“Cold?” he asks with an amused look on his face.
“I’m freezing. What do you have the air set on?”
“A comfortable seventy-two.” He laughs and pulls me over to him, and I can feel the heat coming off his body through the holey blanket.
“Better?”
“Yes.”
We watch the movie and eat pizza, and enjoy the comfort of each other’s company for the rest of the afternoon, until Roxy starts to whine and bark outside.
I sit up nervously.
“It’s okay,” Gabe reassures me. “She just wants inside.”
I nod my head. “Sorry.”
“I need to bathe her,” he says apologetically, seeming reluctant to interrupt our afternoon of laziness.
“Okay, I’ll help you.”
“You sure?”
“Yeah. Don’t make her stay outside.”
“All right, come on,” he says, pulling me to my feet. “I bathe her outside in the summer.”
I follow him outside and Roxy, who is waiting on the landing, darts down the stairs ahead of us. She must know the routine. She wags her tail and makes circles in the sparse grass at the bottom of the wooden stairs. Gabe walks over to the garage and grabs some dog shampoo while Roxy prances around his feet.
“Are you going to get a bath, Rox?” I ask her, and she nudges my hand with her head.
“Come on, Rox,” Gabe says, pulling a hose out into the grass with a spray nozzle attached to the end of it. He positions her front and back legs apart and tells her to stay still while he sprays her down. He squeezes a little shampoo on her back and starts to lather her up from nose to tail.
When he’s finished, I pick up the hose and spray her down. As soon as the soap is rinsed off her she starts to shake her head, and Gabe yells, “Roxy! No!” But it’s too late. She shakes her whole body and soaks us both before taking off like a rocket across the yard.
So much for being clean and dry.
I look at Gabe and start laughing, unable to resist the temptation of the nozzle in my hand. I raise it and point it at his chest.
“You wouldn’t dare,” he says.
“Oh, wouldn’t I?”
“Liv,” he warns, “don’t you do it!”
Too late! I soak his shirt and shorts.
He lunges toward me and I drop the hose.
“Ahh!” I scream, and run several feet away from him before I feel the spray on my back. I scream again and try to twist and turn my body away from the water, but he’s relentless, soaking my clothes and my hair, which had finally just dried.
“Gabe! Stop!” I shriek, and start to run again, but he drops the hose and runs after me. I head for the stairs to the apartment, but I feel him gaining on me, and before I make it to the bottom step, his hands are wrapped around my waist and I’m spinning around and falling backward onto the grass beneath him.
“Gabe!” I cry, laughing. “Get off me!”
He pins my arms above my head and gazes down at me with a look of determination on his face. His chest is rising and falling in hurried breaths against mine.
“Gabe,” I say softly. “Get off me.” I struggle against his hold, feeling his chest against mine through my wet clothes. “Gabe,” I say tentatively, but he doesn’t move. His body covers me, warming the cool water between us until I can feel his heated skin against mine. I savor the feeling of him on top of me—the weight of his body pinning me down, the warmth of his breath as it rushes out of him and mixes with mine.
He gazes at me and the fire that flashes in his eye sears through my veins.
A car door shuts in the distance, echoing across the property and breaking through the fog that consumed me. His parents, most likely, but far enough away that we’re still alone.
Gabe pushes himself off me and gets to his feet.
I sit up and look down at my wet shirt that’s now clinging to me, and I’m reminded that I’m not wearing a bra. I casually cover my chest with my arm and stand up. “I, uh...I might need to borrow a dry shirt.”
“Yeah. A shirt. Um.” He clears his throat and shakes his head. “Yes, you can borrow a shirt.”
“Thanks.”
We head inside and he gives me a shirt to change into.
“I should probably get going. My mom wanted to make dinner for me and my dad tonight, so...” I smile softly.
“I’ll take you home.”
I grab my bag and follow him to his truck.
Things got entirely too carried away with the hose. I would have kissed him. If Gabe had kissed me, I would have kissed him back without hesitation. I would have poured every ounce of my body, heart, and soul back into him. And I think it would have meant something completely different to him.
I can’t let that happen again. I can’t risk losing him. Today was one of the best days I’ve had in years, aside from the jellyfish sting. But even that was tolerable because Gabe was there with me. He and Brandon were the two halves that made me whole, and I was reminded of that today. Gabe makes me feel like me. The me I’ve been trying to find since I left for Raleigh. I’d rather have him in my life as a friend than not have him in my life at all.
“Gabe?” My voice breaks the silence that has accompanied us on the ride back to my parents’ house.
He looks over at me and I can tell I’ve pulled him out of a deep thought. His face is smooth and unreadable, a disappointing divergence from the playfulness I finally saw in him today, after all this time. I’m not sure which is more unsettling. That his mood shifted so quickly, or that I expected anything different.
“I start work at the diner tomorrow and I know you have to work too, so I guess we won’t see each other for a little while.” I don’t know what my point is. I just can’t take the silence anymore.
He nods his head. “Yeah, I guess so.”
I feel sharply disappointed.
“Maybe you could come by the diner,” I say, smiling over the anxious feeling brewing in my stomach.
He pulls his eyebrows together, creating the little crease above the bridge of his nose that appears whenever he’s upset about something. “Maybe.”
I inhale a quiet breath and blow it out slowly. “I had fun today.”
The corners of his mouth turn up only slightly. “Yeah. Me too.”
I return a weak smile and look out of my window.
We ride in silence until we get to my parents’ house, where I give him a quick hug, collect my bag off the seat, and head inside.
Chapter 12
Liv
I finish my first shift at Lou’s with an old saying in mind. I wanted a career and I got a job. But it’s a job that pays. I made great tips today and it was actually kind of fun. It helped that Audrey was working the same shift. She showed me around and introduced me to everyone. The other employees were very welcoming.
I kept my eyes peeled for Gabe, hoping he might show up for lunch. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t disappointed when he didn’t. I would also be lying if I didn’t admit that I checked my phone every hour on the hour, hoping to see a missed call or text from him.
No calls.
No texts.
I’m trying not to take it personally, but I’m jonesin’ for a Gabe fix. I realize how screwed up that is, but he’s in my chemistry, in my DNA. I need him. I need his friendship. I need to feel that bond that was cemented into my soul so long ago. There’s a Gabe-shaped hole in my heart that only he can fill. It’s the same one that burned inside my chest the entire time I was in Raleigh. The one that I patched up with duct tape and ignored when I was with Travis, that ripped wide open the second he proposed.