Chapter 122 122: After Midnight
Sleep became impossible after that.
Gael spent nearly an hour in the backyard staring across the sky with untouched whiskey beside him while Haley's words kept replaying in the back of his mind.
"I love you."
Simple.
Earnest.
Completely unguarded.
And somehow that honesty made everything else feel uglier.
His phone buzzed against the table a little after midnight.
One message.
Gloria.
For several seconds he just looked at the screen without opening it.
Then finally:
[Are you awake?]
He stared at the message longer than necessary before answering.
[yes]
The typing bubble appeared immediately.
Disappeared.
Returned.
Then:
[I should not be texting you right now]
Honest again.
That had become their problem.
Not temptation alone.
Honesty.
Gael leaned back while the moon glowed silently beyond the windows.
then why are you?
This time the reply took longer.
[Because I keep thinking about the fact that I almost kissed you that night]
The directness hit harder than expected.
Not because of the content.
Because she finally stopped hiding behind implication.
A second message followed before he answered:
[and now i feel like a terrible wife]
The guilt had fully arrived.
Because until now Gloria's attraction still existed partly inside fantasy and emotional tension.
Now it had entered moral reality.
Gael rubbed a hand slowly across his jaw before typing.
[you didnt do anything wrong]
Three dots appeared instantly again.
[That is a very dangerous thing to say to me right now]
He reflected faintly while silence settled between messages for a minute.
Then:
[Jay fell asleep holding the television remote tonight]
Another message followed.
[and all i could think about was driving to your home]
That one landed deeply.
Because it wasn't lust.
It was emotional displacement.
The beginning of comparison.
Gael set the phone down briefly against the counter and exhaled slowly.
This was exactly the line he should stop crossing.
He knew that.
But a few seconds later he picked the phone back up anyway.
[gloria]
No answer immediately.
Then finally:
[yes?]
He stared at the blinking cursor longer than he should have.
And somewhere across the city, Gloria was probably doing the exact same thing.
The realization tightened the atmosphere even through a screen.
Finally:
[go to sleep]
Several seconds passed.
Then:
[There is the responsible answer again]
Another pause.
[I think i hate that i wanted a different one]
That message stayed on the screen for a long time.
Because it carried everything now:
desire,
frustration,
guilt,
emotional dependency already beginning to form.
Then one final message appeared.
[goodnight gael]
He didn't answer immediately.
Not because he didn't want to.
Because suddenly Haley's voice echoed painfully in the back of his mind again:
That's one of the reasons I love you.
Two women.
Two completely different kinds of emotional intimacy.
And for the first time—
the situation stopped feeling exciting…