Page 77 of Bridget & Gabe Are Not Okay

“I like your mouth,” Gabriel said, dazed and stupid, and Arthur groaned and pressed his forehead to Gabriel’s fingers.

“I like all of you,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

“I can leave,” Gabriel murmured. “Maybe I… shouldn’t have come here.”

“Well, I wanted you to,” Arthur replied. “I do need to think. I meant that. But this is still okay, because this isn’t thinking. This is almost the opposite of thinking.”

“I don’t know if that’s… logically sound.”

Arthur propped himself up on his arm, face cradled by his hand. “I don’t think I care.”

“Will you care tomorrow?”

“It already is tomorrow,” Arthur said. “And wow, look—I don’t care.”

“Come here?” Gabriel asked, and Arthur did, and seemed surprised when Gabriel wrapped his arm around him, pulling his face flush to Gabriel’s chest. “I think I know how to do this, now,” he whispered in Arthur’s ear. “The two of us. Me and you. Please… let me do it right this time.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur said, voice thick, so Gabriel just held him tighter, trying to think ofright nowinstead of the pain that might come tomorrow, and after a while the tension left both of their bodies, and they eased into sleep.

Thirty-One

Bridget awoke to the sound of shouting, and was on her feet with her sword in her hand before Gwen had even lifted her head from the pillow. They had retired to Gwen’s tent the night before, spent five minutes putting all the soft furnishings on the floor so that they had more space to recline, and then both fallen asleep, entwined, within thirty seconds of lying down.

“What’s happening?” Gwen said, lifting her head, her eyes bleary.

“Stay there.”

Bridget walked slowly from the tent, weapon at the ready, and then sighed and lowered it when she saw what was happening.

“Sidney Fitzgilbert,” she said. “Consider this: Shut up.”

“No,” Sidney said happily, and went back to banging tin plates together. “Wake up, everybody! Wake up, please. I have news.”

Everyone was slow to wake, except Gabriel, who dartednot from his own tent but from Arthur’s, with a very guilty expression on his face. Sidney raised his eyebrows pointedly, easing off on the plates, watching as Gabriel went to a basin of water to splash his face.

“What in the fuck,” Sidney said to Bridget, who just shrugged. “Well, of course you don’t care, you’re not the one who’s going to have to pick up the pieces. Shit. Anyway. What was I saying?Wake up, please, everyone!”

“Sidney,” Gwen said, emerging in a dark velvet robe with her arms crossed over her chest, “if we’re not under imminent attack, I’m going to have you killed.”

“But—”

“Put the plates down.”

He did, reluctantly. It was too late anyway; the entire camp had emerged.

“I,” he proclaimed proudly, “am getting married.”

“Boo,” said Arthur, who had dark circles under his eyes and seemed reluctant to leave his doorway. “We know.”

“Excuse me. Don’t boo my nuptials, Art. That’s not on.”

“Sorry.”

“I am getting married,” Sidney said, raising his voice again to address the group at large, “in two days.”

“Fitzgilbert, excuse me, but what the hell are you talking about?” said Sir Leonard, who was famously not an early riser.

“I’d already asked Agnes to meet me at Harlech, because I miss her—”