Everything seems to slow down then, the last year unspooling between us. Gabe tilts his head to the side. I want to put my thumb on his clavicle, to feel the tick of the blood beating deep inside his body. I want to catch his collarbone between my teeth.
“We can’t,” I tell him, swallowing thickly.
Gabe doesn’t move—or hedoesmove, but closer, so his warm forehead presses against mine. “We can’t what, exactly?” he murmurs.
“You know what,” I say, straightening up with no small amount of effort, stepping back and putting both hands on my flushed cheeks. “And we can’t. Or like—Ican’t. I’m not that person anymore. I have worked so,sohard to not be that person.”
“Can you stop saying that?” Gabe complains, and just like that he’s irritated again; he steps back too, his whole body all angles, like a coat hanger or a cage. “Like, who is this other person you supposedly were?”
“A person who kissed other people’s boyfriends,” I remind him immediately. My voice is rising again, creeping up along some invisible seawall. “A person who never learned. A person who—” I break off, take a deep breath. “Okay. Gabe, there’s something I have to—”
I’m cut off by a crash of biblical proportions down at the back end of the alley; Gabe and I spring apart like we’re on fire, even though we aren’t even standing that close. When I whip around I see it’s just a busboy flinging a bag of trash into the Dumpster, but the stupidity of us standing out here like this together is sickeningly, immediately apparent.
Gabe clears his throat and the moment is over, his narrow body angled away from me and his hands shoved deep into his pockets. I think suddenly of Imogen’s artist nun fromyesterday, all her deepest secrets catching up with her in the end. “You look really pretty in that dress,” Gabe says to the mouth of the alley. Then he walks away without looking back.
I wait a few moments before I follow in a sad, sneaky attempt to stagger our reentrances; I have no idea how I’m going to explain our absence to Ian, but he seems to have barely noticed we were gone. “Come meet these guys!” he says, swinging one heavy arm around my shoulder and introducing me to a crowd of Seamus’s newly arrived friends from rugby. Imogen is watching me warily from behind her pint glass, and I do my best to pretend not to see.
Instead I tuck myself into the safe, familiar circle of Ian’s arm and take the bottle of cider he offers, trying without much success to follow a complicated story one of Seamus’s buddies is telling about a prank involving a jar of orange marmalade and someone else’s broken-down car. I want to relax, to enjoy myself like everyone else seems to be able to, but everything that was charming about this place an hour ago is suddenly grim and claustrophobic to me: empty beer bottles litter the tiny tables. There’s a mousetrap on the floor behind the bar. I’m achy and empty and guiltily out of sorts, unable to settle. I’ve had enough of the traveling life for one night.
“I’m exhausted,” I tell Ian finally, popping up on my tiptoes to murmur in his ear. “I’m just gonna head back and go to bed, okay?”
Ian frowns. “Hang on,” he says, “I’ll come with you.” He holds up his mostly full pint glass. “Just let me kill this first.”
But I shake my head. “It’s like thirty feet from here to Imogen’s,” I remind him, mustering a smile I hope is convincing. “You stay, finish your beer. I’ll be fine.”
“Okay,” Ian says after a moment. “But text me when you’re safe.”
Outside the air is cool and crisp and head-clearing, like gulping a deep drink of water after a particularly long run. I take big breaths as I head up the deserted lane toward Imogen’s, holding them in my lungs for a moment before I exhale. You can see every single star here, bright clusters of them like someone has tossed a generous handful of glitter, and for a moment I’m hit with a wave of homesickness so strong it almost takes me out by the knees.
I let myself in through the back door of Imogen’s silent cottage, not bothering to flick any lights on as I slip my muddy shoes off and pad through the kitchen. I’m about to turn down the short hallway that leads to the bedroom I’m sharing with Ian when I hear a quiet sound from the living room, a moan or a whimper; I glance in that direction before I can think better of it, my whole body getting ferociously hot all at once. In the glow of the twinkle lights strung up along the ceiling I can see two bodies moving together on the pullout: a corona of messy blond hair that is definitely Sadie’s, and a pale, narrow back that’s unmistakably Gabe’s.
I dart down the hallway quick and quiet as a cockroachbefore either one of them notices me, shutting the door with a barely audible click and pressing my back against the jamb. I want to climb out the window and run all the way to Dublin. I want to jump in the ocean and swim all the way home. More than that I want to hit rewind on the last two days, back to that night outside the pub in London:Let’s keep our reservation, I wish I’d said to Ian.Let’s stick to the plan.
Now I lie awake for what seems like hours, marinating in my own self-loathing and loneliness. Every breath sounds loud enough for Gabe and Sadie to hear all the way down the hall. Eventually the back door opens, Ian’s laugh and Seamus’s deep murmur filling the hallway, Imogen hissing at them to pipe down. A moment later a sliver of hallway light slices the bed in half as Ian stumbles across the rag rug; he slips under the covers beside me, warm and solid and beer-smelling. “We had the best time,” he tells me, exhausted and happy as a little kid after a day at Disneyland. “You should have stayed out.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking a breath so my voice will be even and trying for all the world not to let him see I’m crying. “I wish I had.”
He’s out cold in less than a minute, one heavy arm slung over my hip bone. I don’t fall asleep for a long time.
Day5
I wake up in the blackest of moods, a headache thumping dully at the base of my brain stem and my jaw on fire from clenching it all night long. I know I’m being completely irrational—after all, Gabe and I have been broken up sincelast summer—but I can’t stop picturing Sadie and him tangled together on the pullout, can’t stop hearing their quiet private sounds. It’s compulsive, like poking at an abscessed tooth.
“Are you okay?” Ian asks, and I startle; I didn’t even realize he was awake. I look over at his sweet, sleepy face and abruptly feel like the Loch Ness Monster: why the hell am I obsessing over Gabe and his girlfriend when I’m lying next to Ian? Enough is enough.
“Just hung over,” I say, even though between all my ridiculous, farcical encounters I hardly had time to drinkanything last night at all. Then, pulling him toward me on an impulse: “Come here.”
I slide my hands up under Ian’s T-shirt, bite lightly at his bottom lip. Then, a second later, I wrinkle my nose and push him gently away. “Okay,” I say, laughing a little. “Wait, maybe not. Your mouth tastes like ass.”
“I just woke up two seconds ago!” Ian protests. “And you’re the one kissing me! You think you taste like a fucking Shamrock Shake right now?” Then he grins, pulling me back under the covers. “Don’t stop.”
That makes me laugh, warm and pleased-feeling; I’m settling in closer when Imogen’s voice rings out.
“Hey, travelers!” she calls from the kitchen, banging what sounds like a wooden spoon on the underside of a pot. “Get out here! I’m making Irish breakfast before you go!”
Ian groans low and quiet against my mouth. “Is she serious right now?” he asks, knocking our foreheads lightly together.
“Imogen doesn’t kid about breakfast foods,” I say, nudging him off me and swinging my bare feet down onto the rag rug. We get dressed and pad out to the crowded kitchen, where Imogen is standing at the stove in front of a hissing frying pan full of sausages, flipping them onto their backs with a wooden spoon.
