looked up at me with those light-blue eyes. “I’d hoped so.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me.” I glanced up the street, focusing on the peaks of my mother’s roof visible behind the trees. Anything except Gabe. “You’re my best friend. Why wouldn’t you want to talk to me about this, of all things?”
He put his hands into his pockets, and his shoulders slumped. “I thought that considering our history—”
“I would take the news better in a crowd?” Wrapping my arms around myself, I willed myself to stop trembling. I’d cried enough for one holiday.
“Look…I know you don’t like Alicia, and I didn’t want to hear your opinion about it.” Gabe touched my elbow and stepped closer to me.
I grimaced. Of course he didn’t. Gabe was the one person over the past twenty-five years who’d never hurt me on purpose. He was my one constant in a life full of changes and disruptions. And we were always honest with each other. Well, mostly.
“I know.” My breath caught when I saw how earnest Gabe looked. I swallowed back the speech I’d planned before Christmas dinner, and how much I wanted to press my lips to his, and prove to him how much we were meant to be together. I just couldn’t do it. He was so happy, and so…in love. “And…I’m happy for you,” I said, my voice low.
His sigh sounded grateful. “Do you really mean that?”
“Of course I do.”
Alicia poked her head out the front door and waved at me, and the lump returned to my throat.
I gave Gabe’s chest a gentle push. “You’ve got to go back. Alicia is looking for you. Go have some chocolate silk for me.”
He squeezed my arm. “You sure you don’t want to come back? Pie is good for bellyaches.”
“That would just make things worse.” The last thing I was capable of was watching Gabe feed his birdlike fiancée bites of my mother’s chocolate pie. “I should go.”
“All right…but we always spend Christmas together. It doesn’t feel right without you.”
I nodded. I already knew that. Just then, the bus peeked over the hill and grumbled toward us. “I’ve gotta go. Give your parents a hug for me.”
“Okay, then.” Gabe started to walk backward, his world-famous knee-melting smile returning to his face. “Merry Christmas, Vi.”
I watched him turn and dart through the rain. It felt like he was dragging my heart on the sidewalk behind him. I walked to where the bus was idling and released a long, guttural sigh. This would go down in the record books as my worst Christmas ever.
I cursed myself for loving a man who was in love with someone else. “Merry Christmas.”
Chapter Four
September 28, 2005
Even as I cleared out my locker and plucked Gabe’s photo from the door, I could still see the anger on his face when it occurred to him what had gone on. Or what he thought had gone on. And once I saw that S.O.B. Cameron Hakes, leering at me from the end of the hall, that was enough. I ran from Wallingford High School as fast as I could. Never looked back.
In a few short months, I was going to watch the man I loved marry Alicia Von Longorial, the model-slash-waitress. I would have to find a way to watch the ceremony without knocking the bride over and trying to pull her hair out. I knew it wouldn’t be difficult to beat her up. She really was very skinny.
I rubbed at my chest, which felt gutted like a jack-o’-lantern. Burying my face in my pillow, I groaned. I didn’t want to feel like this forever. This dull ache had to go away eventually. Maybe there was something to what Betsy and Kim were suggesting. Maybe moving on and—gulp—dating someone who wasn’t Gabe was just the thing.
Anything would beat lying around sniffling over a man who’d chosen someone else.
Kim pounded on the bathroom door. “Why won’t you come out and talk to us? We have ice cream.”
“And spiked eggnog!” Betsy shouted from the living room.
I sighed heavily and opened the bathroom door before plunking back down onto the toilet seat, a dozen wads of tear-soaked tissue gathered around my feet like snowballs. “Gabe proposed to Alicia this morning.”
“He what?” Kim’s voice was so shrill it practically made our windows rattle.
“Shhh, Mr. Landski is going to beat on the floor with a broom again,” Betsy said.
“Oh, let him.” Kim’s footsteps were heavy as she strode from the bathroom to the kitchen. “I thought they broke up!”
I forced