Elephant in the Room

They sat at a booth in the back of the pizza parlor. He twirled the golden cross around his neck; she twisted the mood ring on her right hand. He watched a football game on the TV above her head, and she kept her bright gray eyes on the wolf tattoo on his bicep. The past few weeks since she had met him, she loved to watch the ink canine stare back at her with golden eyes that showed no judgment. It brought her comfort.

“I’ve been here before with some friends. They make the best breadsticks,” she said to break the silence.

“There’s a Round Table down the street.” His reply was quick but emotionless.

“Well, Round Table is nice, but smaller places can be nice too.”

His lips pursed. “Yeah, but when something is good, it expands.”

She sighed. “I guess.” Sometimes people just think that something was the best because a lot of people tell them it is, and its popularity grew that way. People just didn’t always have the chance to explore other things that may be better.

His grip on the cross tightened. “You know, my parents grew up on Round Table.”

“Same here.” But that didn’t mean she wouldn’t try new places, new things. She looked up; he was staring at her now. His chapped lips were a firm, thin line, and his cold brown eyes locked with hers. Her breathing became unsteady. Her gaze darted back to the eyes of the wolf. She took a deep breath, determined to make her point. “What do you like about Round Table?”

“It’s traditional.”

“Sortta. It’s like Subway. It’s old, but it’s not really traditional. It may have started out more like a deli when it was local, but now it’s a little disconnected.” She watched as he twirled the cross more quickly between his fingers. She swallowed and twisted her mood ring a few more times. “There’s this small deli in my hometown that makes the best sandwiches. It’s a lot like the old delis. We could meet up on Sunday and take a road trip so I can show you.”

“You know I’m busy Sundays.” He sighed and reached for her hand across the table, still holding his cross with the other. “I thought that maybe you’d be busy too.” He gave her a close-lipped half-smile.

She patted his hand but didn’t look away from the wolf. “You know that I keep Sundays open.” And she wasn’t about to change that for him.

He shrugged and withdrew his hand. The smile disappeared. “You know, it’s getting hard for us to meet.”

She couldn’t stand to look into his eyes, so she looked at his stubble instead. She licked her lips. He was certainly managing to raise her blood pressure out of more than just anger. As the heat rose in her cheeks, she was glad that he wouldn’t look at her. Even when he had her in a better mood, she would never tell him how turned on she was by all his stubble, his shaggy hair, his muscles, his chest hair…he was wild and animalistic. He couldn’t exactly call himself “traditional” with his sweat-stained muscle shirt and his multitude of piercings and tattoos. And with her Birkenstocks, moon-shaped necklace, and pierced tongue, neither was she; she thought he knew that. She moved the ring up and down her finger. “We can rearrange our schedules.”

“My schedule is plenty open.”

Her hand formed a fist so tight that her knuckles showed white. She imagined ripping off his ears and making him listen to himself talking. “Maybe you can explain your…schedule to me.”

He raised the cross to his chin and angled it so that light from the window reflected off it and hit her in the eye. “Maybe later.”

She blinked as her eyes watered. She looked away, mentally cursing that piece of jewelry; she had a much less polite name for it, but she would never tell him. She looked out the window. The sky was a bright, clear blue with only a few white clouds sprinkled here and there. The trees boasted pink and white flowers, and the breeze gently brushed against them. A man in baggy, torn clothes slept under one of these trees with a paper sack clutched in his fist. She had no clue how anyone could think that just one god could create all this beauty or all the world’s sins. She tried to, for him, but it was hard to keep her mind open by herself, even when he was his most tolerant. That’s without the names he sometimes called her: pagan at his mildest, Satanist at his worst.

“Well,” he said, getting up out of the booth, “I guess we’ll just see when we can meet again.” He grabbed his wallet and threw a couple ten-dollar bills on the table. “See you.” She thought she heard him mutter “pagan,” and she nearly twisted her finger off with the ring. With that, he turned to leave, and she could no longer see the neutral eyes of the wolf.

She examined the table: an empty glass before her, a half-drank Coke on the other side, a half-eaten pepperoni pizza, and three breadsticks. She sighed. He could’ve tried a breadstick before he stormed off, but at least he paid. She saw a waitress—an elderly woman with a blue-tinted wig—heading toward the booth, and she raised her hand to get the woman’s attention.

“Can I have a large takeout box?” she asked.

The waitress’s wrinkled mouth curled into a small, wavering smile. Her nametag read “Lynn.” “Of course, hon.” Lynn’s soft, pale blue eyes looked from her to the half-drank Coke and back again. “I’ll be right back with that.”

***

Sel carried the large pizza box up the stairs. Her sandals flopped with each step, and she mentally cursed as she nearly tripped for the third time. She finally reached the fifth floor and shuffled over to apartment 501. She balanced the box in one hand and fumbled with her keys with the other. They fell to the floor with a clang, and she bit back a stream of profanities. When she bent forward to retrieve them, she lost her balance and hit her head on the door.

“Why can’t anything go right today?” she whimpered.

“It’s open!” a man’s voice called from inside the apartment.

She sighed, swiped up her keys, and opened the door.

Sel stepped inside the two-bedroom apartment. To the right was a two-shelf wooden bookcase with books from Decade of the Wolf to The New Polytheism and The Complete World of Greek Mythology. Atop the bookcase sat a 30” TV. Against the wall near the door was a dusty dark blue couch with a small square coffee table in front of it. The walls were decorated with a couple photos of her, her parents, and a young man about her age, but mostly the decorations consisted of framed paintings, some of very fit people, some of far-off landscapes, and others that were too abstract and colorful to identify the subject. To the left, the apartment turned off into the bedrooms, and across the living room from Sel were the kitchen and dining room. In the middle of the living room were a canvas with a tarp draped over it, paints, and the young man from the photos sitting in a wooden chair. He was 6’, lean but not skinny, and wearing a gray t-shirt and sweatpants. His shoulder-length black hair was shaggy with the barest traces of sideburns. His smile was wide and bright, though off-white. His eyes shimmered golden-amber.

Her heart jumped when she saw him looking at her, but her frustration quickly returned. “I brought you some leftovers.” She kicked the door closed then flicked off her sandals.

“Some? That looks more like the whole meal.” He chuckled.

She rolled her eyes. “Just come get this.”

“Well, I guess somebody had a bad date.” He launched himself from the chair and went to relieve her of the box.

She shoved the box into his waiting arms. “Why would you say that?” She took a seat on the couch as he went into the kitchen.

“Come on, Sel. You’re not exactly singing a happy tune and I could practically hear you storming up here from a flight down.” Cabinets opened and closed. “So, let me guess, Danny’s still not taking well to the polytheism thing? I told you he wouldn’t take it well so soon.”

“Actually,” Sel snapped, “it didn’t come up.”

“Really?” The microwave door opened and closed, and the dinging of buttons sounded. “Well then, what did you talk about?”

“Food, mostly. And our schedules.”

He snorted. “Well, aren’t you two just riveting?”

Her hand clenched into a fist. She quickly relaxed, resigned. “I know.”

“Did he at least try the breadsticks?”

“No. He wanted to go to Round Table. It’s more traditional, he says.”

His voice grew bitter. “Of course he’d think that.”

“It’s a popular belief.”

The microwave dinged. “Doesn’t mean that I agree with it.” He came out with a paper plate of five slices of pizza.

“Dear gods, you think you have enough to eat there?” She huffed quietly when he shrugged. “We talked about the deli back home. I was thinking that maybe we could take a road trip Sunday and grab a sandwich. What you think?”

He sat down, wrinkling his nose. “I don’t know. I promised Les that we’d spend the weekend together—”

“He can come too. The more, the merrier.” She grinned at the image: she would drive, and Gabriel would sit in the back, shouting “It’s a Small World” just to annoy her; Les would sit shot gun, to serve as a buffer. Gabriel would inevitably get louder the farther they went, and when yelling “shut up” at him proved ineffective, Les would start telling her very loud, very crude jokes, either to drown Gabriel out or embarrass him to the point of silence.

He wrinkled his nose again. “OK, I’m in. Danny coming?”

She arched an eyebrow at him “Sunday, Gabriel. Sunday.”

Gabriel’s face lit considerably. “Well then, I’d be delighted.” He laughed as she glared at him. A smirk danced across his face, and his eyes shined at her. “But…isn’t three an odd number? There’s this guy at work—” Sel groaned “—named Matt. I think you’d like to meet him.”

“Please—”

He raised his hand at her. “Now, just hear me out. He’s a great guy, real nice and smart and creative. He knows pretty much every movie out there, and he’s one of those fit, tanned Italian types. I know how much you like them.” He winked and chuckled, but his laugh tapered off as she glared at him. “Best of all, he’s one of us.”

“One of us? Really? We’ve talked about this—”

“Oh, don’t get all politically correct on me. You know what I mean. He’s open-minded to unorthodox things and even partakes in some.”

She chuckled. “That did not come out right.”

He put his forehead in his palm. His chest heaved up and down in suppressed laughter. “Get…get your mind out of the gutter. I meant unorthodox religions.” They didn’t stop their snickering for a few minutes.

“Education?” Sel finally asked.

“High school.”

She twisted her mood ring. “I don’t know…Danny’s at least going to community college. He’s trying to better himself.”

He clenched his fist in his lap. “Well, Matt had to give up his college funds to help his family when his dad was laid off. He’s going to start community college in the fall.”

“Well,” she said, “he sounds perfect. And you know what they say: the perfect ones are either gay or taken.” Or both. She looked into his golden-amber eyes.

“Just tell me you’ll give him a chance.”

She sighed. It’s not so easy, she wanted to say. Danny was the third guy she had tried to date that year. She felt pathetic for getting ready to move on to number four already. The second guy, Luciano, hadn’t been much of a catch either. He was a grocery bagger at Safeway, fit, tanned, had an average education that peaked at how much child support Charlie Sheen had to pay, but he was a homophobe. He denied it, but Gabriel and Les had told Sel of the numerous slurs Luciano spat at them when she wasn’t in the room. The first man, Michael, had almost been perfect for Sel. He was a mechanic with a mind for both classics and basic physics, but he loved the “art of car restoration” too much to nurture this potential. He had been a kicker on his high school football team and had the strong, toned legs to prove it; he kept his sandy brown hair in a buzz cut and haphazardly shaved his face, often leaving a mix of stubble and cuts. He was tolerant of her religion and explored all kinds of polytheism with her. Gabriel and Les never had a complaint about him. But the relationship ended when Michael accused her of sleeping with Gabriel. She insisted that Gabriel was gay, but Michael told her that Gabriel looked at her differently from other girls and that not everything was black and white. When she couldn’t tell Michael that there was nothing between her and Gabriel, he broke things off. She missed their talks, and about a week ago she had found a voicemail from him on her cell phone. She had been too embarrassed to admit that maybe he was right, so she had left the message alone.

Danny seemed to have potential at the start. They met when he waited on her, Les, and Gabriel at Denny’s. Les, with Gabriel’s arm around him, had been trying to tell her about The Artist, but some men at the table across from them kept shouting “faggot,” “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve,” and other homophobic slurs. Gabriel had gotten uncomfortable and wanted to leave, but Les insisted that they hold their ground. Sel agreed. After about fifteen minutes of this, when he came back with their food, Danny stormed over to the other table and told them to shut the hell up before he escorted them out. They shut up, and Danny apologized to Les, Gabriel, and Sel. His physique and smile made Sel blush, and though Denny’s required him to properly cover himself and take out his piercings, she could still see the hole in his bottom lip and the wolf tattoo peeking out from under his sleeve. He had been so kind and had so freely engaged in their conversation about Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil that she had been blinded to the golden cross.

Sel glanced at Gabriel’s canvas. “So, what are you painting?”

He cupped his hands and began to twiddle his thumbs. “Uh…well…that’s a surprise.”

“A surprise? Why?”

“It just is.” His eyes darted about the room. He suddenly grabbed something under the coffee table. “Look at what came today.” He raised a DVD titled Todo Sobre Mi Madre.

Sel shook her head then smiled slightly. “Sweet. No more watching it in ten-minute increments.” She gestured to the TV. “Pop it in.” Gabriel nodded and went to the DVD player. “Be sure to turn on the English subtitles. I took French, not Spanish.”

“I know, I know.” He put the disk in the player, grabbed the remote, and sat down.

“You know, I don’t quite get why more people don’t know about this movie. I mean, it has Penélope Cruz in it.”

He snorted. “A movie about gays, transvestites, and AIDs. That would go over well here.”

“Good point.”

She reclined as the opening credits began, and Gabriel picked up his pizza. Silence settled until Esteban got hit by a car with his mother, Manuela, watching. Sel and Gabriel jumped as, in the midst of their tears, the song “Little Ghost” sounded. Gabriel scrambled for his phone, Sel glaring at him and muttering a curse. He checked who it was before smiling and answering.

“Hey, Les. How’s it going?” He paused. “Oh, nothing much. I’m just kicking back and having some dinner.” Sel sighed, reached for the remote, and paused the movie. Gabriel looked up to see her tapping her fingers on her arm, her eyes cold on him. “Uh…hold on a sec, Les. I should probably take this into my room. Sel had a bad date, and I’m kinda interrupting her movie…” He stood. “Yeah, Danny…yeah, she’s still seeing him…” He smiled nervously at Sel before running down the hall.

She started the movie again once he was out of the room. For a few minutes, she watched, but her gaze constantly drifted to Gabriel’s unattended canvas. He didn’t exactly say that she couldn’t look at it; he just wasn’t telling her what it was. And anyway, with the day she was having, she deserved a little peek at something beautiful. She glanced down the hall. Once she was sure that he was not coming, she rushed to the painting and tossed back the tarp. Her eyes widened.

On the canvas were light pencil outlines of a nude woman—complete with torso, legs, head, and face—perched on a rock. Some of the woman had been filled in with alternating red and pink brush strokes. The image so far was smooth, bright, and well-crafted. Sel thought it was beautiful, but it made her heart race too quickly. The face that stared back at her was her own; she recognized the round-almond eyes and slightly crooked pug nose from her own mirror. At the corner of the canvas was the photo of her in a black-and-green striped bikini, lying on a rock with head propped on one hand, her other arm resting across her side, and her right leg arched behind her left. Her eyes flared at the camera, her dark brown hair flowed down her front and barely reached the top of her bosoms, and her crimson lips were pulled into a sexy pout. Looking at the photo and the painting, she placed her cheek in her palm and turned violently red.

Sel heard Gabriel coming back down the hall. She threw the tarp over the painting and leapt to the couch. When he returned, she smiled at him, lips quivering.

“Well, Les agrees with me.” He slumped into his chair. “He thinks you should meet Matt. So, it’s two against one. I win.” He smiled brightly at her, but his expression warped into confusion when he saw her faltering smile. “Everything all right?”

“Yeah, yeah.” She glanced at his canvas. “I just…I’d like to know what you’re painting. I don’t know why you wouldn’t tell me, your best friend.”

He twiddled his thumbs and pretended to watch the movie, but her eyes bore into him for too long. “Uh…well, I should tell you that…uh…” He took a deep breath, and his next words came out in a rush. “Les asked if he could spend the night, and I said yes. He should be here in ten, twenty minutes, tops.”

Sel’s mouth gaped open as her mind processed his words. Blood rose to her cheeks, her nose, until finally her entire face was bright pink. “What?” Her voice was startlingly quiet and strained. “I thought that Thursday nights were our nights to hang out, just the two of us.”

Gabriel leaned forward and tore a chunk off one of his slices of pizza. He kept his eyes on his food. “I thought you’d like having Les over. It’s like you said: the more, the merrier.”

“I was talking about the road trip.”

“But you love having him over any other time.”

“But not on a Thursday night.” Her heart stung as he looked at her in complete and utter incomprehension. “None of my boyfriends have ever spent the night here on a Thursday. Les shouldn’t either.”

Gabriel popped the chunk of pizza into his mouth and shook his head. “I don’t get why you’re making such a fuss about this. We’ll still be spending time together. Les’ll just provide comic relief.” He glanced up and smirked at her. When she didn’t return his amusement, he turned back to his food. “Besides, it’s not the same as one of your boyfriends coming over. You usually date assholes.”

Sel flinched as if he had punched her in the stomach. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. Danny’s a religious bigot, Luciano was a homophobe…let’s face it, Michael’s the only decent guy you’ve dated in a year. I don’t know how you managed to screw that up.”

Her hand clenched. “I didn’t screw that up.” Gabriel did.

His eyes grazed over her. He sighed and shifted in his chair. “Look, I’m sorry. That was uncalled for. But Les is spending the night, and he’ll be here any minute. If you don’t make a scene about this in front of him, you and I will go catch a movie after work on Monday. K?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Les and I have plans on Monday.” Her tone dripped with venom.

He twiddled his thumbs again. “Tuesday, then?”

She huffed. “Fine, whatever. But you have to show me that painting, too. Now.”

Gabriel hesitated but nodded. “All right.” He snatched the photo when she seemed to be watching the TV and stuffed it in his pocket. He curled back the tarp and angled the painting toward her.

She tried to feign surprise. “Wow, Gabriel. That looks great. Who’s it of?”

His grip on the painting tightened. “It’s…it’s Aphrodite. It’s for my Greek Gods series.”

Her heart sank. “Oh. Well, it looks wonderful so far. It’s great how you’re using pink and red for the goddess of love.” A knock at the door startled her.

“I guess that’s Les.”

She nodded. “That was quick.”

Gabriel shrugged. He shouted at the door, “It’s unlocked!”

The door flung open and in popped a sandy-haired young man, about Sel and Gabriel’s age, with wide brown eyes. He was gangly and freckled from head to toe but had a bright smile from ear to ear, prominent laugh lines, and a beautiful short, straight nose. His hair was cut to fuzz, and he wore a red Def Leppard t-shirt, faded 501s, and white-turned-gray Sketchers.

“Hey! How’s my favorite duo doing?” The man closed the door and leapt over to Gabriel’s chair. He swept down and gave Gabriel a give peck on the lips.

Sel brought her knees to her chest and hugged them tight, trying to keep herself together in light of their affection. Her eyes stayed on the coffee table, and her voice was low. “Hey, Les.”

Les watched her, his head cocked to the side and his arms crossed over his chest. “You were right, Gabriel. She is in a bad mood. What’s wrong, sweetheart? Danny getting to you?”

She glanced over at Gabriel, but he avoided her gaze. “It’s been an emotionally draining day.”

“Been there, done that.” Les dropped to the floor and sat cross-legged in between Gabriel’s chair and the coffee table, facing Sel. He tapped his index finger on his leg. Then his laugh lines wrinkled as he flashed her a smile. “You wanna hear a joke?”

Gabriel let out a soft groan. “Oh no, not the one about the guys at the railroad.” He snatched his plate from the coffee table.

Les rolled his eyes. “Prude.” His smile widened as he caught sight of Sel’s small smirk. “How about the one about the woman who was in love with the priest—”

“No!”

“Prude,” Les and Sel said together, then chuckled.

“How about the one about Hagrid’s shoe size—”

Gabriel turned red. “Tell that one, and I’ll shove a sock down your throat.”

Les arched an eyebrow. “Promises, promises.”

Gabriel’s blushing deepened to crimson. He tried to bury his face in his free hand, but his shoulders heaved in silent laughter.

Sel’s body uncurled as her laughter rang throughout the apartment. “You’re 0 for 2 today, Gabriel.”

“Oh?” Les said. “What else did he say?”

 “Just something about a guy partaking in unorthodox things, if you catch my drift.”

Les laughed now, and Gabriel tried to hide further in his palm.

Sel laughed with Les until she felt her phone vibrate in her jeans pocket. She pulled it out and saw a text from Danny.

I’m sorry. Want 2 try again 2morrow? We dont have 2 talk about schedules.

Talk about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. At least he apologized this time. She sighed and glanced at Gabriel through her eyelashes. As quickly as his blushing began, he had recovered from his embarrassment and was indulging in his pizza. His eyes were on her, like the eyes of a dog waiting for his master to pay him heed. They only watched each other for a few seconds before Gabriel pulled at the slice too hard and some cheese flung back and flicked him in the eye. She let out a single ringing laugh. He squinted at her—though his eyes were too bright and playful for it to be a glare—and reached for a napkin. Les laughed as well and grabbed the napkin before Gabriel could, just to hand it to him.

Sel smiled. She felt her phone vibrate again. She checked it, and Danny had simply sent ?. Her eyes returned to Gabriel, who was dabbing sauce off his cheek. She could just tell him. She knew that she could just tell him the whole truth, and no matter what his feelings were, he wouldn’t judge her for it. He could still live with her, and hell, maybe he already knew and lived with it now.

She turned to Les. She thought of the many times she had seen him and Gabriel snuggling on the couch, falling asleep together while watching TV Land, holding hands under the table at dinner. She thought of how she and Les would tell each other dirty jokes, make fun of stupid customers, and see a movie or bowl while Gabriel was at work.

She chewed on her bottom lip and after a few minutes replied, Sure. When? Where?

In less than a minute, Danny replied, Round Table @ 1.

She raised her hand to her head and rubbed her temple. At least he chose her lunch break.

Fine. Can Les and Gabriel come? If they were there, Danny might not feel comfortable talking about religion. Maybe she’d get a glimpse of that man she met at Denny’s.

A few seconds later, Of course. C u then.

She tossed her phone on the cushion next to her. “I’m going to Round Table tomorrow for lunch. Do you guys want to come with me? After lunch, I’ll pay for a second pizza, and you can bring it home for dinner. We can have a sleepover before the road trip.”
           

Les cocked his head. “Road trip?”

Gabriel flicked his hand. “I’ll tell you later.” He looked at Sel, his eyebrows raised. “A sleepover, eh? You sure you’re OK with that?” Sel nodded. “An extra-large vegetarian with white sauce?” She nodded again.

“N-ice! Thanks, sweetheart.” Les winked at Sel, bringing a smile to her face.

“You in, Gabriel?”

“Sure, sounds like a plan.” He glanced at her phone, and his eyes flared. His tone did not change. “Can I invite Matt? To the sleepover, I mean.”

“Sure, but he has to sleep out here on the couch.”

Gabriel set his empty plate on the coffee table and returned to his painting. Les scooted next to Gabriel’s chair and set his hand on his boyfriend’s thigh. Sel tore her eyes away from them and lay back on the couch to watch Penélope Cruz try to explain that she got knocked up by a transvestite who had stayed at the church’s shelter. Sel thought that Penélope was lucky. At least in Todo Sobre Mi Madre, a girl could sleep with a cross-dresser with fake boobs and no one would question her. No one wondered about her sexual orientation, if she loved Esteban…“Lola”…or if Lola loved her back. Gabriel couldn’t even paint a sexy picture of Sel without her questioning their entire friendship: Does Gabriel love her? Does she love Gabriel? Is he gay? Bi? She likes him, as even more than a friend, but could she ever be physically attracted to him? He was cute, sure…and perhaps, sometimes, when Les spent the night and Sel could hear them from her room, she’d imagined him nude and felt some stirrings…but then, when they were just spending time together, it appalled her. She closed her eyes and tried to picture it, but the image made her shudder. She glanced over, and neither Gabriel nor Les seemed to notice. And then there’s Danny’s beastly beauty and, she hated to admit, a personality to match, not to mention Michael’s voicemail that lay in waiting.

She dug her nails into her jeans. That damn photo. She wouldn’t have thought about any of this if it hadn’t been for that photo. She would’ve just grown out of these feelings for Gabriel if he had been more responsible the day that photo was taken. A huff-laugh escaped her lips. Fortunately, the movie had enough comedy that Gabriel and Les didn’t question it. She remembered very clearly the day that photo was taken, though she doubted that Gabriel did.

*** 

It was just a year ago, during Spring Break of their senior year of college. They had decided to go to Laguna Beach. They spent their days on the beach and their nights in a hotel in the city. On their last day, Gabriel warned her not to drink any of the Coca-Cola he was bringing to the beach. She didn’t really think much of it—she was more of a Pepsi girl anyway—but after his third bottle in an hour, he started acting strangely. He laughed a little too loudly, his speech slightly slurred, and while he could mostly walk, a couple times he started to lose his balance. After he had started his fourth bottle and prodded her into taking that rather uncomfortable photo, she thought it best to take him back to the hotel. He drank another bottle on the ride back and needed her help up the stairs. In the room, she plopped him on the bed and worked at making him some coffee. He had started rambling about religion halfway up the stairs.

“I’m just sayin’ tha’ it’s a li’l outta date. I mean, mosta our mothers would be dead if we stuck to tha’ whole ‘executin’ wives who weren’ virgins when married’ thin’.” He gawked at her as she snatched away his bottle. “’Ey!”

“You want coffee now, trust me.” She poured the remaining rum-and-coke down the sink and tossed the bottle in the trash. She grabbed the coffee as soon as it finished brewing. She handed it to him and sat next to him on the bed. “Careful. It’s hot.”

He stared at the coffee, as if unsure of what to do with it. She nudged his hand toward his mouth, and after a couple minutes he started to drink it. He exclaimed as it burned his tongue; she just kept the coffee steady and figured that it was the least he deserved.

After a few more sips of coffee, he said, “Ya know, I don’ believe much in religion, but there’s one thin’ I thank the gods for.”

She was jarred by the word “gods.” So many times before, she had heard people say “thank God” but not so often “thank the gods.” And yet Gabriel had said it so naturally, as if his Bible-thumping parents had raised him on it. It had also sounded so much softer to Sel than “God,” and she started to wonder why. She wanted to ask him about it, but she would rather not encourage his drunken religion talk. Instead, she replied, “What’s that?”

“You,” he said without hesitation, “and your parents.”

She blushed and didn’t look at him. “Well, thanks.”

“I mean it,” he said forcefully. “I owe you everythin’.” He gulped more coffee. “You’re why I didn’t give up on life.”

“I doubt that.”

“Well, when your parents kick ya out because you have a boyfriend, it shakes your faith. And then when Kyle dumped me for tha’ community college Lady Chablis wannabe…” Tears stained his cheeks, but his voice was steady. “Man, if you guys hadn’ taken me in, I ne’er woulda made it.”

She gave him a closed-lip smile and grasped his free hand. Her own eyes watered. “You would’ve found a way.” She resisted the urge to add that it had all been for the best. If his parents hadn’t kicked him out, she and Gabriel wouldn’t have become so close. As for Kyle, she was almost certain he had been a sex addict anyway. Never mind that the first time he and Gabriel had held hands in the hallway, she had had to run into the bathroom and lock herself in a stall so that no one could see her cry. Besides, she had met a guy at work named Les who was far better for Gabriel; maybe she would introduce them after they got home.

Gabriel shook his head. He drank more coffee, and silence fell between them for a few minutes. He finished off the cup and squeezed her hand. “You’re amazing, ya know tha’?”

Her cheeks turned a deeper shade of pink. She took the cup from him and set it on the bedside table. When she turned back to him, his eyes were searching her, clouded over with curiosity. Sel bit her bottom lip and looked down at their hands. Her fingers flexed open, but she kept her hand in his.

“You’re pretty, too.” He let out a loud laugh.

She giggled slightly but was cut off as Gabriel’s hand turned her head to him. She didn’t look into his eyes as he leaned forward and pressed his lips to hers. The taste of rum on his breath made her nauseated, but she couldn’t pull away. The heat rising in her face was unbearable.

The kiss only lasted a few seconds. When Gabriel pulled away, it looked as if he hadn’t done anything. “I gotta pee. You should turn the air on, you look hot as hell.” He stood and swaggered to the bathroom, leaving Sel gasping and trying to grasp what had happened.

The next morning, Gabriel seemed to have no idea about what had happened after they left the beach. He was embarrassed when he saw that Sel had slept on the floor and apologized for far longer than she thought was necessary. He claimed to only know that he had woken up with one hell of a hangover that she would torture him with the rest of the day as punishment for sneaking alcohol onto their vacation.

***

Les knew about Gabriel getting drunk, but she hadn’t told him about the kiss, and she never planned to, or so she reminded herself as Les and Gabriel settled closer together to watch the movie. She forced her eyes to stay on the TV so that she wouldn’t see Les’s head leaning against Gabriel’s lap. She buried the right side of her face into the back of the couch as she felt tears trickle down her cheeks. She was just relieved that Les and Gabriel were too far into their own world to notice. Sel allowed herself to wonder, for only a moment, if she had made a mistake. Then she mentally cursed herself, wiped off her tears, and began to plan her ultimatum to Danny: accept her for who she is or lose her for good.

Author's Note: This story was originally published on my Patreon page, the link to which can be found below. Before that, it was written for my ENL100F class at university.