Chapter 22. Seth
All day, ever since I sent my “I regret to inform you I won’t be getting married after all” email, I’ve been fielding texts and phone calls from well-meaning friends and relatives.
My mom sobbed and wondered how anyone could leave her perfect boy.
My dad said I’ll find someone else pronto, because I’m a catch.
My brother said Sarah wasn’t right for me and, “as he’s told me many times before,” I need to break this pattern of too-fast relationships.
Kevin said he’d had a bad feeling ever since I bought the “basic” ring.
Jon said Kevin is callous and lamented that they can’t come visit me because it’s too dangerous to fly.
But the person whose words comforted me the most was actually Molly Marks. “You’re one of the best people I know.”
It’s not that the sentiment is so true. It’s that Molly doesn’t give compliments often. She’s so rarely sincere, and when she is, she really means it. Reading those words from her made me remember the last time we saw each other. How she invited me to stay with her. How she looked so disappointed when I told her about Sarah, and then embarrassed that I could see her disappointment.
And I know that I’m twenty-four hours out of a relationship. But I find myself wondering if she’s single.
I can’t ask her. She’ll think I’m nuts.
But when she said she knows I’ll find the love of my life, part of me thrummed with this wild thought: What if I already have? What if it’s you?
I want desperately to respond to her note—to keep the conversation going—but I have no idea what to say.
Instead, I respond to Mike Anatolian.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, June 22, 2020 at 2:27pm
Re: Subject: Favor?
Hey dude! Good to hear from you. All is well with me and the fam—health-wise, anyway. Work is slow but that clinic I mentioned is going well and keeping me busy. As for Sarah… long story. Give me a buzz soon and we’ll catch up.
Molly is down to offer an internship to Becky. Have her email me and I’ll connect them.
I get an email from Becky within minutes.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, June 22, 2020 at 2:35pm
Subject: Internship
Dear Mr. Rubenstein,
Thank you so much for your help in connecting me with Molly Marks. I am really looking forward to meeting her and I am beyond grateful for your help.
I hope this isn’t too forward, but I have another idea to propose. I’ve been volunteering for a women’s shelter in NYC all throughoutcollege, but it’s currently closed due to Covid. As you can imagine, this is incredibly heartbreaking and so dangerous for our clients in abusive situations. Mike told me about your legal clinic, and it sounds incredibly inspiring and dearly needed. If there is any volunteer work I could help with remotely, I would really love to help out.
Thank you again, and kind regards,
Becky Anatolian
What a nice kid.
And what a nice distraction from my obsession with Molly’s relationship status.
I dash off a note back.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, June 22, 2020 at 2:46pm
Re: Subject: Internship
Hi Becky!
Wow, what a kind offer. I’m definitely going to take you up on it. We could use help with screening interviews, which we conduct over video chat. These are to help us ascertain whether we can help potential clients, or if we need to refer them elsewhere. I’m going to have our intake coordinator reach out to you to see if it’s a good fit. And I might have a few cases I could use some support on with research, if you’re interested in the legal side of things.
In the meantime, I’ll connect you with Molly.
All the best,
Seth
I open another window and start typing.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]; [email protected]
Date: Mon, June 22, 2020 at 2:48pm
Subject: Molly, meet Becky
Hi Molly and Becky,
I wanted to send you a note so you have one another’s contact info. I’ll let you take it away with introductions.
Happy writing!
Seth
Whew.
The miasma of failure hovering around me since I woke up this morning is dissipating in this sea of emails.
My inbox makes a friendly little ping, and the thread from Molly turns bold with a fresh message. There’s a paper clip icon—she’s attached something.
I open it.
I’m greeted by a picture of a baby whale mid-backflip in a sparkling turquoise sea.
From: [email protected]
Date: Mon, June 22, 2020 at 2:53pm
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Subject: Whale hello
Thanks for the intro to my young amanuensis.
Thought you might want something to cheer you up.
(Took this right before I broke up with my last boyfriend. Made me happier than he did.)
I slam my fist down on my marble coffee table so hard I yelp in pain. But who cares, because Molly is single and moreover she volunteered that information. Is she reading my mind? Is she telling me this because she feels the same pull that I do?
I whip out my phone because this calls for more immediacy than emails provide. I don’t even care if I look psychotically eager.
Seth:Thanks for the whale content!
Molly:Nothing like baby whales to soothe the pain of a breakup
Molly:And i have A LOT MORE where that came from
I was not going to ask about her breakup, but I feel like maybe she wants me to? Or at least won’t mind, since she keeps mentioning it?
Seth:Was your breakup bad?
Molly:Not really… We weren’t in love or anything
Weren’t in love! She is talking to me about love? She is admitting she sometimes feels it? I have to restrain myself from hitting the coffee table again.
Molly:It was more the timing… We broke up RIGHT before covid
Molly:So i’ve been alone, basking in my own charming company for four months
Molly:And as much as I pride myself on being a self-sufficient introvert curmudgeon, it turns out that I like human companionship
Molly:Also sex. Could have done with some sex to pass the time
SEX? Not to be a teenage boy about it, but SHE SAID SEX???
Seth:There’s always cam boys
Molly:Who needs cam boys when dick pics are free?
Oh my God, she went there? I suddenly feel like I’m punching above my weight class in terms of escalating flirtation. But I try to reply as blithely as possible.
Seth:There is indeed a robust dick pic economy
Seth:Something to console myself with on the lonely nights to come
Molly:Receiving dick pics?
Seth:Distributing them
Molly:I do not for one second believe you have ever sent a dick pic
Seth:I have
Seth:Only tastefully and upon request
Molly:I zero percent believe you
Seth:Why?
Molly:Because you’re like a civilized courtly gentleman from 1849
I no longer feel like a teenage boy. I feel like an adult man with an absolutely rock-hard erection. And if Molly thinks I don’t know how to sext, she has failed to understand the concept of “gentleman in the streets, freak in the sheets,” despite having witnessed me embodying it in real life.
So I am going to remind her.
Seth:That’s not what you said when I came on your tits
There is not immediately a response bubble to indicate she’s typing, and I instantly worry that I offended her. I bite my lip, stressed-out, as she finally begins replying.
Molly:LOL
Molly:That doesn’t count. You were drunk and i took advantage of your impaired sense of decency
Oh, girl, it is on.
Seth:My cock didn’t see it that way
Seth:Three times
Molly:You counted
Seth:Fuck yeah I counted
Seth:Still think about you when I jerk off
Seth:All beautiful and wet and whimpering my name
Molly:Do i make you come?
Seth:So fucking fast
Seth:Except when I edge it out so I can think about you longer
Molly:How hard are you right now?
Seth:So. Fucking. Hard.
Molly:Prove it
I’m stone-cold sober but I feel drunk. I open my jeans. Pull them off. My dick is already poking out of my boxer briefs, wet at the tip. I position myself so that she gets a little bit of my abs along with my cock, because I’m a generous man.
I take a moment to switch to black-and-white mode before snapping a pic, because I was not lying about being classy when distributing homemade pornography.
I hit send.
Molly:Fuck
Molly:I want to watch you touch it
I literally throb at the loins. Jesus Christ.
I’ve never sent a video before.
But I want to.
I’m going to.
And I want something in return.
Seth:I’ll show you mine if you show me yours
Molly:Deal
I prop my phone up against my laptop and fumble a bit with it until I get a reasonably flattering angle. And then I go for it. I’m thinking of her touching herself while thinking of me, and it takes about one minute to come all over myself.
A lot.
At length.
It is fucking obscene. I’ve never sent anyone anything like this in my life, and my heart is pounding at the idea of her watching it.
But, yeah. I really fucking want her to.
I drag the file into the messenger app, triple check I’m sending it to the right person, and hit send.
The preview of it lands in the box and I’m so turned on by the fact that she’s going to see it that I know I’m going to have to make myself come again in a matter of minutes so I don’t die of lust.
And then a video pops up beneath mine. The preview image is of her breasts. Breasts that I spent so much time holding and stroking in high school that they are like dear, treasured friends. Extremely hot treasured friends.
I click on the video, and it’s Molly from the breasts down. She’s sitting on her bed propped against a mound of pillows and there is a pink vibrator beside her.
Jesus Christ.
She starts by playing with her breasts—stroking them, twisting her nipples. Her hands travel down to her thighs, which she brushes airily with her fingers, teasing herself.
I grab my cock, which is already obtrusively hard again, and begin working it as I watch her—but not too fast. I don’t want to finish before she does.
She spreads her legs to show me her pussy and rubs two fingers into it. I can hear her wetness. She reaches for the vibrator, presses a button, and it begins to whirr. It’s like sexual ASMR. I could get off on the audio alone.
But I don’t have to, because she puts the vibrator to her clit. I can hear it buzzing, hear her sigh of pleasure, hear her breath turn into little moans, hear her whispering “oh fuck yeah, oh fuck.”
Her hand reaches out and pulls her camera closer to her pussy, and I can see up close how swollen and red and wet it is and I want to taste it so bad I put my own finger in my mouth and pretend it’s her. I stop stroking my cock because I’m going to come if I don’t, and it throbs against my stomach, like it’s angry to be left alone.
This is an ache unlike anything I’ve ever felt. My groin is literally pulsing.
She grabs another toy from somewhere off camera—a dildo in the shape of a sparkly, purple, generously proportioned penis. Slowly, she eases it inside herself. I cannot believe what I’m seeing. She’s on her knees now, with the cock up between her legs, thrusting against it, and she puts the vibrator over her clit.
I can tell from the way her moans are coming, fast and high-pitched, that she’s about to come, so I grab my dick and start stroking myself in time with her. And then she cries out so loud it’s almost a scream—“oh Seth, oh God, fuckkkkk.” I close my eyes and explode all over my thighs and stomach.
I nearly black out with it.
I spend a full minute panting.
When I open my eyes I see that underneath the video in the message app she’s typed a single thing: a little whale emoji, water spewing out of its blowhole.
It makes me laugh.
But I’m still emotional.
I can’t believe she did this for me, shared this incredible, intimate, personal thing with me. I grab my underwear off the floor to wipe myself off, pick up my phone, and call her.
She answers on the first ring.
“Hey,” she says. Her voice is barely more than a sigh.
“I’m…” My own voice is raspy, and for a moment, I’m at a loss for words.
“Me too,” she whispers.
“Thank you,” I say. For someone who uses his words for a living, I am wildly incoherent. “I’ve never…” I get out. “I’m, like, moved, Molly.”
She laughs softly. I can picture her lying in bed, naked and boneless from that orgasm, smiling up at the ceiling.
“I thought you might need a pick-me-up,” she says.
“That was a lot more than a pick-me-up.”
She laughs again. It sounds shy. A register I haven’t heard from her since we fooled around in high school.
“I’ve never sent anyone something so… explicit before,” she says. “Was it too much?”
“Too much? Baby, I want to fly across the country and fuck you so senseless you have to quit your job because you don’t have time to do anything but scream my name.”
“I don’t technically have a job at present,” she says. “But that just gives me more time for screaming.”
I can hear a smile in her voice.
For a moment I’m tempted to actually do it. I could take my chances double-masking on a plane. Or I could drive for two days to LA. But I wouldn’t want to get sick, and then get her sick. So I just say, “I’ll keep that in mind.”
“What are you doing for the rest of the day?” she asks.
“Probably watching your video and masturbating,” I say. It’s sort of a joke but probably also true.
“Me too,” she says.
We both laugh.
“Hey,” I say. “Your email meant a lot to me.”
“Aww.”
Her tone is unreadable. I decide not to press it. “So how are you doing these days?” I ask.
“Hmm,” she says slowly. “Fine, I guess.”
“Fine’s not so great.”
“Is anyone so great?”
“Not especially.”
“I’m slowly losing my mind from being so isolated,” she says. “But I feel like an asshole complaining about it, since no one in my family has gotten sick and I have savings to float me until film comes back.”
I hate to think of her alone in Los Angeles. I find that city lonely enough even when I’m just passing through. Quarantining there sounds desolate, even with the better weather.
“Do you have a bubble?” I ask.
“Yeah, sort of. Some girlfriends and I hang outside. But it’s not quite enough to keep me from being sick of my own company. I’m considering getting a dog, and I don’t even like dogs.”
“You like cats.”
There is a pronounced satisfaction in knowing this about her. In having institutional knowledge that dates back to her teens.
“I know, but dogs are more sociable and less likely to be snatched by coyotes.”
“Ah. We don’t have many coyotes in Chicago. Maybe you should move here.”
“You have blizzards, Seth. Stop bragging.”
“Snowstorms are great for cozy winter sex. In front of the fireplace. With a nice full-bodied cab on the coffee table and a view of the city all the way to the lake.”
“You present a compelling argument for life on the tundra.”
“Well, I am a lawyer.”
“I need to shower,” she says. “But this was…” She trails off, searching for the word. “Fun.”
I could do with a more effusive descriptor—like “mind-blowing” or “life-changing”—but I’ll take what I can get.
“Can I call you again?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
I smile. “Good.”
“Good.”
There’s a click, and she’s gone, and my face hurts from smiling.