99 Days (18 page)

“—and she realizes, as the door locks behind her, that
she just left a bag of poop on the kitchen counter
.”

Imogen, Gabe, and I stare at Jay for a moment before bursting into laughter so loud and so horrified that people clear across Bunchie’s turn to look at us. “That’s an urban legend!” I protest through my giggles, half-afraid I’m going to snort my milk shake right out my nose. “That’s an urban legend, uh-uh, I’m Googling it. No way.”

“Go ahead and Google it,” Jay says magnanimously, picking the last couple of fries off his plate and nodding. “It happened to my cousin’s friend.”

“Uh-huh.” I reach over, snag one of Imogen’s pickles. “I . . . think you are full of garbage, but that’s also pretty much the best story I’ve ever heard, so . . .”

Gabe slings his arm over the back of the booth, the inside of his elbow brushing my hair. “Molly’s a skeptic,” he says.

“I am a skeptic!” I agree, but in truth at the moment I’m a happy one—if you’d told me at the start of the summer if I could have something like this, a normal night out with my boyfriend and my friends, I would have asked you what exactly you were smoking and where I could get some, too.

Or, okay—not normal, exactly. I try to ignore the sick pit in my stomach every time I remember what happened with Patrick the other night. I think of the slickness of Patrick’s warm skin under my fingertips. I think of the clutch of my legs around his waist. I feel like a horror show, I feel like exactly the kind of nightmare Julia thinks I am—tearing through the Donnellys again and again like some kind of natural disaster, a tornado that changed course halfway through and came back for more.

But other than that? Totally normal.

We’re debating whether or not to get a round of potato skins for dessert when the door to Bunchie’s opens and Patrick and Tess walk in. I feel a quick, violent sandstorm kick up inside my chest—Imogen asked earlier if it was cool to text Tess and tell her where we were and I made a big show of acting cool about it, but after what happened between Patrick and me the other night I told myself there was no way he’d have the balls to tag along.

I must look visibly rattled, because Imogen glances at me quizzically for one sharp second before she recovers, rearranging her features into a wide, friendly smile. “Hi, kids!” she calls gaily. “You just missed Jay’s great story about a girl taking a crap on her one-night stand’s kitchen counter. Here, come sit.”

“She didn’t take the crap
on
the counter,” Jay protests as we all shift around to make room. Tess slides into the booth next to Imogen, leaving Patrick no place to sit except next to me—once he’s there I’m literally sandwiched in between him and his brother, one warm Donnelly on either side of me and quarters so tight I can hardly move my arms. My whole body goes rigid, some small furry animal that senses a predator. Patrick doesn’t look at me once. I try not to think of his mouth on mine, the rough scrape of tree bark against my naked back. When I reach for my water glass, I’m so flustered I knock a dirty fork right into his lap.

“Sorry,” I mutter as Patrick hands it back to me wordlessly.

“You okay?” Gabe murmurs in my ear. He’s got one warm hand on my knee, reassuring. I nod.

We order the potato skins; Tess tells a story about her new roommate from Barnard, who she just friended on Facebook today. Patrick’s arm is hot and solid against mine. I think of spring of sophomore year again, the end of May and our third argument in as many days—about stupid, inane stuff, whether or not to go to the underclassman formal or what music to listen to while we studied for chem. This time it had started over plans for the weekend and boomeranged right back to Bristol, just like it had every other afternoon this week. I kept waiting for things to right themselves between us, for this bizarre alternate universe where Patrick and I couldn’t be in the same room without arguing to go back to normal.

Also, I was waiting to stop feeling like Arizona might be a really good idea for next fall.

Neither of those things had happened yet.

“Okay.” I took a deep breath and I got up off the bed where I was sitting, pacing past the desk and dresser and back again. I knew every last corner of this room: the warped closet door that never quite closed correctly, the stain on the rug from where we’d ground in Play-Doh by mistake when we were seven. It might as well have been my own. I carved a hand through my hair, frustrated. “You don’t think we’re—” I struggled for a minute, trying to think of how to say it without pissing him off, without making myself more foreign to him than I already seemed to be right now. “You don’t think we sometimes, like . . . spend all this time together at the expense of other stuff in our lives?”

Patrick blinked at me. “What?” he asked, shaking his head faintly. “Like, what are you even saying?”

“I’m just asking!” God, he was irritating me so much lately, moody and intractable in a way he’d never been before—or, if he had, in a way that had never, ever been directed at me. I didn’t know which one of us was changing. It scared me to think maybe both of us were. “Can we just—”

“Molly, if you want to go to Arizona to run, you should go to Arizona to run.” Patrick’s voice was flat and careless. “I didn’t realize I was holding you back
quite
so hard.”

“You’re not holding me back!” I burst out. “I’m asking you a question; I’m trying to have a conversation with you. I thought that’s what we do: We have conversations. We’ve been having one long conversation our whole lives and now—”

“Now you’re bored, and you want to go have other ones. I get it, kid. I do.”

“Can you not finish my sentences, please?”

“Why, is that holding you back, too?”

“Okay, stop it. Just—stop, for a second.” I sat down on the floor, back against the doorframe where Chuck had measured how tall we were the whole time we were growing up, pencil lines and his neat, blocky handwriting:
Julia. Patrick. Molly. Gabe
. This was my family, I thought, looking across the room at Patrick’s hardened, hurt expression. This would always be my home.

“We wouldn’t have to break up,” I told him softly, gazing at him across the bedroom. “If I went. That’s not what it would mean. We could visit, we could—”

“Yeah.” That was the wrong thing for me to say, clearly—I actually watched him shut down then, the angry set of his jaw. “Whatever. Okay. You can leave now, Mols. We’re getting nowhere. I’ll see you, really.”

“Patrick.”
My eyes widened—I couldn’t believe he was doing this again. It was like he was determined to get rid of me any way he could. “Why are you doing this? Can you stop, like,
actively pushing me away
—”

“I’m not pushing, Mols!” His voice cracked then, hoarse and aching. “You want to run so bad? Go run. Seriously. Don’t come back.”

I blinked. “What does that—?”

“It means this isn’t working,” Patrick said coldly. “It means we should just be done.”

I stared at him for a moment like he was suddenly speaking Mandarin, like he was someone from clear on the other side of the vast, breathing world. “Are you breaking up with me right now?”

“Yeah, Mols,” he said, and he sounded like a stranger. “I am.”

*

A burst of laughter rips me out of the memory, spooking me so hard I startle a second time, though at least I don’t send any more silverware flying. Gabe’s still got his palm on my knee. He squeezes a bit, then slides his hand farther over, fingertips picking at the seam on the inner thigh of my jeans.

That’s when Patrick nudges his leg against mine.

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.

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 stops, 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 around 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 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 frowns. “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.