I shifted my gaze, after realizing I’d been staring at him for a few seconds too long, and said, “So, I have to ask, you mentioned you were thinking about me on Christmas. About what, exactly?”
He flashed a grin and nodded. “Yeah, I was trimming the tree with some old ornaments in my new apartment thinking about that ridiculous hovel we shared—”
“The one in Hell’s Kitchen with the bathtub in the living room! We had roaches so big we named them and almost bought them their own stockings.”
“That’s the one! Yeah, I was thinking about that apartment, and that first Christmas Eve we spent there. Remember, you came home with all those bags of groceries after a particularly lucrative shift at Mimi’s,” he reminisced.
“People couldn’t seem to get enough of my Auntie Mame, and it was the holidays so maybe they were feeling extra generous.” I smiled at the memory.
“We cooked a feast, remember?”
“All I remember is every time you stuck your finger in the pot to taste what was cooking, you’d yell out—”
“‘It’s a Christmas miracle!’” we both shouted in unison with our pointer fingers thrust toward the sky.
We laughed at the recollection, and for as much heartache and time that had passed, it didn’t take long for us to fall back into our natural rhythm.
“You’ll be happy to know that before I took this new apartment, I insisted that my bathtub actually be in my bathroom—no ‘half bath’ situation,” he said with a wink and smile.
I clasped my hand over my mouth to stifle a laugh. “Remember how excited the super was to show it to us in that first apartment? Exclaiming something like, ‘It has a half bath . . . half of the bathroom just so happens to be beside the couch. Pretty great, right?’”
He flashed a mischievously sexy grin. “It was pretty great.”
I thought back to our Sunday night wind-down ritual. Gabe would draw a warm bubble bath, and we’d climb inside the tub with a box of pizza and a cheap bottle of pinot noir to watch Game of Thrones, staying curled against one another in the water through the whole episode, not even caring how much the temperature dropped over the sixty-minute show. When it was over, we’d hop out of the bath, water puddling at our feet onto the hardwood floors, and flop onto the couch wrapped up in terry-cloth towels with every intention of watching whatever show followed. But . . . we rarely made it past the opening credits before we lost the towels and then ourselves in each other.
I blushed. “Who would have thought a bathtub could actually be better than a couch? Unless you count that time we watched Titanic.”
“Oh, right? That was a little too immersive of an experience. That movie clocks in at what? Close to four hours? We were the icebergs by the time it ended.”
I had just taken a sip of my coffee before his retort, and it threatened to shoot out of my nose as I fought back a giggle at the memory. Once I swallowed, I added, “My favorite was when I made you hold my arms out, us naked and perched at the front of our tub, as I shouted, ‘Jack, I’m flying!’ We were laughing so loudly Mr. Quinta was knocking on his ceiling from below with his broom, shouting at us to turn it down.”
“Oh my God, he almost put a hole through our floor with all that banging,” Gabe recalled.
I held my hands up, conceding. “Okay, okay, not one of my better suggestions.”
“No, it was great. You were great.” His tone shifted from the light mirth into something more somber and wistful. “I’m just sorry I didn’t appreciate you more.”
With a thousand thoughts and memories competing for my attention, I didn’t know what to say, so I remained quiet.
Gabe took my silence as a cue to continue, cupping his hands over my own. “So tell me, how are you doing? What are you doing?”
“I’m back working at Mimi’s. To put it mildly, my last relationship imploded, and now I guess I’m starting over again.” I lowered my eyes with embarrassment, a little overcome with emotion at having to admit the setback aloud.
Gabe reached for my chin with a finger and lifted my face to look at him. “Starting over can be a good thing.”
I wasn’t sure if he was talking about my last relationship now or our own. The truth was, I wasn’t ready to open my heart to anyone after what happened with Adam, but Gabe wasn’t just anyone . . . he was Gabe. My Gabe. The Gabe I dated for five years who always made me feel safe and loved. And unlike Adam, Gabe was a good person, had always been a good person, even in the moments when we didn’t see eye to eye.
We’d met young and had competing priorities that created what, back then, felt like an insurmountable barrier. But with time and distance, maybe those deep cracks had started to spiderweb down the wall, and I couldn’t help but imagine what would have been waiting for us on the other side if we hadn’t given up on one another and instead, tried to break through it.
“You really think so?” I stated both as a question and plea.
He grazed his thumb along my palm, and my skin tingled at his touch. “I really do.”
I smiled warmly, unsure of what this all meant. Why did the universe or phone booth （or some combination of the two） direct me to Gabe that night? It was something I still had no rational explanation for. Had it been a rare solar flare? Or maybe the Earth had tilted off its axis? Maybe I should simply chalk it up to just one more strange event in a series of strange events that day. But it was all too odd. The fact Gabe had been thinking about me? The phone operator talking about regret and making amends for life’s misused opportunities?
My phone alarm sounded in my bag, and I was glad I’d set it after realizing how distracted I’d become in our conversation. “I’m sorry, I should get going. I’m meeting with a real estate broker to look for an apartment. I have to be out of mine in about two weeks,” I said, standing up from our table and slinging my purse across my shoulder.
“Yes, of course. But . . .” He stood too, now peering down at me from beneath his thick lashes. “When can I see you again?”
I adjusted my bag nervously and remarked, “Um . . . I’m not too sure that leggy blonde from your apartment would like that very much.”
Gabe jerked back, a look of pure confusion plastered on his face. “Wait? What leggy blonde? Who?”
“The one who answered your door on Christmas. In the Valentino.”
“Oh, that was my cousin, Chelsea. She was just picking me up to go over to Marisol’s for Christmas dinner. You remember Chelsea?”
“Like Aunt Deedee’s Chelsea? No way. The Chelsea I remember was a thirteen-year-old with pink hair who practically lived in her One Direction T-shirt. And wait, back it up some more. Marisol? Hosting Christmas dinner? She used to think shoving a Trader Joe’s frozen burrito into a toaster was cooking. Remember when she almost burned down our apartment trying to heat up the Chinese takeout because she didn’t realize the aluminum containers shouldn’t go in the microwave? We couldn’t get the burned smell of moo goo gai pan out of the kitchen for weeks.”
Gabe smiled warmly and nodded. “Months. Thankfully, she’s come a long way. And actually, Christmas Day dinner has become her thing ever since she had her first—”