“It’s like I was telling you guys this morning,” Sadie explains, resting the back of her head against the smudgy mirror. “He’s just so unhappy. He doesn’t know what he wants to do and he won’t admit it and it’s making him so frustrated. And, to be honest, kind of a dick.”
God, I do not want to be the trustee of this information. I shouldn’t be. But I don’t know how to stop her without revealing more than what’s actually mine to give away. “That really sucks,” I finally say. I shift my weight on the gritty tile, trying to figure out how to best make my escape without totally blowing her off.
Sadie sighs. “You know that story we told you guys, about meeting in an English class?” she asks me. “I mean, it’s technically true. But I’d had a crush on him literally all of sophomore year and never got up the courage to say anything to him. I transferred into that class after somebody told me he was in it.” Her lips twist. “I know, it’s stalkery.”
I shake my head. “Only in a benign way.” It makes me like her a little bit more, weirdly, to know she’s got it in her. “I’ve totally done stuff like that.”
Sadie looks surprised. “Really?” she asks. “You don’t seem like the type at all.”
“I’m a good faker, I guess.”
Sadie smiles. “Anyway, it’s like the Gabe I noticed around campus was this awesome, confident, self-possessed guy, you know? He was so sure of himself, and it made him so friendly and easygoing. And now he’s just . . . not. I don’t even know if we’re going to last, honestly.”
I flinch without knowing I’m going to do it, crossing my arms to cover. “No?”
She shrugs. “I’m about to apply to med school, you know? I love the guy, I want to help him, but I also don’t want to get bogged down in somebody else’s problems if they can’t even admit how miserable they are. I thought this trip was going to be the answer to everything, but instead it’s like—” She stops short. “Anyway. I’m sorry. You’re a good listener, you know that?”
It’s all I can do not to laugh. Roisin used to say the same thing, how easy it was to tell me stuff. What she didn’t realize is that the art of asking well-timed questions keeps people from noticing you haven’t told them much of anything in return.
“Gabe doesn’t even have that,” Sadie tells me, getting a second wind. “Somebody to talk to who isn’t me, I mean. He’s pulling away from all his school friends. He has some weird thing with his brother where they don’t get along. And he won’t listen to me at all at this point.” She sits up a little straighter on the sink. “Actually,” she says, “would you try talking to him, maybe?”
I gape at her. “Me?”
“Not about, like, our relationship or anything,” she clarifies quickly, looking the faintest bit embarrassed. “But about school stuff? I just feel like he needs somebody besides me to tell him to get his shit together.” Sadie shrugs again. “He’s gotta trust you, doesn’t he? I mean, the way he tells it, you basically grew up at his house.”
I wonder what else Gabe has told her about our history; if she thinks I’m even remotely the kind of person he’ll trust or listen to, I know it can’t have been the whole truth. I’m about to explain in the vaguest terms possible that I don’t think it’s such a good idea when the bathroom door swings open.
“Here you are!” Imogen crows. “I was looking all over the place.” Her gaze darts back and forth between us, curious and quick. “God, you guys, it is disgusting in here. Everything okay?”
I glance over at Sadie, let her take the lead. “Everything’s good,” she promises, and to her credit she does look better, her eyes less puffy and her cheeks less red.
The curiosity is radiating off Imogen like scent lines in an old cartoon, but all she does is smile. “Good.” She loops an arm around my shoulders, steers me toward the doorway. “Can we get out of here now, please?”
“How’s your cute Irish boyfriend doing out there?” I ask her as we follow Sadie back down the narrow hallway into the pub; it seems like it got louder while we were in there, more people crammed into the tiny space.
Imogen grins. “The cutest,” she says. “He’s great, right?”
“He’s really great,” I promise, although an hour of shouted conversation in a roiling bar doesn’t actually seem like enough information to go on. But he’s ass over teakettle for her, that much is obvious, and I like the air of mischief about him, his easy grin. “Have you guys talked about what you’re going to do after you go back to RISD?” I ask. “School’s gotta be starting for you soon too, right?”
Imogen hesitates then, her thick, dark eyebrows quirking a bit like they always do when she’s about to share a secret. “So here’s the thing,” she begins. “This is what I was starting to tell you yesterday, but it’s been so crazy with everybody around it never seemed like the right time to do it.” She’s stopped in the middle of the hallway, leaning against the dark wood wainscoting and crossing her ankles. “I’m thinking about staying.”
I blink at her. “Staying where?”
“Staying here,” she says, like it ought to be obvious. “In Kerry.”
“Wait, what?” My chin drops. “Really? For how long?”
“I think indefinitely.” She smiles a mysterious, catlike smile. “Seamus wants us to get a place.”
I laugh out loud, a tickled sleepover-party giggle, in the second before I realize Imogen isn’t kidding around. “Wait,” I say again, “what?” It’s like the floor has tipped underneath me, like an earthquake just cleaved the floor in half and I’m the only one who felt it. “You’re serious? You’re going to move here?”
“Why not, right?” Imogen’s grinning for real now. “YOLO, et cetera.”
“I mean, school, to start with,” I say stupidly. “You kind of have to finish it, don’t you?” I shake my head, baffled. “I mean—oh, Imogen, no.”
Her smile pales. “What do you mean, Imogen no?”
“I just—” I break off, my wits dulled by the shock and the noise and the alcohol, at a loss for how to best communicate the obvious terribleness of this plan. “What are you going to do, drop out of school and be a mechanic too?”
Imogen’s whole face goes cold then, snapping closed like the storm shutters on the cottage to keep out bad weather. “Wow,” she says, her tone clipped. “Okay then.”
“I’m sorry,” I say immediately, shaking my head. “That was super bitchy. I didn’t mean there’s anything wrong with—”
“You just said you liked Seamus!”
“I do like Seamus!” I protest. It’s like we’re doing some kind of farcical European comedy routine, all slamming doors and misunderstandings. “Seamus seems lovely! It’s just that I met him like twenty minutes ago, and you met him like twenty minutes before that, so—”
“So what?” Imogen interrupts.
“So I just think maybe you should think about it for a little while longer before you throw your whole life a—”
“I’m not throwing my life away, Molly!” She rolls her eyes. “You sound like someone’s grandma when you say that, first of all. On top of which, how do you know I haven’t thought about it?”
“Because—” I break off, baffled. It’s like I’m drowning, like I can’t get enough air to put a coherent thought together. “Well, you definitely haven’t said anything” is the best I can come up with. “I’ve been here two full days, Imogen. Like, if you’re honestly thinking about moving across the Atlantic Ocean forever, I wish you’d thought to mention it before now.”
“Seriously?” Imogen makes a face. “You’ve got so much going on I don’t even know when I would have had the chance.”
My back prickles with unpleasant recognition. “What does that mean?”
“Come on, Molly. We’re literally in Europe, we are three thousand miles away from Star Lake, and yet somehow your Donnelly drama has managed to creep all the way to my house in Ireland.”
“That’s not true!” My jaw drops at the unfairness of it. “If you didn’t
want them here, you should have said something,” I defend myself. “And Gabe and I have barely even talked the whole time we’ve been here.”
“Which is weird!” Imogen points out. “This whole situation is so weird! And you want to act like it isn’t, and I’ve been taking your lead on that because I’m a good friend and I know you and Gabe have unfinished business or whatever, but seriously. Who invites their ex-boyfriend on vacation with her and her new boyfriend? Especially when he totally dropped off the face of the planet after you broke up, and especially when he doesn’t even know—”
“I’m not even the one who invited them!” I interrupt.
“It’s me, Molly,” Imogen says, more gently. “And you know as well as I do that there is no way that boy would have tagged along unless the both of you not so secretly wanted him to.”
My whole body goes hot and sick-feeling, cornered and caught-out. I’ve been careful to think of this whole outlandish situation as mostly out of my control—a series of bizarre, unlikely events I was powerless to stop or alter. I told myself what was happening here was one giant, exaggerated kuddelmuddel, but of course that isn’t actually true. Now that Imogen has named it out loud it seems undeniable, but I try anyway: “First of all,” I begin clumsily, “that’s not—”
“I don’t actually care, Molly!” Imogen cuts me off. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I’m saying I’ve been patient because I love you and I know you have a lot going on, but now I’m asking you to let this conversation be about me for once.”
I open my mouth and close it again, momentarily speechless. It’s not the first time we’ve had this fight. I tricked Roisin and Sadie into thinking I was a good listener, maybe. But Imogen has always known the real me.
“I’m sorry,” she says now, leaning back against the wall and knocking her skull lightly against a picture of a bunch of IRA rebels, frame rattling off the plaster. “I’ve been drinking. I’m being an asshole.”
“No,” I say quietly, “you’re right. I’m sorry.” I shrug. “I just want you to be careful, Imogen. It’s your whole life. It’s college. Don’t you think you ought to go back for a little while at least, so—”
“So I can look at more slides of Renaissance paintings?” Imogen interrupts. “I’m living in Europe right now, Molly. I’m looking at art. I’m making art. I can make it just as easily—more easily, even—here, where I’m happy, and I’m with somebody that I love.” She sighs. “Look,” she tells me, “I know your whole thing right now is that you’re never going to make another mistake—or even, like, another decision where you haven’t considered every possible outcome—in your entire life. But that’s not me, okay?”
“What?” My mouth drops open. “I’m not—” I begin, then break off. “That’s not why—”
“Imogen!” Seamus’s deep, cheerful brogue rises over the din of the crowd; when I look up he’s waving his beefy arms from across the bar, exaggerated. “You ladies fancy another pint?”
Imogen nods. “On our way!” she calls brightly, then looks at me and shakes her head. “I don’t want to fight anymore, okay?” she asks, though it doesn’t actually sound like a question. “Let’s just pick this up later.” Before I can reply, she’s walking away.
I think I’m probably supposed to follow, to rejoin the group and have another beer and stop being such a colossal drama queen about everything, but for the first time in a year I’m completely unable to snap back into enthusiastic fineness. You could land a transatlantic 747 in the light of the shame radiating off my skin. I stand there for a moment, shocked and stupid. Then I push through the crowd and head for the door.
It takes a long time to navigate an exit, the dense trapping crush of bodies all around me and the music louder all of a sudden, an ocean-liner roar inside my brain. I sneak by Sadie at the bar and Ian in deep conversation with a local in a Pogues T-shirt, then edge through the narrow aisles of the hardware store and burst out into the cool blue night. It’s a dramatic escape for sure, the front door banging wide open and the bells above it jangling wildly; I whip around at the sound of a low snort of laughter and spy Gabe leaning against the front window with his arms crossed, bottle of Heineken dangling lazily from one hand.
“Whoa,” he says, smile falling a bit as he catches sight of my presumably wild expression. “You okay?”
“Imogen wants to stay here,” I blurt before I can stop myself, though of course that’s actually the least of my problems at this particular moment. “She’s dropping out of school so that she and Seamus can move in together.”
“What the fuck?” Gabe’s eyes widen, surprise and not a little bit of amusement. “Seriously?”
“Thank you! That’s what I said!”
“Wow,” he says, rubbing at the back of his neck with his free hand like he’s got a muscle cramp. “That is . . . something.”
“I have to figure out how to talk her out of it,” I tell him, my voice pitched high and a little hysterical. “I have no idea how to do that at this moment, I just tried and it emphatically did not work, I think we actually had a huge fight about it? But like.” I shake my head. “It’s ridiculous.”
“Hey,” Gabe says, holding his hands up, “easy over there. She’ll be okay.”
“How is she going to be okay?” I demand shrilly. I swallow hard, realizing abruptly that I’m shouting. “I’m sorry,” I tell him, scraping my hands through my hair and trying to reel myself in. “I’m, like, really overwhelmed all of a sudden, obviously.”
“Yeah,” Gabe says, “I know the feeling.” He hands me his beer bottle, which is still about half full. “Here,” he says, “finish this.”
I reach out and take it, trying not to think about what Imogen said back inside the bar about Gabe and I both wanting something, telling myself that the two of us sharing a drink doesn’t mean she was right. I drain the bottle in two long gulps and we stand there for a moment, neither one of us saying anything. We breathe.
“Do you think I suck all the air out of the room?” I ask finally, setting the empty bottle down carefully on the edge of the store’s front windowsill and crossing my arms.
“Why?” Gabe asks, looking at me sidelong. “Is that what your fight was actually about?”
I whip my head around to stare at him. “Shut up,” I scold, startled by the sensation of being known both so well and so casually. “No. I mean, yes, obviously, of course it was, but shut up.”
He raises his eyebrows, holding his hands up and pressing his lips together like he’s physically trying to hold back a smile. I roll my eyes.
“I didn’t mean actually shut up,” I clarify, as if he doesn’t already know that. “I want you to answer the question. Do you think I make every single situation about me?” I gesture at myself, keyed up. “Like, actually, am I making this situation about me right now?”
Gabe smiles for real then, a flash of straight white teeth. He thinks for a long moment. “I think controversy sort of follows you sometimes, maybe,” he says finally.
“What? It does not!” I defend myself, faintly outraged. “Or, like, it used to, maybe, but it doesn’t anymore.”
“Okay,” Gabe says, shrugging agreeably in a way that reminds me of what he was like last summer, a person so confident that he didn’t always need to be right. “Fair enough. I wouldn’t know, I guess. But what I mean is, and I’m not saying it was your fault or deserved or anything like that, but you were kind of at the center of a lot of drama back at home, weren’t you?”
My mouth drops open. “Excuse you!”
“I said it wasn’t your fault!” Gabe laughs then, fond and familiar; for a second it’s like he’s forgotten he doesn’t care about me anymore. “It was my fault, a lot of it; I know that. What I mean is that you’ve always been this big personality, really fearless and fun and charismatic and stuff like that. Maybe a little bit impulsive. And that’s what made people want to be around you all the time—present company included, obviously—but it also made you kind of a mag
net for trouble.”
It’s the nicest thing he’s said to me since last summer; the words are like hot stones tucked into my pockets, like I could curl my hands around them to keep warm. “Thanks,” I say quietly.
“It’s true.” Gabe clears his throat then, a little too forcefully; when I glance over his cheeks have gone faintly pink in the light from the store. “Anyway, all of that is to say that no, I don’t think you take up all the air. But I can kind of see how Imogen might feel that way sometimes.” He shrugs. “It’s not like you’re some silly drama queen,” he adds. “You’re tough. All the stuff that happened last year, plenty of people wouldn’t have been able to get through it at all. But you just soldiered right on through.”
“Yeah, well.” I wave my hand vaguely, like I can swat all of last summer away along with my own guilt at not having told him the whole story and my own bafflement at where to begin. “It was a long time ago.” I lean my head back against the cool glass of the window, looking out at the empty street. “I wish I smoked,” I announce, wanting to change the subject. “That’s what you do outside bars in Europe, right? Smoke and look cool?”
“Is it?” Gabe asks, glancing around. “I’m the wrong person to ask, probably. It’s my first time out of the country.”
“Mine too,” I admit, although I bet he already knows that. I haven’t actually mentioned it to Ian, secreting my brand-new passport away inside my purse before he could catch sight of its empty pages. “Is it what you thought it was going to be?”
“Some of it is,” Gabe says slowly. “Other parts . . . maybe not so much.”
That makes me smile. “Present company included,” I echo, teasing.
Gabe chuffs a laugh. “I mean, to start with, yeah.”
We stand there side by side for another long minute. Probably I should go back inside. From out here the noise of the bar is completely inaudible, like we’re the only two people left in town; a cat—the mean-looking creature who was sitting on the counter earlier or another one altogether, I’m not sure—darts underneath a streetlight half a block away. Finally I clear my throat. “Anyway,” I say, too loudly. “How are you? How’s school stuff?”
9 Days and 9 Nights Page 11