99 Days (20 page)

I’m useless at work the next day. I have to recalculate payroll three different times before the numbers check out. I can’t stop thinking about Patrick.

I remember finally telling my mom about me and Gabe at the very end of sophomore year—two weeks after it happened, graduation come and gone, Gabe headed off to be a camp counselor in the Berkshires, and Patrick and I still not speaking. Everything burbled up out of me like some long-dormant volcano: “Tell me,” my mom urged, looking at me hard and searchingly. It felt like a purifying fire.

After that I ran to the Donnellys’ before it was even light out, let myself in with the spare key Connie kept hidden underneath a clay frog in the garden. “Wake up,” I said to Patrick, crawling across his bed in the blue still-darkness. He smelled like sleep, and like home. I felt like I’d dodged the most deadly of bullets, like one of those people that gets hit by a train but somehow manages to walk away unscathed. I felt guilty and lucky, a full helping of both. “Wake up, it’s me.”

“What?” Patrick blinked awake, startled, reaching for my arm. “Mols, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”

“I don’t want to be broken up anymore,” I blurted. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m never going anywhere; I was being an idiot.” I shook my head. “I can run here, I want to stay here. I decided, and I wanted to tell you as soon as—” I broke off. “Please. Let’s just forget about it and be normal again, okay?”

“Hey, hey.” Patrick sat up then, looking at me curiously. His curly hair was crazy with sleep. “You all right?”

“I’m fine,” I promised. “I’m perfect. I was being an asshole, I was just—”

“You weren’t being an asshole,” Patrick told me, “
I
was. I don’t want to hold you back. I
love
you; that’s the last thing I want. I’d fucking hate myself, if that’s what I was.”

“It’s
not
,” I insisted, looking at him urgently. “It’s not. I want to stay here, I want to be with you.”

“I want that, too.” Patrick nodded. “Come here, hey. Of course I want that, too.”

I climbed underneath the covers then, the cotton sheets warm with their time against his body. I’d made a
huge
mistake, doing what I’d done with Gabe, the weight of it like a grizzly settling down right on my chest. I’d never kept a secret from Patrick before. Still, in the moment it almost felt like a small price to pay to figure out what I really wanted: I was going to fix us. I was going to make it all right.

And nobody but me, my mom, and Gabe would ever,
ever
have to know.

*

“What’re you doing?” Fabian demands, banging through the door of the office with a plastic Captain America in one hand and the Falcon in the other, yanking me out of the memory. I click SAVE on the computer, glance at the clock on the screen—Gabe’s due to pick me up from work in twenty minutes.

Fabian’s still waiting on an answer, impatient; I take the action figure he proffers, shake my head. “I’ll tell you, buddy: That’s a really good question.”

Imogen and Handsome Jay seal the deal at the beginning of August at his tiny student apartment; two days later he surprises her with tickets to a sculpture park in Woodstock, a place she told him she wanted to visit on their very first date.

“Good on
you
, lady,” I tell her, sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor of her bedroom as she organizes the pieces for her art show at French Roast, which is coming up two weeks from now—I offered to help her, but she’s got a complicated vision, she says. “You
should
be with somebody who knows you that well, you know?”

Imogen raises her eyebrows, glancing over her shoulder at me—she’s holding up two small canvases with birds on them, scrutinizing how they look side by side. “You mean like you and Patrick?” she asks distractedly.

My internal temperature drops roughly fifteen degrees. “I—what?”

“Oh my God,” Imogen says, whirling around to face me completely, dropping one of the canvases onto the carpet and clapping a hand over her mouth. She huffs out an awkward giggle, eyes wide. “I totally just meant to say you and Gabe. I legit wasn’t even trying to heckle you just then, I’m so sorry. You and Gabe, you and Gabe.”

“Jerk.” I’m blushing and laughing, relief and embarrassment washing through my body in equal measure, hot and cold. “Me and Gabe, yes. Like me and Gabe.”

“God, sorry. Let’s just be thankful Tess wasn’t here, too.” Imogen picks the second canvas back up off the floor, holding them out for my inspection. “What do you think, which way?”

“Um,” I manage, swallowing audibly, relieved at her willingness to drop it. I haven’t told a soul about what happened—what’s
happening
?—with Patrick. The smart thing to do is to let him alone. “Side by side.”

“I think I like them stacked,” Imogen says, and I don’t answer. My head thuds softly back against the wall.

I’m almost asleep, that foggy in-between that’s not quite dreaming, when my phone buzzes loudly on the nightstand:
You home?
Patrick wants to know.

I push my hair out of my face, sit up on the mattress.
Yeah
, I key in, trying to ignore the dark thrill in my stomach that tells me this can’t possibly lead to anything good.
Where are you?

In your driveway.

I creep downstairs and let him in the back door wordlessly, lead him up to my third-floor tower with his warm hand tucked in mine. As soon as the door’s shut, he presses me up against it. My T-shirt hits the carpet with a barely audible whoosh. I never turned a light on and it’s dark in here, nothing but a silver puddle of moonlight on the carpet and the feel of his warm mouth wandering over my collarbone and ribs.

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, needing 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
?

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.

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 me 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.”

“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 going 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 from 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.