99 Days(54)

Julia crosses her arms, shifts her weight a bit. Her nail polish is a screaming neon red. “I know that,” she says, sounding a little defensive. “Of course Patrick wouldn’t care that me and Elizabeth are—whatever. He just doesn’t like her. He thinks she’s vapid, and that I’m vapid for hanging out with her, and I just—you know how Patrick is.”

That surprises me—I do; of course I do. I know how talking to Patrick requires a certain kind of courage, how it can make you feel stubborn and shy. That’s what got me where I am in the first place after all. It was so much easier to tell a secret to Gabe.

I want to explain that to Julia all of a sudden, want to tell her how everything happened to begin with, but I know it’s a lost cause before I even open my mouth. “Yeah” is all I tell her. “I know how Patrick is.” Then, as a kind of offering: “Elizabeth’s pretty.”

“Oh, God, enough.” Julia rolls her eyes at me, shaking her head. “We’re not friends anymore, okay? You don’t have to, like, try and bond with me over liking girls. I came here to make sure your freaking mom wasn’t going to write a book about the lesbian down the road, that’s all. We good?”

Julia Donnelly, ladies and gentlemen. I don’t know why I expected anything else.

“Yeah,” I promise, shaking my head a little. It’s all I can do not to grin. “We’re good.”





Day 59


I’ve been pretty much entirely off the grid since Crow Bar—since Patrick—hiding in the office at work to avoid running into Tess, and coming straight home at night to work my way through documentaries about girl boxers and the Louisiana Purchase. how’re your lady parts??? Imogen inquires on a group message, and Tess chimes in with an emoji face that’s got two Xs for eyes: Did you die of cramps?

The fact that I’ve got friends who care enough to check in on my imaginary period makes me hate myself even more than I already do, both for the lie and for what happened after I told it. Julia’s right: I don’t deserve anything good.

I’m alive, I text them back, the only truth I seem to be able to manage, then turn my phone off and hide from the world for one more day.





Day 60


Gabe stopped off to see some school friends in Rhode Island on the way back from Boston; he gets back in the morning and texts to say he’s going to come meet me at work at the end of the day. I spend my entire shift dreading it, guilt and shame eating at my insides like somehow I swallowed a mouthful of the chlorine we use at the pool. Thoughts tumble around in my brain, wild and overheated like clothes in a dryer—by the time I punch my time card and pull my purse out of my locker, I feel like I’m legit about to be sick.

Then, though—

Then I see Gabe.

He’s standing outside in the parking lot, all tan summer skin and a soft blue T-shirt, car keys dangling lazily from one hand. “Hey, Molly Barlow,” he says, grinning across the blacktop slow and easy.

I launch myself right into his arms.

It’s insane, the effect Gabe has on me—like a storm at sea clearing, like a hurricane calming down. The churning in my stomach disappears the moment he catches me and all of a sudden everything seems so enormously obvious. He seems so enormously right. There’s nothing tortured or painful about being with him. Everything about him is easy and good.

“Hey, you,” Gabe says, laughing, lifting me off my feet a little. His arms feel like a life preserver, feel safe. “Missed me, huh?”

“Yeah.” I clamp my hands over his ears and stamp a kiss on his mouth, decisive. “How’d it go?”

“It went okay, I think,” Gabe says, setting me down gently and lacing his fingers through mine. “Actually, I think it went really, really well.”

“It did?” That makes me smile. “Think you’re gonna get it?”

Gabe shrugs, grinning mischievously. “We’ll see.”

“We will,” I agree. I can picture it now, just like I could before he left but somehow forgot while he was away from me—the two of us sitting in coffee shops or huddled in dark Harvard bars, riding the T over the Charles River with the city lights winking in the distance. What was I trying to do with Patrick the other night, prove that I didn’t deserve this?

I tilt my face up to Gabe’s, his hair gleaming golden in the late afternoon sunlight. “I’m really glad you’re back.”





Day 61


The florist we use for the lobby screws up and sends two dozen extra gladiolas, which are Connie’s favorite, so I bundle them up in paper towels and bring them by the Donnellys’ after work. I’ve been thinking about her, about all of them, the secrets they keep from one another. They used to feel like such a solid unit of measure, the ideal family. They used to make me feel so safe.

“My God, Molly,” Connie says when she answers the door in her mom jeans and her work shirt, the baffled smile turning her face young and pretty. “What are these for?”

I shrug, feeling shy and awkward—I purposely picked a time I was pretty sure none of her offspring would be around, but I feel caught out and exposed anyway, like possibly this was a giant overstep. Back when Driftwood first came out and everything unspooled around me like somebody dropping a ball of yarn, I used to imagine Connie calling or coming to my house to take me out for coffee and waffles with whipped cream, to dispense some kind of sage motherly advice. She didn’t, of course—close as we were I was never actually a blood daughter, and it was her real kids that I’d screwed with. I don’t even know my own mom’s favorite flower, I realize now.