I’m laughing and watching Gabriel shake his head in amusement. His eyes lock onto mine and he shrugs resolutely. He winds an arm around my lower back, and one around my neck. “We’d better give them what they want,” he whispers. Then he bends me backward, and I hold on.
My eyes close as I settle into the kiss. When else in life are we going to be celebrated in public for being this affectionate and romantic? Probably never, so I’m going to enjoy it while it lasts.
The guys cheer, and holler, and one of them yells, “Get it, hero.”
Gabriel smiles against me. I will remember this moment for the rest of my life. A perfect space in time, a?—
What is that sound? I open my eyes as Gabriel rights us.
Fake retching.
Aunt Francesca’s shoulders hunch, her tongue sticks out. She looks like a bizarre salt and pepper haired child.
To keep myself from saying the words on the tip of my tongue, I turn my back on her. I am the luckiest person in the history of ever to call Gabriel my husband.
Aunt Francesca can go fuck herself.
SESSION TEN
DESERT FLOWER THERAPY
“I brought you a plant.”
Dr. Ruben gazes at me warily.
“You can accept it,” I tell him, holding it out. “I’m not trying to bribe you or remove any professionalism from our relationship. In fact”—I look around pointedly—“consider it a gift to myself. Your office lacks anything earthy, anything that promises more than tears and tissues. I need this plant in here.”
Dr. Ruben takes the plant and sets it on a shelf behind his desk, closer to a window. “Let’s keep talking about your marriage.”
My fingers stretch, the thumb of my left hand tucking into my palm and rubbing the bare flesh on my ring finger. Talking about Gabriel like this doesn’t hurt. It’s as if someone has given me a broom, and I’ve swept away the dust and detritus. I’m left with something shiny. Gleaming.
There’s nothing I want more than to be that way again.
“What about it?” I ask.
“Tell me about the climate.”
I point left, to the window and the scenery beyond. “It’s hotter than the surface of the sun out there. I’m not lookingforward to getting in my car after spending this hour in here with you.”
Dr. Ruben shakes his head. “You’re stalling.”
“This is the good part. I want to sit in it for a while. Let the flavors mesh.”
“Are you talking about stew, or your marriage?”
I smile at him. As therapists go, I’ve lucked out with Dr. Ruben. He talks with me, not at me. I like to think I was that way, too. My turnover rate was low.
“Gabriel and I were married. I was busy completing my three thousand clinical hours under Dr. Mallory.”
“You can call him Joseph, if you’d like.”
I nod, glancing quickly at my knotted hands in my lap. I hope that, in time, my embarrassment over what happened will fade.
“Gabriel and I were better than good. We were amazing. My other friends who’d already married warned me the first year of marriage was the hardest. That wasn’t the case for us. Maybe it was everything I already knew about marriage from the time I spent studying it, or maybe Gabriel and I were just that damn good together. At any rate”—my head tips side to side as I think of those first months, as if even I cannot believe it—“we were the kind of couple other people want to be.”
“I bet that felt good.” Dr. Ruben sips his tea, then sets it on a small hot plate on the table between his chair and the couch I’m seated on.
"It did. If Aunt Francesca hadn't died a year later of lung cancer, I would have rubbed it in her face."
