Chapter Twenty-Three
“You look miserable,” Alice said, putting a muffin and a cup of coffee down at Gabriel’s elbow. “I thought this might cheer you up.”
Gabriel smiled a small, wry smile, but accepted the cup of coffee eagerly.
He couldn’t stop thinking about Reid, and about how he was sailing dangerously close to ruining his chances with him.
But on the other hand, he couldn’t stop thinking about the fear he’d felt on Thursday night.
Leaving the atmosphere hadn’t been half as scary as that, and Reid had stated outright that it was an incredibly mild version of whatcouldhave happened.
How would he cope with it if it was ever worse?
“Do people ever harass you?” Gabriel asked, looking up at her.
Alice raised an eyebrow. “I’m a black woman in a STEM field. What do you think?”
Gabriel blushed, looking down at his muffin. “Right, dumb question,” he said.
It didn’t really come as a surprise that Alice was tougher than he was. She had a lot more reason to be. He’d seen the way other men treated women they worked with, and he suddenly wished now that he’d been brave enough to speak up on their behalf more often.
He was going to fix that. If he wanted the world to treat him better, he needed to give something back.
Reid would have been proud of that kind of thinking.
“I’m guessing you were asking for a reason, and not just because you’ve decided to become my knight in shining armor,” Alice said. “Don’t do that.”
“I won’t,” Gabriel promised. “But… if you need someone male to get someone else male to back off… I’ll try. I can’t promise I won’t come back worse off than before, but…”
“I appreciate the offer. So why are you asking?” Alice asked again, obviously not about to accept a change of subject.
Gabriel sighed. He needed someone to tell the story to, and other than Reid, Alice was the only person he knew who might understand.
“I… okay, so, I went on a date with the cute physical therapist, and that was great and everything, right up until… look, a group of teenage boys laughed at us and I panicked. I know that’s ridiculous.”
“It’s not ridiculous,” Alice said immediately.
Gabriel blinked at her. It wasn’t?
“It’s not?”
“Dude, why do you think the concept of being in the closet evenexists?” she asked. “Shit gets intense when you leave it. Anything from weird looks or the feeling that maybe people aren’t giving you opportunities to being yelled at in the street. Or worse. I’m not trying to scare you, but your fear is justified. What did your date say?”
Reid had said basically that, though not in as many words.
The difference was that Reid was invested in getting to be with Gabriel, and Alice wasn’t.
Gabriel didn’t think for a second that Reid had played it down to convince him it wasn’t that bad—he was fairly sure Reid had just gotten used to it, accepted it as part of his everyday life.
The thought of that made Gabriel’s stomach clench. It wasn’t normal. The fact that he’d freaked out proved that.
Reid shouldn’t have had to be that jaded. It hurt to think he was.
It hurt to think Alice had enough experience to know this, too.
“Do you think you’ve lost opportunities?” Gabriel asked.
That had been his original fear. The first thing that had come to his mind after he got over the excitement of finally feeling at peace with himself had been that it’d close a lot of doors.
