Gabriel's Rapture by Reynard, Sylvain (reading comprehension books .TXT) 📕

about him. He seemed softer, somehow, more vulnerable. Yes, there was the occasional show of temper and the old Professor Emerson, but she knew that Gabriel had changed. She just didn’t know why.

By the following morning the power had been restored and Julia was able to recharge her phone. She called the manager at Peet’s and explained that she was under the weather and would be taking the weekend off. He wasn’t happy about it since it was the fourth of July weekend, but there was little he could do.

After a long hot shower, (a shower spent dreaming about Gabriel’s lips and old, suppressed memories of the two of them together), Julia felt much, much better. And only a little worse. She sent a quick email to Rachel, explaining that Gabriel had returned and declared his love for her. An hour later, her phone rang. She expected that it would be Rachel. Surprisingly, it was Dante Alighieri.

“How did you sleep?” Gabriel sounded cheerful.

“Well. And you?”

He paused. “Not as well as I used to—tolerably, I suppose.”

Julia laughed. This was the Professor Emerson she remembered.

“I want to show you my house,” he said.

“What, now?”

“Today, if you’re willing.” He sounded worried she might refuse.

“Where is it?”

“It’s on Foster Place, near Longfellow’s house. Ideal for a commute to Harvard. Not so convenient for BU.”

Julia was puzzled. “If it’s inconvenient for BU, then why did you buy it?”

Gabriel cleared his throat. “I was thinking that—I was hoping that…” He struggled to find the right words. “It’s small but it has a beautiful garden. I’d like to know what you think of it.” He cleared his throat again, and she swore she could hear him tugging at his shirt collar. “Of course, I could always move.”

She hummed in response, not sure what to say.

“Now that you’ve had a good night’s sleep, will you talk to me a little?”

Julia had never heard Gabriel sound so nervous. “Of course. But it isn’t something we can do over the phone.”

“I need to pay a visit to campus to see my new office. It won’t take long.”

“There’s no rush.”

“Yes, there is.” Now Gabriel’s voice was heated.

She sighed heavily. “I could come over later.”

“Come for dinner. I’ll pick you up at six thirty.”

“I’ll take a cab.”

Julia broke the awkward pause that followed with an explanation that she needed to go.

“Fine,” said Gabriel stiffly. “If you wish to take a cab, that’s your prerogative.”

“I’m going to keep an open mind until we talk, and I’d like to ask you to do that too.” Her tone was conciliatory.

Gabriel felt as if he were hanging on to his hopes by a very thin thread. He was far from certain that she would take him back. And even if she did, the old specter of jealously taunted him. He didn’t know how he would react if she revealed that she’d turned to Paul in her grief and shared his bed.

God damned Angelfucker.

“Of course,” Gabriel said, his voice strained.

“I’m surprised you called me. Why didn’t you call me while you were away?”

He was silent for a moment. “That’s a long story.”

“I’m sure it is. I’ll see you tonight.”

She hung up the phone, wondering what his story would include.

* * *

When Julia arrived at Gabriel’s new home, she surveyed it with no little puzzlement. It was a two-story frame house with a simple, unadorned front, and it was painted a charcoal gray with darker trim. There was almost no front yard to speak of and a small, paved car pad to the house’s right.

In an email that included directions, Gabriel had sent Julia a link to the original real estate listing for the property. The asking price had been over a million dollars. The house had been built prior to World War II. In fact, the entire street had been a neighborhood of Italian immigrants who built the small, two bedroom houses in the nineteen twenties. Now the street was populated with old-moneyed yuppies, Harvard professors, and Gabriel.

As she took in the tidy simplicity of the building, Julia shook her head. So this is what a million dollars can buy you in Harvard Square.

As she prepared to knock on the front door, she was surprised to find a note on it in Gabriel’s hand.

Julianne,

Please meet me in the garden.

G.

She sighed, and just like that she knew that tonight was going to be very, very difficult. She walked around the side of the house and down the little paved driveway, gasping when she rounded the corner.

There were flowers and greenery, wisps of sea grass and elegantly trimmed boxwood, and in the very center of the garden stood what looked like a Sultan’s tent. A fountain sat on the right side of the green space, featuring a marble statue of Venus. Underneath the fountain was a small pond filled with white and red Koi.

Julia walked toward the tent so she could peer inside. And what she saw pained her.

In the tent was a low, square bed, exactly like the futon that graced the terrace of the suite she’d shared with Gabriel in Florence. In the suite where they’d made love for the first time. On the terrace where he fed her chocolates and strawberries and danced with her to Diana Krall under the Tuscan sky. The futon where he made love to her the following morning. Gabriel had tried to reproduce the ambience of that terrace down to the very color scheme of the bedclothes.

The voice of Frank Sinatra seemed to float from somewhere closer to the house, while almost every flat, fireproof surface held a tall, pillar candle. Ornate Moroccan lanterns were suspended from crisscrossed wires overhead.

It was a fairy tale. It was Florence, and their apple orchard, and the wonders of an Arabian night. Unfortunately for Gabriel, the extravagant gesture begged the question: if he was resourceful enough to construct a Moroccan caravan in his garden, why couldn’t he have told her he planned to return?

Gabriel saw her standing in his garden, and his