“Patrick wouldn’t care,” I assure her, peeling a loose strand of hair off her forehead, although I actually get her impulse to want to hide it from him. I know from experience he’s not the easiest person to admit a screwup to. “He’d just want to make sure you’re okay. But no, of course I won’t. You wanna go lie down?”
“I need water,” Tess says, so I nod and lead her by the hand back to where our stuff is, digging around until I find my big plastic Nalgene bottle. “Drink it slow,” I tell her, not wanting her to get sick again. Tess nods obediently and glugs it down, then pretty much crawls into her tent before passing out fully clothed on top of Patrick’s sleeping bag. I refill the water bottle and stick it in there beside her for later. Her hangover is going to hurt.
I head back across the field to find Gabe, but Patrick’s the first Donnelly I come upon, sitting by the low-burning embers of the campfire and staring into the flames like he’s trying to solve a mystery, the light flickering over his serious face. His dad used to build us fires just like this one in the backyard of the farmhouse, tell us long, involved stories before we fell asleep. We’d pass out side by side in our sleeping bags. We sat side by side at Chuck’s wake.
I don’t know if he sees me or just senses me lurking, but after a moment Patrick turns and raises his hand to wave. I stand there for a minute, looking at him and remembering, wondering what would happen if I walked over and sat down beside him.
Wondering what would happen if I leaned in and kissed him good night.
God. What is my malfunction? I just held his girlfriend’s hair back while she puked, for Pete’s sake. I shake my head once to clear it, embarrassed. I raise one cautious hand and wave back.
Day 35
Tess takes it easy the next day, predictably, mostly prone in a nest of sleeping bags with a Stephen King book and a bag of pretzels, which is the closest thing to saltines that anybody brought. The rest of us hike until our blisters are bleeding, till it feels like the mountains are having their way with all of us: Patrick has a run-in with some poison sumac. Imogen gets stung by a wasp. My sunburn chafes against my clothes until I’m swearing to anyone who’ll listen that I’m done with outdoor activities forever. “I mean it,” I tell Imogen, hobbling along back down the mountain, hair falling out of its messy bun. “As soon as we get home I’m going to set up shop in a hermetically sealed bubble and never come out again.”
“Sounds like a great plan!” Julia calls brightly, coming up behind us. Imogen and I look at each other wide-eyed for a moment before bursting into wild, slaphappy giggles.
“That Julia,” I gasp, practically doubled over with laughter. It’s been a long time since Imogen and I cracked up like this, since before I left, definitely. I don’t know if the two of us are just exhausted or what, but it almost makes the burn worth it. “You can always count on her.”
Tess has perked up enough by the time we get back that she helps Patrick grill burgers and hot dogs over the campfire, lining the buns up along the table in neat, symmetrical rows. “Feel better?” I ask when I come over to grab a pair for me and Gabe, along with one of the knock-you-naked brownies Imogen made. Tess nods quickly, tilting her head to accept a kiss on the cheek from Patrick that might or might not be for my benefit, it’s impossible to tell.
“Good,” I say brightly, paper plate in each hand, feeling my face do a weird thing and willing it not to. You’re welcome, I think nastily. “I’m glad.”
I tell myself there’s nothing to feel strange about all of a sudden, that I’m cranky and uncomfortable because of my sunburn and sleeping on the ground for a third night in a row. But later on I’m coming back from the campground bathroom holding my toothbrush in one hand and rubbing my opposite arm with the other—it’s chilly this high in the mountains, goose bumps blooming up and down my limbs—when I spy Patrick holding the flap of the tent open for Tess so she can climb on in ahead of him. I can’t hear what he says to her, but I hear her full-bodied laugh in response, muffled as Patrick zips the door shut. It’s the same tent Chuck set up for us behind the farmhouse summer after summer when we were kids. Inside, I know it smells like mothballs and dirt.
I breathe in sharply, hit all at once with this weird, strong instinct to scream out Stop, like seeing someone about to step in front of an oncoming car or put their hand down on a hot burner. Like I’m trying to stave off something awful and disastrous—only I’m the one about to get hurt.
God. I actually shake my head as I turn purposefully back toward the tent I’m sharing with Gabe. I don’t know how to make myself quit feeling like this. Of course I knew the two of them were sharing a tent, of course the various implications of that fact had occurred to me—and, I guess, so had the fact that those various implications were irrelevant as long as Tess was puking her guts out.
Gabe reaches for me almost as soon as I’m inside, one hand in mine and tugging me down onto the soft pile of our sleeping bags, rucking my practical tank top up over my head. “This is some sunburn, Molly Barlow,” he murmurs, looking at me in the dim moonlight shining in through the vent in the ceiling. He presses his mouth against a red place on my shoulder, another one near my hip where yesterday’s shirt rode up as I slept. “That hurt?”
Tess is thinner than me, I think meanly. She’s probably better-looking with her clothes off than I am, she’s probably—
Stop it.