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“Victor’s is heated. Have you even been in it yet? We can still fill the water guns with ice if you want. I recommend it.”
I couldn’t help giggling at his crazy ideas, and in that moment, I realized maybe he was right. “I can’t believe you’re not worried about Erica.”
“Erica loves us,” he said. “She may freak out about the things we do, but she comes around. But that’s between Kota and Nathan. Well you, too...but...I mean, what if Erica doesn’t approve of this? Do you think we’d give up then?”
“Wouldn’t Kota?”
“Not on you,” he said. “He wouldn’t do that.” He perked up. “So I’m not worried. I’d just like to get back to us. I think if we can get into having good times like that, they’ll all lighten up, see this with a more positive perspective.”
Maybe he was right. We were wound up pretty tight, even after I left my parents’ house. It felt like the times Luke mentioned happened eons ago. “Can we think of something else besides freezing water?”
He laughed and nodded. “I know we still need to figure some things out, but let’s not figure it out like it’s a chore and we’re reluctant. Let’s do what we do together.”
His idea was brilliant. Get back to us. “I want to try,” I said.
He beamed. “Yeah. So next time you’re around the others, try to smile a bit. Get them to do fun things. We’ll be a bit more careful, set up some ground rules around families.” He reached out to me, touching my cheek softly. “It’s a happy ending for us, Sang. I promise.”
He made me feel better about it. I was still worried about Kota and Nathan, but I had to trust that even if Erica disapproved, somehow they wouldn’t give up on me. Or us.
The Smooth Chilling Thrill
When we got to Victor’s bedroom, we were both surprised to find Gabriel on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. The king-sized bed was made with a white bedspread and plush with dozens of pillows. The baby grand piano dominated the room in the center. The silver, grays, whites and darks of the floors and walls all made Gabriel’s clothes and even his skin seem to pop in contrast.
Gabriel was lying sideways with his knees bent. His two locks of blond hair fell across his eyes. He kept up the color before, but at the moment, I realized the roots were showing by about an inch, matching the rest of the hair in the back.
His hands were over his stomach. He wore jeans and a yellow tank shirt, and he was barefoot. There were pink crystal studs in his ear, the three black rings and a pink ring added in around the crest.
He slowly turned his head as we approached. The moment he saw it was us, his crystal light eyes widened immensely. “About time,” he said. He sat up swiftly and relief flooded his expression. “Hey! What are you doing here?” He paused and analyzed my outfit. “What the hell are you wearing?”
“We had to run out the door,” I said.
Luke shut the bedroom door behind us. “What are you doing here?”
“I had Pam drop me off when I was supposed to meet Victor, but I don’t know where he is. He’s off doing something. Probably an Academy call.” He yawned and stretched. “I’ve been waiting for someone to come by.”
“Was someone else going to come over?” I asked.
“I was going to wait for Victor,” Gabriel said. “Mr. Blackbourne was going to come by if no one else did, but something happened. What car did you all bring?”
“None,” Luke said. “Kota dropped us off. We were followed for a bit, so he went back to see if he could find him.”
Gabriel made a face, exposing his teeth. “There’s no car here for us to take. So I guess we’re stuck unless we walk down to the hospital.”
“It’d be a bit of a walk,” Luke said. “And we probably shouldn’t take Dr. Green’s car right now. Not unless it’s an emergency.”
“What’s Mr. Blackbourne doing?” I asked.
“Mr. Blackbourne things,” Gabriel said. “We really need more cars.”
“What happened to your bike?” Luke asked.
“It’s too damn cold to drive that thing right now,” he said.
Luke walked away from me and toward the bathroom. “Then let’s do something fun since we may be here for a bit. Think up something. I’ll be right out.” He closed the door behind himself.
I went over the piano and sat on the bench. Gabriel jumped up and joined me, sitting next to me, placing his phone on top of the piano.
We toyed with the piano, figuring out Mary Had a Little Lamb, and then testing every key.
“Should we be messing with it?” I asked him.
He tapped at the black keys, making his fingers look like little legs jumping from one to the other. “It’s a piano. You’re supposed to mess with it.”
His phone buzzed, and he scooped it up off the top of the piano, checking the message.
“Is it them?” I asked.
“Yeah, it’s Victor. But it looks like it is just us up here for a while.” He moved the piano key cover over until it closed. “So we...probably shouldn’t mess with this.”
“So we don’t make noise while Victor isn’t here? So no one hears us?”
“No,” he said sheepishly and then grinned. “He knows I like playing with it when he isn’t here, and he just said to stop. He just had it retuned after the last time.”
“What did you do to it last time?”
“Nothing!” he said, a little too quickly. He looked around. “But there’s nothing else to play with. I’m not allowed on his computer, and that’s boring. It’s all dumb code stuff.”
“We could...watch TV?”
“Mmm...” He shrugged.
I glanced around the room, at the black and white décor, and then the closet. “Should we sort the closet?”
“That’s what I was doing before you got here,” he said. He tapped his fingers like he was playing the piano over the cover. He swung his legs around until he was sitting facing the other way on the bench, and then leaned back against the piano with his elbows propped up. He slid over a little, crossing in front of me, until his face was near mine. “You know what I’m thinking?”
He was close, and his breath was warm. Part of me was terrified at the crazy possibilities he was feasibly coming up with. “I don’t want to cut my hair right now.”
He chuckled.
“Gabriel!” Luke said from the bathroom, his tone light and playful. “Sang! Come see.”
We scrambled off the bench. Gabriel got to the door first and held a hand out to me. “Hang on,” he said. “Let me make sure he didn’t leave a weird shaped doodie and now he’s wanting to brag.”
I wrenched my mouth open to make an “o” shape.
“I was twelve when I did that!” Luke shouted from the bathroom. “And that’s not...I didn’t poop! Just come see.”
Gabriel opened the door. I braced myself to avoid looking toward the toilet, just in case. Luke was tricky.
Luke was on the floor, peering under the sink, and surrounding him were several gift baskets. Each one cellophane wrapped and full of bath oils, bath bombs, salts and a wide range of similar concoctions.
Gabriel picked up one and examined the contents. “Are these new? I didn’t notice these before.”
“Yeah, they’re new,” Luke said. He chuckled and his eyes caught my attention. “I’m pretty sure these are meant for you.”
“Shouldn’t we put them back?” I said. “I mean, what if those are for him? Or a gift for...like a cousin or something?”
“He wouldn’t buy his cousin bath bombs,” Luke said. He brought around his phone, poked at it with a forefinger to type in a message. He spoke as he typed. “Can...we...play...with...gift...baskets...under...sink?” He sent the message and waited. When the phone buzzed, he read, “L
eave a few for Sang.”
“Well, she’s here,” Gabriel said. “That means we get to open all of them?”
“Man, Sang...you get all the good stuff,” Luke said. He placed three of the smaller baskets back into the cabinet. There were still a few in there he hadn’t pulled out. “We’ll save those for Victor. Or next time.”
There were four left out for us. We placed the biggest one in the middle, and we each took one of the other baskets.
It felt a little weird to open it without Victor there, since he was nice enough to get them. “Maybe I should wait,” I said. “Did he mean these to be a gift for me?”
“I’m sure it was because of last week, when we said you liked the bath bomb,” Gabriel said. “And he just said we could play with them.” He stabbed a couple of fingers into the cellophane of his basket and widened the hole. He pulled out an item, a box of three various soaps. He put the box to his nose and sniffed. “The box says Korean Night, but I don’t know what Korea smells like. Is it really?” He sniffed again. “Wow, actually smells spicy.”
Luke opened his package completely, spilling the basket’s contents onto the floor. There was a pipe-shaped container that was the biggest, and he took off the lid. He reached in, pulling out a big round bath bomb in a light blue shade. He sniffed it. “Cotton candy? I like this.”
I turned my basket around, checking out the inside without opening it. Everything was displayed so nicely, I didn’t want to break it open. “What’s a face masque?” I asked.
“Oh man, I want to try one,” Gabriel said, putting his basket aside and sliding over to look. He put his face to my shoulder to examine my basket and did some noise that was a cross between a grunt and a squeal. “Fuck it. We’re having a Victor spa day.”
“In honor of Victor?” Luke asked.
“Right,” Gabriel said. “For Victor.” He went back to his basket. “Okay, pull out everything you want to try. We’ll organize it a bit to put it in order. I’ve seen those spa night routines on YouTube. Been wanting to do that.”
Luke held up some bath bombs. “Do we want to smell like Korea or candy or ocean or...? I’d say candy, but it makes me hungry.”
