Chapter 19. Molly
His name is Sebastian Stone, née Tom Lovell, and he is the hottest man I’ve ever spoken to, let alone slept with.
We met at the premiere for my friend’s movie. He walked up to me and asked if anyone had ever told me I look like Demi Moore, whereupon I immediately decided to sleep with him.
He’s twenty-six. An actor. Not the aspiring kind—he’s on a network show about teenage girls who solve crimes. He wants to pivot to action movies. He’s never seen my films. I don’t watch his show.
He works out for two to four hours a day and eats ungodly quantities of chicken breast. He gets spray tans and highlights and facials. He laughs about how I hide from the sun and don’t dye my hair. He likes to play with my grays in bed, wrapping them around his manicured fingers and calling me his hot-ass crone.
He has a French bulldog named Milo he is sometimes photographed walking. The photos end up in the “stars, just like us” section of supermarket checkout line tabloids. He doesn’t set up these photo ops, but he also doesn’t avoid the celebrity-friendly coffee shops the paparazzi hang out in front of. Once, we were pictured together in a magazine holding hands while walking up Sunset and drinking twelve-dollar cold brews. The headline was SEBASTIAN STONE’S OLDER WOMAN. I framed it.
He lives in West Hollywood, on a high floor of an expensive condo tower. He doesn’t own a car. It’s a forty-five-minute drive, minimum, to get to his neighborhood. He’s been to my house three times and questions why I would want to live in a place with no gym or private pool. He wants me to move to Beverly Hills. He laughs when I tell him I’d rather jump out of his high-rise.
We are an opposites-attract cliché, I’m aware, but you see: there’s the sex.
I’m a professional writer and I’m not sure there are words to describe what he’s capable of. I think it’s something to do with his core strength and his young man’s vigor. He loves to be between my legs. He loves to be inside me. He loves the taste of my skin. He loves to hold me up in front of mirrors and pin me against headboards and hitch me against trees. I’ve had more orgasms in the last three months than I have in the last three years.
He’s the best antianxiety sex I’ve ever had. My life is a shambles, but I haven’t popped a benzo since we met.
Currently, Sebastian is getting a massage at our hotel in Cabo San Lucas, where we’ve gone for a long weekend. Sebastian is treating, so he picked the hotel, and while it’s luxurious, it seems to have been designed entirely for the sake of photo ops. It’s difficult to navigate the walkways without running into scantily clad influencers having their pictures taken. I feel schlumpy and undermaintained in my boho white caftan. Everyone else is wearing, like, neon dental floss.
I flag down my waiter and order another margarita to my lounge chair. The sun is too intense for me to strip down and go in the pool, so I’ve been hunkered beneath an umbrella in my enormous sun hat for hours, dragging the umbrella around to fight the movement of the ever-encroaching sun.
I’m glad to be alone. Sebastian and I arrived a day and a half ago and have spent approximately every minute together since leaving Los Angeles. It’s our first couple’s trip, and the long stretches of time when we aren’t either eating a meal or having sex are beginning to exhaust me. Sebastian is smart, in his way, but we don’t have that much in common. In LA this is not a problem, since we rarely spend more than a night together. Here, I’m beginning to feel the conversational coffers run dry.
My phone chirps with a message notification, and I put down my book. I’ve been trying to spend my vacation not fixating on my phone, but reading an actual physical novel is harder than it used to be, now that most of my reading is done via apps.
Alyssa:Molls, how is vacay going?
Alyssa:I’m living for Sebastian’s Insta posts
Alyssa:Do you know how many organs I would sell to go to a child-free resort?
Molly:There is actually one child here. A baby. With two nannies. And the mom has a dog she seems to love more than the baby, because she keeps sending the baby away and snuggling the dog
Alyssa:Sad
Alyssa:(BUT I GET IT!)
Molly:Rich people are wild
Dezzie:Molly, are you behaving wildly out of character and having fun?
I take a selfie of myself in my huge shades with my margarita in hand and throw it in the chat.
Molly:Poolside, baby
Dezzie:Where’s your man?
Molly:Getting a massage
Alyssa:Getting along?
Molly:Mostly eating guacamole and fucking
Alyssa:STOP. I’LL DIE OF JEALOUSY.
Molly:He’s a little boring though. We’re running out of stuff to talk about
Dezzie:Talk about his abs
Alyssa:Or his penis
Molly:ALYSSA! When did you become such a pervert?
Alyssa:You do not even want to know how long it’s been since I’ve had sex. Like five years. I’m not kidding
Dezzie:I think you’re forgetting you have a baby under the age of two, so that’s not possible
Alyssa:Immaculate conception
Dezzie:Wish that would work for me. I am so tired of having sex with rob for the purpose of procreation. If it doesn’t work soon I’m buying a turkey baster
Alyssa:It’ll happen
Molly:Keep trying!!! I need a mini dez
Alyssa:Or a mini Rob
Dezzie:LOL. An infant shuffling around in dockers and a concert tee from 2006? Can’t wait
Molly:At least you HAVE a rob. Honestly you guys, this trip has me wondering why all my best relationships are sexual
Molly:Like, seb is nice and I enjoy his company in small to medium increments but mainly he’s hot and we have amazing chemistry
Molly:I’m bored
Dezzie:I can answer that
Molly:Oh good
Dezzie:CUZ YOU AVOID DATING ANYONE YOU ACTUALLY LIKE
Alyssa:Not to mention when you accidentally do like them you break up with them immediately
I try to think of a sassy reply, but my text box is overridden by an incoming call. From, of all people, Seth Rubenstein.
I haven’t spoken to him since we saw each other in Los Angeles. I have, however, spent a generous amount of time spying on him and his beautiful girlfriend on Instagram.
“Hello?” I say.
“Molly McMarks?”
“Speaking.”
He chuckles. My mouth curves into a smile I can’t hold back. I love the sound of his laugh.
“How the hell are ya?” His voice is ever so slightly soft around the consonants. Like he’s tipsy.
“I’m a seven point five out of ten. Maybe even an eight.”
“That’s like a sixteen for a normal person.”
“Sure is.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m in Mexico actually. Drinking margs in front of an infinity pool with a view of the ocean.”
“For real, buddy?”
“For real, buddy.”
“God, I’m jealous.”
“Chicago’s permanent winter got you down?”
“I’m in New York, actually.”
“Oh yeah? What are you doing there?”
He laughs softly. “You don’t want to know.”
“Okey dokey.”
“You’re the only person left on Earth who says ‘okey dokey.’”
“Nope. My mom says it.”
“How is your mom?”
“She’s great. Just sold a ten-million-dollar house on the bay. Working on my inheritance.”
“You’re going to be so rich. You can quit your job and live off the fat of the land.”
“Excuse you. I’m an independent adult woman with a booming career.”
A bent truth if ever there was one.
“I was just kidding,” he says. “What are you working on?”
Ugh. I don’t want to tell him, because this means acknowledging to myself how asinine my current project is. My father asked me the same question last week and I literally lied and said I’m between jobs rather than face his scorn.
But whatever. It’s just Seth. He takes pride in my accomplishments like only someone who doesn’t understand my downward trajectory can.
“I’ve been commissioned to adapt a third-rate young adult tearjerker that will premiere on some new micro-streaming app and be viewed mainly by sixth graders and those who have the taste of sixth graders.”
“What do sixth graders taste like?”
“Chicken.”
He laughs very hard.
“That was barely amusing,” I say. “Are you drunk?”
“Mmmmm… maybe a little,” he allows.
“Isn’t it like seven o’clock there?”
“I started early.”
“A special occasion? Or are you just a sad businessman drinking alone in some hotel bar?”
“Special occasion.”
“Care to share?”
“Well, that’s why I called you.”
“Oh, I thought you called me because you’re drunk and unrequitedly in love with me.”
That just slipped out, probably because of the second margarita.
I screw up my entire face in humiliation and am infinitely grateful he can’t see me.
He’s quiet for a second. And then he laughs.
“Dream on, Karl Marx.”
Ugh, relief. He’s letting it slide.
“Don’t call me that.”
“Okay, Molly Malolly.”
“Ew. That’s my mom’s nickname for me. Please don’t impersonate my mother. Anyway, what’s your news?”
I honestly have no idea what he’s going to tell me. That Marian married her Cubs player? That he has an idea for a screenplay? That he’s terminally ill and wants one last goodbye?
“You’re winning,” he says.
“Winning what?”
“The bet.”
“Because you’ve finally admitted to yourself I won’t be your date to our twentieth reunion?”
“No. Because Jon and Kevin are dating.”
“What?” I yell so loudly that the YouTuber next to me interrupts her livestream and glares.
“I know.” I can hear a smile in his voice.
“Aww, that makes me so happy!”
“Me too. Though I can’t believe you were right about them.”
I can. They are the rare fated couple on which all those “ships passing in the night” romances are based.
“I told you, I’m good at this,” I say. “Are you with them right now?”
“I was all day, but I left to call you—oh fuck.” I hear scrabbling noises, then more curses.
“Seth? Everything okay?”
He expels a breath. “God damn it. I left something with Jon.”
“Something important?”
“Yeah,” he says, his voice strained. “Pretty important. Look, I gotta go.”
“Okey dokey. Talk in six months?”
But he’s already ended the call.
I immediately open my messages.
Molly:Guys
Molly:Wow
Dezzie:What?
Molly:Seth Rubenstein just called me
Dezzie:“Seth Rubenstein” lol. Like there’s some other Seth
Molly:He called to say jon and kevin from high school are dating!
Alyssa:!!!
Dezzie:I always thought they had a thing
Molly:Me toooooo
I wish Seth were here so I could gloat to his face.
But he’s not. Sebastian is here. And he is walking toward me, clad in a fluffy white robe.
He flops down next to me. “Hey, babe.”
“Hey. How was your massage?”
“So great.”
He removes his robe to reveal his perfect, massage-oiled musculature and takes his sunscreen, giant water bottle, and book out of his tote bag. He only reads self-help books about woo-woo shit like manifesting, as far as I can tell.
“What do you want to do for dinner tonight?” I ask. “Shall we go into town? I heard the food at Dahlia is incredible.”
He puts his hand on my thigh. “Why don’t we stay in and order room service?”
He means stay in and have sex in our suite. Which we also did last night.
This is not unappealing, but people can both eat food in a restaurant and have sex in one evening.
“Let’s at least check out one of the restaurants here at the hotel,” I counter. “The sushi place has omakase.”
Sushi is one of the few foods Sebastian eats other than chicken breast.
He squeezes my thigh. “Sure, babe.”
“I’ll walk over and make a reservation.”
It’s nice to move my legs after an entire day rotting in the sun on a chaise lounge. I always think I like vacations where you do nothing but sit by the pool. And then, after about one day, I start losing my mind.
I make our dinner reservation with the concierge. And then, on impulse, I ask, “Are there any day trips or excursions you would recommend for tomorrow?”
“We’re just at the end of the whale migration season,” she says. “We offer a fabulous two-hour whale-watching trip that leaves at ten in the morning.”
Whales! The marine biologist I aspired to be in fourth grade does a backflip.
“Fantastic. Can you book it for me? Two people?”
“Of course, madam.”
I walk back to the pool, unnerved that a young woman called me “madam,” but pleased with myself for concocting an adventure.
“So we’ve got a table for dinner at eight,” I tell Seb. “And guess what?”
He looks up from his book on crystals, or whatever. “What, babe?”
“I booked us a whale-watching tour!”
He wrinkles his beautiful top lip. “On a boat?”
“Uh… yes.”
“But I get seasick. And I thought you hated boats.”
“I hate sailboats. And even if I didn’t, I’d make an exception for whales. Come on!”
He gives me a kind smile. “Why don’t you go solo and take lots of pictures.”
“You really won’t come?”
“Babe, I’ll puke on the whales.”
He returns to his book on self-actualization, or whatever.
I am speechless. What kind of man will not go on a whale-watching tour with his girlfriend?
A boring one.
Seb, I must finally admit to myself, is chronically boring.
I open my phone and pull up Seth’s number.
Molly:Do you like whales?
Seth:Um, yes, I’m not a monster.
Seth:Why?
Molly:Just conducting an informal poll
Seth:To locate the sociopaths among your acquaintances?
Molly:Yep. So far i’ve only found one
Seth:Is it you?
Molly:I actually just murdered a whale, so
Seth:Presumably an endangered one.
Molly:Yep. A baby
Seth:Always stay true to yourself.
Molly:I’m a woman of principle
Seth:That’s why I admire you.
I laugh out loud. Sebastian looks up from his book on astronumerology, or whatever. “What’s so funny?”
“Oh, just… nothing. Whales.”
He smiles at me indulgently. “You’re cute. Want to go back to the room?”
I glance longingly at my phone, but Seb’s already pulling me out of my chair.
The rest of the evening goes by predictably. We have sex in the shower. We eat sushi. (Sashimi for him, a twelve-course omakase for me, because it’s important to live, even if your boyfriend is mortally afraid of carbs.) We go back to the room and have sex again.
I never thought one could grow so weary of fabulous sex.
I set my alarm and wake up early. Sebastian is gone—no doubt already at the gym. I grab a bacon torta at the breakfast cantina and head to the lobby to meet my tour group.
There are six of us: me and a family of five from Cincinnati. The parents are nice, but the children—three adolescent girls—look at me like I’m creepy for being alone.
“I’m here with my boyfriend, but he gets seasick,” I explain to the mother, who has not asked.
“Oh, that’s a shame. Too seasick for whales?”
“I know.” I sigh. “I should probably break up with him.”
She gives me a confused look.
“Just kidding!” I say.
She laughs politely and busies herself doling out sunscreen to her children.
We are led down to the beach, where a speedboat awaits us. The tour guide introduces himself and distributes life vests. Two men push us out into the surf, and then we’re off.
I sit near the bow of the boat with the guide. “They’re just a few miles off the coast today,” he tells me. “It’s a good day. Calm. They’re feeding.”
I nod and let the wind whip through my hair and the salt spray my face. Boating on the Pacific is different from the calm Gulf bays and intercoastals by my mom’s house. This is more fun. I feel like Tom Cruise in a Michael Bay movie. I find myself grinning. Genuinely enjoying myself.
How novel.
The guide leaps to his feet. “Over there. Ten o’clock.”
We all turn our heads to see a massive blue whale rise out of the water. She disappears, and then her tail breaks through the surf with a splash.
“Look, two more,” one of the girls cries.
I whirl around to see them duck out of the water in tandem—one big, one small.
“It’s a mama and her baby!” another tween cries.
We all grab our phones and wildly snap photos.
Then I stop, and just watch them—let the moment wash over me.
The guide grabs the wheel and turns the boat, and we spend the next hour finding whale after whale. Some of them approach us, curious. A baby shows off with a flip out of the water as her mother circles her protectively.
They splash us. They squirt water out of their blowholes. They do every single thing you could desire of a whale.
The family and I laugh and take pictures and by the time the hour is up even the daughters seem to like me. I can’t remember the last time something felt so exhilarating.
I loved doing it for myself, but part of me wishes there had been someone to share it with aside from a family of strangers.
I tip the guide handsomely, say goodbye to the family, and walk toward the pool on wobbly, seafaring legs. I grab a chair, order a margarita, and collapse back to examine my haul of photos.
They are beautiful, and I open Instagram to post a few.
The first post I see is from @sethrubes.
He’s sitting next to his gorgeous blond girlfriend in a park. They are holding hands, and there is a giant, sparkling ring on her finger.
It’s captioned @Sarah_LT just made me the luckiest man in Chicago. No, wait, the world.
It has 563 likes, and the first comment beneath it is from the @Sarah_LT in question. Can’t wait to be your wife.
I close the app, stricken, abandon my margarita, and fumble my way back to my suite to find Seb.
“Are you crying, babe?” he asks, emerging from the shower in all his glistening glory.
“It’s nothing,” I say. “I think I’m about to start my period.”
“Aww. Come here and let me kiss it better,” he says.
I bury myself in his chest and, for a minute, just let myself cry.
He wipes the tears from under my eyes and kisses me on both cheeks.
He really is nice.
I know that I’ll break up with him as soon as we get back to LA.
I never do get around to posting the whales.