by Megan Walker
“Gabby?” I call. “Everything okay?”
“Fine!” she says in that overenthusiastic way she does when she’s nervous about something. “Be out in a minute!”
Huh. I rewrite another line of dialogue before the door swings open—
And Gabby is standing there in a very short black skirt and a loose flowing halter top that ties beneath her breasts, showing off her cleavage. The effect is sexy in a dramatic way that’s unusual for Gabby.
My body reacts beneath my laptop and I set it to the side.
“Hey,” I say.
“Hey,” she says back.
She’s also wearing tall black heels—an odd choice for a seduction. By Gabby, at least, who never wears high heels.
“What’s with the shoes?” I ask.
Gabby smiles nervously, and then presses something on her phone.
Music starts blaring from the speakers and we both jump. I don’t recognize the song, but it’s loud and has a lot of bass, and I sit up straighter on the bed.
“Gabby, what—”
And then Gabby starts dancing.
At least, I think that’s what she’s doing. She kind of rolls her hips around, and then gets this terrified look on her face and slaps her ass with a dramatic smack.
I startle again. I mean—I get what she’s doing. It’s like a sexy dancing, possible strip-tease thing, which is really hot. Or it would be, if she didn’t immediately step off of one of her heels, nearly rolling her ankle.
“Shit!” she yells. “No, I’m okay! I’m okay!”
“Gabby—” I say, but then she starts dancing again. I’m trying to appreciate what I can tell she’s attempting to do here. She moves closer, and then smacks her ass again—which is kind of violent; I guess I’m not into spanking—and then does her hip roll thing a little closer and waves the ties to her halter top in my face.
My nose tickles, and I think I’m going to sneeze. And then probably throw up, because I’m starting to put together the pieces of what’s really going on here, and it makes me feel ill. Gabby freezes again, looking like she has no idea what she’s supposed to do next, and then she smacks her ass for a third time and starts working on the knot in her halter, which appears to be stuck.
The music keeps blaring, so we have to shout over it.
“Gabby,” I say. “What are you doing?”
“It’s a strip tease!” she says. “Hang on a second. This isn’t supposed to be stuck like this.”
“I see that. But why?”
Gabby’s lip quivers, and my heart cracks. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m messing it up. I practiced, but I forgot the moves, and . . . hang on and I’ll restart the music.” She reaches over and turns off the music, and nearly falls over on her heels again before picking at the knot.
“Stupid thing,” she says. “This was supposed to come undone.”
I sit frozen for a moment. She’s still trying to get the knot undone like she’s going to fix it and then turn the music back on and do this strip tease thing that she doesn’t want to do and clearly isn’t enjoying.
And this is all my fault.
“Gabby,” I say, desperate for her know this. “I’m not going to cheat on you.”
Gabby looks up at me, finally dropping the knot. “What? I know that.” But her fingers are trembling, and she looks like she’s about to cry. There’s only one place this terrible idea could have come from, and if Gabby’s been talking to Anna-Marie—
Damn it. “You heard about the fight with Josh,” I say.
Her face hardens, and she nods.
Shit. Of course she has. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I was upset that she made you worried about me cheating on you, but I didn’t want to create problems between you and them.” Or me and her, really. “But you don’t need to be doing this—” I gesture at the music and the outfit and the heels and everything “—to keep me interested in you. I’m not going to cheat on you. I promise.”
Gabby’s eyes are filling with tears now. I’m trying to make this better, but I’m not. “But you could have at least talked to me about it.”
I close my eyes. I did this. I made her feel like she had to strip for me just to get my attention. I reach for her hand and pull her down next to me on the bed. “I’m sorry I made you feel like you had to do this when you obviously don’t want to.”
The tears spill over, and I hold her hand tight.
“Anna-Marie never said she thought you were cheating on me,” she says. “Not to me, at least. And I wouldn’t have believed it if she had. She and Josh were worried, I guess, but those are their issues, not mine.” She’s quiet for a second. “What exactly happened with you and Josh?”
I sigh. “He showed up at Ben’s with some preconceived ideas about what was going on with me and you, and tried to pry into it without acting like that’s what he was doing. And I may have lost it with him a little and said some things I shouldn’t have about Anna-Marie.” My stomach is sinking lower and lower. Because if Anna-Marie and Josh hadn’t told Gabby I was cheating on her, then maybe I wasn’t so justified in that fight. Maybe Anna-Marie has been causing far fewer of the problems than I’d thought.
Maybe I was just looking for someone to push my guilt onto, because I’m the one who caused all this to begin with.
“What did you say?” Gabby asks.
I cringe. “I said that Anna-Marie was psycho about the cheating thing.”
Gabby gives me a look, and I shake my head. “I know, I know. Not the best wording. And . . . I may have said that I resent the way you tend to come back from hanging out with Anna-Marie feeling bad about your body.”
“That’s not Anna-Marie’s fault,” Gabby says. “We actually just had a talk about that. And I know I have issues about my body, but Anna-Marie didn’t cause those. It’s not really fair to her that I compare myself to her. It hurts her as much as it hurts me, I think.”
“Yeah,” I say. “That’s what Josh said, in not so many words.” And he was probably right, I realize. It’s just easier for me to be angry with Anna-Marie than to direct my frustration at Gabby. “I’m not proud of the things I said to Josh, and I’m really not proud of the way I handled things with Sarah.”
Gabby grips my hand tightly. “You didn’t cheat on Sarah.”
She always defends me when we talk about this, even though I don’t deserve it. “Think about it, Gabby. How would you feel if I did to you what I did to her? If I met someone and started confiding in her about our lives, and going out of my way to spend time with her, and wishing I was with her instead?”
Gabby’s face falls. “Yeah, okay,” she says. “That would not be great.”
“And I’m not going to do that to you,” I say. “But I don’t blame you if you think I might, because I did it before, and that was an awful thing to do.”
Gabby is quiet. “Is that what’s been bothering you? Because that was a long time ago. And I don’t think you would do that with me. There were circumstances with Sarah. You guys weren’t right for each other, and yeah, neither of you handled it perfectly, but—”
“No,” I say. “That’s not what’s been bothering me.”
Gabby nods and takes a deep breath, like she’s bracing for bad news. “What is it, then?”
I owe her the truth. “I’m desperately unhappy. That’s what’s bothering me.”
More tears slide down her cheeks. “Do you not want me anymore?”
Oh, no. It kills me that she thinks this. “God, no,” I say. “It’s got nothing to do with us.”
“Are you sure?” she says. “Because you don’t seem to want me anymore, and I get that I’m not the perfect girlfriend, and I know that I’m not—”
“Gabby.” I pull her other hand into mine. “Can there be something wrong without it being something wrong with you?”
Ga
bby sniffles. “I guess logically there can be. I’m just not convinced that there actually is.”
“Well there is,” I say. “I don’t know what I’m doing with my life. I’m an adult who isn’t making money, who hadn’t even been looking for a job and is now working part-time at Home Depot and is going to have a child I don’t know how I’m going to take care of. Nothing in my life makes sense to me anymore except you. You’re the only piece of all this that I’m sure of, and I’m failing even at that.”
“No, you’re not,” Gabby says, her expression so sincere it breaks my heart. “You’re an incredible boyfriend.”
“Right,” I say. “An incredible boyfriend who picks fights with everyone in our lives, who can’t figure out how to talk to you about it, who makes you think I don’t want you anymore, when really I’m just spinning wheels and feeling so stuck in the rest of my life. It’s not your fault, Gabby. It’s been three wonderful years together, but it’s also been three whole years that I haven’t accomplished anything.”
“You finished your novel,” Gabby says. I love how quickly she comes to my defense, but in this case she’s wrong, and I need her to see it.
“I finished my novel before we got together.” She opens her mouth to argue, and I keep going, because I know what she’s going to say. “And yeah, there were revisions. Lots of them. And yeah, I’ve started book two. But I haven’t made progress in a long time, and I’m increasingly getting nothing done. The truth is, I may never be a great novelist.”
Gabby nods, like she understands. “And that’s why you’re miserable.”
I open my mouth to tell her that she’s not understanding. She thinks I’m unhappy because I’m scared I can’t have this dream, but really, I’m scared because I don’t think I even want it anymore. After everything she’s sacrificed for me, how can I do this to her? How can I tell her that I want to quit, that it’s all been for nothing?
“But it’ll happen, Will,” Gabby says. “I know it’ll happen. You’re so talented, and you’ve done so much work. I just know you’re going to be successful. You can’t quit now. I know you’re frustrated, but all artists go through periods like this. You just need to keep going, and you’re going to make it.”
I feel like my ribs are caving in. I love Gabby more than anything, and she loves this person that she thinks I am, this great novelist she imagined I was even back when we were working at the bookstore together. I want to tell her that’s not who I am.
But what if she’s right? What if I just hang in there a little longer, and then I can be that person for her?
She’s worth it to me. She’s worth all the misery and more.
I wrap the tie to her halter top around my finger. “I do like the outfit,” I say. “It’s sexy.”
Gabby rolls her eyes. “Yeah, me forgetting the moves and falling off my own high heels is super sexy.”
“No,” I say. “But you in the short skirt is super hot. And I do like the shoes, even if they seem to be actively impeding you from walking.” I use the tie to pull her closer. It still doesn’t come undone. “And what was with the ass slapping? Is that what Anna-Marie does?”
“Yes,” Gabby says. “Though it was only supposed to be in the routine once. But I kept forgetting the other moves, so I just kept doing that one.”
I run my hands around her waist. Gabby’s not stick-thin like Anna-Marie, or like Sarah was. But I love the way her skin feels against my hands, love the shape of her waist and the curves of her hips and her thighs. I pull her closer, my body remembering how it felt when she first walked out of the bathroom, before everything fell apart.
“It hurts when you get down on your body,” I say. “I love the outfit, but you don’t have to do this for me to think you’re sexy.”
“I know,” Gabby says. “I’m sorry. I think it was better for a while, but then when things started to get difficult, I couldn’t help but think that it might all be easier if I was more beautiful.”
I slide my hand beneath her chin. “Gabby,” I say. “You are beautiful.” I can see in her eyes that she knows I mean it, but that knowledge doesn’t ever seem to stick. Not for long. “Maybe you should see someone about it? See a therapist, like Felix does?”
I expect her to argue, or be crushed that I think she needs help, but she nods. “Probably I could use that. I’m a lot more confident than I used to be, but I still have some issues about my body. I kind of got in a fight with Anna-Marie about it, and she pointed out that she would love to have my body, because she can’t get pregnant. I know that being thin doesn’t make your problems go away—just look at my mom and my sister—but somehow, when things go wrong, that’s always the first place my mind goes, and I know that’s not fair to you.”
“Hey,” I say. “It’s not me this is really hurting. I just hate to see you suffer when your body is fine. Better than fine.” I smile, pulling her against me. “Pretty damn perfect, if you ask me.”
“Yeah?” Her voice is soft and breathy, and I’m breaking out in goosebumps all up and down my arms.
“Yeah,” I whisper back. “And I think we need to get you out of these clothes so I can see more of it.” I run my fingers along her thigh just below the hem of her skirt, and her eyes flutter closed. Our lips press together, and I pull her on top of me, and we dissolve into each other. All the while, though, this thought is buzzing at the back of my mind.
I need to get it together, for her. Gabby doesn’t push me the way Sarah did. She isn’t going to shove me toward a job I don’t want and tell me that’s the responsible adult thing to do.
But it’s not Gabby’s job to make hard decisions for me. It’s not her job to know what I need and what I want. I have to figure this out, because I’m hurting her, and I’m hurting us, and more than that, I’m repeating mistakes I made with Sarah. Not the near-cheating, obviously, but the waffling, the stagnation, the sitting in the problem and being miserable instead of doing what I know needs to be done.
Sean was right that I need to man up—offensive as it is that he put it that way. But—surprise!—it’s not by getting a job at a hardware store.
It’s time to decide, once and for all, who it is that I want to be.
Twenty-four
Gabby
For as disastrous as my strip routine ended up being (I really shouldn’t have worn those heels. Or, probably, done that at all), I’m feeling better about this at least—it’s not that Will is unhappy in our relationship or that he’s not as attracted to me anymore. I believe him about that—for real, this time. And I believe he’s right that I could stand to work on some of my own issues, so I don’t jump to those kinds of conclusions so quickly and so thoroughly.
It still breaks my heart to see him so unhappy, though, and even if it doesn’t have to do with me, I still wish there was something I could do to fix it. And I wish he didn’t have to deal with that on top of all the stress of our unexpected pregnancy.
But cuddling with him, talking with him like that, making love afterward . . . It all felt so good, so right. I still feel like there’s something he’s holding back, but I don’t feel like we’re teetering on this brink of disaster anymore.
Which is a good thing. Because if my stripping ability was really the thing we needed to save us, we’d be toast.
The rest of the week passes fairly uneventfully, though I can tell Will’s trying harder to connect with me, to cuddle with me or smile at me. Even though I know how miserable he still is when he comes home in that orange apron, or is staring forlornly at his laptop. And finding time to spend together is still a problem.
By the time the weekend rolls around and the next charity tournament has arrived, I’m glad that I only have a couple more days of Ren faire work left. I’m extra tired today and starting to have some mild cramping—normal in early pregnancy, I know, but it doesn’t mean it’s enjoyable, or that I wouldn’t way rather spe
nd the day curled up in bed. But I’m excited to see Anna-Marie in her princess role, and to enact the plan for Chris to ask Delia out.
My big part of the plan, however—getting Delia to leave her work at the pub to join me at the charity tournament—is more difficult than I’d imagined it would be.
“I can’t just leave,” she says, dropping off a few tankards at a table, along with a plate of mozzarella sticks. “I’m not scheduled for my break for another two hours, and—”
“April’s covering you,” I say. I point over at April, who’s just stepping out from the kitchen with a tray of tankards. She grins over at us. I had to explain the plan to her, and she was more than happy to push back her lunch break for this. Apparently I’m not the only one who thinks they belong together.
Delia frowns. “But I’ve already seen the tournament. Lots.”
“I know, but this time my best friend is the princess. And we get to hang out with the royalty, which is way better than being amongst the peasant riff-raff.” I put on my best snooty tone for this last part.
Delia eyes me suspiciously. Which is fair. I don’t have any better argument for why I so desperately need her to join me at this tournament than straight-up begging. Which argument I decide to employ.
“Please? Don’t make me be the only wench among royals.”
She stares at me for a long beat, then flicks a glance over to April and shrugs. “Okay, fine. Better than being at work, I suppose.” She sets her empty tray down at the end of a table, and we walk out of the pub into the bright sunlight. Already I can hear the cheers from the large crowd inside the jousting arena.
“Are we late?” I ask. “Did it start already?”
“Nah, that’s just them warming up the crowd beforehand,” she says. “Each knight has what basically amounts to a medieval hype guy. They get their section to try to outscream the other sections, that kind of thing.”
“Like cheerleaders?”
She grins. “I told you the whole thing is like being back in high school. And the knights are the jocks.” But she doesn’t sound quite as bitter about it all as she did on that first day. I’m hoping that’s a good sign.
