“It’s fine,” I say, holding up both hands in surrender. I was right; this was a terrible idea. I don’t know what I was possibly thinking. I can feel the scorching heat through my whole entire body, the cold shock of the beer where it’s soaking through my top. I shake Imogen off. “It’sokay,” I manage, more sharply than I mean to. Then, to the back of her receding figure: “Good to see you, too, Jules.”
Julia doesn’t stop moving. “Might want to lay off the beers, Molly,” she singsongs over her shoulder. “You’re looking a little thick.”
“Okay,” I manage once she’s gone, hands shaking. I can see Patrick watching from across the bar. All I want is to shut my eyes and be as far away as humanly possible, but if I can’t have that then I want my third-floor bedroom, the big gray blanket and the glow of the computer in my lap. I want to go home. “I’ve gotta—I mean, this was—I gottago, Imogen.”
“What just happened?” That’s Tess, coming up behind us and bumping Imogen’s hip with hers, three shots of something amber in her hands and some orange slices she stole off the bar for a snack. Her eyes widen when she sees my shirt, alarmed. “Did Julia do that on purpose?” she asks.
Imogen shakes her head. “Don’t ask.” Then, taking two of the shot glasses out of Tess’s hand and handing me one like I never said anything about leaving: “You ready?”
I look at the two of them—improbable teammates after everything that happened, but here they are. Gabe is right; I can’t hide forever. I’ve only got seventy-six days to go. “Ready.”
Day 24
I wake up in the blackest of moods, the pulse of a hangover beating behind my eyes and my mouth tasting cottony and foul—there’s no way I’m running, that’s for sure. Instead I brush my teeth and throw my tawny, knotty hair up into a ponytail, then shuffle downstairs for coffee. My mom’s sitting at the kitchen island, reading theTimesin her new thick-framed glasses and a striped T-shirt that could as easily have come from my closet as from hers.
“Morning,” she says, a pointed glance at the clock on the wall meant to let me know it’s well after noon. “How you doing?”
I sniff the milk carton, wrinkle my nose. “Fine,” I mumble. My stomach doesn’t feel so great.
“Really?” she asks, sitting back in her chair to eye me with the kind of motherly skepticism I’m not used to from her anymore, how she hasn’t tried to parent me in more than a year. Emily Green, conveniently, was an orphan. “Because, I have to say, you’re not really looking fine.” She takes a sip from her steaming mug, swallows. “You want to tell me?”
“Tell youwhat?” I snap irritably. That’s what she said the night I blabbed about Gabe sophomore year, I remember all of a sudden, me out of my stupid brain with guilt and panic and her sitting at the desk in her office,You want to tell me?
And I did.
I told her everything.
God, any curiosity from her is so gross to me now, the instinct for self-preservation kicking up like a stiff autumn wind across the lake. I feel like she wants to pick the meat off my bones. “What do you have, writer’s block or something? Looking for new material? I said I’m okay.”
My mother huffs out a noisy sigh. “Okay, Molly,” she says. “Have it your way. I know you’d rather not be here this summer, and I’ve apologized to you. I’m sorry if you feel like I violated your privacy, but I’m still—”
I whirl on her. “If I feel like you violated myprivacy?” I can’t believe her. I honestly cannot believe her. “Who are you? Whosaysthat? How can you possibly—”
“I’m a writer, Molly,” she interrupts me, like it’s a religion or her freaking culture or something, like some kind of messed-up moral relativism will explain this away. “I take real-life events and I fictionalize them—that’s what I do, that’s what I’ve always done. Of course there are going to be—”
“You’re mymom!” I counter, my voice cracking in a way that betrays all the nasty coldness I’ve spent the last year and a half cultivating, an ugly break in the shell. I shake my head, slam the coffeepot down on the counter hard enough I’m afraid it might shatter. “Or, like—you were supposed to be. Youchoseme, remember? That’s what you always said. But really you just wanted to sell me for parts.”
My mom blanches at that, or maybe I just want her to. “Molly—”
“And you’re right, that I’d rather not be here. I’d rather not have anything to do with you for the rest of my life, actually. And you know what?Thatyou can go ahead and put in your next book. You can tell the whole world, Mom. Have at it.”
I leave my empty mug on the counter and stalk up the stairs, scaring the crap out of Vita and sending Oscar scrabbling into the mudroom. The old stairs creak under my weight.
Day 25
“Hey,” Gabe begins, pulling back for a moment and taking a ragged, rattled breath that’s kind of weirdly satisfying to me, how I can tell I’m getting to him. The skin of his neck is very, very warm. “Can I float something here without you totally freaking out?”
I nod distractedly, sitting back in the passenger seat of the station wagon and breathing a smidge hard myself. We’ve been parked in the dark in the lot of the Lodge for almost an hour, alternately making out and talking about nothing in particular—a little kid who streaked naked through the lobby the other day, the fig-and-gorgonzola pizza that was the special at the shop this afternoon. Gabe’s warm hands crept slow and steady up the back of my shirt. I can’t totally decide if I think it’s fun or seedy, fooling around like this in his car underneath a low canopy of pine trees, the radio turned down low, but the reality is I don’t want to bring Gabe home to my house and we’re certainly not about to go to his, so . . . station wagon it is.
“Sure,” I reply now, pushing my hair behind my ears and looking at him curiously. My lips feel swollen and itchy from too much kissing. Gabe’s cheeks are flushed pink in a way that makes me grin, like I’ve accomplished something—it’s different, messing around with him, more and less serious both at once. Neither Patrick nor I had done much of anything with anybody when we started dating, and we took things almost achingly slow—each new milestone stretched out and a little scary, the two of us so familiar and everything we did so completely brand-new. With Gabe it’s not like that, not really: one, because we’ve alreadybeenwherever this is possibly going, and two, because—well, because it’sGabe. Things are easy with him.Thisis easy with him. There’s nothing to obsess about or overthink. “What’s up?”
Gabe wrinkles his nose like he’s bracing for something. The pale glow of the parking lot lights catch the side of his face through the window. “Here’s the thing,” he begins, sounding more careful than normal, more hesitant than I’m used to from him—I think he’s a person who gets what he wants, generally, who’s comfortable asking for things. “How do you feel about maybe coming to the party?”
Just like that, the full-body buzz I’ve been working on, the heavy pleasure that’s been tumbling through my arms and legs and everywhere, straight-up evaporates. I actually snort. “Noway,” I tell him, shaking my head so hard and resolutely, it just might snap off my neck and go bouncing behind us into the backseat of the wagon. I don’t even have to ask which party he means. “Nooooooway. Nice try. No. No, a thousand times no.”
“I said don’t freak out!” Gabe protests, laughing. He reaches for my hand across the gearshift, laces his fingers through mine, and tugs until I’m close enough that he can plant a tiny kiss on the curve of my jawline. He adds a scrape of teeth, just lightly, and I shiver in spite of myself. “Look,” he murmurs, his nose brushing the skin back by my ear. “I know it’s ridiculous even to ask you—”
“It’s alittleridiculous, yeah,” I agree, pulling back again. The party’s the one the Donnellys hold every year to celebrate all three of their summer birthdays, Julia’s and Patrick’s and Gabe’s. It’s a giant cookout on the sprawling green expanse of the family farm, complete with a volleyball game and fourteen different kinds of baked goods, Beatles music blasting all night long. Growing up, it was the best day of the summer. Last year was the first I ever missed. “Like, can I come to your joint birthday with your mom who hates me, and your sister who hates me, and your brother who hates me more than anyone and who I used todate, andyouwho I’m—”
