Page 61 of A Constant Reminder

Chapter 37 – Sam

The next morning, I woke up beaming with excitement. I had a doctor’s appointment to see if my arm was healed enough to get my cast off. I prayed it was because I was going crazy always having my left hand itchy and sweaty.

Tyler had an early class, and although he offered to skip it to go with me, I told him Gabe was more than capable of escorting me to the doctor. After half an hour of opposing the idea, he finally gave in.

Gabe drove us to the doctor in his large black SUV that greatly resembled Tyler’s. I wondered if this was his actual vehicle, or if Tyler supplied it for the duration of the assignment.

We were both silent, and with no music playing, it seemed super awkward.

I decided to break the silence. “You married, Gabe?”

He gave me some serious side-eye as he considered whether or not to answer my question about something so personal.

“Used to be,” he muttered gruffly.

Even though I knew there was a story there, I wasn’t going to go down that rabbit hole. “Got kids?”

He nodded. “Three daughters.”

“Whoa, I bet the hormones in your house were out of control.”

That got a smile out of him. “Oh, you have no idea.”

I smiled back, proud of myself for finally getting the Behemoth to smile.

“What are their names?”

“Katie, Julia, and Heather. Ages 19, 17, and 15.” The look in his eye when he spoke of them told me that he was one proud papa.

“I bet you’re a good dad, Gabe. I bet no boys messed with them for fear of losing a limb.” I pictured some poor boy coming to the door to pick up one of his daughters and Gabe answering just to make the kid shit himself. The thought brought on a giggle.

“What’s so funny?” He said, the smile still on his face.

“Just thinking about you scaring off every single boy who tried to date one of them.”

He chuckled. “Well, when I’m around, I definitely have to fight them off with a stick, but they live with their mother most of the time, and I think she’s a bit more lenient on the dating front.”

I nodded. “Most moms are. My mom was. No matter how sick she was, she always wanted to hear about my love life.”

Smiling to myself, I thought of when she couldn’t bring herself to get out of bed, so I would come in and lay next to her and tell her about my interaction with whatever boy I was crushing on at the time. We’d giggle and talk about it for hours, her giving me advice on how to make him notice me.

And although she would always encourage my love life, she would instill in me that any man who would come sniffing around would have to earn me. She would tell me I was a force of nature, and whatever man I ended up with would have to know how to weather the storm.

There were days I thought of her and missed her so much it hurt. It wasn’t common, and when it hit me, it seemed to come from out of nowhere. But when my nostalgia hit, it hit hard.

Gabe must have seen that I was stuck inside my own memories because he was silent the rest of the way to the doctor.

Thankfully, everything had healed fine, and I could get that awful cast off. Unfortunately, when they took it off, it smelled absolutely terrible.

On the way back home, Gabe and I continued to make some small talk to get to know each other. As he told me his oldest daughter was going to school to be an engineer, you could practically feel the pride beaming off of him.

“How often do you get to see them?” I asked. “I mean it can’t be easy with his job and the strange hours.”

“The hours on this assignment actually aren’t too bad. Usually, I’m with you during the day, but evenings and weekends are pretty free. Despite their mom and I not being together anymore, she has always been great about letting me see them. Never holding it over my head. And now, they’re old enough to come over whenever they want, so I see them quite a bit actually. It was harder when they were little.”

“Why’s that?” I asked genuinely interested.

“I was in the marines for many years and did one too many tours overseas. I missed a lot of important things in their lives.” Regret coated his words.

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