Gabe doesn’t blink. “Hey, hey,” he says easily, getting his arms around me and squeezing. He smells like farmer’s market bar soap and clothes dried on the line. “Molly Barlow, why you crying?”
“I’m not,” I protest, even as I blatantly get snot all over the front of his T-shirt. I pull back and wipe my eyes, shaking my head. “Oh my God, I’m not, I’m sorry. That’s embarrassing. Hi.”
Gabe keeps smiling, even if he does look a little surprised. “Hey,” he says, reaching out and swiping at my cheek with the heel of his hand. “So, you know, welcome back, how have you been, I see you’re enjoying your return to the warm bosom of Star Lake.”
“Uh-huh.” I sniffle once and pull it together, mostly—God, I didn’t realize I was so hard up for a friendly face, it’s ridiculous. Or, okay, I did, but I didn’t think I’d lose it quite so hard at the sight of one. “It’s been awesome.” I reach into the open window of the Passat and hand him the crumpled-up take-out menu. “For example, here is my homecoming card from your sister.”
Gabe smoothes it out and looks at it, then nods. “Weird,” he says, calm as the surface of the lake in the middle of the night. “She put the same one on my car this morning.”
My eyes widen. “Really?”
“No,” Gabe says, grinning when I make a face. Then his eyes go dark. “Seriously, though, are you okay? That’s, like, pretty fucked up and horrifying of her, actually.”
I sigh and roll my eyes—at myself or at the situation, at the gut-wrenching absurdity of the mess I made. “It’s—whatever,” I tell him, trying to sound cool or above it or something. “I’m fine. It is what it is.”
“It feels unfair, though, right?” Gabe says. “I mean, if you’re a dirty slut, then I’m a dirty slut.”
I laugh. I can’t help it, even though it feels colossally weird to hear him say it out loud. We never talked about it once after it happened, not even when the book—and the article—came out and the world came crashing down around my ears. Could be enough time has passed that it doesn’t feel like a big deal to him anymore, although apparently he’s the only one. God knows it still feels like a big deal to me. “You definitely are,” I agree, then watch as he balls up the menu and tosses it over his shoulder, missing the trash can next to the pump by a distance of roughly seven feet. “That’s littering,” I tell him, smirking a little.
“Add it to the list,” Gabe says, apparently unconcerned about this or any other lapses in good citizenship. He was student council president when he was a senior. Patrick and Julia and I hung all his campaign posters at school. “Look, people are assholes. My sister is an asshole. And my brother—” He breaks off, shrugging. His shaggy brown hair curls down over his ears, a lighter honey-molasses color than his brother’s and sister’s. Patrick’s hair is almost black. “Well, my brother is my brother, but anyway, he’s not here. What are you doing, are you working, what?”
“I—nothing yet,” I confess, feeling suddenly embarrassed at how reclusive I’ve been, humiliated that there’s virtually nobody here who wants to see me. Gabe’s had a million friends as long as I’ve known him. “Hiding, mostly.”
Gabe nods at that. But then: “Think you’ll be hiding tomorrow, too?”
I remember once, when I was ten or eleven, that I stepped on a piece of glass down by the lake, and Gabe carried me all the way home piggyback. I remember that we lied to Patrick for an entire year. My whole face has that clogged, bloated post-cry feeling, like there’s something made of cotton shoved up into my brain. “I don’t know,” I say eventually, cautious, intrigued in spite of myself—maybe it’s just the constant ache of loneliness, but running into Gabe makes me feel like something’s about to happen, a bend in a dusty road. “Probably. Why?”
Gabe grins down at me like a master of ceremonies, like someone who suspects I need a little anticipation in my life and wants to deliver. “Pick you up at eight,” is all he says.
Day 5
Gabe’s right on time, two quick taps on the horn of his beat-up station wagon to let me know he’s outside. I hurry down the stairs faster than I’ve done much of anything since I’ve been here, the noisy clunk of my boots on the hardwood. My hair’s long and loose down my back.
“You going out?” my mom calls from her office. She sounds surprised—fair enough, I guess, since my social circle up until now has pretty much consisted of Vita, Oscar, and the little Netflix robot that recommends stuff based on what you’ve already watched. “Who with?”
I almost don’t even tell her—the urge to lie like a reflex, to keep myself from winding up fodder for Oprah’s Book Club one more time. Then I decide I don’t care. “With Gabe,” I announce, my voice like a challenge. I don’t wait for her response before I walk out the door.
He’s idling in the driveway with Bob Dylan in the CD player, low and clanging and familiar. His parents were both giant hippies—Chuck wore his hair to his shoulders until Patrick and Julia were five—and we both grew up listening to that kind of stuff on the stereo in his house. “Hey, stranger,” he says as I climb into the passenger seat, in a voice like I’m not one at all. “Wreck any homes today?”