“In Star Lake?” That’s a lie if ever I’ve heard one: Patrick is pretty outdoorsy, maybe, but Gabe has always been more of the “drinking beer at a party in the woods” type of nature appreciator. Still, it occurs to me all at once that this is dangerous ground to be crossing, and I turn to Sadie instead: “How was Scotland?” I ask her eagerly. “I mean, keep in mind, you could tell me literally anything and I’d believe you. Everything I know about it is from that sexy time-travel show.”
Sadie shakes her sandy head, quizzical. “I don’t know it.”
“Oh man, my roommate and I were obsessed.” I smile, launching into a detailed explanation of the broader plot points—labyrinthine palace intrigue, daring escapes from British prisons, rakishly handsome Highlanders in kilts. “You’d actually probably really like it,” I tell her. “The main character is a woman doctor.”
“Yeah,” Sadie says, in a voice that’s not unfriendly, exactly, but also somehow manages to communicate the fact that I emphatically haven’t sold her on the concept. “I guess I don’t really watch a lot of stuff like that,” she explains, holding one hand up like, you know how it is. “Girly stuff, I mean. I’m more into, like, grittier shows and documentaries, that kind of thing.”
“Oh,” I say, slightly taken aback. Something about the way she said it pings me, but debating Gabe’s new girlfriend over the merits of a time-travel show seems like a stupid hill to die on. “Okay, yeah. I hear you.”
“Molly loves documentaries,” Ian puts in helpfully. Then, looking at me: “Didn’t you say you once spent a year working your way through, like, every documentary on Netflix?”
“Um, yup,” I admit, cringing. In fact, it was senior year of high school; I was away at boarding school in Arizona, hiding out after the People article about my mom’s book—and, by extension, about me and Gabe and Patrick—hit newsstands. I did the same thing last summer back in Star Lake in an effort to avoid the wrath of Gabe’s sister, Julia, chomping down on Red Vines and hibernating in my room. “That was me.”
Thankfully, the curly-haired waitress shows up just then, notepad in hand, and once we’ve ordered I slide out of the booth and escape to the tiny, gilded ladies’ room. I splash cold water on my face and stare hard into the fake-aged mirror above the sink: Pull it together, I order myself, and I almost think that I have until the moment I open the bathroom door and find Gabe waiting in the hallway on the other side of it.
“I had to pee,” he says immediately, jaw jutted out and a voice like he thinks I’m about to accuse him of something. “I didn’t just, like, follow you back here.”
Oh, for Pete’s sake. “Okay,” I say, shrugging. “I didn’t say you did.”
Gabe’s eyes narrow as if he’s going to argue, but in the end he just kind of droops. “Sorry,” he says, looking a little ashamed of himself. “This is really fucking weird.”
That makes me laugh, a noisy half-hysterical cackle. “Yeah,” I agree, “no kidding.”
“I mean—” Gabe breaks off and for a moment we just stand there, looking at each other in the narrow, darkened hallway. His short hair makes his face seem sharper, more grown-up. “So, um,” he says, after a beat too long for it not to be awkward. “You called me.”
My face flushes; I’m surprised he brought it up. I remember the night I did it, perched at the top of the tiny fire stairwell in my dorm building last September, one arm wrapped around my stubbly knees: I need to talk to you, I said into his voicemail. It’s important. The memory feels like a bone bruise, ugly and deep.
“Um,” I say finally. For an instant I think about telling him everything: the way my sneakers squeaked against the shiny linoleum floor of the clinic in Boston, the feeling of the doctor’s gentle, sandpapery hands. Watching the bright-orange trees out the window once it was over, leaning back in the passenger seat of my mom’s car. Then I shake my head. There’s no way for me to tell him in this crowded bar halfway across the universe. It’s possible there’s no way to tell him at all. “Yeah.”
“And I didn’t call you back.”
I nod. “That’s true, too.”
Gabe exhales. “I’m sorry,” he says, jamming his hands into his pockets. “I just . . . was caught up with school stuff, I guess.”
I swallow. “I get it,” I lie hurriedly, waving my hand like it’s no big deal and deciding not to mention that it’s right up there with dogs and homework for the flimsiest excuse I’ve ever heard in my life. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t have called me back either if I were you.”
Even as I’m saying it, it occurs to me that it isn’t true, not really. Gabe and I had the world’s messiest breakup, that much is undeniable—I spent all of last summer somersaulting wildly between Patrick and him, oblivious to the fact that I was more or less the latest prize in some long-running brotherly pissing contest. But we talked it out before I headed up to Boston, the two of us sitting side by side on the sunbaked hood of his beat-up station wagon on the very last day of summer break, and I honestly thought we were, if not exactly okay, then definitely on the road to getting there. I even wondered if there was a chance we might be able to make things work between us someday. Of course I would have called him back, if the situation were reversed. Of course I would have come.
“Anyway,” I say, tucking my hair behind my ears and smiling as bright as I can muster. “It’s all over now, right?”
“Yeah,” Gabe agrees, after another long moment. “I guess it is.”
“Good.” I let a breath out. “So we’re cool?”
Gabe nods at that, but he’s still looking at me with that unconvinced expression on his face, like I’m one of those human statues on a street corner and he’s waiting for me to break and move. “What?” I demand finally. My face gets hot, though that could be the bar or the beer or any number of acceptable, non-Gabe-related things. “You wanna fist-bump on it or something?”
That makes him smile, wide and easy; just for a second, he’s the Gabe I know again. “Sure, actually,” he says. “Let’s fist-bump on it.”
We do, clumsy, both of us laughing. “You didn’t explode it,” I protest.
“I didn’t,” he agrees, making a face at me. “Come on, let’s go before they start wondering where we are.”
I follow him back to the booth, where Ian and Sadie are deeply engrossed in a conversation about a New Yorker article they both read about fracking, which I suppose is more serious than time-traveling lady doctors. One of Ian’s great talents is his ability to hold forth with anyone on basically any topic, from Patriots football to the midterm elections to the complex machinery behind nineties boy bands. It should make him obnoxious—it would make most people obnoxious, I think—but it doesn’t, for some reason. Instead it just makes him fun to talk to. “That same guy wrote a book about deforestation that’ll make you crap your pants,” Ian’s telling her excitedly.
“Ian likes to read,” I tell Sadie, reaching for the pitcher on the table and splashing some more beer into my glass. “Just in case that wasn’t abundantly clear.”