Gabe and Sadie and I follow him into the kitchen, which is like something out of a magazine: all marble tile and wide-planked floors and an old-fashioned enamel sink with a big white drainboard. Schoolhouse lights hang above a butcher-block island. “I don’t think there’s a ton here to eat,” Ian says, opening the stainless-steel fridge and peering skeptically inside, “but there’s a grocery store like two blocks down that way if you guys want to get some snacks and wine andstuff?” He motions toward the side of the house, back in the direction we came from.
Gabe nods. “We’ll go,” he says, nodding at Sadie. Then, looking suddenly mortified: “But—” He breaks off.
“No no, it’s fine.” Ian shakes his head. “It’s a wicked old-fashioned place, my parents keep an account there. So you can just put it on that.” He trails off a little bit as he explains it, as if the absurdity of telling us that his parents have an account at an old-fashioned French grocery and that we can use it to pay for our lunch is suddenly dawning on him. He has the decency to look embarrassed.
“We’ll pay you back,” Gabe says firmly, and for a second I forget how angry I’ve been all day and feel a little bit bad for him—I know he’s already feeling sensitive about money, on account of everything that’s going on at home with the pizza place. There’s no way this isn’t humiliating.
Once the door snicks shut behind them Ian takes a breath, then turns to look at me. “So, okay,” he says, rubbing a wary hand over his beard. “About this place.”
“Yeah.” I brush past him, opening various cabinet doors open until I find the one housing a cache of pristine glassware flecked with tiny bubbles, heavy and handmade. I fill a cup at the sink, gulp it down like I’ve been wandering the desert for forty years. “About this place.”
Ian sighs like I’m being dramatic. “Molly—”
“No, Ian. I have no clue what’s going on here, and actually I’m kind of pissed.” Now that the initial bafflement haspassed, I’m angry for some reason, and I don’t even know how to explain exactly why. There’s the obvious, of course: that he’s been holding this back, that he’s flat-out lied to me about who he is and where he comes from. But there’s also the sting of looking like an idiot in front of Sadie and Gabe, and the shameful shock of realizing I’m not the only one in this relationship with secrets. If I’m being honest with myself, I’m not sure which part upsets me most. “I’m trying to figure out how we’ve spent the last five days tooling around Europe—never mind the eight months we’ve known each other—and you somehow neglected to mention your parents have a fucking palace in Paris, France.”
Ian leans back against the counter with his arms crossed, like I’m someone’s irascible toddler. “First of all,” he begins, “I didn’t neglect to mention it.”
“Yeah,” I snap, “no kidding. You didn’t tell me on purpose. What were you worried about, that I was some kind of manky gold digger?”
“Of course not,” Ian says. “Come on.”
“Then what?” I demand. “You let me pick out hotels and search for bargain flights and print us all a freaking Groupon for skydiving yesterday—you let me planthis whole trip—and meanwhile the entire time you’re sitting on this place? You grewupin places like this place.” That’s a part of it too, I realize suddenly. Admitting it even to myself is gross and unflattering, but the truth is I’ve spent the last eight months walking around with this made-up version of Ian inmy mind: a sweet, unassuming book nerd who’d somehow managed to pick up all this knowledge and insight about the world just by exercising his library card. I was so sure he was inventing me, back at the beginning. But I did exactly the same thing to him.
“I feel like an idiot,” I tell him finally.
“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel that way.” Ian shakes his head, reaching a hand out in my direction; I jerk away, and he sighs. “Molly. Come on. You were so excited about this trip. I didn’t want to take away from that. I would have sounded like a huge douche.”
“Okay,” I say. “What about the however many months we knew each other before I started planning it, then? You just never found a moment to drop it into conversation that your parents are gajillionaires?”
He shrugs. “They’re not gajillionaires, first of all. And it never came up while we were at school.”
“At school you have three roommates, one of whom is a mouse.” I blow out a frustrated breath. In Boston one of our favorite things to do was to meet halfway between my dorm and his apartment, then see how far we could get on ten bucks. I tried dollar oysters that way; we wandered up to the top of the Green Monster in the middle of a rain delay at Fenway. Suddenly I’m wondering if those things were pretend, some kind of disingenuous experiment in slumming it. “I don’t understand,” I finally say. “Like—youwork.”
Ian snorts a laugh. “Yeah, Molly,” he says. “I work.”
“Why?”
“Because I like the library?” Ian asks, holding his hands out, palms up. “Because my parents think it’s important not to have things handed to you? Because having things handed to you makes you an asshole? I don’t know. I just do.”
“Do you guys have other houses?” I can’t resist asking. It’s crass, but less crass than what I actually want to ask, which ishow rich are you, exactly?“Like, besides your regular house?”
Ian shrugs, uneasy. “A place in Aspen, yeah,” he admits. “And one near Lake Como, but we never go to that one, they just bought it as an investment.”
“Oh my God.” I shake my head. “Seriously?Seriously.”
Ian makes a face at that. “Okay. Enough over there, please, tiger. It’s not like you grew up on the mean streets. Your mom was literally on the homepage of Amazon the other day.”
“That’s not the point,” I say, though of course I know he’s got one. My righteous anger is breaking a little, the knowledge that I’m being slightly ridiculous beginning to seep through the cracks. It’snotactually that different from how my mom lives, after all, padding barefoot around her quiet house in Star Lake instead of dressing up for publishing parties down in Manhattan; still, there’s no way I’m going to admit that out loud. “And anyway, we’ve never had an investment property next door to George Clooney.”
“Would it have made a difference?” Ian asks. “If I told youthat my parents had a bunch of money? Would you have, like, liked me more, or wanted to get more serious faster, or—”
My eyes widen. “Youdothink I’m a gold digger!”
“No,” Ian says, “I’m just saying it makes people weird sometimes.” He sighs, leaning back against the massive butcher-block island. “I don’t know what to tell you, Molly. There are things about yourself you don’t like to talk about, right? I mean, I think you’ve been pretty clear about that.”
It’s the winning shot, a three-pointer from midcourt, and both of us know it. Still, I dig my heels in. “That’s different,” I insist.
Ian raises his eyebrows. “Really?” he asks. “How?”
