My brow furrows; I think, very clearly, leave it. Still, “Does he seem what?” I hear myself ask.
Sadie sighs. “He’s just so unhappy,” she says, setting her spoon down. “It started at the end of the school year—he was just such a bear all the time. And I thought it was finals stress or whatever, but we were apart all summer and now we’re on this amazing trip together and he’s so—” She shrugs. “I don’t know.”
“Really?” I ask. That doesn’t sound like Gabe at all. Back in Star Lake he was everybody’s favorite person, easygoing and sure of himself and happy to get along. Yeah, he’s seemed out of sorts the last couple of days, but I just assumed it was my fault for barreling back into his life like a bull charging the streets of Pamplona. It’s startling—and a little embarrassing—to realize that of course he has more on his mind than me.
“Have you talked to him about it?” Imogen asks, the voice of reason from her perch on the counter.
“I’ve tried,” Sadie says. “And he keeps saying everything is fine. But then I’ll say something about Indiana or our program or the future, and he gets all weird and cranky again.”
“So is it school-related?” Imogen asks, sounding intrigued in spite of herself. “Does he not want to be a doctor anymore?”
“I don’t know,” Sadie says, the oven door creaking loudly as she slides the muffin tin inside. “Sometimes to hear him talk I don’t know why he ever wanted to be one to begin with.”
I do, although I don’t say it out loud. Gabe’s dad died of a heart attack right in front of him and both his siblings, collapsing at the dinner table halfway through a plate of spaghetti Bolognese the summer Gabe was sixteen. Of course he knows in his head that he can’t bring Chuck back by becoming a doctor. But I don’t always know if he knows it in his gut.
“Look,” I say finally, my chest aching with time and memory. God, what do I think I’m doing, listening to the private details of Gabe’s new relationship? I’ve been down this road before, last summer with Patrick’s girlfriend Tess, and I know exactly where it leads. “It’s been ages since I spent any real time with Gabe. But he’s the greatest. I’m sure it’ll all sort itself out with a little time, won’t it?”
As romantic advice goes, it’s about as dumb and useless as just be yourself or follow your heart, but it seems to do the trick for Sadie: “Yeah, no, definitely,” she says, nodding gratefully. It occurs to me that maybe the reassurance was all she wanted to begin with. “I’m sure you’re right.”
Imogen hops down off the counter then, eyeing me like maybe she’s the one in medical school and she suspects there’s something here to diagnose. “I’m going to make coffee,” she announces cheerily. “Sadie-lady, do you want coffee?”
“Sure,” Sadie says. She sets the oven timer, turns around, and smiles at us. “You guys are great, you know that?” she asks. “I’ll be honest, I don’t have a ton of girlfriends. There’s always just so much drama, you know? But you guys are chill.”
Immediately my eyes cut to Imogen; sure enough, she’s looking at Sadie skeptically, head tilted to the side and lips pursed. “Well,” she begins. “I don’t really know if that’s—”
“If dudes have a problem, they just punch each other in the face and move on,” Sadie continues, oblivious. “But with girls it’s always like, ‘well, she said this to this person, so then I did this, and—’”
“Coffee!” I blurt inelegantly, before Imogen’s head pops off her head entirely and flies around the room like a deflating balloon. “Hey, Sadie, want to help me grind the beans?”
Gabe and Sadie borrow Imogen’s car to try to find the house where his grandfather grew up, and Imogen’s got some work to finish up on her fellowship project, so I find Ian reading his book out in the plant hospital and ask him if he wants to go for a walk into the village. He takes my hand as we stroll down the winding byways, passing carefully tended gardens and a dog snoozing under a mountain ash tree and a truly staggering number of churches. This part of the country looks like something out of a storybook, as if we got off the bus and traveled through time like characters on my apparently silly Highlander show. Even the cars look charming to me, with their steering wheels all on the opposite side.
“Did you know,” Ian says as we walk, “that when pensions became a thing in Ireland in the nineteenth century, there was no uniform system for recording birthdates and ages and stuff, so to prove you were old you had to be able to remember ‘the night of the big wind’ in 1839?”
“That’s not true,” I say immediately. “What?”
“It is!” Ian laughs.
“How do you even know that?”
He shrugs cheerfully. “I read a lot.”
“Yeah, you’ve mentioned,” I tease, but I’m smiling. We pass another church, a repair shop, a post office that from the look of things is only open on Wednesdays. I let go of his hand, excavate my phone from my pocket. “Okay,” I tell him, “so there’s a shop that does all different kinds of meat pies up here that I want to check out, and then there’s a super-old graveyard on the edge of town that could be cool if you’re in the mood to creep on some dead people who were probably around for the night of the big wind.”
Ian’s eyes widen, exaggerated. “Do you seriously have an itinerary for this part of the trip too?” he asks. “How is that even possible? There are literally more cows here than people.”
“I’m just trying to make the most of our vacation!” I defend myself. Then I frown. “Wait, do you not like my app?”
“No no no, it has nothing to do with not liking your app,” Ian promises. “I know you love your app. I would never impugn your app.” He hesitates. “It’s just—sometimes having everything so planned out kind of limits the opportunity for . . .”
“Kuddelmuddel?” I supply.
“See, when you say it in that voice it sounds ridiculous,” Ian says, “but yes, basically. Don’t you ever want to just . . . wander?”
Truthfully, the addition of Gabe and Sadie into our traveling party is kind of all the kuddelmuddel I can handle for one trip, but I can’t exactly tell Ian that. “I’m sorry,” I say, a little abashed. “I know I’m probably not the easiest person to travel with.”
Ian shakes his head. “You’re okay,” he promises, smiling. “I’ll keep you. I mean, at the very least I’ll never accidentally wind up at a place with inconsistent Yelp reviews.”
We get the meat pies and a couple of iced teas from the shop in town—which is, for the record, adorable, with big windows and an old-fashioned slide-letter menu above the counter, a girl with two long braids like Pippi Longstocking running the register—and walk about halfway back to the cottage before we find a low stone wall to sit on while we eat. We perch there in one of our comfortable silences for a while, just the sound of two birds chattering somewhere off in the distance.
“So, speaking of kuddelmuddel,” I say finally, picking at the flaky crust of my meat pie. “Sorry for being such a weirdo yesterday morning, about Gabe and Sadie coming with us. I know you were just being friendly. And it can’t be exactly how you wanted to spend your European vacation either.”
Ian raises his eyebrows. “What, hanging out with your home friends?” he asks, looking at me uncertainly. “I always wanted to meet them, Molly. You know that.”
“No, I know you did.” I nod uneasily. “You’re right.” It’s the only real fight Ian and I have ever had, actually, the week before the end of spring semester; I was sitting at my desk writing a final research paper on workplace diversity policies when Ian showed up at my dorm and announced his mom had canceled the trip to the Galápagos his family had scheduled for once school let out.
I frowned, squinting at my bibliography for a second before looking up from my laptop. “Seriously?” I asked. “That sucks.”
Ian nodded. “She’s gotta go to Toronto for a client thing,” he said, toeing his boots off and hopping up onto my bed with its fluffy white duvet, the flannel-covered throw pillows all arra
nged in perfect order. The dorm room I shared with Roisin was a cinder-block shoe box with a window that opened three inches and overlooked an air duct; still, I’d decorated it with as much care and precision as if I were outfitting a ten-thousand-square-foot mansion. My books were organized by color on the bookshelf; a rag rug in varying shades of blue covered the industrial stain-resistant carpet on the floor. Above the desk was an art poster Imogen had sent me with graphic renderings of vintage running shoes, and over on the windowsill a tiny cactus sucked up what little springtime sunlight trickled through the glass. It was neat and tidy and organized. There was no space in here for a mess.
“So are you gonna go home anyway?” I asked Ian, pushing my chair away from the desk and turning to look at him. He was wearing a BU T-shirt and a worn-in pair of khakis; his hair was sticking up a little, like it always did when he’d been studying. “See your dad and sister? Or just hang around your apartment until summer classes start?”
“I dunno.” Ian looked at me a moment. “You’re still heading home for a few days, right? Before your internship?”
I raised my eyebrows; he knew I was. “Unfortunately,” I said.
Ian smiled. “You always make your hometown sound like a total nightmare, do you know that?”
“It’s fine,” I hedged, curling the toes of one socked foot around the wooden bed frame and not looking directly at him. If I’d given him that impression it was a miscalculation on my part; truthfully, I didn’t want to draw any attention to Star Lake, or the person I’d been there, either way.
“It’s fine,” Ian mimicked in an Eeyore voice. Then he sat back against the throw pillows, looked at me for a moment. “I could always come with you,” he said.
I laughed out loud before I realized, with no small amount of horror, that he was serious. “Wait,” I said. “You want to come to Star Lake?”
“I mean, maybe not with that tone in your voice, I don’t,” Ian said pointedly. Then he shrugged. “I dunno,” he continued. “Is it such a ridiculous idea?”
“I mean, no,” I said, already scanning my mind for any possible way to dissuade him. “Of course it’s not ridiculous. It’s just—why?”
Ian laughed. “Because you’re my girlfriend?” he suggested mildly. “Because I want to see your house and make fun of your dorky middle school pictures? Because I want to meet your friends?”
“I’ll have my mom send you my middle school pictures,” I promised, smiling a little. “I had braces and a bowl cut, it was a whole thing.”
But Ian shook his head. “I’m serious,” he said quietly.
“No, I know.” My whole body felt hot and prickly; I shifted uncomfortably in the hard wooden chair. “I get it, I just—” I broke off, wishing Roisin would come back from class to interrupt us. Wishing a meteor would whiz past the building. Anything to cut this conversation short. “I don’t think it’s a good idea, is all.”
“Why?” Ian asked, sitting up a little straighter. “Who are you embarrassed of?” He was trying to sound like he was joking but not hitting it, exactly; there was an underlying sharpness at the back of his voice that gave him away. “Them or me?”
“Neither!” I said, louder than I meant to.
Ian looked at me blankly. “Then what?”
I didn’t say anything for a moment, the silence stretching out between us gray and cold as the Neponset River in January. The answer, of course, was that I was embarrassed of myself, of the person I was back in Star Lake. I could feel it now, the nauseating green horror of walking down Main Street and running into Julia; the drink knocked into my lap at a restaurant, the unexpected backhand of a whispered insult as we wandered through the bookstore or strolled around the lake. The confusion—and then, inevitably, the disgust—on Ian’s face.
“Look,” he said finally, sighing a little. “Are you not serious enough about this to bring me home? Is that what it is? And you just don’t want to tell me?”
“No,” I said, reaching forward and taking his hands. “Hey, come on. That’s not it, I promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes!” I insisted.
“Well then why are you being so cagey about this?”
“Ian,” I snapped, letting go of him abruptly, “can you please just drop it?”
“Why?”
“Because it’s not going to happen!”
Ian looked startled; I’d never raised my voice at him before. I scrubbed both hands over my face, shaking my head hard like I could rattle all the knots loose that way. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m just stressed out with finals and stuff. I didn’t mean . . .” I trailed off, mortified by my own outburst and trying to reel myself back in as quickly as I could manage. But what could I possibly tell him? How could I possibly explain?
“Look,” Ian said again, sliding off the bed and jamming his socked feet into his boots, not bothering with the laces. “I’ve got a hundred pages to read for tomorrow. I should go.”
“No, wait.” I stood up too, reached an arm out. “Come on, Ian—”
“I’ll text you later, okay?”
I looked at him for a moment, resenting him for putting the pressure on me. Resenting myself for not being able to give him what he wanted. “Yeah,” I said finally. “Okay.”
Once he was gone I sprawled on the mattress and stared out the window at the air shaft, trapped and pissed and guilty. I picked at my essay for a while. I ate a stale dining-hall cookie I wasn’t hungry for. Finally I rolled over and picked up my phone. That was horrible, I texted. Can you meet me?
It took him a long time to text back. Sure, he said. Coffee?
I jumped into my flats and jean jacket, hurrying down the sidewalk with my hands shoved into my pockets. Boston in May is all promise, warm sunshine and pale-green leaves on the trees; still, I found myself shivering like it was the middle of winter, like there was an icicle dripping right down the back of my shirt.
Ian was sitting at a table by the window at our usual coffee shop, one hand wrapped around the back of his neck while he paged through a lit theory textbook. I gazed at him through the window, at his wavy hair and serious expression. For a second it felt like he was a stranger. And that was what I’d wanted back when we started dating, right? Somebody who didn’t know me. Someone completely new. Somehow I’d never calculated for how complicated that might get down the road.
“Hi,” I said cautiously, touching his shoulder. The café smelled like pastries and freshly ground coffee; Edison bulbs glowed dimly above the counter, and the long tendrils of a hanging pothos plant trailed nearly to the floor.
“Hi yourself,” Ian said quietly. He didn’t smile.
I sat down across from him, tucked my hands under my thighs to warm them. “Are you breaking up with me?” I asked.
Ian sat up straight. “Am I breaking up with—no, Molly.” He sighed. “I’m just frustrated, you know? Sometimes it feels like you’re purposely keeping me from getting close to you. Like you have this whole other life that I’m just never going to get to see.”
“That’s not true,” I protested, reaching for his arm across the table; a girl in glasses at the table next to ours peered over curiously. “This is my only life, Ian. That’s the whole point, you know?” I shrugged and let go of him, picking a paper napkin up off the table and twisting it into a rope. “I told you when we first got together that there was stuff I didn’t want to talk about. And you said yourself that it didn’t matter. So now—”
“Were you with, like, a ton of dudes? Is that it?”
My eyes widened; I shoved my chair back hard enough that it screeched. “Are you serious right now?” I hissed, glancing at the girl one table over; she was fussing with her phone, probably live-tweeting the couple embarrassing themselves in front of a dozen strangers at a coffee shop. “No! Jesus Christ, Ian.”
“I’m sorry,” he said immediately, cheeks coloring underneath his beard. “That was out of line.”
“Yeah,” I snapped, “it was.” Out
of line or not, the question cut way too close to the bone; I was surprised by the heat of my own outrage, the instinct to defend myself with claws and teeth. I hadn’t felt anything like it since last summer, when Julia’s ground campaign of social misery finally became too much to tolerate even for me. “First of all,” I said, channeling every Jezebel article Imogen had ever emailed to me, “even if I’d been with the whole United States Army, that wouldn’t be something I had to apologize to you for. Second of all—”
“No, of course.” Ian held his hands up. “I’m sorry. I just—what exactly is it that you don’t want me to know?” He was smiling at me now, abashed, trying to turn the whole thing into a joke. “Are you on the run from the law? Do you have multiple personalities? Is there a crazy wife locked in your attic?”
I huffed a breath out, leaning back and carding my hands through my hair. “I don’t think the wife in Jane Eyre is crazy,” I finally said.
Ian tilted his head to the side, interested. “You don’t?” he asked.
“No, actually,” I said, “I don’t. I think Mr. Rochester got tired of her, locked her away, and told everybody she was a nutbar so he could have sex with the babysitter.”
Ian grinned at me, our fight momentarily forgotten. “You’re something else, you know that?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes a little and tried not to smile, not totally ready to give it up yet. “I have been told that in the past, yes.”
“Yeah,” he said softly. “I bet.”
We were quiet then, just the hiss of the espresso machine behind the counter and the occasional jangle of the bells above the door as people walked into the shop; Sam Smith piped mournfully through the speakers overhead. This was my chance, I knew. I could be honest with him. I could tell him about Gabe and about Patrick, about getting picked on and then about getting pregnant. But then what? Once he knew the truth about me, there was no way he was going to want to deal with it. All of this hard work—this whole year—would be for nothing.
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