With a groan and a string of several despicable curses, Gabe rummaged around his bed for the device making the incessant noise. It was his cell.
He peered at the name through his bleary-hangover vision. Ella. His sister-in-law who also happened to be his boss. He debated letting it ring out - but being the stubborn creature she was, she'd probably turn up on his doorstep; lest she was there already.
He panicked slightly, he'd come home with somebody last night - he peered around the room - Rachel...Regina or Gina had clearly let herself out before he had woken up. He sighed, relieved.
"Ella."
"Gabriel." She chirped with an unnatural amount of energy.
"It's summer. I don't answer to you for at least another week." Gabe grumbled.
"Yes, that's why I'm calling as your sister-in-law. I need a favour."
"No." Gabe snapped, lying back down and pulling the covers over him. His head was spinning from one too many last night.
"You don't even know what I'm going to ask." Ella insisted her voice becoming higher and higher.
"It doesn't matter. I know it's going to put me out."
"Well that's generally how favors work, Gabe."
"Yeah and I also have a choice saying no. Bye, Ella."
"I can and will take this out on your football budget." Ella interjected before he could end the call.
"You know I've fought against dictators like you." Gabe shot back dryly, only half-meaning the insult. Ella was a couple of notches scarier than Saddam Hussein and only because she hid it well under a veneer of Southern charm.
"Now that I have your attention. I need you to collect one of our exchange teachers from the airport tomorrow."
This exchange programme had been Ella's pet project all of last year. She had called endless faculty meetings about it, planning every little detail to perfection. If she was calling him at the last minute to do her a favour something must have seriously gone wrong, but he was too afraid to ask. Ella's rants were legendary and he didn't have the wherewithal to be at the receiving end of one right now.
He supposed he could her help out a little - her determination and similar adoption of high school football as a pet project had seen their school district cough up the money for a football team; that he was now the head coach of. Two years in, and he was making great progress in building the team up to something their town could be proud of.
"When?" Gabe asked begrudgingly.
"11 in the morning, so you have plenty of time to get over your hangover." Ella said sweetly as if it made the inconvenience of driving into Austin's morning traffic any better.
"Also, don't forget you're coming over for dinner tonight." Ella added hurriedly, knowing that she was pushing her luck with him.
"Bye, Ella." Gabe ended the call, eager not to be roped into any more favors.
Rolling out of bed in the late afternoon, Gabe was still annoyed Ella had roused him from sleep so early in the morning. He had trouble getting back to sleep and had loitered in bed nursing a headache.
He took a quick shower and dressed in a T-shirt and jeans. He was going to run by the store to get a bottle of wine before he went to his sister-in-law's house that she shared with her husband, two daughters and countless pets.
He pulled up into the driveway of the family home, the door was unlocked and he let himself in, a running blur colliding into his legs so quick his knees almost buckled.
It was his niece Kayla and the family Labrador. Gabe bent down to pick Kayla up, nuzzling his bearded face into her rosy cheeks much to her tickled screams of delight. "How is my princess today?"
"Brilliant," Kayla screamed in a fake British accent courtesy of some cartoon show she had been obsessed with all summer. Gabe wondered how long the British Invasion would last for.
"Just brilliant? Not supercalifragilisticexpialidocious?" He tickled her some more as she laughed at his corny joke, walking into the hallway of the dining room where Ella was setting up for dinner. Gabe placed the bottle wine he'd brought to chill in the fridge.
Ella gave him a sideways hug, as he placed Kayla back down and she ran off to resume whatever occupied 4 year old girls, her long brown hair billowing behind her.
Kimberly, his other niece at a slightly older age of 12 year old was helping to set up.
"Hey, Kim." gabe said ruffling her hair.
"Don't call me that, Uncle Gabe."
"Okay, Kim-ber-ly," Gabe agreed pronunciation every syllable. He did it to annoy her, knowing that she was going through some kind of feminist phase where she stomped around the house saying "men are trash" and also expressing her dislike for gender traitors such as the Kardashians.
Gabe made eye-contact with Ella who was hiding her laugh behind her preparation of the salad.
"Honey." She called to her child, "Why don't you go wash up for dinner?"
Kim acquiesced, silently disappearing down the hallway. Ella turned to Gabe, and he knew that she had planned to accost him about a topic he'd been avoiding all summer.
Today was wife's birthday. His deceased wife. She would have been 36. It had been four long years since she had passed away from a short and gruelling battle with blood cancer.
Ella was Alice's sister. Ella was older by a couple of years and had been just as devastated when her sister passed away, especially since she had been tested as a bone marrow donor and hadn't matched her sister.
They eventually found an unrelated donor on the donor registry but Alice developed a viral cold days before the donor was to go ahead with the procedure. The donor donated anyway and the cells were frozen, in the hope that given a few weeks, Alice would recover. She never did.
"How are you, Gabe?" Ella asked seriously.
"You know me, I get by," Gabe said palming his neck. He got by but at a drink and sex-fuelled cost. He had been reckless all summer. With no work obligations he could blow off all the steam he wanted; steeling himself for the downward spiral that would come with this day.
"That's not what Alice would have wanted for you, Gabe. You're getting by, but she would have wanted you to be thriving.
"That's life. It doesn't always go the way we think it will." Gabe said quietly.
"Have you thought of dating?" Ella approached. "Let me set you up, I know a lot of wonderful women in this community that would love to be taken out by our resident brooding bachelor."
"No, how can you ask me that?" Gabe whispered tersely.
"Well you're out sleeping around - forgive me if asking you about dating is such a leap!" Ella returned, her voice rising with frustration.
"That's me getting by." Gabe said sardonically. Wanting desperately for this conversation to be over.
"I want you to be happy!"
"I'm trying!"
There was a beat, with both of them staring each other in the eyes before they burst out laughing.
"Come here." Ella beckoned gathering, Gabe into her arms.
Alice's illness had made them close, with Ella and Gabe both sharing caregiving duties. Gabe and Alice had moved to Manor from Gabe's Military base in Florida to be closer to Ella when she got sick. When Alice died, he had stayed.
"You can't nag me into being happy." Gabe said.
"I know, but I'll be damned if I give up." Ella sighed. And she was a remarkably determined individual.
Ella's husband Scott walked in from work a couple of minutes later. Ella called the kids to the dining table so they could eat. Dinner turning into a raucous affair with Kayla and Kimberly providing comic relief as Scott and Gabe slipped into good-natured football talk.
"You're still on for helping me tomorrow?" Ella asked before the end of the night, as Gabe was climbing into his truck.
He lived a couple of miles away, a short drive. He was okay to drive he'd only had a beer, with Ella polishing off much of the wine he had brought.
"Yeah, you know you can always count on me."
"Alright. I'm gonn to text you her flight itinerary, contact details and her picture. I've arranged for her to live in the old Henderson house on your street. I'm going to do a last minute check to make sure the contractors fixed everything like I asked, which is why I can't pick her up myself."
"Okay."
"And Gabe,"
"Yes."
"Be nice." Ella reminded him waving a tipsy hand in his face.
"I'm always nice." Gabe said rolling his eyes as he climbed into his truck. Ella, unsteadily made her way back into the house with one last wave to the departing vehicle.
Gabe changed into an old faded Marine Corps T-shirt and pyjama pants once he was at home. His cell phone chimed with an incoming message. The flight itinerary Ella had promised, contact details and a name: Natalia Burton. It was a standard name, it didn't give anything away. Gabe couldn't guess what she'd look like, he knew that she would be British but that's it.
Gabe texted Ella a reminder to send a picture of the exchange teacher so he could actually find her at the airport, but he guessed that her drunk little ass had fallen asleep right after that text message. He made a mental note to remind her again in the morning.
Gabe drove downtown towards Austin's airport. Ella had been incommunicado for much of the morning, doing last minute checks on the housing she had secured for her precious exchange teacher.
Gabe hadn't known her to get so involved in a project, but the teachers she was getting from England were all she had been talking about for the past year. It would be good for the school and the community she had said excitedly, getting everyone into the spirit.
Huffing with frustration, Gabe fired off a series of texts to Ella. Standing parked kerbside outside the airport in the midday heat wasn't his idea of fun. The precious teacher was late and he still hasn't received a picture from Ella for all he knew they could have missed each other. Her plane according to the airport's flight tracker on their website had landed about an hour ago.
Ella eventually resurfaced letting Gabe know, Natalia had landed and was at the baggage claim. Gabe saved her number on WhatsApp and gave her a call.
"Natalia Burton?" He asked when his call was picked up after a few rings.
"Yes this is she." A soft melodious voice answered. Her accent making the words sound brisk and clipped. His stomach did a flip. Why was he reacting like this at the mere sound of someone's voice?
Gabe shook his head, seemingly to clear it of any foolish notions. It was Ella getting into his head. He decided, nothing more.
"I'm waiting outside by a green pickup." He told her and ended the call.
He busied himself with looking up her profile picture on WhatsApp. It was a sunset from a balcony overlooking the beach below. Interesting but it didn't tell him anything about her or what she looked like.
A couple of minutes later, he felt someone in his presence. His looked up from his cell phone screen and his breath caught in his throat. If he thought his reaction to her voice was uncharacteristic, his reaction to her actual person felt like a demonic possession.
"Hi I'm Na-..." she started stutteringly, regarding him from downcast eyes, he could tell despite the sunglasses perched on her button nose.
She had beautiful smooth brown skin that shone with golden undertones in the summer sun. It was slightly windy, so her curly brown hair blew around her head like a halo. Her lips were full and naturally pouty, coloured a deep berry red with a Cupid's bow.
She hid her body behind an oversized shirt, that hung off her shoulder, revealing a deliciously pointed collarbone and skimming past more-than a-handful breasts. She wore leggings that revealed wide hips and thick thighs. Gabe couldn't tell since she was facing him but he would bet his life-savings that her ass was everything her hips promised they would be.
Maybe he was coming down with something, Gabe thought. All that drinking and partying he had done in the summer was coming back to bite him in the ass. He wasn't a spring chicken anymore, at 38 years old, it took him a couple of days to recover from a hangover instead of mere hours like when he was younger. Maybe it was the time of year - he missed Alice, and summers were long when you didn't have the distractions of a wife and kids to keep you occupied when school was out.
"Hop in," Gabe finally managed, his throat dry. Natalia followed his lead. He surreptitiously adjusted himself, the results of his too-long scrutiny of her body.
He had no idea how he was going to survive the car ride with her but one thing he was sure of, Ella was going to pay for setting this up.