I stop by French Roast the next morning on the way back from my run—awkward or not, I need to talk to somebody about what’s going on here, and Imogen’s possibly the only girl in all of Star Lake who isn’t secretly applauding Julia for dishing out exactly what I deserve. I’m fully intending to throw myself on her mercy, but when I burst through the doors of the coffee shop I find her taking her break at one of the long wooden tables, sitting across from Tess with a Celtic cross spread of tarot cards laid out between them.
My first instinct is to turn around and walk right back out, my skin going hot inside my T-shirt. I haven’t seen Tess since the night of the party, when I took off like my hair was engulfed in flames—our shifts hardly ever overlap, they won’t until the Lodge opens for real, and the few mornings I’ve noticed her on the schedule I’ve hidden out in the office like a political dissident seeking asylum. Beyond the shock of locking eyes with Patrick was the sting of seeing him with his new girlfriend. Tess is living, breathing proof I can’t fix what I broke.
“Hi, Molly,” Tess calls before I can make a break for it, obviously raised with better manners than I was. She’s wearing a big pair of tortoiseshell glasses and picking at a fruit cup, peering down at the cards as Imogen flips them over.
Imogen looks up guiltily as I approach, offering a little wave. I’m not really doing that anymore, I think of her saying. What she meant was she wasn’t going to do it for me.
“Hi, guys.” I offer a watery, pulpy smile and glance at the major arcana cards laid out on the table—justice and judgment, temperance and strength—and wonder what question Tess wanted answered, if there’s anything she’s unsure of at all. I wonder what things are like between her and Patrick, if he tells her stupid jokes when she’s feeling worried. If he talks her back to sleep when she has bad dreams. I feel a fresh, familiar ache behind my rib cage, like re-tearing a muscle that never quite healed right. He’s moved on, I remind myself silently. Everyone has.
Except for me.
Patrick has a new girlfriend now. Imogen has a new best friend. Bristol was supposed to be this great fresh start, but the reality is I was a ghost there, too. I laid low. I did homework. I kept to myself. I thought of my time at boarding school like a jail sentence, and for the most part it suited me just fine.
More than two weeks at home now, though, and it occurs to me I’m still serving it out.
“I can do yours after this,” Imogen offers now, flipping over the Four of Cups and laying it down on the table—an olive branch, maybe, but I’m too exhausted and stung to reach out and take it. I shake my head and hold up my wallet. There’s no way I can tell her about Julia, I realize belatedly. I’ve got nobody to talk to here at all.
“I’ve gotta run,” I tell her, wanting to let the both of us off the hook—I lost her somehow, I was careless, same as I lost everything else I used to have. I don’t need the cards to shine a light on things for me. I already know I’m the fool.
Day 17
The next day Gabe comes by the Lodge with two cups of coffee and the hoodie I left at the party. “Here you go, Cinderella,” he announces. Fabian, who darted into Penn’s office with the giddy announcement that a boy was here to see me, peers at us openly from behind one of the fraying brocade sofas in the lobby.
“Cinderella left her shoe,” I inform Gabe, turning Fabian around by the shoulders and sending him off to find his sister with a pat between the skinny wings of his shoulder blades. “Not her grotty track sweatshirt from freshman year.”
Gabe grins. “I’m familiar with the fairy tale, thank you.”
“Thank you,” I correct. “For picking it up and everything.” I busy myself with the plastic lid on the coffee cup, taking way longer than I need to pull it back. I know in theory there’s no reason to feel embarrassed in front of Gabe—if I’m a slut, he’s a slut, right?—but all the piss and vinegar that had me agreeing to come to the party to begin with feels like it’s been bleached out by everything that’s happened in the last few days, like there’s no fight left inside me at all. Nobody’s putting condoms in Gabe’s locker, I don’t think.
“Hey, there.” As if he can read my thoughts, Gabe takes a step toward me, ducking his face to meet my gaze. “We’re on the same team, remember? You and me.” He scrubs at his neck, shakes his head a little. “Look, I know you caught the brunt of the bullshit when everything hit the fan, and I should have said something way before now. It’s messed up that I didn’t. But you and me, this summer and whenever else? We’re on the same team.”
That makes me smile in spite of myself, a warm, pleased flush. I try to remember the last time I had anybody else on my team, and can’t. Track, maybe. Maybe track. “We are, huh?” I tease, lips twisting. “Partners in shame and degradation?”
“Exactly.” Gabe laughs low and easy. I can’t tell if stuff genuinely rolls off his back like a duck in the lake, or if maybe he’s just a born politician, a master of spin and PR. Patrick’s never been like that—everything he feels is always written across his face like a sign on the highway, no secrets to suss out there at all. It’s one of my favorite things about him, or it was.
“So, hey,” Gabe says now, perching comfortably on the edge of the sofa like he hangs out here every day of his life. “In the spirit of being dirty rotten scoundrels, what do you say we get out of here, huh? Go for a drive?”
“Gabe.” I shake my head even as I’m still smiling back at him, the crooked grin I’m starting to realize is possibly more than just friendly on his part. Right away I want to say yes just as much as I need to say no. “I’m working.”
Gabe raises his eyebrows. “You must get off sometime, right?”