I was a girl with nothing more to my name than my name itself. If I were Della Jane, I wouldn’t want me dating her son either.
After awkward good-byes, I hurried into Gabe’s car, and I wasn’t surprised to see the tension had carried over. He sped out of the driveway without saying anything until we were almost to the edge of town.
“If you didn’t want to stay in with my parents, I totally get that,” he said finally. “But you didn’t have to leave. It’s not even seven yet.”
“I know, but I do need to get back. There’s a lot going on at the carnival,” I said, and that wasn’t completely a lie, and my mom would be happy that I was back so early.
“Like what?” Gabe asked, sounding exasperated. “You tell me hardly anything about your life and what’s going on. Like how you met both my parents.”
“I didn’t know they were your parents,” I corrected him icily. “They didn’t exactly introduce themselves and say, ‘Oh, by the way, in case you decide to date Gabe, I’m just letting you know that he’s my son.’”
Della Jane hadn’t even given me her last name—and while I had suspected that Julian might be related to him, there hadn’t really been an organic way to bring it up in the two minutes we’d spoken.
“Fair enough,” he allowed, and his hands relaxed slightly from how tight they’d been gripping the steering wheel. “But you’ve apparently been going on all these adventures around Caudry.” He sighed. “I know you don’t have to tell me every little thing about your life, but I just feel like you’re keeping so much from me, and I don’t know why.”
There wasn’t some big awful reason. I just hadn’t wanted to tell him about going to the police station to try to report that my friend may or may not be missing, or about visiting a former coworker and probable drug addict who believed that this town had a supernatural pall over it.
Neither of these stories was glamorous or normal or the kind of thing you tell someone on a first date.
We’d reached the carnival parking lot, and he pulled over as rain pattered down on the Mustang. He turned to look at me, waiting for me to explain myself or just say anything.
I stared down at my hands, blinking back tears, and finally said, “I was embarrassed, okay?”
“Embarrassed?” Gabe reached out and took my hands in his. “You don’t have to be embarrassed with me. If I’ve done anything to make you feel ashamed about any part of your life—”
“You don’t get it.” I shook my head. “We only have a week together, so I just wanted to keep us nice and shiny and separate from all the crap in my life that never quite works.”
He didn’t say anything for a minute. He just held my hand, rubbing the back of it with his thumb, and stared down at his lap.
“I know exactly what you’re talking about,” he said at length. “I’ve done the same thing before.” He lifted his eyes to meet mine. “But I don’t want to do that with you. I don’t want to keep you separate from anything.”
I closed my eyes, trying to steel myself from the depth of his words and the pain they brought with them. Here was someone asking me to share my life with him, and I couldn’t.
“Gabe, you’re not listening.” I opened my eyes. “I’m not your girlfriend.” My voice cracked, but I kept going. “I will never be your girlfriend. A week just isn’t enough time.”
“It’s actually ten days,” he corrected me softly.
“I have to go.” I pulled my hand away from his and opened the car door.
“Mara, wait,” he said, but I was already out the door. He got out too, and I didn’t want him following me into the carnival, so I stopped. “When will I see you again?”
“I don’t know.” I started backing away. “I’ll let you know.”
“How? You don’t have a phone.”
“I know where you live. I’ll find you when I’m ready,” I replied simply, and I hoped that that would satisfy him because I couldn’t keep having this conversation. I turned and jogged away, and at least the rain helped mask my tears.
35. gambit
“Can you grab me one too?” I asked Hutch as he pulled a beer out of the fridge in the trailer he shared with Luka.
Luka was sitting across from me in the dinette, and he gave me a look over his cards. “That’s your second beer tonight, and you’re not usually a drinker.”
We’d finished taking down the carnival for the night, and Roxie, Tim, Luka, Hutch, and I were all relaxing over a game of poker and a few beers. We used tokens from the digger crane games on the midway as poker chips, each with a theoretical value of a penny, though we rarely actually enforced payment.
“Your date with Gabe must’ve gone really bad,” Roxie commented as Hutch handed me a beer. She sat beside me in the booth, playing with her tokens. “Especially considering you won’t even talk about it.”