“I’ve never seen baby onion rings served with a street calzone before,” I observed before biting into the hot dough, filled with melty gooey sweet mozzarella. “Mm.”
He was watching me and admiring the night sky, as he reached for another ring.
“It’s calamari. But I’ve never seen it served from a food truck outside a closing bar,” he quipped, popping in another piece. “Very good calamari, on top.”
I took a few more bites of the calzone and set it down, dusting the light flour from my hands, and reached for a piece. I dipped it as he did, and chewed.
“Mmm.” I nodded my head after I swallowed. “That’s very good.”
“Your first time?” he asked lazily.
“Yes. That could get addictive.” I reached for another.
His lip curved, pleased. “I am glad it was with me.”
I stopped chewing, and blushed. “Me too,” I said after swallowing the tasty piece. We ate slowly, and I noticed him gazing behind me into the view of the park. After a while he spoke.
“Tell me your secrets, Gabrielle,” Daniel said.
“My secrets?” I contemplated, slowly setting down a calamari I selected.
“Yes. I want to know the things about you that no one else knows. That you would never tell anyone else.”
“I don’t really have any,” I said honestly.
“Everyone does,” he remarked patiently.
“Well,” I said thoughtfully. “We once took the keys to my dad’s truck for a joy ride,”
“Go on.” His lip curled up, but his eyes were smiling.
“But we couldn’t drive a stick, and ended up stuck in the wrong gear on our gravel drive. We had to push it back,” I admitted, smiling at the memory.
His lips joined his eyes in a smile. “Then it doesn’t count. You’ll have to think of something else,” he insisted, lifting another ring to his lips.
I folded my hands in my lap and looked up at the sky, than back down. “Well. I’ve never told anyone else this but…orchids are my favorite flower”
“Why is that secret?’ he asked, interestedly.
“Orchids are like,” I paused, rubbing my thumb against my other thumbnail in my lap. “Exotic. And provocative. So, I always just tell people I like wildflowers. There were fields of them everywhere.” Imagine if I’d told my father I’d really wanted an arrangement of orchids for my sixteenth birthday. In our tan, green house filled with second-hand things. The arrangement bright and glamorous would have sat on a table not valued more than the spray. It would have been selfish even to admit it. I loved the wildflowers I found on the table that morning just that same. But Daniel sought honesty. I wanted to give it to him.
“Do you not think yourself those things?” he inquired.
“Sometimes,” I replied. Tonight, with you, I thought. He looked away.
“I like orchids too, I suppose,” he admitted, reaching for a calamari, covering it in marinara. They do remind me of something quite dear to me.”
He ate and his eyes connected with mine. “What’s that?”
“Well,” he hesitated, slowly chewing, and I sat as his gaze raked over me. “The center of a woman.”
My face warmed by degrees, and I hoped it didn’t show bright crimson. I looked down. He studied my reaction and my face, I could feel, and when my cheeks cooled, I looked back up. He tightened his shoulders a bit from where he reclined, stretched.
“I apologize,” he said, straightening a smile. “I shouldn’t speak that way in the company of a lady. It’s just that I’m so seldom in the private company of one.”
“Aren’t you from England?”
“Yes.”
“Aren’t there lots of ladies in England? They all seem so proper.”
“An accent doesn’t make a lady. Or a gentleman,” he replied, disapproving, then refocused. “What else?”
“Well, I don’t really want to do the major I’m going to school for.”
“Why are you, then?”
“I don’t know. I sometimes feel like I’m doing what everyone expects because I showed promise at it. As though I didn’t really choose,” I admitted a trouble I persistently shut down.
“I understand. If you could do anything, what would you do?”
I took a cleansing inhale and leaned back on my palms glancing up at the Big Dipper, before re-meeting his gaze. “I actually like sculpture. And I’m good at wood work,” I confessed, then sat forward, leaning over my folded legs. “My dad has a work shed, and he’s let me learn since I was small. That’s where I would go to be alone. But…I’ve never showed anyone my stuff. I’m not sure what the point would be.”
“Will you show me?” he asked, hopeful.
“I don’t know,” I said uncertainly. Wanting to say politely tell him no. This one was hard. A snag in a perfect tapestry of exchange. If my wood-working was terrible, let it exist unseen, pestering no one, like a cracked crock pot heaped in the trash beside a broken commode. My wood-working projects couldn’t be singled out in that Appalachian scene.
“Gabrielle.” I met his eyes. “I can assure you, anything made with those hands must be very beautiful,” he said convincingly.
“Thank you,” I said, feeling less weighted.
“So why don’t you pursue it?” he asked.
I stroked my own thumbnail meditatively. “You can’t really make any money at it, and I’m not even sure how to turn it into an actual job,”
“Money isn’t everything,” he supplied.
“I agree. But I have a full ride in accounting. I’m learning how to make my life an oyster and not a nail. Wouldn’t it be wise to maximize my temporary luck into a foundation? When the music stops,” I paused. “We all need somewhere to sit, don’t we?”
“Go to your father’s shed. Build a seat.”
I smiled, enjoying his nature above the subject. “I can’t sit on my day dreams.”
“Can’t you?” he asked, his eyes meeting mine.
I looked down at my lap, generally warm. From the bonfire. I straightened my expression, and glanced up. “Did you go to school?”
“I left,” he said simply but looked away.
“It’s never too late to go back,” I encouraged, sounding like a GED ad.
“I have no interest,” he replied mildly.
“I guess you don’t need degrees with hidden talent like yours,” He looked at me curiously. “The piano.”
“Oh, yes,” he acknowledged, casual. “It’s a good hobby.”
“Do you play much? The way you play is…salient.”
“My mother and I learned together. I am not artistic about it. It is.” He let the thought go, like a balloon.
“Cathartic,” I supplied.
He continued. “She would break from work in the middle of the day and play one song. A happy one.”
My brow pinched minutely. “In the nice house?”
He tipped his chin briefly in a nod. I kept my eyes on him, softly, wanting more than anything to learn him. With some nerves, I said, “So, tell me your secrets.”
“You don’t want to know mine.” I kept my eyes on him, but he craned his neck forward, the muscles in his neck stretching, as he looked out into the city. At the lights and building and glass ahead.
“I do,” I pressed softly, knowing it was more than a career choice.
“I don’t think you’ll think so well of me if I tell you. Not that I assume you think so well of me now.”
“I think…well of you,” I said. I scooted the food tray aside and inched a bit closer to him.
“Do you?” he asked, eyes trained on me.
I nodded, folding my hands in my lap again. My thumbnail was positively buffed. It shone back up at me.
“You’ll be afraid of me and I don’t want that, although that may be a selfish wish.”
“I don’t think I will,” I tried reassuring him without saying too much, and glanced up, under my lashes.
His expression was calm. He sh
ook his head slowly and met my eye again. “When you look at me, you make me feel like I could tell you anything,”
“That’s because you can trust me, Daniel,” I affirmed.
“I’ve never trusted anyone, Gabrielle,” he said, the words coming from the bottom of his well of existence. My stomach twisted a bit in empathy.
“I’m sorry that you haven’t had someone to trust. But whatever it is,” I said. “I promise you I’d never tell a soul.”
“I believe you. I killed someone,” he said into my eyes.
“Did you mean to?” I begged.
“No,” he said, blinking once. “It was my mother. I could have saved her, and I didn’t.”
“Do you feel guilty for it?” I checked, sorting through my own process of grief at the confession.
“Very much so,” he admitted.
“Then, I’m sure she wouldn’t be mad at you if she knew it was an accident and that you were sorry,” I reasoned, hearing my voice slightly higher.
“You’re too kind, Gabrielle. But she doesn’t forgive me and neither do I,” he said with finality but accepting my consolation, looking back out into the city ahead. Then he bowed his head.
I took a few breaths and switched thumbs. “Daniel, you can’t carry around all this guilt. You can’t live your life like that.” I stopped. He looked up at me with so much pain in his eyes—and I knew that pain ruled him. That’s why he was trying to end it last night instead of living with it. However she died, it was killing him, from the inside out. He looked unlike the man I’d spent the evening getting to know and every bit the player I’d met the night before. It was hard to remember they were one in the same in most moments. But I shouldn’t have forgotten. I searched his eyes and my shoulders sagged, emotionally exhausted from the trek inside them. He looked away, and I stared at his cheek, heartbroken.
“I forgive you,” I said. He met my eyes.
His brow lowered but his eyes lightened. “Why?” he asked.
“Because you deserve that. Everyone deserves a second chance,” I said passionately.
“You are the most amazing person I’ve ever met.”
“I think I feel the same way about you,” I admitted.
“You shouldn’t,” he advised.
“I do.” Simply nothing to be done for it. It was true.
“That sounds nice.” He grew still. “Will you hold out your hand?” he asked, keeping his eyes on mine. I obliged uncertainly but wanting him to see I still trusted him. My hand was even. He picked up the last piece of cold calamari and bounced it in his palm, and then deciding, slid it on my finger.
I froze. “Why did you do that?”
“Because it’s what I want,” he said. I looked down at my finger. He paused, looking into my eyes. “Do you think you could ever want that from me?”
“I do,” I said, closing my hand.
“May I kiss you, Gabrielle?” he asked, his eyes swimming. It was the most magical four words I’d ever heard.
In the present, all I could do was nod. Warmth bursting from every internal cell. His hand reached under my chin and pulled me down where we met almost in the middle. His lips felt sweet and firm. We changed angles once, deepening the kiss, and then broke away slowly.
“I want to be a French Canadian school teacher,” I whispered, the words resounding off his lips an inch away.
“I’m sorry?” he asked, pulling away to see my eyes. I opened mine.
“Um, sorry, sometimes when I get overwhelmed, I blurt things out,” I said, sitting back.
“Like the chouquettes.” He looked mildly humored, to my relief.
“Yes, like that,” I said, sitting back, slouching a bit.
“You shouldn’t be embarrassed, Gabrielle. You say things with immense authenticity. It’s admirable.”
“Admirable,” I repeated.
“I also happen to find it very charming. So what does it mean?”
“I just had this image of you with a nice woman who probably teaches kindergarten, and you move to the suburbs with two point five kids,” I broke off. “And that she was good to you and helped you. You guys even adopted a stray and wore matching denim shirts. It sounds really silly now,”
“I don’t think it’s silly that you wished for my happiness,” he said. “I did the same for you.”
“You did?” I blushed.
“Yes.”
“What did you imagine?”
“I imagined you’d marry well, an Ivy League man. Probably a Wall Street tycoon and lived in a penthouse near the park. A man who gave you everything you could want. Stability, fine things, expensive vacations, a child….”
“I feel terrible now because I pictured you in New Jersey.”
“It’s fine.”
“Well…I could be happy in New Jersey. Or anywhere…” I trailed.
“And children?”
“Well, I always thought I’d love to be a mom one day.”
“I can’t give you those,” he admitted slowly, not unproudly.
“That’s okay.” I accepted.
I’d partly imagined little birds flying down with a pennant written “this guy” and an arrow pointing downward when the one walked into my life, harboring no timeline on the when. Surely not now. There’s no right way to describe it. My senses lighting up like a Tokyo New Year, parts of me stoking a warm kindle steadily in his company; no, there were no birds. There was knowledge, however, like it was born in me. Like the air I’d depended on to exist and shared long-standing mutual trust with was the thing telling me, this one is yours. Why would you even deny it? I felt the air ruffle me as I looked into Daniel’s eyes.
He smiled at me, just lips. “I fear I’ve made you up,” he said.
“What do you mean?” I asked, blushing.
“I keep thinking I must have died last night and this isn’t real. That I turned your memory into the most perfect thing I’ve ever known, and that I’m imagining that you want me, too.”
“I’m not perfect.”
“You don’t see yourself from my view.”
“But I am real, and I do…want you.”
“Well, if you are real, then I know you’ll run screaming when I tell you this.”
“Tell me what?”
“I think I’m in love with you, Gabrielle.” My breathing hitched.
“I’m not running anywhere. And…I think I feel the same way,”
He pulled me to him and rolled on his back. I rested my head on his chest, my body curled against his, and we rested under the navy sky. I sneaked my hand beneath his coat and onto his heart. He placed his hand on top. We looked up at the stars and eventually I bent my knee to slide my leg into his thigh, increasing our coziness. His hand gripped me, stopping me just as I began curling onto him. When I looked down, I saw why.
“Sorry,” I muttered, rearranging myself more chastely. He placed his finger under my chin and drew me into a kiss. The kiss grew hot, and he didn’t stop my thigh from sliding onto his. I grew intimidated and slid it back down after a little mental computation, but the kiss got hotter still. We broke away.
“I am in the eye of something,” he said looking into me. “You are something revealed to me, but I am not a gentleman. If we continue, if you don’t bring me back, I will fuck you like a madman. And I will want you to fuck me, just as madly. I am grappling with that image, you can see my cock is not. Too much?” he asked.
“It might be.” His lip tugged in the corners, and then his lips parted in a wicked smile. I giggled at having made my own self blush.
“Wicked, wicked,” he chanted, searching my features. “Are you sure a boyfriend isn’t going to come around the corner and get knocked flat?”
“I’m sure,” I said, readjusting my cheek on my hand, which lay on his chest, smiling with kiss-swollen lips. “What about you? No girlfriend? No wife?”
“She would take one look at you and understand. If there were one. I’m not a polygamist.”
I furrowed my brow
playfully. “We’re not actually, you know. I mean, officially.”
He looked down at me hard, and his brow furrowed too. “Follow me,” he said and helped me up. He wrapped the blanket around me and guided me down the flights of stairs. I glanced up at the stars on our way, feeling as high as them. We emerged from the alley, covering our noses with our collars and crossed the street into the park. We walked for a while until we reached the first bench. He pulled a folding knife from his pocket. Woodsmen like my dad carried similar.
“Always handy. You should have one. For utility or safety,” he said, taking in my wary face as he unflicked it. “Behold, it serves a penultimate use.”
He loosened the bolts in the foot of the bench. I glanced around. There were people walking a few hundred yards away in each direction. I looked back down, but Daniel had risen and was tipping over the bench. He tipped the blade into the wooden slat, making an etching sound. I deputized myself lookout. He flipped the heavy iron bench back over gingerly not to damage it and tightened the screws. I approached and leaned over him, pressing my legs into his back, draping my hands around his neck, and lacing my fingers together below on his collar like a necklace. He stopped what he was doing. I felt his cheek brush my hand, then his hand lifted to his mouth where he gently kissed it. A cool moist press. He kept my hand and spun to a stand, pulling me against him. He lifted me, not kissing, only resting his forehead against mine. He took me easily as he sat, me straddling him. I rested my forehead back on his. We could be doing anything, anywhere, but he was my destination.
“There is a tale from the area my mother descended in Ireland,” he said. “On the day a man chooses his bride, and she accepts. The bridegroom is to carve their names into the side the door to the place which they will reside. The wood is their witness, their officiant, and their guardian. It is a tradition from druid times. Still today, the old families recognize it.”
“I have chosen here because this place never made sense to me. The building are cutting edge or historic and I’ve always appreciated them. The industry. Wondering why they didn’t develop over this green patch for more progress. More life. More industry, and machine. But it’s not the park that can’t survive without the city, it’s the reverse. I came here succumbed to this industrial landscape I described, thinking the best use for this park was a bulldozer. But in the end, it sustains the city. It is the heart. I met you here. When you emerged through those woods, I thought I brought the figment of a brave and terrified angel with my consciousness before it slipped away. If you are the last thing I saw before the final music ended, I was content. But when you left me, I can’t explain it. You defied my will from afar. You brought me back to you tonight. And now washed I am in certainty, in your eyes of honey and silver that flood me with a most willing unforeseen surrender, I was brought back for this.”
In the Land of Milk and Honey Page 48