“No, no,” I said, shaking my head. “It’s fine.”
“Okay,” Gabe said, crossing the kitchen to stand beside me at the sink. This close he was taller than I’d realized, my head just about level with his sternum. It was rare for us to be alone. “So . . . what?”
And I told him.
I told Gabe everything, about the recruiter and about Bristol, how all of a sudden Patrick and I had started speaking different languages out of nowhere like the freaking Tower of Babel or the French tapes Connie liked to listen to while she weeded her garden. How I didn’t know how to say anything to him anymore, didn’t know how to make him hear me. How I felt more alone than I’d ever, ever felt. “I didn’t evenwantto go to freaking Tempe at first,” I finished. “What’s in Tempe? Nothing. But I just. I just wanted totalk. And instead he, like . . .broke up with me.”
Gabe listened wordlessly, arms crossed and blue eyes focused. When I was finished, wrung out like a washcloth, he sighed.
“Look,” he said finally. “You know my brother. You know him better than anybody else, maybe. You know how he is. He gets something in his head and that’s the end of it, you know? He’s a fucking donkey. He decides something’s not good for somebody—especially him—and that’s it. And you moving across the country, even for something awesome, even if it was something you really wanted to do? Definitely wouldn’t be good for him.” Gabe stopped then, just for a beat, and then he said it. “And I mean. For what it’s worth, Molly Barlow? It wouldn’t be so good for me, either.”
I stared at him for a second, not comprehending. “I—”
Right away, Gabe shook his head. “Forget it,” he said, looking shyer than I’d ever seen him—actually blushing, like he couldn’t believe what he’d said. “That was out of line, you’re my brother’s—”
“I’m not anyone’s,” I blurted. God, that was the problem, wasn’t it—like Patrick and I were one person, one soul or brain orwhateverliving in two bodies, so that whatever either one of us did had to be decided by committee. It felt suffocating, all of a sudden, or maybe it had felt suffocating for a long time and I’d just never noticed:You’re my brother’s. Like Patrick owned me. Like if he didn’t like something that meant I couldn’t do it, period. Bristol or anything else. “I’m mine, I mean. I don’t belong to—”
“No, of course, I know that.” Gabe shook his head. “You’re his girlfriend, I meant. Or, you were, I guess. Look, this is getting messed up. I just meant—”
“I know what you meant,” I told him, realizing in that moment that I did, just from the way he was looking at me. I glanced at the short hallway that led to his small, neat bedroom. I felt reckless and brave.
“Molly,” Gabe said, and his voice was so quiet. Down near the pocket of my denim shorts his fingertips brushed mine. His eyes had flecks of brown in them I noticed. I’d never been close enough to tell. When he ducked his head down to kiss me, his mouth was plush and friendly and warm.
“Holy shit,” I said, pulling back a minute or twenty later; my thoughts were careening everywhere, Gabe’s hands creeping up under my T-shirt right there in the kitchen of his house. I had never known that before, that having my stomach touched was a thing that could feel that good. I had never known I was this kind of person. “Okay, we should—” God, this was wrong, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this; it was supposed to be me and Patrick, a perfect moment right out of one of my mother’s dumb books. Not like this. Already I’d come too far to ever go back. “Holy shit, Gabe.”
“You want to stop?” he asked, a little breathless. His lips looked very red. “We can stop, fuck, we should probably . . .” He trailed off, nervous and almost panicky. I’d never seen Gabe anything less than sure. “What do we do?”
I looked one more time toward his bedroom, back up the stairs to where I’d left Patrick what seemed like a lifetime ago. Everything felt inevitable all of a sudden, a book that had already been written. I shook my head. “Let’s go,” I muttered softly. Gabe nodded, took my hand.
Day 68
The next day it storms, which matches the state of my humid brain almost exactly; I wake up early to the wicked flash of lightning, to thunder so noisy I feel it rumble in my bones. There’s no way I’m getting back to sleep, so I drag the quilt off my bed and head down to the living room, opening every window I pass to the hissing gush of rain. The trees rustle uneasily under the force of it, the green smell of water and the brown smell of mud.
Petrichoris the word for the scent of rain as it hits the blacktop. Patrick taught me that, a really long time ago.
I jab at the coffeemaker until it brews and take my mug into the living room with no real plan other than to sit there and listen to the rain, to let it wash me clean if there’s any conceivable way. I’ve felt like crying since the moment I opened my eyes. I settle myself onto the big leather couch, blow on the coffee until it’s cool enough to drink without scalding the inside of my body. There’s a copy ofDriftwoodsitting with a stack of magazines on the table, a curling Post-it marking the place my mom reads from when she does events at libraries and bookstores.
I glance over my shoulder at the doorway, which is empty. Vita snores quietly on the rug. I’m alone here, just me and the book my mother wrote about me, the mystery words I’ve never been able to look at for more than a few seconds at a time. I’ve skimmed paragraphs here and there, with the guilty, shameful feeling of looking at something illicit and dirty.
Now I take a deep breath, pick it up, and read.
It’sgoodis the worst part of everything; in my head it was hackneyed and nasty, like a cheap daytime soap on the page. The truth is it’s . . . kind of compelling. I get why it did so well. The boys aren’t Patrick or Gabe, not exactly, and while reading about Emily Green makes me supremely, squirmingly uncomfortable, I have to admit I’m rooting for her stupid coin-flipping self by the time I near the end.
I’m almost finished, turning the pages faster and faster, and the rain long since calmed to a steady drizzle when I hear the creak of the floorboards behind me: There’s my mom in the doorway with Oscar, and I am unmistakably caught.
“Morning,” is all she says, though, setting the dog down on the floor so he can trot over to where I’m curled under the blanket, toenails clicking on the floor. She looks from me to her book and back again, her face impassive. “You been up awhile?”
Long enough to read the best seller you penned about my love life, I think, but for the first time I can’t bring myself to get worked up about it. “For a bit,” I say. “Yeah.”
My mom nods. “You want more coffee?”
I almost tell her something else then. Iwantto tell her something else—that reading this book was like spending three hours with her, that I miss her, that she’s talented and even if I don’t forgive her I’m still proud that she’s my mom. The cover feels like it’s gone hot inside my hands.
“Coffee would be great,” I finally tell her, and smile. My mom nods at me slowly, smiles back.
Once she’s gone I dig around in the couch cushions for a moment, come up with a fistful of crumbs but also exactly what I’m after—a tarnished, gummy nickel, cool and heavy in the palm of my hand. I squeeze it tightly for a moment, like I can give it special powers that way, like I can infuse a whole year’s worth of questions into the metal.
Then I flip.
