And for him.
“Okay, Gabriel Stark, you’re going to listen to me state my case,” I declared.
He immediately moved to foil me.
He did this by sharing, “Cupcake, couples have discussions, they don’t state cases.”
“We’re not a couple.”
He looked from the kitchen to where I’d been lounged beside him on the couch for the last two hours (not to mention, where I’d been last night) to me.
God!
He was maddening!
And this was good.
It gave me the strength to carry on.
“Fine,” I bit off. “We’ll discuss.”
He fought a smile, though he didn’t hide he was fighting it, and he settled in, all man, stretching his ripped arms across the back of the couch, spreading his long legs wide and sinking his fine ass deeper into the seat.
It was an outrageously attractive picture, and one that gave me the urge to crawl into that lap and devour his mouth before I crawled out of it to kneel between those spread thighs and do other things.
I clenched my fists.
I dug deep to tap into what I needed in order to do the heartbreaking and impossible.
And I began.
“First, I allowed Kevin to leave me in a financial lurch. Growing up with not a lot, it causes anxiety if I don’t have a healthy savings and enough money in the bank to cover me should something go down. Say I lose my job. Or I need new tires. Or I catch some bug, and my insurance doesn’t fully cover the absurdly expensive prescription I need. Whatever.”
He nodded.
I kept going.
“I’m not close to where I’d like to be to catch up, so I’m going to need to work to get to that place. That means I wake up at four o’clock, and often, if not every day, I’m not done until six, or even seven at night. And I work weekends. That doesn’t leave me a lot of time to concentrate on a new relationship.”
“You just said you’re going to take breather,” he remarked.
“Yes.” I leaned toward him. “A breather.” I leaned back. “Not a break. Six weeks, but I have Willow’s Good Stuff orders during those six weeks. I’m just not adding more in that time.”
“Okay,” he stated immediately. “For my part, I need to stay fit because it’s a prerequisite of my job, and because I enjoy it. I’m at the gym by five every day, if I’m not doing something for work, not including Sundays. I take Sundays off. And my job is not eight to five. Not even close. I could be gone all night. I could be called out in the middle of the night. I could have an assignment that takes me to Tucson, Flagstaff, Payson, even into New Mexico, and I could be gone for days or weeks. Each day that comes, I’m not sure what it will bring.”
All righty…
Safe to say, first, I found every little morsel he shared about him or his life captivating (yeesh, did I have it bad).
And it was safe to say his seizing my tactic to keep us apart as a tactic to explain how we fit together was unexpected (to say the least).
So, it was safe to say, this wasn’t exactly going as I’d planned, and it was just starting.
I didn’t miss this was a bad sign.
Gabe kept talking.
“I understand my body needs rest and downtime, and I find those things. But I prefer to be busy, on the go, and, as I already told you, challenged. The woman in my life will have to understand that about me and roll with it. Obviously, since that’s the case, if she’s the same, I’m not gonna pitch a fit because she is. I’m gonna give her the space to do what she has to do.”
