Day 8
I wake with a start the next morning, the knowledge of something undone humming like a power grid deep inside in my bones. When I look over Ian is still asleep beside me, limbs sprawled in all different directions and his face creased from a kink in the pillow. I slide out of bed as quietly as I can.
The house is calm and quiet, morning sun spilled in yellow-white puddles on the honey-warm hardwood floor. Gabe and Sadie are already gone, their water glasses rinsed on the drainboard and their sheets in a heap on top of the washing machine in the alcove off the kitchen. I catch sight of a note beside the coffeemaker in Sadie’s handwriting: Didn’t want to wake you up to say good-bye! Thanks SO MUCH for everything.
I pick up my phone, click the icon for my travel app. We’re supposed to fly back to Boston this afternoon; I’m supposed to spend the week before school starts with Ian in his Fenway apartment, watching old movies and reading in the park and eating late-night dollar slices from the pizza place downstairs. We were going to ride to the end of the Orange Line and go to the Arboretum. We were going to go to the beach.
Instead I switch my ticket to a flight to New York, so I can’t chicken out at the last second. I text my mom to let her know I’ve changed my plans. I make two careful cups of coffee in the fancy machine, adding milk and half a sugar to Ian’s the way I know he likes it. Then I gather my courage and climb the stairs to the second floor.
“Hi,” I say, sitting down on the edge of the mattress and setting the cups on the nightstand. It occurs to me, with a flicker of dark hilarity, that I’ve never actually broken up with somebody before. Every other romantic relationship of my life has imploded in the middle of a screaming fight about my own infidelity, my own failures, my own wrongness; this feels oddly civilized even as I think I’d do anything in the world to avoid it. I wonder if I might actually prefer the other way. “I have to tell you something, and you’re not going to like it.”
Ian blinks awake. “Good morning to you too,” he says sleepily. He sits up, scritching a hand through his bedhead. “What’s wrong?”
“I think we have to break up,” I blurt.
For a second Ian just looks at me, confused and bleary. Then he frowns. “What?” he says. “Why?”
I open my mouth, then close it again, weirdly embarrassed. God, I should have at least waited until he was up and dressed. Already I’m doing this all wrong. “I’m sorry,” I say, biting my lip the moment it starts to tremble. It doesn’t seem fair to cry.
“Is this because of the other night?” Ian asks. He’s leaning forward, periodically jamming the heels of his hands into his eyes and rubbing vigorously. I didn’t even let him pee first. “I was a dick the other night, Molly, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have given you a hard time like that.”
“No, it’s not about the other night,” I tell him, voice as steady as I can manage. “Or maybe it is, but not the way you think. I mean, yes, the other night was kind of fucked up. But we could have figured it out, I think, or maybe it wouldn’t even have been an issue to begin with if everything else between you and me felt . . .” I trail off, and then finally I admit it. “Right.”
“Right?” Ian repeats, his face sharpening suddenly with hurt and surprise. “I mean, I guess I didn’t realize it felt wrong to you this entire time.”
I shake my head quickly. “No, it’s not that, I just—” I break off. “Don’t you think it says something that neither one of us felt like we could be completely honest with each other?” I ask him. “Like, that we got this far into it before we started telling the truth?”
“I tried, Molly.” Ian’s kind eyes flash then, all anger and frustration. “Don’t you think I tried? I’ve spent the last eight months doing everything I can think of to try and get you to open up to me, and even after the other day I know there’s still stuff about yourself you’re never going to talk about. And I don’t know how to be the kind of person you can tell.”
“You’re right,” I tell him honestly. “And that’s on me.”
Ian shakes his head. “But I don’t—why?”
I want to give him a neat, tidy answer. But all I’ve got left is the truth. “I just—when we met last year, I was trying so hard to re-create myself, you know? And you liking me—liking this new version of me, even if it wasn’t always who I actually was—was, like, proof that it was working. I didn’t want to wreck that.” I bite my lip. “I honestly thought eventually it would start to feel normal and natural and like something I didn’t constantly have to calculate for. But somehow it never totally did.”
Ian frowns. “So being my girlfriend—that was fake?”
“No,” I tell him immediately, reaching my hand out and curling my fingers around his wrist, squeezing. “Not at all. I really care about you, Ian. I’ve loved being your girlfriend. I wanted to be your girlfriend. I just mean I think there was a part of me that felt like if you knew everything about me, warts and all, you’d run away like your hair was on fire.”
Ian pulls away. “You keep saying that,” he points out, sounding frustrated. “But when did I ever make you think I wouldn’t like your warts?”
I hesitate at that, not sure how to answer. After all, he has a point. But if I’ve learned anything this week, it’s that I’ve been holding on to the past a lot more tightly than I realized. Living in total opposition to something is just a different way of not getting over it.
“You’re right,” I tell him. “You never gave me a reason to think the person I used to be was so terrible. But I guess a lot of other people did.” I glance down, remembering, then—finally, finally—letting it go. “I’m really sorry, Ian.”
“I still don’t get why this is something we have to break up over,” he insists, stubborn. “Like, let’s be up-front with each other from now on, that’s all. Let’s see how it goes. There’s no reason to just throw our whole relationship away.”
I waver for a moment, letting myself picture it: going back to Boston and papering over everything that’s happened, convincing ourselves that what we have together is enough. It’s tempting, that much is undeniable. But in my gut I know it wouldn’t be fair to either one of us. “I think maybe it’s too late for that,” I tell him quietly.
Ian gazes at me for another long moment. Finally he sighs. “Yeah, Molly,” he says, shaking his sandy head sadly. “I guess it is.”
Ian calls me a car in a gesture of courtliness so simple and straightforward it almost breaks my heart. I stand by the door like a little kid waiting for a ride to camp, listening to him speak perfect French into the receiver.
“Thank you for this,” I say as the car pulls into the driveway, two neat taps on the horn to let me know it’s arrived. Outside the sun is a ripe, dripping yellow, the sky a million brilliant shades beyond blue. “Not just for the cab, I mean. But for all of it.”
“Yeah,” Ian says, shrugging a little. “Of course.” He takes half a step in my direction, then hesitates like he isn’t sure if he ought to hug me or not. Finally he lifts his hand in an awkward wave. “Bye, Molly.”
I smile faintly and press my palm against his, lacing our fingers together long enough to squeeze in gratitude. I pull him a little closer, plant a kiss on the back of his hand. “Bye, Ian.”
Day 9
One Week Later
I’m curled on a lounge chair in the lush green backyard of my mom’s house in Star Lake when the back door creaks open. “Whatcha reading now?” she calls, padding down the steps from the deck with a massive coffee mug in one hand. She’s wearing ripped jeans and one of her trademark long, thin cardigans, her blond hair in waves down past her shoulders.
I hold it up for her inspection as she crosses the late-summer grass—a fat paperback pinched from the overflowing bookshelves in our living room, a voluminous and wide-ranging cache that I never really paid much attention to until this week. It occurs to me to wonder if that will be the big takeaway from my relationship with Ian, this newfound ability to lose myself in stories—to find
myself less alone there, to find myself forgiven. I want to thank him for that, though it occurs to me that now probably isn’t the time.
My mom takes the book from my hand and glances at the back before returning it with a satisfied nod. “I’m going to try and not take it as a personal failing that it took you twenty years to discover you like to read,” she says, lips twisting. “What is that, your fourth book this week?”
“Fifth,” I confess, settling back down into the lounge chair and tilting my face up toward the sunshine. I’ve spent the week since I got back from Paris almost as if this entire year had never happened at all, holed up at the house while my mom’s cranky cat, Vita, wound wary circles around my ankles and industriously kneaded a pillow next to my head. Jet lag, I assured my mom when she periodically popped her head into my bedroom that first morning, but of course it was more than that; in the past she might have taken me at my word, closed the door and left me to my own mopey devices, but this time she sat down on the mattress beside me.
“Hey,” she said, reaching out and straightening the sleeve of my T-shirt. “We don’t do that anymore, remember? You don’t have to tell me what’s going on if you don’t want to. But you also don’t have to lie.”
I hesitated for a moment, old suspicions creaking like a medieval suit of armor, but in my heart I knew she was right. I opened my mouth to tell her everything. “I broke up with Ian” was as far as I got before I burst into tears.
I cried for a long time with my head on my mom’s shoulder, leaving dark spots on her delicate silk shirt—for what I could have had with Ian if I’d trusted either one of us enough to be myself around him. For whatever I might have had with Gabe. Finally I sat up on the mattress, wiping my wet, puffy face with the back of my hand. “You can’t write a book about any of this, you realize,” I warned her, sniffling wetly. “No matter how blocked you ever get.”
My mom made a face at that, rueful. “I deserved that,” she admitted wryly, then gathered me up one more time.
Now, a week later, she squeezes my knee and boosts herself up off the lounge chair, takes a sip of her coffee. “Corina is driving up from the city tonight to work on some marketing strategies for the new book,” she tells me. “I thought we could go have dinner at the Lodge, if you’re interested.”
I nod, curious. “That sounds great.” Then: “Mom,” I blurt, before I can talk myself out of it. “Are you and Corina . . .” I trail off, not exactly sure how to continue.
My mom raises her sharp eyebrows. “Are Corina and I—” She stops short, and I think she’s about to play dumb or deny it, or that maybe I really do have it wrong, but instead she tips her head to the side and looks at me for a long moment. “Would that bother you?” she asks. “If we were?”
I laugh a little, surprised. “No,” I tell her, shaking my head. “Of course not.”
Her eyes narrow. “Really?” she asks quietly, and it’s the most vulnerable I’ve ever heard her sound. It occurs to me that all of us have secrets. It occurs to me that all of us are afraid.
“Mom!” I scramble up off the lounge chair, my book hitting the grass with a crinkly flop; I wrap my hands around her wrists, her coffee sloshing a bit. “Not at all. I want you to have someone, you know? I want you to be happy.”
She flushes at that, pretty and pleased and young-looking. “All right,” she says, gently shaking me off and making a bit of a face like she’s the teenager and I’m the mom, like I’m embarrassing her. “Then yes, to answer your question. We’ve been seeing each other for a few months.”
“That’s amazing,” I tell her, sitting back down on the lounge chair. “Seriously. I’m really glad.”
“Well,” she says, a little awkwardly. “I’m really glad, too.” She clears her throat then, picking my book up and flicking at the cover with one painted fingernail. “That one ends happy,” she tells me, then heads back across the grass toward the house.
That afternoon I lace up my sneakers and go for a long, sweaty run, perspiration dripping down my backbone and my sneakers hitting the hard-packed dirt with a satisfying thud as I loop the lake. I find myself smiling at moms with baby strollers and raising my hand to wave at tourists in kayaks, weirdly cheerful: I’ve spent so much of my time in this town hiding. It’s nice to feel the sun on my face.
I take my old familiar route from last summer, along the trail that hugs the water and winds down past the Star Lake Lodge, the inn where I worked last year. I stopped by and saw my old boss, Penn, and her kids earlier this week, chasing sweet, mischievous Fabian through the lobby and lying on the floor of the office to color with Desi, who was completely silent for the entirety of last summer but chattered a blue streak as she dragged a crayon across the page with one chubby fist.
“Since when do you talk so much?” I teased her, and she looked at me like I was demented.
“Um, since always?” she asked with exquisite five-year-old exasperation, and dug another crayon out of the box.
Now I turn down the road that leads into town, passing French Roast and the tiny bookstore with its perpetual stack of Driftwood paperbacks in the window. The magazine rack outside is full of tourist-friendly gossip rags: SABS HITS REHAB, the headlines scream. Well, I think with a combination of sadness and admiration. Good for her. Probably both of us could stand another fresh start.
I keep going, down past Bunchie’s Diner and the new, cursed juice place, but split off before I hit the block that houses Donnelly’s Pizza. Gabe said Patrick was home for the summer, but even after all this time I can’t imagine that running into me would be anything close to a kuddelmuddel for him. I hope he’s happy, though, whatever it is he’s up to. And I like to think he’d hope the same for me.
I’m starting to slow down when my phone dings in my pocket with a text from Roisin: Any requests from Costco? she wants to know. I’m here w my mom and she’s buying us the whole store for the apartment.
I grin down at the screen: I’m headed back to Boston in a couple of days, and the closer it gets the more excited I find myself—for my very own campus apartment and long nights of bingeing sexy time-travel shows, yeah, but also to settle into myself again, to see who I might actually be now that I don’t have to work so hard at being perfect. It’s corny, maybe, but it kind of feels like Roisin isn’t the only one I haven’t seen in a while.
Nope, I promise, tucking my phone into my pocket and turning my face up toward the sunshine, heading for home. Got everything I need.
That afternoon I’m rinsing a coffee cup at the kitchen sink, the light spilling in warm and dappled through the window, when Vita lets out a sudden, affronted hiss; I jump as she darts from between my ankles, her patchy fur standing on end as she charges the back door. I turn around and gasp as a startled, high-pitched bark splits the silence: on the other side of the screen sits a tiny, wrinkly-faced beagle puppy.
And there, holding the leash, is Gabe.
“Hey, Molly Barlow,” he says, raising his free hand in a greeting. He’s wearing frayed khaki shorts and a soft-looking T-shirt, his face scrubbed clean and smooth. The bridge of his nose is faintly pink from the sun. “I was hoping you’d still be here.”
I blink as Vita barrels toward the dining room in outrage, her angry paws thumping a tattoo against the hardwood. “Um, yeah,” I say slowly, my head falling to one side as I stare at him across the tidy kitchen. It feels like I’m seeing an apparition. It feels like I’m seeing a ghost. “I’m still here.”
“I see that.” Gabe smiles. “Hi.”
“Hi.” I motion to the puppy, who’s standing up on four short, pudgy legs now, turning in snuffly circles on the porch. “Who’s this?”
“This is Ellie.” Gabe tugs her leash to get her attention, just gently; then, by way of explanation: “My mom got lonely.”
“I know the feeling,” I say, and Gabe nods.
“I got all the way back to Indiana,” he confesses. He jams his hands deep into his pockets, Ellie’s leash still looped around one wris
t. “I got all moved in, I got my schedule and all that. But I couldn’t do it.”
I stare at him for a moment, heartbroken and hopeful. I wonder if this is our lot, mine and Gabe’s, to surprise each other over and over until the very end of the world. “Do you want to come in?” I finally ask.
“Oh!” he says, like he’d forgotten he was standing out there. “Um. Yeah.”
He opens the screen door, stepping into the kitchen and letting the leash go. Ellie runs over to Vita’s water bowl and takes a few loud, thirsty slurps. Gabe and I watch her for a moment, neither one of us saying anything; suddenly some spell has been broken between us, awkwardness settling down like a fine, brackish mist. I clear my throat. Gabe scratches his collarbone. Neither one of us looks at each other. We’re circling something, clearly, but it feels like neither one of us knows how to cross that final stretch.
“So what are you going to do instead?” I ask finally, my voice oddly jovial. Suddenly I don’t know what to do with my hands. I clap them together for safekeeping, rocking back on my heels in a nervous little dance.
Gabe lets out a quiet laugh. “I have no fucking idea,” he admits. He sits down with a heavy sigh at my mom’s antique kitchen table, the polished wood knotted and scarred. “I was so busy trying to convince myself I wanted to be a doctor that I never really let myself think about anything else.” He leans back, rubbing a hand over the top of his dark, shorn head. “I don’t even like science.”
I hide a smile. “I know that about you, in fact.”
“You could have mentioned it,” he says with a grimace.
“Seriously?” My eyebrows crawl.
Gabe holds his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay,” he concedes, lips twisting. “I guess you tried.” He lifts his face and looks at me then, with an expression like he’s about to dive into the deep end of the ocean. “I broke up with Sadie,” he says.
I try to keep my face neutral, but the knowledge hooks itself into my rib cage and pulls the bones wide—my whole heart exposed and vulnerable, like he could reach out and cup it in the palm of his hand. “Yeah?”
9 Days and 9 Nights Page 20