Free It's a Match by Ana Tejano

01. The present.
     
    Cams didn’t think Gabriel would actually show up after she’d texted
him earlier. She retracted it, sort of, telling him not to bother because it
really wasn’t an emergency. She just panicked and reached out to the first
person she knew would sympathize. After all, he was the only one who knew where
she was that night, besides her sister, Charlie.
    But she knew he was out on a date too, which was why she changed her
mind and told him not to worry about her. It wasn’t like she was in danger or
anything; besides, she had already calmed down. Cams was at their friend’s
restaurant, just waiting for heavy traffic to go away before heading back home.
Gabriel could wait until tomorrow. 
    So she wasn’t expecting him to arrive twenty minutes after she sent
her last message. Gabriel hadn’t replied, so she assumed he’d stayed put
wherever he was. But when the chimes over the door announced the arrival of a
new customer and the owner nodded in recognition, Cams turned around and found
herself caught in his intense gaze as he approached her.
    She looked away quickly so he wouldn’t see her blush, but not
without noticing that his sleeves were now folded up. He’d had them covering
the whole length of his arms earlier that afternoon when he dropped by her
house. She tried to ignore the flip-flopping of her stomach and the quickening
of her heartbeat—something that her body had started doing involuntarily ever
since he’d been around her for the past week. Cams knew she was right about how
folded sleeves looked so good on him and smiled to herself, but it faded
when she remembered that he didn’t agree to her suggestion earlier, so perhaps
this was something his date had pointed out.
    Did he tell her about this girl he was supposed to meet tonight?
Cams couldn’t remember. But she didn’t have time to think about it anymore
because warm hands were on her bare shoulders as Gabriel turned her around to
face him. Suddenly she was in his arms, and all coherent thought flew out of
her head.
     “Are you okay?” he asked as he pulled away to look at her. “Did he
do anything to you?”
    Cams shook her head slowly, trying to gather the thoughts that were
oh-so-nicely disrupted by his scent, which filled her senses when he hugged
her. Woodsy, with a hint of sweat and cigarettes—secondhand smoke, because
Gabriel had never touched a cigarette in his life.
    “No. Nothing happened. I’m okay,” she finally got to say.
    He slowly let go of her shoulders, then took a seat at the bar stool
beside her. Their eyes met again, and his lips slowly curled into a sincere
smile.
    “I’m sorry it took me a while to get here,” he said.
    Cams’s face flushed. “It’s okay.” She reached for the glass of iced
tea she had ordered earlier to give her hands something to hold on to. “You
really didn’t have to come.”
    “You expect me to ignore a message from you that started with ‘Help’?”
    She resisted the urge to slap her forehead at the stupidity. She
really shouldn’t have sent that. “Well, thanks,” she said. “But you really
didn’t have to.”
    Gabriel let out an exasperated sigh. She braced herself for a
lecture about how she’s downplaying herself again, but he just pursed his lips,
then called the attention of the bartender to order a glass of Jack Daniel’s.
    She glanced at him, surprised. For someone who owned a bar in the
city where millennials partied every weekend, Gabriel rarely drank alcohol. He
didn’t like hangovers, he once said. She knew him well enough to know that he
only drank when something was bothering him. He couldn’t be that bothered
by her message, right?
     “Did something happen during your date?” she asked after the bartender
delivered his drink.
    To her surprise, Gabriel hesitated. “No. Why do you ask?” Cams
motioned to the glass of whiskey in his hand.
     “Oh. No, this is nothing,” he said slowly. “I’m just . . . winding
down.”
     “But