Chapter 13
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“You look beautiful.” His gaze lowered to my mouth. “Kissable.”
“Don’t say those things.” I drew a pattern in the spilled sugar on the table. When I realized I’d written a cursive letter G, I swept the sugar into my palm and emptied it into the ashtray.
Gabriel rested his elbow on the table and propped his head on his hand, studying my face. “You never called.” It sounded like an accusation.
“Annika is my best friend.”
“I know that. But we’re not together anymore,” he reasoned.
“It doesn’t matter. You’re still her ex-boyfriend. So that makes it wrong.”
“Is it though?”
“Yes. Nothing can happen with us.” His knee brushed my thigh, and I jerked back like I’d just touched a hot stove. “Not now. Not ever.”
After a few seconds of weighted silence in which I stared at the table while his gaze flitted over my face, he placed his hand on the table, palm up and wiggled his fingers. “Give me your hand, Cleo.”
I shoved my hands under my thighs and shook my head.
He let out an exasperated sigh. “Stop being a chicken. Just let me hold your hand.”
“Why?”
“Because you’re telling me I can’t be with you, so I’ll have to settle for a consolation prize. Come on,” he coaxed. “I just want to hold your hand.”
He made it sound like he’d perish and die if he couldn’t, so I placed my right hand on top of his left and told myself it’s no big deal, it means nothing.
But I could feel the current of electricity coursing through me like we were hooked up to a power grid.
Chemistry. It wasn’t the kind of thing you could fake. You either had it or you didn’t.
To my dismay, we had it in spades.
My gaze dipped to our joined hands. His long fingers and larger palm engulfing mine. His calloused guitar player hands rough against my softer skin.
Such a simple thing, holding hands, but so intimate.
Heat spread through my body and pooled in my belly, and inexplicably, I started to shake. He clasped my hand in both of his, holding it like it was a small, fragile bird he needed to protect.
I felt like I was going to cry.
I yanked my hand away and stood so abruptly, I knocked my chair over. Gabriel righted it and I gathered up my coat and bag and scarf and hugged them to my chest.
He grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving. “Don’t go yet. I want you to listen to my music.” He bit the corner of his mouth, vulnerable. “Please stay.”
“Gabriel—”
“I won’t touch you again.” He held up his hands. “Unless you ask me to,” he added.
I looked around at the tables filled with people drinking coffee, reading books, chain-smoking, chatting. “You’re just going to go up there and play right now?”
“Sure. Why not? It’s what I do.” He turned to Sean who had stopped at our table with my mom. “Sean doesn’t mind, do you?”
“You already act like you own the damn place,” Sean grumbled, but I could tell he didn’t mind. Dammit.
“I’m just the dishwasher,” Gabriel said.
“Don’t expect any star treatment from me. You’re not Bono.”
“I never wanted to be a rock star. Next thing you know you’re up on stage ripping off your shirt and getting your nipple pierced. I’m just in it for the music.” Gabriel grabbed his guitar and headed to the mic stand along the back wall like a wandering troubadour.
“It’s gonna happen for him,” Sean said. “He’ll get that record deal. But he won’t know how to handle it.”
“In what way?” I asked.
“His morals. His lofty ideals. He wants to keep his music pure and unadulterated,” Sean said. “But he needs to get it into his head that music is a business just like everything else.”
“Maybe he’s happy with the way things are,” I argued. “Maybe he doesn’t want more.”
Sean huffed out a laugh. “If he didn’t want more, he’d be at home playing to his four walls. He wouldn’t even need an audience. He wants to remain anonymous, but he also wants to get his music out there. He can’t have it both ways.”
“Sean’s right,” my mom said. “If he…”
I don’t know what she was about to say because Gabriel started singing “Just Like A Woman” and my mom sat up and listened.
Like all his covers, he made it his own, changed the composition and sang it in a different key.
I don’t think I’d ever heard any musician infuse so much passion into their music as Gabriel did. This acoustic set made his music feel even more intimate.
Whenever I listened to his voice, it made my heart hurt. It gave me chills. It filled me with longing and lust and heartache and joy.
That was his superpower. His music made you feel so much. An onslaught of emotions.
Judging by my mom’s expression, she was enraptured too.
After the Dylan cover, he sang The Smiths’ “Reel Around the Fountain,” and the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” followed by an original song that hadn’t been on the cassette he gave me.
The song was about the regrets that lingered after someone was gone. He lamented over disappointing them and never living up to their expectations.
I thought it was beautiful.
You could feel his pain when he sang it, and I got the feeling he wrote it for his father. Not that I knew anything about his father. He’d never mentioned him. I was basing it on what I’d read in the notebook, just a few lines but enough to convey that they had a rocky relationship.
He finished on a sigh and tipped his chin in thanks for the smattering of applause, then leaned into the mic and spoke.
“I wrote the next song for Jane,” he said.
“That’s not her real name. It’s just the name I conjured up the first time I ever saw her face.
There was just something about this girl that hit me right here.
” He slammed his fist against his chest. “Boom! I remember thinking…what if she’s my once in a lifetime? ”
He laughed at himself. Then his eyes found mine. “Guess we’ll never know, will we? Now she’ll always be the one who got away.”
Our gazes locked and held across the room, and I cursed fate once again for being so unbelievably cruel. Guys like him didn’t come along every day. He wasn’t an asshole. He wasn’t arrogant or condescending or an egomaniac. Gabriel was special.
What if he was my once in a lifetime?
“I hope you find your Jane,” a girl at the next table yelled, effectively snapping me out of my trance. “But if not, I’d be willing to fill in.” She flashed him a bright smile and offered herself up on a silver platter.
I glared at the waif-like blonde with a gold nose ring who couldn’t take her eyes off him. I wanted to kick her in the shin. Or better yet, scratch out her eyeballs.
When my gaze returned to Gabriel, the corner of his mouth lifted in a half smile like he’d read my mind.
God, this guy. He brought out my violent streak. I’d never had a jealous bone in my body, and now look at me, reaching for my pepper spray. Not literally, of course. I wasn’t a total psycho.
“I’m keeping the faith,” he said, eyes still on me. “I think there’s hope yet.”
Before we left, Gabriel wrote a note on a paper napkin and stuffed it into my coat pocket.
We spilled out of the café and said our goodbyes on the corner. He told my mom it was great to meet her. She told him it was a pleasure, and that his music and his voice were extraordinary.
On a parting note, she said, “The world needs good music. If you’re offered a record deal, don’t instantly dismiss it. There’s always room for negotiation. Just remember that.”
He nodded solemnly and said that he would. I think he respected my mom’s opinion. I think it was half the reason for that spontaneous performance at Monks. The other incentive was obviously to torture me.
“Oh, hey,” he said. “Has anyone got the time?”
My mom told him it was seven thirty.
“Oh shit. I was supposed to meet someone—” His eyes met mine and he grimaced.
Just tell me you were supposed to meet a girl without telling me, why don’t you?
“I need to run. I’m playing at Cornelia Street Café,” he said as if just remembering he had a gig this evening.
With a final look at me, he dashed across the street in the snow, running late as usual, in a beanie and an army jacket that wasn’t thick enough to keep him warm in the middle of winter.
Not my problem. I’m sure he could find plenty of girls to keep him warm. I’m sure the blonde in the café or the girl he was supposed to be meeting would be more than happy to share their bed.
Not that I was bitter.
“Come on,” my mom said. “I want to see your designs before I go.”
As we walked up Avenue A past the park, the note in my coat pocket felt like it was burning a hole right through the lining. I desperately wanted to read it, but at the same time, I didn’t.
I’d fallen in love with his words so many years ago. Had built him up in my head so much that he couldn’t possibly live up to my idyllic vision.
And yet.
And yet…
How did you stop yourself from wanting someone you shouldn’t want?
“You’re Jane,” my mom guessed.
“Yeah.” I sighed. “I’m Jane. And he’s the boy who lost his notebook in the park three years ago.”
“His notebook—” She stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and grabbed my arm. “The boy of your dreams?”
“He’s not. I just…I was young and stupid when I said that.”
She laughed. “You’re still young.” She tilted her head and studied my face in the hazy acid glow of the streetlight. “So what are you going to do about it?”
“Nothing. There’s nothing I can do.” Except to forget him.
I trudged up the street and tried to shake off the disappointment and the ridiculous hopelessness of it all.
It felt like a sick joke. A jester dangling a carrot in front of my nose only to yank it away, laughing and taunting, Ha ha ha, you can’t have it .
My boots left tread marks in the slush, blackened from exhaust fumes and pedestrians. Nothing ever stayed clean and pristine in this city, not even pure fallen snow.
“Why don’t you talk to Annika? I’m sure she’d understand.”
I stared at my mom like she’d suddenly grown three heads and was breathing fire. “And say what, exactly? Gabriel is my Notebook Boy, and he wrote songs about me and performed them while he was still with you?” I threw up my hands. “How do you think that would go over?”
“ Gabriel is your Notebook Boy?” Annika screeched.
I froze. My stomach did a freefall and landed at my feet with a splat.
Where had she come from?
I stood motionless, too scared to turn around or to utter a single word, like it was a game of Statues and I’d lose if I moved a muscle.
Why, God, why hadn’t I kept my big mouth shut?
My mom greeted Annika with a smile, but Annika didn’t even notice. Her eyes were narrowed on me.
“I’m going to hop into a taxi,” my mom said, squeezing my arm. “I’ll call you tomorrow morning. Everything is going to be okay,” she assured me.
I wish I could believe her.
“Tell me you’re joking,” Annika said. “Tell me you would never keep something like that from me. Tell me!”
“I…” It was one thing to withhold the truth, but quite another to lie to her face. I swallowed. “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m so sorry.”