99 Days(56)

I shake my head. Actually, the truth is that since Elizabeth’s little drawing they’ve pretty much laid off lately, leaving me mostly to my own devices with only the occasional nasty look to deflect. There’s no way I can tell Penn that I actually spent all of last week dodging Tess. “It’s fine,” I promise. “It’s all resolved now.”

“Okay.” Penn nods, brushing her hands off like they might have some dirt on them, case closed, then. “Good. You wanna go run by the kitchen, make sure the guys all got their breaks?”

“Sure thing. What do you say, Des?” I ask her, easing her off my lap and onto the carpet. “You wanna go for a walk?” Desi hops up piggyback, and we head out into the lobby. When we round the corner there’s Tess in her red lifeguard bathing suit and a pair of mesh shorts, whistle hooked on a long nylon cord she’s spinning around two fingers. “Oh, hey, there you are,” she says, “I was looking for you this morning. Hi, Desi.” She grins at the forty pounds of kid peering over my shoulder curiously. Then, to me: “I have to tell you something, and I feel stupid about it. Or, like, I’m actually really happy about it? But I feel stupid.”

“Okay . . .” I say uncertainly, boosting Des up a bit higher on my shoulders. She’s slipping. “What’s up?”

“Patrick and I kind of got back together last night.”

“Ow!” I flinch as Desi catches a hunk of my hair in the elastic of her shiny plastic bracelet, yanking hard. “Easy, kid.” I set her down while we get untangled, eyes watering at the sting in my scalp, though in truth I’m grateful for the distraction and the half beat it gives me to rearrange my face into something more appropriate than my gut reaction.

Back together.

Patrick and Tess.

“Sorry,” I say, standing upright again; Desi scampers across the lobby after Virgo, the Lodge’s cranky orange cat. Tess is looking at me expectantly. “That’s . . . great!” I manage. I think of how strange it seemed that Patrick was so unbothered about Gabe going to Boston—about Gabe and me—at dinner last night. I guess it wasn’t actually strange at all.

“I feel like the Girl Who Cried Breakup,” Tess explains, shaking her head a little. “Or a traitor to the sisterhood or something.”

“What sisterhood is that?” I ask, trying to sound jokey and cool about it. “The International League of Patrick’s Ex-Girlfriends?”

“Exactly.” Tess smiles. “I made him suffer, for what it’s worth. But he showed up and said all this amazing stuff about, like, the future, and I just . . . I don’t know. It felt good, you know? It felt right.”

I twist my face into a smile I hope looks genuine. Because this is a good thing, isn’t it? What happened with me and Patrick while he and Tess were broken up was an aberration, the worst kind of self-sabotage, and I want to put it behind me forever. Here’s solid, unequivocal proof that Patrick does, too. I made my choice, and so did Patrick. “I do.”





Day 63


It’s Imogen’s birthday, so we wolf down a truckload of pizza at Donnellys’ and then head for the woods beside the lake, a cooler of watery Bud Light hidden under a blanket in Gabe’s station wagon and Tess’s iPod sitting in a red plastic Solo cup to amplify the sound. Handsome Jay made cupcakes, which strikes me as incredibly freaking dear.

It’s a pretty big crowd, us and Jake and Annie and a bunch of Imogen’s French Roast girlfriends; Julia and Elizabeth were hanging out at the pizza place and deigned to tag along for the ride. “I like those jeans,” Julia tells me, popping the top off her bottle and nodding at my holey Levi’s. Then, off what must be my vaguely stunned expression: “No, Molly, I’m not hitting on you. You can relax.”

“That’s not what—” I begin, shaking my head quickly. Julia only smirks.

I’m headed to the cooler for a beer of my own when Patrick grabs my arm like it’s an emergency. “What?” I demand with alarm. He doesn’t answer, just yanks me back behind a giant oak where no one can see us, dark enough that I can barely see him.

“What the hell are you doing?” I open my mouth to say but never get the words out because right away he’s kissing me hard just like the other night on his doorstep, hot and messy, his tongue sliding into my mouth. He tastes like beer and like Patrick. His hands burn like brands through my shirt.

I should push him away. Oh my God, I need to push him away, Tess and Gabe are twenty feet from where we’re standing, on top of which it’s wrong, it’s terrible, but it’s like I’m outside my body watching myself do this horrible f*cking thing and I can’t stop, the bark of the oak tree scraping roughly at the skin of my back and the sting as Patrick bites down on my bottom lip. In some enormously messed-up way, the pain almost feels good.

Not almost. It does feel good.

Patrick doesn’t say anything, just keeps on kissing me, nudging his knee between my thighs and rocking a little, all this heat bleeding through his clothes and mine. He reaches up and cups the back of my skull so it doesn’t hit the tree trunk, surprisingly gentle, then tilts my head back and sucks my neck so hard I’m almost sure he’s going to leave a mark. It feels like there’s a series of bombs going off one after another inside my body, like somehow he improvised a chain of explosions along my spine when I wasn’t paying attention.