“Kuddelmuddel?” I supply.
“See, when you say it in that voice it sounds ridiculous,” Ian says, “but yes, basically. Don’t you ever want to just... wander?”
Truthfully, the addition of Gabe and Sadie into our traveling party is kind of all the kuddelmuddel I can handle for one trip, but I can’t exactly tell Ian that. “I’m sorry,” I say, a little abashed. “I know I’m probably not the easiest person to travel with.”
Ian shakes his head. “You’re okay,” he promises, smiling. “I’ll keep you. I mean, at the very least I’ll never accidentally wind up at a place with inconsistent Yelp reviews.”
We get the meat pies and a couple of iced teas from the shop in town—which is, for the record, adorable, with big windows and an old-fashioned slide-letter menu above thecounter, a girl with two long braids like Pippi Longstocking running the register—and walk about halfway back to the cottage before we find a low stone wall to sit on while we eat. We perch there in one of our comfortable silences for a while, just the sound of two birds chattering somewhere off in the distance.
“So, speaking of kuddelmuddel,” I say finally, picking at the flaky crust of my meat pie. “Sorry for being such a weirdo yesterday morning, about Gabe and Sadie coming with us. I know you were just being friendly. And it can’t be exactly how you wanted to spend your European vacation either.”
Ian raises his eyebrows. “What, hanging out with your home friends?” he asks, looking at me uncertainly. “I always wanted to meet them, Molly. You know that.”
“No, I know you did.” I nod uneasily. “You’re right.” It’s the only real fight Ian and I have ever had, actually, the week before the end of spring semester; I was sitting at my desk writing a final research paper on workplace diversity policies when Ian showed up at my dorm and announced his mom had canceled the trip to the Galápagos his family had scheduled for once school let out.
I frowned, squinting at my bibliography for a second before looking up from my laptop. “Seriously?” I asked. “That sucks.”
Ian nodded. “She’s gotta go to Toronto for a client thing,” he said, toeing his boots off and hopping up onto my bedwith its fluffy white duvet, the flannel-covered throw pillows all arranged in perfect order. The dorm room I shared with Roisin was a cinder-block shoe box with a window that opened three inches and overlooked an air duct; still, I’d decorated it with as much care and precision as if I were outfitting a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. My books were organized by color on the bookshelf; a rag rug in varying shades of blue covered the industrial stain-resistant carpet on the floor. Above the desk was an art poster Imogen had sent me with graphic renderings of vintage running shoes, and over on the windowsill a tiny cactus sucked up what little springtime sunlight trickled through the glass. It was neat and tidy and organized. There was no space in here for a mess.
“So are you gonna go home anyway?” I asked Ian, pushing my chair away from the desk and turning to look at him. He was wearing a BU T-shirt and a worn-in pair of khakis; his hair was sticking up a little, like it always did when he’d been studying. “See your dad and sister? Or just hang around your apartment until summer classes start?”
“I dunno.” Ian looked at me a moment. “You’re still heading home for a few days, right? Before your internship?”
I raised my eyebrows; he knew I was. “Unfortunately,” I said.
Ian smiled. “You always make your hometown sound like a total nightmare, do you know that?”
“It’s fine,” I hedged, curling the toes of one socked footaround the wooden bed frame and not looking directly at him. If I’d given him that impression it was a miscalculation on my part; truthfully, I didn’t want to draw any attention to Star Lake, or the person I’d been there, either way.
“It’s fine,” Ian mimicked in an Eeyore voice. Then he sat back against the throw pillows, looked at me for a moment. “I could always come with you,” he said.
I laughed out loud before I realized, with no small amount of horror, that he was serious. “Wait,” I said. “You want to come to Star Lake?”
“I mean, maybe not with that tone in your voice, I don’t,” Ian said pointedly. Then he shrugged. “I dunno,” he continued. “Is it such a ridiculous idea?”
“I mean, no,” I said, already scanning my mind for any possible way to dissuade him. “Of course it’s not ridiculous. It’s just—why?”
Ian laughed. “Because you’re my girlfriend?” he suggested mildly. “Because I want to see your house and make fun of your dorky middle school pictures? Because I want to meet your friends?”
“I’ll have my mom send you my middle school pictures,” I promised, smiling a little. “I had braces and a bowl cut, it was a whole thing.”
But Ian shook his head. “I’m serious,” he said quietly.
“No, I know.” My whole body felt hot and prickly; I shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair. “I get it, I just—” I broke off, wishing Roisin would come back fromclass to interrupt us. Wishing a meteor would whiz past the building. Anything to cut this conversation short. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, is all.”
“Why?” Ian asked, sitting up a little straighter. “Who are you embarrassed of?” He was trying to sound like he was joking but not hitting it, exactly; there was an underlying sharpness at the back of his voice that gave him away. “Them or me?”
“Neither!” I said, louder than I meant to.
Ian looked at me blankly. “Thenwhat?”
I didn’t say anything for a moment, the silence stretching out between us gray and cold as the Neponset River in January. The answer, of course, was that I was embarrassed of myself, of the person I was back in Star Lake. I could feel it now, the nauseating green horror of walking down Main Street and running into Julia; the drink knocked into my lap at a restaurant, the unexpected backhand of a whispered insult as we wandered through the bookstore or strolled around the lake. The confusion—and then, inevitably, the disgust—on Ian’s face.
“Look,” he said finally, sighing a little. “Are you not serious enough about this to bring me home? Is that what it is? And you just don’t want to tell me?”
“No,” I said, reaching forward and taking his hands. “Hey, come on. That’s not it, I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
