I meet up with Patrick again the following morning; it’s easier to keep up with him than it was last time, the rhythmic thud of rubber on earth and the breath steady in and out of my lungs. We’re halfway around the lake when Patrick stops cold.
“I was trying not to lose you,” he says suddenly, and from the tone in his voice I know he’s been thinking about it for longer than since we started this run. “That’s why I was such a dick about Bristol. I was trying not to lose you.” He shakes his head. Then, before I can rub two wits together: “But I lost you anyway.”
“You didn’t,” I blurt, fast and immediate like I think I’m on Family Feud. I’m breathing hard, from the run or from something else. “You didn’t lose me, I’m right here, I—”
“Mols.” Patrick screws up his face a bit, like, It’s me, please cut the crap. “You moved all the way across the country to get away, you know? And now you date my damn brother.” He scrubs a hand through his curly hair. “That’s a thing I knew, too, not for nothing. That he liked you. He liked you for a long time.”
I blink. I think of what Gabe said at Knights of Columbus, that he’d thought about me on the Ferris wheel. “You did?”
Patrick shrugs his broad shoulders, rolls his storm-gray eyes. “Everybody knew,” he says.
“I didn’t.”
“Yeah.” He glances out at the lake, back at me, out at the lake again. “I know. And I didn’t want you to find out.”
“Why?”
Patrick lets out a breath. “Trying to stave off the inevitable, I guess. I don’t know.” He sounds annoyed that I’m making him talk about it, like he’s not the one who brought it up to begin with. “But Gabe’s Gabe.”
“What does that mean, ‘Gabe’s Gabe’?” I ask, although I already kind of know what Patrick’s getting at. Probably if I was smart I wouldn’t push.
“Molly—” Patrick breaks off, irritated. It’s humid today, and his tan skin is damp with perspiration. He’s standing so close I can feel the heat. “I don’t know. Forget it. Can we just go?”
Did you think I wouldn’t want you if I knew I could have your brother? I want to ask him. Did you worry I was settling for second best? “Talk to me,” I prod him. “Whatever else happened, you used to be able to talk to me.”
“I used to be able to do a lot of things,” Patrick snaps, a flash of temper. “Can you leave it?”
“No!” I exclaim. It feels like we’re tossing a ball back and forth, like Hot Potato, like neither one of us wants to be the one left holding it when it explodes. I bailed on coffee with Imogen to come here. I still haven’t told Gabe what’s going on. “Tell me.” Then, when he doesn’t answer: “Patrick.”
“Mols.” Patrick’s eyes are darker than I’ve ever seen them, that fleck in the iris like the North Star. “Let it go, okay?”
Things get weirdly quiet then, the trees and the lake and how empty it is out here, no tourists or anyone to see. Patrick’s face is tipped down close to mine. He wants to kiss me, I can tell he does, both of us standing here practically panting. He wants to kiss me so, so bad.
I know because I want to kiss him, too.
“We should go,” Patrick says, shaking his head and turning away from me. He takes off so fast I lose my breath.
Day 51
Tess calls early the next morning—an actual phone call, not just a text, so I fish my phone out of my pocket with the tips of two wet fingers: One of the dishwashers at the Lodge broke overnight and flooded half the kitchen, so it’s kind of an all-hands-on-deck situation. “Hey,” I tell her, wedging the skinny phone uncomfortably between my ear and my shoulder and dunking some coffee cups in the first basin of the three-bay sink. A wet towel squelches under my feet. “Are you here?”
“No,” Tess tells me. “I’m supposed to be on at noon, but I don’t think I can come.”
“Okay,” I say slowly. Something in her voice doesn’t sound right. I glance across the kitchen at Jay, who’s working on some scrambled eggs for the breakfast buffet. “You sick?”
“Patrick broke up with me.”
I freeze where I’m standing, two hands in the sudsy water like I’m aiming to start the second flood of the day, enough water to sweep the whole Lodge out into the lake. A low, nauseated chill swoops through my gut, my brain pinging out in a hundred different directions.
Patrick broke up with her.
“Oh my God,” I manage finally, the first coherent thought I manage to put together being that I need to act normal here, and the second being that there’s no reason for me to feel one way or another, beyond the fact that Patrick and Tess are my friends. I’m not allowed to be invested. I’m definitely not allowed to be so immediately, physically relieved. “Are you okay?”
“I—yeah. No. I don’t—” Tess breaks off. “I’m sorry, it’s totally weird that I’m calling you, I just figured maybe you could tell Penn for me.” Another pause. “I mean, that’s not even totally true, I just kind of wanted to talk to you about it, you know? Since you—” She stops again. “Sorry.”
“Since I’m also somebody who’s been dumped by Patrick Donnelly?” I supply, hoping if I can kid around about it Tess won’t guess at the taste of my heart pulsing at the back of my mouth, thick and coppery. I think of yesterday on the trail with Patrick, the weird, charged, electrical moment that passed between us.
Tess is laughing a little, this phlegmy, snotty sound like she’s been crying. “Yeah,” she admits. “I guess that’s why.”