Once Upon a Marriage

Gabi’s upbeat tone made Marie happier, too.

“Is it weird, being so newly married and now having a...roommate?”

From up on a ladder, leaning over the top of a tall shelving unit, Gabi chuckled. “You want to know what Elliott’s like to live with, don’t you? I could always send him down to you.”

She wouldn’t, of course. But Marie warmed inside, just thinking about the large man sleeping in her spare room. “Does he sing in the shower?” The question slipped out. Only because this was Gabi. And Marie was clearly spending too much time alone.

“How do I know?” Gabi laughed out loud. “His room is fifteen hundred square feet away from ours, and the bathroom is on the far side of that.”

All of which Marie knew. She’d helped Gabi decorate the guest suite the month before.

Her friend called down numbers. Marie jotted in columns. And then held the ladder steady as Gabi climbed down.

“I’m losing it,” she confessed, as soon as her friend was on solid ground. “Ever since Friday night...he’s all I can think about. I mean, I thought of him a lot before that, too, but... I think you’re right, Gabi. I’m falling for him. And it’s nuts. I’m thirty-one, not sixteen. And I’ve only known him three months.”

“I married Liam less than a month after I knew I had feelings for him.”

“But you’d known him forever.” They both had.

They stood there, both with their hands on the ladder, facing each other. “I just think that there are some things you can’t quantify,” Gabi said, her voice softer than Marie was used to hearing it. Gabi was the practical one of the three of them. The attorney who was always preparing for the worst. And counting every penny.

She dotted every i. Crossed every t. Marie tended to go more by the heart and forgot the i’s and t’s sometimes. While Liam just breezed by them, pushed them or found a way to get rid of them if they got in his way.

“And there are some things over which you have no control. No matter how hard you try.” Gabi’s eyes glistened. And Marie, nodding, reached out to brush a piece of her friend’s short dark hair away from her face.

“Just let it happen,” Gabi whispered, taking Marie’s hand in hers. “Please, Marie. Just let go and let it happen. Elliott’s a good guy.”

“You really think so? Because it’s not like I’ve got a great track record in that department.”

“There’s nothing wrong with your ability to choose a man,” Gabi said, her voice getting stronger as she folded up the ladder and put it away. “You choose men who you know aren’t going to tempt you to be in it for life. Men who are preoccupied by other things. Or who you aren’t particularly attracted to.”

“I do n...” Marie broke off as Gabi turned to give her the look. The one where she was challenging Marie to be completely honest.

“Freshman year,” Gabi said. “He was more into his church than he was into you. To the point that you had to go to church with him to spend any real time together.”

Maybe.

“And the doctor... He was in med school, Marie. And was going to be for some time. Years. He made it clear from the very beginning that his studies came first...”

“That still didn’t give him the right to be unfaithful to me.”

“Of course not!” Gabi was back. Right in front of her. “The guy was a schmuck as well as a med student. I’m just saying, you’ve never seriously dated anyone who didn’t have something else that came first in his life.”

“Then I’m doing it again,” Marie said, her emotions settling down into some semblance of normal for the first time in what felt like months. “Because Elliott’s career definitely comes first with him.”

“Does it?” Gabi walked toward the door of the storeroom that led back into Marie’s office. “Or is he just dedicated to his job? Maybe he wants a home and family just as much as you do but hasn’t found the right woman yet.”

In all of their talking, he’d never said much about his life. About his wants and needs. Marie needed to know about them. “Has he said something to you?”

“No. But if I were you, I’d be asking him the next time I had a chance.”

“Yeah, right. Out of the blue I’m going to get all personal with him,” she said. But she knew that the idea wasn’t as far-fetched as she was making it out to be. While Elliott kept a professional distance, he’d also breached that line the other night when he told her he liked her. Too much.

She’d been going crazy ever since.

“So, you going to talk to him?” Gabi, with a handful of popcorn, sat down alone in the chair Liam had occupied with her the day before.

“You really think I should?”