My heart is fluttering at the base of my throat, and I hate how nervous I am.
Does Gabe feel the way that I do—the way I wish I didn’t—as if those three days ten years ago have been suspended in time? Perfectly frozen like a mosquito in amber.
I’m about to head inside, when I feel a hand on my elbow.
I turn, already knowing it’s him.
“Chani,” Gabe says.
He has a beard now.
But he still knows how to say my name.
Tell Me Something I Don’t Know
Reviews
Horowitz’s much-anticipated collection gathers some of her best works—including, of course, the infamous Gabe Parker interview—and includes some new pieces. Her writing sparkles with humor and wit. Reading it, you’ll feel like you’re talking to your best friend—if your best friend was the type of person who snuck out of the newest James Bond’s house in the middle of the night.
—Broad Sheets Fans of Horowitz’s profiles will love Tell Me Something I Don’t Know. A fizzy, lighthearted read, it’s the perfect book to toss into your beach bag. You’ll tan while you giggle at her best hits—her Gabe Parker profile is of course the star of the collection—and grin at the new additions.
—Publishers Weekly Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is a bubble bath in a book—soothing and calming, the perfect balm for the end of a long day. The collection revolves around her viral hit, “Gabe Parker: Shaken, Not Stirred,” and readers will wince again with embarrassment as she recounts how she blew her once-in-a-lifetime chance with the Bond star after attending a house party of his and passing out in his guest room.
—Kirkus Reviews Apparently, Horowitz is a fairly beloved celebrity interviewer. This reviewer could not say how or why—even the profiles included in her collection of essays are self-serving and self-centered. Everything is about her. It’s kind of cute at first, the way it’s cute when your child asks you a precocious question, like “Daddy, why is the grass green?” But when that question is asked over and over and over again, it doesn’t seem cute. Instead, it seems likely that something is wrong with your child and their intelligence. One only has to read her infamous interview with Bond star Gabe Parker to realize exactly why she’s gotten any attention for her mediocre writing.
—Goodreads
Chani Horowitz is a slut.
—Reddit
Chapter
8
“Hi,” he says.
I stare.
I’d been expecting a version of the Gabe from photos. A combination of that and who he’d been ten years ago. Boyish. Open. Carelessly handsome.
He’s still handsome—breathtakingly so—but it isn’t careless anymore.
There’s the beard hiding the lower part of his face and the baseball cap which tries to conceal the rest of it. But he tilts his head back far enough so I can see his eyes. He looks tired and worn, but it suits him. Or rather, it suits me. It blunts his beauty a bit, makes him seem more real, more touchable, which in turn makes him seem more distant.
“It’s good to see you,” Gabe says.
He’s still holding my elbow and I can feel the warmth of his fingers through my sweater.
“Unngh,” I say.
And I know, right then, that all the growing up I thought I’d done, all the walls I’d erected around my heart after six years of marriage and what since then has felt like constant heartache, are damn near useless against this.
I also know the answer to my question. About what he remembers. How much he remembers.
Amber, meet mosquito.
We sit, and he takes off his hat.
He’s had a beard before—a while back, seen briefly in the grainy photos of him being escorted into rehab. The first time. The tabloids had made a point to focus on his weight gain and the loss of the Bond six-pack, but plenty of people complained about the beard or the scruffy way he was wearing his hair. His hair has far more gray than I would have expected, far more than I saw in pictures. Contradictory bitch that I am, I prefer this look.
I don’t mind that he’s gained weight. Don’t mind that I can see a curl of chest hair peering out from the undone top button of his shirt. Don’t mind that he’s gotten older.
I’d seen a hint of what it had cost to look the way he did on the big screen back then. Starving himself, waxing his chest, getting things plucked and shined and oiled. It had been part of the job and even then, he hadn’t complained.
I like this version of him better.
I don’t want to like him. Not the way I liked him back then—that starry-eyed girl who had fallen head—and heart—first into what turned out to be the generic trap of celebrity. Gabe is a movie star. An actor. It’s his job to make people fall in love with him.
At least I hadn’t fallen in love with him.
I hadn’t.
Because that would have been truly ridiculous.
For years, I’ve been trying—in my way—to escape this magnetic pull he’s had over my life and my career. And today I’m stepping right back into its force field.
Part of me wants to get up and run.
I don’t like how my heart is racing. Don’t like that my palms are sweaty. Don’t like that I’m having almost the exact same reaction to him that I had ten years ago. I’d been so sure that I knew better by now.
Maybe my mind does, but my body sure as hell hasn’t gotten the memo.
Gabe looks up and smiles.
And dammit if my heart doesn’t skip a beat.
Fuck.
He sits there, across from me, and people are staring. He is, after all, impossible to ignore.
I smooth my hands down the front of my shirt, my fingers checking that button one last time. His eyes follow the gesture and they linger there for a moment.
At first, I think he might be staring at my boobs, but then I realize he’s looking at my fingers. Specifically, at my ring finger.
The last time he did that, I’d been wearing my wedding band.
But I stopped wearing it after the party with Jeremy in Brooklyn. When I knew my marriage was over, even if we still managed to draw it out for almost a year with therapy and promises to change.