Gabe’s smile falls then—just a little bit, around the eyes, and nothing you’d notice if you hadn’t spent your whole life getting intimately acquainted with the finer details of his face—and I wonder if he’s thinking of his own brush with Boston life. Last summer while we were dating he got pretty far along in the interview process for an undergrad program at Mass General, which would have put him just down the road from my dorm near Kenmore Square. He and I were already broken up by the time he found out he didn’t get in, but for a while at least, Boston was a thing Gabe and I were going to do together. “Yeah,” he says now, “I can tell.”
It doesn’t sound precisely like a compliment, and I raise my eyebrows. “What?” I ask. “How do you mean?”
“I don’t know,” Gabe says. “You’re different, is all.”
I shake my head, suddenly self-conscious, lifting a hand to the back of my neck as I remember what Imogen said outside in the plant hospital. “It’s just a haircut,” I protest, trying not to sound defensive. “Some new clothes.”
“I don’t mean your haircut.” Gabe picks the dish towel up again, wipes at the already clean countertop. “So what,” he asks, not quite looking at me, “you did the whole college reinvention thing? New year, new you?”
His tone riles me—like he thinks it’s stupid or immature, something I read about inCosmo. “It has nothing to do withcollege,” I tell him, although of course it does, a little—after all, when else was I going to get the chance to start so entirely over? The chance to be someone so perfectly new? But that’s not the only reason why. “Maybe I just didn’t like who I was back in Star Lake.”
Gabe shrugs. “Seems like kind of a big transformation, is all.”
“Does it?” I ask, prickly. “Well, next time I’ll check with you before I make any significant lifestyle changes, how about.”
Gabe rolls his eyes. “I’m not trying to pick a fight with you,” he says, although actually it feels like that’s exactly what he’s doing. “I’m just saying, I never thought you were so bad to begin with.”
I laugh out loud, I can’t help it, a mean witchy cackle that doesn’t sound anything like my normal laugh. “Oh,really?” I demand, emboldened by the naked nerve of him. “’Cause I’ll be honest, you could have fooled me.”
Gabe opens his mouth, closes it again. “I—” He breaks off. “Look, Molly,” he tries. “What happened last summer was—”
“Hurry up in here!” comes Imogen’s voice from behind me. When I turn she’s standing in the doorway with her arms crossed, a skeptical look on her face like she suspects she’s saving me from myself.It’s not like that, I want to tell her, except for the part where maybe it actually is. “Everything okay?”
I nod, pushing my hair behind my ears and smiling sunnily, turning purposefully away from Gabe. “Everything’s super,” I tell her, wrapping an arm around her waist and squeezing. “Just catching up. Is there more wine?”
“There sure is,” Imogen says, picking the bottle up by the neck and waving it in my direction. “Come on.”
Out in the living room Beyoncé has given way to Amy Winehouse, moody and mournful; I plunk down next to Ian on the carpet, breathing in his whiskey-skin smell. “Hi,” I say, more enthusiastically than I mean to. It occurs to me that I’m really glad to see his face.
“Come sit,” Sadie calls to Gabe, who’s still skulking in the kitchen doorway. She scoots over on the sofa to make room for him, tucking her bare, callused feet underneath her. “We’re playing Never Have I Ever.”
“We’re playingwhat?” I all but squawk. Oh, that does not feel like a good idea atall. Back at school I made it my mission to avoid getting-to-know-you games of any stripe, up to and including the throwback rum-soaked rounds of Truth or Dare Roisin and her sorority sisters liked to play after their meetings on Monday nights. I liked those girls, the gaggle of them huddled on Roisin’s bed in a cloud of perfectly drapey Madewell sweaters, but I always smiled and shook my head when they asked me to come play. “Really?”
“I was pushing for Quarters,” Imogen tells me, topping off my wineglass by way of apology. “But we don’t have enough beer.”
“Can you not play Quarters with wine?” I ask hopefully.
“How sophisticated,” Ian teases. “Very French.”
I’m about to suggest a list of more desirable alternatives—a late-night nature walk, a game of charades, ritual blood sacrifice—when Gabe speaks up. “I think it sounds fun,” he says as he crosses the living room and settles down beside Sadie, slinging one ropy arm around her shoulders and putting his feet up on Imogen’s rickety coffee table. “I’ll play.”
That throws me: after all, I’d have expected him to be at least as unwilling to go dredging up the past as I am. For a second I wonder what he’s after, if maybe he’s only agreeing for the sake of giving me a hard time—but that’s something Patrick would have done, not Gabe.Not every decision he makes is about you, I remind myself firmly. If he doesn’t think it’s a big deal, then neither do I. I can’t live the rest of my life desperate to control every single social interaction, can I? Maybe I really do just need to loosen up.
“I mean, if everybody’s doing it,” I say, taking a generous gulp of my wine. “I’m in.”
“Really?” Ian looks over at me, surprise written all over his face.
“Sure,” I say, a little too forcefully. “Why not?”
“Just surprised, that’s all.” Ian shrugs. “It’s not usually your kind of thing.”
“Well,” I reply with a smile, trying to keep my voice light. “I guess tonight it is. Kuddelmuddel, right?”
Ian smiles back at that, easy. “Fair enough,” he agrees,reaching behind me and running a finger over the small of my back inside my tank top.
“Okay, I’m starting,” Imogen announces, then grins wickedly. “Never have I ever been to London this morning.”
All of us groan. “Oh, come on!” I shout in mock outrage. “That’show it’s going to be?”
