“Hey,” I said.
My head hurt and I was embarrassed beyond reason.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m really sorry,” I said as a response.
He grinned at me.
“You were pretty funny,” he said, his face scrunched up in a teasing manner.
“You didn’t have to put me in your room,” I said.
“I couldn’t leave you on the dog bed,” he said.
He gestured toward it, the puppy still fast asleep.
“You could have put me in the guest room,” I said.
“People would have been coming in and out of that for a while,” he said. “Party only ended about an hour ago.”
“What time is it?” I asked, feeling completely out of sorts.
“Only three,” he said.
“Three?”
Only three.
“You shouldn’t be sleeping on the couch,” I said.
“I wasn’t,” he said. “I was going to go sleep in the guest room when I got tired.”
“You shouldn’t sleep in the guest room,” I said.
He raised an eyebrow. “Is that an invitation?”
I didn’t know what to say. Was he serious? And if he was, was it? An invitation, that is?
Could I actually take him up on it?
“You probably need some water,” Gabe said, thankfully saving me from answering. “Sit.”
He patted the couch as he got up and headed into the kitchen. I perched there, on the edge of one of the cushions, watching his dog sleep. She was very, very cute, her nose tucked under her tail. It was then that I finally directed my attention to what Gabe was watching on TV.
“It’s true,” he said when he returned with a large glass of water. “I’m a huge nerd.”
“I love this episode,” I said after I’d drunk most of it.
“Yeah?” Gabe asked.
“I mean, Data is probably my favorite character, followed by Worf, but the Picard-centric episodes are pretty spectacular.”
Gabe looked at me.
“I’m also a huge nerd,” I said, though I imagined it was less of a surprise to discover that I was a Star Trek: The Next Generation fan than to find out that Gabe Parker was one.
“Want to watch it with me?” he asked, holding up the remote.
“I should go,” I said.
But I didn’t move.
“I can call you a cab in the morning,” he said. “Come on. Watch an episode with me.”
We watched three. The one he was already watching, my favorite episode, and then his favorite. He had all of them on DVD.
Gabe made popcorn—a little bowl of plain for the dog, then sprinkling cinnamon and sugar on the one he made for us.
The whole thing felt weirdly nice. And normal.
More normal and nice than the entire weekend had been.
“Did you grow up watching Star Trek?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Gabe said. “My dad loved it.”
There was a long, weighted silence. Gabe looked at me.
As if he was giving me permission.
“Who was his favorite character?” I asked, carefully pushing the boat out.
“He loved Geordi,” Gabe said. “I think because he was an engineer at heart. Liked to fix things.”
“Were you close with your dad?” I asked, still bracing myself for the brush-off. For him to shut down, turn away, and tell me to fuck off.
But Gabe softened. Smiled.
“Yeah,” he said. “The whole family was close but I was the only one who wanted to go to job sites with him. I could spend all day there, breathing in the sawdust, listening to his team hammer and cuss. Watching them watch my dad. He was great at his job—everyone admired him.”
“You loved your dad,” I said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” Gabe said.
The general assumption was that there was something dark and sordid about Gabe’s relationship with his father. That Gabe’s reluctance to talk about him was covering something up.
He leaned back into the couch, his feet up on the coffee table.
“What do you know?” he asked. “About him?”
I repeated everything I’d heard—just the facts—the kind of things that might be listed on his Wikipedia page.
“You weren’t…estranged?” I asked.
I thought about my tape recorder in the other room. But I knew that Gabe wasn’t telling me this because of the article.
“No,” he said. “He died when I was ten and he was my hero—cheesy as that sounds—and to an extent, he still is. Losing him was the worst moment of my life.”