“What do you mean?”
“You just called me ‘sweetness’. It’s what you used to say back when I was that broken nineteen-year-old. You’d hold me and rock me and call me that name while I cried myself to sleep. I can’t stand the thought that you still see me that way.”
“I don’t, but it’s not a bad thing that I still see traces of him in you. I’ve always adored that boy.”
There was a question I’d been carrying with me for years, and after a pause I said, “I know you didn’t want to come with me to Reno because you thought you’d derail my recovery. But once you got a handle on your addiction, why didn’t you call my aunt and uncle and ask them where I was?”
“I called them the day after you left to make sure you’d made it to Reno, and they told me they’d gotten you into rehab. Once I knew you were safe, I threw away their contact information to make sure I didn’t have a way to find you.”
I met his gaze and asked, “Why would you do that?”
“Because I thought I’d never be anything but an addict, and the last thing people in recovery need is to be around someone who’s still using.” His voice was rough with emotion when he told me, “I’m so sorry I failed you.”
“You didn’t fail me, Gabriel.”
“Yes, I did. You needed a friend after you got out of the treatment facility. I know that because I sure as hell did, but I wasn’t strong enough to kick my addiction and be there for you. Now that I know your aunt and uncle weren’t there for you either, I feel even guiltier than I already did for abandoning you like that.”
I took his hand and said, “You have to stop doing this to yourself. Instead of focusing on the fact that you saved my life, you’re letting yourself feel bad about things that were never in your control. I know what it means to be an addict, so I know exactly what you were struggling with back then. I don’t blame you for not having more to give me while you were going through that, and you can’t blame yourself either. We both have to forgive ourselves for what happened in the past if we’re ever going to move forward.”
He knelt down in front of me and grabbed me in a hug. As I rubbed his back, he whispered, “I love you so much, Riley.”
He didn’t mean it the same way I did. I knew that for a fact. Loving someone and being in love with them were two very different things, but it still felt good to hear those words. I kissed his forehead and said, “I love you, too.” If only he knew how much I meant it.
We shifted to the bed and curled up with each other for a while. When a text alert beeped I ignored it, but he murmured, “That’s probably Will.”
I took the phone from my pocket and read the screen before saying, “You’re right. They’re leaving his agent’s office now and will be here in about twenty minutes.”
We both got up, and Gabriel said, “I’ll help you finish packing.” After we worked together to assemble my fantasy makeup kit, he caught my hand to get me to hold still and used a cleansing cloth to wipe off my eye makeup.
Then we still had a few minutes before our friends arrived, so we sat side-by-side on the bed to wait. After a pause, he asked, “Do you think we’ll ever be able to talk about that time in our lives without getting upset?”
“Definitely. It’s just a lot to process right now, because finding each other again brought all kinds of emotions to the surface.”
“I really need to get my guilt under control,” he muttered.
“I need to do the same thing with my embarrassment. I just really want you to see me as the man I am now and not the boy I was then, because I can’t stand how weak I used to be.”
“You were never weak,” he said. “Far from it.”
I glanced at him and asked, “Do you really think so?”
“I know that for a fact. You went through hell and survived. There’s no way you could have done that if you were weak.”
“That’s a totally different perspective than the one I’ve been carrying with me all these years.”
He laced his fingers with mine and said, “Sometimes it helps to see yourself through someone else’s eyes.”
Chapter 4
It was almost nine o’clock when we arrived in San Francisco, after what turned out to be a fun road trip. Will needed to memorize his lines for the scenes he was shooting over the next few days, so for the last half of the drive we each chose one of the five main characters and rehearsed the scenes over and over again. To keep it interesting, we added different accents and funny voices and played up the drama, with hilarious results. By the time we reached our destination, all five of us had the lines memorized forward and backward.