Page 30 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

On that note, Happy Birthday.

Stop being a big chicken. You heard Simone. Fashion is art so get over yourself. You’re not selling out. You’re using your talent to create something unique that only Cleo Babington could design.

Be brave. Be bold. Fly high.

Howl if you need me. Anytime. Anywhere. The Kiev at midnight or a church pew on Good Friday, call me. I’ll drop everything to be by your side just for the privilege of holding your hand and never letting go.

In the meantime, I’ll see you in my dreams.

Gabriel

After reading it a dozen times and slashing a black Sharpie through his phone number to avoid temptation, I folded up the note, tucked it back in the book and laughed until I cried.

Then I slid the cassette tape into my Walkman, put my headphones on and listened to Gabriel’s voice. There were only two songs, both original.

Annika must have gotten mixed up and blended the lyrics from two different songs. One of them, I suspected, was inspired bySong of Songs.

The sweet wine fragrance of your perfume / kiss me, lover, with your honey lips and dirty mouth / milky pearls and longest sighs…

The other song was about seeing the moonlit goddess through the window with rain shimmering on the neon streets.

Why are you haunting my caffeine dreams / and not here with me speaking French / while I read your sad poetry / and the night will never end until we grow old and you see into my soul / and I will never forget your smile / that showed me all the secrets of the universe…

I listened to the songs on repeat until I knew every lyric and note by heart.

Proof that I’m a masochist.

If it hurt this much to listen to his music without ever knowing him intimately, without knowing the feel of his caressor endless nights of passion, skin against skin, sheets tangled, his musky scent and hard body, the full weight of him pinning me to the mattress…

How much worse would it feel if he had been mine and I’d lost him?

You were the most beautiful dream too, Gabriel.

But was he, really? I wrenched the headphones off my ears.

His birthday gift only confirmed what I already knew. None of this was innocent. Not the note or the cassette tape or the phone call on Friday. Not the shirt I made for him or our conversations.

You don’t have to fuck someone else’s boyfriend to be a cheater.

Fuck you, Gabriel Francis, for wielding your voice and your words like weapons of mass destruction.

I ripped the cassette out of the Walkman and crushed it under the heel of my boot then unspooled the tape until I was tangled up in long black ribbons.

Kindly go fuck yourself, thank you very much.

It was only after I’d completely destroyed the cassette tape that remorse set in.

I crawled into bed and pulled the covers over my head. It was for the best.

I needed to forget him.

CHAPTER TWELVE

February1993

Annika bounced back from her breakup quicker than I could have hoped. By the time we rang in the new year, he was all but forgotten.

Which was a relief. Out of sight, out of mind, and time to move on.