She left in a rush, because she was about to do something stupid like kiss him in Lucy’s bakery in front of half of Park Slope.
Outside, the heat hit hard. A bus released a cloud of diesel at the corner and sweat beaded at her temples before she’d walked ten feet.
Her phone buzzed before she reached the corner.
Gabriel: Address sent. Wednesday. Ten.
Tessa: I’m picturing a fortress. Maybe a moat.
Gabriel: Closer to the moat than the fortress.
She laughed out loud on a Brooklyn sidewalk, and a man with a stroller swerved around her.
The subway was two blocks ahead. She’d make it if she hurried.
She was still smiling when she reached the platform.
Chapter 11
GABRIEL
Wednesday morning,Gabriel arrived early.
The café hadn’t changed in the years he’d been coming back to it. Worn wooden floors, mismatched chairs, a chalkboard menu that never carried more than six items. Old jazz drifted through the room that was soft enough to think over.
His mother used to bring him here when he was a kid, back when life felt simple. He came back on the days he needed to remember the version of himself that existed before everything sharpened and hardened into the man he had become.
He paid for two coffees. The thinning stack of fast-food gift cards he had been carrying for two weeks brushed his fingers as he tucked his wallet back into his jacket. He took the table by the window.
The door opened at nine fifty-eight. Tessa walked in wearing jeans and a white blouse, her hair pulled back, studying the room like she wasn’t sure she had the right place.
He stood. “You found it.”
“I almost didn’t.” She took in the mismatched chairs, the chalkboard, the jazz drifting from the speaker above the counter. “How did you find this place?”
“My mother took me here a long time ago.”
She sat across from him. The table was small enough that her leg brushed his when she settled, and neither of them moved away.
“I didn’t sleep well,” he said.
“Why not?”
“I kept thinking about Thursday.”
Her cheeks went pink. “Which Thursday?”
“Both of them.”
The last Thursday, when he had pressed her against her building and kissed her until neither of them could think. And tomorrow at his apartment, and whatever happened after.
“Gabriel.”
“Yes?”
“We’re in public.”
“I’m aware.”
