It wasn’t the words that tore me to pieces and had me sagging against the door with my hand over my mouth to stifle the sobs. I had started writing that first book when I was nineteen and struggling through classes at my performing arts college. My drama professor told me I had a problem syncing with the emotions of my characters, so he advised me to keep a journal. Apparently writing out my feelings was supposed to be cathartic or some shit, but all it did was make me realize how pathetic I had been as a teenager, so I added some other things to spice it up, and Delia Dates was born.

Everything in that book was fiction. I didn’t have much in the way of human connections when I was college. I don’t know why. I guess I just didn’t see the point in investing that much of myself into something that was going to be so fleeting. Being nice didn’t cost anything, and I could be friendly with a lot of people, but I didn’t really feel the need to go any deeper than that. Of course, I went out and I dated, and I did take some of those experiences and turn them into Delia’s, but every single word in my books was fiction—except for that first bit.

Those words Gabe read aloud through the door were the catalyst that got me writing, and in doing so, found the thing I was really good at. I sucked at acting, but music and the written word—those were my jam. I didn’t publish volume one until I was out of school and still living in California, but it didn’t take long for book two and three to follow. Writing was something I could do no matter where I was, and before long I had thrown myself into it with reckless abandon.

So it wasn’t the words that had me shivering and shaking on my side of the door, thinking my legs weren’t going to be able to hold me up much longer. No, it was the way Gabe’s voice had cracked and almost given out several times while he had been reading. It was the raw emotion and pain I could hear coming through the door that cut me like a knife. The emotions I had tried so hard to bury deep inside of me oozing sluggishly through the open wound.

I never wanted Gabe to hurt. I had never even wanted him to know.

“Can you please stop now?” I whispered the words because I couldn’t make my voice sound any louder. I was surprised I was able to get that much out, but he heard me through the paper thin hollow wood of the door anyway.

“I’ve already read the first five books. They are hysterical, for the most part, and I can totally hear you saying the words as I read them in my head. All except for that first part of that first book, when we find out what happened to Delia to essentially fuck her up from having any meaningful relationships in the future. Angel, open the door.”

“I don’t want to.” I really, really didn’t want to. I didn’t want him to look at me, to judge me, to see my face destroyed by the tears I hadn’t cried since that night when I decided I hated pink roses.

“Angel, open this door or I will rip it off its fucking hinges, I swear to God. Please.” I didn’t want to test him, he sounded serious. Steeling myself against the agony of the eye contact, I slowly unlocked the door. Stepping back I swung it open to find Gabe standing there, book in his hands, looking down at me. My legs almost did give out on me then, and I had to back up and sit on the edge of my bed or I was going to fall down.

A crying man was my kryptonite.

There were no actual tears, no, I am sure Gabe was much too manly for that. But his eyes were red and bloodshot anyway, and they had a glassy sheen to them that breathed of leaking emotion.

I wanted to vomit.

“Those books are fiction, Gabe.” Most of them anyway.

“Oh, they would have to be,” Gabe said conversationally as he walked a little farther into the bedroom, eating up my personal space and forcing me to look up at him with his hand on my chin. “Some of the shit that happens to this chick is over the top. Works well with the continuation of the series, though. But let me ask you this…who’s Gavin Ainsley?”

I’m already sitting here fucking destroyed, Gabe, don’t make me say it.

“You know,” I whispered, trying to break eye contact but his hand under my chin wouldn’t budge, and I was so goddamn angry with him for making me do this I almost couldn’t see straight.

“Oh, I have an idea, Angel, but I want to hear you say it.” He looked down at me, mouth hard, expression in his eyes even harder.

Oh, fuck this.

I finally found my voice. “Fine, Goddamnit, you want to know so badly? It’s YOU. Gavin Ainsley is you, and Kathy Dillman is Lila Dickerson, and I’m Delia, or at least, I was in the beginning. All of the rest of my books are completely made up because I am apparently an emotionally stunted fuck up. Is that what you wanted me to say? I’m sorry I wrote about you to come to some kind of closure over something that happened when we are kids. I’m sorry, okay? Are you fucking happy now?” I screamed as I stood and shoved him in the chest. Hard. I was shocked I had even done such a thing, put my hands on anyone in anger, and I immediately regretted it. Gabe hadn’t even moved, though. It had been like shoving against a wall. Didn’t do anything but hurt my wrists a bit.

Gabe flexed his hands a little and looked like he wanted to reach out for me, but he changed his mind and folded his arms across his chest instead. “No, I’m not happy. I’m not happy at all, and I think you are misunderstanding something very important. I’m not pissed because you wrote a book, Angel. You make your money any way you want to. I do. I’m a grown ass man and no one is going to tell me what I can and can’t do. No, Angel, you are completely missing the point about why I’m upset.”

Gabe rolled his shoulders and lifted his head to the ceiling like he was praying for patience, and maybe he was, because he was clearly still mad at me. When he lowered his head to look at me again, there was something else in his still red-rimmed eyes. Something besides anger, and it twisted my guts to see it because I knew I was the one who put it there. He was hurt.

“I’m pissed because you were my best friend. And regardless what other feelings you had, you didn’t think enough of me as a person to come and tell me when these things happened. Because if you did, then we could have talk about it. Let me ask you something else, because it kind of bothered me back then, but you denied anything was wrong. My sophomore year, when you were a freshman and you got that god-awful spiked short haircut. I saw you crying when you came home from the salon, but you told me you were in high school now so you wanted to try more edgy things. That’s not what happened, is it?”

I grimaced at the memory. No that was not what happened. Blanching inwardly, I sighed, and spilled my guts. “Kelly Abraham didn’t like that I rode to and from school with you. It was bad enough when it was our moms that drove us, but then you got your license and your new car and you still picked me up and dropped me off. She wanted it to just be her, so to make her point she and two of her girlfriends held me down in a stall in the second-floor girl’s bathroom and used clippers to shave a chunk out of my hair. Took it straight to the scalp in one area. My mom would have shit a brick and I couldn’t leave it as it was, so I went straight to the salon and had them do what they could. Kelly told me that if I wanted to be your best friend and consider myself one of the guys, then I might as well look like one. Worst haircut I ever had.”

I laughed then, because it really was ridiculous. That haircut lasted longer than his relationship with Kelly, so who really had gotten the shit end of that deal? As an adult it was laughable. As a young teenage girl I was devastated.

There was rage stamped all over Gabe’s features, and he sounded like he was barely hanging on to the tail end of his temper when he said to me through gritted teeth, “And you lied to me about it?”

“What good would it do to tell you? It was my problem anyway.” Wrong choice of words apparently, because Gabe exploded.

“If it involved me in any way, if you were being hurt or bullied because of me, then it damn well was my problem, too! Goddamnit, Angel. Shit piss fuck.” Running out of cuss words he turned and started pacing the room.

“You want to know what happened the night of your play, Angel? Because I know what you saw and what you wrote, but do you want to know how it was from another point of view? Since I was there, I would like to weigh in on this.”

I didn’t say anything, just sat down on the bed again and put my head in my hands. God this was draining.

“I didn’t fucking hear her, Angel.”

I snapped back to attention at his words. What the hell did he mean he didn’t hear her?

“I wasn’t paying attention to her because I was looking for you. You nailed the high notes on Poor Wandering One, and I was so proud of you. You had been practicing for weeks and that was always the part that tripped you up—but you killed it. I was so happy for you I wanted to hug the shit out of you. That’s why I made Lila hold your roses, too. Because I was going to crush you and didn’t want to destroy your flowers.” He stopped pacing and stood in front of me again, running his hands through his hair and then letting his arms fall back down to his sides. He looked tired, defeated.

“She talked all the time, Angel. Seriously, she never shut up. I tuned out ninety percent of the shit she said so I literally did not fucking hear a word that came out of her mouth. I laughed because she expected a response. I kissed her because I didn’t want her to know I hadn’t been listening. I didn’t even know what she said. I certainly didn’t agree with any of that. God. I’m so fucking sorry.”

He dropped to his knees then, Gabe did, right in front of me. He bent his head over my knees as I sat on the edge of the bed and he whispered his apology. This wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want a broken Gabe begging my forgiveness. That wasn’t what this was about. I had to sit on my hands to resist touching the back of his head, comforting him by running my fingers through the short hairs there. I was pretty sure he did not want me to be touching him at this moment.

“Angel, I didn’t deserve that kind of loyalty from you when we were kids. I just didn’t. And it guts me that you wanted to be something other than you were because, trust me, you did not want to change places with any of those girls.” His words were sorrowful, and he actually believed exactly what he was saying.

“Gabe, I loved you as hard as a teenage girl can love anyone but herself, so please don’t tell me what I did or did not want. You were never supposed to know because you didn’t see me that way.”

“You’re right, Angel. I didn’t see you that way. I saw you as something better. You weren’t one of those girls because you were too important. Those girls came and went but you were always there. I would never have that relationship with you because I cared about you. My friendship with you, I was serious about. My relationship with those girls? That was a teenage boy who wanted to have fun and liked boobs.”

“You still like boobs.”

“Don’t. Don’t make this a joke Angel. This isn’t a comedy like your books. I’m fucking serious. You were everything to me. I didn’t have another friend, a guy or a girl, who was as close to me as you. So when you disappeared, and I had no idea why, it didn’t just sting. I was gutted. And when I was freaking out about college, about doing everything my mom and dad wanted me to, even though it wasn’t at all what I wanted, I really wanted to talk to you about it, because you were the only one who would understand. But I couldn’t because you cut me off and I had no idea why. So yeah, I fucking ran. Looks like we were both stupid kids fucking up. Goddamnit.”

It was my turn to bow my head and cover my face. This conversation was too hard, and I didn’t want to have it anymore. To find out that all of my angst over the night of my play was because he was a douchebag boyfriend who hadn’t heard a word out of his date's mouth made me feel very petty, but there was no going back. Those things that had happened made us who we were and I didn’t think either of us would change who we were now, even if we could. I liked myself. And I liked Gabe.

What would happen to us now?

“You were never supposed to know any of this, Gabe, and even now I don’t know what it changes that you do. I’m not that teenage girl anymore, and you aren’t that kid I was in love with. We’ve cleared up some things now, but all it does it make me feel stupid and weak. Stupid for internalizing and not coming to you when I should have, and weak because it has affected me for so long.” I couldn’t look at him, the tears weren’t running down my cheeks anymore but I had the hiccups. I tried to take deep, even breaths to keep from making any noise, but every few seconds my chest would seize and the “hic” would come out.

“If we had dated when we were kids, I never would have appreciated you like I should have. I didn’t have the capacity at the time. It was a maturity I didn’t possess yet. But I was young then, and I didn’t know a damn thing. I’m a grown man now, and I know exactly what I want.” Gabe’s hand slid under my chin again, gentler now, and I raised my tear-streaked face to meet his. His eyes weren’t hard anymore, and they weren’t sad. There was something else in there, but I didn’t want to believe what I saw there, in the warm brown depths of his gaze. I didn’t want to open my heart to that if it meant hurting again. Shit, I was hurting now.

“I don’t know if I even have the capacity to care that deeply about a person anymore,” I said truthfully.

“Then why are you crying?” He wiped a fresh tear from my cheek with his thumb and tilted my face to meet his. It wasn’t a brain-melting kiss like he had given me before, this was sweet and gentle and almost had me sobbing again with all of the emotion he passed into me from his lips.

“Don’t look down again, Angel. Look at me. I didn’t know shit then, but I know now and I’m not afraid to tell you. I’m not afraid to say it out loud that I care about you. The adult you. The Angel I drove to Detroit for and punched Dino in the face for and stayed up all night reading romantic comedies for. But we have a problem. I don’t want you to let someone else determine what your place is. You determine that. I would love to say that your place is right here with me, but even I can’t decide that for you.

“And if you decide you want to try this with me, then there absolutely will be people that will try to remove you, to get you to back down. I mean it, these women get really creative and I need you to be assertive. If you can do that, then I promise I will never make you do it alone. I will stand next to you, I will stand up for you, in the future and like I should have all those years ago.” Gabe got up from his kneeling position and sat next to me on the edge of the bed, his thigh touching mine, and he grabbed my hands and squeezed.

“If you decide that your place is with me, and I don’t know what else I can do or say to convince you of this, then I need you to stand your ground. I need you to trust how you feel about me and how I feel about you because we are going to communicate. I need you to be able to give a big fuck you to anyone who would try to knock you from your place. Can you do that?”

“You gonna need me to be a bad ass?” I asked, feeling for the first time that maybe I could rise to the challenge.

“The baddest of asses,” he said solemnly. It would have been a very sweet and poignant moment if his hands hadn't immediately drifted up to my chest so he could squeeze my boobs together.

“Are you ever going to be able to control yourself?” It’s like we hadn’t just been having an intensely emotion conversation where he yelled and I cried.

“Probably not. Do I have to?”

I laughed and pushed him in the chest, much more gently than earlier in our argument, until he fell backward on the bed. He didn’t say anything, just raised his eyebrows and folded his arms behind his head, waiting to see what I would do. I slid his fancy leather shoes off his feet, running my fingers up the arch of his foot, causing his leg to jump. As playful as our mood had become, I really didn’t want to have sex right now.

Gabe had been traveling, up all night and most of today. There were shadows under his eyes I couldn’t help but feel guilty about for putting there. Climbing into the bed next to him I snuggled up close and rested my head in the crook of his arm.

“You don’t think we are rushing into anything too fast?” My words disappeared into a jaw-cracking yawn.

“Who do you need permission from to love me, Angel? We’re adults,” he said, mirroring my yawn. I knew it, he was exhausted. “You want me to call your mom and ask her?” he asked while turning on his side and tucking me in closer to his body.

“Dear God, not that.” I snorted softly, burying my face into the worn cotton of his navy shirt. I stayed there for a bit, feeling the rise and fall of his chest under my cheek. When I did move my head back to look up at him I saw he had fallen asleep, his eyelids closed over his chocolate brown eyes. The ones that flashed black when he was angry or turned on.

Having this Gabe was good, too. He was strong and dominating, and really had to have his own way all the time, completely different than when we were kids and he always let me have my own way. I was different now than I was fifteen years ago, too. Maybe it was fate that we were so close back then, but never able to be together. There was a reason we were together now, maybe we were both finally ready. It was a really nice thought to fall asleep to, anyway.

* * *

It was full night when I opened my eyes next. I woke with a start because Gary’s answering machine kicked on downstairs and he had the volume turned up to eleven when he listened to his messages. I reached on my nightstand and checked my phone; it was after midnight. Definitely time for more sleep. I was warm with Gabe’s body curled around me like a furnace, the same as the first time we ended up in a bed together. Instead of terrified and nervous, though, I felt comforted having him beside me. Happy.

I’d been told once, by someone I had dated briefly, that I lived my life treating every relationship like it could be taken from me at any moment. But that wasn’t true, at least not anymore. I was trying, in my own way. As I snuggled my bottom a little more firmly against Gabe’s middle, he grunted, and slid one large thigh over mine, trapping me in place. Ugh, I was still wearing my jeans and as I moved, the waistband caught on the black plastic covering of my tattoo, making a crinkling noise. I brushed it gently with my hand, my fingers flirting with the edge of the tape that held the covering on. I should have taken it off before I went to bed. But I was too busy to think of it. I would do it in the morning. Clean it up and put new salve on it, then I would show it to Gabe. Maybe, when he saw the small pink rose I had put on one of his favorite parts of my body to grab, then he would understand.

Then again, I thought as I felt his deep, even breathing in my hair and against the back of my neck, maybe he understands just fine. Maybe it was me who needed to catch up. Either way, I couldn’t wait to show him my surprise.