99 Days(27)

“What is it, like, a Hogwarts place? You live in the woods with a bunch of other girls, who make you do hazing rituals with virgin blood?”

“It’s not Hogwarts.” That chafed me a little, truthfully. It wasn’t like him to be so hugely dismissive—or okay, it was, but not when I was the person he was talking to. I was the one he listened to, who spoke his language. “We live in the woods anyway,” I pointed out, ignoring the bit about the hazing—and the bit about the virgins—and picking at a loose plastic seam on the interior door of the Bronco. It was rare for me to sit up in the front, since usually Julia called shottie and Patrick and I crowded into the back. “I think this place is in the desert. Whatever, I don’t know. You’re right; it’s dumb. Forget I said anything.”

We were stopped at a red light then—Patrick reached across the front seat, poked me gently in the thigh. “Mols,” he said, looking at me like I was yanking his chain, like he thought I was trying to shake his hand with a joy buzzer or get him to sit on a whoopee cushion, offering him one of those pieces of gum that turn your teeth black. “Hey, talk to me. Do you want to go?”

“No,” I repeated stubbornly. “I don’t, I just—I don’t like you talking like it’s not even a possibility, you know?”

“But it’s not a possibility,” Patrick countered, looking honestly confused. “Right?”

Right?

I’m only just thinking about it, I wanted to tell him. It’s nice that somebody wants me for something. Sometimes I get afraid that you and me are too attached.

I looked at him across the car for a moment, laced my fingers through his, and squeezed. “Right,” I said. The light turned green, and Patrick went.

*

He turns up at the Lodge late that afternoon just as a blue-black thunderstorm is tumbling through the mountains in our direction, the low rumble of weather and a gust of cool, humid wind through the door. “Hi,” I say, blinking, my heart tripping like a reflex for one stupid second before I realize it’s not two years ago, when he used to come pick me up at the end of my shift every night. That was then, I remind myself, fingers curling around the edge of the reservation desk anyway, like I’m bracing for something physically painful. This is now. “You here for Tess?”

Patrick nods; he’s halfway across the lobby, the desk and two chairs and a leather ottoman between us, but he takes a step back anyway like I’m radioactive, like possibly he could catch what I have. “She texted,” he says, hardly any intonation in his voice at all. “She’s finishing up.”

I nod back slowly. “Okay.” The polite thing to do would be to leave him alone, but I find myself staring anyhow, rude like a little kid with no manners. He’s shorter than Gabe by a couple of inches, just shy of six feet now maybe. He’s got the faintest hint of stubble on his chin. He’s not close enough for me to see it right now, but I know he’s got an eye freckle, this dark fleck in the gray iris of his left eye; I used to look at him and concentrate on it when we were kissing, like I could see right into his heart that way.

“I heard my brother invited you to the party,” Patrick says now. I’m surprised he’s saying anything, how he’s still keeping a distance wide enough to prevent catching anything communicable. He’s wearing a baseball T-shirt with the sleeves pushed halfway to his elbows. I can see the bean-shaped birthmark on his wrist.

“He did,” I reply, tucking my hair behind my ears and wondering what else he’s heard, what the hell that conversation possibly looked like. “Yeah.” I can’t imagine Gabe would throw our barely started relationship in Patrick’s face—after all, he kept that night in his bedroom a secret for nearly a full year—but not for the first time I ask myself what on earth I think I’m doing, getting mixed up with the Donnellys again at all. “I told him I wouldn’t come, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

Patrick shakes his head, just slightly. “I don’t care what you do, Mols. I thought I told you that.”

I feel my cheeks get hot. “Yup,” I agree, picking up the papers I came out here for to begin with, the list of reservations for this weekend coming up. Penn’s waiting for me back in the office, Desi cuddled in her lap afraid of the storm. “You did.”

I turn to go but look back at the very last second; Patrick’s staring right at me, the force of his gaze like a physical thing. Patrick and I never had sex—to this day, Gabe’s the only person I’ve ever done that with, and just the once—but still I know almost every inch of Patrick anyway, the kind of learn-by-doing familiarity you get when you spend every day with somebody for years on end, how stupid he sounded when his voice was changing and how in seventh grade he point-blank asked me if I was wearing a bra.

“I saw what my sister did to you at Crow Bar the other night,” he says, still looking. I miss him so stupidly, absurdly much. “You should tell her to go f*ck herself.”

I cross my arms over my chest, instinctive and embarrassed: You’re looking a little thick, I remember, my limbs going hot and numb with shame. Of course he would hear that, of course he would. Of course he already thinks I’m gross. “I thought you didn’t care what I did,” I reply.

Patrick’s eyebrows shoot up, like he wasn’t expecting an argument from me. I don’t think I was expecting it from me, either. For one crazy second I think he’s about to smile and I actually hold my breath in anticipation, like waiting for a sneeze or for a butterfly to land on your finger. In the end he just shakes his head.