Mixtape: A Love Song Anthology

by Nikki Sloane, Elle Kennedy, KL Kreig, Leslie McAdam, Lynda Aicher, Mara White, Marni Mann, Rebecca Shea, Saffron Kent, Sierra Simone, Veronica Larsen, Xio Axelrod

  “Oh God, Dean. I can't go home. Where the hell am I going to go?”

  I take her hand again. “Don't worry. I got you, okay? Don't worry.”

  We head down another flight of stairs to the lower level of the station. The C train comes to a stop at the platform, its doors barely begin to open when Gabby shoves inside the subway car.

  We're met with stares from nearly all of the several dozen people sitting inside. Their looks of pleasant surprise melt away to apprehension—because neither Gabby nor I are smiling.

  I spot two seats in the back.

  “This way,” I say.

  Gabby sits beside me, staring blankly ahead. “Did . . . did that just happen?”

  My heart's still pounding, but relief floods me so suddenly—I laugh out loud.

  The sound is met with awkward silence.

  Overhead, an AC vent kicks on and icy air blows over us. I shrug off my suit jacket and pull it around Gabby's shoulders. She sits eerily still beside me.

  The train lurches into movement and rumbles away from the stop.

  Away from Gabby's wedding.

  From the future she planned.

  “Are you okay?” I ask.

  I regret asking.

  Gabby's face turns toward mine, slowly. She nods once, twice, then switches course and starts shaking her head, her eyes brimming with tears. She releases the bottom of her wedding dress and lets the lace material pool at our feet like milk.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “The look on his face . . . all those people. This is awful . . . I'm awful.”

  There's a dizzying swirl of emotions in her expression.

  Guilt. Pain. Embarrassment.

  It's all the opposite of what I'm feeling.

  I'm relieved. Elated like a man who had a brush with death.

  But I know better than to let any of it show. Gabby's going through a completely different experience than me. She could've ran halfway across the globe and it wouldn't make her problems disappear. Her last-minute decision to stop the wedding has undoubtedly ignited a tornado of drama she's going to have to face.

  Jordan.

  His family.

  Her family.

  The three hundred plus guests that witnessed her flee the altar.

  Everyone is going to want answers. She knows it's only a matter of time before their questions, anger and judgement pours down on her.

  I can't stop it and I can't fix it.

  “Shhhh,” I say, putting my arm around her.

  She settles into my embrace without hesitation, the way she always does.

  And I shut my eyes, savoring the stirring in my chest when she lowers her head onto it.

  Can she hear my heart beating?

  It's where she belongs.

  With me.

  She goes quiet for a few seconds as the train rumbles along the tracks. I know she's crying, but she's trying hard not to make a sound, except for the occasional sniffling.

  “I kept waiting for the feeling to go away.” She wipes a stray tear creeping down the side of her nose. “The nagging feeling . . . the . . . the fear. Everyone told me it would go away. But it didn't. It got worse. I couldn't breathe toward the end. I got . . . I got so panicked I felt like I was going to drown if I didn't say something. I just couldn't . . . I couldn't marry him.”

  “Do you love him?”

  The beat of silence that follows my question makes me brace for impact.

  “I care about him, so much.” Gabby shakes her head. “But . . . no. I realized standing there in front of him that I'm not in love with him. Not how I want to be. Not how I dreamed I'd be. What is wrong with me?”

  I want to kiss her. Her red nose. Her tear-streaked cheeks.

  I want to kiss her and take away every ounce of pain she feels.

  And it's like she can read my thoughts because her gaze lowers to my lips.

  The questioning gazes of the strangers around us disappears into a fog.

  It's just us—just Gabby and I. Nothing else matters—nothing else ever does.

  “Look at me,” I demand. She turns her face up toward mine, her eyes wide at the sudden force of my voice. “There's nothing wrong with you. Do you hear me? Sometimes we're placed in a horrible situation, where doing the right thing for us means hurting someone else.”

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dean

  I take Gabby to my place and set up the guest bedroom for her. It takes hours for her initial shock to wear off. In that time, I help her out of her wedding dress and shove it into my entryway closet like it's a bag of money we're trying to pretend we didn't steal.

  I make her food and let silence settle between us when it needs to and listen when her thoughts flood over. There's a heaviness in the air, an acknowledgement we're sitting in the eye of a storm. Gabby's emotions swing from relief to guilt and back again. She'll laugh out loud one minute, then grow silent for several more.

  I'm not sure what to do except sit with her.

  I make French toast for her after she admits she hasn't been able to eat in two days from nerves. I watch her carefully, wondering if she will wake up tomorrow regretting what she did. Whether she will regret leaving with me. Her phone buzzes endlessly in her purse and we pretend we can't hear it. I suggest she turn it off, but she’s against the idea. It's like she wants to torture herself by knowing everyone's trying to reach her.

  At one point, she says, “I'm going to have to see him. And apologize.”

  “Yes,” I tell her. “But not tonight.”

  She nods, seemingly relieved.

  Tonight, we settle in with the tense energy, the prickling sensation that comes from knowing you've hurt someone, and try to drown it out with action movies. My thoughts drift and I find myself not really paying attention to the screen. The sky outside my apartment windows grows dark and Gabby falls asleep beside me.

  The last thing I remember thinking is I should carry her to the guest bed.

  But I fall asleep next to her on the sofa, too.

  The next day is hell for her. And for me.

  Because I have to watch her pacing my apartment with her phone clutched to her ear as she tries to get a word in edgewise. Loud voices come from the other end. Her mother. Jordan's mother. Even Remi seems to be demanding an explanation from her. It takes everything in me not to snatch the phone from her and tell them to back the fuck off.

  The one person who deserves an explanation is Jordan, but he refuses to speak with her. Angry and embarrassed, he sends all of her calls to voicemail. His mother tells Gabby to give it time. And she does.

  Gabby stays with me as the hellish days go by. I try hard to take care of her, making her feel as comfortable as possible. Someone has to. She's become everyone else's emotional piñata. Everyone seems to think since she's the one who left, she can't be the one in pain.

  I'm the one witnessing the color drain from her face as her friends and family call to hound her with questions and insinuations. I'm the one watching the quiet way she puts down her phone and carries the energy with her for the rest of the day.

  Gabby holes up at my place for several days. By the time Remi comes to see her, Gabby's boiled down her decision to a simple explanation. She explains how trapped and crazy she felt for not wanting what everyone assured her she should want—what she herself was so sure she did want.

  Gabby also manages to bring her mother around to accept her decision. But Jordan's mother won't be swayed. The woman's dislike and anger only grows as the days go by. It doesn't help her son seemed to fall off the face of the earth for over a week before resurfacing and agreeing to meet with Gabby.

  I want so badly to come with her, to stand between them like a protective barrier. Not because I'm afraid she'll go back to him—at this point it's clear she knows she made the right decision—but because I know how much he's going to play on her guilt. Beat on it until she's standing squarely in the space of the villain and he
as the victim.

  But when she returns from seeing him, she's visibly lighter, like a thousand-pound weight has been lifted from her chest. She tells me how awful their meeting started, how angry Jordan seemed. But how by the end of it they both started crying and he ultimately admitted a part of him knew she didn’t really want to be with him.

  It seems denial is a widespread phenomenon.

  That night, I catch her looking through pictures of her dad on her phone.

  He died right after we graduated from college and left a rip in her heart.

  I sit beside her, silently looking over at the pictures she's scrolling past. Pictures of camping trips and Christmases. Pictures of ski trips upstate and tropical beaches in the Florida Keys. Every once in a while, she'll pause over a picture and we'll share a laugh. She'll tell me the story behind it. Or, in the pictures I happen to be in, we'll recall some ridiculous detail of the day that makes us smile.

  Gabby’s scrolling begins to slow when she reaches pictures of her father in a suit and her mother in a wedding gown. It's from the time the two renewed their vows back when Gabby and I were in college.

  She stops at one of the pictures, where her parents are standing at the altar, hand in hand, staring at each other. Gabby's in the picture too, standing off to the side with a bouquet of flowers in her hands and a look of awestruck wonder in her eyes.

  “I miss him,” she says quietly.

  Setting her phone down, she goes still and quiet for several seconds. Then . . .

  “Dean?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Do you think I'm a horrible person?”

  Her tone is serious, the type you use on a friend so they know you want the truth.

  I stare at her.

  “Are you kidding? You're the most incredible person I know. Gabby, what you did? It was brave. Some people would rather spend their lives living a comfortable lie than face the backlash that comes with the truth.”

  I lower my lips to her forehead and plant a kiss on her smooth skin.

  She stares up at me in stunned silence, though she has no way of knowing I'm talking about me. About my feelings for her. About the tight ball of unspoken words coiled up in my chest since the last time I spoke them.

  Next time I tell her how I feel, I'm going to make damn sure she doesn't forget.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Gabby

  If I'd gone through with the wedding, I would've spent the past few weeks on a honeymoon in Aruba. Lying on the beach, sipping coconut mojitos and staring at the wedding ring on my finger. It's a reality I pictured vividly while planning the wedding. But now the fantasy has an eerie sheen to it, like a treat that was too disgustingly sweet to eat in the first place.

  Instead, my days have been spent at Dean's place. Settling in for the long haul, letting Dean’s familiar nooks and crannies wrap me with a sensation of safety. This feels more like home than anything Jordan and I had.

  Dean has never mentioned it, but there's no logical reason for me to still be staying here. Jordan left our shared apartment days after our would-be wedding.

  I stay because there's nowhere else I'd rather be.

  In the mornings, Dean's apartment smells of sugar and cinnamon as he makes me my favorite breakfast before he heads to work. He refuses to let me help, insisting I sit behind the counter and let him work. He's always loved cooking, putting so much effort and focus into making the perfect French toast. He looks damn good doing it, too. The button-down shirt he wears to work rolled up at the elbows, and he'll occasionally bring the tip of his thumb to his lips to suck away powdered sugar.

  And I stare, much longer than I've ever allowed myself to.

  He's here. He's always been here, yet I feel like I've been asleep the whole time.

  Dean and I have been through hell and back together. It seems one of us is always going through some crisis, and we take turns leaning on each other.

  When I look at him, I'm relieved I didn't marry Jordan.

  Everything would've changed.

  Dean and I never admitted it out loud, but we both knew our friendship would change forever after the wedding. I shudder at the thought. How did I ever think I could live without this? Without Dean.

  He's home to me.

  He brings my thoughts fluttering to a standstill with his touch. The smell of his shirts. The way he holds my head to his chest and drowns my thoughts out with the beat of his heart.

  A life that takes me away from Dean feels like a life without oxygen.

  I'm so grateful for this man.

  This beautiful man who's been there for me through everything.

  Every damn thing . . .

  I let these thoughts settle in my chest long after he sets breakfast in front of me and we eat together in a comfortable silence. I know he'll let me stay here forever. A part of me wants to. Dean knows me well enough to know when to give me space, and how much of it to give. He knows when I need silence and when I need to be distracted from my thoughts.

  He's the way out of the mess I've made for myself. He's always been the anchor in the storm. I ran away from more than just Jordan at the altar. I ran away from the version of me tethered to the opinions of my friends and family. The part of me that cared more about their peace of mind and happiness than my own.

  What happens when you suppress what you want for so long you can't even find it anymore?

  That's how I feel. On the cusp of possibility. Like the moment right before the clock ticks to midnight on New Year's Eve and an exciting new beginning awaits.

  My subconscious is nagging me. Every night, I find myself looking through the pictures on my phone of my parents' vow renewal ceremony. There's one picture in particular I keep hovering over.

  It's a picture of the wedding reception, my parents are in the middle of the dance floor, my mother's hand pressed to my father's chest, her head tilted back in a wild laugh. The way my father is looking at her, a small smile on his lips, brings butterflies to my chest. Off in the distance, almost out of the frame, Dean and I are sitting at a table.

  I go back to the photo several nights in a row. One night, Dean sits beside me on the couch and points at the picture.

  “Look at you,” he says. “You look so cute staring at your parents. That was a fun night.”

  I nod, keeping my eyes on my phone screen.

  The me in the picture is smiling as she stares at the couple on the dance floor. But it's the smile on Dean's face in the photograph that I can't stop looking at. He's looking at me with a warm, satisfied smile that's too familiar.

  The same smile that's on my father's face.

  The longer I stare at the picture, the quieter Dean becomes. It's like he's starting to hear the thoughts whirling in my head, churning alive like a rusty engine.

  “Dean? Why did you stand up in the middle of the ceremony?”

  His gaze locks with mine.

  “I think you know, Gabby.”

  I shake my head, though a part of me knows he's right. I do know. I know in the same way anyone knows the truth. It's always been there, just below the surface. All we need is permission to pull it out.

  Dean looks down to my lips, then back to my eyes.

  Is he . . . is he going to kiss me?

  The room grows warmer and for the first time in a long time I'm fully conscious of how close we're sitting.

  Swallowing, I try to stall. “I . . . I don't know.”

  “I think you don't want to know. I think knowing scares you. Because if you think back to that night last year, the rooftop bar on Valentine's Day . . . Do you remember the words I said to you?”

  That was the night I met Jordan.

  I'm uncomfortable now, but resist the urge to shift away. It's a foreign feeling for me to have around Dean. I'm usually more at home around him than I am in my own skin. But right now? Every part of me is resisting the memory he's tugging out with his words.

  The words
he told me?

  I shake my head, but even as I do, my heartbeat picks up. Because I know . . . somehow, I know something happened between us that night. Dean was different for a few days after, disappointed in me for reasons I didn't understand.

  Then I remember why I went out to a bar that Valentine's Day to begin with.

  I was looking for ways to chase my thoughts away. Thoughts of Dean I didn't want to have because I was sure they'd ruin our friendship. I'm frozen now, looking into his beautiful blue eyes and wondering if he can see the images flashing before mine. Dreams I got good at pretending didn't matter.

  Dreams that still happen every once in a while, and leave me flushed and breathless. Of Dean's hands running up the skin of my back, then tugging me down onto him. Of me, writhing over him. Of our mouths opening in wild breaths.

  I never told him about them.

  At least . . . I don't think I did?

  Something inside of me stirs, a memory flutters to the tip of my tongue. I open my mouth to say it aloud, but it slips again.

  The words he told me . . .

  The window at the end of Dean's living room faces the street, where a streetlamp flickers every few seconds. Like the lamp that was outside of the apartment I used to share with Remi.

  And there, a memory slithers free. A cab waiting on the curb. Dean standing on my front steps with his hands in his pockets. He's looking at me in a way that makes me forget to breathe.

  Words he said to me were still fluttering around my head, making me feel drunker than I was.

  I want you, Gabby.

  You're all I think about.

  He looked down at me, his eyes bright enough to cut through miles of darkness. I thought he was going to kiss me. I wanted him to kiss me.

  That night was the night . . . something almost happened.

  We almost . . . were.

  Dean sets a hand on mine, and I blink away the memories. But they leave me staggered, mentally trying to find my footing. I was brave that night. Brave enough to be reckless.

  And that's what it takes, sometimes.

  One reckless move to change your life.

  I remember the feeling so vividly. Feeling like I was sitting at the edge of a well, staring down and wondering how deep it was. I wanted to jump in, but only if he was going to jump, too.