“I know,” he says. “And I’m sorry.” He shakes his head, and he looks very sincere. “Honestly, Molly, I just want to be around you.”
I offer him a watery smile, but the truth is I feel drained and exhausted: my body aches like I’ve been training for a track meet. My skin is itchy and raw. It occurs to me that I’m tired of traveling, of packing up and moving on and exploring places I’ve never been before. It occurs to me that I’m almost ready to go home. “I’m sorry too,” I tell him finally.
“Eat some of this,” he advises, nudging the waxed-paper bag of croissants in my direction. I nod, tearing a pastry in two and handing him half. Both of us chew silently for a moment; then Ian swallows, flopping back onto the bed with such force I lift my coffee into the air to keep it from spilling all over the sheets. “God, I feel likeshit,” he says, shutting his eyes and digging the heels of his hands into them. “I’m never drinking red wine again.” He opens his eyes, peers at me guiltily. “You probably want to go out and, like, see stuff today, huh?”
“I do in fact kind of want to go out and see stuff,” I confirm, tearing off another piece of croissant and chewing thoughtfully. “But you don’t have to come with me, if you don’t want to.”
Ian hesitates, rolling over to look at me more closely. I can see him trying to figure out if this is a trap or not. “It’s fine,” I promise. “Look, clearly you’ve already seen all thisstuff, right? There’s no reason for you to schlep all over creation with me to go see theMona Lisa.”
Ian looks so intensely sheepish I almost smile. “I really,reallydon’t want to go see theMona Lisa,” he confesses.
“It’s okay,” I tell him again, and I mean it. Idowant to see theMona Lisa, actually; I wanted to see the Eiffel Tower, too, but if he thinks it’s dumb or boring I’d rather just go on my own. “Seriously, take the day off, chill out. I’ll be fine.”
I’m planning to say the same thing to Gabe and Sadie—the last thing I want is to wind up spending the day as their third wheel—but once I’m dressed and downstairs I find Sadie still unshowered, drinking coffee on a lounge chair in the courtyard with a set of borrowed headphones in her ears. “You know, I think I’m going to stay here today,” she announces, pulling out one earbud and squinting up at me in the whitish morning sunshine.
I blink. “Really?” I ask. “But... we’re in Paris.”
Sadie smiles. “You know, I heard something about that.” She shrugs, leaning back against the chaise. “We went to the Louvre yesterday. I ate some Brie. I’ve been traveling for ten days, and now I want to sit by this pool and listen to TED Talks. That’s what vacation is for, right? Going where the trail takes you, guilt-free?”
“I mean, yeah,” I agree. I think of my carefully planned itinerary, all theshoulds andmusts andought tos I packed in my suitcase on the way over here. It’s almost like someone else made all those plans. “I guess you’re right.”
Sadie grins at that, leaning back and stretching as luxuriously as a cat on a windowsill. “I like to think I usually am.”
“Well, Ian’s begging off too,” I tell her, frowning a little bit. “Massive hang-xiety up there. So if you’re committed to this chair for the day, that leaves—”
“You and me,” Gabe says, appearing at the sliding doors that lead back into the kitchen. He’s in the same clothes he’s been wearing since we got here, jeans and a soft-looking T-shirt, his short hair wet from the shower.
“You and me,” I say, trying not to sound too obviously panicked. I can tell my expression mirrors his, a combination of dread and false equanimity,don’t fight in front of the kids.
Gabe’s gaze cuts from me to Sadie, then back again. “I just gotta grab my stuff, okay? I’ll meet you inside.”
“Um, yup,” I tell him. “I’ll be here.”
Once he’s gone Sadie wrinkles her nose, tipping her head back against her lounge chair. “Anyway, it’s probably not the worst thing in the world for us to take a little bit of a break from each other,” she admits more quietly. “Yesterday we argued all the way around Montparnasse.”
My heart sinks like a penny in a fountain, turns over once on the way down. “Oh, Sadie,” I say, and I’m surprised to find I really mean it. I think I could have been a better friend to her while we were here. “I’m sorry.”
Sadie shakes her head. “It’s okay. It is what it is, right?”
“I guess,” I agree. “But it still sucks.”
She smirks at that, a sharper, wryer expression than I’veseen on her face until now. “Yeah,” she admits. “It totally sucks.” She sighs then, determined and resigned as a hiker taking a break before the last long leg of a journey. “Anyway, I have no idea what’s going to happen when we get back to Indiana. But for today, I am going to enjoy my own personal Versailles.”
I consider her for a moment, Sadie with her quick thinking and indefatigable optimism and midwestern cornfield of yellow hair. Looking at her I can’t help but remember Tess, who Patrick dated last summer; she and I could have been real friends, I think, but just like always I let the Donnellys get in the way. “Look, Sadie,” I begin cautiously, “I’m really sorry I snapped at you the other night. I was just really tired.”
Sadie looks confused. “When did you—what, about Sabrina Hudson?” She shakes her head. “I thought about that, actually. And I think you were right.”
I blink at her. “I was?”
Sadie nods. “Yeah. I mean, what do I care if some celebrity wants to show her business to the whole world, right?” She shrugs again then, like it’s no skin off her tan, freckled nose. “I know I can be kind of, like, a judger sometimes, especially when it comes to other girls or whatever. But I meant what I said about you and Imogen. You guys make me think it wouldn’t be so bad to have more girlfriends.”
That makes me smile. It occurs to me that for better or worse Sadie is the only one of us who’s been one hundred percent herself the whole time we’ve been on this trip: whohasn’t been hiding secret family money or a paralyzing fear of the future or a messy, shameful past. Even if I haven’t always been her biggest fan, I have to respect that much. I hope I can be more like her in that way.
“I’m really glad you came on this trip,” I blurt before I can talk myself out of it, decide it’s too awkward or forward or out of the blue.
Sadie looks slightly confused, but she grins in return. “Well thanks, Molly,” she says. “I’m really glad I did, too.”
“I’ll bring you back some fancy-ass chocolate,” I promise. “You enjoy today.”
