The Soulmate(14)

I wanted to say no to the date. I told myself I had some dignity. But it turned out I didn’t have much at all.

On this occasion, having the advantage of prep time, I looked nice. I wore a short white sundress with sandals, my hair was washed and in a bouncy ponytail. I wondered if he’d comment on my appearance, but he didn’t. Knowing Gabe as I do now, it doesn’t surprise me. As good-looking as he is, looks are entirely irrelevant to him. He’s attracted to something deeper, harder to pin down.

We met at the Botanic Gardens – his idea, and a sweet one. This time, though it was cloudy, there was no rain. Gabe arrived on crutches, carrying a thermal picnic bag over one shoulder and a blanket around his neck. When I got close enough to him, I laughed and rolled my eyes, taking the blanket from him. Perhaps it was the crutches that made me feel strangely comfortable. As if they brought him down to a more human level, less the unattainable dream-like man I’d imagined the past few weeks. As I spread the blanket out for us, he said, ‘It feels like we’ve done this before, doesn’t it? In another life?’

Yes, I thought. Yes, it does.

‘So, you’re a lawyer?’ he said; I’d told him as much in our phone conversation. ‘What kind of law?’

It was a question I answered often. I was aware wills and estates was not the sexiest area of legal practice. It had never bothered me. But now, faced with a gorgeous man, I found myself wishing I’d chosen litigation, or mergers and acquisitions, or even family law.

‘Wills and estates,’ I confessed, then added in mitigation, ‘It’s most recession-proof.’

What happened next was the second miracle of our relationship (the rain-stopping being the first). Gabe rested his cheek in his hand, looked into my eyes and said, ‘Tell me about it.’

No one had ever said that before. No one has ever said it since. The craziest part was that it looked very much like he meant it.

So I told him. I was halfway through explaining escrow, when he took my chin between his thumb and forefinger, looked directly into my eyes and kissed me. Softly. Just once. Then he smiled and said, ‘Sorry. Carry on. Escrow.’

We talked about everything that day. Important things – like the fact that his father had died before he was born and that he still bore a grudge towards his father’s family, who never helped his mother out or made any attempt to meet him. We also talked about unimportant things – like what we watched on TV, why IKEA hot dogs were so good and whether we were going to get that Indian summer everyone was talking about.

We stayed in the gardens until the sky turned dark and the bats began to fly overhead. The air was warm and sweet, and our conversation was punctuated by short silences and shy smiles and comments of wonder (from Gabe) like, ‘It feels as if we’ve always known each other.’

It was an evening of that feeling you wanted to bottle, the feeling that no drug or orgasm could replicate – the skyrocketing high of limerence. I was delighted by everything: the way he paused to think before answering any question, as if whether or not he liked pickles was worthy of deep contemplation; the way he laughed loudly at my offhand jokes; the way his chest looked in his button-down shirt. And he delighted equally in me. It was delightful to be delighted in.

By the time we made it back to his apartment, which was just a short walk away, it was not a question of whether the night was ending but, rather, where we were going next. The idea of parting was simply unthinkable.

When I gathered my things to return home forty-eight hours later, he seemed adorably confused.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked.

‘Home.’ I laughed. ‘I’ve been here two nights. How long did you think I would stay?’

He looked at me as if it was the strangest thing I’d ever said.

‘Pippa,’ he said, ‘I thought you’d stay forever.’



We went from nought to one hundred in a second, which, I learned later, was the only way Gabe did things. He met my family after a week, we started looking for a house together after two. Three weeks after that first date, in a bubble bath, he asked me to marry him. There was no ring, no champagne. The idea just occurred to him, he said. I told him he was mad, and you couldn’t possibly get married after knowing someone for three weeks. He agreed, it was ridiculous. Then I said, ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ and we had sex on the bathroom floor.

*

Falling in love with Gabe lasted an eternity. It felt like I’d never stop falling. There were a million little reasons to love him. He was the person who always rushed to help when someone dropped their bags in the street. He was the guy at the party who offered to hold the random baby. He was the first to put his hand up for anything – even before he understood what it was or what it would involve. He listened to people, really listened, and then thought about what they’d said later. He went out of his way to include people who were left out of conversations.

I realised, even then, that there was another side of Gabe. He got distracted easily. He could do big talk, but not small talk. He didn’t sleep . . . or only slept. He was all or nothing.

I often wonder if choosing Gabe was a direct result of my upbringing. Some people choose the safe guy, the stable guy, if they’ve had an upbringing filled with uncertainty. My family was so stable, maybe it made me yearn for instability? And Gabriel Gerard was a perfect fit.