“Why is it weird?” Ian asks. “They’re your friends. Or he is, at least. Isn’t he?”
“No,” I amend, “I mean, heis, but it just feels like an imposition on Imogen, and it wasn’t part of our plan, and—” I break off, huffing a breath out. I can’t believe I let him do that. I can’t believe I letmyself.
“Do you want to uninvite them?” Ian asks finally, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and looking faintly crestfallen. “You can just text them, right? Say you got some kind of rare European fever and the whole thing is canceled.”
I smile in spite of myself, shake my head. “No,” I say. “That just makes it weirder.” I sigh, scrub my hands through my unwashed hair. “I’m sorry. I’m being a control freak.”
“Something new for a change,” Ian jokes, but there’s a faint edge to his voice. I tuck my hair behind my ears, and just like that I’m my normal self again, bright and unruffled.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “I’m being ridiculous. It’ll befun. The more the merrier, right?” I lean over and stamp a deranged kiss on his face before hopping out of bed and trotting toward the bathroom. “Good morning, PS. I’ll call Imogen and let her know.”
I shut the bathroom door and turn the water on, then scroll through the favorites on my phone until I find the number for Imogen’s international cell. “It’s you!” she says when she answers. “What’s the matter?”
“What makes you think something is the matter?” I ask, sitting down on the cool tile floor and stretching my legs out in front of me.
Imogen laughs. “If nothing was the matter, you would have texted. You guys are still coming, right?”
“No no no, absolutely!” I promise. “Yes. There’s just, like. A tiny wrinkle.” I rest my head against the doorjamb, try to think how best to begin. “So, first of all, guess who’s in London.”
I explain the whole night as quickly and factually as possible, leaving out the part where seeing Gabe again set every cell in my skeleton humming like a juiced-up power grid and ending with Ian being Ian and inviting them to tag along. Once I’m finished, Imogen is silent for a moment. “So you’re bringing Gabe and his new girlfriend to my nun house today?” she asks. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“Um,” I say sheepishly, squeezing my eyes shut. My head really hurts. “Yes? I’m sorry. I know it’s a massive imposition, you can definitely tell me to go screw, I—”
“No, it’s not that,” Imogen interrupts. “Come on, I don’t care about that. I just...” She trails off, the question hanging thick as London fog in the silence.
“I didn’t tell him,” I blurt. “I know that’s what you’re thinking, and you’re not saying it out loud because you’re polite, but—no. I didn’t tell him.”
“Are you going to?” Imogen asks. “I mean, for the record I don’t actually think you’re obligated, after the way he totally fell off the face of the planet back in the fall. But that’s just me.”
I huff a quiet laugh through my nose. “I don’tknow,” I murmur, glancing over my shoulder at the closed bathroom door. “I wanted to back when it happened. You know I wanted to. But you’re right. He made it pretty clear he didn’t want anything to do with me after last summer. So I kind of don’t see what it would accomplish at this point except dredging a bunch of ugly stuff up again.”
“I mean, Ithoughthe made it pretty clear,” Imogen points out, “except for the part where apparently now he wants to embark on an international vacation with you and your new boyfriend like a giant weirdo.” She sighs. “God, I don’t even know where you all are going tosleep.”
I smile at that, knowing this is about as much of a blessing as I’m likely to get. “Thank you, lady. I can’t wait to see you. You’re the best.”
“I am, truly,” Imogen agrees, and I can hear the wry smile in her voice. “But Molly?”
I close my eyes. “I know.”
“I gotta say it anyway.”
“I know.”
“You’re playing with fire.”
I hesitate. I want to explain to her that I’m not that person anymore, that I’ve spent the year making and remaking myself until she’d hardly recognize the girl who blew through Star Lake like a category five hurricane last summer, knocking down houses and uprooting trees. What Gabe and I had was cozy and exhilarating and old-fashioned all at once somehow, a love like sitting next to a campfire wrapped in a blanket on a cool September night. But that’s over now.
It has to be.
I tilt my head back against the doorjamb, humming my quiet assent into the phone. “I know,” I promise again, a third time like a spell in a fairy tale. “But we’re friends, Imogen. Or we’re trying to be, maybe. That’s all.”
“If you say so,” Imogen tells me, in a voice that lets me know she’s not convinced, not really, but she’s going to wait until she sees me in person to press me on it any more. “Either way, you better hurry up and get here before I change my mind.”
I smile, climbing up off the tile and tucking my hair behind my ears. “I love you,” I tell her. “I’ll see you soon.”
Ian and I pack our bags and use the app on my phone to find the train to the airport, my heart thrumming in a wayI’d rather not examine too closely; by the time we get to the terminal I can’t keep myself from frantically scanning the crowd for familiar faces like a secret agent in a spy movie. There’s a part of me that’s hoping Gabe woke up full of the same existential dread that I did, that somehow he’ll have managed to talk Sadie out of this whole doomed endeavor.
The other part of me can’t wait to see him again.
