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“Almost at the stretch goal,”
this term gives me ptsd from my retail days
“Nah, I gotta email her.” “Son, listen to me. This is the one who got away. You’re not thinking clearly.” Fabian was right, but it didn’t matter. “I have to,” Gabe said, getting to his feet. “The way I left things, and now this . . . I’ll be a total dick if I don’t even email her to explain.” He’d already ghosted her as a friend. He wouldn’t add professional ghosting to the list of his sins where Michelle was concerned.
No. No no no no. How could he do this? Crash into her life again like the goddamn Kool-Aid Man, like he hadn’t completely wrecked her when he’d left? Fuck him. And with this? With a job offer? The motherfucker wanted to hire her?
Clearly Gabe and his partner knew about her old firm, Rosen and Anders, which meant they could easily reach . . . Nathaniel. “Fuck,” she hissed between her teeth. Not Nathaniel. Anyone but that backstabbing asshole.
He turned as she came up beside him and without a word, Michelle reached up and threw her arms around his neck in a tight hug. She hadn’t planned to do this either, but she couldn’t stop herself. She needed it.
But he’d left for a reason. He’d stayed gone for a reason. And that reason was living in the house right next to the one she expected him to stay in for four days.
And he’d eventually admitted to himself that he was in love with her, beyond friendship.
“I’m leaving.” Michelle scoffed and crossed her arms under her breasts. “Yeah, I can see that. You’re really fucking good at it.”
“I needed a clean break, and you . . .” He let out a sigh that seemed to come from the depths of his soul. “You were the only person with the power to drag me back here.”
“Why was I the only person?” she pressed, her tone insistent. “Why, Gabe?” The spark in his eyes was her only warning. “Because of this!” The words burst out of him like a storm. He curled his big hands around the thin straps of her tank top, clinging like they were a lifeline, and lowered his forehead to hers. His voice was harsh with longing. “God, Michelle, I want you so fucking bad I can’t think straight.”
You started to view gym clothes as real clothes, which made it way too easy for a naked woman to pull your pants down.
What if she didn’t love him back? “What if I wasn’t attracted to you?” she asked. Sure, that was good enough. “Yeah.”
“It did cross my mind, but as a . . . future thing. Like maybe someday we’d take that step, but I didn’t need to force it. You were a constant. My hot best friend. It didn’t bother me that we dated other people. You were still mine, and I was yours. That was all I needed. And then . . .” “And then.” He knew exactly what she meant. “I didn’t know it would be like that. Like this. And once I knew . . .” “It changed things,”
He should call her Mami.
Making bad romantic choices wasn’t new for Michelle. It was why she’d given up on dating, opting instead for flings, affairs, or fuck buddies.
In her more self-reflective moments, Michelle could admit she tended to have sex with guys who were kind of boring because it allowed her to maintain emotional distance even while letting them into her body.
She was holding back. He could tell from the way she’d rushed him and used humor as a defensive tactic, even when he was inside her. She’d held back during sex, and she was trying to put distance between them now.
In college, he’d struggled not to start sentences with “my friend Michelle” whenever he talked about something from his childhood.
At some point they’d started holding hands, like a real couple. He didn’t know how it had happened. Maybe she’d taken his hand to pull him toward an exhibit, or he’d reached for her so as not to lose her in the crowd. But then . . . they hadn’t let go.
He stopped and cupped her face in his hands. “I have always thought you were beautiful. Now even more so. You take my breath away, Mich.”
Gabriel, this is a family establishment. Stop seducing me at the zoo.”
“Michelle, ¡salte del carro!” “Mira, comemierda, este es mi carro.”
“Don’t shit where you eat?”
“Why is everything ten times better with you?” he said softly, lifting a hand to brush her hair back from her temple. There was a note of wonder in his voice, in the light in his eyes. “Not just sex. Everything.”
“I emailed you,” she murmured. “More than once.” “I know. There was so much I wanted to say, and I didn’t know how.” “Like what?” she whispered. Like “I love you.” But he still didn’t know how to say that, so he didn’t.
“¡Por fin!” Esteban threw up his arms like this was something to celebrate. “Estabas tan enamorado de ella.”
“¿Qué haces, muchacho? You’re not married to her yet. Necesitan practicar safe sex.” Gabe’s heart stopped. This was it, this was the moment he died. In the condom aisle of a CVS, at the age of thirty-one, because his father had told him to practice safe sex.
If you wanted to keep a secret in this family, you kept it to yourself.
“Did you buy this yesterday?” he asked, because let me worship you seemed like too much.
“However long it takes, your pleasure is worth it. Anyone who’s made you feel like it wasn’t . . .” He worked to get the anger out of his voice, because he wasn’t angry at her. “I’m just sorry anyone ever made you feel that way.”
“I’m not sure why, but I prefer to do it alone. Probably to avoid emotional intimacy or whatever.”
“Anyway, my fantasy is to come. A lot. By someone else’s hand. Or . . . parts.” “Challenge accepted.
“If I come—and I might, because seeing you in ecstasy brings me pleasure too—it doesn’t mean the night is over. We’ll go for as long as you want. Okay?”
“Are there any boundaries?” he asked. She shook her head. “Not with you.”
“I’m close, babe.” His breath was harsh and hot against her ear. “You got one more in you?” “I don’t know,” she said brokenly. Her body was awash in sensation, no longer tethered to this plane.
I don’t like to burden anyone else with my feelings.” “A burden shared is a burden halved,”
“What was that for?” What could he say to that? For being incredible. For seeing me and my vision clearly. For caring about my gym. For caring about me.
It was as Michelle had always suspected. Love was for other people. And she was meant to be alone.
Family worked together. No one could do it alone. He’d been determined to prove them wrong. And now look where he was.
“Everything okay, Michie?” her dad asked. She sighed. Her dad was far more perceptive than he let on. “No, Daddy. But it will be.” He gave her a big hug and kissed the top of her head. “Let me know if you want me to . . .” “Dad, don’t be a stereotype,” she warned. “What? I was gonna say, let me know if you want me to leave bad Yelp reviews for his gym.”
After a few minutes of frustrated searching, he found them in a folder labeled “G and M Story.” Past Gabe sure hadn’t wanted to make it easy for Future Gabe to find. He copied the folder to his desktop and renamed it “Celestial Destiny,” which was what he should have called it in the first place.
No he called it their story bc it is their story
Except they’d never written the end. Just one more bit of unfinished business between them.
But the biggest surprise was . . . himself. He’d written himself into the character of Zack in a way that was glaringly obvious, and as a result, reading the story was like opening a time capsule and finding Teenage Gabe.
Duh this was obvious
It was while reading episode 9, the one where Zack and Riva kissed, that Gabe had realized the truth. Michelle was the love of his life, and she always would be. Which meant he had once again tossed aside something most people only dreamed of.
The time apart meant he couldn’t blame his doubts or his failures on anyone but himself.
“You were worried about me?” “Of course. You were three thousand miles away, all alone, and you barely knew how to do your own laundry.” Okay, that much was true. But Gabe had known how to work hard. Thanks to his dad.
What if he was the one who doubted himself all along?
“You came to New York to work with Michelle?” his mother clarified. “Sí.” Norma threw up her hands in disbelief. “¡Pero los condoms!”
“Pero no entiendo. Why did you need those if you were just working?” Esteban cleared his throat and muttered, “No creo que solo estuvieran trabajando.”
