Wishing I could put a pause on time is pushing my luck I figured but my anxiety seemed to have eased a bit, in the days that went by since I met Gabe. I still take acid relief and Aleve daily.
Gabriel lingers in my mind like an unanswered question. Seeing him that night at dinner made everything I thought I'd almost left behind come rushing back. The heartbreak, the hollow feeling of being cast aside, and that lipstick stain on his shirt, the silent evidence of another woman in his life. Cassandra. I still can't wrap my mind around it all. Had he already met her now, or would she come into his life later, slipping into place like a piece of a puzzle he'd been missing all along?
The phone call he took- the way he smiled as we were leaving comes back to mind. I can't shake the thought, can't stop turning it over in my head like some toxic charm.
God. Had I been a stand-in for her and not his mother's request to see him married before she passed?
