Page 65 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“Why wouldn’t I be? Okay, sure, my best friend is shacking up with my ex, but it could be a lot worse. You could be shacking up with David, and I’d have to buy him a lifetime supply of socks.”

“Stop,” I laughed. “So you’re not mad?”

“I’m not mad. I’m happy for you.” She sounded genuinely happy for me, and that was the mark of a true friend.

“You don’t think I’m crazy for moving so fast?”

“Oh no, I definitely think you’re crazy but I think you’re both crazy in the same way, so it works,” she said. “It sounds like everything is going really well though.”

“It is.” I wandered into my bedroom and picked up the discarded clothes from the floor. Cradling the phone between my ear and shoulder, I folded Gabriel’s T-shirt and jeans and stuffed them in his duffel bag. Half of his clothes were already in my apartment. “But sometimes I worry that it’s too good to be true. It almost feels too easy.”

“Cleo,” she chastised. “That’s a good thing. Relationships don’t have to be hard work or painful to be the real thing. This is how it’ssupposedto feel when you meet your person. And I think Gabriel is your person.”

We talked for a few more minutes and as soon as we hung up, my mom called so I told her the news too.

“This is great news,” she said. “I have a really good feeling about this. You’ll have to bring him to our summer party. It’s the third weekend in June. Gabriel will love it.”

I wasn’t so sure about that. I wasn’t even planning to attend. “I think Gabriel has a gig that weekend. In fact, I’m almost positive he does so I’ll probably skip this year and stay in the city. For his gig,” I added.

“Mmhmm.” She wasn’t buying it. “Make sure you invite him. You’ve skipped the last two years. Everyone misses you, Cleo.”

I moved to the window and watched a flock of pigeons congregating on a rooftop. “I’m sure they won’t even notice I’m missing.”

“Well, I will,” she said. “And I think Gabriel will get a kick out of the lads.”

They were lads, all right. The exact kind of lads I prayed that Gabriel wouldn’t become when he signed a record deal.

Gabriel moved in the following Saturday. It was Memorial Day weekend.

Everything he owned fit in Devin’s car. He added his CDs to my collection, his books to my shelves, propped his guitars in the corner of the living room and hooked up his stereo in the spare bedroom.

To celebrate our new living arrangement, we had sex on the sofa and danced a drunken tango across the living room and all the way up to the roof where I hugged the chimney and fisted Gabriel’s T-shirt while he sat on the ledge with his legs dangling over the side. As if we weren’t six stories above a brick courtyard.

I thought he needed boundaries; he was ready to fly.

He turned to me. “Everything feels possible. All our dreams, our hopes, our future…it’s just waiting for us to reach out and grab it.”

“Yep, I hear you. But could you just get off that ledge, please?”

“Do you hear that?”

All I could hear was the pounding of my own heart. I didn’t want him to fall off the roof. But Gabriel told me to listen more closely, and then I heard it.

A man singing opera music. Rigoletto.

Gabriel joined in…Le donna é mobile…moving his arms like he was conducting an orchestra…È sempre misero.

I held on tighter. It was crazy, but beautiful. And so was he.

Only in New York City could you sit on a rooftop on a warm spring night and listen to opera music under the stars while down below, taxis honked their horns and sirens wailed and couples made love and argued. The scent of curry and sauteedgarlic in tomato sauce and fresh tortillas and all the neighbors’ cooking aromas filtered from open windows and filled the air.

Our wild, adventurous life together was just beginning. Not perfect, but ours.

I wanted to remember every second. Not only remember it butliveit.

So I boldly, bravely climbed onto the ledge and sat next to him.

Life, from a bird’s-eye view.