Gabe asks me over for dinner again the next evening—lasagna this time, a big pan of it baking in the oven, and Julia and me putting a salad together side by side at the kitchen counter, lettuce and tomatoes still gritty with the dirt from Connie’s garden.
“Know what I was thinking about?” Julia asks, rinsing the lettuce under the faucet and tossing it into the spinner. She’s wearing a few of Elizabeth’s bangles, I notice, the jingling sound as she moves. “Remember the Year of the Zucchini?”
“Oh God, I thought we agreed never to speak of that again.” I snort, knife clicking against the cutting board. The summer we were eleven Connie accidentally grew a giant bumper crop of the stuff, more than any sane person would ever want to eat in a lifetime. She put it in literally everything—normal stuff like soup and bread, but also chocolate chip cookies and once, hauntingly, this gross ice cream she tried to sneak past everyone, like somehow we wouldn’t notice. Finally, Chuck rounded up everything that was left and drove Patrick and Julia and I all out to dump the whole lot of it in the lake. “They used to serve it as a side dish at my boarding school all the time and I’d have to, like, avert my eyes when I passed by.”
“Did you like it?” Julia asks me, tossing some grated carrot into the salad bowl and raising her eyebrows. “Boarding school, I mean?”
I still can’t believe she’s talking to me like this, almost exactly like we used to. How many hours did we spend in this kitchen, back before I set the whole world on fire? “Look, Jules,” I tell her finally, opening the fridge just like I have a hundred times before, pulling the bottle of salad dressing off the door. “I’m not going to tell anybody about you and Elizabeth, okay? I meant that, I swear.”
“Okay . . .” Julia looks at me mildly. “So?”
“So you don’t have to be nice to me, okay? If that’s why you are. I mean, if you could not key my car again that’d be awesome, but . . . I don’t—” I break off, a year’s worth of loneliness and humiliation cresting like a wave inside my chest. “I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Julia shrugs then, hopping up on the counter, picking a chunk of tomato out of the bowl. “I don’t know what I’m doing, either, honestly,” she confesses. “I mean, yeah, part of it’s about Elizabeth, I guess. Look. What you did to my family makes me want to rip your face off, Molly. And I’m the one that brought you into it to begin with, and it’s like—” She stops, focusing on the middle distance for a second. I wonder if she’s remembering like I am, the equal parts Barbie and freeze tag that made up our days together when she and I were little, before Patrick and I became such an exclusive twosome. Then she shakes her head. “Anyway, it’s also pretty obvious that Gabe’s, like, on his butt for you.” Then, a moment later: “I’m sorry about your car.”
I huff a quiet laugh at that, shaking my head—it’s a thing, it doesn’t matter. I’m so tired of being at war. “So what does that mean?” I ask, setting the bottles down on the butcher block, careful. “We’re, like—friends again, or something?”
Julia considers me across the kitchen, snaps a bit of carrot between her incisors. “Not a chance,” she tells me flatly, and grins.
*
Patrick doesn’t turn up in time for dinner, and I’m grateful—the last thing I want is to sit across from him at the table, pretending there’s nothing there. I’ve been trying to forget what happened on Imogen’s birthday. I’ve been trying not to think about Patrick at all. I should have stopped him—obviously, I should have stopped him, right? What does it say about me that I didn’t? I glance at Julia, who’s reaching for seconds, think of her pink-highlighter scrawl:
dirty slut
Gabe hands me a hunk of garlic bread. Connie takes a sip of her wine.
*
It’s late when I kiss Gabe good night and head out to the driveway where my car’s parked, the constant trilling of crickets and the soggy earth sucking at my feet. I’m digging through my purse for my keys when I notice a light on in the barn at the back of the property, the telltale yellow glow of a camping lantern.
I mean to get into my car and drive off in the darkness.
I take a breath and cross the yard instead.
Sure enough, there’s Patrick hanging out on the ratty couch Connie always swore she was going to toss but never did after Chuck died, a mildewy plaid number we used to like to jump on when we were little kids. He’s wearing jeans and a hoodie—it’s chilly back here, damp air and the smell of wet leaves, the hard-packed dirt floor. He looks up when he hears me, expectant. He’s got a fat paperback in one hand.
It’s true that I was glad he wasn’t at the table for dinner.
But part of me was a little disappointed, too.
“When did you get home?” I ask him now, hovering in the doorway. The night wind blows gently, goose bumps blooming on my arms and legs, all my nerve endings coming online at once. I keep my distance on purpose, crossing my arms like a shield.
Patrick shrugs. “A little while ago.”
“Didn’t want to come inside?”
“Not particularly,” he says.
“Okay.” I exhale. I don’t know what I’m trying to get from him, exactly—we said we’d be friends, sure, but obviously that’s not happening anytime soon. I have no idea what we actually are.
“What are you reading?” I try, motioning to the book he’s got his index finger tucked in, marking his place. Patrick holds it up—it’s Stephen King, I see from my post by the doorway. The Stand. “What’s it about?” I ask.
“The end of the world,” Patrick says.
My lips twist. “Fitting.”
“Uh-huh.” Patrick shifts then, feet on the floor to make room for me beside him on the ratty plaid sofa. Against my better judgment, I cross the barn and perch on the arm of it, feet in my boots planted next to Patrick’s hip. He looks up at me and raises one elegant eyebrow, so arched that I laugh.