Page 89 of See You Next Tuesday

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It never occurred to me that’s how you’d feel, but it should have.”

“It’s okay,” he assured her. “It didn’t occur to me either. Then the next time I saw your family was at your mom’s funeral. And it really hit me that if I didn’t try to mend my relationship with my parents now, I might never get the chance. So after Tallulah and I broke up, I moved back home.”

“Gabe.” Anya was shocked. She knew he’d been in LA, but she had no idea he was living with his parents. “How is it?”

“It’s been—hard. And awkward. Sometimes it’s like, what was I thinking coming back here, and then other times it’s almost approaching normalcy? I’ll argue with my dad about why the Dodgers sent some pitcher down to the minors when they already have so many injured guys, or I’ll take my mom shopping for a new bureau for the guest room, whatever. It’s not like we’re best friends. It’s never going to be like your family. But I feel like…” He trailed off.

Anya could see his eyes were wet. “Like what?” she prompted.

“Like this is the thing Danny would actually be proud of.” Gabe’s voice broke. “That I found a way to keep our family together.”

“He would, I’m sure he would,” Anya said, and she was crying again too. She wrapped her arms around Gabe and pulled him close. He hugged her tightly, and it felt so good, after all this time—all this life and death and messiness in between—to be warm and safe in his arms.

“I think they want us to be happy,” he mumbled, his breath soft against her hair.

“Who?” Anya asked. She tipped her head upward so she could see his face.

“Danny,” he said. “And your mom. Don’t you think? They just want us to be happy.”

The sun was lower in the sky now, and the light in the car was turning golden, with orange rays dancing off the surface of the lake. Golden, Anya repeated in her mind. It was a word—and a color—that she had always associated with Gabe.

“I missed you,” she said softly. “Like, I really missed you.”

“Anya,” he sighed. “You have no idea how much I missed you.”

She laid her hands on his chest, and he went unnaturally still, like he didn’t want to spook her. She moved her fingers up to his neck, then his face, feeling the dense prickles of his beard, the crinkles of the soft skin next to his eyes. It was strange how not strange it felt to be touching him like this, so intimate, so familiar. Maybe because she’d imagined it so many times, or maybe because they were already so emotionally entangled, so cosmically intertwined, that something as simple as running the blades of her fingers over the planes of his cheekbones could only ever represent a fraction of how close she actually felt to him.

He moved his hands along her back, warmth and pressure, drawing her closer, until the only thing that made sense was to kiss him.

And she forgot—oh, god—she forgot how good kissing was, except she was pretty sure kissing had never been this good, the way his tongue was rough in her mouth but not forceful, the way his hands gripped at her body, nerve endings she’d assumed were long dead springing to electrically charged life beneath his fingers. She let out a groan—was it too loud? She always worried she was too loud—but he moaned in kind, and it reminded her of Vieques, how even when he was asleep, whenever she moved, he moved too.

He eased his leg between hers, and she felt a shock of pleasure as the stiff fabric of his jeans rubbed against her. Anya had always had a healthy relationship with her sexuality, but this year she hadn’t been interested. It wasn’t even that she didn’t want sex—it was like sex no longer existed to her. Like her body had dropped to bare survival mode, and she was unable to access the neurons needed for anything else. That long period of disconnect made Gabe’s touch now feel even more intense, like Anya could barely stand how good it felt to grind her hips against his thigh.

There was so much information to take in—the taste of his mouth, the feel of his hair between her fingers, the needy grope of his hands as he slid them under her shirt and felt for her breasts. She tore at her shirt to pull it over her head, but he moved quickly to stop her—

“Careful.” His voice was urgent, but his touch was gentle. “Your forehead—your bruise.”

“Oh.” She was breathing hard, and she almost laughed. “I forgot.”

He protected her forehead with one hand as he helped remove her shirt with the other, then wasted no time in exploring each new patch of skin she put on offer. It reminded her of how he was at work, the way he’d get totally fixated on one idea before leaping to another with just as much excitement. That always annoyed her at the office—but when every new idea he had involved his tongue and his hands and her body? She didn’t mind so much. She moaned louder as he took her nipples into his mouth, and louder still as he unbuttoned her jeans and slid his hand inside them. She couldn’t mute herself with him, and she didn’t have to, because the sounds she made only seemed to turn him on more, to make him even more voracious, which in turn made her feel even more wanted.

“Kiss me,” she implored him, and he snapped his head up and brought his mouth to hers. She was dizzy with how good he felt. She worked her hand inside his jeans too—her eyes went wide when she felt how big he was.

“Christ, Gabe,” she sputtered. “No wonder you’re so fucking arrogant.”

He laughed at that—a big, generous laugh—and she laughed too, and it was the oddest thing, because even though they’d never done anything like this before, they still felt like best friends.

She wanted hours of foreplay with him—nights, weeks, maybe years—but everything in her body felt too on edge for that now. She needed more.

“Do you have a condom?” she asked.

“Anya.” He pulled away from her, breathing hard. “We don’t have to— I mean, maybe we should talk about this?”

“We’ve been talking for ten years.” Anya almost laughed again. “Can we please just have sex now?”

Gabe gave her a sly grin. “As long as we can talk after.”

“If you hurry, I’ll even let you talk during.”