[ jettica , please ] [ m ] oh , please , just close your eyes .
He was not young. He hadn’t been young in over five years.
He was not a lawyer. He had no official law training, nor an official title.
He was not single. He had been with his fiancé since his freshman year of college.
Gabriel was an insignificant two years away from thirty and he felt everything but young. He felt he had experienced too much life, that he had waited
too long for too many things, that he didn’t have much left to look forward to, that he didn’t have enough time. He had gone to college to become a
caseworker for the child protection agency and dropped out. He worked instead at his family’s law firm as the receptionist. It was still a challenging
job, he always had something to do, but he still wished he would have gotten his degree. Life got in the way, certain aspects of life that he refused
to talk about with others, or even mention. His fiancé didn’t even know about them. She was only twenty-six, her name was Isabella, and she was the
love of his life. Gabriel had known from the first time that he met her. Having known her for the majority of his adult life, he knew more about her
and she knew more about him than anyone. She currently worked as a part of the nursing staff at the city’s hospital and Gabriel so admired her for it.
Even with her medical degree and job, she smoked cigarettes regularly.
He was religious. He had been raised strictly catholic and still regularly attended Sunday mass.
He was not a virgin. He would have been a little embarrassed if he was.
He was suffering from cystic fibrosis. It was the reason he dropped out of school and the reason he didn’t want children.
Until his eighteenth birthday, Gabriel had attended mass three times a week. His first, sixth, eleventh, and seventeenth birthday presents had been
bibles. His Wednesday and Saturday nights had been taken up by youth group from the ages of five to sixteen. His first communion was at the age of
seven, his reconciliation at ten, and his confirmation at fifteen. He was named after the archangel who gave the news of Jesus to the virgin Mary. He
had read the bible numerous times and could recite countless verses. Despite all of this, he had sex before marriage. Multiple times. He saw nothing
wrong with it, though he would never, ever admit it to his parents. He figured, since he was planning on marriage anyway, and since he was in love,
God would forgive him. Sex without protection, however, was not an option. Children were not something he, or his fiancé, were interested in. Cystic
fibrosis is an inherited disease that he could easily pass on to any children he assisted in producing. Most with the disease didn’t live past their
late thirties/early forties. Because of it, coughing wasn’t uncommon for him, he obtained regular respiratory infections, he was far under a healthy
weight, and he was often short of breath. His symptoms were worse, however, due to his unaware girlfriend’s smoking habit. The second hand smoke
caused harsher infections, even less weight gain/more weight loss, and further decrease in his lungs’ function. No one but his doctor was aware of his
condition, and he never planned on relaying it to anyone else. It was his burden and he was content to bare it all on his own. He vocalized his reason
for coughing as a shitty immune system and a constant cold, and blamed his weight on genes.
He enjoyed his work.
While it wasn’t what he had dreamed of doing with his life, he still liked it. Most of it was busy work, but he was consulted unofficially sometimes
for advice, and he found pleasure in hearing all of the cases they were presented with. Not only did his father own the firm, but his younger brother
and sister also worked there, among other unrelated people. Though he loved his family, it wasn’t uncommon for them to fight. They were twins, a year
younger than him, and therefore very close and, in his opinion, bratty. Sibling rivalry played a large part in their relationships, and it was hard
for Gabriel to see them so successful while he himself worked beneath them. A better job, however, he wouldn’t be able to find. He worked a block from
his home and made good money for a receptionist. His own incompetence was regularly pushed aside and ignored by his close family and friends, and he
was thankful for it. He had enough to deal with without his flaws being pointed out; his mother did have the tendency to insist on him returning to
school, however, one which he regularly ignored. In any case, his time was monopolized by his job, and he was generally the last in the building late
every night. Between filing, organizing, and financing, it wasn’t hard for him to keep busy. They were a damn popular firm.
you stay home ,
she goes out .
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posted on 9-1-2010 at 02:28 AM
