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day 49
There are two texts on my phone when I wake up the following morning, two chimes in a row dragging me out of restless sleep. One’s from Gabe, who decided at the last minute to make an actual trip of it and is going to take a few days to visit school friends on his way back from his interview: I’ll miss you, Molly Barlow. Will tell Boston you say hi.
The second text is from Patrick: run tomorrow?
I stare at the screen for a moment, the messages stacked one on top of the other like some cruel joke at the hands of the universe.
Then I turn it off and go back to sleep.
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day 50
I meet up with Patrick again the following morning; it’s easier to keep up with him than it was last time, the rhythmic thud of rubber on blacktop and the breath steady in and out of my lungs. We’re halfway around the lake when Patrick stops cold.
“I was trying not to lose you,” he says suddenly, and from the tone in his voice I know he’s been thinking about it for longer than just since we started this run. “That’s why I was such a dick about Bristol. I was trying not to lose you.” He shakes his head. Then, before I can rub two wits together: “But I lost you anyway.”
“You didn’t,” I blurt, fast and immediate like I think I’m on Family Feud. I’m breathing hard, from the run or from something else. “You didn’t lose me, I’m right here, I—”
“Mols.” Patrick screws up his face a bit, like It’s me, please cut the crap. “You moved all the way across the country to get away, you know? And now you date my damn brother.” He shakes his head, scrubs a hand through his curly hair. “That’s a thing I knew, too, not for nothing. That he liked you. He liked you for a long time.”
I blink. I think of what Gabe said at Knights of Columbus, that he’d thought about me on the Ferris wheel. “You did?”
Patrick shrugs his broad shoulders, rolls his storm-gray eyes. “Everybody knew,” he says.
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” He glances out at the lake, back at me, out at the lake again. “I know. And I didn’t want you to find out.”
“Why?”
Patrick lets out a breath. “Trying to stave off the inevitable, I guess. I don’t know.” He sounds annoyed that I’m making him talk about it, like he’s not the one who brought it up to begin with. “But Gabe’s Gabe.”
“What does that mean, ‘Gabe’s Gabe’?” I ask, although I already kind of know what Patrick’s getting at. Probably if I was smart I wouldn’t push.
“Molly—” Patrick breaks off, irritated. It’s humid today, and his tan skin is damp with perspiration. He’s standing so close I can feel the heat. “I don’t know. Forget it. Can we just go?”
Did you think I wouldn’t want you if I knew I could have your brother? I want to ask him. Did you worry I was settling for second best? “Talk to me,” I prod him. “Whatever else happened, you used to be able to talk to me.”
“I used to be able to do a lot of things,” Patrick snaps, a flash of temper. “Can you leave it?”
“No!” I exclaim. It feels like we’re tossing a ball back and forth, like Hot Potato, like neither one of us want to be the one left holding it when it explodes. I bailed on coffee with Imogen to come here. I still haven’t told Gabe what’s going on. “Tell me.” Then, when he doesn’t answer: “Patrick.”
“Mols.” Patrick’s eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them, that fleck in the iris like the North Star. “Let it go, okay?”
Things get weirdly quiet then, the trees and the lake and how empty it is out here, no tourists or anyone to see. Patrick’s face is tipped down close to mine. He wants to kiss me, I can tell he does, both of us standing here practically panting. He wants to kiss me so, so bad.
I know because I want to kiss him, too.
“We should go,” Patrick says, shaking his head and turning away from me. He takes off so fast I lose my breath.
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day 51
Tess calls early the next morning—an actual phone call, not just a text, so I fish my phone out of my pocket with the tips of two wet fingers: One of the dishwashers at the Lodge broke overnight and flooded half the kitchen, so it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation. “Hey,” I tell her, wedging the skinny phone uncomfortably between my ear and my shoulder and dunking some coffee cups in the first basin of the three-bay sink. A wet towel squelches under my feet. “Are you here?”
“No,” Tess tells me. “I’m supposed to be on at noon, but I don’t think I can come.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. Something in her voice doesn’t sound right. I glance across the kitchen at Jay, who’s working on some scrambled eggs for the breakfast buffet. “You sick?”
“Patrick broke up with me.”
I freeze where I’m standing, two hands in the sudsy water like I’m aiming to start the second flood of the day, enough water to sweep the whole Lodge out into the lake. A low, nauseated chill swoops through my gut, my brain pinging out in a hundred different directions.
Patrick broke up with her.
“Oh my God,” I manage finally, the first coherent thought I manage to put together being that I need to act normal here, and the second being that there’s no reason for me to feel one way or another, beyond that fact that Patrick and Tess are my friends. I’m not allowed to be invested. I’m definitely not allowed to be so immediately, physically relieved. “Are you okay?”
“I—yeah. No. I don’t—” Tess breaks off. “I’m sorry, it’s totally weird that I’m calling you, I just figured maybe you could tell Penn for me.” Another pause. “I mean, that’s not even totally true, I just kind of wanted to talk to you about it, you know? Since you—” She stops again. “Sorry.”
“Since I’m also somebody who’s been dumped by Patrick Donnelly?” I supply, hoping if I can kid around about it Tess won’t guess at the taste of my heart pulsing at the back of my mouth, thick and coppery. I think of yesterday on the trail with Patrick, the weird, charged, electrical moment that passed between us.
Tess is laughing a little, this phlegmy, snotty sound like she’s been crying. “Yeah,” she admits. “I guess that’s why.”
The urge to hang up and call Patrick feels like trying to hold back a cough: to hear his side of the story and make sure everything’s okay with him. I try to think quickly. “You want me to call Imogen? We’ll do a girls’ night tomorrow? We’ll go to Crow Bar or something. I’ll try really hard not to get anything thrown on me this time; it’ll be fun.”
“Yeah?” Tess says, sounding hopeful. “You want to? I mean, you don’t have plans with Gabe or something?”
The sound of Gabe’s name is startling: For a second I forgot he existed entirely, let alone that we’re together. God, what’s wrong with me? My heart is rattling away inside my chest like a shopping cart with a bum wheel. “No,” I tell Tess, trying to keep my voice even. “No, he’s in Boston for an interview. We’ll go just the three of us; it’ll be fun.”
“Okay,” Tess says, sounding a little less wobbly than she did at the start of this conversation. I feel wobbly in the freaking extreme. “Crow Bar, then. Nineish?”
I promise her I’ll be there and plunge two more glasses into the soapy water. I leave my phone in the freezer for the rest of the day.
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day 52
I don’t think I’ve ever done a proper girls’ night, bu
t Imogen’s an old pro, the smell of steam and burning as she flatirons my hair and a bottle of Apple Pucker she pulled from her purse like Mary Poppins, witchy green and syrupy like melted-down lollipops. Her mom’s away at a women’s retreat in Hudson. Nobody dresses up to go to Crow Bar, but Imogen insists we should anyway, pulling dress upon lacy dress from the depths of her walk-in closet while Tess and I watch from the bed, calling out our myriad opinions like something out of a chick flick montage. It feels like the kind of pregame Emily Green would have with her girlfriends, not me with my cat-lady tendencies and long queue full of documentaries about baseball and the history of salt. It’s nice.
“Okay,” Imogen says, shimmying into a black halter that makes her look even more like a pinup girl than normal. I’ve got a stretchy skirt and a silky tank top, the closest I’ve gotten to a dress since seventh grade—I wasn’t exactly in a position to go to prom. “Thoughts?”
“Do it,” Tess says cheerfully. She’s all smiles and spice tonight, brassy, but her alabaster face was a little puffy when she got here, her already short fingernails bitten down to painful-looking stubs. She still hasn’t said what the fight was about, if there even was a fight to begin with. I haven’t asked. “Your ass looks great in it. And I wanna go out.”
“Well, you best chug that delicious beverage, then,” I tell her, nodding at her mostly full juice glass of Apple Pucker with a grimace. I like sweet things, but three sips of this stuff and my teeth feel like they’re wearing sweaters. “Bottoms up. Go on, it’s right up your alley, it’s made of produce and everything.”
“Basically a health food.” Tess nods resolutely. “To getting dumped by Patrick Donnelly,” she says, holding it up for a toast.
“To getting dumped by Patrick Donnelly,” I echo, clinking. My laugh sounds strange and hollow, though: The truth is I feel dishonest, this pestering nag at the back of my brain like I’m telling whopper after whopper just by showing up here and being with them. I haven’t heard from Patrick since our run the other morning, but suddenly he’s closer than he’s been in a year and a half.
Tess downs her schnapps and makes a truly hilarious gross-out face, like she just took a swig of human vomit chased with kerosene. “Let’s do this,” she orders as she hops off Imogen’s bed, teetering a little as she lands. She yanks at the short hem of her emerald-green dress, frowning. “I always feel like a drag queen in heels,” she mutters.
“You realize we’re gonna look like hookers at Crow Bar,” I point out, then: “Drag queen hookers,” we say at the same time.
“Oh, you’re very funny,” Imogen says, rolling her eyes at both of us. “Shut up for a second; I’ll call a cab.”
At Crow Bar we order shots of fireball whiskey and drop them in glasses of hard cider, a trick Gabe taught me that tastes like apple pie: “Apples are the theme of the night,” Imogen observes. “Abraham Lincoln would be so pleased.” Then, off our blank stares: “You know, cause of the apple tree?” she asks, looking back and forth between us. “He couldn’t cut it down? Or he cut it down at couldn’t lie about it?”
“It was a cherry tree,” I say at the same time Tess points out, “It was George Washington.”
All three of us find this hysterical, for some reason, clustered around a table in the far back near the jukebox, doubled over giggling. “Are we dancing?” Tess asks when the music changes over to the Whitney Houston we plugged in with our fistfuls of quarters. “I’m pretty sure I was promised dancing in my time of need.”
“Oh, we’re dancing.” Imogen grabs me by my wrist and pulls me into the crowd.
I laugh as I thread through the crush along with them, shaking my hair and letting Tess twirl me around, Imogen singing along like we’re still in her room and not technically underage in a bar full of people. I feel like I’m having two separate nights, though, like I’m only half-present: The urge to check in with Patrick is constant and physical, like an itch on the bottom of your foot when you can’t take your shoes off, or a tickle at the back of your throat.
We head to the bathroom after another round, snaking through the crowd one after another. “How you doing?” Imogen asks Tess, bumping their shoulders together as we wait in the long line. It smells like a sewer. “You hanging in?”
Tess sighs. “Yeah, I’m fine,” she says. “I just feel so stupid.” She leans across the puddle-filled counter and peers at herself in the cloudy mirror, wiping away the mascara that’s migrated down underneath her lash line. “At least I didn’t sleep with him, I guess.”
“You didn’t?” I blurt immediately, then cringe. God, how desperate do I sound right now? How gross is it that I care so much if they did or they didn’t? Patrick and I never had sex—in a lot of ways our relationship reset when we broke up and got back together, and we were only just headed in that direction again when the article came out at the end of junior year. I was terrified I’d give myself away somehow, that if we did it he’d be able to tell I’d done it before. To his credit, Patrick never pushed. “I mean, not that it’s any of my business, sorry.”
“Uh-uh.” Tess seems unbothered, both by my question and by the fact that we’re having this conversation in full earshot of like six other women. Possibly she’s a little drunk. “I mean, I would have, honestly, but, like . . . He didn’t want to. Which, what eighteen-year-old boy in the universe doesn’t want to have sex? I’m a pretty girl! I should have known something was weird.”
“Maybe his penis is broken,” Imogen volunteers helpfully. “Or, like, got accidentally lasered off in a childhood accident.”
Tess cracks up. “Laser dick,” she says over the sound of a toilet flushing, then heads for the open stall. “That’s definitely what the problem was.”
Imogen and Tess head to the bar on the way back, and I weave my way to back to our table in the corner and people-watch for a while. I glance at the beer clock on the far wall. I’m digging through my purse for some Chapstick when I feel the buzz of my phone against the back of my hand, the screen lighting up with Patrick’s name.
Hey is all his text message says.
Shit. I look around like I’m expecting to get caught with contraband. I can see Tess and Imogen leaning over the bar, laughing about something. It’s the closest I’ve come in a year to having friends.
Hey yourself, I key in, chewing my lip like I’m aiming to amputate it. Then: you okay?
I’m not expecting to hear back right away, that’s for certain. I remember how long it took him to respond after the camping trip, how far we are from the perpetual back-and-forth of a few years ago, our lives one long conversation. It’s entirely possible he won’t text me back at all. Which is why I’m so surprised when I my bag buzzes again less than ten seconds later:
fine, Patrick says, just the one short syllable. Then, a few beats after that: you doing anything right now?
I take a deep breath, watching Tess and Imogen make their way back through the crowd in my direction, both of them giggling. Imogen waves like we haven’t seen each other in years.
I glance down at my phone again, back up at the two of them.
no, I key in quickly. What’s up?
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day 53
“I thought you said you weren’t doing anything,” Patrick says when I show up at his side door after midnight; I had a cab drop me off at the end of the driveway, told Imogen and Tess I had cramps. There’s an empty spot in the muddy driveway where Gabe’s Volvo usually sits, tire tracks from where he pulled out to head to Boston. I take a breath and look away, ask myself for the forty-fifth time in the last forty-five minutes what exactly I think I’m doing. “That outfit doesn’t look like nothing.”
“Well,” I tell him, tugging self-consciously at Imogen’s clingy black skirt, which is way tighter on me than it would be on her. I shrug inside my slinky gray tank top. “I’m a liar.” r />
“That’s a fact,” Patrick says, but there’s no real heat behind it. Then, a moment later, and so quietly I almost don’t even hear: “You look nice.”
“Yeah?” That surprises me, how he’s got these compliments for me all of a sudden, pulling them out of his back pocket like shiny new coins. When I look up his gaze is dark, almost hungry. Something liquid, an egg maybe, feels like it’s cracking open inside my chest. I swallow. “You do, too,” I say finally.
Patrick makes a face. “Good try,” he says, snorting a little. We’re still standing in the Donnellys’ doorway, half in the house and half out of it. Everything about us feels like an in-between. I shouldn’t have come here, I want to tell him, or maybe: I’m so glad you texted me tonight.
“Why’d you break up with Tess?” is what comes out.
Patrick shakes his head, this face like that’s the obvious question and an impossible one, like if I have to ask there’s no way for me to possibly ever know. “Don’t” is all he says.
“Why not?” I can feel the night pressing in behind me, hear the faint buzz of mosquitoes and the far off hoot of an owl. “I was just with her, she’s—”
“You were with her?” Patrick asks, eyes widening. “Why?”
“Because we’re friends!” I retort, crossing my arms over my chest. “I know you hate me and everything, but I’m still allowed to have friends.” Not that I deserve them, a sharp voice in my head reminds me. Look where I am right now.
“You know I—” Patrick looks at me like I’m deranged. “Is that what you think? You think I hate you? Why the hell am I calling you to come over in the middle of the night, why am I breaking up with my fucking girlfriend if I hate you, Mols?”