Page 35 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

I yanked my hand away and stood so abruptly, I knocked my chair over. Gabriel righted it and I gathered up my coat and bag and scarf and hugged them to my chest.

He grabbed my arm to stop me from leaving. “Don’t go yet. I want you to listen to my music.” He bit the corner of his mouth, vulnerable. “Please stay.”

“Gabriel—”

“I won’t touch you again.” He held up his hands. “Unless you ask me to,” he added.

I looked around at the tables filled with people drinking coffee, reading books, chain-smoking, chatting. “You’re just going to go up there and play right now?”

“Sure. Why not? It’s what I do.” He turned to Sean who had stopped at our table with my mom. “Sean doesn’t mind, do you?”

“You already act like you own the damn place,” Sean grumbled, but I could tell he didn’t mind. Dammit.

“I’m just the dishwasher,” Gabriel said.

“Don’t expect any star treatment from me. You’re not Bono.”

“I never wanted to be a rock star. Next thing you know you’re up on stage ripping off your shirt and getting your nipple pierced. I’m just in it for the music.” Gabriel grabbed his guitar and headed to the mic stand along the back wall like a wandering troubadour.

“It’s gonna happen for him,” Sean said. “He’ll get that record deal. But he won’t know how to handle it.”

“In what way?” I asked.

“His morals. His lofty ideals. He wants to keep his music pure and unadulterated,” Sean said. “But he needs to get it into his head that music is a business just like everything else.”

“Maybe he’s happy with the way things are,” I argued. “Maybe he doesn’t want more.”

Sean huffed out a laugh. “If he didn’t want more, he’d be at home playing to his four walls. He wouldn’t even need an audience. He wants to remain anonymous, but he also wants to get his music out there. He can’t have it both ways.”

“Sean’s right,” my mom said. “If he…”

I don’t know what she was about to say because Gabriel started singing “Just Like A Woman” and my mom sat up and listened.

Like all his covers, he made it his own, changed the composition and sang it in a different key.

I don’t think I’d ever heard any musician infuse so much passion into their music as Gabriel did. This acoustic set made his music feel even more intimate.

Whenever I listened to his voice, it made my heart hurt. It gave me chills. It filled me with longing and lust and heartache and joy.

That was his superpower. His music made you feel so much. An onslaught of emotions.

Judging by my mom’s expression, she was enraptured too.

After the Dylan cover, he sang The Smiths’ “Reel Around the Fountain,” and the Velvet Underground’s “All Tomorrow’s Parties” followed by an original song that hadn’t been on the cassette he gave me.

The song was about the regrets that lingered after someone was gone. He lamented over disappointing them and never living up to their expectations.

I thought it was beautiful.

You could feel his pain when he sang it, and I got the feeling he wrote it for his father. Not that I knew anything about his father. He’d never mentioned him. I was basing it on what I’d read in the notebook, just a few lines but enough to convey that they had a rocky relationship.

He finished on a sigh and tipped his chin in thanks for the smattering of applause, then leaned into the mic and spoke.

“I wrote the next song for Jane,” he said. “That’s not her real name. It’s just the name I conjured up the first time I ever saw her face. There was just something about this girl that hit me right here.” He slammed his fist against his chest. “Boom! I remember thinking…what if she’s my once in a lifetime?”

He laughed at himself. Then his eyes found mine. “Guess we’ll never know, will we? Now she’ll always be the one who got away.”

Our gazes locked and held across the room, and I cursed fate once again for being so unbelievably cruel. Guys like him didn’t come along every day. He wasn’t an asshole. He wasn’t arrogant or condescending or an egomaniac. Gabriel was special.