Hayley
The Apartment gang decided to have a lunch together at Brady's on the last Saturday of November. The air was chilly and it felt like the festival season was already in gear.
Kabir had a flight later in the night. He was going to meet his sisters for Diwali; which was in a few days. The let's-open-our-own-bar conversation was on hold for the week he'd be gone but we'd all been assigned duties.
Luna was on financial duty. She was to look up investors and possible options for procuring capital. I was on location duty with Jess. We had to look for affordable places in the hot part of the town. The attractive niche of the city was close to the Apartment, the "hot part of the town" also had the bar that both the boys worked in. The street was lined with restaurants and buzzing pubs on either sides. It had loads of shops catering to all cuisines, keeping the diversity of the working bustling city people in mind. A place here would we criminally expensive and out of our reach, so we also expanded the search to our own area where Brady's and the General Store were. Lainey was on aesthetics duty and looked up cheap decor material online as well as kept an eye out for flea markets and yard sales.
The research part was pretty important and Kabir was determined to not let this go. He was going to make it happen and we were going to do everything possible to help him with realizing his dream.
The boys took the night off and we occupied our usual booth at Brady's. Sitting on the same leathery bottle green seats, ordering our usual, my senses filled with the delicious aroma of the bistro.
We saw there was a new waiter and the group talked in hushed whispers, "Who's the new guy?" Luna asked in a low voice. Everyone leaned in and we discussed possible back stories for him.
The new guy came to take our orders, he was the definition of tall, dark and handsome. He was a delicious looking man, like the chocolate brownies of Brady's. It was beyond my comprehension why he would need to work here.
Putting on my sweet flirty voice, I gave him my sexiest smile, "Hey, what's your name? I haven't seen you around here."
"I'm Gabriel. I started this morning."
"And why would a handsome man like yourself need to wait on tables?" I asked and was quickly pinched by Luna on my arm in disapproval.
He blushed and ran his hand through his non-existent hair. Who is so sexy when their head is shaved? God.
He replied, "Paying off student loans. I'm still in Uni, doing a double major in Dance and Statistics."
"Ooh, I'm impressed, that sounds fantastic" Jesse shocked us with his confident borderline flirtatious response.
Taking our order, Gabriel winked at Jesse before leaving.
Well, that's odd.
Jesse blushed and shockingly, giggled like a little teenage girl swooning over a Justin Bieber poster. Kabir teased him, "Aw, little Jesse has a crush on the new waiter boy."
"I didn't know you were into boys, Jess," I half-asked.
"N-no I'm not," he stammered but his cheeks were tomato red.
"Someone definitely has a crush, my gay-dar ain't broken," Lainey laughed.
I was flooded with emotions, I didn't know how to feel about it. Just about a month ago he was a virginal straight white Christian boy. Now he'd had sex with me but didn't even want me anymore. Now he was flirting with Gabriel, an African-American boy? What was that all about? His orthodox Christian parents would lose all the shit they have left if they hear this. Anyway, nothing is happening right now and we're just teasing him. It shouldn't bother me, even if something did happen between them. We shouldn't get too ahead of ourselves, Gabriel just winked at him. Nothing is happening.
We ate our spaghettis, pizzas, and cheeseburgers. Then we all told our dessert orders to Jesse. We teased him and asked him to call Gabriel to our table.
"Uhm, two sizzling brownies with vanilla ice cream and uh, we'll take a big piece of strawberry cheesecake for the table. Thank you, Gabriel." Jesse recited with the biggest grin plastered to his face. He was arguably shining.
"Be right there-" Gabriel replied with an equally big grin. Indicating he wanted to know Jesse's name, he had paused and waited at our booth.
"His name's Jesse. Jesse Smith," I told him.
Jesse
I cringed at how my friends were reacting to a boy just winking at me. If they found out I wanted to lick that yummy face of his, they'd probably tease me to the ends of hell. But wait, why did I want to lick that face of his? And why did I just call him yummy?
I'd liked a few guys back in school but it never felt more than a young phase where I was crushing on attractive charming people. This was a full blown I-want-him-to-do-me-right-now moment. I'd never had one these before, why was I enjoying the attention he gave me? Which was just a wink, it probably didn't even mean anything to him and it's his job to be nice. I cringed at my own thoughts, my education was pretty progressive but my family wasn't. At all.
If they know their Jesse is drinking, had sex and is probably bisexual, if not gay; they will honestly fucking flip their shit. But I really want Gabriel, I don't know how and I don't know why, I'm inexplicably attracted to him.
After I nervously gave him the dessert order, Hayley told him my name.
"Hello, Jesse Smith. It's nice to meet you," he said in the sweetest voice and I swear I got weak in the knees when he smiled and put his hand out.
I took his hand in mine and shook it but what I was actually thinking about was how dry my hands were and wondered if they were clammy, because his hands were so soft; like he moisturizes them every time he washes his hands.
Ugh, why am I thinking about his hands. Ugh.
He went away to get our desserts and the gang turned on me, "Little Jesse has a boyfriend," Hayley started to sing.
"Don't tease him guys, I think we're past that age, don't you?" Luna came to my rescue.
Lainey added, "Yeah, it's okay Jess. Whoever you like, it's all cool."
Kabir started to make another joke but Luna kicked him under the table. In an attempt to shut Kabir up, she also kicked me accidentally and we all end up laughing when I screamed, "Ow, Looney, what did I do?"
The table erupted in laughter and the conversation shifted away from questioning my sexuality to Kabir's Diwali plans. Everyone went around to discuss their holiday traditions when Luna instructed us to do so.
Kabir narrated, "Well, when I was younger, we used to be excited for weeks to burst firecrackers but later it became about good food and playing cards. We have a big feast with North Indian food like shahi paneer and naan. There's lots and lots of mithai (sweets). Playing cards and drinking with friends for Diwali parties was something we did every year in high school, even when we weren't legal. They're some of my best memories."
Everyone responded with aww's and I patted him on the shoulder. After Kabir, we went to Hayley's traditions.
"Uhm, I don't have any yearly traditions with my family. My fondest holiday memories are with Looney. We go Christmas shopping together, decorate trees at each other's houses with fairy lights-"
"I think we all know about your fairly lights obsession, Hayles," I told her and everyone laughed in response.
"Ha ha. Any-waaay, we tried to bake cookies one time when we were 12 and it was disastrous, the entire kitchen was full of smoke. Luckily, we didn't burn the house down but we ended up buying chocolate chip and peanut butter cookies at the nearby bakery. We've gone back to have the same cookies ever since. We were the mischievous children who'd sneak in cookies to eat at Church."
Luna took the story forward, "We weren't allowed to eat for a while before, and during mass. All the kids were totally jealous of us because we were the cool gutsy rebels. Even though our act of sneaking cookies doesn't seem so defiant now, in that moment, we thought we were changing the world," Luna concluded.
Everyone erupted in laughter, again. The joy between us was such a natural emotion, everyone slipped into casual conversation with utter ease.
Lainey told us about her quiet holidays with her cats because she hated too much noise and shopping among the swarm of people at malls. Her family didn't believe too much in religious festivities and they rather enjoyed Día de los Santos Inocentes. They had traditions of going to the amusement park in costumes for Spanish April Fool's Day on 28th December.
I shared my plain boring story about my typically Christian festivities where the family would decorate trees, have dinner, go to mass, the usual.
We stayed much after dessert and Gabriel casually came up to us with the bill to indicate us to leave politely. We split the bill five ways to the T and left him a tip.
Gabriel came up next to me and leaned. The others were in conversation when he whispered to me, "You're cute." Shaking my hand and winking at me one more time, he walked away.
Who says cute anymore? That's so weird. I realize he'd slipped me a small piece of paper and I clutched it in my fist, not telling the others.
When we got home, we helped Kabir pack and put him in a cab in time for his flight. The girls were doing their own thing when I went to the privacy of my room and finally opened the hastily written note. It said do you like what you see? call me?
The note had a small heart drawn on the bottom left and signed Gabriel Matthews with this phone number.
I analyzed every word he wrote. He had asked 'do you like what you see.' It felt like he didn't say it with a cocky confidence. Rather, he asked me humbly and at the same time, tried to be endearing and charming.
Without letting my thoughts run awry and letting myself ponder too much, I just texted him. There were too many problems and variables to think about, I didn't want to drive myself crazy. I quickly typed it and sent it before I could change my decision.
Jesse, 6:45 pm: I liked what I saw :) -Jesse
And I waited.
**
A/N
Gabriel (Played by Jesse Williams) pictured above. Do we want to see more of him? How do you feel about these new feelings our Jess is experiencing? Vote, comment or drop a message. It means so much!
Love and power,
speck of dust~