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Gabby hugged me, forcing me to jump with her while she blew out my eardrum with her screams. A soft smile spread across Nathaniel’s face as he processed what happened in front of him. He joined our hug and squeezed us both.
“Congratulations, kid,” he yawned. “Shit, I need to get ready for work.”
Nathaniel frantically disappeared into Gabby’s bedroom to get ready.
“I can’t believe it! And on your birthday!” Gabby pulled me toward the couch. She set both hands on my knee as I faced her. She gasped. The excitement was wiped from her face almost completely. The same thought I had earlier had just occurred to her.
“Wait! Who is it? You’ve been on so many dates lately. Oh my god, how can we know? It’s got to be Parker. I know it.”
“Richard and I went kayaking a bit ago. It was actually a really nice date. I felt a real connection with him. It was nice to see him try to do something else. It could be him.”
“Oh gross, no. It can’t be Richie. It has to be Parker.”
“It can’t be Parker.”
“Why not? Was the day at the beach not everything your dreams were made of?”
“It was, but it can’t be him. I can even use your theory of choice to make sense of it. I can’t choose Parker. He’s leaving in three weeks.”
Based on Gabby’s rationale alone, Parker wouldn’t have caused the color I was seeing. I couldn’t fall in love with him. I couldn’t choose to be with him.
“I could be wrong,” Gabby muttered, not convincing enough for me or her.
“Try again.”
“I could be wrong,” she said more definitively.
“Let’s talk about the fact that it could be Erik. I felt something…different…when he walked me home the other night,” I tried to think about every feeling I had experienced over the last two months. Before all of this, I could have counted the instances of strong feelings I had experienced in three years on one hand. My brain was overrun, thinking about the three men I brought into my mind. “It could also be Richard. It could be Erik. Oh my gosh. What if you are wrong, and it can be Parker? No, no –”
“Blake,” Gabby’s voice was low.
“It has to be Richard. It has to be him. Or Erik. Erik is okay. I left him once and survived. He could leave, and I would –”
“Blake, you’re spiraling,” she shook me slightly.
My heart rate increased.
“Oh goodness, Gabby, what did I get myself into?”
I buried my face in my hands as Gabby ran to the kitchen. She came back with some reheated muffins.
“It seemed a little early for wine,” she laughed.
Gabby was adamant that Parker had caused the color, which was a possibility I refused to accept. My brain is jumbled. My heart is puzzled. My hands are clammy.
“Gabby, let’s be real…”
“Blake, he makes you so happy! I don’t see how you can ignore that.”
“Gabby, he’s leaving.”
My breathing stalled. My lungs weren’t getting enough oxygen.
Gabby started listing the different ways to make Parker and me work. She pitched that he could stay in Virginia, but his entire family was in Texas, which meant everything to him. Not to mention, he would never abandon Amelia with how fast the company was growing. She suggested I could follow him to Texas, but my life and career were here. I had made a point to prioritize my professional goals after leaving Erik. I didn’t think I could give everything up again. Long distance was always doomed to fail, so that wasn’t an option.
“You said it yourself,” she said, her voice becoming more muffled in my brain. “Erik feels like a memory. He might have gotten better, but people don’t change. You have to remember how he made you feel in the moments that mattered the most.”
My body started trembling. I recognized the signs but couldn’t stop it from happening. Gabby paced in front of me.
