99 Days(60)

“When did you get home?” I ask him now, hovering in the doorway. The night wind blows gently, goose bumps blooming on my arms and legs, all my nerve endings coming online at once. I keep my distance on purpose, crossing my arms like a shield.

Patrick shrugs. “A little while ago.”

“Didn’t want to come inside?”

“Not particularly,” he says.

“Okay.” I exhale. I don’t know what I’m trying to get from him, exactly—we said we’d be friends, sure, but obviously that’s not happening anytime soon. I have no idea what we actually are.

“What are you reading?” I try, motioning to the book he’s got his index finger tucked in, marking his place. Patrick holds it up—it’s Stephen King, I see from my post by the doorway. The Stand. “What’s it about?” I ask.

“The end of the world,” Patrick says.

My lips twist. “Fitting.”

“Uh-huh.” Patrick shifts then, feet on the floor to make room for me beside him on the ratty plaid sofa. Against my better judgment, I cross the barn and perch on the arm of it, feet in my boots planted next to Patrick’s hip. He looks up at me and raises one elegant eyebrow, so arched that I laugh.

“Shh,” he says mildly, but he’s got one hand wrapped around my calf and he’s tugging and then I’m down on the couch cushions with him, my knee bent and brushing his thigh. “Hi.”


“Hi.” I huff a breath. “This can’t keep happening.”

“It can’t, huh,” Patrick says, not even really a question. His gray eyes are latched on mine.

“No,” I insist, shaking my head. “Patrick—”

“Did he just kiss you good night?” he interrupts me. “My brother?”

My eyes widen. “Why is that your business?”

“Because I want to know.”

“Too bad,” I say immediately—that’s over the line, even for whatever Patrick and I have going on here. That’s just over the line. I get up off the couch, but Patrick stops me, curling his familiar hand around my wrist.

“Wait,” he says, and he sounds so sincere I stop and look at him. “I’m sorry,” he says. “You’re right; that was f*cked up. I’m sorry.”

I let him tug me back onto the sofa, curling one leg up underneath. “I mean it,” I tell him quietly. “We gotta stop.”

Patrick nods without saying anything. He picks at a loose seam on the back of the couch. “I got into another program for the fall,” he tells me quietly. “This Outward Bound–type thing, in Michigan. Rangering-type stuff, running parks tours.” He shrugs. “It’s a gap year, for if your grades aren’t great.”

“Your grades are fine,” I say automatically.

Patrick frowns. “Not this year.”

“I’m sorry.” I think of what Tess said when she told me they got back together, all this stuff about the future. “Did you tell Tess?” I ask. “That you’re going?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Patrick’s head comes up, looks me square in my face. “Because I wanted to tell you,” he says.

I’m not sure which one of us leans in first.

It’s not like the other night against the tree trunk, that desperate scrabbling—this is slow and measured, his long eyelashes brushing my cheeks. I make a quiet sound against his mouth. “Shh,” he says again, warm hands wandering up inside my T-shirt, skimming along the stretchy band of my bra until I’m shaking. Finally, I pull away.

“What is this?” I demand. It’s worse that it wasn’t a fast, messy blur this time. Somehow that makes it even worse. “What are you doing with me, Patrick? Tess is my friend.”

“And Gabe is my brother,” Patrick says, mild as milk toast. “But here we are.”

“Should I break up with him?” I blurt, then immediately feel my cheeks flame. It feels horrifying to articulate the idea out loud—just as horrifying as it feels to be doing this to begin with. I care about Gabe. I’m falling in love with Gabe. So what the hell am I doing here? “Should I?”

Patrick shakes his head. “I’m not breaking up with Tess,” he says decisively. “Not again.”

I stare at him, pulse fluttering like the inside of a hive at my wrists and my collarbone. The damp summer air presses down. He leans forward to kiss me again, eases me back against the arm of the sofa. I close my eyes and sink in.





Day 67


Gabe’s the only one home when I come to pick him up for a double date with Kelsey and Steve the next evening: “In here,” he calls when I rap my knuckles against the screen door. His bedroom’s off the kitchen, a smallish afterthought of a space that used to be the servants’ quarters a hundred years ago when the farm had horses and pigs and cows to milk. Gabe got it when he turned thirteen, on account of he was the oldest.

“Hey,” I tell him cautiously, leaning against the doorway: It’s the same as I remember it, the blue-and-green plaid bedspread, the pine dresser—everything almost preternaturally neat for a teenage boy, like maybe nobody even lives here. Patrick’s room was always a disaster.