Once Upon a Friendship

He moved toward the sight, his heart in his throat, but Marie blocked his way. She shook her head. Pointed toward the door.

“I have a confession to make,” he said in a voice that didn’t sound like his at all.

“Not tonight, Liam.” Marie’s teeth were clenched as she bit out the words. “You’re going to have to learn to take no for an answer.”

Oh, Lord, he hoped not.

“I love you, Gabrielle,” he blurted. “I am in love with you. It might blow our friendship, but not being honest will do that more quickly, and more permanently. I guess what I’m trying to say is that it’s too late to prevent the risk. I am in love with you.”

He turned to face Marie, not silenced by her frown. “I love you, too, though in a different way,” he told her. “And I’m counting on both of you. We’ve always found a way to work through whatever problem any of us brought to the table,” he told them. “Well, here it is. I am in love with Gabrielle. I can’t seem to find any other woman even remotely attractive, which is a great thing. But there are all kinds of possibilities when I start to think about things that could go wrong between us someday. I don’t deny that. I don’t deny that I need our family together. Like we are right now. I need us. So what do we do?”

Neither woman said a word. Marie, openmouthed, stared at him. Gabi didn’t raise her head.

Encouraged by the fact that Marie wasn’t throwing him out, he said, “I watched Dad and Missy tonight. You need to see them together, Gabi. It’s like...he’s...different with her. I look at them and see all the time they’ve lost just because he wouldn’t tell me about her. About them. Because he didn’t think his two worlds would meld. I don’t want to be him. I don’t want to make his mistakes. I don’t want a lost life. If Marie is correct, and I’m certain she is, I’ve been in love with you since college, only I was too blinded by who I thought I was to see that. I’ve already been too much like him. I’ve wasted ten years. Assuming you’re in love with me, too, I don’t want to waste another minute.”

As the words left his mouth, a huge weight lifted from his chest. One that he’d been carrying around far too long.

No one moved. No sniffles came from the couch. No words from Marie.

He understood. He’d broken the code of their friendship.

And even if there was no way Gabrielle would trust them enough to let herself love him back, he felt better. Not great. But better.

“So that’s it.” He glanced at Gabi’s form for a long moment. Giving her time, if she needed it. To move. To say something.

To offer him some tea.

And then he turned to go.

“Wait.”

She half choked the word. Her voice a couple of octaves lower than normal. He had a feeling she’d been crying for a long time. And felt sick knowing it was because of him.

Because she’d known, as he had, that their friendship was being blown apart by the love between them no matter what either one of them wanted.

He stopped but didn’t turn around.

“You can’t just say you’re in love with me and then leave. It’s not right,” she told him.

“That’s true.” Marie—in a bathrobe, he now noticed—nodded.

Swinging around, he watched as Gabi slowly unfolded from the couch and came to him. Stopped just in front of him. She was in her bathrobe, too, not that it mattered. Did she have any idea how beautiful she was with that hair sticking up all over her head?

“Come on, Liam, surely you don’t need me to advise you on what to do next,” she said, her face a mixture of consternation and something he didn’t recognize. “I mean, when you came to confess your drinking or gambling when we were in college, you wanted me to tell you what you were doing was wrong, so I did. Because it was what you expected. But you didn’t need to be told. You knew what you were doing was wrong before you ever came to our door.”

Yeah. He had.

So why had he gone to them?

He’d gone to them, not for advice, but to know that someone cared about him enough to be there for him when he screwed up. He’d gone because he’d cared about them and needed to know that they cared about him, too.

Everyone needed that. “I’m not going to demand that you tell me how you feel about me, Gabi,” he said now, words coming from deep inside of him. “I’ve spent the past twelve years taking from you two. It’s time for me to give back. Long past time. So... I’m here. Night and day. I’m going back to work at Connelly and will continue writing as I have in the past—with the exception that I’m going to cover stories that matter to me, including the series about my father—but I’m going to be staying right here. Living here. Loving you both—you in a way I’ve never loved any woman—and fighting for our friendship.”

“You aren’t moving back to your condo?” That from Marie.

He shook his head. “Kind of surprising, isn’t it? But this place...it feels more like a home to me than anyplace else I’ve ever lived.”

Glancing down, he saw Gabi’s eyes, like steel burning right into him. He’d gotten her all riled up and didn’t know what to do with her.