99 Days(29)

He does it over and over, reintroducing me around with a hand on my back and an easy smile, asking after his cousin Bryan’s baseball league and his aunt Noreen’s book club. He’s hugely, enormously, unremarkably casual about the whole thing.

And—hugely, enormously, unremarkably—so is everybody else.

“See?” Gabe asks once we’ve done a lap around the perimeter and settled in by one of the food tables, scooping some mayonnaise-y potato salad onto my plate. We’ve talked to Chuck’s old drinking buddies and Gabe’s cousin Jenna’s new fiancé; I’ve explained to no fewer than three different aunts that no, I don’t know what I want to major in yet. We steered clear of Julia and Elizabeth Reese, now piled in the hammock with their heads tipped close together—they’re wearing matching chambray shirts and, thank God, seem more interested in yakking with each other than in tormenting me on this particular day. Meanwhile, Patrick’s a ghost. I caught glances of him out of the corner of my eye like possibly he can walk through walls and disappear at will, like he’s full of magic tricks, here and gone again.

He and I used to do our own thing at this party—he and I used to do our own thing at every party, truth be told—creeping out into the barn to play Would You Rather or just hang out, legs crossed over each other’s and Patrick’s hand playing idly in my hair. I remember being here the summer after sophomore year, after I’d slept with Gabe but before he’d left for college; Patrick and I were back together by then, and we spent the whole day camped out on the couch in the barn by ourselves. Usually I would have tried to get him to hang out with everyone else, but that day I was grateful for Patrick’s penchant for solitude—after all, it made it easier to avoid his brother.

Gabe’s a social animal, though, and I knew coming in that being here with him would mean being here with him—digging in and being part of the party, the kind of person who shows up in the forefront of pictures instead of hiding somewhere in the background, cut off, face turned away.

Patrick and Julia aren’t the only Donnellys avoiding me—I haven’t seen Connie yet, either, only caught a glimpse of her disappearing into the kitchen out of the very corner of my eye. Still, save a couple of admittedly confused looks from Gabe’s uncles, for the most part this afternoon isn’t exactly the medieval gauntlet I was expecting. “Not that bad, right?” Gabe prods, nudging my shoulder with his solid one. “I told them all you were being cool and to play along.”

“Oh, funny guy.” I try to roll my eyes at him, but I can’t keep the smile off my face. It feels like a victory—a tiny one, maybe, but a real, tangible victory. I reach out and tug the belt loop of his shorts.

“Angel Gabriel!” That’s a shout from the driveway—here’s Ryan and a bunch of Gabe’s other friends from the lake party, a whole tribe with cases of beer and soda in hand.

“You have got to get them to stop calling you that,” I tell Gabe as we head over to meet them. That girl Kelsey is here, with the painful-looking earrings and a platinum-blond pixie cut, plus gladiator sandals that lace all the way up to her knees. There’s a long-haired kid whose name I think might be Scott or Steve, maybe, a couple other people I don’t know, all of them in sunglasses and smiles, like there’s no place besides Gabe’s family party they’d ever want to be.

Kelsey hugs me like we’re the oldest of friends when she spots me, then immediately launches into a long and complicated story about the designer of this artisan turquoise jewelry she just ordered for the shop. The big group of us decamp to a cluster of lawn chairs near the vegetable garden, where we drink hard lemonade and eat chips for a good portion of the afternoon. I feel protected and included, surrounded by the crowd of them. With Gabe’s friends, I realize, I feel safe.

The weird, sweet truth, though, is that nobody at this party seems particularly interested in me one way or the other. Nobody trips me and snickers; nobody blows a gum bubble into my hair. Around four, Kelsey gets up to track down some more pasta salad, and thanks to her—and also, okay, thanks to the margarita one of the boozy Ciavolella aunts poured me—I’m relaxed enough to risk a solo trip to pee. I’m just coming out of the tiny powder room underneath the stairs when I hear Connie around the corner in the living room: “Come outside and help me with the ice cream, will you, birthday girl?” she’s saying, familiar voice echoing off the high ceiling and shiny wide-plank floors. We used to love to slide around in there in our socks, all four of us. Then: “And maybe wipe the look off your face like you smell something bad, just for the company?”

“I do smell something bad, thanks,” Julia retorts immediately. “And her name is Molly—”

“Enough,” Connie interrupts, even as I feel myself blanch so hard I worry I’ve actually made a sound: It’s like a trapdoor has opened up underneath me. This used to happen a lot, before I left for Bristol, overhearing people talking about me whether they knew I was listening or not. I ought to be more used to it by now. The familiar wave of shame is physical as dizziness. “Can we not do this now, please?” Connie continues. “Just as long as the girl is, you know, in this house?” I wince at that, the girl—at the idea that that’s who I am to Connie now, after all the times she hugged me hello and put me to bed and generally mommed me. I used to be pretty sure she loved me like one of her own three kids. “There’s no point in getting yourself all worked up about it now, Jules, letting it ruin the day.”