drag a hand over my face but it doesn’t stop the tears that spill out, hot and relentless. I slide down the side of the car until I’m crouched on the ground, back against the bumper, staring at nothing.
“She said even if you weren’t there, part of you was,” he continues. “That’s why she named her Gabriella.”
The guilt is suffocating, I almost can’t take it. “I don’t deserve that,” I choke out.
“No,” he agrees bluntly. “But she didn’t name her that because you deserved it, Gabriel. She named her that because she loved you.”
“Did she…blame me?” I ask after a while.
Zale looks down at his hands. “She blamed herself,” he says. “Which was worse.”
I close my eyes, because of course she did. Zalea would carry the weight of the world before letting anyone else touch it.
“I was chasing medals,” I murmur. “While she was burying our daughter.”
“You were chasing something you thought mattered,” he says after a while. “You were wrong…but you were also young.”
“That’s not an excuse.”
“No,” he agrees. “It’s not.”
“I need to know everything about her, even if it kills me inside.”
Zale studies me for a long time before he slides off the trunk and lands on his feet in front of me.
“Then ask my sister, not me,” he says. “She deserves to decide what you get to know, and when.”
I nod slowly, because he’s right. This is a conversation I should have with Zalea, as Gabriella’s parents.
“For what it’s worth,” he says awkwardly, not meeting my eyes, “she seems happy with you.”
“You think so?” I ask, pushing myself up on unsteady legs and wiping my face one more time.
“I’m not saying I forgive you,” he adds quickly. “But if you hurt her again, I won’t let it slide this time.”
A ghost of a smile pulls at my mouth despite the wreckage I feel inside me.
“Got it.”
He jerks his head toward the driver’s seat. “Come on, Coach. Never keep my sister waiting.”