Now That I've Found You - Kristina Forest Page 0,10
reaching past me for my suitcases. “Let me get those for you.”
But I move to the side, blocking him. “I don’t understand. How do you know my grandmother?”
“She buys her groceries from my store,” he says, still smiling. “She’s one of my most loyal customers.”
Without asking, he takes both of my suitcases and begins rolling them toward his truck.
I know that I’ve been avoiding Gigi, but I still trust her with my life. She wouldn’t send a serial killer to pick me up from the airport. Mr. Gabriel has to be legit.
And that’s how I find myself climbing into a grocery store delivery truck and being driven to the Upper West Side of Manhattan. As if I needed a reminder that I’ve completely fallen from grace.
Marvin Gaye blares through the truck’s speakers, and Mr. Gabriel shouts over the music so that I can hear him. I’m learning that he is a talkative man.
“Your grandmother said you went to a fancy school in Los Angeles and that you were in some popular movie,” he says. “What was it called?”
“Mind Games,” I say quietly, looking out the window.
“What?” he shouts.
“Mind Games!” I roll up my window so that the wind isn’t so loud.
“Ah, never seen it,” he says. “I’ll have to check it out. My niece, Janine, lives in Los Angeles too, you know. She writes plays. She’s working on one right now … Um, I forget what it’s called.”
“Oh, cool.” Whenever I meet people who aren’t from LA, they just assume all the people who live in LA know one another. I was well connected before my life imploded, but there’s not much I can do for his niece now, if that’s what he’s hoping for. I continue to look out the window as we drive through Times Square, hoping he stops the conversation there.
“I’ll give you her number, and you can call her.” He glances at me as he says, “You know, you really do look a lot different in person. Nothing like that picture I saw.”
I cringe, finger-combing my wig self-consciously. “It’s the hair.”
And, irony of ironies, that’s when I see it: Simone’s face on a huge billboard for Beautiful You’s newest hair-care line.
“YOU’VE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME!” I shriek.
Mr. Gabriel swerves, and the drivers around us lean on their horns.
“What? What is it?” he asks frantically.
Not only did she replace me in Paul Christopher’s movie, she stole my beauty campaign! She knew how much I wanted to work with Beautiful You, what it meant to me. How can one person be so terrible?
“I hate her,” I mumble, holding my face in my hands. I’m seething. I’m surprised steam isn’t wafting off of me. “I hate her so freaking much!”
“Who?” Mr Gabriel asks. “What are you talking about?”
I sink lower into my seat and squeeze my eyes closed, reminding myself to breathe. In and out, in and out, again and again, until my pulse returns to normal.
Poor Mr. Gabriel is still confused and alarmed. I can’t even bring myself to explain. I’ll end up spiraling out again.
“Here we are,” he eventually says, turning onto West Eighty-Seventh Street and heading toward Columbus Avenue.
He comes to a stop in front of Gigi’s town house. I look out the window and stare at it. The last time I visited, I was happy, a different person. Everything was different.
“Thank you,” I say to Mr. Gabriel, but my hand freezes on the door handle. “And, um, I’m really sorry for shouting out of nowhere and scaring you.”
He smiles warmly and waves his hand. “Please, it’s not a problem. I live in New York. I’ve seen worse.”
He helps retrieve my suitcases from the back of his truck and rolls them onto the sidewalk. I stand beside them and thank him again.
“Don’t worry about it. Anything to help your grandmother,” he says. “You just take down my niece’s number and promise to give her a call one of these days.”
“I don’t really know if that’s a good idea…” Doesn’t he know what I’ve done? I’m sure his niece does not want me calling her, especially if she’s trying to break into the industry.
“Nonsense! You take her number down right now.”
He actually stands there and waits as I enter his niece’s number into my phone before quickly hopping into his truck and driving away.
And then I’m alone again.
Gigi’s neighborhood is so quiet. Beautiful and affluent, but mostly quiet. I guess that’s why she wanted to move here.