Page 95 of It Couldn't Be You
“What good would it do?”
“Oh, I don’t know.You two could start dating?” Mom said bluntly. “Isn’t pretending worse?”
“But us dating could ruin everything.” How my mom couldn’t see it was a lost cause was beyond me.
“Ruin what?” she asked incredulously.
“Ruin mine and Katie’s whole friendship and our dynamic with the Hernandez family!”
“How would you two dating ruin any of those things?”
“If we broke up.”
“That’s a big if,” she said. Another cupboard door slapped shut.
The next morning, my hands shook the entire time I finished packing my bag, put on my mascara, and slipped on my shoes. My hands shook as I toasted half a bagel. It was as if I had taken three shots of espresso and eaten a handful of sugar. I was completely wired to be spending a few days straight with Gabriel, just the two of us. It was like a toddler being told they could have unlimited access to ice cream.
Now, here I was, loading my bags in the back of his truck as he pointed it toward the airport.
“Good morning,” I said through a yawn.
“Good morning to you, too.” He glanced over at me.
“I can’t believe you still drive this old truck,” I said, yanking mindlessly on the seat belt.
“It feels like a piece of me now. Like an extension of me, like a limb.”
“Feels like an extension of you to me, too.” I patted the glove compartment lovingly making him break into a grin.
We went through a drive-thru for venti lattes and were waiting for our turn in line, when I asked him when he’d last been in California.
“Before Christmas,” he said. “In a weird way, things kind of worked out. My lease came up right before I came home for Christmas. I was planning on coming back to LA in January and staying with a friend until I started my work trip. So, in a way, I had kind of already stopped living there. I didn’t have a place there anymore.”
“Are you planning on going back? I know your leg is getting better,” I said, pretending I hadn’t overheard him talking about this with my mom already.
“I don’t really want to live there anymore. It was a place to get things started—what I needed at the time. But it’s not what I need anymore. I’m trying to determine my next steps, especially with the book I’m writing.” He hit the blinker before he switched lanes. “Do I get a new place until I take off for my trip? Do I stay put and write freelance until I take off?”
“Where would you go if you got a new place?”
“Wherever I find my next story,” he said with a wink.
I just rolled my eyes.
“You know, I’ve been so focused on what I was supposed to be doing, but couldn’t do now and trying to salvage my plans, that I haven’t thought much about what Iwantto do in the interim. I’ve been in talks for a couple of stories, but none require jetting off somewhere cool. I can do most of the work from my bed,” he said.
I imagined the two of us lounging in a bedroom working on our laptops, hot mugs of coffee on our end tables, the early morning sun peeking in through the blinds. I shook the image out of my head.
Gabriel was pulling into a spot in the airport parking lot. We yanked our bags from the car and chased after the airport shuttle. We bumped along in the shuttle, shoulder to shoulder. We were quiet, but Gabe kept looking over at me with a grin I could recognize anywhere.
The two of us jetting off on a trip together; the two of us navigating the airport. It felt like my favorite song had come on the radio, and I didn’t want to miss a single second of it. I wanted to rewind and trace over these moments again and again while I was in the middle of living them. We trudged through check-in and security, then raced down to our gate to realize we, in our antsy excitement, had arrived early,andour flight was delayed. We had a good hour to kill.
I was standing by our gate, shoulders slumped. I shrugged. “I guess we could get some work done?”
“Nah, I know a place,” he said, grabbing my hand and leading me to an airport gift shop full of snacks, mugs with Texas flags, books, and magazines.
“I kind of want one of these mugs,” I said as we walked through the doors. I picked up a small white mug with a tiny Texas flag imprinted across it.
“One of these,” he nodded to the mug in my hand, “or one of these?” He held up a giant mug with the slogan, “Don’t Mess With TX!” on it in red, white, and blue font. He wiggled his eyebrows.
