“Molly,”he says, echoing my tone exactly. “Trust me.”
So. I do.
We drive an hour to Martinvale with the windows of the station wagon rolled down to let the wind in; it’s bracing, the feeling of old skin sloughing off in the breeze. “So, biology, huh?” I ask him, reaching across the center console and flicking the Notre Dame key ring dangling from the ignition with one of my short, naked fingernails. I expected the ride out to be loaded or awkward. Instead it just feels nice. “What’re you gonna be, a mad scientist or something?”
“Uh-huh, exactly.” Gabe lets go of the wheel and puts his arms out like Frankenstein’s monster, his warm shoulder bumping against mine as he does it. “Sex robots, for the most part. Some secret stuff with lizards.” Then, as I’m laughing: “Nah. I’m premed.”
“Really?” That surprises me for some reason. I always thought of Julia as the brains of the Donnelly family. Gabe had the personality. Patrick had the soul. “What kind?”
“Cardiologist,” he says immediately, then huffs out a wry little breath and shakes his head at the windshield. “I guess it’s kind of lame and obvious why, huh? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this kid’s dad keeled over from a heart attack, behold as he works out all his issues in the world’s most obvious way.’”
I’ve never heard Gabe talk about his dad before. I don’t know why I always thought of Chuck’s death as Patrick’s loss more than anyone else’s—because I felt it from him most, I guess, because Patrick was my favorite Donnelly and so somewhere in the back of my unconscious head I’d always assumed he must be Chuck’s, also. That was the great thing about Chuck, though, why six hundred people showed up at his funeral: Everybody he knew thought they were his favorite. That was just the kind of person he was.
“Not the most obvious,” I tell Gabe now, tilting my head to look at him in profile. The sun makes dappled patterns on the smooth skin of his cheeks and forehead. His nose is very, very straight. “Themostobvious would be joining a band.”
That makes him laugh. “True,” he allows, signaling to pull off the parkway. “Joining a band would be worse.”
We get lunch at a drive-through burger joint not far from the exit, wax-paper sacks full of French fries and tall plastic cups of iced tea. I feel weirdly self-conscious as I’m eating, glancing down at the wide white expanse of my thighs sticking out of my shorts. New running routine or not, probably the bacon on my burger is not helping the situation here.
“What’s the word?” Gabe asks now, nudging me in the shoulder—it’s an old expression of his mom’s. I shake my head, crumpling my fry bag up into a little ball.
“Your sister keyed my car,” I confess.
Gabe gapes at me. “Wait,what?” he demands, blue eyes widening. We’ve been sitting in the open hatchback of his station wagon, our legs dangling out over the bumper, but all at once he’s springing to his feet. “Jesus Christ, Molly. When?”
“At work,” I mutter, looking down at my lap again, hiding behind the curtain of my long, wavy hair. I haven’t told anyone until right this minute and admitting it to Gabe feels like lancing a blister, a combination of satisfying and completely, abjectly gross. I don’t know how I became this person, one of those girls with a lot of drama around her. A person whose romantic garbage literally fills an entire book. Patrick and I would have judged the shit out of me, two years ago. I’m judging the shit out of myself right now.
Gabe doesn’t seem to be, though: When I glance out from behind my waterfall of hair his face is painted with anger, but it’s definitely not directed at me. “Look,” he says, “I’ll deal with her, okay? That’s, like . . . that is actual bullshit, right there. Julia gets away with murder sometimes. And, like, I’ve been trying to go easy on her lately because of—” Gabe breaks off, shaking his head. “Whatever. I’ll handle her.”
“No, no, no,” I protest, scrambling out of the hatchback myself. God, that would only make it worse, if Gabe got in the middle. Maybe it’s fair and maybe it isn’t, but whatever this is between me and Julia—between me and Patrick, between me and Gabe himself—I’m the one that needs to handle it. “It’s okay,” I lie, wanting it to be for both of our sakes. I reach out and touch his arm below the elbow, warm skin and the rope of muscle underneath. “Seriously, please don’t. I’ll figure it out.”
Gabe rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue. I like that—that he seems to trust my judgment. That he doesn’t try to convince me he knows best. For a moment I follow his gaze out to the tree line; he parked with the back of the wagon to the summer woods, this wide expanse of uninterrupted green. I forgot how much I missed this when I was in Tempe. “Okay,” he says, sliding his arm back until our hands catch, squeezing for a moment before he lets go. The gesture sends a clanging all the way up into my elbow, like I banged my funny bone. “But I just—I know your life has basically been one long, uninterrupted shitshow since you got back here. And I know a lot of that is my fault.”
I shake my head, ready to protest. “It’s not—”
Gabe makes a face. “It kind of is,” he says.
For a second I remember the feeling of his warm mouth pressing at mine. I feel safe when I’m with Gabe, I’m realizing slowly, like the station wagon is a getaway car and we’re headed for the border by nightfall. It’s not exactly an unattractive thing to pretend. “Okay,” I admit finally. “It kind of is.”
“Same team, remember?” Gabe shrugs, sun catching the lighter streaks in his hair, brown and amber. He sits back down in the trunk of the Volvo, picks some dog hair off the interior, and drops it on the ground. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, it’s your rodeo, but . . . same team.”
“My rodeo, huh?” After a moment I sit down beside him, stretch my palms out behind me, and turn my head to look at him. “Okay.”
“Okay,” Gabe echoes. He leans back so his arms are behind him just like mine are. His pinky brushes mine on the floor of the trunk. I glance over my shoulder, look at our hands side by side, my ragged cuticles and the pale fuzz of blondish hair on his wrists. I imagine him grown up and finished with med school, patients lying on the operating table—reaching inside people’s rib cages, fixing their broken hearts.
Day 18
The Lodge opens in a few days, and Penn’s dialed up to eleven: This morning she had me and Desi dusting the details of the crown molding with Q-tips, then interrupted us halfway through that to taste-test three different ketchup options in the kitchen. I’m exhausted, a wrung-out kind of limpness in my arms and my shoulders—so tired, in fact, that when Mean Michaela waves to me in the hallway on my way to the time clock, I’m stupid enough to wave back in the moment before she turns her hand and flips me off instead. “Night, bitch,” she singsongs cheerfully, the door slamming behind her as she goes.
“Nice,” I mutter, rolling my eyes even as I feel the familiar heat of shame flooding my face. All I want to do is go home and crash without speaking to another human person, but when I grab my bag out of my locker and head for the exit, I find Tess already there punching her card.
“Long day?” she asks, looking pretty wiped herself—I can only imagine what pool duties were today, if she had to scrub tile grout with a toothbrush or something. Tess is wearing shorts and a Star Lake Lodge T-shirt with the old logo on it, one she must have found floating around the hotel somewhere. Her hair’s in a messy knot on top of her head. She doesn’t look like a supermodel or anything, isn’t tall or extraordinarily pretty. It makes her a lot harder to hate.
“Long day,” I echo, punching my card and slipping it into the appropriate slot. The time clock dates way back to the sixties. I start to wave good-bye, feeling awkward just being around her, but Tess holds up a hand so I’ll stay.
“Look, Molly,” she says, shrugging her broad athlete’s shoulders. She’s holding a half-eaten peach in one hand. “I guess I just wanted to say—” She breaks off. “God, this is awkward. This is really awkward, right?”
That makes me smile. “A little,” I admit.
