Page 45 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“There you go,” Gabriel said. “You restored your good karma.”

I sighed. “If only. The old man behind the counter thought it was so sweet that a little kid donated her allowance that he rewarded my good deed with a candy bar. A jumbo-sized bar.And I ate it.”

Gabriel howled. “This is priceless. An evil mastermind at the tender age of eight. I’ll bet you were adorable. Like a little OliverTwist.” Gabriel held out his hands and gave me a sad, puppy dog face. “Please sir, I want some more.”

“Are you kidding? I was the Artful Dodger!”

Gabriel found that hilarious. He was laughing so hard that a guy sitting by the window shot us a look before he went back to sulking over his coffee.

I’m pretty sure it was Lou Reed. Or someone who looked exactly like him.

“I’ll bet this story would have scandalized the turtleneck guy.”

I rolled my eyes and took a sip of my coffee. “You’re really hung up on those turtlenecks, aren’t you?”

“He didn’t have a passionate bone in his body,” Gabriel said dismissively.

“Wow, you really saw a lot from that window. You’re being pretty judgmental about a guy you don’t know,” I said. “For your information, we had a lot of interesting conversations, and I enjoyed his company.”

Gabriel snorted. “Conversations, huh? That’s code for the sex was lousy.”

Sex with David was underwhelming but I was eighteen and inexperienced when we met, so I’d chalked it up to sex being overrated. What had bothered me the most though was that he never took off his socks.

When I asked Annika if that was normal, she’d laughed for a solid two minutes and told me to dump him immediately.

But it felt disloyal to dish the dirt on David’s sock-wearing-during-sex habit, so I kept that to myself.

“How many girlfriends have you had?” I asked instead.

He shrugged. “Not that many.”

“I find that really hard to believe.”

“Believe it. I’ve only had one long-term relationship that could be called serious.”

When I prodded him for more details, he told me they were together on and off for almost two years when he was out in L.A. He said she was a “very cool chick” but it just didn’t work out.

I sensed some lingering feelings, but he denied it.

“It was my first serious relationship,” he said. “My only one, really. I was young and stupid and didn’t know how to handle it. I was dealing with a lot of heavy shit at the time, and she was a lot more switched on than me.”

“Did you love her?”

He thought about that for a minute. “I liked her. I cared about her. There was a time when IthoughtI might have loved her. But when we broke up, I just felt relieved. I was free to go anywhere I wanted, do anything I wanted. Free to make mistakes and fuck up without dragging someone down. And I don’t think I would have felt that way if I’dreallyloved her.”

“So you didn’t even get any good songs out of it? No tragic ballads?”

“Sounds like a missed opportunity,” he joked. “Did you love the turtleneck guy?”

“I guess it was the same for me. I liked him and cared about him but I didn’t really mourn the loss when it was over.” I circled the rim of my coffee cup with my finger. David had accused me of being cold and never letting my walls down. We were together for over a year, and when we broke up, he said he felt like he never really knew me at all. “I thought maybe there was something wrong with me for not feeling more emotional when I ended things.”

“There’s nothing wrong with you,” Gabriel said. “He wasn’t your true love. He wasn’t The One.”

He reached for my hand across the table and clasped it, brushing his thumb over mine like it was perfectly natural that we should be holding hands.

Gabriel had great hands. Veiny like his forearms.

David hadn’t been big on hand-holding or any form of public affection, but whenever he’d held my hand, it had always felt awkward. Like our hands didn’t quite fit together. His weren’t rough and calloused like Gabriel’s, and they weren’t as warm either.