Chapter 61 - The Non-couple’s Spat (2/2)
”Jesus, Kurt?” Gabriel face-palms. ”He's gay, Claire.”
”Then what about, uhh, Oscar, from IT?”
”Oscar's married and has seven kids, Claire. I doubt he'd like to add you to his growing list of dependents.”
”Then what about…Oh, blast it! What I'm trying to say is, what would you do if I date another guy here?”
”Then I'll fire his ȧss, too,” he says, half-grinning.
”That's not fair!”
”Claire, I'm kidding. I didn't fire Jake because he dated you. And I won't fire anyone you would date. I know our boundaries. I know I have no personal ownership of you at all. At least while we're in this arrangement.” Emphasis on ”at least,” because somehow, in the far future, Gabriel feels he might do his best to make Claire stay in her life. But now, he must not say it to avoid further complication.
”Then what happened to Jake?”
Gabriel sighs. He gazes intently into her eyes, and he could see how clueless Claire really is. She has no idea of what actually transpired on that night. Honestly, he would have wanted for Claire never to revisit that traumatic night. He would have wanted for things to remain as unspoken as they are. But Claire demands the truth, and she deserves nothing less.
”Do you remember the date, where you went?”
”Yes,” she says. ”Sort of. It was a steak house. I remember Jake being sweet and all and…”
”And?”
”And nothing else.” Claire grimaces, trying to retrieve the memory. ”But strangely, I don't remember it ending. As if the last thing I remember is Jake's face saying words, but that's it. Everything is mysteriously missing. The next thing I knew is I woke up and you were beside me in the bed. Remember?”
”There's a grave reason why it was so,” he says. ”Jake's not the sweet guy you think he is.” Gabriel stops, trying to weigh his next words, composing them in his head so as not to shock her. But there seems to be no filtering this next revelation: ”Jake drugged you and tried to **** you in his house.”
Claire's pretty face knits in confusion. ”You can't be serious. Jake? He can't…” Then she remembers finally. How Jake really was. How people called him ”Jake the Snake.” Wasn't it suspicious that on her supposed first day at work, Jake was already hard at the effort of asking her out on a dinner date? Seriously, what kind of person does that?
But on the other hand, what kind of girl says yes to such an invitation? Oops.
”He slipped something in your drink, a modified version of a notoriously powerful drug called 'la rocha' or 'roofies'. Modified because it knocked you out in mere seconds. I guess you were lucky because if he had somehow exceeded the highest possible dosage your body could absorb, you could have ended up paralyzed.”
”Paralyzed? Like a vegetable?”
”Yes, the whole body. Paralyzed. For the rest of your life.”
Gabriel fought within himself regarding saying these dastardly details, but in the end, his dėsɨrė for her to know the whole truth won.
”Paralyzed, for the rest of my life,” Claire intones, reeling from the realization of what a close call that simple, otherwise harmless dinner date had been with the end of her life. Her life hasn't even started yet, and there she was, so stupidly allowing herself in harm's way. And worse, she had been living the past few days without any idea of what a close call to disaster that had been.
”Paralyzed,” she mutters, and she feels an upward surge of sickness from her belly that she isn't able to stop.
She vomits her breakfast all over Gabriel Tan's impeccable carpet.