Chapter 55
CHAPTER FIFTY-FIVE
Gabriel
After a run on the beach with Otis the next morning, I showered in the outdoor shower and ran a towel over my hair as I rounded the side of the house.
I was expecting— hoping —to find Cleo in the kitchen.
No Cleo.
There was a fresh pot of coffee and a bag of bagels on the counter. Underneath the bag were three CDs and a black-and-white composition book with a hot pink Post-it note on the cover:
G—
I wrote our story. My side, anyway. How we met. How we fell in love. How we inspired each other.
If it makes you uncomfortable, you don’t have to read it. But it’s all yours. To read or to burn or to stuff into the back of your closet. That’s entirely up to you.
The CDs are, of course, yours. I brought them in case you were ready to listen. They’re part of your story too.
C.
Whereas before I’d had no interest, now I wanted our whole story, every little detail, from beginning to end. As for the music, I had no interest in listening.
I talked about it with Cleo’s mom last year after I was forced to listen to the songs I’d recorded.
How it was hard to listen to my own voice and music without being overly critical.
She said she understood. It was the same for her with the books she wrote.
If she read them after they were published, she’d want to go back and change every word, so once they were out in the world, she never read them again.
I sat on a cushioned lounger on the deck with my breakfast and opened the notebook, eager to get started.
The first line:
I remember everything, like a movie that plays on a loop in my head, set to the soundtrack of his notes and lyrics with a haunting refrain.
Our story began a decade ago, two years before we’d ever met when Cleo found my notebook in the park and fell in love with my words.
In some ways, it felt a lot like reading a good piece of fiction when you’re so emotionally invested in the characters that you can’t turn the pages fast enough.
You need to know what happens.
Desperate to know how it ends.
But this was a true story, and we were the main characters, something I had to keep reminding myself.
This was you , not some stranger with the same name.
Apparently, I was rude to Cleo the first time we met eight years ago, almost to the day.
I sounded like an asshole, but it got better…then worse…then better again.
Plenty of ups and downs and a few plateaus, but a riveting read, nonetheless.
Cleo wasn’t one for sugarcoating and didn’t wrap it all up in a pretty bow. She laid it all out there. The good, the bad, the ugly, the bitter and sweet. The arguments and petty grievances and the compromises required in a relationship when two strong-willed people build a life together.
But through it all there was a deep, abiding love so strong and pure that it transcended all my visions of what true love really looked like.
It was all the little, seemingly inconsequential things that spoke volumes (her words, not mine).
When I served her coffee in bed.
When I massaged her feet after she’d been running around in heels all day.
When she was angry that another designer was churning out cheap knock-offs of her designs, and I listened to her rant (and offered to go after the slimeball and put a stop to it) even though I’d just spent fourteen hours in the recording studio.
When I took the red-eye from LA to New York to surprise her at her first runway show and had to get right back on a plane the next morning to perform that night.
Love was in the details.
I went back and reread a line.
I used to love to watch him sleeping, and I would always marvel at how lucky and grateful I was simply because he existed.
Imagine having someone love you so much that they were grateful for your very existence.
Imagine.
I laughed at the list of things I did that drove her nuts: Dog-eared the pages of my books.
Woke up in the middle of the night (on numerous occasions!) because I had a song running through my head and needed to work on it right that minute .
Ate Doritos in bed and left a trail of orange crumbs.
Wrote To-Do lists and promptly lost them.
I sighed when I read about our first kiss. Our first time. The first time we said I love you .
And nearly cried during the final chapter. The lychees on New Year’s Day. The rubies I’d collected for her engagement ring. The vows we’d exchanged in my hospital room.
I read the final pages, pouring over the words like I was mining for gold.
It wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows, but it was honest, and it was good, and it was ours. Gabriel taught me so much about love. He was always so good at it. I think it’s because he was never scared to jump off a cliff without a parachute.
He was braver than me in that way. While I was always more guarded, he made himself so open and exposed and vulnerable and lived with (sometimes) reckless abandon.
An emotional risk-taker.
With his music.
With his life.
With me.
I guess that’s why they call it falling in love. It’s like a trust fall. You have to put your faith in the other person and believe they’ll always be there to catch you. And for a long time, I did.
I believed in him. I trusted him. I took the leap.
But that was then, and this is now…
If we were two strangers with no history and we’d just met, I would want to know him better. But I wouldn’t be so quick to roll the dice and gamble it all on us.
The first time around I said, here’s my heart. It’s yours. Be kind and gentle with it.
But this time around, I need to take it slow and protect my battered heart.
For a long time, I blamed him for leaving, blamed him for giving up on us, but now I see that maybe our separation was necessary.
In the months after his surgery, my entire world revolved around him.
After he left, I felt so lost, to the point where I had no idea how to live without him, whereas before I had always been my own person.
If he had stayed, I might not have been brave enough to pursue art or go out into the world to find myself again.
I wouldn’t have travelled around Southeast Asia on my own or moved to London or learned that despite my fears, I am strong enough to handle so much more than I knew and am braver than I thought.
I guess what it comes down to is that you can love someone all you want, but you have to love yourself more.
And I hope that he does. Love himself, I mean.
I hope he found himself again. I hope he knows that this world is a much better place for having him in it.
P.S. If you need a reminder, Gabriel… YOU ARE ENOUGH. You are talented beyond belief, an old soul, a truth seeker, a drop of pure light. I feel so privileged to have been loved by you, and even though our future remains unclear, our past is a gift that I am eternally grateful for, now and always.
By the time I finished reading, the sun was high in the sky, sweat suctioned my T-shirt to my chest, and I was mourning the loss of something so deep and profound that I had no idea how I could have ever forgotten it all.
A few things stood out on that final page. Loved . Past tense. Our future remains unclear , as if to say we don’t have one, but hey, good news, we had a past you don’t even fucking remember!
I rubbed my hand over my heart. It ached.
What a cruel twist of fate. What a beautiful fucking tragedy.
Her words were further proof that she’d done just fine without me, and even better after I left.
Was she giving us another chance or saying goodbye?
Fuck if I knew. I had no idea where to go from here.
Guess we’d just have to stay in the slow lane. Wouldn’t be my first choice. Wouldn’t even be my second.
If it were up to me, we’d swing for the fucking fences. All or nothing. Do or die. No holding back or hedging our bets or playing it safe.
In my book, that was the only way to live.
But this wasn’t solely up to me. After everything I’d put her through, some of which was only made obvious to me now after reading her words, the very least I could do was to honor her wishes.
So, I shed my T-shirt and dove into the pool.
Right into the deep end.