“You would really come with me to my parents’？ Don’t you have like a thousand things you could be doing with your weekend?”
“Meh, whatever else I’d find to occupy my time probably wouldn’t be as fun. And definitely wouldn’t be as cute. Besides, in all the times I visited Woodbury during college, we still never made it to Flapjacks, Connecticut’s oldest pancake house.”
“I hate to be the one to have to tell you, but it’s not the oldest pancake house anymore. The Connecticut Historical Society found out there’s an even older one in New Haven. Stripped the town of our plaque and everything.”
“They even took the plaque? Those bastards. Well, I’d still like to try it. With you. If you want.”
“Well, I do want. I’m grabbing the 10:10 from Grand Central. Meet me underneath the gold clock at 10:00?”
“I’ll bring the coffee. Tall drip with two shots of espresso, oat milk, and one sugar,” he recounted by heart.
“Sounds perfect.” Both the coffee and his plan to join me for the weekend.
True to his word, Gabe met me at precisely 10:00 a.m. underneath the big gold clock located in the center of the famous train terminal. He looked adorable in his casual weekend wear: gray hoodie, fitted black track pants, his unruly dark hair tucked underneath his well-worn Yankees cap, the same one I was pretty sure he had back in college. He had a small brown leather duffel slung over his shoulder and was clutching a steaming cup of coffee in each hand.
We boarded the train and a little over three hours later pulled into the Woodbury station, a single platform between Main Street and Maple Boulevard. My parents’ antiques store was located on the north end of Main, just a twenty-minute walk through town. I glanced down to check Gabe’s shoe situation, and when I confirmed he was wearing sneakers, asked if he was game to take the scenic route.
“Lead the way,” he said, picking up my bag and slinging it on the opposite shoulder from his own.
We came down the platform steps and crossed over the road, heading into the busiest part of the street. Although Gabe had come home with me maybe half a dozen times while we were dating, I’d never taken him to some of my favorite haunts, a bit embarrassed by our no-frills, Podunk town compared to the bright lights of the big city where he’d spent his whole life.
“So, coming up on your left,” I said, pointing to a small building with large glass windows and a pink-and-white awning, “is the world-famous Woodbury Tutu School, where after hundreds of hours of dance practice, Miss Natasha declared I simply did not have the feet or turnout needed for ballet and encouraged me to pursue tap and jazz instead. God, the amount of money my parents must’ve spent on those lessons. Money I’m sure they didn’t have.”
“Parents do that, though, for their kids. Many don’t, I guess. But the ones who do do it because they want to. That’s a pretty special thing, and I think I appreciate, more and more every single day, that my mother did the same for me and Marisol.”
A small smile crept across Gabe’s face as he reminisced for a moment about Elise until the expression tightened into more of a wince. From the way his jaw clenched, I could tell he probably didn’t open up very much about losing her. Though March was peeking just around the corner and spring not far behind, the February air was still brisk, turning even sharper as an occasional gust whipped through the streets. I tucked in closer to Gabe, snaking my arm around his and resting my temple against his shoulder as we strode in sync, side by side.
“I’m sure you really miss her.”
“Mostly when something I know she would think is really funny happens. I pick up the phone to call her and realize I can’t. It’s weird, the same thing used to happen right after we broke up. I’d read an article or see a movie or hear a song I knew you’d love and want to call and tell you about it, but I couldn’t.”
“You could’ve. Maybe you should’ve. You know I always wondered . . .”
Gabe stopped in his tracks and turned to face me, his hands reaching up and rubbing down the length of my arms to warm them. “We don’t have to keep tiptoeing around this. No matter how it happened, after all the time that’s passed and all the twists and turns we’ve endured, we ended up back here together . . . maybe now, the timing’s finally right. Maybe we both needed to learn a few lessons and grow a little bit before we were able to appreciate what we had, and work harder this time not to lose it.” He punctuated his point with a gentle squeeze and stroked the smooth fibers of my camel peacoat with the pads of his thumbs.
I looked up into his hazel eyes, and my stomach dipped when he moistened his full lips with the edge of his tongue. He slid his baseball cap from his head and ran a hand through his thick dark hair before securing it back in place. He glanced up and down Main Street to survey what was where. “Okay, my dear, so which way?”
I crooked my arm in his again and we restarted our stroll, admiring the cute facades and window dressings of the shops that lined Main Street until finally we were standing in front of Lawrences’ Antiques, my parents’ store that had once belonged to my grandfather and his father before him. I pushed into the shop and was immediately hit by the familiar musty odor of well-worn leather-bound books, furniture polish, and dust.
“Mom? Dad?” I called out and motioned for Gabe to follow me inside, surprised that I had to maneuver around the open door and mountains of trinkets and gadgets prominently displayed around the store. There were about a zillion items everywhere, seemingly even more than the last time I’d visited—which was ironic given the fact that 80 percent of that trip had been spent talking about their big plan to downsize everything once they sold the business and retired at the end of the year.
“Mom? Dad?” I cried out again. “Oh God, what if they got wedged in behind an armoire or something?” I turned to Gabe. “I told them we’d be getting in right around now.”
“Ave, that you?” Dad called from the basement. “Be right there.”
A few minutes later, he came huffing up the stairs. “Sorry, sweetie, we had a gorgeous Biedermeier side table delivered from an auction this morning, and I was just snapping some photos for the website.”
“The website? That’s new. Um . . . when did you get that going? I didn’t even know you knew how to do that.”
“Just a little something we put together recently. Have to join the twenty-first century sometime, right? Your mom even wants me to get a TikTok account. Has a handle picked out for me and everything: @AntiquesJoeShow. Get it? Like Antiques Roadshow but with my name, Joe.”
I snickered, finding my dad’s “dad jokes” so adorably typical. I rolled my eyes and gave him a kiss on the cheek and a quick hug, relishing in the familiar scent of the same cologne he’d been wearing since I was five. “No, I mean, I get it, but I just don’t like get it. Why are you learning how to TikTok? What’s with the push to revolutionize the business in its last half a year of life? Trying to go out with a bang or something?”
Dad ignored my question and pushed past me and over to where Gabe was still standing in the doorway holding our bags. He opened his arms to him and said, “Gabe Salgado, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes. How’ve you been, son? Judging by your baseball cap, I can see you’re still the eternal optimist. The Yankees haven’t had a good turn since ’98. Now, that team had some amazing chemistry.”