“Apparently.”
At nine forty-five he paid, and they walked out together.
“I should get back,” she said. “I have early catering tomorrow.”
“Let me call you a car.”
“I’m fine with the subway.”
“Tessa.”
“Gabriel.” She grinned. “The subway is part of my process. Thirty minutes underground with my headphones. It’s cheaper than therapy.”
He didn’t push. He walked her the three blocks to the station. She paused at the entrance.
“Thank you,” she said. “For dinner. For listening.”
“Tessa.”
“Yes?”
“I meant what I said. About your mother. About you. All of it.”
She nodded.
“Does Thursday still work?” he asked.
“We had dinner tonight.”
“That wasn’t a date. That was reconnaissance.”
“Reconnaissance.”
“Information gathering.”
“And what did you learn?”
“That I’m already falling.”
The words landed, and she went still. Her face opened the way it had at the table when she had saidI feed people—guardedness gone, something raw underneath.
“I’ll pick you up at seven on Thursday,” he said.
“Okay.”
She squeezed his hand once, and then she was down the stairs.
Gabriel stood on the sidewalk watching the entrance.
He took the subway too, because it was Thursday-quiet and because for the first time in weeks, he wanted to be alone with what was in his head and not with what was in his calendar.
He let himself into his apartment at ten forty-five. The lights were off. The kitchen was clean and silent. Tessa’s mother kept walking through his head. She was losing weight. Her work clothes hung off her. She was giving her daughter her food.
He sat at the kitchen table with his phone in his hand. He opened a browser and typedMcDonald’s gift cards bulk orderinto the search bar.
He bought fifty.
Chapter 10
