Page 55 of Our Last Resort

“Bye,” she said.

“Bye.”

As Gabriel followed me outside, I turned my head away from him.

He put a hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off.

“Hey!” he said.

I shoved the paper bag against his chest.

“Just take them.”

But he didn’t. He kept his hands at his side, left it to me to carry our contraband.

We walked in silence.

“That guy didn’t know what he was saying,” Gabriel said after a while.

He meant Max.

“He was an idiot,” Gabriel continued. “You can’t talk to people when they’re that dumb.”

I knew what he was doing: rewriting history, pretending I hadn’t said what I’d said. Gifting me a world in which I hadn’t referred to Émile as atotal freak.

“Just the stupidest guy in the world,” I said.

Gabriel giggled. I did what I always did when I heard him laugh. I joined him.

It almost scared me, how much I needed him in that moment.

I pulled the pills from the paper bag and stuffed the bottle in my pocket. It rattled the whole way back. As we reentered Émile’s world, I placed my hand over it. The pills went silent.

19Escalante, Utah

The Sixth Day

My phone buzzes in my pocket.

Done.

Gabriel, texting me, as promised, to let me know his interview has ended.

I step off the patio as quietly as possible.

When I return to the suite, Gabriel is standing by the desk, leafing through a book—not actually reading it, just flipping through the pages. We’re not the type to scroll on our phones. Another habit we never formed. This is what Gabriel does instead to put his mind on pause.

He looks up when I come in.

“How did it go?” I ask.

For a second, I hope he’ll give me a brief grimace.It was going okay,he might say,until I freaked out, and—

That would make his lie acceptable. If he confessed. We’d figure out a solution together. We always do.

“Fine,” he says.

Come on.

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