Page 4 of She's Like the Wind
He was close to his younger brother, who was studying medicine at LSU, and I knew he was footing the bill. His little sister was at Juilliard in New York, dancing, and he was covering that, too. He never oncecomplained. Just mentioned them with quiet pride, like helping them was the most natural thing in the world.
He never said it outright, but I had the sense he helped his parents, too, and not just with time or running errands, but with money.
He was the son who never needed to be asked.
He talked easily about his family, and whenever he did, I felt a pang and wished they were mine as well. He told me stories about holiday traditions, which I foolishly and, to my disappointment, kept hoping he’d include me in.
Now, he was making it clear to me—whatever we had was done, and it was because of me. I hadn’t been able to keep it casual. I’d broken the contract we had made to keep it simple.
“Not lookin’ for more than sex and companionship, baby.”
Aurelie and her band started playing the last set of the night, and as if it were just for me, began withQue Sera, Sera.
She’d tried to talk to me about Gage being at Maison with a woman during the break, but I’d told her it wasn’t an issue since Gage and I weren’t in a relationship.
But damn it, it had felt like one.
He spent nearly every free evening and weekend with me. He cooked for me and let me cook for him. We watched movies together and went out, just the two of us, and not just with groups of friends.
I met Gage when his company, Walker Restoration, was hired to renovate the building next to my shop and apartment on Royal Street.
It hadn’t taken long for me to learn that he wasn’t just a muscle-bound guy in a hard hat swinging a sledgehammer around for fun. He was a top restorer of old buildings, and his reputation stretched from the Garden District to the Marigny.
If you had a hundred-year-old Creole cottage falling in on itself or a fire-damaged Second Empire mansion about to crumble into the street, Gage was the person you called.
The French Quarter might’ve been a party to the rest of the world, but to us locals, it was a living museum—a federally protected historic district with rules so strict they’d fine you for repainting your shutters the wrong shade of green.
Most contractors didn’t have that expertise.
Gage did!
He had a master’s in historic preservation and construction management—how’s that for sexy?
Tattooed forearms and a degree in saving the past.
He didn’t slap plaster over a rotted beam and call it a day. He’d get into the bones of a building, study its history, and trace the line of every joist and cornice until he could hear the house breathe as it used to.
I once heard him argue with a city inspector for twenty minutes over the phone about a set of 1850s cypress doors.
Gage won.
I think I fell in love with him the day he took me to the Lafitte House on Burgundy Street. He was overseeing a complete restoration, down to the handmade crown molding and hand-lathed balusters.
The place was gutted, just exposed brick and dust and possibility.
I remembered walking through it with him, listening to him talk about the old French-style chimneys and the transom windows above the doors, how they used to let air flow through before modern AC.
He touched every beam like it was sacred.
“Buildings are like people,” he told me, standing in that hollowed-out parlor. “You think they’re broken, but they just need someone who knows how to look at them right. Someone patient enough to bring them back.”
I didn’t know if he meant it as a metaphor. Knowing Gage, probably not. But I felt something shift in me that day. I let him into my heart even though it wasn’t something he wanted.
Now, as I watched him leave Maison with the blonde he’d kissed so passionately, I held on to my tears.
I’d learned long ago that mourning the truth didn’t get you anywhere. I could’ve cried and cried that my loving parents were gone and that at the age of thirteen, I was now cloistered in a home with no love, noaffection, no kind words—just the harshness of scripture.
But what would the point have been?
