AllFreeNovel
Share Us
I covered my snicker with a cough, but she elbowed me anyway. There was no need for the manager to know her vegan ass wouldn’t be stepping foot back in this place.
“Morgan was a great server,” Caroline stated with a smile, slipping on her coat.
Frank ushered her toward the exit with a, “Food was great!”
Then I signed for the check without a word and guided Gemma to a quick getaway. Inside my car, she shivered beneath the wet material of her top, and I blasted the heat all the way up. “Better?”
She nodded, zipping up my jacket, and I breathed out a quiet laugh.
“Man, you’ve got no fear whatsoever, huh?”
“What?”
“You told off some guy while wearing a see-through shirt and with everyone staring at you. Incredible.”
She held her fingers up to the heater. “I couldn’t let her get fired.”
“No, I know. I know. It’s just that not everybody would have done the same thing.”
“It was no real tragedy, just some water. If somebody has to get ice water thrown on them, I suppose why not me?” She rubbed her hands along her thighs, obviously trying to warm up, and I replaced her hands with my own.
“And that’s exactly why you’re so incredible because you ask why not you.”
Her face flushed with color, and I cupped her cheeks between my hands.
“You’re thoughtful and smart, and I’m so lucky you picked me.”
“I always pick you,” she whispered, kissing me sweetly.
Back at her apartment, we discarded articles of clothing on the floor as we made our way to her room, expressing words not yet spoken until passing out from exhaustion, tangled up in each other’s arms.
* * *
My alarm beeped near my ear, my cell phone stuffed under the pillow. I’d barely gotten a few hours of sleep and dreaded going to work. With Gemma sleepily draped over me, I considered taking a sick day.
Last night, being with Caroline and Frank, witnessing their devotion to each other, I couldn’t help but visualize my future. I had imagined being sixty and struggling to blow out trick candles while Gemma laughed in amused satisfaction next to me. It was her I wanted next to me in twenty, forty, sixty years. A lifetime with her would never be enough.
Because I loved her.
The truth had struck me like a slap across the face, and I had been close, so close, to telling her at the restaurant until the water fiasco.
Words somehow seemed insignificant and not nearly enough to describe the world I now inhabited with Gemma. It was big and wide, and every day was something new to learn and explore. I couldn’t possibly explain all that to her, so when we’d gotten home, I tried with my mouth and hands.
Smiling in contentment, I carefully lifted Gemma’s limbs off me and shimmied out of bed to get ready for work. Shuffling into the living room, I retrieved my forgotten clothes from the previous night and spied my jacket clumped on the floor underneath Mr. Clooney. I shooed the cat away, my eyes almost popping out of my head when I saw the ruined material. Scratches and holes dotted the new brown leather. I gritted my teeth and stomped back to Gemma’s bedroom to wake her up. “I’m going to kill that goddamn cat.”
“What?” She squinted awake. “What’s wrong?”
“My jacket.” I held it up. “Look at it. It’s brand-new.”
She sat up, still rubbing sleep from her eyes, and assessed the evidence. “It has character now.”
“Character,” I repeated in a huff.
“What?” Her eyebrows knit together, and the fact that she didn’t seem to care that my stuff had been destroyed pissed me off. She bought almost all her clothes at thrift stores, and I totally respected whatever she wanted to do. The favor was not returned.
“This is real leather,” I told her. “It cost me a couple hundred dollars.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, getting up from the bed to take it from me, inspecting it for a few moments before handing it back. “But maybe you shouldn’t spend your money on such expensive things. It’s only a jacket.”
