Chapter Thirty-Three
All the books and all the movies, all the love stories, had lied to Gabe.
The difficult second act didn’t segue into a glorious, fully resolved third act.
There was no mad rush through an airport to make it to the gate in time to stop the one you loved from boarding a plane that would take them far away from you.
There was no running through crowded New York streets and jumping on the bonnet of a yellow taxi, so even in a crowd of fast-moving New Yorkers, you could find the person that you were meant to be with.
There were no mutual declarations of love.
No final passionate embrace just before the credits rolled.
There was waiting. More waiting. Yet more waiting. Then the sickening realisation that she, Tess, wasn’t coming.
Gabe had shot his shot and missed the target.
His difficult second act was going to last the rest of his life.
Gabe had loitered outside the marquee waiting for Tess to emerge after she’d read his letter. She’d have questions, of course she would, and he wasn’t even sure that he had all of the answers. Just his love and his stupid heart, which now beat just for her.
But the minutes ticked by. All twenty-seven of them. Still Gabe waited, even if it was for Tess to storm out and slap him round the face for his temerity in loving her when she didn’t feel the same way.
After half an hour he was getting very suspicious looks from the wait staff, and no wonder. Because yes, it was all very well making grand gestures in books and films but in the real world, those same grand gestures had serious stalker vibes.
Tess had made it very clear she never wanted to see him again.
Both to his face and in print. But he’d ignored those clear boundaries.
Once again, thinking that he knew best but he didn’t.
The reason Tess hadn’t left the tent was probably because she was on the phone to a lawyer, maybe even a judge, begging for an emergency restraining order.
It was time to walk away. ‘Enough,’ Gabe said out loud.
‘Enough now.’ Just like Andrew Lincoln in Love Actually.
The one good thing about the whole debacle was that he hadn’t written out his, his …
screed on big pieces of card and held them up with a boombox at his feet playing ‘All You Need Is Love’.
At least he hadn’t done that and that was only because Ella and Sanjay had forbidden him from doing so.
There’d been a PowerPoint presentation detailing exactly why that was a bad idea.
Gabe walked through the college grounds very slowly. Very, very slowly. Just in case Tess had had a change of heart and was coming to make him the happiest man in the world.
But it didn’t matter how slowly he walked, she never came and he was, and always would be, the unhappiest man in the world.
The night was dark and velvet soft, curling around Gabe.
He could hear the faraway laughter and chatter leaking out of the marquee from the revellers who were having it large to ‘Come On Eileen’.
A faint breeze ruffled the leaves of the trees and seemed to taunt him as they did, almost as if someone was calling his name.
‘Gabe! Gabe! Gabe!’ The wind kept chanting his name and just as he reached the small wrought iron gate set into the wall which would take him out onto the street and a life without her in it, he couldn’t help but turn round.
Oh, there she was!
The moonlight made her pale hair gleam, as she ran across the lawn in a cloud of black and white, her dress billowing out behind her, five sheets of paper clutched to her chest.
‘Gabe!’ It was less a chant, more of a wheeze. ‘Please stop walking so I can stop running!’
She had to be an illusion. A fever dream conjured up by his longing; but Gabe stopped as commanded.
There was nothing illusionary or dream-like about the way that the very real and, to be honest, quite sweaty Tess hurled herself at him like she was coming home. Hurled herself so hard that Gabe rocked back on his heels but managed to fold his arms around her.
Gabe didn’t know how long they stood here, their hearts frantically beating but, at the same time, perfectly matched. His lips were pressed to Tess’s forehead and if all he was going to have was this moment, then he wanted it to last for as long as possible.
She said something but it was muffled by his shoulder, where she’d buried her face.
‘What was that?’ Gabe asked, half dreading her reply, as she pulled free from his embrace and looked at him as if she was seeing him for the first time. ‘You were so long reading the letter. I feared the worst.’
Tess stared down at the pieces of paper, which were creased and crumpled. ‘Your handwriting, even capitalised, really is atrocious. It took me a long time to decipher it with the aid of the torch on my phone and then, halfway through, my battery died and it was a whole thing …’ She tailed off.
Gabe had memorised and catalogued every single expression of her face, even though there were thousands of them, but even if he hadn’t, it was obvious that Tess wasn’t happy.
Either with the letter or with him. Probably both.
As she opened her mouth to say something else, to shatter what was left of his dreams, Gabe was tempted to flee into the night, never to return.
‘I’m so sorry,’ she said, her tone flat, her meaning undeniable.