Chapter 8. Seth
It will come as no surprise to you that I enjoy making love.
Give me some tender eye gazing, some Sade in the background, some massage oils, and I am a happy and sexually aroused man. (Just kidding about the Sade part. Let’s be honest; I prefer the more intimate soundtrack of the breath.)
I’m sentimental, I know, but it’s also a taste borne of practicality. The ability to have slow, present sex with someone without bursting out laughing is a good litmus test for whether you might fall in love.
But I don’t want to make love with Molly Marks.
Tonight, I have more of a horny teenager energy.
I have two-virgins-desperate-to-finally-have-the-privacy-to-do-it energy.
Which is where we left off fifteen years ago, the night she broke up with me.
But let’s not think about that. Heartbreak isn’t great for virility.
So no.
I do not want to light candles.
I do not want to indulge in leisurely foreplay. My cock straining against my pants in that fucking endless Uber ride back to our hotel was the foreplay.
Now I want to fuck this girl fucking senseless.
I pull up her dress and pull down her panties. She’s so fucking wet.
“You okay?” I ask, because consent is sexy even when you are reliving your sixteen-year-old desperation lust.
“Get it in,” she replies, producing a condom.
Reader, I get it in.
And it is good.
More than good.
It is more than good three times before we pass out.
I awaken in Molly Marks’s hotel room, which smells like her perfume and the incredible scent of whatever she puts in her hair.
Molly is lightly snoring, which I find adorable.
This whole thing would be idyllic except for my shattering, phantasmagorical hangover.
I get out of Molly’s bed (Molly’s bed!), call room service, and order the works, charging it to my room. I pilfer around in the minibar and find one of those $18 packets with four tabs of Tylenol. I take two for myself and put two out for Molly, along with a glass of cold water.
She doesn’t stir.
I open the sliding glass doors and make myself comfortable on her balcony overlooking the bay while I wait for our feast.
It’s not hot yet, and there’s a lovely breeze. I close my eyes to do my morning meditation. (I do it every day, no excuses. Discipline is the essence of self-care.)
I hear the knock at the door for our breakfast, and Molly rouses as I go over to open it. She hides all but her squinting eyes under the covers as the server unveils our spread of eggs, pancakes, green juice, orange juice, bacon, and croissants, and pushes down the steaming French press.
I tip him generously, and he leaves with a smile.
I turn to Molly, also smiling.
She pulls down the covers to reveal her mouth.
She is not smiling.
“You’re still here,” she states flatly.
My extremely good mood leaves my body and hovers just above my head, fluttering, not sure if it it’s safe to come back.
“Oh…” I say, worried I have deeply misread the room.
Was this supposed to be a one-night stand?
Canit be, if you’ve waited fifteen years for it?
Was I supposed to slip out under the cover of darkness on a girl I’ve known since we were fourteen?
“Sorry,” I say with all the casualness I can muster. “I won’t linger. I just thought you might want something to mop up the booze.”
She closes her eyes and rubs her temples. “Sorry, sorry,” she says. Her voice is froggy, like she smoked a pack of cigarettes last night. I would say it’s seductive except I’m getting strong vibes that seduction time has drawn decisively to a close.
“No, it’s fine,” I say. “I’ll get out of your hair. I’m just gonna steal a cup of coffee because my head is protesting the twelve Flamingos I pounded last night. It was great to see you… and stuff.”
She sits up. “No… Hey, Seth, I’m sorry. That came out wrong. You don’t have to go. Help me with these pancakes?”
I relax a bit but not entirely, because it seems like she’s pitying me.
“It’s okay, Molls. I want to get a swim in before I pack anyway. I’ll leave you to it.”
She hops out of bed and walks to the closet to grab a long, hippieish robe that is so Los Angeles it recontextualizes her into the adult she is now, rather than the girl she still is in my mind.
Wait, that sounds creepy.
What I mean is that I know her through the lens of my memories. I don’t have the slightest idea who she’s become.
I’d love to get to know her.
I doubt, from the brisk way she cinches her robe, that it’s mutual.
I really should go. I do possess pride, and she’s damaged enough of it for one lifetime.
I stand up and grab my wallet from the dresser.
“Sit down, Rubenstein,” she orders. “I can’t eat five hundred dollars of room service alone.”
“Don’t worry, it’s on my tab,” I say.
“I’m not worried. I’m a lauded and well-compensated screenwriter. Sit down.”
I sit down without further protest, because I am so fucking hungry that I’d rather eat than preserve my dignity.
“How did you end up a screenwriter?” I ask. “I always thought you’d be a lobbyist or a professor or something.”
She was so serious in high school.
“I’m full of mystery,” she says, piling scrambled eggs onto her plate.
Apparently, she doesn’t intend to say more.
“Seriously,” I prod.
“Well, I majored in communications, because I wanted to be White House press secretary. You know, a normal thing eighteen-year-old girls want.” She laughs at herself a little. “But I had to take a couple of creative writing classes for my major to graduate, and I was really good at it. So I decided to do a screenwriting MFA.”
“Why screenwriting?”
She dumps a huge blob of ketchup onto her eggs.
“Because screenwriting is more lucrative than toiling away at a literary masterpiece, and I like money.”
“Strategic,” I say. “But why rom-coms?”
In high school she could not abide the slightest whiff of anything romantic. She wouldn’t even watch masterpieces like Titanic. She liked to cuddle up on the couch with popcorn and watch Frontline.
“They were way more popular, when I started, and easier for women to break into,” she says. “And I wanted to write stuff I could sell. Plus, you can bang them out quickly because they all have the same arc and use similar tropes. It was just practical.”
“You sound somewhat dismissive of your own genre.”
And dissonant with the girl she used to be. Molly’s interests were never “practical.” She liked listening to Rufus Wainwright and debating the existence of trickle-down economics and reading slim volumes of Edna St. Vincent Millay.
“I’m not dismissive. I think rom-coms are an undervalued reflection of our culture. The conventions are a narrative vehicle reflecting the fantasies and anxieties underlying, you know, the primal biological will toward finding a mate.”
“Oh, like, a soul mate?”
She groans. “Not this shit again. I mean the impulse to reproduce one’s genetic material.”
“It’s not shit, it’s true love. And it’s what you’re selling, isn’t it? Soul mates? You must on some level find the idea attractive if you’ve devoted your entire career to it.”
“What I find attractive is exploiting the inherent human desire for connection for profit. It’s a job. I’m good at it. End of story.”
I don’t buy it.
“You’re so full of shit, Molls. God, I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”
“Excuse me?”
She looks mad.
I guess we’re not at so restored a level of closeness that I’m allowed to call her out.
Apparently, this is the part of her high school schtick she’s still hanging on to: finding love corny.
I happen to know she actually doesn’t.
I’d bet my life on it.
But for now, I’ll bet something else.