Page 12 of Victorious

He paused at the final threshold, one hand splayed against the door as he tried to compartmentalize what he’d just seen. And done. When he was confident he had his thoughts together, he counted to ten, and then went in.

The first thing that always struck him was the color.

He’d decorated the office downstairs in shades of pale wood, the walls off-white, the furniture charcoal, all of it a carefully neutral backdrop on which to work.

The house, by contrast, was a study in saturation, one room peacock blue, another goldenrod, each space augmented by patterned rugs or colorful throws. A constant rotation of design, Iris’s bold and ever-changing taste on full display. Gabriel’s sensibilities peeked through, in the minimalist furniture, the clean lines of the shelves, but judging by the makeshift—and half-finished—fort in front of the couch, the trail of toys leaving a breadcrumb trail out of the room, Ian was clearly his mother’s son.

Gabriel knelt to pick up the abandoned action figures, the gaming pad, the half-laid tracks for a forgotten race. He returned the toys to their respective bins and was about to restore the pillows to the couch when Iris called out from the kitchen.

“Gabe?”

Love, he mused, was a beguiling force. It had the power to heighten some feelings, while muting others. To make a person behave entirely out of character, accept chaos when they preferred order, or embrace a thing simply for its source.

Example: For the first thirty years of his life, Gabriel refused to be called Gabe.

It grated on him, like cheap wool.

And yet, coming from Iris, the nickname didn’t irk, or chafe, but curled around him like a welcome pair of arms.

He found his wife stirring onions in the kitchen—which was three different shades of green—while Ian sat coloring at the table.

“Hello, Dad,” chimed Ian brightly as Gabriel passed a hand over his son’s dark curls. Gabriel’s own hair had been the same shade, once, before the slow siege of silver in his twenties.

Iris stood at the stove, her own hair—which was blond when they first met, and had since been a dozen shades of brown, and red, and black, and one summer, even rose, and was currently a shade she called burnt caramel—up in a messy bun, exposing the nape of her neck.

Gabriel bent his head to plant a kiss on her warm skin.

“Sorry I’m late,” he said. “The session ran long.”

He didn’t say more, and she didn’t ask—doctor-patient confidentiality—just turned in the circle of his arms and held up a spoon. “Taste this?”

Her commands came out like invitations, her voice twitching up at the end. Gabriel took the spoon. The sauce was rich, but sharp. Tangy, with an edge of sweetness.

“It’s perfect,” he murmured absently.

Perfect. An empty word—one that served no purpose, and one he almost never used. It must have tipped her off, because Iris cupped his cheek, her hazel eyes—even they couldn’t choose a color—searching his face as she said, “Are you home?”

Gabriel tensed.

The twenty-eight steps hadn’t been enough. He felt like he’d left a piece of himself downstairs. Or worse, like a piece of downstairs had clung to him, and been carried up here. Out of one world, and into another. Out of a dream, and into—

Gabriel cleared his throat.

“I’m home,” he assured her with a smile. Iris made a thoughtful sound, tapping the clean edge of the spoon against his shirtfront before deciding to believe him.

“Set the table?” she said, giving him a small, endearing nudge away from the stove.

Ian had migrated to the sink and stood on a footstool washing his hands, humming the birthday song as he lathered each of his fingers. Perhaps he wasn’t entirely Iris’s son. Or so Gabriel thought until the boy slammed his hands together, sending soap bubbles everywhere.

Ian cackled, and Gabriel sighed and turned his attention to the table, which was covered in papers—Iris’s advertising work, sketches for her latest campaign warring for space with Ian’s doodles, loose markers scattered like paperweights.

He frowned, rubbing at a smudge of permanent pen one of them—it was hard to tell which—had left on the polished wood. He gathered the papers, sorting them into piles, and paused at one of his son’s drawings. A boy with fluffy clouds around his head, each one holding a slice of cake, a dog, a door.

A child’s take on dreams.

Was it real?

“Bon appétit,” said Iris as they sat down to eat, and Gabriel poured two glasses of wine, and thanked her for cooking, and Ian proceeded to twirl so many noodles on his fork he couldn’t fit them in his mouth, and his wife talked about work because she could, and his son talked about school, one thought running right into the next, and Gabriel moved through the motions of his mundane life as if everything was still normal.