Rising From the Dust

by Adrianna M Scovill

  She put a hand on his arm, smiling. “I’m not judging, honey,” she said. “Just stating a fact. But how did you end up making out with a cop?”

  Gabriel ran a hand over his burning face. While he was grateful for their support, this new dynamic was going to take some getting used to. “He pulled me over,” he said.

  “I’m sorry,” Natalie said. “You’re mumbling. Did you just say he pulled you over? And then, what? Propositioned you?”

  “That seems sketchy,” Ben chimed in. “Did he, like, blackmail you or anything? Threaten or pressure you?”

  “Good lord,” Gabriel breathed. “No, it wasn’t like that. It…After I left, I went to a bar, and when he got off work, he saw my car was there and…he…stopped in to check on me,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. He didn’t want them to know about his moment before the overpass—not ever. He’d never lied to them, and he had no intention of starting, but that was one secret he wanted to take to his grave. He prayed they wouldn’t ask anything that would make him divulge the real reason he’d been pulled over.

  “I was, uh…singing at the piano…” He was still embarrassed, but he also felt a pleasant wiggle in his stomach when he remembered how it had felt to turn and catch Jack’s eyes—to see the spark of desire, to know that Jack had come into the bar to see him, to realize that he hadn’t imagined the mutual attraction.

  “You were singing in a bar?” Ben asked in disbelief.

  Natalie squeezed Gabriel’s arm. She could read between the lines enough to know that Jack had found him in a dark place.

  “Guess he liked what he heard,” Ben said, and Natalie snorted, glancing back at her son with a grin. “Or saw,” Ben added.

  “Or both,” Natalie suggested.

  Gabriel cleared his throat. “Pretty sure it was both,” he murmured, glancing in the rearview mirror at his son.

  And then all three of them were laughing, and Gabriel felt a rush of love and gratitude for them: his family.

  “You gonna see him again?” Ben asked.

  Gabriel shook his head. “I don’t think so,” he said, looking into the mirror again—this time, at the distant flash of lights. “I sort of…panicked on him,” he said with a grimace. “Asked him to leave…”

  “Leave?” Ben repeated. “Where’d you guys go to…you know?”

  Natalie cut in before Gabriel was forced to try to answer that. She knew where they’d been, and she knew that Gabriel didn’t want to have to explain why he’d taken a man back to his mother’s house. “Was he angry?” she asked.

  Gabriel shot her a grateful look for her intervention. “No,” he said. “He was very nice. But it was just, you know.” He gestured vaguely in the air with a hand. “A spur of the moment thing. I’m sure he’s come to his senses and realized that I’m…” not worth the drama, he thought. “A little high-strung at the moment,” he said instead.

  “High-strung?” Ben asked incredulously. “You’re the calmest person in the world. Anyway, I think you should call him. Did you get his number?”

  Gabriel chewed his lip, glancing at Natalie. “He gave me his card, yes,” he said. He hesitated. She was being supportive, but he knew that this was still difficult for her. “Maybe down the road,” he said. “When things are…settled and we’ve all had time to—”

  “Ben’s right,” Natalie said. “You’re half a century old, buddy,” she added, grinning when he groaned. Ben laughed in the backseat. “We’re not going to let you wait any longer to start…living,” she said, faltering a bit over the final word.

  Gabriel reached over and took her hand, twining his fingers with hers on her thigh. After a few seconds, she lifted his hand to her mouth, kissing his knuckles. She held their joined hands against her chest for a few moments, so he could feel the steady beat of her heart.

  “Mom,” Ben said. “When are you going to start dating?”

  She made a sound of exasperation, looking back at him, and it was Gabriel’s turn to laugh.

  Chapter Four

  As soon as Gabriel hung up the phone, he regretted his decision. He’d actually retrieved the handset from the cradle and half-dialed the phone number again before he stopped himself, slamming the phone back down with disgust. He stared at it, with his heart pounding and his stomach churning. After an internal debate that had lasted all morning, he’d made his decision, and now he had to live with it. He wasn’t going to call and cancel the order.

  He sat, staring at the phone as though it were going to speak to him. He was sitting in the teacher’s lounge, alone. He was glad that no one had come in, because the blush in his cheeks was surely unmissable. He knew he had nothing to be embarrassed about—and certainly not ashamed of. That didn’t keep him from feeling like an insecure teenager. And it hadn’t kept him from making the call from the school landline instead of his cell phone, as though it would’ve mattered.

  But, for better or worse, he’d made the call. He had no idea if he would get a reaction, but he couldn’t afford to spend all afternoon and night worrying about it, either. He sighed and pushed away from the table in the corner of the lounge. He glanced at the clock. The Drama Club would be assembling in less than ten minutes. As much as he loved all of his students and classes, he loved the Drama Club the most.

  He did his best to shove aside his anxiety as he made his way toward the gym.

  ***

  “Windsor,” a voice said from the doorway, and Jack looked up from the paperwork on his desk.

  “Here,” he said, frowning as the man walked toward him with…Was that a bouquet of flowers? Jack reached out a hand automatically when the man extended the bouquet, but he said, “I don’t think—There must be a mistake—”

  “Jack Windsor?” the man asked, checking the card in his hand.

  “Yes, but—”

  The man shrugged. “Secret admirer, maybe. Don’t know what to tell ya, buddy. Have a nice day.”

  Jack stared after him as he walked away. He was holding the flowers above his desk, and suddenly realized that he was gaping like a fool with his mouth open. He snapped his jaw shut, glancing around. He was getting a few curious looks, and a few chuckles, but none of that mattered. He looked at the flowers.

  They can’t be from Santiago, he thought. But who else…?

  He plucked the card from the bouquet, trying to ignore the nervous flutter in his stomach. He set the flowers down carefully, not wanting to crush them within the crinkling paper. He pulled open the small envelope and slid out the card.

  Jack. Sorry for my meltdown. Thank you for being so kind. Maybe our paths will cross again someday when I’m not such a train wreck. All the best. G.S.

  Jack stared at the initials for a while.

  “Someone good, Windsor?” a voice asked, and Jack looked up, startled. He realized that he was grinning at the card. “Ha. Guess so. Good for you, then,” the officer said, strolling away.

  Jack looked at the card again. He knew that Gabriel hadn’t written it himself; he had to have called the florist’s shop and ordered the delivery, which meant he’d also dictated the message to some stranger on the other end of the phone.

  Maybe he did it online.

  Jack shook his head. No, he didn’t think so. He was pretty sure Gabriel Santiago was more old-school than that. And for some reason, the idea that he’d said these words aloud, for someone else to write into a card, made Jack keep right on grinning.

  ***

  “Shit,” Gabriel said. He wasn’t aware he’d spoken aloud until he realized his students were looking over at him. He shook his head, cleared his throat, and muttered, “Sorry. Never mind, I just remembered something.” He made a gesture with his hand, urging them to continue reading their lines.

  “You okay, Mr. S?” Alex asked.

  “Yeah, fine. I just forgot to do something and—It’s fine.”

  Alex was sitting apart from the other students, closer to Gabriel, because Alex wasn’t an actor. He was a sixteen-year-old aspiring writer. He�
�d been writing for the yearbook since his freshman year—a job usually reserved for juniors and seniors, but he’d earned his place. He’d moved to the school in the eighth grade and promptly set about making a name for himself.

  Now he was a junior and this was his first year in the Drama Club. He’d asked Gabriel if he could join as an unofficial assistant, helping tweak scripts and running lines with the actors if necessary. Alex had always been a good student. He’d been in Gabriel’s English and Spanish classes since the eighth grade, but Gabriel knew that he also excelled in most other subjects. All of the teachers loved him, and he was well-liked among his peers.

  Alex had had a rough sophomore year. His father had died of pancreatic cancer; there’d been little warning, with only a few months between his diagnosis and his death.

  Gabriel had a longstanding policy that his students could come to him with any questions or concerns. They could confess to anything and, so long as it wasn’t something that would cause harm to them or others, he promised to keep their secrets. He knew from experience how hard it was for a kid who had no one in whom they could confide, and he was determined to offer a listening ear to anyone who needed one.

  Alex had come to him at the end of the previous school year. He’d been struggling since his father’s death. His grades had slipped, although he was still maintaining a decent GPA. He’d opened up to Gabriel about how difficult it had been, how he’d felt the need to put on a brave face at home, how much he missed seeing his father when he first woke up every morning.

  Gabriel had deep sympathy for Alex, but allowing him to join the Drama Club was not an act of charity. Alex was a smart kid—quick on his feet, and witty—and he had a genuinely kind soul. He always had a word of encouragement for the actors when they stumbled over their lines, he was always willing to arrive early and stay late and do any necessary odd jobs around the sets, and he had a great ear for dialogue. He usually had everyone’s parts memorized as well as, or better than they did, and he was good at helping them find a rhythm that worked when they had difficulty with the words.

  He was a valuable asset in the club, and Gabriel thought it was good for him to be around other sensitive and creative kids—most of them outcasts from the social hierarchy of high school—during his grieving process.

  “Something important? You need me to run any errands?” Alex asked.

  Gabriel smiled. “I sent somebody something and forgot to include my phone number,” he said. “Like an idiot,” he added to earn a grin from the kid.

  “Well, you can always send another note or something,” Alex suggested.

  I could always make myself look super desperate and needy, Gabriel thought. Especially when the guy probably never wants to see or hear from me again. And he probably tossed my sweater in a dumpster somewhere.

  “It’s not a big deal,” he said. “You know what they say, the memory’s the first thing to go with age.”

  “Yeah, and you are old now,” Alex teased. He, along with the rest of Gabriel’s junior Spanish class, had sung “Feliz Cumpleaños” on Friday, knowing that his birthday was over the weekend, and the Drama Club had given him a large card that they’d made and signed. They’d also given him a sympathy card and flowers, though he’d said nothing to them about his mother’s passing. Word traveled quickly in a small school.

  “I’ve been old a long time,” Gabriel joked. He looked at Alex. “Something on your mind?” he asked after a few moments of silence.

  Alex shrugged, chewing the inside of his lip. “I don’t know,” he finally said. “I guess I just feel like I’m not really pulling my weight around here.”

  Gabriel turned toward him. “What do you mean?” he asked. “We wouldn’t be where we are without you, this year.”

  “I don’t know,” Alex repeated, frowning. “I mean, it’s just, like…stuff anyone could do. I know it’s not like I can rewrite Shakespeare or anything, but I wish there was something more I could contribute in, like…script stuff.” He looked at his foot as he toed at the shiny floor.

  Gabriel sighed, watching the other kids rehearsing for a few beats. “It’s funny, when I was your age, I wrote a play.”

  Alex perked up immediately, and he looked over at Gabriel. “Really?” he asked.

  Gabriel nodded. “My goal wasn’t to be a writer, script or otherwise,” he said. “When I was sixteen, I wanted to be an actor or singer, or both. I loved being on stage. Being someone else,” he amended. He cleared his throat, glanced at Alex, and continued: “I wrote it because I wanted to star in it. Looking back, I’m surprised by my own…audacity,” he laughed. He shrugged a shoulder. “My Drama teacher, Mrs. Muñoz, said it was decent. She said I should keep working on it and maybe one day I’d see it produced on a stage somewhere.”

  “Ouch,” Alex said quietly.

  Gabriel eyed him with a smile. “You think?”

  “Well, I mean, you obviously wanted to put it on at your school, right?” Alex answered. “She probably said the school had, like, a list of approved plays or something.”

  Gabriel chuckled. “Something like that,” he agreed. “Anyway, I’m sure she made the right call. I can’t imagine it was very good. You’re a far better writer than I was at your age, Alex,” he said.

  “Eh,” the boy answered with a grimace. “Thanks.”

  “I don’t say things I don’t mean,” Gabriel said.

  Alex glanced at him, and some of the tension seemed to ease from his shoulders. “Yeah, I know,” he said. “Thanks,” he repeated.

  “Do you have something you’d like me to read?”

  Alex smiled. “Not really, no,” he answered. “Just thinking about trying some stuff, you know.”

  “Well, just so you know, I’ve never been great at sticking to the approved list of plays,” Gabriel said, and Alex laughed. “They can’t fire me, anyway. I’ve got tenure.”

  “I wouldn’t want to risk it,” Alex said. “Besides, I don’t have a play.” He looked at the teacher. “Did you show yours to anyone else? Submit it anywhere?”

  “I did not,” Gabriel answered with a smile.

  “Do you still have it?”

  “I think it’s in the file cabinet at home. I haven’t looked at it in…I don’t even know. Since college, I guess. I used one of the scenes for my audition piece…” He trailed off, struck by a sudden sense of nostalgia as he thought back on the dreams he’d once had. Life had had other plans for him, though. “Before I decided to go into education,” he said, offering Alex another smile.

  “Do you regret it? Not going to Broadway or Hollywood or something?”

  “You know what they say—those who can’t do, teach,” Gabriel said.

  “That’s bull,” Alex answered, surprising him. “I think you could’ve made it anywhere you wanted.”

  Gabriel blinked, touched by this proclamation. “Well. Thanks,” he said.

  “I don’t say things I don’t mean, either,” Alex told him, and Gabriel laughed. “Mr. S?”

  “Hm.”

  “Do you…think…Would you maybe ever let me look at the play you wrote?”

  “Sure, if you want.”

  “What’s it called?”

  “Looking Through You,’” Gabriel answered. He hesitated. “It’s sort of from a Beatles song.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said, “we listen to a lot of Beatles in my family.” He fell silent for a few seconds. “Maybe not so much anymore,” he added.

  “I’m sorry, Alex,” Gabriel said quietly. He’d talked to the boy about the death of his father, but Gabriel also knew how the sense of loss was likely to strike at unexpected times.

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “I’m sorry about your mom, too. I’m gonna go see if Eliza needs help.”

  Gabriel watched the kids rehearsing, but his mind was elsewhere. He didn’t want to think about his mother, even though Alex’s words had brought her to mind. She was never far from Gabriel’s thoughts, anyway.

  Neither was Jack Windsor.

/>   You sent him flowers and an apology like a sappy jerk and you didn’t even remember to put your number in the card, he thought. Smooth, Santiago. Gabriel supposed that Jack would be able to find him easily enough if he wanted to, as a cop, but that wasn’t the point. The point was that Gabriel clearly had no idea what he was doing.

  At least I’m trying, he thought, surprising himself. Better late than never. He almost laughed, but choked it back, giving his head a little shake.

  ***

  “You got a package,” Natalie said when he walked out of his bedroom in the morning. Ben was back at school, and as much as they both missed him, there was also something comforting about being back to just the two of them now that everything was out in the open.

  Gabriel had already decided to look for an apartment, and they’d discussed it the night before. It was going to be a huge adjustment for both of them. Neither of them had ever lived alone. They’d gone from living with their parents, to dorm rooms, to apartments with roommates, to moving in together when they were twenty-three and twenty-one. Since then, they’d spent only a handful of nights under different roofs. Sleeping in the guest room had been something of a trial run, he realized now, although he hadn’t wanted to acknowledge the idea to himself.

  She’d known, of course. She’d broached the subject of divorce because she’d known he wouldn’t—even though he’d taken to sleeping in the other room because he hadn’t wanted to disturb her with his tossing and turning. His sleeplessness, and restlessness, had gotten worse in the last year.

  “Package?” he asked, frowning as he walked toward the kitchen table. She was finishing her breakfast.

  “Yeah,” she said, pointing at the padded envelope with her fork as she pushed to her feet. “It was delivered while you were in the shower. There’s no return address.”

  He picked it up and flipped it over, still frowning. His name and address were written neatly in black marker, but there was no postage, which meant it must’ve been delivered by a courier. He pulled the strip off the envelope and peered inside.