99 Days(18)

“Cardiologist,” he says immediately, then huffs out a wry little breath and shakes his head at the windshield. “I guess it’s kind of lame and obvious why, huh? ‘Ladies and gentlemen, this kid’s dad keeled over from a heart attack, behold as he works out all his issues in the world’s most obvious way.’”

I’ve never heard Gabe talk about his dad before. I don’t know why I always thought of Chuck’s death as Patrick’s loss more than anyone else’s—because I felt it from him most, I guess, because Patrick was my favorite Donnelly and so somewhere in the back of my unconscious head I’d always assumed he must be Chuck’s, also. That was the great thing about Chuck, though, why six hundred people showed up at his funeral: Everybody he knew thought they were his favorite. That was just the kind of person he was.

“Not the most obvious,” I tell Gabe now, tilting my head to look at him in profile. The sun makes dappled patterns on the smooth skin of his cheeks and forehead. His nose is very, very straight. “The most obvious would be joining a band.”

That makes him laugh. “True,” he allows, signaling to pull off the parkway. “Joining a band would be worse.”

We get lunch at a drive-through burger joint not far from the exit, wax-paper sacks full of French fries and tall plastic cups of iced tea. I feel weirdly self-conscious as I’m eating, glancing down at the wide white expanse of my thighs sticking out of my shorts. New running routine or not, probably the bacon on my burger is not helping the situation here.

“What’s the word?” Gabe asks now, nudging me in the shoulder—it’s an old expression of his mom’s. I shake my head, crumpling my fry bag up into a little ball.

“Your sister keyed my car,” I confess.

Gabe gapes at me. “Wait, what?” he demands, blue eyes widening. We’ve been sitting in the open hatchback of his station wagon, our legs dangling out over the bumper, but all at once he’s springing to his feet. “Jesus Christ, Molly. When?”

“At work,” I mutter, looking down at my lap again, hiding behind the curtain of my long, wavy hair. I haven’t told anyone until right this minute and admitting it to Gabe feels like lancing a blister, a combination of satisfying and completely, abjectly gross. I don’t know how I became this person, one of those girls with a lot of drama around her. A person whose romantic garbage literally fills an entire book. Patrick and I would have judged the shit out of me, two years ago. I’m judging the shit out of myself right now.

Gabe doesn’t seem to be, though: When I glance out from behind my waterfall of hair his face is painted with anger, but it’s definitely not directed at me. “Look,” he says, “I’ll deal with her, okay? That’s, like . . . that is actual bullshit, right there. Julia gets away with murder sometimes. And, like, I’ve been trying to go easy on her lately because of—” Gabe breaks off, shaking his head. “Whatever. I’ll handle her.”

“No, no, no,” I protest, scrambling out of the hatchback myself. God, that would only make it worse, if Gabe got in the middle. Maybe it’s fair and maybe it isn’t, but whatever this is between me and Julia—between me and Patrick, between me and Gabe himself—I’m the one that needs to handle it. “It’s okay,” I lie, wanting it to be for both of our sakes. I reach out and touch his arm below the elbow, warm skin and the rope of muscle underneath. “Seriously, please don’t. I’ll figure it out.”


Gabe rolls his eyes, but he doesn’t argue. I like that—that he seems to trust my judgment. That he doesn’t try to convince me he knows best. For a moment I follow his gaze out to the tree line; he parked with the back of the wagon to the summer woods, this wide expanse of uninterrupted green. I forgot how much I missed this when I was in Tempe. “Okay,” he says, sliding his arm back until our hands catch, squeezing for a moment before he lets go. The gesture sends a clanging all the way up into my elbow, like I banged my funny bone. “But I just—I know your life has basically been one long, uninterrupted shitshow since you got back here. And I know a lot of that is my fault.”

I shake my head, ready to protest. “It’s not—”

Gabe makes a face. “It kind of is,” he says.

For a second I remember the feeling of his warm mouth pressing at mine. I feel safe when I’m with Gabe, I’m realizing slowly, like the station wagon is a getaway car and we’re headed for the border by nightfall. It’s not exactly an unattractive thing to pretend. “Okay,” I admit finally. “It kind of is.”

“Same team, remember?” Gabe shrugs, sun catching the lighter streaks in his hair, brown and amber. He sits back down in the trunk of the Volvo, picks some dog hair off the interior, and drops it on the ground. “I won’t do anything you don’t want me to, it’s your rodeo, but . . . same team.”

“My rodeo, huh?” After a moment I sit down beside him, stretch my palms out behind me, and turn my head to look at him. “Okay.”

“Okay,” Gabe echoes. He leans back so his arms are behind him just like mine are. His pinky brushes mine on the floor of the trunk. I glance over my shoulder, look at our hands side by side, my ragged cuticles and the pale fuzz of blondish hair on his wrists. I imagine him grown up and finished with med school, patients lying on the operating table—reaching inside people’s rib cages, fixing their broken hearts.