Page 81 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

“Gabriel,” I said softly.

He released a heavy exhale. “So after the show, we all pile into the van and I’m just staring out the window and I thought about you and I thought about us. How we are together. And thatisthe fucking point of it all.

“I never dreamed that I would find this kind of love. That I would find someone who just makes everything better. Not in that castles in the sky way or like a cheesy movie where they ride off into the sunset and everything is perfect but it’s all superficial Hollywood bullshit. In the real-life way where I buy you a pomegranate and you act like I gave you precious jewels. Or when you yell at me to go to the doctor because you care, and I’m pissed off, but I go anyway because I care about your feelings…I could give you a dozen examples but hopefully you get my point.”

“I do.” I smiled. “There’s no one I’d rather piss off.”

“There’s no one I’d rather drive nuts.”

We laughed.

“I think you’re the only person whoreallyknows me and youstilllove me,” he said, sounding amazed that I would love him, flaws and all. “And if I have any say over the matter, I plan on sticking around for a long, long time.”

“Thank you. You could have led with that. And don’t ruin it by saying it’s not within your control,” I added.

“I won’t.”

We lapsed into silence. Sometimes we just liked to stay on the line and listen to each other breathing. I think that’s true love. Just being happy that the other person exists and feeling so incredibly grateful that you’re lucky enough to share a life with them.

“I can’t wait to see you when you’re ninety with wrinkles and gray hair,” he said. “Your face will be a canvas for all the experiences you’ve lived and all the tears and the laughter, the wonder and joy and the heartache you’ve endured…” He sighed wistfully. “That’ll be something to see.”

Only Gabriel would make a love declaration likethatand sound wistful. “It’ll be something, all right.” I didn’t know whether to laugh at how ridiculous it was or cry over how sweet he made it sound. I did both, a combination of a laugh and a heartfelt sigh. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

“Crazy about you. When you’re ninety, I’ll still think you’re sexy and I’ll still write songs for you. You’re the only music I’ll never get tired of listening to.”

Gabriel said the most beautiful things. But I felt like that should have been my line. After all, hewasthe music.My music.

When Gabriel’s album dropped, at the height of grunge, America didn’t know what to make of his music. His album languishedat 189 on the charts for weeks and didn’t get much airplay. The critics gave it mixed reviews. While some called it a “romantic masterpiece” and raved about Gabriel’s powerful vocals and emotional intensity, others claimed it veered into melodrama.

Sales weren’t meeting the record label’s expectations, and it didn’t help that producing the album had gone way over budget. But Gabriel said it was worth it. He didn’t want his legacy to be a piece of garbage.

There was his art and then there was all the noise surrounding it. For Gabriel, they were two entirely separate things.

He refused to be swayed by the major-label hype. He wanted to be a credible artist.

He wasn’t chasing trends. He wanted to create something timeless, and that kind of thing didn’t always take off right out of the gate so he stayed true to his vision, and he did things his own way.

“Look,” he said when I met him in Boston for the weekend, “you’ve gotta be willing to roll the dice and lose. I don’t have any problem with failure. People should be allowed to fail. The only thing that matters to me is that I’m doing work thatI’mhappy with.”

Which, in turn, inspired me to adopt the same mindset.

My grunge collection sold out in all three boutiques as soon as it dropped. But I turned down an offer from a major department store.

It would have been a lucrative deal but after meeting with the executives and hearing their plans to mass-produce and capitalize on the grunge mania, it sounded as if they wanted to increase profit margins by skimping on quality.

I decided that it wasn’t the direction I wanted to go in and left the money on the table.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

“I’m so fuckingproud of you for sticking to your guns,” Gabriel said as we wandered through Camden Market.

“I didn’t want to let the team down.”

I’d just arrived in London early that morning to join Gabriel on the last leg of his European tour.

Over the past six months, we’d become pros at juggling our time together. We’d agreed from the start that our relationship came first but our careers shouldn’t suffer because of it. Gabriel made me promise that my career would never take a back seat to his; so as long as it didn’t conflict with getting my own work done and launching the next design collection, I joined him whenever I could.

It was a damp Saturday afternoon in October, and we clutched cardboard cups of tea. Gabriel was wearing a motorcycle jacket he bought from an artist running one of the stalls and new Doc Martens to replace the boots that were beyond repair.