We stumble back toward my mattress, a tangle of arms and ankles. Still neither one of us has said a single word. His weight presses me down into the sheets for half a second, mouth glancing clumsily off mine before he’s gone again, fingers hooked in the elastic of the boxers I went to bed in, pulling my bottoms down my legs.
“What are you doing?” I ask, popping up on my elbows to look at him. “Patrick.”
“I wanna try something.” His rough cheek scrapes against my inner thigh, gentle. “Will you let me try something?”
“Uh-huh,” I say, more of a gasp than anything. I reach down and scratch my short nails through his hair. It feels insane; it feels like my bones have come apart and only my skin is keeping them from flying away entirely. I make a damp fist in the sheets.
“Come up here,” I say finally, pulling at his shoulders until he listens. I’m shaking everywhere, need something to hang on to. I think my nails are digging into his skin. “Come here.”
Patrick crawls up my body, presses his mouth against mine. “Are we doing this?” he asks me quietly, an echo of two years ago in his family room, the way it was all meant to happen before everything fell apart. “Mols. Are we—?”
“Yeah,” I say, nodding into his shoulder. He wants to, I can feel that he wants to. I want to do it, too. “Yeah, yes. We’re doing this.”
Patrick exhales in what sounds like pure relief to me, like he thought I was going to send him away. “I wanted it to be with you,” he mutters, tugging me up on top of him, my leg slung across his hips. “That’s always how I pictured it, you know? It’s corny as shit, but . . . the first time, I just, I always—me and you.”
I—what?
For a moment, I freeze in his grip, this horrifying coldness running through me, like there’s lake water in my veins instead of blood.
He thinks—
He doesn’t know—
Oh, shit.
For a moment, I just stay there, rigid, wanting more than anything to get up and out of here—to run barefoot to Bristol or Boston, hair streaming behind me like a flag of retreat. How can I not tell him? I owe him the truth, after all this time. I owe him that.
“Patrick,” I tell him, sitting back awkwardly, one hand on his naked chest. I can feel his heart through the vellum skin there, and I swear it stops for a beat as he figures it out.
“It’s not the first time, is it?” he says slowly, staring at me in the darkness, his eyes like a midnight cat’s. “Not for you.”
“Patrick,” I repeat, trying to keep my voice quiet, the way you’d calm an animal or a little kid. “Listen to me. I thought—because of Driftwood, I thought you—”
“I thought it was just part of the book,” he says, jerking away so fast I land back on the mattress with a bounce; I reach for the sheet like an instinct, wanting so badly to cover up. “Because I’m a fucking moron, evidently. Dammit, Molly. Are you kidding me?”
“I—no,” I tell him, stumbling over my words, a hundred different responses ricocheting around in my brain all at once. You hated me that much, and you didn’t even think we had sex? I want to ask him, or maybe: Don’t you know I’ve loved you my whole entire life? “You told Gabe he should go to Boston,” I finally sputter, these hot ashamed tears burning in my face like I swallowed a mouthful of pool water, like I’m drowning. “You told me not to break up with him. You got back together with Tess, you’ve been messing with me all summer, you said—”
“I’m not talking about that, Molly,” Patrick snaps at me, up off the bed and flicking the lamp on, the room flooded with harsh white light. I pull the sheet more tightly around me. “I’m talking about sophomore year, when you fucked my goddamn brother like some kind of filthy whore.”
Like some kind of—
Okay.
Patrick shakes his head and we’re both on the verge of tears then, like we’ve finally destroyed each other, finally eaten each other alive. We’re never coming back from this; I know it. Both of us have finally gone too far.
Patrick knows it, too, I see it on his face then, my Patrick, whom I’ve loved my entire life. “I gotta go,” he says, reaching for his crumpled T-shirt. He slams my bedroom door so hard I wince.
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day 74
I get to work the next morning and find Desi and Fabian sprawled out on the floor in the office playing Candy Land, Penn digging her way through a pile of invoices at her desk. Desi jumps up when she sees me, wordlessly scrabbling halfway up my body like a silent, skinny squirrel climbing a tree. “Hey, Desi-girl,” I tell her, lifting her the rest of the way and smiling as she hooks her twig legs tightly around my waist. I’m hugely grateful for the affection this morning, honestly, my face puffy and tender from crying. I plant a smacking kiss on top of her head. “Hi, guys.”
Penn isn’t amused, though. “Get down from there, Des,” she snaps, more sharply than I’ve heard her speak to either of her kids since I’ve worked here. She stands up from behind the desk, arms out. “Come on.”
“It’s fine,” I promise, shaking my head and shifting Desi’s lanky body to one hip. “She can come with me on rounds if she wants; it’s totally okay.”
“It’s really not,” Penn counters, reaching out and peeling Desi off me. “I’ll take my kid, you take your notebook, how about that?” She hands me the pad I carry when I walk the Lodge and grounds at the start of every shift to see who and what needs attention. “Before you go, though, I want to talk to you about something. I want to send you up to Hudson, to scope out some club chairs for the lobby. An antiques dealer I know is holding them for me, and they’re cheap, but I can’t tell if he’s screwing me or not and I can’t face putting the kids in the car for that long to go check it out myself.”
“I—okay,” I tell her slowly, trying to figure out what’s happening here. It seems like I’m being punished for something, like I’m being sent to my room, and I can’t tell exactly why. In my head I know there’s no way it has anything to do with Patrick and Gabe, but it feels like that anyway, like the whole world can see the blackest parts of me, like there’s shame and scandal radiating off my in cartoon waves. Like even Penn can’t bear to look at me right now. “Sure. When?”
“Tomorrow, day after?” Penn sets Desi’s sandaled feet down on the rug, looks at me coolly. “It’s a long drive, probably an overnight, so check it with your mom, obviously. You can take Tess with you. I’ll give you my credit card to get a motel room.”
That’s all she’s got to say about it, apparently—no I trust you, no I’m sending you ’cause I know you’re the right girl for the job. I glance down at Desi, who’s watching me silently. “Sure,” I say, stuffing the notebook in my jeans pocket and wiping my clammy hands on my legs. “No problem.”
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day 75
“Okay, okay,” Imogen says, squinting at the sun in her rearview and changing lanes on the sparsely populated highway. “I’ve got one.” She had a couple days off in a row and decided to tag along on our Lodge Girls field trip to Hudson to check out the furniture, unknowingly saving me from an overnight solo excursion with Tess. The three of us are piled into her Fiat, embroiled in a super-intense round of Fuck Marry Kill as the dark fragrant pine trees whiz by on either side of the car. “Harrison Ford, Robert Redford, Paul Newman.”
“We always knew Imogen liked ’em older,” I tease, just as Tess asks, “From the salad dressing?”
“And the popcorn,” I remind her from my perch in the backseat. She’s been quiet all afternoon, a mumbled mention earlier of Patrick being weird and distant over text the last couple days. I murmured sympathetic noises in response, looked away. It’s over for good now, whatever warped, twisted, horrible thing I had goi
ng with her boyfriend. It’s finished, no need for her to ever get hurt. “Also lemonade.”
“And, like, a million classic movies!” Imogen protests.
“But mostly the salad dressing,” I point out.
“I do like salad dressing,” Tess says diplomatically. “Or, okay, though, what about the kid from One Direction—”
“Which kid from One Direction?” I interrupt.
“The floppy one.”
“They’re all floppy.”
“The floppiest one!” Tess says, laughing, swearing as we hit a pothole and she splashes water form her Nalgene all over herself. “The kid from One Direction, Justin Bieber, and the Backstreet Boy of your choice.”
“Kill Justin Bieber,” Imogen and I say in perfect unison, then dissolve into giggles. I was dreading this trip, but I’m surprised by how light I feel here in this car with them, legs stretched across the backseat and my hair knotted sloppily at the very top of my head. It feels like it doesn’t matter, everything that’s happened before now. It feels like maybe I can start clean.
“No, no, wait, I’ve got the best one,” Imogen says, pushing her sunglasses up on her nose and pausing dramatically. “Fuck, Marry, Kill: Gabe Donnelly, Patrick Donnelly, Julia Donnelly.”
For a second, the car is totally silent, just the hum of the little Italian motor and static cutting in and out on the radio as we pass through the mountains.
Then we all crack the hell up.
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day 76
Tess sacks out around midnight, the cheery purple glow of a Friends rerun on the old tube TV in our motel room; she’s an easy sleeper, our Tess, limbs starfished sloppily across the bed. I’m not tired, though, not even a little: “I’m going to check out the vending machine,” I tell Imogen, slipping outside and down the concrete staircase, humid night pressing in from all sides.
I dig a dollar out of my shorts and get myself a pack of Twizzlers—not Red Vines, but they’ll do in a pinch—then wander back up to where our room is. Instead of going back inside, I lean over the concrete railing for a minute, staring blankly at the neon light of the motel sign and the Burger King across the street and trying to ignore the chorus of voices—Julia’s, Connie’s, Penn’s, Patrick’s loudest of all—echoing endlessly through my skull. I don’t know how long I’m out there before the door opens behind me.
“You’re right here?” Imogen asks, flipping the deadbolt so the door won’t lock behind her and joining me on the catwalk. The faint scent of cigarettes lurks in the air. “I thought you got murdered.”
“Sorry,” I tell her, holding out the package of Twizzlers. She’s in her pajamas, these crisp old-fashioned looking things with pink and white stripes. “Was just thinking.”
“About what, huh?” Imogen asks, fishing a strand of licorice out of the plastic. “You’re been emo all day.”
“I have not!” I protest. Have I? I’ve been trying to act normal—thought I was acting normal—but could be she knows me better than I give her credit for, even after all this time.
“Okay,” Imogen says, making a face like, nice try. “You and Tess both, a pair of Mopey Mopersons.”
Yeah. “That’s what my driver’s license says, actually,” I tell her, leaning against the railing. There’s a scatter of moths flinging themselves at the yellow light mounted to the wall.
“Mm-hmm,” Imogen says, smiling a little. “What’s up?”
I don’t answer for a minute, debating. I tuck my messy hair behind my ears. I remember that I didn’t tell her last time, that I carried my secret like a rock in my shoe and in the end it came tumbling out anyhow.
This time, I tell her everything.
Imogen looks at me for a moment once I’m finished, unreadable. Then she shakes her head. “That’s fucked up,” Imogen tells me. “Crap, why the hell did you just tell me that, Molly?”
I blink. “I thought—” I start, that same horrible sinking feeling as I got the other night with Patrick, like I’ve totally misread everything and everyone. “Should I not have?”
Imogen shakes her head again. “No, no, I take it back, of course I want you to tell me, but . . .” She glances over her shoulder at the door to our motel room, open just the tiniest crack. She moved over a little, sits right down on the grubby cement floor. Like an instinct, I sit down across from her, our bent knees making twin pyramids so that anyone walking by would have to spelunk over us. “Tess is my friend, too. Tess is your friend, too, I thought.”
“She is!”
“Really?” Imogen raises her eyebrows. “Because that was, like, a serious breach of the Ovary Code.”
“I know,” I say miserably, thumping my head back against the wall. “I know. I messed up. I really messed up, Imogen.”
“You did,” she says matter-of-factly. “You messed up huge. But so did Patrick. On top of which, I think virginity is kind of an antiquated concept, right? Like some boy sticking it in you changes who you are as a human being?”
“I don’t know if it was so much about the concept of my virginity as it was about me losing it to Gabe,” I point out.
“I mean, fair.” Imogen sighs. “Look, you know I never thought it was so bad, what you did with Gabe to begin with, last year. I mean, it was bad, but it’s not like you killed anybody. But the point is that the moment it gets to be about doing messed-up stuff to other girls is the moment I get off the train.”
“I know,” I tell her honestly. She’s always been that way, Imogen, some combination of her own achingly compassionate temperament and seventeen years spent praying to the Goddess. “I want to get off the train, too. It’s done now; it’s over. I am officially off the train.”
“You promise?” Imogen asks me, and holds up her pinky for linking. I hook our fingers tight together, and I swear.
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day 77
You home? I text Gabe as soon as I’m back in Star Lake, jumping into my car and heading down the tree-lined road to the farmhouse; over the last decade I’ve traveled its winding curves on foot and by bike and once, memorably, in a pair of vintage roller skates of Connie’s that Patrick and I found in the Donnellys’ attic.
Today, I speed.
Sure thing, Gabe texts back just as I’m pulling into the driveway. You coming over?
Already here.
He comes out the side door fresh from the shower, hair damp and curling down over his ears. “What’d you, miss me or someth—” he starts to ask me, then gets cut off as I jump up right into his arms.
“I did,” I tell him firmly, arms monkeyed tight around his broad back and the stamp of my lips against his. “But I’m back now.”
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day 78
“Can I talk to you for a minute?” Penn asks when I get in the next morning, shutting the door to the office behind us. She’s wearing a pale pink blouse with three-quarter sleeves, a man’s watch around one wrist.
“Sure,” I tell her, with a little trepidation—we checked in over the phone about the club chairs while I was in Hudson, but other than that we haven’t really talked since she was sharp with me the other day. “What’s up?”
“I owe you an apology, I think.”
I blink at her. Penn’s office is basically the only room in the Lodge that didn’t benefit from the rustic-chic makeover: The chairs are all covered in pink flowered cushions, and there’s an ugly print of a cluster of sailboats along one wall. Fabian’s coloring stuff is heaped on the cheap pressboard bookshelf. “You do?”
Penn nods. “I was a weirdo to you about Des the other day,”
she says, taking a sip of her coffee. She perches on the edge of the cluttered desk instead of sitting behind it. “Before I sent you off like that. She’s attached to you, and it just tweaked me out a little, I’m sorry.”
“No, no.” I shake my head, surprised. “I mean, I’m attached to her, too, obviously. I’m really sorry if I overstepped.”
“You didn’t,” Penn says flatly. “Look, it was a bad divorce, me and the kids’ dad. I bought this place because I needed a fresh start, and I thought the kids needed one, too, but then we got here and Des just completely stopped talking.” She waves her hand like she’s trying to clear cigarette smoke away, like there’s something poison in the air keeping her from breathing it properly. “Maybe I was wrong, I don’t know. But I just wasn’t crazy about the idea of Des getting close to another person who’s leaving, and I was trying to protect her from that. And maybe I was trying to protect myself, too.” She rolls her eyes. “I rely on you for a lot here, you know? You help me run this place, and you’re not going to be here forever.” She drains the coffee, sets the empty mug back down on the desk. “Not the most emotionally intelligent moment of my life, maybe, but there you have it. That’s why I was short with you the other day.” Penn sighs. “Anyway. I hope I didn’t scare you off from hanging with Des. Ultimately, my kid needs as many people that care about her as possible, right?”
I smile at that, then step forward impulsively to hug her. “Yeah,” I say finally. “Yeah, I think she does.”