“You know, the internet is actually super spotty here,” Imogen jumps in, hopping up off the couch like her underwear is on fire. “You’re probably better off waiting till you get to the airport to try and buy anything.”
“Really?” Sadie asks, squinting at the screen. “It was working fine a second ago.”
“Yeah, it goes in and out.” Imogen waves her hand vaguely. “Hey, you wanna come help me make more popcorn?”
She takes Sadie’s hand, pulling her into the kitchen before she can answer; when I look up Gabe is watching me, the barest hint of a secret smirk visible on his face.Oh, this is funny to you?I want to ask—wouldask, if Ian weren’t sitting beside him, calmly shuffling the cards for their next hand.
I think of what Sadie said this morning, how unhappy Gabe’s been lately. I think of what he said last night about the shop. I hate to think of the Donnellys struggling, even though it’s a pretty fair bet that the last thing any of them want is my pity. Still, a part of me wants to force Gabe to tell me what’s really going on.
I think of the hundred thousand slices I’ve eaten in mylifetime. I think about the birthday party I had there in second grade. I think of the picture of Chuck hung up in the kitchen, all beefy forearms and thick dark hair, his head thrown back laughing, and wish for the hundred thousandth time he was still around to tell us all what to do.
Twenty minutes later I find Gabe setting out a game of solitaire on the kitchen table just like Connie, his mom, used to do after dinner when we were kids, the cards making a crisp, quiet snapping sound as he lays them down on the Formica. “What happened to Ian?” I ask.
Gabe shrugs. “Shower, I think?”
“Got it.” I watch his hands move as he shuffles, his long competent fingers casual and deliberate. For no good reason at all—at least, not one I’d ever be able to say out loud—my entire body goes prickly and alert. “So hey,” I announce, reminding myself firmly to stop being such an enormous creep about everything, “I was thinking about the shop.”
That gets his attention: Gabe raises his eyebrows as he turns around to look at me, equal parts skeptical and amused. “You were, huh?” He bangs the deck lightly against the edge of the table to even it out.
“Um, yeah,” I say, blushing. The house is quiet. Sadie’s asleep on the love seat out in the plant hospital, her long limbs splayed out every which way; Imogen’s in her room talking to Seamus on the phone. The rain has mostly stopped by now, a trickle instead of a deluge. I can hear it dripping offthe rooftop, a steady, near-musicalplink. “I have some ideas.”
“Molly—” Gabe blows a breath out. “I don’t know if that’s really—”
“Just hear me out, okay?” Off his dubious expression, I sigh. “Look, I know you didn’t ask me to do this. And clearly I’m not Warren Buffett. You guys have been running a business for a long time, and I’m sure you’ve already thought of a lot of this stuff. But on the off chance you haven’t, maybe I can help.” I look at him. “Iwantto help, okay?”
Gabe looks at me. Then finally he shrugs, leaning back in the rickety kitchen chair and crossing his arms inside his hoodie. “Okay,” he says after a moment, chin tucked like a boxer’s. “Go ahead.”
So I launch into my pitch for a new, improved Donnelly’s Pizza: early-bird happy hours with half-price cheese pies for families on vacation and an old-fashioned late-night speakeasy with beer specials and local bands. “You could even set up space outside in the back, like they did at the bar we were at back in London,” I suggest brightly. “Put a bunch of Christmas lights up, drag some picnic tables out there, and bam, you got yourselves a patio.”
Gabe raises his eyebrows, smirking a bit. “Bam, huh?”
“Yeah!” I insist, laughing a little. “Bam! Come on, these are good ideas.”
“They are good ideas,” Gabe admits, his smile turning into something real. “You’re smart about this stuff, you always have been.” Then, presumably off my surprisedexpression: “What, you wanna fist-bump again?”
“Okay, you know what?” I make a face at him. “Doyouwanna fist-bump again?”
I’m expecting a joke in return, but Gabe just gazes at me evenly. “No, Molly Barlow,” he says, and the skin on the back of my neck prickles. “That’s not what I want.”
Imogen’s bedroom door opens then, the sound of her laughter ringing out like a school bell; I swallow my own swollen, aching heart back down where it belongs. “Anyway,” I say, wiping my suddenly sweaty palms on my jeans. “It’s worth a shot.”
“Yeah,” Gabe says, getting up from the table with no preamble, looking everywhere in the world but at me. “Maybe it is.”
Imogen reads my cards after lunch, the two of us sprawled on her bed with her battered, beloved tarot deck spread between us. She’s been reading for me—and almost everybody else back in Star Lake—since we were in middle school, and her cards have been handled so many times that the edges have gone furry and frayed. It’s still drizzling, but barely; out the window Gabe and Ian are kicking a grimy-looking soccer ball around the yard like two little kids after school. “Where’s Sadie?” Imogen asks me, following my gaze through the glass as she sets the final card down.
“Who knows?” I ask distractedly, peering down at the Queen of Swords with her fall of raven-black hair; Imogen’sdeck is beautiful and intricate, the images all drawn in chalk pastel by an artist from California that she loves. “Building a lean-to in the woods, probably, where she can commune with the mountains and get away from bitchy drama queens.” I clap my hand over my mouth and look up at Imogen, wide-eyed. “Oh my God, I didn’t mean that. It just came right out!”
“Uh-huh.” Imogen laughs. “Not a fan of the new girlfriend?”
“No, that’s horrible of me,” I protest quickly, shaking my head. “That’s gross. I like her! She’s lovely. She’s so nice.”
“You sound like Rizzo talking about Sandy,” Imogen informs me, smirking.
“Ugh, I do, right?” I sigh, digging the heels of my hands into my eyes. “It’s not even that I think she’s too pure to be Pink—although, okay, she does kind of seem that way sometimes, right? But it’s more that she’s, like...”
“One of those girls who thinks she’s better than other girls because she doesn’t wear eyeliner?” Imogen supplies.
“Kind of!” The truth is there’s a part of me that feels better for admitting it out loud, like the moment of shameful satisfaction after popping a pimple. Still. “I hate feeling like this. It’s so boring to not like your ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend. It makes me feel like a terrible feminist.”
