34 : Admitting It

                                    

                                          

                            

                                
                            
                              
                                  
                              
                              
                                
                                  
                                  
                                
                              
                             
                            
                            
                          
                          
A/N: It's a long one. That's what she ... you get it.
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Coming home after my week away is always a relief. I hate being away from Gabe. Without him next to me, a part of my soul is missing. Now, I feel complete, I feel like I can breathe again.
I walk back out to the patio with the tea, handing one mug to Penny and keeping the other for myself. "This smells delicious," she says. It's chai from scratch and took me twenty goddamn minutes to make. It better smell delicious.
"Thanks." I wedge myself into the chair beside Gabe, my arm wrapping around his middle as I rest my head against his bony shoulder. He busies himself with his phone, his earbuds firmly blocking out anything and everything I try to say to him, but this still counts as cuddling in my book.
"You should have heard those pricks talking shit at the hospital today. I'm seriously about to quit," Penny says. She spins her hair up into a knot on top of her head. "They're all a bunch of fucking assholes who need to spend their time worrying about getting themselves laid rather than fucking with you," she says then huffs. "I hate people."
"It's going to be okay," I try to comfort her with a laugh. She's young, but Penny is the least judgmental person I have met since moving here. Without a filter of any kind, she makes it easy to trust that everything she says, good or bad, she means. Penny is a breath of fresh air in a world full of shit. "People were gossiping so much I'm almost glad to be gone."
"Well, I'm not. I miss you," she says with a frown.
"Then tell your boyfriend to invite me over for dinner more often," I tease.
She is mid giggle when her phone chimes. She looks at her screen and a little smile perks at the corner of her mouth. "Mickey is almost here. Are you sure Gabey Baby can't come too?"
I look at him, but he can't hear anything over his shitty music. Or, at least that's what he wants me to think. "No, his dad is in town and asked to steal him for dinner." When I look back, Penny has a wide-eyed stare. "What?"
"Gabe's dad?" she questions.
"Yes?"
"You have never mentioned his dad to me."
"I haven't?"
"No, I'm totally kidding. You've been raving about him nonstop since we met," she says with a roll of her eyes. I love her so much. "I've been sitting here imagining you had some torrid love affair in your past that you never speak about."
Oh, Penny. "Well ..." The doorbell rings just in time. "I'll tell you about it later," I say as I untwine myself from Gabe. "Or never. Whichever comes last."
Walking back inside and through the living room, I answer the door. When I open it, the godlike creature named Michael appears and suddenly everything around him looks like shit. He looks like someone photoshopped the best part of every Italian cologne model together into one person. How a human being can be that fucking handsome, I just don't understand. "Hi, Maggie," Michael says with his gleaming smile.