“I don’t,” I tell him, reaching my hand out across the tiny camper. “Come back here.”
Gabe doesn’t move for a second, head cocked to the side and his face a quiet question. “Okay,” he says after a moment, and laces his fingers through mine. He gets both knees up on the narrow mattress, hair falling across his forehead as he gazes down at me. “You sure?” he asks, barely more than a murmur. I look up at him in wonder, and I nod.
Day 85
Imogen’s art show is a roaring success, French Roast packed to bursting with friends and strangers alike: She pushed this event hard on Twitter and Instagram, put up fliers in every shop in town, and it paid off in a crazy, crazy way. Nearly everywhere I look I spy pieces with little red SOLD stickers on them, the collages and the brush script, the series of the lake in the fading light. A lot of people love Imogen: It’s a trip watching her make the rounds and talk to everyone, Handsome Jay’s arm slung casually around her shoulders. I’m proud of her.
“She’s good, huh?” Gabe asks me, in front of a line drawing of Tess in profile, her expression mysterious and wry. He’s right—it’s a gorgeous piece, the texture of her braid just right and the rich way the ink’s soaked into the thick paper. I can hardly do more than mumble my vague agreement, though, because just then the door to French Roast opens and Tess herself walks in, Patrick’s long fingers hooked through the belt loop on her jeans. He catches my eye for a moment, and stares.
I swallow. It’s the first time I’ve seen him since the awful night in my bedroom, both of us beaten to wreckage like ships—we’ve avoided each other carefully, orbiting around each other in our little social circle like magnets with repelling poles.
“What’s his problem?” Gabe asks, following my sight line to Patrick’s stony expression.
I shrug, turning purposefully away. I’m surprised he can’t smell it on me, the sweaty sheen of guilt coating my skin. “I dunno.”
“Deep existential angst no layman could understand,” Gabe diagnoses. “You want food?”
I don’t. It seems like it should be easy to get lost in the crowd milling around in the coffee shop, the big tables of pastries and drinks and so many things to look at and people to chat to, but instead from the moment Patrick turns up it feels like he and I are the only two people in here, this weird animal awareness of him no matter where he goes. He’s tracking me, too; I can tell he is, can feel his gaze on my body like a constant, low-grade hum. I stick close by Gabe’s side and try not to look.
Afterward there’s a party at Handsome Jay’s tiny apartment, all of us crammed onto couches and in his little galley kitchen, a fridge full of Bud Light and a few cheap bottles of liquor on the counter. I step over Jake and Annie, who are making out on the futon, and mix myself a vodka cranberry that’s mostly juice.
When I see Patrick duck out onto Jay’s balcony, I glance over my shoulder to make sure Gabe and Tess are both distracted before I follow. “I am a champion of the world,” Imogen is saying, holding up her beer bottle with a giggle in a tipsy toast to her own success. Tess clinks, and they both take long gulps.
Patrick’s leaning over the railing staring out at the patchy woods beside the apartment complex, a bunch of anemic-looking pine trees ringing the economy-filled parking lot. “Got a minute?” I ask quietly.
Patrick shrugs. “It’s a free country, I guess,” he tells me, which is a thing we used to tell each other real snotty-like when we were little. Then he sighs. “What do you want, Mols?” he asks, and he sounds so tired of me. “I mean it, what could you possibly want from me?”
He’s drunk, I can tell by the way his gaze is slightly slow to focus. Not exactly ideal conditions for a resolution, but I have to try anyway. I have to see if I can get this out.
“Look, will you talk to me for a second?” I ask him, still trying to keep my voice low—the party’s noisy inside the apartment, but the sliding door’s still open a bit. I feel like I’ve spent this whole entire summer worried someone’s going to overhear. “The summer’s almost done, you know? And I don’t—I love you, and I care about you, and I don’t want—”
“You love me, and you care about me.” Patrick snorts. “Okay.”
“I do!” I protest, stung by the dismissal. “Why the hell else would I have done what I did with you all summer, huh? Why would I have risked hurting Gabe like that—?”
“I don’t know; why did you do it last time?” Patrick demands. “Because you like the attention. That’s what it is with you. You’re a poison, you want—”
“Can you keep your voice down?” I hiss, but it’s too late—here’s Tess sliding the glass door all the way open, fresh beer in her hand.
“Everything okay out here?” she asks.
And Gabe on her heels: “What’s going on?” he asks.
Patrick focuses his reply on his brother: “Why don’t you ask your girlfriend?” he suggests nastily. “And while you’re at it, why don’t you ask her what the fuck else she’s been doing, the whole time she’s been fucking you?”
I freeze in total horror. Patrick moves to shove his way past us all. Gabe grabs his arm to keep him from going, though, and just like that Patrick whirls on him, his fist connecting with the side of Gabe’s face with a sick crack like something out of a movie. Tess screams. Gabe hits back. And I do the only thing I can think of, the only thing I’ve ever been any good at in my whole entire life:
I run.
Day 86
I can’t—
I didn’t mean—
Oh God oh God oh God
Day 87
Overnight it’s like something heavy and poisonous bursts open inside me, a cyst or a tumor: I wake up sobbing into the mattress, and I can’t for the breathing life of me stop.
I ruined everything; I destroyed it.
You’re a poison.