He laughed. ‘I know, typical straight bro dudes.’
‘Yeah, and that’s not really me.’
‘Straight? Bro? Dude?’ Then he quirked his head. ‘Typical?’
Again he made me laugh. I don’t know what it was about him that made me feel so comfortable when it was just the two of us. I also wanted to ask him ifhewas one of those three things. I already knew he wasn’t typical.
‘I should get going.’
‘Where to?’ Gabe asked.
‘Home.’
He looked disappointed. ‘No chance of us being friends?’ I didn’t know what to say. He pounced on my hesitation and pouted. ‘Please. My only other friends are assholes.’
I tried not to laugh. His friendswerekind of assholes, but somehow he wasn’t. Was that even possible? Didn’t hanging out with assholes make him an asshole by association? But he was nice to me. To everyone I’d seen him interact with, really. Something in my chest betrayed me and told me to let it go. But not entirely.
‘Maybe on a probational basis.’
He nodded. ‘I can handle that.’
Together we walked back down to Ava and his friends. I told Ava I was going to head home – there was no use pushing our luck when I had just decided I’d give Gabe the chance to prove he was different from his friends. Morgan said she’d drive Ava home.
Ava pulled me into a hug and whispered, ‘Smells like Gaga’s key change in “Shallow” and Tom Daley’s surrogacy contract.’
I almost laughed but whispered back, ‘Better than Acqua di Gio and wall art that saysIt’s Wine O’Clock Somewhere.’
‘You’re really just going home?’ Gabe asked as he followed me out to my car. ‘I can’t convince you to hang out somewhere else?’
With Gabe? Alone?
Those stubborn embers in my chest were still buzzing. What the hell was wrong with me? ‘Where did you have in mind?’
‘Holy shit, you’re rich.’
I pulled to a stop behind Gabe’s parked car, looking up at the house – no,mansion– he lived in.
‘We are not rich.’
‘Your house isn’t connected to several other houses,’ I said. I pointed at the massive field to the left of the driveway. ‘And you own what appears to be three football fields. You’re rich.’
He seemed embarrassed. We got out of the car, and I took a better look at it all. It was an old stone house, three stories and what looked like a little attic window above the third floor. There was a wooden porch that wrapped around the front, all the way along the side of the house to the back deck. There was also a roundabout in front of the house, where we had parked, that led back to a stone carriage house that looked like a garage with maybe a guesthouse on the second floor.
The house also felt familiar, like it reminded me of one from a TV show or movie that I couldn’t place but maybe Gabe could. Hell, maybe they had even filmed a movie here. It felt like I’d seen it somewhere before. The property had to be several acres, because we’d had to take a darkened, hilly back road to get here, and I couldn’t see another house anywhere through the trees surrounding the property line.
The rowhome I lived in was probably smaller than his carriage house. Also, I had no front yard and just a concrete patio in the backyard.
I’d grown up in a house with a yard, but when my dad died, we’d had to downsize.
‘Is this where you grew up?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘We used to live somewhere else. This was my grandparents’ house. When they passed away, they left it to my dad, and we sold our other place and moved in here.’
‘Oh, so you’re anheir.’
‘It’s not like that at all … Trust me.’
I was still skeptical.
