Chapter 45
CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE
Cleo
It was so surreal to be sitting across from Gabriel again.
I always thought that if I ever saw him again, I’d be mentally and emotionally prepared for it. But the very last place I wanted to see him was at the opening night of my solo exhibition. All of those pieces were about us. Twin flames that had burned out.
He looked like his old self again, maybe even better.
It was so odd to see him with a suntan. When we were together, we were pale city slickers. Now his skin glowed with vitality like he’d spent the past three years living on a beach. Which I guess he had.
His hair was longer and touched the collar of his shirt.
I used to brush those stubborn locks off his forehead with my fingertips.
Any excuse to touch him. Not that I’d ever needed an excuse.
Physical touch was one of our love languages.
We used to be fluent in all of them. Now we didn't even speak the same language anymore.
He lifted his glass in a toast. “To us.”
To the end of us, more like it. I clinked my glass against his. “To our divorce.”
I took a fortifying sip of my rum cocktail with honey and lime juice and ignored the scowl on his face.
“Stop talking dirty. How about we don’t mention the D word again?”
This man was unbelievable. What had he expected? Not like he’d spent the past three years blowing up my phone with calls. He hadn’t knocked on my door or flooded my mailbox with letters. No smoke signals or carrier pigeons or any other form of communication.
“Nice shirt,” I said.
He ran his hand down the front, smoothing out the wrinkles.
I used to iron his clothes before he went on stage and he would stand behind me, arms wrapped around my middle and murmur into my ear, How do you make ironing look so sexy ?
“Thanks,” he said. “It’s my favorite.”
I searched his face. Nope. No recognition whatsoever. “I made it for you for your twenty-fourth birthday . You were sleeping with my best friend at the time.” I couldn’t help but throw that in because yes, I was still that petty.
His brows knitted and he shook his head. “Nope. Doesn’t ring any bells.”
“How convenient.”
He laughed.
We downed our cocktails and ordered another round, barely touching the food.
“Where’s your ring?” he asked.
I looked down at my bare ring finger. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?” He stared at me so intently, so laser focused that I wouldn’t be surprised if he could see straight through to my innermost thoughts.
I’d almost forgotten the intensity of his gaze. The way his deep brown eyes held mine captive and made it nearly impossible to look away.
I took a deep breath and lowered my eyes, running my finger over a crack in the Formica. “I checked just about every pawn shop in the city but never found it.”
“Cleo.” He reached for my hand and held it in his. This felt so familiar. His warm, calloused hand clasping mine. “What happened?” he asked, his tone gentle, brows knitted.
“I got mugged by a knife-wielding panhandler. I was walking home from the subway late one night and I wasn’t paying attention.
Which is crazy. I’m a New Yorker. I should know better.
He demanded that I give him the ring, and I said, ‘over my dead body.’” I laughed hollowly.
“I fought him and spit in his face. I tried to run but he grabbed my hair, yanked me back and held a knife to my throat…”
“Jesus.”
“He said, ‘You either give me the fucking ring or I’ll carve up that pretty face.’” For months after that happened, I could still feel the cool steel of the blade pressed against my skin and smell the stench of his breath.
I used to wake up in the middle of the night covered in sweat with panic clawing its way up my throat and my heart pounding like a drum.
When I’d reach for Gabriel, needing his reassurance that I was safe and there were no knife-wielding intruders in our apartment waiting to slice my throat, his side of the bed was empty and my fears would morph into sorrow and heartache.
Gabriel’s jaw was clenched, and he kept running his hands through his hair, making it stick up in ten different directions.
He smacked his palm on the table, making the dishes rattle. “That fucking asshole,” he seethed. “No ring is worth that.” He paused, eyes narrowed in thought. “That’s why you stabbed the canvas,” he guessed.
I nodded. “Yeah.”
That had been the longest, cruellest winter of my life. The curse of threes. First, Gabriel left. Then, my bedroom flooded. And for the hat trick, the ring.
It was almost as if the universe was trying to send me a message by ripping away everything I cherished.
Forget him. Move on . Stop holding on to something that’s long gone .
Gabriel held my hand in both of his and brushed his thumb over my ring finger. “How are you now?”
I stared at the half-eaten egg roll next to a plate of ropa vieja. As usual, Gabriel had ordered too much food. “I’m good. I’m doing really well. Art saved me. Or maybe I saved myself.”
I went to therapy. I took self-defense classes. And then I picked up the pieces and rebuilt my life. Without Gabriel.
After two years of travelling, living in foreign cities and chasing my dreams, I was stronger. Braver. More resilient.
But here we were again, holding hands across the table under the hum of fluorescent lights in a diner with an Enrique Iglesias song playing from the crackling speakers.
And just like that I was twenty-two years old again, sitting across from him at the Kiev, my heart and mind at war.
A love like that only comes around once in a lifetime.
If you’re lucky.
My eyes met his. He was still so beautiful to me. With his soulful eyes and messy hair and big, sloppy heart.
The clock rewound, and I was transported back to another time and place.
The giddy highs of first love and the thrill of finding your person in a sea of billions.
Late-night conversations in 24-hour diners about everything and nothing.
Lazy mornings in bed, exploring each other’s bodies and laughing for no good reason.
Running up the stairs at the end of each day, heart beating in my throat, a kaleidoscope of butterflies flapping their wings, running into his arms like it had been years instead of hours.
“We were good together, weren’t we?” he asked as if he could read my mind. As if he knew I was tripping down memory lane, replaying the highlight reel of forgotten dreams.
He bit the corner of his mouth, unsure, because he really had no idea, and even three and a half years later it still broke my heart that all his beautiful memories were gone.
“Yeah, we were good together,” I said, trying to speak past the lump in my throat. “We made each other better and we just…fit.”
“Let’s try this again.” Gabriel stood up from his seat then slid back into the booth and leaned his forearms on the table. “Hi, old friend. It’s good to see you again. Has it really been three years or only three minutes?”
“Hey, old friend. It’s been a while.”
He smiled.
I smiled too.
We picked up our forks and started eating, like we’d given ourselves permission to ease into a warm familiarity and just enjoy each other’s company. If only for a little while.
“So you live in Montauk now?” I only knew that because I had to ask Sean for his address.
“Yeah. I bought a beach shack, planted a wild meadow, and adopted a chocolate Lab with big, sad eyes.”
“Wow. You’re a dog owner now. That’s wild.” But I could picture him with a dog. Getting slobbery, puppy dog kisses. Lavishing all his time and attention on his adopted pet.
Gabriel had a whole new life I knew virtually nothing about.
It had been easier to move on with my life if I didn’t have to hear about him all the time, so I’d asked our mutual acquaintances not to mention his name.
After he left, I used to see him everywhere. Walking down the street carrying a guitar. Waiting in line at the coffee shop we used to frequent. Browsing the shelves at a used bookstore.
I even saw him at JFK airport when I was running to catch a flight. But then the person would turn their head and I would see that it was just someone with messy dark hair and a similar build who wasn’t Gabriel, and my heart would plummet.
Until finally, I stopped looking for his face in every crowd.
But now, curiosity got the best of me. “So tell me about the music,” I said between bites of rice and beans. “Have you found your way back to it?”
He nodded. “I started learning how to play guitar two years ago.”
“And how’s that going? Are you an axe slinger yet? Shredding with the best of them?” I tried to keep my tone light and breezy like we were just old friends catching up and not two lovers whose happily ever after was cut tragically short.
“I wouldn’t go that far,” he said. “But I’ve built up some good calluses and I practice every day. The guitar is my favorite toy. I love to play around with it and see what it can do.”
“Does it ever make you cry?”
“ Weep . When I first started learning, I listened to these old Robert Johnson recordings over and over and tried to play them. I was singing the Delta blues, baby. And, oh man, when I figured out what you can do with tunings, I was all over that.”
I laughed. It was funny but at the same time it wasn’t. To think that he’d had to start from scratch and learn all over again, when before he was such a skilled, innovative guitarist, was heartbreaking.
“What made you decide to start playing again?”
“Sheer boredom. Or curiosity, maybe,” he said.
“I had all these guitars sitting in the living room and every day I’d walk right past them.
I felt no attachment whatsoever. But one day, I picked up a guitar and it felt good in my hands, so I started experimenting.
And every day after that, I kept coming back to it.
Now music has become as essential as breathing. So you were right about that.”
Music saved him just like I knew it would.
Before I went to Bali, I’d been left with the unenviable task of divvying up all our things. I packed up his clothes and books and CDs, his stereo and guitars, and moved them to the cabin in the Hudson Valley should he ever come looking for them.
That was the day I finally started letting him go. Three hundred days after he left, when I was forced to relegate our lives into two separate compartments.
His and Hers. Before and After.
“Do you sing too?” I asked.
“I sing. Or, at least, I try to sing. Not sure how good it is.” He set down his fork and leaned back in his seat.
“It’s all experimental. Like a child at play, you know?
Kids aren’t worried if they’re doing it right.
They’re just having fun. Going wherever their imagination takes them.
They’re not jaded or cynical or self-conscious.
They’re not worried about what will come tomorrow or next year or five years from now.
They’re just right there in that moment building castles in the sand, and there’s so much freedom and so much joy in that. ”
It was true. As we get older, we lose that childlike wonder.
It sounded as if Gabriel had fallen in love with life again.
But why couldn’t he have done that with me by his side?
“Come to Montauk,” he said. “We’ll have the ocean on our doorstep and a wild garden and the salt breeze in our hair.
I have an art studio where you can work while I write music.
I’ll serve you peaches and fresh seafood and wine and serenade you while you paint canvases.
We’ll spend quality time together and get to know each other all over again. ”
Typical Gabriel. He wanted everything all at once. What really struck me was the line about getting to know each other all over again.
Even so, a big part of me was tempted to say yes. Yes, yes, yes. Let’s just forget all this divorce business and fall in love all over again. You can feed me sun-ripened peaches and kiss the juice off my lips. Read poetry and sing me love songs and make me forget that you ever said goodbye.
But when you’re the one left holding all the baggage, it wasn’t so easy to forget or forgive.
My phone rang, jolting me back to the present. I fished it out of my bag and stared at the screen, debating for so long that the call went to voice mail. A few seconds later, my phone started ringing again. I silenced the call and stashed the phone in my clutch bag, snapping it shut.
I’d call him back tomorrow.
Gabriel’s eyes narrowed to slits. “One of your someones , Cleo?”
The accusation in his tone fuelled my anger. He had no right to question me, let alone act like the injured party. I lifted my chin. “What’s it to you, Gabriel?”
“You’re still my wife. Did you tell those assholes that you’re already married?”
I laughed without a trace of humor. “Wow. You’ve suddenly remembered that I’m your wife after three years of radio silence. Do you think that gives you the right to act like a jealous lover? We’re married on paper only. I’m not going to hold you to vows you don’t even remember making.”
“What if I want to be held to those vows?” he challenged.
Then you wouldn’t have deserted me.
“Just sign the papers. I don’t want a dime from you so that should make everything easier.” I grabbed my bag and stood, suddenly exhausted. “Goodbye, Gabriel.”
Without waiting for his response, I barrelled out the front door and flagged down a taxi. When it skidded to a stop, I dove into the back seat and yanked the door shut just as Gabriel charged out of the restaurant.
As the taxi pulled away, he threw his arms in the air and shook his head like he couldn’t believe I’d walk out on him.
It doesn’t feel so great, does it, Gabriel?
I wasn’t trying to punish him though. This was self-preservation.
Who would be foolish enough to risk getting their heart broken by the same man twice?
Not this girl.