99 Days(52)

Hey, is all his text message says.

Shit. I look around like I’m expecting to get caught with contraband. I can see Tess and Imogen leaning over the bar, laughing about something. It’s the closest I’ve come in a year to having friends.

Hey yourself, I key in, chewing my lip like I’m aiming to amputate it. Then: you okay?

I’m not expecting to hear back right away, that’s for certain. I remember how long it took him to respond after the camping trip, how far we are from the perpetual back-and-forth of a few years ago, our lives one long conversation. It’s entirely possible he won’t text me back at all. Which is why I’m so surprised when my bag buzzes again less than ten seconds later:

fine, Patrick says, just the one short syllable. Then, a few beats after that: you doing anything right now?

I take a deep breath, watching Tess and Imogen make their way back through the crowd in my direction, both of them giggling. Imogen waves like we haven’t seen each other in years.

I glance down at my phone again, back up at the two of them.

no, I key in quickly. What’s up?





Day 53


“I thought you said you weren’t doing anything,” Patrick says when I show up at his side door after midnight; I had a cab drop me off at the end of the driveway, told Imogen and Tess I had cramps. There’s an empty spot in the muddy driveway where Gabe’s Volvo usually sits, tire tracks from where he pulled out to head to Boston. I take a breath and look away, ask myself for the forty-fifth time in the last forty-five minutes what exactly I think I’m doing. “That outfit doesn’t look like nothing.”

“Well,” I tell him, tugging self-consciously at Imogen’s clingy black skirt, which is way tighter on me than it would be on her. I shrug inside my slinky gray tank top. “I’m a liar.”

“That’s a fact,” Patrick says, but there’s no real heat behind it. Then, a moment later, and so quietly I almost don’t even hear: “You look nice.”

“Yeah?” That surprises me, how he’s got these compliments for me all of a sudden, pulling them out of his back pocket like shiny new coins. When I look up his gaze is dark, almost hungry. Something liquid, an egg maybe, feels like it’s cracking open inside my chest. I swallow. “You do, too,” I say finally.

Patrick makes a face. “Good try,” he says, snorting a little. We’re still standing in the Donnellys’ doorway, half in the house and half out of it. Everything about us feels like an in-between. I shouldn’t have come here, I want to tell him, or maybe: I’m so glad you texted me tonight.

“Why’d you break up with Tess?” is what comes out.

Patrick shakes his head, this face like that’s the obvious question and an impossible one, like if I have to ask there’s no way for me to possibly ever know. “Don’t,” is all he says.

“Why not?” I can feel the night pressing in behind me, hear the faint buzz of mosquitoes and the far-off hoot of an owl. “I was just with her, she’s—”

“You were with her?” Patrick asks, eyes widening. “Why?”

“Because we’re friends!” I retort, crossing my arms over my chest. “I know you hate me and everything, but I’m still allowed to have friends.” Not that I deserve them, a sharp voice in my head reminds me. Look where I am right now.

“You know I—” Patrick looks at me like I’m deranged. “Is that what you think? You think I hate you? Why the hell am I calling you to come over in the middle of the night, why am I breaking up with my f*cking girlfriend if I hate you, Mols?”

I start, an electrical shock jolting through me. Did he just say—? “Because—” I break off, try again. Suddenly, his face is so, so close. “Because—”

That’s when Patrick kisses me.

It’s clumsy at first, his face butting at mine so hard and unexpected he almost knocks me backward. I taste blood and can’t tell if it’s his or it’s mine. It used to be that Patrick was kind of shy when he kissed me, all bashful and hesitant like he was scared he was going to break me if pushed even a hair too hard.

This . . . does not feel like that.

This feels like a fire in the forest, like one of those carnival rides where the floor drops out and centrifugal force is the only thing keeping you stuck to the wall. Patrick’s hands are everywhere at once. I wind my arms around his neck to keep steady, heart slamming with a shocking violence against my rib cage and his sharp teeth biting at the edges of my tongue. His smell is the only thing that’s the same. I fist my hands in his shirt and lean into him, standing on my tiptoes to get as close up into his space as I can manage. I’d climb inside him if I could, set up house in there, walk around for the rest of the summer. Walk around for the rest of my life.

And then I remember Gabe.

“Stop,” I say before I realize I’m going to do it, heart pounding in a different way altogether, pulling back all at once. “I just,” I say, holding my hands up in a panicky flutter. “I can’t. Patrick. I can’t. Not when—I can’t do this again, please.”

Patrick looks completely baffled for a moment. Then his eyes narrow. “Because of my brother?” he demands, backing off fast enough that it feels like he’s shot me, a ricochet and shatter in my bones. I flinch. “Are you serious right now?”