“Oh,” I say.
I hate that even though I know—I know—that I didn’t do a damn thing to deserve that grotesque overture, I still feel a twinge of guilt. Of embarrassment.
I’d never told anyone, but I wasn’t really surprised that Dan had. I just hadn’t thought he would have said something to Gabe.
Business has begun to pick up in the diner and the door jingles behind me, bringing with it a whoosh of cold air that hits the back of my neck and makes me shiver.
“He knew Dan was running his mouth,” Ollie says. “He knew it was a lie. That you wouldn’t—”
“Wouldn’t I?” I ask.
I hadn’t done what I’d done with Gabe because of the story, but the whole thing had never been some innocent, youthful misstep. Gabe was right—I wasn’t the victim. I’d known what I was doing and I’d known that it was ill-advised.
I’d been there to do a job. Not Gabe.
“Chani.”
Gabe.
He’s standing at the end of our booth, looking nervous. I look over at Ollie who shrugs and takes a sip of tea.
“Business partner,” he says. “Friend.”
“Can we talk?” Gabe asks.
Most of my anger has dissipated, exposing the emotion I was trying to avoid. Fear.
“Okay,” I say.
There’s shame too.
“I’ll eat your breakfast for you,” Ollie says.
As we walk out of the diner, Gabe hands me my scarf.
“You forgot this,” he says.
“A few other things too,” I say.
He nods.
The heat is on in his truck, so I don’t even need my scarf. I keep it balled up in my hands.
We drive back to his apartment and park outside. From this direction, I can see all the way down Main Street. Where I have a view of the mountains but also the church spire and a water tower and what appears to be an old hotel in the distance. Cooper is quiet and cold, a thin layer of snow covering every surface like icing.
I turn away from this view, away from Gabe, and find myself looking at the dumpster I’d hid behind like a coward.
“I could see you,” Gabe says.
I look back at him. “What?”
He points—to the dumpster and then up.
“From my living room,” he says.
There’s a window above the alley. His window. Which meant that Gabe watched me duck behind a trash can to avoid him. Watched me crouch there like an old-timey burglar all because I couldn’t have an adult conversation about an adult decision without my flight impulse kicking in.
Teddy isn’t in the truck, so I imagine her in the apartment, looking out the window.
My face and neck are so hot that I have to unzip my jacket. This whole thing keeps getting more and more embarrassing and stupid.
“Ollie texted you,” I say.
“I texted him,” Gabe says. “When you left.”
I nod.
“Déjà vu,” he says.
“It’s not the same,” I say.
“I know.”
I keep futzing with my scarf, scrunching it into a ball so it fits in the palms of my hands and then releasing it to expand in my lap.
“I didn’t want it to happen this way,” he says. “When I said we’d have time, I thought we would. I thought that I could do what I’d done with my father—that I could keep you, that I could keep this, out of the watchful eye of the press. That this could be something I didn’t have to share. At least not right away.”
I know it’s not his fault.
“I never thought I deserved Bond,” he says. “Even before I found out about Ollie.”
Outside the truck, snow has begun to fall—fat, fluffy flakes caught and buffeted around by the chilly air.
“Every article, every think piece about how ill-suited I was for the role, how wrong I was, I could have written myself,” he says. “Even in rehearsals, I was always two seconds away from quitting.”
I hear him shift, hear the squeak of the seat as he turns toward me.
“?‘I can say with all confidence that Gabe Parker is the Bond we need. He might even be the Bond we deserve.’?”
I start crying.
“I thought you hated the article.”
“Not all of it,” he says. “And I never hated it.”
My hands are open and my tears are gathering there, in the curve of my palms.
“You were good,” I say.
“You were right,” Gabe says.
“You had Dan Mitchell fired?” I ask.
His jaw tenses.
“I’d like to think I would have done it no matter what,” Gabe says. “That if I heard him saying things like that about any woman, I would have done the same thing—would have thrown all my weight behind getting him fired.” He lifts a shoulder. “But it was you he was talking about.”
“Why?” I ask.
“Why what?”
“Why me?”
He takes a moment.
“I think it was the short story,” Gabe says.
“The story?”
“I think that’s where it started,” he says. “When I read your story.”
“It’s not that good of a story,” I say.
“I guess I really like dragons, then,” he says. “Because by the time you walked up to my front door, talking to yourself, I think I was already halfway infatuated with you. It wasn’t just the story, I don’t think, though it was good. It was the way you wrote it. The way your brain worked. I liked that. A lot.”
The confession leaves me breathless.
“What you’re feeling,” he says. “The doubt? It never really goes away. Not really. I’ll never know if people go to see my movies because they like me, or because they think of my personal life as a never-ending car wreck that they’re hoping will show up on-screen.”
He looks at me.
“I should have asked,” he says. “What you wanted. From this trip. From me. From us.”
Us.
“The funny thing is,” he says, “I think we would have been a mess ten years ago. If you’d stayed. If I’d called. But now…”
The wind has picked up. The truck is warm, and it feels a little like we’re inside a snow globe.