99 Days(64)
“Hi,” Patrick mumbles against my jaw, licking at the pulse point just underneath it. I can feel the mossy floor of the lake underneath my toes. He’s fumbling for the band of my sports bra, my arms coming up to help him as he peels the whole soaking thing off, the water cold and black and all the warm places where he’s pressed against me. My legs come up like a reflex to wrap around his waist.
“Hi,” I tell him quietly, and kiss him again.
It goes on for a long time out there in the murky water, nobody around to stop or see us, his solid body and his hands carding through my wet, tangled hair. Patrick pulls back for a moment to look at me, intentional. For a second he only just stares. “Mols,” he says, in this voice like I’m a precious thing, in a voice like I’m rare. “Molly.”
I shake my head, blushing even as the water feels like it’s getting colder, how I’m freezing and burning up all over the place. “Patrick.”
“I meant it, what I said that day it was raining,” he murmurs, swallowing audibly. “About you being beautiful. I know you weren’t fishing. But you are.”
I get my hands on his face and kiss him again then, not wanting to think about anything but this moment, like the sound of our own quick breathing can keep everything else at bay. Still, though, I can’t keep myself from asking again: “What are we doing?” His mouth tastes like water, the zing of this morning’s Colgate behind his teeth. “Huh? Patrick? You gotta tell me here, what are we—”
“I don’t know,” Patrick tells me, urgent, more vulnerable than he’s sounded all summer long. His face is so close I can see his eye freckle, that dark fleck I’ve always thought of as just mine. Like you could get into his soul that way. “I don’t know. We’re going different places, aren’t we? You’re going to Boston with my brother.”
“I’m not—” I begin to protest, but Patrick cuts me off.
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, his hands wandering, me arching into his touch before I can stop myself. “It’s still here, isn’t it? Between you and me. I loved you, Molly, I love—”
Patrick catches himself just then, doesn’t finish. I wrap my arms around his neck and hold on.
Day 71
I’m useless at work the next day. I have to recalculate payroll three different times before the numbers check out. I can’t stop thinking about Patrick.
I remember finally telling my mom about me and Gabe at the very end of sophomore year—two weeks after it happened, graduation come and gone, Gabe headed off to be a camp counselor in the Berkshires, and Patrick and I still not speaking. Everything burbled up out of me like some long-dormant volcano: “Tell me,” my mom urged, looking at me hard and searchingly. It felt like a purifying fire.
After that I ran to the Donnellys’ before it was even light out, let myself in with the spare key Connie kept hidden underneath a clay frog in the garden. “Wake up,” I said to Patrick, crawling across his bed in the blue still-darkness. He smelled like sleep, and like home. I felt like I’d dodged the most deadly of bullets, like one of those people that gets hit by a train but somehow manages to walk away unscathed. I felt guilty and lucky, a full helping of both. “Wake up, it’s me.”
“What?” Patrick blinked awake, startled, reaching for my arm. “Mols, what’s wrong? What are you doing here?”
“I don’t want to be broken up anymore,” I blurted. “I’m not going anywhere, I’m never going anywhere; I was being an idiot.” I shook my head. “I can run here, I want to stay here. I decided, and I wanted to tell you as soon as—” I broke off. “Please. Let’s just forget about it and be normal again, okay?”
“Hey, hey.” Patrick sat up then, looking at me curiously. His curly hair was crazy with sleep. “You all right?”
“I’m fine,” I promised. “I’m perfect. I was being an *, I was just—”
“You weren’t being an *,” Patrick told me, “I was. I don’t want to hold you back. I love you; that’s the last thing I want. I’d f*cking hate myself, if that’s what I was.”
“It’s not,” I insisted, looking at him urgently. “It’s not. I want to stay here, I want to be with you.”
“I want that, too.” Patrick nodded. “Come here, hey. Of course I want that, too.”
I climbed underneath the covers then, the cotton sheets warm with their time against his body. I’d made a huge mistake, doing what I’d done with Gabe, the weight of it like a grizzly settling down right on my chest. I’d never kept a secret from Patrick before. Still, in the moment it almost felt like a small price to pay to figure out what I really wanted: I was going to fix us. I was going to make it all right.
And nobody but me, my mom, and Gabe would ever, ever have to know.
*
“What’re you doing?” Fabian demands, banging through the door of the office with a plastic Captain America in one hand and the Falcon in the other, yanking me out of the memory. I click SAVE on the computer, glance at the clock on the screen—Gabe’s due to pick me up from work in twenty minutes.
Fabian’s still waiting on an answer, impatient; I take the action figure he proffers, shake my head. “I’ll tell you, buddy: That’s a really good question.”
Katie Cotugno's Books
- Hell Followed with Us
- The Lesbiana's Guide to Catholic School
- Loveless (Osemanverse #10)
- I Fell in Love with Hope
- Perfectos mentirosos (Perfectos mentirosos #1)
- The Hollow Crown (Kingfountain #4)
- The Silent Shield (Kingfountain #5)
- Fallen Academy: Year Two (Fallen Academy #2)
- The Forsaken Throne (Kingfountain #6)
- Empire High Betrayal