“Morning,” she says, shooting me a look that I immediately recognize as meaningI’m sorryandwe’ll talk laterandyou’re my best friendall at the same time. I nod and offer hera small smile, pressing my fingertips against her shoulder in return.
“You guys took off early,” Ian says, nodding at Gabe and then Sadie, who’s slicing tomatoes at the kitchen table, rosy-cheeked and satisfied like a person who unequivocally spent the night having super-romantic makeup sex. Just looking at her makes me want to howl.
“Yeah. Just tired, I guess.” Gabe is standing at the counter pouring coffee out of the ancient metal percolator. “Here,” he says, handing me a chipped mugful. I muster a mumbled thanks and turn away, ignoring the quizzical look I can feel him shooting at my back. I don’t want anything to do with him this morning. I don’t want anything to do with him for the rest of my life.
In the meantime, though, we’re due at the airport in Shannon by ten thirty for our flight to Paris; just a few more hours, I promise myself, and Gabe and I will finally be able to go our separate ways. We cram our stuff into our suitcases, strip the beds, and pile into Imogen’s tiny car, where she cranks the eighties rock station too loud for any of us to talk. Sadie sits in the middle of the backseat, Gabe on one side and me on the other; I stare out the window at the gray Irish morning, arms crossed and cardigan wrapped tightly around me.
Imogen drops us off curbside, hugging everybody good-bye and grabbing me by the arm. “Can I talk to you?” she asks quietly.
“I was going to ask you the same thing,” I blurt, relieved. Then, calling to Ian: “I’ll meet you guys in there!” I turn back to Imogen, shake my head. “I’m really sorry about last night.”
Imogen waves me off. “No,” she says, “I am.”
“No, me,” I say, and smile. “You’ve been so amazing—you arealwaysso amazing. I didn’t mean to come all the way here and pull all my same old Molly shit.”
Imogen sighs, raking her fingers through her dark, shiny hair. “I shouldn’t have said that. That’s not what you were doing. And honestly, even if you were, I was so happy to see you I don’t even care.” She leans back against the car door, settling in like we’re back in the kitchen at the cottage and not in the airport drop-off lane under the watchful eye of a security guard who’s already motioning at her to hurry up. “I get why it sounds like a bad idea,” she admits. “Me and Seamus. I would probably think it was a bad idea, if somebody was saying it to me. But I love him, Molly. I really do. And if it turns out to be a disaster, then I’ll just... get on a plane and come home.”
I nod. It occurs to me that maybe this is what friendship is sometimes: saying your piece, then crossing your fingers and hoping for the best. “I’m happy for you,” I promise. “I really, really am.”
Imogen smiles like the sun coming up over the mountains back at home in Star Lake. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I’m happy, too.” Then her lips twist. “My mom is going to fuckingmurderme.”
“Yup,” I say, and laugh, and then suddenly the two of us are cackling, obnoxious hysterical giggles, like we used to when we stayed up too late watching rom-coms in middle school. I double over, my purse thudding to the pavement; Imogen holds on to the rearview mirror on the side of the car. The security guard scowls wildly, though he stays where he is.
“Okay,” she says finally, wiping tears from her eyes with the heels of her hands, smiling. “I’m so glad you came, dummy. And I love you.” She hugs me tight then, the smell of hyacinths and oil-based paint. “Travel safe. And remember what I said, okay? You should never have to be afraid to be who you really are.”
“Yeah,” I say, swallowing down that precry tightness in my throat and face. Not for the first time, I wonder what exactly I did to deserve a friend as true as her. “I know. You’re right.”
“I mean it,” Imogen says firmly.
“Ladies!” Now the security guard is marching in our direction, pointing to his watch. “You cannot be having your afternoon tea in my—”
“I’m going!” Imogen promises, flashing him a dazzling grin.
I’m smiling as I walk through the sliding door into the airport, though the warmness in my chest vanishes at the sight of Gabe and Sadie holding hands near security, her chin resting on his shoulder as she peers at their boarding passes. Well, good for them, then, I think snottily, hooking my hand in thestrap of Ian’s backpack and tugging gently as we head for the checkpoint. “I love you,” I murmur in his ear.
It should get better once we’ve boarded the plane. Gabe and Sadie are sitting a few rows in front of us on the opposite side of the aisle, too far away for me to be able to see them. But it turns out imagining them is even worse: napping with their heads on each other’s shoulders or talking about their plans for the fall back in Indiana or tucked together under a fleecy airline blanket watching a movie, Gabe’s hand wrapped around the inside of her thigh.
I curl up next to the window and spend the trip staring out at cloudy gray nothingness with my cardigan on backward and tucked over my knees, arms crossed so I can make myself as small as humanly possible. I want to pull myself out of my own bad mood, but I don’t know how to: It’s like I’ve twisted the rusty top off some tightly sealed container, and now I can’t screw it back on.
“How you doing?” Ian asks me finally, nudging my arm as the flight attendant passes by with a cart full of snacks I have no interest in eating. He’s been absorbed in a book on his phone, seemingly unbothered by my inability to quit sulking.
He clicks out of the app now, opens up a game of Scrabble. “Want to play?”
I don’t, really, and he beats me literally every single time, but it’s not like I have a better idea. “Sure,” I tell him. Anything to help get this flight over with. We’re booked at asweet little rooming house I’ve been looking forward to since I found it online back in the spring, antique cast-iron tubs and tulips on all the bedside tables and a tiny café on the ground floor famous for theircroque madame. Best of all: it’s clear across town from Gabe and Sadie’s hostel. “Why not?”
The two of them are waiting for us when we get through the jet bridge and into the terminal. “Hey dudes,” Gabe says, sounding downright cheerful. It makes me want to punch him in his face. “How’d it go?”
“Great,” I say brightly, breezing straight past him. “Let’s move.”
It takes forever to get through customs, all of us shuffling along like a herd of drowsy cattle. It smells like sweat and McDonalds and old-lady perfume. By the time we finally get our passports stamped my stomach is rumbling and my mood is subterranean; all I want to do is drop our stuff and go to lunch. “Come on,” I say, looping my arm through Ian’s and rubbing my face against the shoulder of his T-shirt. “I’m about to get hangry.”
“Just let me pee really fast?” Sadie pipes up, although I’m not really sure why that has anything to do with Ian and me. We’ve made it to Paris, after all; there is absolutely no reason for us to still be traveling as some kind of weird, fraught foursome. Still, I find myself stopping as she wriggles out of her backpack, dropping it gently on the tile floor at Gabe’s feet. “I’ve had to go since we got off the plane.”
“Me too, actually,” says Ian, dropping his own backpack into the pile; I park my bag beside it, my shoulders bunched and aching. “I’ll be right back.” Sadie passes me her purse and Ian hands off his passport, which I rest on top of Gabe’s beat-up L.L.Bean duffel for safekeeping. It’s monogrammed, I notice for the first time, with Chuck’s initials.
Once they’re gone Gabe and I stand there for a moment looking anywhere but at each other, his hands shoved in his pockets and me picking at my fingernails with enough intensity to rip them clean off. He feels like a completely different person than the one who almost kissed me in the alley outside the hardware-store bar twelve hours ago. He feels like someone I’ve never even met.
“I’m going to grab a bottle of water,” he says finally, clearly looking for any flimsy excuse to get away from me. I can’t blame him, though it makes me hate him even more. “You okay to wait here with the stuff?”
