‘I don’t know what that means, but I can pick some videos. Then we can get together and watch them.’ I could have just sent him some links, but what would be the fun in that? This way, we’d be watching them and analyzing them alone in the carriage-house studio.
I promised I’d get working on them when I got home, then went back to my car, where Ava was waiting with a look of suspicion.
‘What?’ I asked as I ducked in, avoiding her gaze. I was doing nothing untoward. I was only giving Gabe more opportunity to see me be passionate about food. And maybe have him thinking more about whatelseI could be passionate about?
I had just finished wrapping the final salad dressing when Gabe rounded the corner with a tray of cleared plates and utensils from one of his tables. Here we were in the last week of October, and he was already in the casual dining room. That usually didn’t happen until halfway through your first year.
‘First day in CDR on your own,’ I said. ‘Check out the fast mover.’
I hoped Natalie was taking note of how well he’d been doing since his training ended.
‘Actually …’ He set the tray down and moved around the salad bar toward me. ‘This is mysecond. Jake had to call out on Sunday brunch, and I took his section.’
I raised my eyebrows, impressed, as he peeled the plastic wrap off the cucumbers and used tongs to snatch one out.
‘What are your Halloween plans?’ he asked.
‘Ava and I hang out and watch Halloween-themed cooking and music videos on YouTube. It’s a fun time. You should come by. We can finally watch the videos you promised to rip off for me.’ I’d pushed hard for the first week or so, trying to schedule a time for us to get together and watch the videos I’d chosen, but Gabe had been busy with a school film project. He offered to watch over the phone, but I said I’d rather explain some of what I wanted in person. Which, yes, is a total lie – Gabe probably knows more about the film techniques the YouTube cooking folks use than I do. It had been a while since we’d hung out, just the two of us.
‘Your video willnotbe a rip-off – it will be an original with plenty of homage! Not going to the Halloween dance at your school?’
‘No.’ I tightened the plastic wrap on the cukes and gave him a death stare. ‘Idon’t have aboyfriendto go with.’
Gabe pretended to be annoyed, but his ears turned red. He went back to his tray but didn’t pick it up. ‘We’re actually having a party at my place tonight. My parents are out of town. You and Ava should come.’
A party? Tonight? Why didn’t he invite me sooner? I may have been more proactive in trying to get Gabe to hang out outside of work these past couple weeks, but so far we still hadn’t met the elusive boyfriend. Ava would occasionally ask when we were going to meet him, but Gabe would say he was working or he had something due for school.
Sometimes we would hang out as a group – Ava, me, Morgan, Gabe and his best friend, Kevin – but Kevin was tediously straight. He flirted nonstop with Ava, and if I wasn’t wrong, Ava seemed to be enjoying the attention. I’d asked her about it on our way home one night and she just shrugged and said, ‘I have a type, and it’s dorky white boys who are bound to disappoint me. It’s how I keep myself humble until I find Mr Right.’
Gabe also didn’t change his Netflix password on me, so one night I’d texted him that I was looking for a movie and asked which one to watch.
We texted through the movieChef, which was absolutely amazing.
At work I was a little flirtatious, doing what Ava and a few other people said he had been doing to me. We texted more than we spoke on the phone, and when we did text, there was a definite undercurrent of sex. At least from me there was. Our social media interactions were pretty tame, but I did notice he never posted pictures of his boyfriend. He would use the word ‘we’ when talking about something, but never a name. He never tagged a guy in his posts, other than his friends, and he never posted pictures of him and another guy.
What did that mean?
Maybe the guy wasn’t out, so Gabe couldn’t post pictures of them together. But if there’s one thing I know about homophobes, it’s that their brains will make major leaps to create a narrative where two guysaren’tboyfriends. Look at all the historical ‘bachelors’ who lived with ‘good friends’. So why couldn’t Gabe post pictures of another guy who was just his ‘good friend’?
My first thought: maybe Gabe didn’t like him that much? He never talked about him – which, yes, that could be because it would create awkwardness with me. But even Kevin didn’t talk about him. Though that could be because he was too busy flirting with Ava.
It was extremely frustrating. Ava and I had done a fair amount of cybersleuthing to try to figure out who it could be, but had gotten nowhere.
‘Anyone else from Sunset going to the party?’ I asked. Ava thought maybe the boyfriend was someone from Sunset Estates.
But everyone knew everyone else’s secrets in Sunset Estates. Except for the big stuff.
‘I invited Morgan,’ he said. ‘And Mackenzie and Connor said they were coming.’ Mackenzie and Connor were dating, so it wasn’t them. ‘Then just you, Ava and Luke.’
Ava walked into the salad bar with a tub of napkins to fold.
‘You want to go to Gabe’s Halloween bash tonight?’ I asked her, trying to keep my voice calm.
She looked at Gabe. ‘Costume party?’
He shrugged. ‘If you want.’
‘Areyoudressing up?’ she asked.
