I open my mouth and close it again, momentarily speechless. It’s not the first time we’ve had this fight. I tricked Roisin and Sadie into thinking I was a good listener, maybe. But Imogen has always known the real me.
“I’m sorry,” she says now, leaning back against the wall and knocking her skull lightly against a picture of a bunch of IRA rebels, frame rattling off the plaster. “I’ve been drinking. I’m being an asshole.”
“No,” I say quietly, “you’re right. I’m sorry.” I shrug. “I just want you to be careful, Imogen. It’s your whole life. It’scollege. Don’t you think you ought to go back for a little while at least, so—”
“So I can look at more slides of Renaissance paintings?” Imogen interrupts. “I’m living in Europe right now, Molly. I’m looking at art. I’mmakingart. I can make it just as easily—more easily, even—here, where I’m happy, and I’m with somebody that I love.” She sighs. “Look,” she tells me, “I know your whole thing right now is that you’re never goingto make another mistake—or even, like, another decision where you haven’t considered every possible outcome—in your entire life. But that’s not me, okay?”
“What?” My mouth drops open. “I’m not—” I begin, then break off. “That’s not why—”
“Imogen!” Seamus’s deep, cheerful brogue rises over the din of the crowd; when I look up he’s waving his beefy arms from across the bar, exaggerated. “You ladies fancy another pint?”
Imogen nods. “On our way!” she calls brightly, then looks at me and shakes her head. “I don’t want to fight anymore, okay?” she asks, though it doesn’t actually sound like a question. “Let’s just pick this up later.” Before I can reply, she’s walking away.
I think I’m probably supposed to follow, to rejoin the group and have another beer and stop being such a colossal drama queen about everything, but for the first time in a year I’m completely unable to snap back into enthusiastic fineness. You could land a transatlantic 747 in the light of the shame radiating off my skin. I stand there for a moment, shocked and stupid. Then I push through the crowd and head for the door.
It takes a long time to navigate an exit, the dense trapping crush of bodies all around me and the music louder all of a sudden, an ocean-liner roar inside my brain. I sneak by Sadie at the bar and Ian in deep conversation with a local in a Pogues T-shirt, then edge through the narrow aisles ofthe hardware store and burst out into the cool blue night. It’s a dramatic escape for sure, the front door banging wide open and the bells above it jangling wildly; I whip around at the sound of a low snort of laughter and spy Gabe leaning against the front window with his arms crossed, bottle of Heineken dangling lazily from one hand.
“Whoa,” he says, smile falling a bit as he catches sight of my presumably wild expression. “You okay?”
“Imogen wants tostayhere,” I blurt before I can stop myself, though of course that’s actually the least of my problems at this particular moment. “She’s dropping out of school so that she and Seamus can moveintogether.”
“What the fuck?” Gabe’s eyes widen, surprise and not a little bit of amusement. “Seriously?”
“Thank you! That’s what I said!”
“Wow,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand like he’s got a muscle cramp. “That is... something.”
“I have to figure out how to talk her out of it,” I tell him, my voice pitched high and a little hysterical. “I have no idea how to do that at this moment, I just tried and itemphaticallydid not work, I think we actually had a huge fight about it? But like.” I shake my head. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Hey,” Gabe says, holding his hands up, “easy over there. She’ll be okay.”
“How is she going to beokay?” I demand shrilly. I swallow hard, realizing abruptly that I’m shouting. “I’m sorry,”I tell him, scraping my hands through my hair and trying to reel myself in. “I’m, like, really overwhelmed all of a sudden, obviously.”
“Yeah,” Gabe says, “I know the feeling.” He hands me his beer bottle, which is still about half full. “Here,” he says, “finish this.”
I reach out and take it, trying not to think about what Imogen said back inside the bar about Gabe and I both wanting something, telling myself that the two of us sharing a drink doesn’t mean she was right. I drain the bottle in two long gulps and we stand there for a moment, neither one of us saying anything. We breathe.
“Do you think I suck all the air out of the room?” I ask finally, setting the empty bottle down carefully on the edge of the store’s front windowsill and crossing my arms.
“Why?” Gabe asks, looking at me sidelong. “Is that what your fight was actually about?”
I whip my head around to stare at him. “Shut up,” I scold, startled by the sensation of being known both so well and so casually. “No. I mean, yes, obviously, of course it was, but shut up.”
He raises his eyebrows, holding his hands up and pressing his lips together like he’s physically trying to hold back a smile. I roll my eyes.
“I didn’t meanactuallyshut up,” I clarify, as if he doesn’t already know that. “I want you to answer the question. Do you think I make every single situation about me?” I gestureat myself, keyed up. “Like, actually, am I making this situation about me right now?”
Gabe smiles for real then, a flash of straight white teeth. He thinks for a long moment. “I think controversy sort of follows you sometimes, maybe,” he says finally.
“What? It does not!” I defend myself, faintly outraged. “Or, like, it used to, maybe, but it doesn’t anymore.”
“Okay,” Gabe says, shrugging agreeably in a way that reminds me of what he was like last summer, a person so confident that he didn’t always need to be right. “Fair enough. I wouldn’t know, I guess. But what I mean is, and I’m not saying it was your fault or deserved or anything like that, but you were kind of at the center of a lot of drama back at home, weren’t you?”
My mouth drops open. “Excuse you!”
“I said it wasn’t your fault!” Gabe laughs then, fond and familiar; for a second it’s like he’s forgotten he doesn’t care about me anymore. “It was my fault, a lot of it; I know that. What I mean is that you’ve always been this big personality, really fearless and fun and charismatic and stuff like that. Maybe a little bit impulsive. And that’s what made people want to be around you all the time—present company included, obviously—but it also made you kind of a magnet for trouble.”
It’s the nicest thing he’s said to me since last summer; the words are like hot stones tucked into my pockets, like I couldcurl my hands around them to keep warm. “Thanks,” I say quietly.
