I shrug. “Do whatever you want,” I can’t resist muttering. “I mean, you probably will anyway.”
Gabe stops half a dozen steps away, face darkening. “Okay, can I ask you something?” he says. “What is your problem with me today?”
“I don’t have a problem with you,” I snap.
“Really?” Gabe raises his eyebrows. “’Cause you’re doing a pretty good job of acting like you do.”
“Oh,am I?” I all but shout, whirling in his direction like I think I’m going to shove him with both hands; suddenly Iam so monstrously, ferociously angry. I’m angry that he tried to kiss me last night. I’m angry that I kind of wish I’d let him. I’m angry that since the very beginning, the consequences of whatever he and I have been to each other have always fallen squarely on me, whether that meant girls tucking condoms into my work locker or me lying on my back on an exam table at a clinic in Boston, imagining myself into a cloud. It’s not even a hostile act on his part. It’s just how it works. Gabe gets away with things. I pay for them. Gabe moves on. I get stuck.
But I can’t say that in the middle of the airport in Paris while our significant others use the bathrooms less than fifty feet away. I can’t say thatever, probably, but especially not now. So I sigh, tucking my hair behind my ears and trying one more time to zip myself up, taking a few steps closer and lowering my voice to an acceptable pitch. “Nothing,” I tell him. “Just forget it, okay?”
“I don’t want to forget it,” he argues. “Come on. It’s me.”
I shake my head, debating. We’re about to go our separate ways, after all. Who knows when I’ll see him again? Finally I just say it: “I saw you and Sadie last night, okay?”
Gabe looks at me blankly. “You saw Sadie and me... ?”
“The two of you.” I grimace. “On the pullout. When I came back to Imogen’s after the bar.”
Just for a moment, Gabe looks completely and utterly stricken. Then his eyes narrow. “What the hell were you doing?” he demands.
“I wasn’tspyingon you,” I snap, immediately defensive.“It wasn’t some creepy, tawdry thing. I just walked in minding my own business and there you were.”
“Okay.” Gabe shrugs, and the cavalier ease of it takes my breath away. “Well, I’m sorry you saw.”
I gape at him. “That’sit?” I can’t keep from saying. “Sorry Isaw?”
Gabe sighs. “Sadie and I are together, Molly. What did you think we did?”
I open my mouth, shut it again. He’s right, of course. Even as their relationship has been going on right in front of my face for the last three days—even though we’ve been broken up for a year—it occurs to me I’m still thinking of him as on loan to her, like a sweater she’ll eventually give back. “You realize you tried to kiss me two seconds before that,” I sputter.
Gabe nods. “And I think we can both agree that was a giant mistake.”
“Uh, yup.” I huff a noisy breath out. “That’s a fact.”
We face off like that for a moment, glaring at each other, the hassled crowd like schools of fish bobbing and weaving all around us. I know I should leave it alone, that there’s nothing to be gained here, but something small and stubborn in me isn’t quite ready to concede the point: “So what?” I can’t resist pressing. “You guys are all made up now? Everything is fine? You’re just going to add last night to the list of things you’re not going to talk to her about and move on with your lives in perfect artificial happiness?”
“Perfect artificial—” Gabe’s eyes widen. “First of all,” he says, “you’re not exactly one to talk about keeping secrets.”
I know he’s right, which doesn’t stop me from bristling. “This isn’t about me.”
“It’s always about you, Molly!” Gabe explodes, loud enough that a teenage girl in a Bruno Mars T-shirt whips her head around in alarm. “That’s the fucking point!”
I stare at him for a moment, taken aback. It’s an uncomfortable echo of what Imogen said last night, although something about the way Gabe is looking at me makes me think that’s not exactly how he means it. If he hadn’t spent the last year ignoring me completely, I’d almost think—
“You know what?” Gabe continues before I can ask him what exactly he’s getting at, scrubbing a frustrated hand over his face. “This is ridiculous. This whole trip was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I thought was going to happen here.”
“It was,” I agree hotly. In fact, it seems absurd to me that I ever thought it could work. I convinced myself it could because I missed him; I convinced myself it could because I didn’t want to say good-bye. I couldn’t let go of everything that happened a year ago on the other side of the ocean, and now I’ve gone and risked everything I’ve worked for in the here and now. “We should have called it that first night back in London.”
“It’s good we’re splitting up, then.”
“It’sgreatwe’re splitting up!” It sounds dangerously close to a wail, and for one horrifying second I think I might beabout to cry. I swallow hard, biting my tongue until I taste metal and blinking as fast as I possibly can.
That’s when Ian and Sadie come strolling across the terminal.
“Hey, pals,” Sadie says cheerfully; she’s wearing last night’s jeans and a T-shirt top with the names of all the US national parks printed on it in a pattern that makes the shape of a tree. “You ready?”
I swallow. “Yup,” I manage, trying to keep my voice steady. I glance at Gabe. “Let’s just—”
