Chapter 6. Seth
I’m finally, finally over it.
After fifteen years of harboring low-grade resentment toward Molly Marks, I am now at peace. I feel light as a feather, if a little absurd for harboring a grudge for so long. But I forgive myself for that. I was holding space for pain.
After all, Molly was my first real love and she apologized, however badly, and I will likely never see her again after tonight, and I want to dance with her for old times’ sake. To her favorite song.
Okay, maybe I want to torture her just a little.
The thing with chronically grumpy people is that sometimes they need to be tortured. Counterintuitively, it cheers them up.
Also, I’ve had a lot of Flamingos and I am buzzing with caffeine.
“This is cruel,” Molly yells in my ear.
“Nope,” I counter. “This is fun.”
I move her hips near mine—innocently enough distancewise, but with a rhythmic approach favored by horny teenagers at high school dances.
Mostly to troll her but also because, well. She’s hot as fuck.
“Come on kid, put your hips into it!” I yell, shaking her shoulders into a shimmy.
“Gross,” she yells back. But she obeys my command.
We are flesh against flesh.
“Do it for Justin,” I whisper into her ear, putting my hand at the small of her back and spinning us around.
“Justin who?”
“Timberlake, baby.”
She giggles, and I know I have won.
She’s still the same as she was in high school. And I always intuitively got her in high school. We had instant chemistry—not just sexually but the intrinsic friendship kind, where you fall into conversation effortlessly and end up talking for hours.
Despite my long string of girlfriends, I haven’t had a connection like that with anyone in a long time.
In a way, I still miss her. My Molls. My Miss Molly. My Marky Marks.
“Molls,” I say, pulling her in a little closer.
“Yag?” (She might have said “yeah” but the NSYNC is very loud.)
“I’m sorry if I was intense earlier. I hope I didn’t ruin the night for you.”
She shakes her head. “I deserved it,” she shouts.
I don’t deny this.
“It’s nice to see you,” I shout back.
“It is, isn’t it?” she mouths. I cannot hear her. I do not care.
Now that we’ve cleared the air, I want to dance.
I sing the bridge to Molly passionately while she leans away, laughing. I spin her around a couple of times, asynchronously with the music—just for fun.
By the end of the song, she’s singing too. We’re looking into each other’s eyes, and our hips are now… dare I say it?… grinding.
It is fun and hot and when “Shake Ya Ass” comes on next she doesn’t even attempt to get away. Instead, she commences booty dancing with me.
Is this happening? Is she rubbing her ass against my crotch and tossing her extremely long erotic hair in my fucking face?
She is, Your Honor. She is!
When the song ends we’re winded, so I put my arm around her shoulders and lead her off the dance floor. “Let’s get a drink,” I say. “It’s been at least twenty minutes since my last Flamingo.”
We flag down a waiter and grab another round of deadly, caffeinated alcohol.
“Let’s take a walk on the beach,” I suggest.
I am no doubt pressing my luck. I brace myself for her to make her excuses and go moan to Alyssa that she accidentally enjoyed my company.
But she nods. “Great idea,” she says. “It’s so nice and balmy.”
Kevin catches my eye from across the room and squints disapprovingly in the manner of an English nursemaid who has caught a child mainlining cake. He’s friendly with Molly—they went to college together in New York—but he’s protective of me.
Which is kind of him, but I don’t need a hero right now; I need to kiss this woman who is clutching my hand and marching me off toward the ocean, whispering, “Come on. I want air.”
I hope she means “I want you.”
I grab her hand and we stroll down the beach, stopping at the pier.
“Remember when we used to make out here?” Molly asks.
I play it cool.
“Yeah, totally. It’s annoying that this beach has been discovered by tourists. Nowadays it takes an hour and a half to get here from town with the traffic.”
“I know. My mom always wants to come here when I visit, but I refuse to compete with the tourists.”
“Do you come back often?” I ask.
I do, but I’ve never run into Molly.
“Just once a year, if I can help it,” she says. “I do Christmas here, and my mom comes to LA for Fourth of July.”
I recall that she got very excited about the Fourth of July in high school. No matter how desperate things were at home, her mom would always host beach cookouts for their entire extended family. Molly moved through those parties with so much joy and confidence that she was hardly recognizable. I loved watching her like that—happy, uncomplicated.
“So no more beach parties?” I ask. It kind of makes me sad that the tradition no longer exists.
“They don’t let you make bonfires on the key anymore,” she says, shrugging. “And my mom got busy with her job and moved to the fancier part of the island, and my aunts and uncles are less enthusiastic about driving down here—they’re getting older, you know? Plus the traffic.”
Floridians hate traffic with a fiery passion—in part because our towns become overrun during high season with tourists and snowbirds whose driving skills are not at their peak. It is, consequently, a state prone to road rage.
I’m glad I now live in Chicago.
But I still like coming back.
“What’s LA like on the Fourth?” I ask.
“Oh my God, Seth,” she says, her voice full of something uncharacteristic, like excitement.
I too am full of excitement, because she has not called me by my first name in fifteen years. It literally sends tingles down my spine. Seth. It sounds like “sex,” with a lisp.
“It’s so beautiful,” she continues. “It’s the city’s best holiday—everyone goes nuts with fireworks, and you see the whole valley exploding in these gorgeous lights from the canyons. I can’t describe it. It’s a little scary because, of course, fire risk and all the sonic booms echoing off the mountains, which make you feel like you’re in the Blitz, but it’s so full-body that it’s almost sublime.”
Apparently, it still turns me on when Molly is that rare thing: earnest.
“Are you a Los Angeles July Fourth evangelist, Molly Marks?”
“I guess I am. It’s this pure, magical night. You should come sometime.”
She seems to take in what she said exactly in tandem with me—it makes her visibly gulp, and makes me sweat a little.
“I mean, you know,” she says quickly, “you should visit LA for the Fourth sometime, not—”
“Yeah, I get it,” I assure her.
“Not to be rude, it would just be weird if—”
“Molls,” I say, taking her by the shoulders and lowering my voice. “I get it. You’re not inviting me to come stay at your house for Fourth of July. It’s okay. I’m not offended. I’d rather visit you over Thanksgiving anyway. I make incredible pumpkin pie.”
She relaxes.
And then we are standing in the moonlight, on a gorgeous beach, and I am holding her, and she is looking into my eyes, and she is so beautiful.
I know what I have to do.
It’s the law, and I am an officer of the court.