Chapter 46 Gabriel
Gabriel
Ten Months Later
Standing in the living room of our penthouse and wearing the same black dress she had on when she defended her dissertation earlier today, Sydney bumps my bicep with her shoulder. “This place looks like a hurricane hit it.”
“The storm is ongoing. You’re reporting live from the scene.”
She looks over the mingling, chattering, laughing crowd with a smile. “You didn’t have to do this.”
“We wanted to celebrate with you. Finishing your PhD is a big deal. And I didn’t do it myself.”
“Uh-huh,” she says doubtfully.
I indicate the eye-watering hot pink and black banners on the walls. “Bronwyn, Dean, and the kids were in charge of the signs. Clarissa devised the menu. Henry and Franki chose the soundtrack.”
“I’ve never heard half this music before.”
“They like their indie artists.”
Sam squeals and runs on speedy preschooler legs with a bright blue cupcake in his hand. My sister chases after him and scoops him up with a laugh.
James Mellinger sways his sleepy one-year-old slightly to the music playing over the speakers as Clarissa leans against his other shoulder.
My paternal grandmother, Rose, fragile with age, but every bit as regal as she ever was, sits in an armchair talking with Grandma Miller.
When she gave me controlling shares of MPD, Grandmother Rose was the first person who showed unwavering faith that I’d turned a corner all those years ago. She’d handed me a thick manila envelope and said, “I’m too old for this. I trust your days as a directionless hussy are over.”
I’d suppressed a smile at the word “hussy.” Then, I looked at the contents of the envelope. In the initial shocked moment of comprehension, the thought occurred to me that I wasn’t ready and should pass them on to Henry.
But, as my wife likes to say, “Sometimes being ready is just doing it scared,” and I’d needed something to give my life structure and purpose after rehab.
“I’m going to make you proud,” I’d said.
She waved her hand. “I spent too many years as a prisoner of my pride to willingly pass that shackle on to you. I’m far more concerned with your health and happiness. Thrive, Gabriel, and I’ll be content.”
I tug my wife against me, my arms wrapping around her chest. She presses her back to my front. For an instant, a different day and a different kind of disaster in this penthouse flashes in my mind. I’d held her against me while she fought, silently and desperately, to claw her life back.
And she did.
I adjust my wrist to get a look at my watch, then toward our foyer. Sydney rubs my arm. “He’ll show. Doctor’s hours can be unpredictable.”
“I won’t blame him if he doesn’t.” I’ve sent some version of a dumbass, “Really sorry about all my past bullshit. How have you been? I’ve got a thing coming up. Be good to see you” text to Josh’s old number once a year, every year.
Every year, I received no response. This time . . . this time, he texted back: Where? When?
Movement in the foyer catches my eye. Josh steps into the room. Tall, broad-shouldered, and wearing a dark blazer over a crisp shirt and trousers, he carries a yellow envelope and scans the crowd as he runs a hand over the cropped black hair he keeps high and tight.
His shoulders lower, dropping some of their tension at the family-friendly sight that greets him. He cracks a full-blown smile when Henry, Ian held in one arm, reaches him and extends his free hand to shake. Then, Henry turns back to point at me.
Josh makes eye contact. I wave. If nothing else comes of this except closure and that we won’t avoid each other in the future, that will have to be enough.
Josh joins us and offers Sydney the card. “Congratulations, Dr. Walsh McRae.”
Sydney accepts. “Thank you. How about you call me Sydney, so I can call you Josh instead of Dr. Granthy the Younger?”
It’s like we share a brain sometimes.
“Sounds good,” Josh says.
Sydney steps out of my arms and holds up the card. “I’ll put this with the others.”
And then she’s gone, and Josh and I are left standing near each other with more than ten years’ worth of things to say and no idea where to start.
He clears his throat. “You both look good. Everything okay with you guys?”
I scratch the back of my neck. “Yeah. We’re great. How about you?”
“Good.” Josh stuffs his hands into his pockets. “I came as soon as I had the chance to get off shift at the hospital.”
“Glad you could make it.”
He gives a small shake of his head then takes a breath. “I wasn’t sure what I’d be walking into here.”
I still remember the look of disgust on his face when he’d found my old apartment vandalized, with me shitfaced and lolling on a sofa in the middle of a blaring party.
My wallet was empty. My keys were gone and my favorite watch, given to me by my grandfather, was no longer on my wrist. I’d kicked out the bodyguards Dad hired to protect me because I was sick of listening to their judgmental shit.
Josh called my guards back inside, retrieved my cards and watch, though we never found those keys, and cleared out the apartment. When he tried to help me to my feet, I’d thrown a punch at my best friend in retaliation for ruining my night.
And he’d finally thrown up his hands in defeat.
“Sober nine years, three months, and”—I check my watch—“four days.”
“I couldn’t stay to watch you kill yourself. I didn’t have it in me.”
“I can tell you right now, the kid I was before and the man I am now are glad you protected yourself. I was on a sinking ship I’d set on fire.
You kept trying to pull me onto a lifeboat, and I fought you harder every time.
There comes a point where you have to prioritize your own survival. I’m sorry for what I put you through.”
“Your apologies used to piss me off.”
His phrasing doesn’t ease my tension. “Because they meant nothing.”
He shakes his head and watches Ian toddle from Henry to Franki.
“I knew you meant them. But your trajectory was fueled by shame in the first place. Adding more was rocket fuel, and every time you talked to me that last year you got angry so you could have an excuse to let loose. Then you’d apologize and use your guilt as a reason to do the same thing. ”
I clear my throat. “Shifting responsibility is straight out of the alcoholic playbook.”
“I should have kept in touch, though. At first, it was a relief to take that weight off my shoulders. If I couldn’t stop you, at least I wasn’t making you worse.
I was in med school, and . . . then I ran into your mom.
She said you got sober, and I should call you.
But I kept thinking about how much better you were doing without me. I didn’t want to rock the boat.”
I grapple for words. “Correlation, not causation.”
He nods.
I shift on my feet. Scratch my ear.
We both speak at the same time.
“James Mellinger and I play pick-up basketball on Saturday mornings if you want to—”
“I have some extra tickets to the Mets game next week if you and Sydney want to join me—”
We stop. He laughs. I smile.
“Most Saturdays work for me as long as I’m not on rotation at the hospital,” he says.
“I’ll check with my wife for her schedule, but I’m pretty confident it’ll be a ‘hell, yes’ to the baseball game.”
Josh grips my shoulder. Then we’re in a full-on hug, pounding each other on the back and squeezing hard. After a minute, we ease away from each other.
Janessa strides toward us with Sydney close on her heels. I don’t have time to process a single theory about what’s happening before they reach us. Sydney shoots me an apologetic look, then clears her throat. “Josh Granthy, I’d like you to meet my friend, Janessa Fontini.”
Josh blinks twice, then stares into Janessa's face like a man entranced. “Nice to meet you.”
Oh, shit. I wave to try to catch Josh’s attention. If he looks at me, I can nod at Bronwyn as a hint. I mime a yanking motion behind Janessa’s back, but Josh never takes his dark eyes off her.
Janessa cocks a hip and an eyebrow, tossing her long sable hair over a shoulder clothed in slinky black silk. “You don’t remember me,” she accuses.
He chuckles. “I think I’d remember if I’d met you.”
I throw both hands in the air in disgust.
“So, you don’t recall popping the heads off three of my Barbie dolls at the McRae house?” she demands.
Josh freezes. “Jannie?”
“No one has called me Jannie since I was nine.”
Josh recovers quickly. “It was transplant surgery on the dolls. I put the heads back on.”
“You put a Skipper head on a Barbie body and my color-changing mermaid head on Skipper’s body. It was major malpractice,” Janessa says.
“I bought you new dolls using every penny of my own allowance to pay for them.”
“They weren’t the same.”
“How can I make it up to you?” he asks.
She appears to contemplate her answer. “I suppose cake on the balcony is a start.”
Josh pauses long enough to shoot me a silly grin I haven’t seen in close to twenty years. I smile back and mouth, “Good luck.”
Then they’re gone, heading for the cake in the corner.
Sydney squeezes my hand. “That looked like it went well for you guys.”
I nod. “It did.”
“I tried to keep Janessa away, but all she said was ‘He's here,’ then she took off like she was on a mission.”
I laugh. “He doesn’t appear to be suffering.”
“It’s good timing for us.” Sydney grabs my belt, tugging, and I follow her without question. Maybe she wants to give them a chance to flirt more, because that was absolutely something.
When my wife drags me down the hallway toward our bedroom, I frown. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” With her free hand she pulls an ovulation test stick out of her pocket and holds it up.
My pulse accelerates, every cell in my body zeroing in on what this means. It’s time. We’re. Doing. This. “You took the test now?”
Obviously, she did. Stupid question.
“It was sitting on the counter in our bathroom, and I just had a feeling, and I thought why not check it when I pee because I had the tests ready, anyway? So I did, and good thing too because I entered the ovulation window early.”
Most couples don’t jump straight to ovulation tracking and predictor tests or taking temperatures and vitamins. Most couples, from what I hear, just start having regular unprotected sex. But Sydney is Sydney, and I adore her for it.
We both started multivitamins and increased protein and folic acid intake because the health of the father directly impacts the mother’s and fetus’s health during pregnancy too. We both had full metabolic panels drawn up and genetic testing because, again, Sydney is Sydney.
We read the studies, had long conversations about the fact that we had alcoholism on both sides of the family, and weighed the data on nature and nurture.
All of that. But now, it’s here, and something primal takes hold inside me. It’s not about logic anymore. Now, it’s about hot, wet, hard fucking.
When we enter our bedroom, I kick the door closed behind us. Rufus lifts his head from the spot where he’s sunning on the windowsill, then turns his face away with a flick of his tail.
Flipping the lock, I try one last time to suppress the caveman inside me. Give her some banter. Flirt.
Smirking, I cup her round ass. “You expect us to sneak off in the middle of a party to fornicate? I’m shocked. My delicate sensibilities—”
She strokes my cock through my pants, and I drop my head back on my neck and groan.
“We’ll make it a quickie. No one will miss us,” she promises.
I lower my head and scowl. “I’m not looking back on the day I fucked a baby into you knowing he or she was conceived in a quickie.”
She shivers with arousal. “We can’t know for sure that we’ll conceive at all.
And if we do, you can tell yourself that it probably happened tonight after the party when we do it again.
Or tomorrow.” She backs up farther into our bedroom, reaching under her dress and sliding down her black panties as we go, so smooth and coordinated that she never misses a step as she removes the barrier between me and heaven.
“Give me those.” I stalk her across the room.
“My underwear?” She laughs.
“Yes.”
She passes them over, and I bring them to my nose, inhaling deeply. “You’re definitely ovulating. I’ve never smelled anything so delicious in my life.”
Color darkens her chest and cheekbones. “Quickie,” she reminds me.
“Sydney.”
“Gabriel.”
Tucking the underwear in my pocket, I haul her over my shoulder and head for the walk-in closet.
“Where are we going?”
“Somewhere sound won’t travel. We’ve never tested how well noise from the bedroom carries into the hallway. There are children at this party.”
I flip on the sconce lighting with the switch and close the door behind us, lowering her to lean against it. My mouth closes over hers as I push her dress up and out of the way. My fingers glide over the silken skin of her muscled thighs as she goes to work on my belt buckle and zipper.
One handed, I expose her shoulder, then reveal the black lace of her bra. I press my forehead to hers. “You are so beautiful.”
“That’s my line,” she breathes, wrapping one leg around my lower back.
I slap her ass, and she laughs. Then her hand is on me, stroking my achingly hard length and guiding me toward her center. My dick jerks in her palm as I slide my thumb down to her clit. “Give me your orgasm first.”
“We’re in a hurry. You don’t have to—”
“Nonnegotiable.”
“Not everything is a deal,” she says, her eyes crinkling at the corners with amusement.
I drop to my knees. “Nothing with you is a deal, Sydney. It’s my vow. Ask me for something? I’m giving you everything. Every fucking time.”