Rock My Heart (Luminescent Juliet #4) (7 page)

This time, I try to take in the moving scenery, try
to see why Rachel would have wanted to do this, and try to find some enjoyment
from it, but being on the back of the motorcycle makes me queasy and anxious.
And way, way too aware of Gabe, specifically his six-pack, even
I
can admit the man has some serious
wash boarding going on.

Finally, we stop below my apartment. Gabe offers to
take the groceries up for me, but I grab the bags from his hand. “That’s okay.
I’m pretty sure I can handle three bags. Um…thanks for the ride, for doing this
for me, and telling Jeff,” I add, reminding him about our deal.

He settles back on the bike, looking me up and down.
“How’s your piercing doing?”

Between his gaze and the reference to my itchy
bellybutton, I’m suddenly excessively self-conscious. “All right.” I take a
step back toward the stairs and the honestly he usually produces in me has me
admitting, “A bit sore, other than that, its fine.”

He hits the kickstand down. “Not going to show it to
me?”

“Ah…that would be a definite negative,” I say,
trying not to imagine raising my shirt and him bending to check out my midriff.
I turn around and go up a few stairs. Over my shoulder, I say, “Thanks again,
see you Tuesday.” Then I practically run up the stairs because I’m losing the
battle with my imagination and all sorts of odd things are happening in my
brain, like Gabe’s hands on the bare skin of my midriff.

The entire image is unsettling and bizarrely
exciting.

Chapter 10

~April~

I don’t rush out of
group in my usual frenzy because for once group had gone well. Misha and her
lap dog Chad were rude as predictable, but Jeff beamed at me when Gabe shared
the two items we did to ‘complete’ the bucket list. I could practically see the
report of progress he’d give Dr. Medina written all over his face. The
expectation kept me giddy through group.

In fact, I’m so slow leaving the building I miss
offering Jason a ride. He’s already going around the corner of the building as
I exit. I’m two steps into the parking lot as Gabe catches up with me.
Strangely, being around him has become somewhat normal. Or maybe it’s that I
feel
normal around him. The shield of
flawlessness I usually wear is refreshingly absent when we’re together.

“Got a favor to ask,” he says as he matches my
shorter stride. “My truck’s in the middle of getting fixed. Think I could get a
ride?”

“Um…sure,” I say, a little startled at the request.
“How did you get here?”

“Sharon, my father’s girlfriend, drove me.”

I frown, thinking of someone going half an hour out
of
their
way. “You should’ve got my number from Romeo
or Riley and rode with me.”

“Thought about it. I didn’t know what to say.” He
splits away from me, going around the back of my car to the passenger’s side.
“Wasn’t sure you wanted them to know you’re in group therapy.”

I’m annoyed and startled that he can read me that
well, but as usual, I’m all honesty with him. “I’d rather they didn’t know I’m
in therapy, so thanks.”

He nods at me from across the car’s roof before we
both get into the car.

As we buckle our seatbelts Gabe says, “Don’t want to
ruin that Little Miss Perfect image?”

I push the keys in the ignition and turn toward him,
my expression flat. “Nope, I don’t.”

His brows rise the slightest bit.

I shrug and shift into drive. “It’s not that I
really want them to think I’m perfect or that I’ve ever been perfect...it’s
just that this perfection image thing keeps me”—I pause, searching for
acceptable ambiguous words—“keeps me going sometimes.”

I sense Gabe staring at me while I drive. The
highway keeps my attention, but my fingers tighten on the steering wheel. I
finally ask, “What?”
 

The seat creaks as if he’s sitting back. “Sorry,
you’re telling me you weren’t always Miss Perfect?”

A boisterous laugh escapes me. “Hardly. I used to be
normally imperfect.”

I sense his continued stare.

“I’m having a hard time believing that.”

“Don’t really care.”

This time he laughs.

The car is silent until he switches on the radio. A
popular pop song by some teenybopper pervades the space with its bubblegum
beat.

“Seriously?” Gabe asks with an incredulous tone.
“You listen to this shit?”

“It’s just background noise.”

He’s soon pressing buttons, searching for a rock
station. In less than a minute, loud guitar riffs and hard drumbeats fill the
interior of the car. The song must be newer. I don’t recognize it.

At the commercial break, Gabe turns down the radio.
“Hey, pullover.”
 

Seeing nothing but fast food places and a gas
station, I ask, “Why? Where?”

“Burger joint.”

“Seriously? You eat that stuff?” I whine, copying
his opinion of the radio station.

“I’ll pretty much eat anything. Cupboards were
rarely full as a kid.”

Well, that has me turning into the restaurant. “Can
I just go through the drive-thru?” 

“Of course not, pull into a parking space,” he says
in an authoritative tone.

My brow rises. Instead of arguing, I do as he
instructed. The argument isn’t worth the time.

He reaches for the door handle, then glances at me
expectantly. “Well, come on.”

“I’m not hungry. I’ll just wait in the car.”

“This isn’t about hunger.”

My look at him is quizzical.

He grins wickedly. “It’s about completing the list.”

Ugh. I should have guessed his intentions. “How can
you remember every single thing on that list? It’s like you have a photogenic
memory or something.”

He taps an ear. “It’s because I heard it as you read
it. I would have remembered only half if
I
read it. Now come on.”

I keep my internal grumbling, recall Jeff’s beam,
and get out of the car to follow Gabe around the back of the building and the
drive thru speaker.

“This is not going to work,” I whisper.

“Never know until you try,” he whispers back, then
clears his throat. “Hello?” he says loudly.

After several long seconds, the intercom comes on.
“Um… can I help you?”

The male voice sounds young and confused.

“Sure can,” Gabe says. “We’ll take two fries, two
cheeseburgers, a coffee, and a”—he gestures to me.

When I stand there, he nudges me with his elbow.

“And an ice water,” I blurt out.

The confused voice on the intercom repeats the order
while Gabe smirks.

As we walk to the window, I dig in my purse.

“Oh, no,” Gabe says. “This one is on me.”

I keep digging. “I’ll pay for my therapy, thank
you.”

“Put it away, April,” Gabe says in a harsh tone.

A glance at his harsher expression has me closing
the purse. “Fine.”

The teenager at the window eyeballs us over, his
face flushing with each second. “You’re not supposed to walk through the drive
thru.”

Gabe puts his elbow on the window ledge. “It’s a bet
dude. She”—he tilts his head my way—“didn’t think I’d go through with it. So I
had to, right?” He holds out a twenty-dollar bill. “I mean look at her.”

The boy glances at me, blushes and nods before
taking the money. “You’re lucky the manager’s on break,” he grumbles.

“Oh, yeah,” Gabe says. “I’m one lucky son of a bitch.
Been lucky my whole life.”

His sarcasm and the ‘look at her’ comment, mixed
with the fact that I’m standing at a drive thru window has me shuffling
forward. I move onto the sidewalk past the window as a car comes around the
corner.

Gabe waves at the car.

Finally, after what feels like the longest three
minutes of my life, the boy hands over the drinks and a bag. I move to round
the restaurant toward my car, but Gabe decides we need to eat at a picnic table
on a little patio in front of the place.

I plop on the bench across from him. “We could have
just ordered drinks. The point was to walk through the drive thru.”

He pushes a burger and fries across the table toward
me. “True, but I missed lunch.”

I consider his grease stained T-shirt, then recall the
also grease stained pants now under the table that Misha sneered at during
therapy. “Fixing your truck?”

He unwraps a burger. “Yeah, then there was the ride
thing that took some time.” He takes a huge bite of burger.

“Your father’s girlfriend who gave you a ride,” I
say, pushing my cheeseburger toward him. “Is she the same one…from when you
were fifteen?” I pluck out a fry, attempting to make it appear
like
the question is small talk. I’m not sure if I want
him
to think I’m not that interested or
convince myself that I’m not that interested.

He nods.

“So she’s like a mom to you?”

He swallows, his Adam’s apple a bob. “Suppose so,
don’t know what it’s like to have the real thing.”

“Oh crap, I’m so sorry. Your mother passed?”

“Not that I know of. My mother left when I was six.”

The fry in my hand drops to the table. “You haven’t
seen your mother since you were six?”

“Maybe six and half.”

My mouth hangs open until I say, “And she left you
with
your
father?”

He pauses unwrapping the second burger. “You know, once
people hear that my father was abusive”—I continue to question
the was
—“that’s all they can see, but
he
never left me.”

My mouth becomes a flytrap again. “You’re defending
him?”

Gabe sighs. “I know I make it sound like it in therapy
because that’s what people want to hear, but it’s not like the man is just a
fist. It’s not like I wasn’t a little shit. It’s not like he hit me out of the
blue.” He lifts the burger, then sets it down. “Well, most of the time.”

“Really?” The word rolls out of me in a dry
incredulous tone, thinking no one, but especially a child, deserves to be hit.

“Really,” Gabe says in a confident voice, but his
hands grip the edge of the table. “Though an asshole, my dad has had a rough
life too. His mother was an alcoholic, and he has become one too—which is why
I’m not in to drinking much. He never graduated from high school, never even
got a GED because he started working at sixteen to support her.
A shit job six days a week that he is still stuck in.
I
think he met my mom at the diner he’s a line cook at. He doesn’t talk about her
much because yeah, she walked out on him and never looked back. And I could be
a lazy, non-listening shit. Tried to get out of chores. Stayed out way past the
streetlights coming on, even as early as the age of nine. Did stupid shit like
light firecrackers in the basement…”

“Gabe,” I say softly, patiently. “No matter what you
did, your father didn’t have a reason, or an excuse, to abuse you.”

“I know that.” He lets go of the table only to tap
on the wood with his index fingers. “Trust me, my psychologist has brainwashed
that into me. But I don’t want to remember only the bad. I don’t want my past
to simply be belts and knuckles and the bottom of a boot.”

My eyes grow large as he continues, “There were
other things.” Tap. Tap. Tap. Like a slow drum roll on the table. “A bicycle
next to the Christmas tree when I was ten. A bicycle he couldn’t afford.
Fishing from the river docks during the summer. Teaching me things like how to
change the oil in a car. I’m not going to brush all the good away. I’m not
going to ignore the shit life he has lived. I can’t”—his voice becomes hoarse
as he stops tapping and glances down—“I don’t want the sum of me condensed to a
mother who abandoned me and a father who beat me
.”

At first, I assume this is about people pitying him.
As I slowly take in his intense expression and clenched jaw, I realize he
wants, maybe needs, to have a parental bond. Turning his father into solely a
villain negates that connection. And perhaps having—even if imagining—the bond
allows him to deal with his past.

“Yet you want to move out,” I add, truly trying to
understand the connection to his father.

“Most of the time I can’t stand the mean, old
bastard, and he can’t stand me, but more than that, I have to get out the
cycle. When I’m there, I’m too close to my fifteen-year-old self. But for the
six weeks during the tour, the first time I was gone for more than a few nights
here and there, I felt like a different person. Calmer and freer somehow.
Perhaps from the never ending worry of what’s going to happen next. So I’m
hoping moving out will bring that sense of calmness and freedom back.”

Surprised at his awareness of the cycle he’s caught
in, I stare at him in contemplation until I blurt my next thought out. “Will
you go back to visit him?”

He shakes his head. “I don’t know…” He looks at the
parking lot. “Damn, why am I telling you this shit? Some of it I don’t even
tell my shrink.
It’s like you ask
, and my mouth spouts
shit. Are you Jedi shrinking me for practice?”

A loud laugh bursts from me.

He cocks an eyebrow.

I reign in my iconic chuckle. “I’m not shrinking
you. But it’s kind of the same for me.”

His eyebrow remains up.

I straighten my collar, feeling a bit anxious being
so honest. “I can’t keep up my pleasantly polite, even keeled front around you.
I’m either angry and blurt stuff out or curious and blurt stuff out or
strangely honest and blurt out the truth.” Sighing at my own lack of control, I
reach for another fry.

“Pleasantly polite?”

“Nice ring to it, eh?” I pop the fry in my mouth.

He lets out a grunt. “More like boringly stuck up.”

I throw the next fry at him. He flicks it away
before it beams him in the eye. “That’s not true.”

“Maybe not,” he concedes, prying the lid from his
coffee. “But I recall hearing that you bitched out Riley once. So you’re not
always Ms. Pleasantly Polite.”

“That was pre-meditated. She was hurting Romeo with
her indecisiveness.”

“And you needed to be the one to set her straight?”

My look at him is sharp. “I didn’t like seeing him
hurting.”