Page 33 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

No! No, you did not. Bad Cleo. He barely ever crossed your mind.

“Mind if I sit here?” Without waiting for an answer, he shed his army jacket and sat in the chair kitty-corner to mine.

He wore a navy wool sweater with a stretched-out neck and a hole right above his heart. I could see his white T-shirt underneath, and for some reason I found that endearing.

After he took off his beanie and ran his hands through his messy hair, trying to unflatten it, he turned to my mom who I’d failed to introduce. “Hey. I’m Gabriel.”

She shook the hand he offered. “Nice to meet you, Gabriel. I’m Alice, Cleo’s mum.”

“You look too young to be her mom. I would have guessed older sister or distant cousin.”

“What a charmer,” my mom said with a smile. “In fact, we were just talking about you.”

“And you’reBritish.” He nodded like he was confirming something he’d already suspected.

His gaze swung to me. “So you were talking about me, Cleo?” He gave me a boyish grin. It was adorable.

But I tried to steel myself against his charms.

I shook my head. “Nope. Sean was.” My gaze dipped to his guitar. The case was chunkier than his Telecaster and covered in stickers. “You’re not playing here now, are you?” I sounded horrified, like I couldn’t imagine anything worse than being subjected to his music.

“This?” He looked down at his guitar. “Nah. I just carry it around to look cool.”

“Such a poser.”

“You’ve got me all figured out.” He drummed his fingers on the table. “So, how’s the fashion designing coming along?”

“Great. I’m designing my first capsule collection.”

His brows shot up. “Yeah? You’re really doing it?”

I couldn’t help but smile with pride. “Yep. I’m really doing it. Sink or swim, I’m all in.”

“No point in half-assing it,” he said. “But don’t doubt yourself for a minute. It’s going to be incredible.”

“You sound so confident.”

“Because I know what you’re capable of.”

Before I had a chance to respond, he turned to my mom, dismissing me. Which was a good thing. I needed a minute to pull myself together.

“Cleo said you’re a music journalist?”

“I was. Years ago.”

“How did you get into it?”

My mom said she was young and determined and just figured, why not. What have I got to lose?

Gabriel asked her a million questions about the musicians she’d interviewed, and which ones were most memorable. She talked about Bob Dylan who was famously elusive. Janis Joplin who she met at Woodstock and had a drink with. And a few of the other music legends she’d met in the seventies and eighties.

No mention of Nick Ashby or the Rogue Prophets, thankfully.

“I interviewed Robert Plant in his suite at the Park Lane on Central Park South,” she told Gabriel. “He was hobbling around on crutches with his golden curls. He was lovely. Very friendly. He’d been in a car crash in the Greek Isles. We talked a bit about that and the band, of course.”

Gabriel couldn’t get over it. He wasmadabout Led Zeppelin. “Jimmy Page is one of my heroes. I taught myself how to play finger vibrato because of him.”

“I can picture you as an angsty teen in your drafty attic bedroom playing ‘Stairway to Heaven,’” I teased.