Crys And Gabe

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  A lady? Trish?

  Oh, shit. She'd already pulled the wool over his dad's eyes.

  Fuck.

  "I'm done, Dad," Gabe said slowly. "Trish is coming? Well, good for you. Count me right, the fuck, out."

  "Aw, Buddy, give her a chance, okay? She said she'd made a mess of things with you, but I think we can work together to get it right."

  Gabe looked at his sorry excuse for a father then glanced at the half-naked girl in the hall.

  "Think I'm all out of trying to work it out with Trish." He did an eye roam over his dad before continuing. "And with you."

  Chapter Twenty Seven

  I pulled up outside Leila's place and looked it over as I turned off the Jeep. She had a great freaking house, old-fashioned looking with a deep porch and two huge windows that bracketed the door.

  I'd been here quite a few times but never really looked the place over before, took it all in. Don't know why I did now, but the flowers and bushes that rimmed the porch, the lights gleaming softly in the windows just kind of said 'home' to me tonight.

  "Hey, girl," she said in her melodic voice. Leila said she couldn't sing, that she couldn't even carry a tune, but I knew different. Her regular speaking voice was like a song.

  "Hey, Elle," I said with a hug.

  "Coffee?" she asked closing the thick, heavy front door.

  I could feel my nose scrunch. "Never developed a taste for it, unless it’s the Buxby's kind with all the stuff in it. Got anything else?"

  "Wine?" she asked with a smile, opening the fridge. "You said you wanted to learn, right? I have a great red or a nice white."

  I loved the layout of her house. When you walked in the stairs, situated about ten feet in front of you, went straight up to the second floor. To the right was the dining room with a huge, kick-ass table and the kitchen behind it, separated by a breakfast bar.

  To the left was the living room, which she had set up with an open space by the street-facing window, the back of the couch facing the front door. The couch was placed so that it looked to the beautiful fireplace and this was the only time I hadn't seen a fire lit in all the times I'd been there.

  "Uhm, you know I love white. But go ahead and teach me about the red," I said with a smile. Learning from Leila was the best, since she was a professor, with her doctorate in English, so she really knew how to teach.

  "This is a kicky little Napa Valley Pinot Noir," her mouth curving in a smile when she said 'Pea-noh New-ah' as she explained.

  Leila was a gorgeous brown eyed brunette, and, like I've already told you, was my idol. A nerd-girl that made a conscious choice not to be one. And Human Hiero was her first step in shedding that nerd-skin when she got her tattoo of her butterfly. It was some kind of special Indian butterfly, not the American kind of Indian, but the Asia, the India, kind. It was big, it was blue and it was on the curve of her hip.

  Dex had done her tattoo and that's where they had started.

  All because of me.

  And because of me and my attitude, the universe had smiled on all three of us.

  At least, that was how I chose to think about it.

  I was just hoping that the universal light that shined on Leila could catch me up in all that reflected goodness.

  "I must admit, Crys, I've been wanting to talk with you for a while," she said over the glugs of the bottle into a fish-bowl sized wine glass. She set it in front of me, but put her hand over mine when I went to pick it up. "No, sweetie, it needs to breathe."

  I set the glass down confused.

  "Red wine needs to breathe a bit before you drink it. The air makes the flavor bloom." I watched as she swished the wine in her glass and then she put her nose in the glass and sniffed deeply.

  She glanced at me and giggled. "Looks weird, doesn't it? But, try it. Just swirl the wine and then sniff it. Go on, you'll like it!"

  I twirled the glass.

  I sniffed.

  I liked.

  There were all sorts of smells roaming around in the glass. Grapes, of course. But berries, too. The smell of some kind of wood. Pepper?

  "It takes a lot of things to make a great wine, just like a great love. Do you smell them, Crys? The things that make a great red wine?" she said, breathing in her glass again.

  "That's why you use such a big wine glass for a red, especially a deep red like the Pinot Noir," she continued softly. "So you can walk into it with your nose and 'see' everything that has gone on before, into making it."

  I stopped sniffing. She wasn't talking about wine. Or, should I say, not just about wine.

  "So, Dex has been talking," I mumbled, kind of embarrassed. I can't imagine what Dex might have told her, about me and Gabe.

  Not that I was ashamed by what we had.

  Confused? Hell, yeah.

  Embarrassed? Not in the least.

  But seen through other people's eyes and hearing about what they thought about it might be a problem.

  "Of course he has, Crys. He loves you so much and talks about you and Gabe a lot," she said, taking a tiny sip from her glass. I watched as she rolled it in her mouth.

  "I, uhm, I…" Truthfully? I didn't know what to say but I could feel my face heating.

  She moved from the kitchen to sit beside me at the breakfast bar.

  "Sweetie? We need to talk. Or rather, you need to talk," she said patting my arm as she took another small sip of her wine. "I was there. At the hospital, when we were all waiting up in the ICU room."

  I took a tiny sip, mirroring how she drank and felt the wine explode on my tongue before sliding down my throat, and was amazed by the flavors it left behind.

  "He was a warrior, Crys. The kind of warrior you only read about. The rings? That was only the tip of the iceberg. He wants you. He wants to marry you and is determined it's you he wants." She turned even more towards me. "That's unusual, don't you think? To want someone so much that you could be in a roomful of strangers and declare your love?"

  There's silence and then there's silence.

  "Everyone one in the room saw it, Crys, that connection that he alluded to, that he wanted to build a life on. We just couldn't figure out why you'd never talked to us about it, about him. I mean, you told me a little bit about him, like the emails. But not about the feelings, the connection you had."

  Oh. My. God.

  This shit was deep.

  Too deep for me.

  Unless.

  Unless I told her about us, the real us.

  The tale of Crys and Gabe.

  So I did, sipping the wine in the tiniest of sips. Watching her refill our glasses, never pouring more than a third of the glass.

  "And then he just freaking shows up and thought I was gonna fall in his arms," I concluded.

  "Did you?" she asked slowly.

  I gave her a look and we both laughed.

  "Not at first. No," I said with a sigh. "But, I did. Eventually."

  She gave me a sidelong glance before sighing herself. "Been there, done that."

  There were more than a few moments of silence. But silence with Leila was always good, comfortable.

  "What does Crys look like in five years?" she asked at long last.

  "Huh?" I asked. I didn't feel drunk, but the question hit me in such a way that I felt drunk. Does that make sense?

  "What do you want, sweetie? How do you see your life in five years? In ten years?" she repeated softly.

  "I, uhm, I don't know," I admitted after thinking it through. What did I want?

  "It's your life, Crys," she said reaching for my hand. "Only you can figure out what's going to make you happy."

  I looked away trying to think. What did I want for me, for myself in five years?

  "You can't tell, Dex," I announced without my mind involved in the least. It was a total visceral reaction and the demand came from somewhere around my knees.

  "Aw, Crys. I love Dex loads. To flipping bits and beyond, but we're not that way together. He has his life and I have mine. We
share a life together, too. But we don't share everything! My life would bore him to freaking tears and his? Believe me, I've seen what was in his life and it wasn't pretty. And the 'not pretty' wanted to share," she said with a shudder. "Remind me to tell you of a visit we had from one of his friends from Wyoming and you'll know what I mean."

  I heard the door in the utility room open, just off the kitchen, and saw Dex come in.

  Was it that late?

  "Hey, pretty girls," Dex said softly. "Okay, red wine. Girl talk. Give me a kiss, Elle and I'll leave you two alone."

  I watched as he approached Elle and they did a lip lock.

  "You okay, Baby Girl?" Dex asked, still entwined around Leila, but his head now twisted my way.

  "More than okay, Dex," I sighed.

  "It ain't over until it's over. Right?" he said reaching for me and planting a kiss on my forehead.

  "Yeah, Dex," I said. Why I got a lump in my throat every time he did that, I didn't know.

  He moved upstairs while Elle and I looked at each other.

  "The only time he's not a dick is when he's with you," I announced softly.

  "Not true, Crys," she said smiling. "He's still a dick. But, he's my dick."

  I couldn't help the laugh that escaped, and once I heard her join me in my laughter, I couldn't help but to laugh even harder.

  When laughter had died, she began to speak again.

  Wiping her tears with a napkin, Leila went back to our earlier conversation.

  "You have to have a plan," she admitted softly. "A plan for what you want to do with your life. I had a plan. And, with my doctorate, I achieved it. Even with all that schooling and a good job, I wasn't happy. I wasn't happy with me."

  I was in awe of her degree because I'd struggled so hard in school.

  "But there's a big difference, Crys, between being educated and being smart. You're smart. Unbelievably smart, funny and the kind of cool that the rest of us all want to have, to be."

  She sighed.

  "I saw a boy grow into a man right before my eyes," she said softly as she turned to me. "I watched this kid, someone I'd heard about, turn into a man who knew what he wanted and wasn't afraid to say it. I saw it, Crys, right in front of me. And it was freaking awesome."

  I felt my eyes fill.

  She was talking about Gabe.

  My Gabe.

  "Uhm, Elle? There's more," I started. "There's this girl in Eugene…"

  "The one that says she's preggers? Yeah, I heard about that," Leila interrupted with a wry smile. "Gabe is saying he doesn't think she really is, though, right?"

  "Yeah," I breathed. She was getting it, and getting how it was skewing the whole of my might-be world.

  I showed her the email on my phone.

  She was quiet and looked around the room as she thought.

  "I was married before to a man that I now know wasn't much of a man," Leila confessed. "And, because he wasn't much of a man, he didn't make me feel like much of a woman. I'm guessing that can go both ways. Right? That someone tries to make another person think that they're a 'less than' kind of person and will say or do things that are untrue just to get what they want."

  She was married before? Why didn't I know this?

  And, that this 'before' guy tried to manipulate her, Leila, I couldn't even begin to fathom.

  I could hear her old fashioned wall clock ticking in the silence.

  "Can you imagine being with Gabe? Having his baby?" she asked into the quiet.

  A baby?

  Ah, no.

  "Let me show you something," she announced and hopped off her bar stool before running up the stairs.

  I was thinking a million miles a minute when she was gone.

  What if I did have kids? Would they have my problems? How would I deal with it when my kids were called 'retard' because they couldn't read well, couldn't sit still?

  She came barreling downstairs waving a piece of paper.

  "Look, it says here that seventy percent of couples wished they'd known each other better before they got married. You and Gabe must have that beat by what? Ten percent?"

  I glanced at the paper she shoved in my hand.

  Truth or dare time.

  But, with Leila, I knew I could finally say it. Could admit to it.

  "I can't…uhm. I have a hard time. With reading," I admitted, swallowing thickly.

  She stared at me.

  "Yeah, that makes more sense," she said, her eyebrows pulled together as she squeezed her bottom lip with her top teeth. "You're so smart, but you shy away from things. And your emails and texts sometimes get it wrong."

  I could feel my face flame.

  "Dyslexic? A touch of ADD thrown in?" she asked thoughtfully.

  "Yeah. Add ADHD and you've got the full prognosis," I said and even I could hear the regret in my voice.

  "I can help, Crys," she said. "That was my specialty in school. Kids with learning disabilities. There are so many things that can help."

  I just stared at her.

  Leila, my idol, was trained to help people like me?

  She could help me read?

  "Could you help me, really?" I asked on a whisper reaching for her hand.

  I watched her eyes fill as she tilted her forehead to press against mine.

  "You better believe it," she whispered back.

  It took a few moments but I finally got a grip.

  "Here's something I was thinking about," she said, using the napkin on her eyes again. "I know you're not happy at the shop. The boys all take advantage of you and I've told Dex that most of the reasons behind the great reviews are because of you. How you are the 'face' of the shop especially the way you work reception, how you keep the place so clean and inviting."

  Oh, God. It was so nice to be recognized as a contributor, someone who added value to the business I'd inherited from Dad.

  I sure as shit never heard it from my so-called business partners.

  "Have you ever thought about having your own shop, Crys? Or, if not your own place, being a piercer, or is it piercest, somewhere else?"

  I could feel my eyes bug out as the idea hit me.

  Yeah, I could do something like that. But the idea of not being a part of Human Hiero had never, ever crossed my mind.

  "I never thought of it before," I said slowly.

  "Something to think about?" she asked upending her glass.

  "Oh, hell, yeah," I breathed. "I need to think about it, though. Like, a lot."

  "Another thing, too," she said. "And, if it's not my place, please tell me."

  I nodded for her to go on.

  "I heard about the fire at your house and that it's being investigated. Which means it could've been set on purpose. Have you given any thought to selling?"

  I looked down at my hands. My first thought was that I couldn't do that to Dad, just sell his house and property. But Dad was dead. And, technically, the house and property were mine.

  "It might give you the money to open your own place," she suggested with a smile.

  I raised my head and looked at her. "Something to think about," I murmured, my head spinning.

  "I'm here, sweetie, anytime you need to talk," Leila said.

  "Love you, Elle," I mumbled.

  "Love you too, sweet girl," she breathed, giving me a tight hug.

  I left shortly after, more than okay to drive with the little bit of wine I'd had. While I liked learning about red wine, it still wasn't my alcohol of choice.

  I had a lot to think about and wanted to get right to the thinking part. So much so, I stopped by the Mini-Mart and picked up a notebook so I could capture all the shit going on in my head.

  Chapter Twenty Eight

  It had been four hours since he'd confronted his dad and he was still so fucking pissed he couldn't see straight.

  It didn't help that it was after midnight and Crys still wasn't home.

  Gabe had tried sleeping, but after tossing and turning for the better part of an hour
, he'd finally given up and moved to the dining room to work on his flash.

  Where the fuck could she be?

  He knew so little about her now, her life, that he couldn't imagine where she could be, who she could be with, what she was doing.

  And the shit he did imagine was heart-stopping.

  Another man, maybe?

  God knows that with their history, what she'd told him, of what she remembered, he wouldn't blame her for looking elsewhere.

  Christ!

  This was crazy.

  Crazy about what he felt, no, what he fucking knew they could be, and she needed him away from her.

  Where the fuck was she?

  After another half hour, he heard the Jeep pull in.

  Thank God.

  He took a deep breath and made a point of relaxing his tense shoulders.

  "Oh, hey, Gabe," she said coming in and moving down the hall to her room.

  Her room.

  Her fucking separate room.

  Away from him.

  She came back to the front of the house and grabbed a water from the fridge.

  "What're you working on?" she asked moving to stand behind him at the table.

  "New flash," he mumbled. God, just the sound of her voice had him hard.

  "Looks good," she said and dropped a hand to his shoulder.

  Didn't she know what she did to him?

  How her touch was so wanted, so needed, that it almost burned?

  "Have fun, tonight?" he asked, trying so hard to keep the edge out of his voice.

  "Yeah, I went to see Leila," she said, taking a pull from her water bottle.

  He let that lie.

  Leila wasn't Niko or Steven or any other red-blooded man in Grantham that wanted in her pants. And, if he read it right from just the clients that came into HH, there were too many men that wanted her to count.

  "Thanks for sending me the email, Crys," he said softly, his eyes trained on the light box, but not really seeing a thing.

  "No probs, Gabe," she said softly back and he felt her hand move from a light touch to softly rub his shoulders. "You needed to know."

  There was quiet between them but it wasn't bad.

  "Went to see Dad about it," he admitted. "As you can imagine, our talk didn't go well."

  There was a couple of beats, before she spoke.