Chapter 33. Seth
Normally the feeling I get when I’m about to see Molly after weeks apart is elation so intense it makes me borderline manic. But tonight, there’s a dull, painful pressure behind my eyes as I roll my suitcase past baggage claim and confront the hot cloud of exhaust fumes outside LAX.
I’ve been upset all day, ever since Rob showed up in my office with his gross fucking bombshell.
The timing could not be worse.
It’s unspoken, but a lot rides on this trip.
It was Molly’s idea to spend Thanksgiving together, just us.
She hasn’t said it, but she’s testing out being my family.
And I want to graduate with honors.
I know it’s fast, and that’s my old, problematic pattern. But I spent a year working through that, alone, and this feels different. I’ve wanted this woman since I was fourteen years old.
And the Thanksgiving invitation feels like a bookend to the time she invited me to Joshua Tree: her own Molly way of telling me she wanted me the way I wanted her.
We’ve spent a lot of time these past months talking through our respective issues. My history of overeagerness, her fear of people leaving out of the blue, which drives her to do it first. I’ve taken pains not to leap at making this permanent before she’s ready, to give the relationship time to breathe. I can tell she’s been doing work not to flinch from my love. To let herself trust that it’s real, and hers. That I’m not going anywhere.
But her anger over the Dezzie thing has me anxious. Divorce is a tough subject for her under any circumstances, and Dezzie is one of her dearest people. I wish I could use my skills to rescue both of them.
I can’t.
As an equity partner, it would be egregious to break the ethics policies I’m in charge of upholding. I adore Dezzie and will give her all the emotional support she needs, but I can’t be her legal counselor.
I text Molly my location and she says she’s two minutes away. I strain to see around the bend, waiting for that first glimpse of her car.
There she is. My girl.
And—thank God—she’s grinning at me.
She jumps out of the car as soon as she finds a place to stop and runs to me and throws herself into my arms.
I kiss the top of her glossy, clean-smelling hair.
“Hi, baby.”
“Hi,” she whispers.
We hold each other for a few seconds longer than is socially acceptable in a competitive parking situation. Her nearness makes my headache feel a little better.
She pulls back and takes me in. “You look exhausted,” she says.
“Long day. Lots of lawyering to get done before my big California adventure.”
She refrains from making a barbed comment about not lawyering for Dezzie, to my profound relief.
“We’ll get you nice and rested,” she says. She kisses my cheek and then grabs my bag and stashes it in her car. I hop into the passenger seat and she navigates through the serpentine traffic snarled around LAX.
Molly drives like it’s an art form. She’s not aggressive, but she’s skillful—elegantly weaving across six lanes to reach an exit that comes out of nowhere, making room for cars about to get cut off without disrupting the flow of traffic, maintaining conversation as she zips along the steep, winding mountain roads that lead up to her house.
Her authority behind the wheel is sexy. I can’t wait for her to drive us to the desert. I hope the route is really difficult.
“Home sweet home,” she says, pulling into the driveway of her small, white, Spanish-style house. It’s surrounded by purple bougainvillea bushes and cacti that shoot up from the earth like jaunty flower-capped erections. The air smells like jasmine.
It’s so her. I love it here.
Inside is a mix of dark wood and comfortable white linen furniture. The floor has Spanish tile and the rooms lead into each other through archways original to the 1920s house.
She’s already lighting scented candles on every surface, making the rooms glow.
“Want a snack?” she asks.
“Yes. I’m famished.”
She leads me into her yellow kitchen, with light blue cabinets that have vintage crystal knobs she found on eBay. The care she has taken to restore her house, and the pride she takes in telling me about it, is dear to me. It’s another one of those unexpected facets I’ve discovered about her as we’ve gotten to know each other’s adult selves.
I fantasize about buying a rambling old Craftsman and fixing it up with her. Somewhere with a big yard and plenty of fruit trees. A home of our own.
“Toast?” Molly asks.
She has learned about my midnight toast habit. “Yes, please.”
She puts some bread in the toaster—the sourdough I like from the farmers market in her neighborhood—and leads me out the door onto her patio. We stand there, holding hands, staring out at the glimmering lights of Los Angeles. There’s a slight breeze blowing and the air is cool, but not cold. The smell of my toast wafts from the kitchen and I inhale deeply and kiss the temple of the woman who knew to make it for me.
It is in this exact moment I know I can really do it: I can move to Los Angeles.
“I never get tired of this view,” I say. “I’ve missed it here.”
“It’s only been three weeks.”
“Felt like three months.”
She squeezes my hand.
We go back inside and she slathers normal butter on one slice of the toast and peanut butter on the other and mashes them together into a saturated mess, just how I like it. I take my signature sandwich and devour it over the sink. It’s so much better when she makes it.
When I finish, I tidy up the counter.
She watches with a wry look. “Finished, inspector?”
“Yes. Take me to bed.”
We walk to her room—a pretty, girly space with white velvet drapes and a queen-size bed with a puffy stack of pillows that I immediately want to nestle into after my long day of work and travel.
I grab Molly with both arms and pull her down onto the duvet. “Come here, kid.”
She lets me wrap my entire body around hers and squeeze her like I’m an overly exuberant squid. Her body feels small and soft and heavenly beneath mine.
“Thank you for having me,” I say into her hair. And I mean thank you for loving me. Thank you for the honor of welcoming me into your life.
She laughs. “My pleasure, Miss Manners.”
Still no mention of Dezzie. I wonder if I should bring it up. But Molly seems relaxed. I don’t want to ruin her mood.
I drown her in more kisses from her eyes to her throat. She squeals and pushes me off.
“You’re crushing me!”
“I can’t help myself. You’re so crushable.”
“You’re so cheesy.”
I yawn. “I’m so tired.” It’s eleven p.m. in Los Angeles, making it one a.m. in Chicago.
“Are you going to conk out on me, Rubenstein?”
“No. I’m going to take a shower in your adorable bathroom. And then I’m going to conk out on you.”
“I’ll get you a towel.”
I enjoy washing my hair with Molly’s shampoo, the bottle of which identifies the name of the familiar, intoxicating scent of her hair—neroli. I slather myself with her eucalyptus soap, which floods the shower with the scent of spa treatments. The luxuriousness of her bath products makes me question my own affinity for drugstore brands that profess to smell like “man.”
I come out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam into the hallway. Molly is waiting on her bed. She’s changed into a white, gauzy, floor-length nightdress that reminds me of a virginal Victorian maiden about to get corrupted by a sexy ghost in a candlelit attic.
“You smell like me,” she observes.
“I know. I can barely resist myself.”
She gestures at the night table on “my” side of the bed. (Molly is dogmatic about sleeping on the left, no matter where we are.) “I got you some water and Advil PM, in case you’re too wired to sleep.”
She knows me well.
“Thank you, my queen.” I hang my towel over a hook on the back of the door and climb naked into her bed.
I turn to face her and run my finger along the lace cuff of her nightgown. “Am I allowed to see what’s under your Jane Austen getup?”
“The lady is feeling a bit chaste tonight. Do you mind?”
The uncomfortable thought flickers up again that she might still be pissed about Dezzie. I’m always harassing Molly to talk through her anxieties. It’s bad form on my part not to broach this, even if I’m a little scared to.
“That’s all right,” I say. “But, Molls?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you still upset? Over my not being able to represent Dezzie?”
She stiffens. “A little,” she admits. “But I do understand. I think?”
“I would do it for you in a heartbeat if I could. For both of you.”
“I know. I don’t want to be unfair to you. I guess it’s just this terrible reminder of all the ways things go wrong. Even for people who were happy.”
I hold her tighter. I know this is bringing up everything that happened with her dad.
“And I was thinking about how your whole life is dealing with stuff like this,” she says. “And telling myself, okay, maybe this is the universe’s way of showing me that your job is a positive thing, that I don’t have to feel guilty about it, that you can help my friend. But when you said you couldn’t, it was like of course not. How stupid of me.”
I hate to hear this. My career is one of the few things about myself I can’t promise to change for her, and it saddens me that she might always feel conflicted about what I do—that it might be a tension we just have to live with.
“I get it,” I say. “I wish more than anything that I could fight for her. Not to be selfish, but I feel like this was an opportunity to prove myself to you, and Rob ruined it. But Dezzie will find a great lawyer—we’ll make sure of it.”
Molly leans over and gives me a peck on the lips. “You don’t have to prove yourself to me, Seth. But I have my issues, and they don’t go away just because I love you.”
Oh God, the relief to hear those words.
“I love you too,” I whisper back.
I hold her in my arms until her breath slows, grateful that we’ve survived our first real fight as a couple.
In the morning, I wake up before her and sneak off for a run. (It’s much harder in her mountainous neighborhood, and I can see why she refuses to do it.) When I get back, she’s already dressed. She waves off my desire to cook her breakfast—she wants to take me to her favorite Mexican diner for horchata and chilaquiles to fuel us for our journey.
I order mine the way she recommends—half mole sauce, half verde, with a runny egg on top. The owner knows her and calls her mija, and suddenly I wish we were staying in Los Angeles instead of going to Joshua Tree—I love seeing her in her world.
But if things go the way I hope they will, I’ll have the rest of my life to do that.
The drive to the desert is at first flat and bright and nondescript, and then becomes beautiful. The brown earth sprouts thousands of tall white windmills. The roadway opens up into rugged mountains. After about two hours I catch my first sight of a Joshua tree. I’ve never seen one in real life before, and I marvel to Molly at the way their branches divide over and over into Seussical formations. We drive down a road evocatively named Twentynine Palms Highway, past a rugged town with a mix of old-timey saloons and hipstery boutiques and strip malls and abandoned shacks, until Molly turns off the highway and navigates down a series of unpaved roads to a gate with a wooden sign reading JACKRABBIT RANCH.
“This is us,” she says. She hops out, fishes a key from the back pocket of her jeans, and unlocks the gate to let us in.
Molly’s friend Theresa sent me pictures when I was making my secret arrangements for the weekend, but I’m still blown away by how perfect it is. The yard is thick with mature Joshua trees and spidery ocotillo cacti. The front yard is landscaped with a beautiful rock garden and a bench big enough for two lovers to make out under a starry sky. I happen to know that if you drive about a thousand feet past the entrance there’s a second gate, which leads to a guesthouse. Theresa usually keeps it closed during the winter, but she sent me the keys on the sly.
“How big is this place?” I ask, because I don’t want Molly to know I already sleuthed it out.
“Ten acres,” she says. “Theresa bought two parcels next to each other in the aughts for nothing and renovated the old 1950s bungalow that was here originally. It’s amazing. Just wait.”
We grab our bags and unlock the screened-in porch. The house is low to the ground and seems to be made entirely of wood-paned windows with views of the trees. Everything inside looks hand chosen to feature in an Architectural Digest article about retro chic.
“This is amazing indeed,” I say.
“You’ll be pleased to note there’s a fire pit.”
Molly knows from our Wisconsin days that I’m a bit of a pyromaniac.
We unload culinary delicacies out of the cooler and into the old-fashioned SMEG fridge in the kitchen. I admire the milky green dishes stacked on the shelves, which Molly informs me are called “Jadeite” and are “ungodly expensive.” She says this with such covetousness that I mentally note to find her a Jadeite kitchenware collection of her own.
“Are you ready to go to the park?” Molly asks.
“Yep.”
“Great. Put on your hiking boots. I’m just going to check in on Dez real quick.”
She goes into the bedroom and closes the door. I hear soothing tones coming through the wall, though the words aren’t distinct.
“How’s Dez?” I ask when she emerges.
“A little better today,” Molly says. “She managed to get ahold of one of those lawyers you recommended and has a consultation lined up for Monday.”
Thank goodness. I texted all three of them to see if they could squeeze in a call, but it’s so close to the holiday that only one—the fearsome Geneva Bentley—was still in the office.
“I’m so glad,” I say.
“Me too. Ready to go?”
We drive ten minutes to the entrance of the national park, and Molly pulls in at the trailhead for what she calls a “normal people hike,” a short, flat loop through boulders that leads to Skull Rock. (A rock, she helpfully informs me, that looks like a skull.) Then, to “honor my desire for punishing exercise,” we drive to another trail and spend two hours trekking up and down a mountain.
The hike is vigorous and the view is beautiful, and I’m exhilarated with fresh air and endorphins by the time we get back to the car.
“We should get out of here before it starts getting dark, but I want to take you to my favorite place first,” Molly says.
“If it’s your favorite place, it’s my favorite place.”
“You’re a real cornball.”
“I do live in the Midwest. Home of corn.”
For now.
We drive through groves of Joshua trees as the sun begins to set, turning the surrounding mountains purple.
Molly stops at a parking lot with multiple large signs warning of bees. I look around warily.
“Molly?” I say.
“Seth?”
“Is this a prank to try to kill me?”
“Are you allergic to bees?”
“No, but I’m scared of bee attacks. Like any sensible person.”
She waves this off. “It’s worth the risk. Trust me.”
We get out and walk toward the entrance of a trail through a giant maze of cacti.
“Cholla cactus,” she explains.
The plants are waist-high and ombré, with brown roots that grow up and out into a spectacular shade of yellow. From afar they look fat and fuzzy, like Muppets, but up close the spikes seem like they could kill you. They seem like they want to kill you.
“Aren’t they beautiful?” Molly asks.
Sheis beautiful. The golden hour sunlight is radiating against her hair and making her skin luminous. But what I really love is the serenity on her face.
She’s so happy here.
And I am so happy to bask in her happiness.
I can see that however shaken she is by Dezzie and Rob, she’s not consumed by it. There’s room for joy, too.
“So Molls,” I say, forcing my voice into a casual calm I in no way feel. “I have a surprise for you.”
“Oooh. What is it?”
We’re wandering the gardens, and I steer her toward a viewpoint where there aren’t any other people.
“I set up some meetings on Monday,” I say. “With law firms.”
“Oh yeah? What about?”
“About potentially interviewing. For jobs here.”
Her eyes go wide. And not, it is instantly apparent, with joy.
“Whoa,” she says. “Wow. Why didn’t you tell me first?”
“Because I wanted to surprise you,” I say carefully. “I thought it would be… good news?”
She squints at me. “So you’re thinking of moving here?”
She doesn’t sound excited—more like confused.
That’s okay. I can fix confused.
I put my arm around her waist. “Babe, the past five months have been the happiest of my life. I love you, and I want to be where you are.”
She nods slowly. “I love you too, Seth. But that’s a really big change for you, just to be closer to me. Like, a huge commitment.”
“That’s the idea,” I say softly.
“What about your nonprofit?”
“We’ve been thinking about expanding beyond Chicago. I’d love to do something similar in LA.”
She gives me a strained smile. “Okay. We can talk about it more. Let’s see how your meetings go.”
I decide not to tell her I’ve already done a series of Zoom interviews with both firms I’m considering. That this is basically a chemistry visit to help me decide which one to choose.
But then she reaches out, pulls my head down and kisses me.
“Sorry,” she says. “I’m just on edge. I think it could be great. Can you imagine, getting to see each other every day? You’re amazing to even consider it.”
I’m not amazing.
I’m madly in love.
“I just want to be with you, Molls. Any way you’ll have me.”
“I want you all the ways,” she says. “Let’s go home and get on that.”