Chapter 50
CHAPTER FIFTY
Cleo
In the six days since our coffee date, I’d thought of little else.
Gabriel seemed so much like his old self, right down to the way he talked and the things he said that it was clear that his personality had remained intact.
If we’d just met for the first time at that coffee shop, I would have wanted to get to know him better.
I would have looked out that window and thought: you look like my kind of person with your disheveled hair and clothes, and those big, stupid boots on your feet. You look like an artist and a dreamer with a wildly romantic heart .
And when he walked into the coffee shop and sat across from me, I would have thought: if anyone else said those things, it would have sounded cheesy, but coming from you, I’m intrigued and already half in love and desperate to hear more.
But it wasn’t the first time we’d met, and I wasn’t twenty-one anymore. I was twenty-nine years old and had fire-proofed my heart so he couldn’t burn me again.
Now I had no idea what to do about any of this.
So I went for an early morning run, jogging down the streets of SoHo to Annika’s dance fitness studio where I suffered through a gruelling hip-hop class led by my bionic best friend.
“I thought this was supposed to be fun.” I leaned over and rested my hands on my thighs, wheezing and gasping for breath.
“Put some energy into it!” She clapped her hands. “Come on! Keep up!”
If looks could kill.
After a quick shower, I shouldered my tote bag, closed the door on the mess in my apartment, and walked to my mom and Sean’s.
A few years ago, they bought a condo in a pre-war building on a pretty, leafy street in the West Village. Their love story began while my relationship was unravelling, but I was happy they’d found each other and proud of my mom for taking another chance on love.
She greeted me with a bright smile and a hug and pulled me inside.
“There’s our girl.” Sean beamed at me as if I’d done something remarkable simply by walking into their sunny yellow kitchen where he was manning the waffle iron.
“Do you need any help?” I plucked a strawberry from the bowl on the counter and popped it into my mouth then pilfered a crispy strip of bacon draining on a paper towel.
Sean waved me away with the ladle in his hand. Batter dripped onto the counter. “Sit down and relax,” he said gruffly.
“What he’s trying to say is get out of his way,” my mom said with a laugh.
If it were up to Sean, my mom and I would never lift a finger.
I poured myself a mug of coffee and sat opposite her at the bistro table by the window.
In the distance, the spire of the Chrysler Building rose above the brown brick buildings and shimmered in the sunlight, a view so quintessentially New York that a thrill shot through me.
London had been good to me, but I’d missed my beloved city. When my plane landed at LaGuardia a few weeks ago, I craned my neck to soak up the view of the skyline as we made our final descent and thought, Home, at last .
“All ready for your trip?” I asked. Monks was closed for renovations, so my mom and Sean were taking a road trip up the coast of New England.
A road atlas lay opened on the table with their route to Maine highlighted in neon orange.
“Packed and ready to go,” my mom said, reeling off their itinerary while I flipped through a stack of glossy brochures featuring the Salem Witch Museum, a charming inn on Martha’s Vineyard, and the rugged coastline and lighthouses of Maine.
“When’s your shipment arriving from London?” Sean asked.
“It arrived a few days ago,” I said, returning the brochures to the stack at my mom’s elbow.
“Didn’t I tell you to call me?” Sean closed the oven door and scowled at me over his shoulder. “I would have carried the boxes upstairs for you.”
“It was good cardio. Besides, I needed the workout.”
He exhaled loudly and shot me a look like he couldn’t believe I’d move my own boxes up five flights without his help.
My mom smiled. “Still my stubborn, independent girl.”
“Like you’re one to talk,” Sean grumbled. “I told you I would put those bookshelves up for you but no, you went and did it yourself.”
I tskked, rubbing my index fingers together. “Naughty Alice. When are you going to let the big, strong man take care of you?”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself. I’m hardly a damsel in distress.”
“You think I don’t know that?” Sean said, serving our breakfast and refilling our coffee.
It was only after he’d ensured that my mom and I had everything we needed that he took a seat.
“I know you’re capable. But how many times do I have to tell you that I like being needed? I like doing things for you.”
She patted his arm. “Next time I want to put up shelves, I’ll let you do it.”
He jerked his chin at me. “How much do you wanna bet she’ll do it herself?”
“I don’t have that kind of money to lose.” I’d inherited my mom’s can-do approach to life and her DIY ethos. She’d always been self-sufficient, and I doubted that would ever change.
“These waffles are delicious,” my mom gushed. “I don’t know how you get them so light and fluffy. Thank you for breakfast, Sean.” She gave him an adoring look. “I appreciate you.”
Sean snorted and jerked his thumb at her. “You see that? This is what she does. She makes it impossible to stay mad at her.”
I laughed. “What can I say? You just gotta love her as she is.”
After a few minutes of small talk, my mom and Sean exchanged a look, the kind couples share when they’re on the same page and could communicate without words. A raise of the brows. A subtle nod.
And then, “So you asked Gabriel for a divorce,” my mom said. “Why didn’t you tell us?” She sounded hurt.
I dragged the last bite of waffle through the syrup. Normally, I would have discussed this with my mom, but she was partly responsible for my decision.
Even though she’d moved on with Sean, she’d clung to the ghost of my father for over a decade.
I didn’t want to end up like her.
But I didn’t have the heart to tell her that so instead, I shrugged and said, “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”
My mom stared at me, aghast. “ Not a big deal? He’s my son-in-law.”
I couldn’t believe she was playing the son-in-law card. “I’m your only daughter. Get your priorities straight.” I was only half-joking, because really? She was Team Gabriel?
“I have my priorities straight. You’re still my number one.
But we care about Gabriel too.” She looked to Sean for backup.
He grunted in agreement. “I think you two need to sit down and have an open, honest conversation before you make any major decisions. He’s worked so hard to get to a good place. He’s not the same man who left you.”
“Yeah, well, if he was doing so great, why did he leave me hanging for three years? He could have at least had the common decency to pick up the phone and call me.” I was really harping on that, but it was a hard thing to wrap my head around.
They say that time heals all wounds, but that was a lie.
All the old hurt and resentment had resurfaced with his reappearance. All the nights I’d cried for that man, wondering where he was and if I’d ever see him again, only to find out that he’d been off in the fucking desert doing drugs.
I used to wear his old Jimi Hendrix T-shirt to bed every night until one day I realized that it smelled more like me than him, and I’d sobbed so hard that my stomach hurt and my ribs were sore for two days. Over a stupid T-shirt .
“He never came back for me and now that it’s convenient for him, he expects me to fall back into his arms like nothing ever happened?” I shook my head. “Nuh uh. It doesn’t work that way.”
My mom and Sean exchanged another meaningful look.
“He came back,” Sean said finally. “About three days after you left for Bali, he showed up at Monks. Said he’d been sitting outside the apartment waiting for you to come home. He was in a bad way. Wouldn’t have been any good for you…”
Three days ? I’d missed him by three days? What was it with us and the curse of threes? I left in May. He returned in May.
I should have waited longer than ten months. What was wrong with me?
No one ever told me he came back. Although I knew he must have at some point since he’d obviously picked up his things from the cabin, just thinking about him waiting for me pierced my heart.
“You want to hear the rest?” Sean asked.
I nodded. “Tell me everything. I want to hear it all.” If I’d asked sooner, maybe we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and heartache.
“About six months after he came back, he asked for your address. I thought he was just gonna send a letter. But he flew to London and just missed you again. You were in Paris at the time.”
My throat closed up and I felt like I was going to cry. How did we keep missing each other? And who would fly all the way to London without calling to check if I’d be there? Gabriel, that’s who.
“I don’t know the whole story, but he ran into some trouble,” Sean continued. “The paparazzi were hassling him, and I guess he snapped. Punched one of the guys and broke a camera.” He chuckled like the whole thing amused him, but I saw nothing funny about any of this.
That didn’t even make sense. Gabriel didn’t have a violent bone in his body. “But Gabriel would never do something like that.”
“Yeah.” Sean blew out a breath. “Wasn’t one of his finest moments.”
“He was staying with Ian,” my mom said as if that explained everything.
“So he flew to London, got into some trouble, and then he just… left ?” I asked, trying to make sense of this.
My mom said, “I think he knew that he wasn’t ready for you yet.”
Sean picked up the ball and ran with it.
They were a tag team now. “When he got back from London, he really started doing the work. He got more serious about his music, and he turned his life around.” Sean’s voice was filled with pride.
As if Gabriel was his own son, and not just the guy whose career he managed.
“He said that he wanted to be a better man,” my mom said. “For himself. And for you.”
God. That was such a Gabriel thing to say.
He’d always been a good man though. The best kind of man.
Generous with his heart, kind and loving, with an enthusiasm for life that was infectious.
Which was why it had been so difficult to reconcile the Gabriel I’d married with post-surgery Gabriel who cared about nothing and no one, not even himself.
“Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time with him.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, more inquisitive than accusatory but wasn’t sure how well I’d succeeded.
“We wanted to make sure he had somewhere to go for the holidays and got spoiled on his birthday, and that he always knew he had a family that cared about him,” my mom said simply.
A family that cared about him.
No one had ever chosen him. His own mother had abandoned him when he was just a little boy and his father had treated him with scorn and ridicule. A harsh disciplinarian who had never given Gabriel a single ounce of love or affection.
How could I have forgotten just how alone he’d been?
Gabriel had always yearned to be part of a warm, loving family and even though ours was small, he said it was quality over quantity. He loved all the Christmas traditions my mom and I had.
Every year, we’d traipse through the woods, searching for the perfect tree, and haul it back to the cabin. While we decorated, we drank cocoa with mini marshmallows and ate sugar cookies shaped like reindeer and sang along with Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mathis crooning Christmas carols.
All our ornaments were handmade or vintage. Hand-painted baubles, jewel-toned strands of beads from the flea market, and my toddler handprints preserved in clay. Our running joke: What small hands you had, Artful Dodger. All the better to pickpocket.
On Christmas morning, when we passed out gifts with the fire crackling in the hearth, dressed in our matching Christmas pajamas (the equivalent of ugly Christmas sweaters that my mother insisted we wear, No exceptions!
It’s a tradition! ), Gabriel always said the same thing: This is the best Christmas I’ve ever had.
My chest ached just thinking about it. I’d blocked out so many memories, as if that would protect my heart from further damage.
Now I just wanted to be alone to mull over all this new information, so I stood and cleared the table. Rinsed and stacked, my mind a million miles away.
“I’m sorry if we upset you,” my mom said, touching my arm, jolting me back to the present.
I shook my head and forced a smile. “No, it’s okay. It’s better that I know.” I’d been a coward for not asking sooner. But again, it was self-preservation and if I really thought about it, it was for the best that I hadn’t known any of this then.
If I had, I would have put my life on hold to be there for him. But like he’d said in the coffee shop, he had nothing to offer me at the time.
Translation: He would have been just as withdrawn and distant as he had been when he left, and I would have knocked myself out trying to reach him and been disappointed when I couldn’t.
“Thanks for breakfast, Sean.” I leaned my hip against the dishwasher to shut it. “Have a great vacation. Send a postcard and take lots of photos.”
“We’ll see you in a couple of weeks.”
My mom walked me to the door and hugged me before I left. I was already halfway to the elevator when I retraced my steps. “Are you happy, Mom?”
Her smile was soft. “I’ve never been happier. I’m with a man who would drop everything to be by my side. I never have to worry that he won’t come home at night or that he’ll forget to show up when he’s promised to meet me somewhere.”
She paused, deliberating over her words.
“I’m sorry I gave you such a warped view of relationships.
For as much as I loved your father, what we had was toxic, and it took me a long time to figure that out.
Love shouldn’t have to hurt like that. But I think you already know that.
I think you figured that out long before I did. You’ve always known your own worth.”
“I’m glad you found each other. You deserve to be with someone who puts you first. You deserve the world.”
“So do you, baby. So do you.” She gave me another hug. “I know how much Gabriel hurt you, but what you had was special. If you still love him, it’s not too late to try again.”
I swallowed. “What if he breaks my heart again?” Or what if I break his? Both options were equally devastating. “I don’t know if I’d survive that a second time.”
My mom put her hands on my shoulders. “You will survive.” She squeezed my shoulders.
“But even the best relationships take work. And if you find that this love no longer serves you, that you’re not the best version of yourself when you’re with him, then by all means let it go.
But don’t just throw it away because you’re too scared of getting your heart broken. Be brave.”
Be brave. Be bold. Fly high.