I can’t tell if he’s doing it on purpose at first, just the barest hint of pressure, heat seeping through his layer of denim and mine. I try to concentrate on what Imogen’s asking, about who’s around to help stretch canvas for her art show, but I feel like I’m listening from the bottom of the lake. My breath comes fast and ragged all of a sudden, and I concentrate on slowing it down so nobody will hear.
The worst part is I can feel myself responding in other ways also, the low swoop of want in my stomach and the skin all over my body tightening up—and I don’t even know who I’m responding to. What is up with me, how messed up am I, that I think it might be both of them?
Gabe’s fingers play idly along my inseam, oblivious. Patrick pushes a little bit harder now, the muscle of his thigh insistent enough that there’s no way it’s not intentional. I feel like I’m on fire, engulfed in hideous flame while everyone else sits around and eats French fries. I feel horrified by my body and my heart.
“I gotta pee,” I announce, popping up in the booth and cutting Imogen off mid-sentence, scrambling out of the booth and leaving both Donnelly boys behind.
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day 66
Gabe asks me over for dinner again the next evening—lasagna this time, a big pan of it baking in the oven, and Julia and me putting a salad together side by side at the kitchen counter, lettuce and tomatoes still gritty with the dirt from Connie’s garden.
“Know what I was thinking about?” Julia asks, rinsing the lettuce under the faucet and tossing it into the spinner. She’s wearing a few of Elizabeth’s bangles, I notice, the jingling sound as she moves. “Remember the Year of the Zucchini?”
“Oh God, I thought we agreed never to speak of that again,” I snort, knife clicking against the cutting board. The summer we were eleven Connie accidentally grew a giant bumper crop of the stuff, more than any sane person would ever want to eat in a lifetime. She put it in literally everything—normal stuff like soup and bread, but also chocolate chip cookies and once, hauntingly, this gross ice cream she tried to sneak past everyone, like somehow we wouldn’t notice. Finally, Chuck rounded up everything that was left and drove Patrick and Julia and I all out to dump the whole lot of it in the lake. “They used to serve it as a side dish at my boarding school all the time and I’d have to, like, avert my eyes when I passed by.”
“Did you like it?” Julia asks me, tossing some grated carrot into the salad bowl and raising her eyebrows. “Boarding school, I mean?”
I still can’t believe she’s talking to me like this, almost exactly like we used to. How many hours did we spend in this kitchen, back before I set the whole world on fire? “Look, Jules,” I tell her finally, opening the fridge just like I have a hundred times before, pulling the bottle of salad dressing off the door. “I’m not going to tell anybody about you and Elizabeth, okay? I meant that, I swear.”
“Okay . . .” Julia looks at me mildly. “So?”
“So you don’t have to be nice to me, okay? If that’s why you are. I mean, if you could not key my car again that’d be awesome, but . . . I don’t—” I break off, a year’s worth of loneliness and humiliation cresting like a wave inside my chest. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Julia shrugs then, hopping up on the counter, picking a chunk of tomato out of the bowl. “I don’t know what I’m doing, either, honestly,” she confesses. “I mean, yeah, part of it’s about Elizabeth, I guess. Look. What you did to my family makes me want to rip your face off, Molly. And I’m the one that brought you into it to begin with, and it’s like—” She breaks off, focusing on the middle distance for a second. I wonder if she’s remembering like I am, the equal parts Barbie and freeze tag that made up our days together when she and I were little, before Patrick and I became such an exclusive twosome. Then she shakes her head. “Anyway, it’s also pretty obvious that Gabe’s, like, on his butt for you.” Then, a moment later: “I’m sorry about your car.”
I huff a quiet laugh at that, shaking my head—it’s a thing, it doesn’t matter. I’m so tired of being at war. “So what does that mean?” I ask, setting the bottles down on the butcher block, careful. “We’re, like—friends again, or something?”
Julia considers me across the kitchen, snaps a bit of carrot between her incisors. “Not a chance,” she tells me flatly, and grins.
Patrick doesn’t turn up in time for dinner, and I’m grateful—the last thing I want is to sit across from him at the table, pretending there’s nothing there. I’ve been trying to forget what happened on Imogen’s birthday. I’ve been trying not to think about Patrick at all. I should have stopped him—obviously, I should have stopped him, right? What does it say about me that I didn’t? I glance at Julia who’s reaching for seconds, think of her pink-highlighter scrawl:
dirty slut
Gabe hands me a hunk of garlic bread. Connie takes a sip of her wine.
It’s late when I kiss Gabe good night and head out to the driveway where my car’s parked, the constant trilling of crickets and the soggy earth sucking at my feet. I’m digging through my purse for my keys when I notice a light on in the barn at the back of the property, the telltale yellow glow of a camping lantern.
I mean to get into my car and drive off in the darkness.
I take a breath and cross the yard instead.
Sure enough, there’s Patrick hanging out on the ratty couch Connie always swore she was going to toss but never did after Chuck died, a mildewy plaid number we used to like to jump on when we were little kids. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie—it’s chilly back here, damp air and the smell of wet leaves, the hard-packed dirt floor. He looks up when he hears me, expectant. He’s got a fat paperback in one hand.
It’s true that I was glad he wasn’t at the table for dinner.
But part of me was a little disappointed, too.
“When did you get home?” I ask him now, hovering in the doorway. The night wind blows gently, goose bumps blooming on my arms and legs, all my nerve endings coming online at once. I keep my distance on purpose, crossing my arms like a shield.
Patrick shrugs. “A little while ago.”
“Didn’t want to come inside?”
“Not particularly,” he says.
“Okay.” I exhale. I don’t know what I’m trying to get from him, exactly—we said we’d be friends, sure, but obviously that’s not happening anytime soon. I have no idea what we actually are.
“What are you reading?” I try, motioning to the book he’s got his index finger tucked in, marking his place. Patrick holds it up—it’s Stephen King, I see from my post by the doorway. The Stand. “What’s it about?” I ask.
“The end of the world,” Patrick says.
My lips twist. “Fitting.”
“Uh-huh.” Patrick shifts then, feet on the floor to make room for me beside him on the ratty plaid sofa. Against my better judgment, I cross the barn and perch on the arm of it, feet in my boots planted next to Patrick’s hip. He looks up at me and raises one elegant eyebrow, so arched that I laugh.
“Shh,” he says mildly, but he’s got one hand wrapped around my calf and he’s tugging and then I’m down on the couch cushions with him, my knee bent and brushing his thigh. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I huff a breath. “This can’t keep happening.”
“It can’t, huh,” Patrick says, not even really a question. His gray eyes are latched on mine.
“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “Patrick—”
“Did he just kiss you good night?” he interrupts me. “My brother?”
My eyes widen. “Why is that your business?”
“Because I want to know.”
“Too bad,” I say immediately—that’s over the line, even for whatever Patrick and I have going on here. That’s just over the line. I get up off the couch but Patrick stops me, curling his familiar hand arou
nd my wrist.
“Wait,” he says, and he sounds so sincere I stop and look at him. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right; that was fucked up. I’m sorry.”
I shake my head but I let him tug me back onto the sofa, curling one leg up underneath. “I mean it,” I tell him quietly. “We gotta stop.”
Patrick nods without saying anything. He picks at a loose seam on the back of the couch. “I got into another program for the fall,” he tells me quietly. “This Outward Bound–type thing, in Michigan. Rangering-type stuff, running parks tours.” He shrugs. “It’s a gap year, for if your grades aren’t great.”
“Your grades are fine,” I say automatically.
Patrick shakes his head. “Not this year.”
“I’m sorry.” I think of what Tess said when she told me they got back together, all this stuff about the future. “Did you tell Tess?” I ask. “That you’re going?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
Patrick’s head comes up, looks me square in my face. “Because I wanted to tell you,” he says.
I’m not sure which one of us leans in first.
It’s not like the other night against the tree trunk, that desperate scrabbling—this is slow and measured, his long eyelashes brushing my cheeks. I make a quiet sound against his mouth. “Shh,” he says again, warm hands wandering up inside my T-shirt, skimming along the stretchy band of my bra until I’m shaking. Finally, I pull away.
“What is this?” I demand. It’s worse that it wasn’t a fast, messy blur this time. Somehow that makes it even worse. “What are you doing with me, Patrick? Tess is my friend.”
“And Gabe is my brother,” Patrick says, mild as milk toast. “But here we are.”
“Should I break up with him?” I blurt, then immediately feel my cheeks flame. It feels horrifying to articulate the idea out loud—just as horrifying as it feels to be doing this to begin with. I care about Gabe. I’m falling in love with Gabe. So what the hell am I doing here? “Should I?”
Patrick shakes his head. “I’m not breaking up with Tess,” he says decisively. “Not again.”
I stare at him, pulse fluttering like the inside of a hive at my wrists and my collarbone. The damp summer air presses down. He leans forward to kiss me again, eases me back against the arm of the sofa. I close my eyes and sink in.
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day 67
Gabe’s the only one home when I come to pick him up for a double date with Kelsey and Steve the next evening: “In here,” he calls when I rap my knuckles against the screen door. His bedroom’s off the kitchen, a smallish afterthought of a space that used to be the servants’ quarters a hundred years ago when the farm had horses and pigs and cows to milk. Gabe got it when he turned thirteen, on account of he was the oldest.
“Hey,” I tell him cautiously, leaning against the doorway: It’s the same as I remember it, the blue-and-green plaid bedspread, the pine dresser—everything almost preternaturally neat for a teenage boy, like maybe nobody even lives here. Patrick’s room was always a disaster.
“Hey,” Gabe says, pulling a frayed gray polo over his head. I haven’t been in here all summer—haven’t been in here at all since everything first happened between us, actually, the night in May of sophomore year when Patrick dumped me.
I remember stumbling down the back staircase and into the kitchen, physically disoriented—it felt like a canyon had opened up between us, like in some old cartoon where a crack appears in the earth and the ground breaks apart all in the space of five seconds. Like strolling blithely off a cliff and not noticing until you look down. I stood there in a numb haze, barely registering the sound of the side door slamming shut, then the rev of the Bronco’s noisy engine as Patrick took off.
I didn’t realize I was crying until I saw Gabe.
“Hey, Molly Barlow,” he said, glancing at me once and then again more closely; he was making a turkey sandwich at the beat-up butcher block counter, twin slices of bread already laid out on a plate. His graduation was in a week and a half. “What’s wrong?”
I shook my head. “No, nothing,” I said, wiping my face and thinking for a minute of claiming allergies before realizing he’d never believe me and that it didn’t really matter anyway. It was, after all, just Gabe. “Had a fight with your brother, we’ll work it out, it’s fine.”
“You people, had another fight?” Gabe put the knife down and licked mustard off his thumb. He looked genuinely surprised. “What the hell, huh? Like, are the rivers turning to blood?”
“Shut up.” I laughed a little, sniffled. “I mean, kind of. It’s the same fight, I don’t know.”
“About boarding school?” Gabe asked, then hesitated. “I mean, sorry, I’m not trying to crawl up your ass or anything.”
“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 the full story, 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 thing 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 even want to go to freaking Tempe at first,” I finished. “What’s in Tempe? Nothing. But I just. I just wanted to talk. 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 or whatever living 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.
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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 lightening, 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.
Petrichor is 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 of Driftwood sitting 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.