Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
Molly
Hallie
Mol, how’s going?
Julie
Hallie, are you psychic? I was just about to send the same text.
Emma
It doesn’t count as psychic when the three of us just had a conversation wondering how Molly is doing.
Me
Holy shit, you guys. I mean, actually, holy motherfucking shit.
Julie
Like, in the good way?
Molly
Let’s just say I have a lot to tell you.
Hallie
Donuts. Monday morning. 8:30.
Emma
Jeremy and I are running after Maddy gets on the bus. Make it 9:15
Me
Idk I might be jet-lagged.
Julie
I don’t care. Get your ass to the office. We need details.
Hallie
It’s Thursday. Monday is forever from now. I need a preview.
Me
And a preview you shall have, my pretty.
He literally tore my thong off my body on the plane. Like, ripped it clean in half and tossed it on the floor then told me to hold on to the seat. When we landed, he took me shopping. We were the only customers in the entire store and there were racks of dresses for me to try on and all my favorite snacks.
Emma
I…don’t have any words.
Hallie
Cosign.
Julie
I have plenty of words. What happened after he tore your underwear in half? Was it good? Are you now a card-carrying member of the mile high club? Were you worried the flight attendant would walk in on you?
Should I keep going? I’m cosplaying Molly because it’s Molly we need the details from. She’s the best at getting details. Not as great at giving them.
Me
I’m turning over a new leaf. Gabe was the only secret I was keeping from you and, well, he’s not a secret anymore, so details you will have. On Monday. With donuts.
Hallie
Okay but how about just one little thing?
Me
He called me a needy little slut and I came harder than I ever have in my entire life.
Emma
Shit, why is that so hot?
Julie
He just said it? Just like that?
Me
He may have remembered that’s…something I like.
Hallie
How are we just learning now that you have a degradation kink?
Me
I don’t. At least, I don’t think I do. You don’t know because it turns out I only like it when he’s the one saying it.
Julie
I have the strangest urge to give you a standing ovation right now.
Me
Save it for when I get back. I have a praise kink too.
I snort out a laugh and click off my phone just as the car pulls through the tall iron gates of the cemetery.
“Everything okay?” Gabe asks.
I toss my phone in my bag and turn to face him. “Yeah, it was the girls, just wondering how it’s going here.”
“What did you tell them?”
Gabe reaches out and takes my hand in his. It shakes just slightly, and I can see the set of his shoulders. The tension in his jaw. Nerves radiate off of him as the car climbs the winding road of the cemetery taking us, I assume, closer and closer to his parents’ graves. I decide to give him a little distraction.
“That you tore my underwear off my body and called me your needy little slut.”
He huffs out a laugh, and I can see his shoulders relax. Mission accomplished.
“That’s a lot of sharing for a group text.”
I shrug and squeeze his hand, hoping to get him to relax a little more. “I’ll tell them the rest on Monday morning over donuts. We like to have ourselves a sexy breakfast story every now and then. We’re sharers.”
“They’re your sisters.”
I nod, grateful that he understands my relationship with my friends. “In every way that matters.”
The car slows to a stop and Gabe’s breath hitches, body tensing up again. I cover his other hand with mine and he turns to face me, something akin to panic in his eyes. “I don’t know how to be here, Rory,” he says, voice almost a whisper.
I’ve known cheerful, golden retriever Gabe. Focused, brilliant coder Gabe. Deeply in love with me Gabe. Grieving, angry Gabe. At one point in my life, I loved all those parts of him. But it’s this Gabe—quiet, vulnerable, a little afraid, peeling himself back to show me his hurts—to whom I come perilously close to losing my heart for a second time in this life. I try and yank myself back from the edge, but I’m smart enough to know it’s an exercise in futility.
So, it’s here, in the back seat of a car parked in the middle of a cemetery, that I accept my fate. I’ve loved Gabe since I was eighteen, and I’m destined to love him until the day I die. It wasn’t a choice. It was predetermined. Written in the stars.
It’s that understanding that has me cupping his face, keeping my gaze steady on his while I stroke my thumbs over his cheekbones, searching his beautiful face. “Whatever you need, I’m here. Okay?”
He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. When he opens them again, his expression is determined. “Would it be okay if I went myself first? I think maybe I need a minute alone with them.”
I press a kiss to his forehead and let him go. “Of course it is. I’ll be right here if you need me.”
Gabe climbs out of the car, and I watch him walk slowly up to his parents’ graves. He stops and takes them in—the tidy grass, the fresh flowers. He brushes a hand over the top of each stone before he crouches down and runs his fingers over their names, the dates they died. He stays like that for a long time, sitting back on his heels, facing the graves.
I can’t see his face, so I don’t know if he’s talking or just sitting in silence, but I can tell the moment everything changes. Gabe’s shoulders fall first, then he rolls forward onto his knees. He has a hand flat on each stone, and his head drops down. His back starts to shake.
I don’t have to be next to him to know he’s crying. I can see it. Feel it. My heart aches right along with his. He asked for some time alone and I gave it to him, but every instinct I have is telling me to go to him. Be with him. Help him through this the way I couldn’t the first time. The first time he asked me to leave, and I did. This time all he’s done is ask me to stay. To be here with him. And I have. I can’t be anywhere but where he is. My heart and my brain and the part of me that has always belonged to him simply won’t allow it.
Decision made, I push open the door and get out of the car.
Gabe
The spring breeze is cool on my face as I approach my parents’ graves.
Parents. Graves.
Even ten years later, the words sound wrong in my head. I wonder if I’ll ever be used to it.
The graves are neat. Tidy. There are fresh flowers—the purple tulips my mom loved—and I wonder if maybe my sisters have already been here. They both flew in this morning, and I know they were planning on coming at some point. Ames asked me if I wanted to come with her, but I said no. I wasn’t even sure I would have the courage to come until I was sitting in that dressing room with Molly.
Without her, I wouldn’t have.
Stepping forward, I brush a hand over the top of each grave, feeling the stone warmed from the sun. I kneel down, running my fingers over my parents’ names. The dates they were born and the dates they died. I’ve never been able to hold their date of death in my head. Every year on the anniversary of their deaths, one of my sisters has to remind me of it.
I sit back on my heels and stare at the stones. I don’t know how long I stay like that, and I don’t know how I know, but I’m confident that I’ll never forget that date ever again.
There is a bubble of emotion in my chest that started forming as soon as I asked Molly to come here with me. Or maybe it’s been there, unnoticed, for years. That suddenly seems possible. The closer we got to the cemetery, the bigger it grew, and now that we’re here, it sits so heavily my breaths are shallow and my heart pounds against it. My eyes burn.
I don’t know what to do here. How to be. How to make it okay that I’ve lived a decade of my life without all of my most important people. How to be grateful that I had such good parents and so angry that I lost them and that, in the losing of them, I lost so much more.
I’ve done the best I could. Raised my sisters. Built my company. Healed in all the ways I knew how. But sitting here, I’m cracked wide open, and I wonder if I’ve done any healing at all. This is why I’ve never come here.
Liv once told me that when she’s here, she talks to my parents. Tells them about her life. For lack of anything else to do, I decide to give that a try.
“Hi, Mom. Hi, Dad.”
The words come in a raspy whisper, and they’re the only ones I manage before the bubble bursts. Tears fill my eyes and roll down my cheeks as I lean forward onto my knees, splaying a hand over each of my parents’ headstones. Sobs wrack my body. I don’t even know what I’m crying for. Nothing. Everything. All at once.
For the twenty-two year old who lost his foundation. For my sisters, who lost theirs. For my parents, for all the life that they didn’t get to live. For the ten years I spent avoiding this place. For Molly. For the love of my life, who should have spent the last decade by my side but couldn’t because I broke us. Because I was broken.
And as if just thinking her name conjures her, she’s there.
Molly sits down and guides me back so I’m seated next to her instead of on my knees, my shoulders still shaking with quiet sobs. She wraps an arm around my waist and puts a hand on my cheek, turning me to face her. Her eyes are full of patience and understanding, and something else I’m too sad and exhausted to name. She kisses the side of my head and guides me down so I’m leaning against her. She holds onto me with both arms while I cry out ten years of grief onto her pretty floral dress.
She whispers words to me.
I’m here.
You’re safe.
I’ve got you.
Let it out.
It feels right, somehow, that Molly is here with me, like this. Like the reason I’ve stayed away all these years is because the first time I came back, I needed it to be with her. We’re on the precipice of something. I can feel it, and I know she does too. I think maybe to move forward, we needed to look back first.
When I’ve finally cried myself dry, I sit up, turning so I can face Molly, picking up one of her hands and pressing a kiss to her knuckles, closing my eyes as my lips graze her skin.
“Thank you for being here. For knowing when I needed you to come.”
She smiles, reaching out and brushing some hair off my forehead. “It might have been ten years, but it looks like I still know what you need.”
The fact that my brain immediately translates that into something dirty, and my cock stands up and takes notice makes me think I really have taken a giant step forward today. Purged something that has been weighing me down.
Molly pins me with a look that makes me think there’s something on her mind, but she doesn’t want to say it.
I smile at her, running my thumb over the back of her hand. “Ask me a question, Rory.”
“I don’t think it’s appropriate for a cemetery.”
I wave a hand around. “They’re all dead. They won’t mind.”
She snorts out a laugh. “Fine. When I said I still know what you need , you turned it dirty, didn’t you?”
“You bet I did, Rory baby.”
She narrows her gaze at me. “Weren’t you just crying over your parents’ graves, like, three minutes ago?”
I nod. “I was. I needed it. I needed to come here, and I needed you to be here with me. It feels good to be here. Like I was holding onto some of my grief, but I finally feel like I can let go. I couldn’t have done it without you here.”
“I’m glad. And I’m glad I could be here. I’ll always be here for you.”
She looks away then, as if she didn’t mean to say that last part. The always part. But mean it or not, she said it, and I heard it. I can’t unhear it now. It’s contentment that fills my chest now, in the space where grief once was.
Today has been a whole bucket of emotions.
I know she wants to change the subject because when she meets my gaze again, she smirks. “A question for a question, right? Ask me a question, Gabe.”
I think about all the questions I could ask right now. The ones I want to ask.
When you said forever, did you mean it?
What happens now?
Are you mine?
Am I yours?
I love you. Do you love me? Could you love me one day, like you used to?
But I don’t ask any of those. One day I will. Not now.
I stand and reach down a hand to help her up. Then I ask something else instead.
“Want to get dressed up and go to a party with me?”