Chapter 28. Molly
I wanted this.
I wanted it badly.
But now that I’m getting it, I feel so overwhelmed that I wish I had taken an Ativan.
I am not accustomed to being spoken to this sincerely. This romantically.
I’m not sure anyone has been so earnest with me about wanting a relationship since, well… Seth. In high school.
Say something,I beg myself. I can see he’s putting everything he has on the line, and I can’t just sit here nodding. This is the kind of scene I write. I should be able to find the right lines.
But I don’t have any.
So I just blurt out the truth. “I adore you too.”
And it must be the right thing, because he lets out maybe the world’s longest breath. “Did you really just say that?”
“Yeah,” I whisper.
His eyes are glistening. He reaches out for my hand and kisses it.
It’s so sweet, and it’s harrowing to be the object of such sweetness. My every instinct is to make a joke of the emotion in this moment.
But Seth deserves better.
He deserves the same sincerity he has given, like a gift, to me.
So I don’t deflect. I don’t break eye contact.
And sitting in the intensity of this moment, just feeling it, is beautiful.
But it’s also unbearable.
It’s making my heart slam into the walls of my chest.
There’s a reason I make stupid jokes when things get emotional. Stupid jokes don’t make your throat close.
Please don’t have a panic attack, I beg myself. Please don’t have a panic attack.
“Hey,” Seth says, his face drawing tight with concern. “Why do you look so upset?”
I look down at the table. I’m mortified that I can’t be who I need to be in this moment. The girl he deserves.
“I’m really scared,” I confess.
“Oh, Molls,” he murmurs. He stands up, walks around to my side of the table, and puts his hands on my shoulders.
His touch is such a relief. I lean back against him and close my eyes.
“Hey,” he says, stroking my hair. “Don’t be scared. This is good. This is happy.”
I reach for his hand and put it against my cheek. Its coolness is a balm against my flushed skin.
“I’m okay,” I say. “Thank you.” I take a very long sip of my ice water.
“I think this calls for something a little stronger,” Seth says.
He beckons our server and whispers into her ear. As they confer, the food comes, and I’m grateful for the distraction.
I still feel overwhelmed. But I can do this.
With him, I can do this.
Seth returns to his seat, and I begin carving into my crab Benedict.
“How is it?” he asks.
“Good. Crabby. How’s yours?”
He got—wait for it—Mickey Mouse pancakes.
“Good. Mousey. Want a bite?”
I shake my head. “I don’t eat rodents.”
“Some might say crabs are the rodents of the sea.”
“Ugh. Let me enjoy my crustaceans in peace, please.”
Our server comes back with a tray of bright pink cocktails garnished with huge, red, rock-candy suckers and neon bendy straws.
“Are those…”
“Shirley Temples!” Seth announces. “Just like our first date here.”
“Can I have vodka in mine?” I ask our server.
“Way ahead of you,” Seth says.
We clink our glasses.
“I guess it’s not surprising that I’m freaking out,” I say. “Do you remember how anxious I was on our first date?”
“Yes. Even though we were friends and we’d already made out.”
I shrug. “Making out is fun. It’s the dates that are stressful.”
He grins. “Would you like to leave and make out?”
“No, I’ll eat my crab like a big girl.”
“Good. Because these Mickey pancakes are ridiculously delicious.”
I feel better now that my panic is out in the open. More normal. Normal enough to air the question that has been plaguing me since last night.
“So, not to be too forward,” I say, “but how do we… how would it work, if we were to try to be together?”
He meets my eyes. “I don’t know, honestly. I’ve never dated anyone long-distance. I think we just… try.”
“Would we be, um… exclusive?” I manage to squeak out, even though I’m worried even asking this will make me seem needy.
He just smiles.
“I’d like to,” he says. “But I’ll take you any way you’ll have me.”
Good. I can’t imagine the agony of having to share him.
“I guess we could visit each other, now that flying is viable,” I venture.
“We could go on trips,” he says.
“Do you really have a lake house?” I don’t remember hearing about it before last night.
“I do. I bought it after Sarah and I broke up. So I could hole up like Thoreau and contemplate the nature of existence.”
“Did you know that Thoreau lived like a five-minute walk from his mother, and she would bring him food?”
“Lucky Thoreau. My place doesn’t even have DoorDash.”
“Where’s the house?”
“Lake Geneva, in Wisconsin, about ninety minutes outside of Chicago. It’s pretty small—two bedrooms. But it’s right on the water. Good kayaking.”
“You would not want to put me on a kayak.”
“I would absolutely want to put you on a kayak.”
“I don’t even like sailboats. I definitely do not want to ride in something with oars.”
“You’re in luck. Kayaks don’t have oars, they have a paddle. I’ll take you out on the lake when you visit. Show you some good ol’ wholesome midwestern fun.”
“I prefer Paris and Hawaii.”
“Oh, come on. I’ll feed you cheese curds. I bet you’ve never even seen a cheese curd.”
“The word ‘curd’ has to be among the most revolting in the entire English language.”
“Cheese curds and summer corn and cool dips in the lake on hot days. You’re going to be in heaven.”
I smile at him. That actually sounds wonderful. “I would like to see your place.”
“What are you doing next weekend?”
“Working, sadly.” I have that meeting with my dad and his producers on Monday, and I don’t want to be jetlagged for it.
“Cancel it,” he says decisively.
“Whoa tiger.” I laugh. “I actually do have a job. I can’t just gallivant around the hinterlands of America on short notice.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Let’s look at our calendars and find a date.” I pause. “It’s funny that I’ve never seen you in your own environment. Like, I’ve never been to your apartment.”
“I’m dying to go to your house. I bet it’s so girly and cute.”
My house actually is girly and cute.
“I bet yours is full of doilies and cats and those wood blocks that say it’s wine o’clock somewhere,” I joke.
“Yep,” he says. “And dead bodies.”
“That goes without saying.”
Seth asks for the check and I get up to go to the bathroom.
I take in my reflection in the mirror.
Usually I feel critical of myself, but right now, in this moment, I think I look pretty. Maybe it’s just the lighting, or the flattering color of this dress, or the way my hair turns wavy in the humidity.
Or maybe I’m seeing myself through Seth’s eyes.
I consider refreshing my lipstick but then decide it’s pointless. I want to kiss Seth with these lips, and I’m not sure how he’ll look in Nars Jungle Red.
“Ready?” he asks when I get back to the table.
“Yep. Where to next?”
“It’s a surprise.”
He takes my hand and we walk out to the parking lot. We make it as far as his mom’s car. I push him against the door and kiss him.
The last dregs of anxiety I’ve been harboring melt away once his arms are around me. “You,” my body thinks. “You.”
“Mommy! Eeeeew! They’re kissing!” a little boy cries.
“Knee that kid in the balls,” I whisper to Seth.
He laughs into my hair, pulling me closer.
We make out for what must be five minutes, until we’re both sweaty and sticky from the heat.
I step away and rub my mouth with the back of my hand.
“Let’s go to a hotel,” I say.
Seth shakes his head. “Nope. I have a whole day planned for us.”
And he does. Our next stop is the aquarium where we went on our second date. We wander through dark rooms, past otherworldly floating jellyfish and tanks boasting schools of angelfish, butterfly fish, and prehistoric-looking monsters called porcupine fish. It’s both captivating and deeply creepy, in the way of all aquariums.
We step out into a room with a giant sea turtle lolling in a huge, open pool, and then to something called the Shark Room, which I drag Seth through quickly. I do not fuck with sharks. This leads us to the aquarium’s most famed inhabitants: two giant manatees.
“I can’t decide if they’re cute or hideous,” Seth says, taking in their roly-poly bodies and snubbed snouts.
“Both,” I say.
“They kind of look like swimming pigs with no legs,” he muses.
“I’m sure they think the same thing of you.”
“They eat seventy-two to eighty-four heads of romaine lettuce a day,” an attendant informs us.
“Yum!” Seth enthuses.
We exit into the gift shop. I head for the doors, but Seth calls for me to wait. He’s standing at a counter inspecting marine life–themed jewelry.
“I want to buy you a present,” he says.
“I’m good on fish jewelry, actually.”
“No woman can ever have enough fish jewelry.” He flags down the cashier. “Do you have any of these necklaces with whales on them?”
I can’t help but smile.
The cashier looks confused. “Sorry, no… we don’t have whales in Florida. But we have these with manatees, dolphins, and starfish, in all the birthstones.”
“Well, manatees are like the whales of the bay,” he says authoritatively. “We’ll take one of those. In—” He turns to me. “What’s your sign, babe?”
“Taurus,” I say reluctantly.
“Taurus, please,” he says to the cashier.
“How lovely,” she says, plucking a necklace from the counter. “Shall I wrap it up for you, or would you like to wear it out?”
“She’ll wear it out,” Seth says. He takes the necklace and delicately slides it under my hair and around my neck.
“Cubic zirconia,” he says admiringly to the saleswoman. “Don’t you just love it on her?”
“Beautiful,” she agrees. “It really catches the light.”
I roll my eyes at Seth, but I take the charm in my hand and rub it with my thumb. It gives me that feeling you get when you pick out a crystal at a rock shop. You know that its supposed powers are probably bullshit, but it still makes you feel better to touch it.
“Thank you for my bauble,” I say as he hands over his credit card to the tune of $34.99. “I’ll treasure it.”
“For you, my lady, the finest jewelry the ocean-trinket industry can muster.”
We stroll back into the heat toward the car.
“Can you guess where we’re going next?” he asks me.
“The hotel?” I say hopefully.
He chuckles. “Come on. Think harder.”
The memory of our third date comes back to me. “No way,” I say.
“Yes way,” he counters.
“I’m not dressed for fishing,” I protest, looking down at my rather chic outfit. “And we don’t have poles.”
“Au contraire,” he says, popping open the trunk to reveal two fishing rods and a small cooler. “I stole my dad’s.”
“What’s in there?” I ask, pointing at the cooler.
“Kal Rubenstein’s finest cold brewskies, babe,” he says. “Get on in, it will be fun.”
We drive over a bridge to a fishing village and stop at a tackle shop by the pier. Seth runs in and emerges with a big bucket of bait fish. I carry the bucket and he hauls our gear out to the pier. There’s a pelican chilling on one of the posts, and some wizened old fishermen casting lines.
“Notice how no one else appears to be on a date here?” I ask.
“Too bad their boyfriends aren’t as creative as me.”
“Are you my boyfriend?” I ask softly. I don’t know why this word feels so freighted, since we’ve spent the past few hours reliving our youthful romance, kissing, and discussing trips we can take together while we feel out being a couple.
But it does.
“I want to be,” he says.
I feel a slow grin overtake my face. “I think I want that too.”
He reaches out and draws me to his chest.
I burrow there.
I feel eyes on us, and look over Seth’s shoulder at a pair of burly, tanned men openly ogling us as they wait for bites on their lines.
“They’re staring at us like we’re the catch,” I whisper.
“Yeah. We better get down to business,” Seth says, drawing away. Apparently public displays of affection on a pier where people routinely gut fish are a bit too sappy even for him.
Snapper are biting, and we catch a few small ones we throw back. And then Seth gets a giant tug on his line and has to really fight to bring it in—so much that the fishermen guys crowd around us to give him advice.
“Step back and brace your shoulders,” says an old man with a tobacco-stained beard.
“Don’t tug so hard, you’ll snap the line,” commands a younger guy with a deep sunburn.
Seth struggles for what feels like forty-five minutes until the creature breaks above the water. We all cry out encouragement as he reels in… a very small, very mad, hammerhead shark.
“You caught a fucking shark?” I squeal, taking one million pictures with my phone.
I don’t fuck with sharks, as stated, but I’m still impressed that my dude caught one with a fishing pole.
Seth shoots me a smug grin, holding the writhing, furious creature up for a portrait. The fishermen help him remove the hook from the shark to throw it back, though not before a few of them pose for pictures with it too. We give away the rest of our bait and walk back to the car.
We drive five minutes to an outdoor oyster bar so old that my grandparents took my mom here when she was growing up. Seth orders two dozen oysters on the half shell, which come with a bucket of saltine crackers and cocktail sauce so full of horseradish it nearly burns my face off.
The sun has moved behind the clouds and a big gust of wind blows over the stack of napkins in front of us. All of a sudden, I smell petrichor.
“Uh-oh,” Seth says. He peers out at the horizon, where you can already see rain pounding the ocean in the distance.
“It’s going to pour,” I say.
We ask for our check, but every other person at the bar has the same idea. By the time we pay there’s a crack of thunder, and then the sky erupts.
“Should we make a run for it?” Seth asks.
I grab his hand. “Come on.”
We sprint out from under the cover of the bar to his car, getting utterly soaked in the process. Water is dripping down my arms, my hair, my nose. His shirt is clinging to his chest. We dive in and slam the doors behind us.
Seth reaches in the backseat for some towels and hands me one.
“You’ve thought of everything.”
“I’m trying to impress you. And I was hoping we could make out on the beach later. I guess we’ll have to scratch that one.”
I pull him close, and kiss him. “We can make out in the car.”
Necking in a steamy car, with the windows fogged up and rain slamming down, gives us an air of privacy. Were it not for the console between us I would be in his lap. And were it not for the presence of children at the oyster bar, my mouth might be there instead.
But keeping things PG-13 has its own erotic appeal. By the time the storm stops I am dying, actually dying, to have sex.
“Let’s go to a seedy motel,” I pant. “There’s that place that charges by the hour off the highway. I’m slutty enough to find it hot.”
“Hold that thought,” Seth says.
His phone has been lighting up with notifications. He checks his messages and turns to me, looking sly.
“My family is going out to Heron Key for dinner. They’ll be gone for a few hours. Do you know what that means?”
I shake my head.
“My childhood home has no parents.”
His childhood home was the locale of many of our horniest nights.
“You really want to bone me in a twin bed?”
He nods gravely. “I really want to bone you in a twin bed.”
I can’t deny that this holds a certain nostalgic appeal. Plus, as much as I fancy myself charmed by roadside motels, Barb Rubenstein’s sheets are far less likely to have bed bugs.
I laugh and shake my head. “Okay, Rubenstein. Let’s go.”
His parents’ house is exactly as I remembered it. A large, pleasant split-level in a gated community built on a golf course.
It still smells the same way it did in high school—like clean counters and Seth’s mom’s beloved peppermint tea.
“Feels like home,” I say.
“I’m sure my parents would be happy to have you move in.”
“Great, I’ll consider that.”
“Want anything?” Seth asks. “Water? Wine? One of my mom’s three zillion diet sodas?”
“Just you.”
“As you wish, my lady.”
He takes my hand and escorts me to his bedroom. His parents, remarkably, have not redecorated it in the two decades since he left home. It still has his twin bed with its madras print bedspread. His bookshelf brimming with sci-fi paperbacks. Even his old desk, with the bulbous turquoise iMac he used in high school.
And his bulletin board, tacked with the same snapshots that were there the last time I was in this room. Seth with his friends from space camp. Seth with Jon and Kevin, grinning and sweaty in their soccer uniforms. Seth and Dave, wearing Minnie Mouse ears at Disney World.
And then there are the ones of Seth and me. Our official portrait from homecoming. (I look distinctly uncomfortable, and he looks like he’s having the night of his life.) The two of us sitting side by side on towels at the beach, tangle-haired and laughing. And the one I always loved the most: the two of us standing in his backyard, his arm casually thrown around my shoulders as I lean into him. We’re both smiling, squinting a bit against the sun. We look so happy to be near each other. So in love.
I untack the picture and take a closer look. “I can’t believe you’ve had these in your room all these years,” I say. “Weren’t your girlfriends hopelessly jealous of me?”
“Yes, my girlfriends were all kept awake by the torment of my eternal love for my sophomore year homecoming date.”
“As they should have been. Look at us now.” I pull him toward the mirrored closet door so we can admire our reflection.
“They look pretty good together,” he says.
“Very sexy against the backdrop of your Ender’s Game poster. I’m sure your exes couldn’t resist you ravishing them in here.”
“You never could,” he says. “And actually, when I bring girlfriends home we sleep in the guest room. I’m only staying in here because Dave and the kids are here, too.”
“Okay but for real, why didn’t your parents change your room? This place is like the Seth Rubenstein Museum.”
“Never got around to it, I guess. Or maybe they just pine for the days when I was a snotty eleventh grader.”
“You were never snotty. You were the Platonic ideal of a teenager. You made the rest of us look even worse than we were.”
“And you,” he says, leaning in to smile at our photos on the bulletin board, “were so beautiful.” He turns to me and moves my hair out of my face. “Almost as beautiful as you are now.”
He opens his arms and I step into them and he pulls me on top of him and we collapse down onto his bed. It groans under the weight of two rabidly horny adults, and I hope it doesn’t break as he pulls me on top of him and I open my legs to feel his erection. The friction of the bulge in his jeans through my panties makes me want to cry—both from how good it feels to be connected to him in this way, and from the corporeal memory of grinding against each other in this bed, frantic for each other’s bodies but too afraid of getting caught by his parents to take off our clothes.
Emotion is not a feeling I am used to experiencing in the lead-up to sex. Or during it. Or afterward.
Emotion gives me panic attacks. In contrast, sex gives me the kind of dopamine rush I usually have to pay good money for at the pharmacy.
It’s a relief from emotion—a way to lose myself.
But here, in Seth’s embrace, with the pressure of his lust raging up against mine, I’m not lost.
I’m overcome.
“I’ve missed this, baby,” he murmurs.
“Dry humping is still surprisingly hot,” I manage to get out, shuddering under him.
“Only cuz I’m so good at it.” He’s grinning, but his voice is breathy and I know this is driving him crazy too.
“Well, you did have years of practice,” I say, grabbing his ass and drawing up my hips to get a better angle.
“Who said I ever stopped?” he says, really giving it to me.
“Oh yeah? Is this your signature move?”
Talking is helping me not to come, but he groans, and I love it.
“Jesus fuck,” he says, lifting himself off me. I’m bereft at the loss of that pressure. Until he slides his hand into my panties and slips a finger inside me.
“Not to brag,” he whispers. “But I recently learned how to do hand jobs.”
“Nah. You were always pretty good at it.”
I lean up and kiss him, devour him, dying.
So many feelings overwhelm me. How he taught me to feel this way. How easily I feel myself becoming raw, wanting to let him break me open. How he knows how to touch me, even though we’ve only slept together once, because his body still remembers mine from all those years we made each other ache.
I come so quickly I’m embarrassed.
“Shit! Sorry!” I gasp out, shaking.
“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” he asks, between covering my face with kisses.
“I want you too much. It’s like a sickness.”
“I think I know the cure for that,” he says.
“What is it?”
“How about,” he says, “you roll over and I fuck you until you can’t see straight.”
God, the mouth on this man.
I oblige, and he growls as he pulls off my underwear, throws it on the floor, unzips himself, and slides into me.
It’s fast and hard and everything I need. It’s us, but with the advantage of experience. Urgent and rough, fueled by Seth’s filthy mouth and our insane need for each other, yet somehow still tender.
When it’s over we collapse down onto his pillows, still clothed and panting, and he pulls me close and spoons himself around me.
I can’t stop smiling.
“You are shockingly good at that,” I say.
“Shockingly? Do I not exude sexual prowess?”
“You’re very sexy,” I say honestly. “I’m just not used to nice boys who rail me senseless doggy-style in their childhood bedroom.”
“It’s usually mean boys who rail you in their childhood bedrooms?”
“Yep.”
He nibbles my ear. “No one should be mean to you.”
“What will you do if they are?”
“File frivolous lawsuits against them in civil court.”
I wrap my fingers through his. “That shouldn’t arouse me, but it does.”
“Oh yeah?” he murmurs. He presses himself against me, and he’s still hard.
I guess some things haven’t changed since high school.
“Yeah,” I say, hitching my hips to rub against his erection.
He rolls over so he’s on top of me, propped up on his forearms.
“Let’s get you out of that dress.”
We take off each other’s clothes, and I allow myself to ogle his body.
“Exercise fucking works,” I say, running my hands over the muscles of his shoulders and down his abs to the borderline ostentatious V of his hips.
“Are you being nice to me?” he asks.
“I’m trying to sweet-talk you into having sex with me again.”
“Oh, weird,” he says. “It worked.”
This time it’s slower. By the time we both come I am, to use a metaphor that befits this room, Play-Doh.
We cuddle up together, naked, and put the blanket over us. It barely fits. He has to wrap himself around me to avoid falling off the mattress. Our breath has slowed, and I can feel his heartbeat.
It might be the best feeling in the world.
He kisses my jaw.
“Molly,” he whispers in my ear, squeezing me a little. “I’m in love with you.”
My breath catches.
I go completely still, waiting for the panic to wash over me.
But when my heart flips over, it’s not with anxiety.
It’s with joy.
“I love you too,” I say.
We lay like that, basking in warmth and contentment, until I get drowsy. Seth glances at his phone.
“They’ll probably be gone for another hour or so. Want to take a quick snooze before I drive you home?”
I nod, and he sets an alarm and gathers me up.
We drift off together, heartbeats in sync.
And when I awaken, it’s not to the beeping of an alarm.
It’s to a child’s voice shrieking, “There’s a girl in Uncle Seth’s bed! And she’s naked!!!”