It’s that last thought that has my spine straightening: after all, if Gabe can act like there’s never been anything worth remembering between us, then so can I. “Sure,” I say brightly, tucking my hair behind my ears and smiling. “Absolutely.”
Gabe looks shocked, then slightly irritated, like he was counting on me to come up with a plan for emergency evacuation and—just like always—I’ve let him down. Well, screw him, I think. At least one of us has to be a damn adult here. “Sounds like a plan” is all he says, raising his hand at the hostess and smiling his dazzling politician smile. “We’re four.”
The hostess nods briskly and leads us through the clusters of tables to one of the booths at the back; I slide in next to Ian and across from Gabe, still careful not to make eye contact.
“So when was the last time you guys saw each other?” Sadie asks as we get ourselves settled. She’s got sharp blue eyes and a faint spray of freckles across her nose, with pale eyebrows and the kind of deep, even tan that tells the story of a summer spent outdoors. “Molly, is your family still in Star Lake?”
“Um, my mom is,” I admit, glancing down at the menu, “but I don’t get back there too often. We haven’t seen each other since last year.”
“Long time,” Gabe agrees, scanning the beer list. Neither one of us volunteers any other details.
“Actually, dude,” Ian says, nodding his chin at Gabe across the table, “you’re exactly the right person to clear this up for me. Your town can’t possibly be as bad as Molly makes it out to be, right? Whenever she talks about Star Lake, it’s like it’s situated directly on top of a hellmouth.”
I wince. He’s ribbing me, doing a little comedy routine for my benefit, but I definitely don’t want Gabe, who’s basically the mayor of Star Lake, to think I go around trash-talking it—especially considering the holy havoc I wreaked there last year. “I never said that,” I protest.
“Oh, really?” Ian gives me a look like, come on; Gabe is eyeing me from across the table, all long eyelashes and inscrutable expression. “I think the exact words you used were—”
“Okay, okay, but Star Lake talk is boring,” I interrupt, then turn to Sadie. “So are you also at Notre Dame?”
“Guilty as charged,” she says, lifting her backpack off the booth to reveal a Fighting Irish water bottle hooked to one strap by a carabiner. She’s premed just like Gabe, she tells us; they met in their organic chemistry class freshman year but didn’t connect until last fall, when they were in the same Shakespeare gen-ed requirement they’d put off as long as humanly possible. “So there we were, these two science nerds trying to figure out what on earth was going on in A Midsummer Night’s Dream,” Sadie recalls. “It was comical, really.”
“Hey, speak for yourself,” Gabe says, smiling the first genuine smile I’ve seen out of him since our eyes locked in the bar; the sight of it sends a pang through my body. Of course he’s smiling at her, I remind myself sharply. She’s his girlfriend. I bury myself in my menu, mumbling something inane about shepherd’s pie.
Sadie asks what we’ve seen in London so far and Ian gives her the rundown, thankfully only stopping to tease me a little about what a tight schedule I’ve got us on. “What about you guys?” he finishes, reaching for his pint glass. “When did you get into town?”
“Just a couple of days ago,” Sadie says. They took the train out to Buckingham Palace yesterday, she continues, then snagged student rush tickets to a show in the West End. “We were in Scotland before that,” she finishes. “We spent a few days hiking and camping near Edinburgh.”
I look at Gabe in surprise: “Since when are you into hiking?” I blurt, before I can stop myself.
Gabe’s eyes widen, just slightly. “Since always,” he says, shrugging over his beer bottle and looking irritated. “I used to go all the time back home.”
“In Star Lake?” That’s a lie if ever I’ve heard one: Patrick is pretty outdoorsy, maybe, but Gabe has always been more of the “drinking beer at a party in the woods” type of nature appreciator. Still, it occurs to me all at once that this is dangerous ground to be crossing, and I turn to Sadie instead: “How was Scotland?” I ask her eagerly. “I mean, keep in mind, you could tell me literally anything and I’d believe you. Everything I know about it is from that sexy time-travel show.”
Sadie shakes her sandy head, quizzical. “I don’t know it.”
“Oh man, my roommate and I were obsessed.” I smile, launching into a detailed explanation of the broader plot points—labyrinthine palace intrigue, daring escapes from British prisons, rakishly handsome Highlanders in kilts. “You’d actually probably really like it,” I tell her. “The main character is a woman doctor.”
“Yeah,” Sadie says, in a voice that’s not unfriendly, exactly, but also somehow manages to communicate the fact that I emphatically haven’t sold her on the concept. “I guess I don’t really watch a lot of stuff like that,” she explains, holding one hand up like, you know how it is. “Girly stuff, I mean. I’m more into, like, grittier shows and documentaries, that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” I say, slightly taken aback. Something about the way she said it pings me, but debating Gabe’s new girlfriend over the merits of a time-travel show seems like a stupid hill to die on. “Okay, yeah. I hear you.”
“Molly loves documentaries,” Ian puts in helpfully. Then, looking at me: “Didn’t you say you once spent a year working your way through, like, every documentary on Netflix?”
“Um, yup,” I admit, cringing. In fact, it was senior year of high school; I was away at boarding school in Arizona, hiding out after the People article about my mom’s book—and, by extension, about me and Gabe and Patrick—hit newsstands. I did the same thing last summer back in Star Lake in an effort to avoid the wrath of Gabe’s sister, Julia, chomping down on Red Vines and hibernating in my room. “That was me.”
Thankfully, the curly-haired waitress shows up just then, notepad in hand, and once we’ve ordered I slide out of the booth and escape to the tiny, gilded ladies’ room. I splash cold water on my face and stare hard into the fake-aged mirror above the sink: Pull it together, I order myself, and I almost think that I have until the moment I open the bathroom door and find Gabe waiting in the hallway on the other side of it.
“I had to pee,” he says immediately, jaw jutted out and a voice like he thinks I’m about to accuse him of something. “I didn’t just, like, follow you back here.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “Okay,” I say, shrugging. “I didn’t say you did.”
Gabe’s eyes narrow as if he’s going to argue, but in the end he just kind of droops. “Sorry,” he says, looking a little ashamed of himself. “This is really fucking weird.”
That makes me laugh, a noisy half-hysterical cackle. “Yeah,” I agree, “no kidding.”
“I mean—” Gabe breaks off and for a moment we just stand there, looking at each other in the narrow, darkened hallway. His short hair makes his face seem sharper, more grown-up. “So, um,” he says, after a beat too long for it not to be awkward. “You called me.”
My face flushes; I’m surprised he brought it up. I remember the night I did it, perched at the top of the tiny fire stairwell in my dorm building last September, one arm wrapped around my stubbly knees: I need to talk to you, I said into his voicemail. It’s important. The memory feels like a bone bruise, ugly and deep.
“Um,” I say finally. For an instant I think about telling him everything: the way my sneakers squeaked against the shiny linoleum floor of the clinic in Boston, the feeling of the doctor’s gentle, sandpapery hands. Watching the bright-orange trees out the window once it was over, leaning back in the passenger seat of my mom’s car. Then I shake my head. There’s no way for me to tell him in this crowded bar halfway across the universe. It’s possible there’s no way to tell him at all. “Yeah.”
“And I didn’t call you back.”
I nod. “That’s true, too.”
Gabe exhales. “I’m sorry,” he says
, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I just . . . was caught up with school stuff, I guess.”
I swallow. “I get it,” I lie hurriedly, waving my hand like it’s no big deal and deciding not to mention that it’s right up there with dogs and homework for the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard in my life. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t have called me back either if I were you.”
Even as I’m saying it, it occurs to me that it isn’t true, not really. Gabe and I had the world’s messiest breakup, that much is undeniable—I spent all of last summer somersaulting wildly between Patrick and him, oblivious to the fact that I was more or less the latest prize in some long-running brotherly pissing contest. But we talked it out before I headed up to Boston, the two of us sitting side by side on the sunbaked hood of his beat-up station wagon on the very last day of summer break, and I honestly thought we were, if not exactly okay, then definitely on the road to getting there. I even wondered if there was a chance we might be able to make things work between us someday. Of course I would have called him back, if the situation were reversed. Of course I would have come.
“Anyway,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears and smiling as bright as I can muster. “It’s all over now, right?”
“Yeah,” Gabe agrees, after another long moment. “I guess it is.”
“Good.” I let a breath out. “So we’re cool?”
Gabe nods at that, but he’s still looking at me with that unconvinced expression on his face, like I’m one of those human statues on a street corner and he’s waiting for me to break and move. “What?” I demand finally. My face gets hot, though that could be the bar or the beer or any number of acceptable, non-Gabe-related things. “You wanna fist-bump on it or something?”
That makes him smile, wide and easy; just for a second, he’s the Gabe I know again. “Sure, actually,” he says. “Let’s fist-bump on it.”
We do, clumsy, both of us laughing. “You didn’t explode it,” I protest.
“I didn’t,” he agrees, making a face at me. “Come on, let’s go before they start wondering where we are.”
I follow him back to the booth, where Ian and Sadie are deeply engrossed in a conversation about a New Yorker article they both read about fracking, which I suppose is more serious than time-traveling lady doctors. One of Ian’s great talents is his ability to hold forth with anyone on basically any topic, from Patriots football to the midterm elections to the complex machinery behind nineties boy bands. It should make him obnoxious—it would make most people obnoxious, I think—but it doesn’t, for some reason. Instead it just makes him fun to talk to. “That same guy wrote a book about deforestation that’ll make you crap your pants,” Ian’s telling her excitedly.
“Ian likes to read,” I tell Sadie, reaching for the pitcher on the table and splashing some more beer into my glass. “Just in case that wasn’t abundantly clear.”
“You know, I’ve been getting that impression?” Sadie laughs. “Who’s your favorite author?”
Ian smiles bashfully. “I mean, how long do you have?”
It should be awkward. It should be awful. An impromptu double date with my ex and his new girlfriend? It’s like something out of a bad student play. But the longer we sit there—and the more pitchers of beer we order—the more surprised I am by how easy it starts to feel. Sadie is a big talker, full of stories about Notre Dame and the wilderness camp she worked at this summer and her four brothers back at home in Omaha, all of whom also have names that start with the letter S. Even Gabe warms up a bit, chiming in with a story about the two of them landing at Heathrow and riding six blocks in the backseat of a car before realizing it wasn’t an Uber.
“Once the poor guy figured out he wasn’t being carjacked I thought he was going to murder us,” Gabe admits, grinning; Ian is laughing so hard he’s about to snort his beer. “We basically grabbed our stuff and jumped out into moving traffic.”
It’s normal, sort of; more than that, it’s nice. Still, I know just sitting at this table is pushing my luck in a pretty spectacular fashion, and I mean to pull Ian away as soon as we’ve eaten—to head back to our rental or even another bar, a place that’s just the two of us. But right as we’re about to ask for the bill the jazz trio out in the courtyard is replaced by a rough-around-the-edges cover band, and before I know it the whole place is rocking with the sound of a slightly out-of-tune British Bon Jovi cover.
“Well, now we have to dance,” Ian says, in a voice like he’s delivering truth from a higher power, which as far as he’s concerned he basically is: Ian loves to dance. Already he’s moving around in his seat a bit, broad shoulders bopping up and down like a little kid in a bounce house. He looks across the table at Gabe and Sadie. “You guys? You in?”
Right away, Gabe shakes his head. “That . . . is a hard pass,” he says, sitting back in the booth; he’s smiling, ostensibly good-natured, but he’s also got his arms folded with a mulishness I don’t recognize. “Thanks, though.”
I raise my eyebrows, frowning at him across the table before I can quell the impulse. I’ve always thought of Gabe as incredibly game, the first guy to order a five-alarm chili burger or jump in the lake in the middle of January or run across campus in a pair of tighty-whiteys on a dare; the kind of person who’s always been confident enough never to worry about the possibility of looking dumb. I can’t tell if it’s the company—namely, me—turning him guarded and reluctant, or if there’s something else going on. Either way, I remind myself, it isn’t my problem anymore.
“Do you guys want to get the check, then?” I start to ask, but Sadie is already sliding out of the booth, all long limbs and maxi skirt, a worn-in pair of Birkenstocks on her feet.
“Oh, come on,” she says, holding her hand out for Gabe’s, “it’s vacation.” She gestures at me. “Molly thinks you should.”
Gabe’s eyebrows twitch, infinitesimal. “Is that what Molly thinks?” he asks quietly, then sighs and puts his palms on the table, making to get up. “All right,” he says, “twist my arm.”
We head out into the crowd on the patio, Ian’s hands warm and clumsy as he twirls me around on the densely packed floor. “You are a really, really bad dancer,” I tell him, laughing.
“Fuck you!” Ian says, pulling me closer and pressing a kiss against my mouth as the band segues into an old Coldplay song. He’s a little drunk, expansive and good-natured, his fingertips settling low on my hips. “I’m blowing your mind.”
“Oh, is that what you’re doing?” I tease, thinking of the loaded moment that passed between us earlier. I scratch lightly at his shoulder through his warm, wrinkly button-down, purposely not tracking Gabe and Sadie on the other side of the room. “I wasn’t sure.”
Finally the band takes a break and the four of us collapse back into the booth, the waitress dropping another pitcher of beer onto the table between us. “So what’s your plan for the rest of the trip?” Sadie asks, rosy-cheeked and a little breathless. “Where to next?”
“Ireland and then Paris,” I tell her. Then, to Gabe, “Imogen is in Ireland, did you know that? She got an art fellowship, she’s living in a convent or something and studying feminist art from the twelfth century.”
Gabe grins. “Sounds like Imogen,” he says.
“We were dying to go to Ireland,” Sadie puts in, tilting her blond head in Gabe’s direction. “Gabe wanted to see the house where his grandpa used to live. But this trip was so expensive as it is, it felt like a bad idea to tack an extra country on.”
“Where’s your family from?” Ian asks Gabe, taking a sip of his beer. He’s definitely a little drunk now, the tiniest bit of a slur to his vowels; his face is flushed pink and new-looking in the warm, humid bar.
“Well, my dad was born in New York,” Gabe explains; if he’s hit with the same twinge I always am at the mention of Chuck, who died when Gabe was a junior in high school, he doesn’t let on. “But his family was from County Kerry.”
“Wait, really?” Ian turns to look at me. “Did
you know that?” I shake my head—I knew Gabe’s grandparents came over from Ireland in the sixties, but not the specifics of where—but Ian’s already turning back to Gabe: “That’s where we’re going.”
Sadie’s eyes go wide. “Seriously?”
Ian nods. “The convent is like an hour from Shannon,” he tells her. Then his expression changes, going thoughtful and alert, and suddenly—horrifyingly—I know exactly what’s coming. Don’t do it, I plead silently. Say anything, anything but—
“You guys should come,” Ian suggests.
I freeze, both shocked to the depths of my person and wholly, dully unsurprised: in fact, this is exactly like him. Ian loves both big groups and unexpected situations, is forever inviting some random kid from his James Joyce seminar out for a bowling night in Southie or organizing a party bus for a twenty-person trip to eat giant turkey legs at King Richard’s Faire. I found it charming, back in Boston. Right now, not so much.
“Really?” Sadie asks, sounding delighted.
“Really?” Gabe says, looking significantly less so.
“Yeah!” Ian exclaims. I can see him getting more and more excited by the idea, the ingeniousness of it coalescing in his mind. “Why not? It’s only a couple of days.” He turns to me. “I mean, if you think that’d be okay with Imogen?”
“Yeah, no, totally, it’s not that I don’t think it’d be okay with Imogen, I just—” I stop short, frantic as an animal forced to chew its own leg off in a desperate attempt to free itself from a trap. I can feel the same cold panic radiating off Gabe from clear across the table. There’s no way to explain why this is a horrible idea without outing ourselves, and it’s too late for that now; my carefully assembled itinerary—my neat, tidy plan—is dissolving in front of my face like so much cigarette smoke.
9 Days and 9 Nights Page 4