99 Days(25)

Gabe wrinkles his nose like he’s bracing for something. The pale glow of the parking lot lights catch the side of his face through the window. “Here’s the thing,” he begins, sounding more careful than normal, more hesitant than I’m used to from him—I think he’s a person who gets what he wants, generally, who’s comfortable asking for things. “How do you feel about maybe coming to the party?”

Just like that, the full-body buzz I’ve been working on, the heavy pleasure that’s been tumbling through my arms and legs and everywhere, straight-up evaporates. I actually snort. “No way,” I tell him, shaking my head so hard and resolutely, it just might snap off my neck and go bouncing behind us into the backseat of the wagon. I don’t even have to ask which party he means. “Noooooo way. Nice try. No. No, a thousand times no.”

“I said don’t freak out!” Gabe protests, laughing. He reaches for my hand across the gearshift, laces his fingers through mine, and tugs until I’m close enough that he can plant a tiny kiss on the curve of my jawline. He adds a scrape of teeth, just lightly, and I shiver in spite of myself. “Look,” he murmurs, his nose brushing the skin back by my ear. “I know it’s ridiculous even to ask you—”

“It’s a little ridiculous, yeah,” I agree, pulling back again. The party’s the one the Donnellys hold every year to celebrate all three of their summer birthdays, Julia’s and Patrick’s and Gabe’s. It’s a giant cookout on the sprawling green expanse of the family farm, complete with a volleyball game and fourteen different kinds of baked goods, Beatles music blasting all night long. Growing up, it was the best day of the summer. Last year was the first I ever missed. “Like, can I come to your joint birthday with your mom who hates me, and your sister who hates me, and your brother who hates me more than anyone and who I used to date, and you who I’m—”

I break off abruptly, embarrassed all of a sudden, not knowing how to continue. Not knowing exactly what Gabe and I are. The idea of turning up at the biggest event on the Donnelly calendar with anyone other than Patrick is enough to clam me up completely, enough to have me wondering who in the hell I think I am. Gabe and I kissing in the station wagon is one thing—a selfish, stupid thing, admittedly, but one that’s fun and free and easy and ultimately harmless. It’s a secret, one that’s not really hurting anybody.

The party? That’s a different animal altogether.

“Me who you’re what?” he prods, kind of teasingly. He reaches out with his free hand and draws a circle on my bare, slightly stubbly knee, fingertips creeping higher until he reaches the hem of my shorts. I breathe in. “Me who you’re what, hm?”

“Shut up,” I mutter, feeling my skin go prickly in all the places he’s touching, not to mention some he isn’t. I wait a minute before I continue, can hear the faint sound of cicadas and the far-off hoot of an owl in the pine trees. “You who I’m screwing around with in the car every night, for starters.”

“Oh, is that what you’ve been doing?” Gabe grins at me, near wolfish, but there’s something else behind it, something I can’t entirely read. “That’s what this is, huh?”

“I mean”—I wave my hands a bit, vaguely, feeling awkward in a way I hardly ever do in front of Gabe—“isn’t it?”

Gabe shakes his head. “I don’t know, Molly Barlow,” he says, eyes steady and even on mine. “I’ve been waiting for you to offer to make an honest man out of me, but so far, no dice.”

“You have, huh?” I ask, and my voice comes out a lot softer than I’m expecting it to. “That what you want?”

“Yeah,” he tells me, the quiet pitch of his voice matching mine almost exactly. It sounds like he’s been thinking about it, like it’s not something that’s only just occurring to him in this moment. “It really, really is.” He’s still got his hand on my knee, and he squeezes once before he says it: “What about you?”

“I don’t know.” I yank a hand through my tangled hair, feeling cornered and exhilarated in equal parts. It’s like I’ve lost all decision-making capability since I came back here, like I can’t tell the difference between love and loneliness. I like Gabe—I like Gabe so much, his smile and his steady heart and how easygoing he is, like he expects the world to be on his side and so it is, simple as that. The days I spend with him feel like gemstones threaded into the long, fraying rope of this summer, valuable and unexpected. “I mean yes, but—”

“Yeah?” That makes Gabe smile.

“Maybe!” I throw my hands up, laughing a little, nervous or something else. “Come on, you’re you, obviously I’ve thought about it.”

Oh, he likes that, too. “I’m me, huh?” he asks, eyebrows up.

“Ugh, don’t be gross.” I roll my eyes, trying to picture it: how I’ll never be accepted by anyone in his family, how dating Gabe for real would be opening myself up to all kinds of fresh torment, ripping the scabs off injuries that have barely even begun to heal. Not to mention that I’m headed to Boston the first week of September—what happens at the end of the summer, do we just high-five and say it was fun while it lasted? The threat of distance was the thing that undid Patrick and me to begin with—or at least, it was one of the things. There were a lot of them. Still, it’s piling stupid on top of stupid to start something with Gabe that’s already got an expiration date stamped on the container with indelible ink.