Page 180 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

I grabbed the edges of the table and clenched around him. “Never too much.”

All I could hear was skin slapping against skin. Nina Simone’s voice sounded like it was coming from the end of a tunnel. The studio looked dreamlike, infused with pink light.

Gabriel’s hand was in my hair, yanking my head up. He slid his arm around my ribs, his fingers stroking my clit while he thrust faster, harder, deeper.

His scent pervaded my senses. Woodsy. Spicy. The musk of a boy. I could feel his sweat on my back and his warm breath on my neck and I wanted to weep with happiness.

I loved him. I loved him. I loved him.

A strange thought, perhaps, when you were being fucked from behind on a drafting table, but it was enough to come undone.

Afterward, when he’d collapsed on top of me, he laced his fingers through mine and whispered in my ear, “I love you.”

Gabriel said it all the time now, but I had yet to say the words.

“May I?” Gabriel gestured to the sheet over the canvas.

“You can do anything you want,” I said. I could still feel his semen seeping out of me, dripping between my thighs.

I moved to his side as he whipped the sheet off the canvas with a flick of the wrist, unveiling my art. He dropped the sheet to the floor and moved in closer, studying every detail like he was searching for buried treasure.

I didn’t have to ask Gabriel what he thought of it. The answer was written on his face. Pure, unadulterated love and admiration mingled with awe. It was the kind of look he gave me when he was in the throes of passion.

“Our street?” He gestured to the cityscape at the bottom of the canvas.

I loved how he called it “our” street. It could be any street on the Lower East Side—a row of tenement buildings with fire escapes—but it was ours.

I nodded, watching from the corner of my eye as his gaze swept over the canvas. Music notes, words, and swirls of paint soared above the rooftops in a frenetic dance of color and light and pulsing energy.

Dozens of hands emerged, reaching, as if they were putting the stars into the night sky. His hands. My hands. In black, brown, umber, bronze, sand, ivory, alabaster.

The piece was still chaotic, but so was life, and when I’d sanded down the layers of paint and sketches and found objects, I discovered the meaning in the chaos.

Gabriel read the words under his breath. “GRIEF: the measure of how well we have loved. LOVE: the antidote.”

He moved farther down the canvas and tilted his head. “HUMANKIND: Are we all not made of stardust? A UNIVERSE. Infinite. Luminous. Explosive. We light the sky with the fire in our souls.”

I told Gabriel that I was donating my hundred grand commission to an AIDS foundation that supported marginalized communities.

He turned to me, and the look on his face made me feel like the Madonna incarnate. “You are a wonder, Cleo Babington. Let’s double it. Call it two hundred grand.”

What a man.What a man.

“You’re a wonder, too, Gabriel Francis.” My voice was hushed like we were in a church. Like this moment was sacred. And it was.

This was the exact moment when I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that I was all in. No holding back. No second-guessing. Right here in this studio in the fading light.

My God. He was so beautiful. So precious to me. With his messy dark hair touching the collar of his faded blue T-shirt and his crooked grin and deep brown eyes.

I pushed a lock of hair off his forehead, my fingers brushing over his skin because I could. His eyes drifted shut and a soft sigh escaped his lips as I traced his dark brows, the slope of his nose, the fullness of his mouth.

Nina Simone’s voice poured from the speakers, an upbeat, joyous “Feeling Good” that made me feel happy just to be alive and so incredibly grateful that he was, too, and that we’d found our way back to each other.

My heart felt too big for my chest, inflating like a balloon filled with helium. It was a wonder my feet were still firmly planted on the ground when I felt as if I could float into the ether.

I was in love.

Madly, deeply, irrevocably.