Diving In (Open Door Love Story)

by Stacey Wallace Benefiel

  “Thank God!”

  We stop at a red light near the aquatic center and Gabe sort of busts out laughing hysterically. He turns to me.

  “What?” I ask, starting to get the giggles because he’s being such a weirdo.

  “I was just thinking about how awesome it would’ve been if after I’d said ‘Thank God’ I could’ve whipped down the visor and had, like, a Harry Styles shrine stuck to it or something.”

  And I think, Damn, Brynn, even your defining moments are bizarre, because the flutter in my stomach goes wild. “I teach the senior citizen class on Friday nights,” I say in response, nodding at the aquatic center as we drive past.

  “Bad ass.” Gabe wiggles his eyebrows at me again.

  “Do you swim, still?” I blurt, hoping I haven’t ruined our easy conversation by bringing up something hard.

  “I don’t,” he says simply, shrugging his shoulders.

  “Why not?” I prod, annoyed with myself for being so pushy, but needing to know.

  “Honestly, because at first it was such a thing. It went hand in hand with, ‘You’ll walk again. Miracles do happen. You’ll swim again. Anything is possible!’ But, you know, year three of PT, I was still dragging my legs behind me while I wobbled on a walker … I let myself stop fighting for it. I’m okay being in a chair. I’m okay not being the captain of the swim team. I made a mistake and changed my life, but I didn’t completely ruin it. I am grateful every day that I didn’t suffer brain damage from loss of oxygen and that Travis was there to pull me from the water.” Gabe drives around Eichler Park and heads back downtown.

  My stomach flutters turn sour.

  He must have caught my freaked out expression. “I know what people think of him, and yeah, Travis Chandler can definitely be a massive ass, but he saved the part of me that is really me, and I’ll be forever in debt to him for that.”

  “Do you still talk to him?” I ask, prying, wishing I could let it go and bury the whole thing in some corner of my mind.

  “He calls to check up on me every once in awhile.”

  I bet he does.

  “I’ll probably see him during Thanksgiving break when he’s home from Stanford. His family usually goes to Sun Valley for Christmas.”

  “Is he still swimming?” Something about the fact that Travis can and Gabe can’t brings up a deep anger in me. I am older now. Taller. Less afraid. For the millionth time I imagine I stayed with Gabe until the paramedics arrived. That I gave a statement to the police about everything I saw, every detail, including how he’d threatened me and my family, and that he’d gotten arrested and was made to pay for what he did to Gabe.

  “Nah, he didn’t make the team. He’s focused his energy on his frat instead – apparently, they’ve had some legendary parties.” Gabe’s eyes go a little sad and I feel for him, not because he’s missing out, but because he thinks he’s missing out.

  “I’m sure Travis’s tales of the parties are way better than the actual parties. I think Andy’s doing the same thing, trying to make me want to join him at U of Wyoming.” I smile at Gabe. “Good thing I have such a rich and full life in Boise.”

  “Oh, me too,” he says, the light coming back into his eyes. “I hang out at home with my mom, who quit her job to take care of me, but now I don’t need her help as much, so that’s awesome and a discussion we have on a daily basis when she does things for me while I’m constantly telling her not to.” He tries to give me a thumbs up, but it comes off a little crooked and like he’s pointing at himself. “I’m trying to give you a sarcastic thumbs up, but my fingers are kinda jacked.”

  “I understood what you were going for.” I aim my thumb at myself.

  “Way to mock the handicapped. Jeez!”

  “The world is a cruel place. Get used to it, son.”

  “I enjoy how you say son like a white middle class girl from Boise pretending to be gangsta.” Gabe does a fake ha-ha-ha staccato laugh. “It’s refreshing, really. Not overdone at all.”

  “Whatever. You’re just pissed you can’t throw gang signs ironically.” I make my fingers go Westside.

  “And even more ironicaller,” he says, cocking his head to the side. “Crips is the hardest.”

  “It’s like ray-e-ain,” I sing.

  We’re comfortably quiet for a moment and then Gabe asks, “So, this Andy guy in Wyoming is your boyfriend?”

  I nod and bring up a photo, one of his face, on my phone and show it to Gabe. “Yeah. Since sophomore year of high school. He was swim captain our senior year. You’d probably recognize him if you’d watched any meets the last three seasons, although you guys never swam together. His family moved from Wyoming right after your accident.”

  Gabe glances at it. “Huh. I stopped paying attention, but I still keep in touch with a few guys who would know him.” Gabe shoots me a sly grin. “I’ll have to do some recon.”

  I roll my eyes. “Not much to discover. He’s a jock and an extrovert and I’m not and he likes me anyway.”

  “He likes you, but do you like him?”

  I cringe. I hate not telling the truth, but hey, I’m already keeping the most major secret of Gabe’s life from him, so what’s a little lie? “I do like Andy. He’s easy to be with and makes me happy.”

  “So, why aren’t you at school with him?” Gabe asks.

  “I know this is hard to believe, but I wanted to stay here. I want to manage a chain of dry cleaners like my mom and my grandpa.” I shrug. “I always think it’s a waste when people have a family businesses waiting for them to take over and they don’t want the opportunity that is being handed to them, like, so they can follow their dreams or some shit. I guess I don’t have any dreams.”

  Gabe takes a corner pretty close and I brace myself. “Or maybe your dream is to run a chain of dry cleaners? Nothing wrong with that. Dreams come in all shapes and sizes.”

  “Does the chair enable your kind to spout inspirational quotes without being mocked?” I ask, raising an eyebrow.

  “I don’t know, you tell me.” He reaches over and turns the radio off. I hadn’t even realized it was on anymore. “Hang in there!”

  “Meh. Mock level one.”

  “I’m trying to remember all the memes from Facebook … Be the change you want to see in … the world?”

  “That one can’t be mocked. It makes sense. Because Gandhi.”

  “Are you sure that’s Gandhi?” he asks, cocking his head. “I thought it was from Doctor Who.”

  I stick my tongue out at him. “Are you seriously mixing up Be the Change and Hello, Sweetie?”

  Gabe smirks. “I was mostly just testing your knowledge of the Doctor.”

  I make the so-so gesture. “It’s passable. I watch a lot of Netflix on my laptop.”

  “Are you caught up?”

  “No, I’m halfway through season six.”

  “Well, I’m always up for a third or fourth viewing, if you want company.” He throws this out there as we pull into the parking lot of the cleaners and into the space directly in front. There’s a man swinging the door into and out of the store while Junnuen looks on approvingly.

  “That was fast!” I say. “I was wondering what I was going to do with a broken door.”

  Gabe nods toward the man and cuts the engine. “Dad works graveyard, so I texted him while you were inside and asked if he could fix it before nighttime. He’s good like that.”

  I hop out of the van and approach Mr. Riley. “Thanks so much for fixing my botched attempt.” I offer him my hand and he wipes the grease stains from his with a rag before shaking mine.

  “Happy to help, Brynn. It was good of you to make the effort.” He chuckles.

  “Even if I had no idea what I was doing.”

  Mr. Riley laughs harder. “You said it.”

  The sound of the chair lift going down pulls our attention to Gabe.

  “Let’s test ’er out, son,” Mr. Riley says, picking up his impressively loaded canvas tool bag and moving it out of Gabe�
�s path.

  Gabe rolls forward between two concrete parking thingies and up onto the sidewalk. He puts his hand on the handle and pushes the door inward, easily rolling into the store.

  “Success!” he says, backing out. “Now you’ll never be able to get rid of me.”

  “Good,” I say.

  Mr. Riley raises his eyebrow at me. I can’t say the gesture is unwarranted.

  “See, Dad,” Gabe says, saving me, “having a kid in a chair does have its advantages. I totally scored you free dry cleaning for life.”

  “Thanks, Brynn, but that’s not necessary.”

  “You should probably bring it up with your wife first before you turn my offer down, Mr. Riley.”

  He chuckles. “Smart woman.”

  Chapter Five

  I’m going through the motions of the Thursday closing procedures, paying extra attention to everything because Thursday is the day Mom checks up on me to make sure I’m doing things the Perfect Kathleen Garrett Way. She’s sifting through my receipts, mmhming and generally putting me on edge. Another thing that’s the Perfect Kathleen Garrett Way.

  Mom abruptly stops ruffling through the papers and I can feel her glaring at the side of my head. “Why didn’t you charge Melissa Riley for her tablecloth?”

  My face heats and I panic, blurting, “You said I should take care of it, remember, for the door problem with Gabe?”

  She purses her lips. “That’s not the way I remember it. I believe I begrudgingly let you give them a one-time twenty percent discount – because you’d already offered it without permission.”

  “Well,” I say, still avoiding making eye contact with her, “you also said you’d call Landon and you didn’t, so I tried to fix the door myself and broke it and Gabe’s dad came out and fixed it for us. I think that warrants free dry cleaning.” I’m not about to tell her that it’s for life. For someone who considers herself a truthful person, I’m doing a whole lot of lying lately.

  “Uh huh, and you,” I finally get a good look at Mom and her nostrils are flaring, “clocked out early? Why in God’s name would you close the store early?”

  I stand up straight and throw my shoulders back, pretending courage. “There weren’t any more tickets left, so I went for a ride with Gabe in his van. You should be happy I have a friend, Mom. You always wanted me to be more social.”

  She does her eye roll/hard sigh. “Yes, with certain people, Brynn. Not … a disgraced boy in a wheelchair! Did anyone see you out with him?”

  “I don’t know!” I shake the trash bag I’m pulling out of the trashcan by the door extra hard and a flurry of closed tickets fall on the floor. “Shit.” I bend down and start stuffing them back into the bag, when a horn honks outside. I don’t look up to see Gabe waving, as I know he’ll do because that’s what he’s done the last two days. I look at my mom instead.

  She shakes her head no. “Brynn, it’s nice of you to want to have a project, but Gabe isn’t a suitable person for you to be involved with.”

  I hate her. I hate her so much. She doesn’t have a scrap of mothering in her. “Like Dani isn’t suitable for Liam?”

  Mom clucks her tongue. “That’s not fair! I don’t know what I did to deserve such ungrateful children. I thought you were on a better track than your brother, wanting to stay home and learn the business, but here you are, just like him, courting the different and socially unacceptable.”

  I do look at Gabe now, and he tentatively waves to me and then turns his hands in a what’s up gesture. He’s not that different and he’s definitely socially acceptable and I realize I wouldn’t care if he wasn’t either. I like spending time with him doing nothing and I haven’t had that experience before.

  I drop the trash bag back into the can – I can deal with it in the morning, it’s not unsightly or smelly or anything – and go over to the computer. “Excuse me,” I say to Mom, hoping she just gets the hell out of my way and doesn’t challenge me. She moves. I clock out. “I’ll see you next week.”

  Gabe doesn’t say anything when I get in the van. He backs out of the space and then, for the first time since we started going on drives, takes a right out of the parking lot.

  ~

  Ten minutes later we’re going down the driveway into the parking garage underneath the Grove Hotel. Gabe parks the van in the space right by the elevator.

  He pretends to dust off his lapel. “Just one of the perks of being me.”

  “And well worth it.” I point my thumb at my chest.

  Gabe shakes his head slowly in an Ah Yeah manner, his upper lip curled. “Totally. I’d take a header into a shallow pond again in a heartbeat if it meant choice parking for life.”

  “So, what are we doing here?” I ask, grabbing onto the door handle. “Are we getting out?”

  He uncurls his lip and his face returns to being way too handsome. “Yes, Dork Patrol, we’re getting out.” He backs out of the driver’s seat, laughing. “I have no idea why I called you Dork Patrol, but now I’m always going to. Sorry in advance.”

  I make a whatevs face. “That’s fine. I’m going to call you Fast Food Condiment Hoarder. Nicknames shouldn’t always have to be short or applicable.”

  “Agreed.”

  We take the elevator to the roof deck and I follow Gabe to the edge overlooking the square. The streetlights are in full effect, twinkling. A lot of the buildings are already decorated for the holidays, adding to the spectacle. I jam my hands deep into my pants pockets, feeling dumb for not grabbing my coat. It’s dry, but windy out.

  “I like to come here to get away from my parents, and my parents are great, so I figured you might like to know about my secret spot to get away from your less-than-great mom.”

  I nod. “This is the part where I’m supposed to defend her and say she’s not that bad, but she really is that bad.”

  “She doesn’t want you hanging out with the likes of me, which was obvious even though I couldn’t hear what she was saying.” Gabe starts shrugging out of his coat. “Your mom wouldn’t be the first of my friend’s parents to think I’m a bad influence. It’s okay if you … need to do as she asks.” He’s got one arm free of his coat. “I’m trying to be manly and let you wear my coat, except I’m having trouble getting it off.” He chuckles and shakes his head. “Pitiful.”

  I want to tell him what really happened. I want for him to know that he didn’t make a mistake and that he’s a good person. But, then it’s all out there and it will need to be dealt with and we’re both … surviving like this. It is up to me whether the past stays in the past and I’m just not ready yet. To relive, fully, what happened. Flashes, nightmares, I’ve learned to manage those. I prepared myself for the aftermath of the trauma and I’m actually okay. And Gabe, he’s come to terms with the way he is and what he thinks he did.

  “You agree that I’m a pitiful excuse for a man?” he says in a joking voice. “Otherwise, I think you would’ve said something by now instead of staring off into space.”

  I roll my eyes at him. “I was remembering something I’d read about paraple—”

  “You found a wheelchair sex site, didn’t you?”

  I blush, because yeah, I had, but, “I’m not taking your coat because your body has trouble regulating heat, right?”

  Gabe sticks his free arm back into his coat. “Imagine a cartoon bubble above my head that says, ‘sigh’ okay?”

  “You could just sigh,” I point out.

  “You could just sit on my lap and let me put my arms around you,” he says, like it’s the simplest thing in the world.

  I look at his lap. His jeans are baggy, but I can make out the outline of his legs. They’re pretty thin compared to the rest of his body. “Are you sure I won’t hurt you?”

  “No,” he says, his eyes meeting mine. “Do it anyway.”

  I am cold and I don’t want to go yet and I do want to … be close to him.

  I swallow hard and then come at him sideways, slowly putting my weight on him. “Imagi
ne a cartoon bubble above my head that says, ‘gulp’.”

  Gabe opens the front of his down jacket and wraps it around my body, forcing me to rest my shoulder against his chest. I tuck my chilly hands between my legs. Our faces are close and his breath is warm on my cheek.

  “Feel okay?” he asks.

  I nod. “You?”

  “All good as far as I know.”

  We look out over the city and I match my breathing to his, or he matches his to mine. I close my eyes. The world falls away and I’m weightless.

  “I don’t talk to anyone about anything, Gabe, least of all about my mom. But I need you to understand something. There’s nothing wrong with you. Her opinion, her judgment, there’s something off about her and she’s only gotten worse since Liam…”

  Gabe tips my chin up with his crooked index finger. “So, that’s true?”

  “It is,” I say, checking his expression for any signs of judgment. I’m relieved when I don’t see any. “My super popular, golden boy brother is a cross dresser and he works as a drag queen named Hollee Golightlee and he’s happier than he’s ever been.” I fish my phone out of my pants pocket and bring it up between our chests, showing him an Instagram from Liam’s last drag show.

  “Is it weird that I kinda want to bone him?” Gabe asks, grinning.

  I pull my head back, surprised. “I think it’s weird you want to bone anyone. I figured your action didn’t work.”

  His grin becomes a smile and his eyes go wide. “My brain still wants things and sometimes my body cooperates.”

  Interesting. “Huh. And your brain wants my brother as Hollee?” Had I got my signals way crossed?

  Gabe blushes, but pulls me closer to him, whispering. “I think it’s because he looks like a tarted up version of you.”

  “Oh.”

  His gaze falls to my lips and I know he’s going to kiss me. And I want him to kiss me, but not while I’m still with Andy.