“I just wanted to say sorry again about Julia coming over like that.”
“It’s fine. You don’t have to apologize for your girlfriend stopping over.”
I ran my hand through my hair. “She’s not my girlfriend.”
Molly tilted her head. “She’s not? Does she know that?”
Blowing out a deep breath, I felt my shoulders slump. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Moll.”
“What do you mean?”
I decided to go back to the beginning. “For the last year, I’ve had a giant crush on Julia. We’ve been traveling together more over the last few months, spending a lot of time alone together, and as you know, I’d hoped our chemistry would make her second-guess things with the guy she was dating. It finally did, and now she seems totally into me. And yet I’m the one keeping things moving slowly now.”
Molly bit down on her bottom lip. “It doesn’t look like you’re going slow, the way she’s hanging all over you and how much she says you like her bones.”
I shook my head. “We haven’t… You know...”
A look of surprise crossed Molly’s face. “Are you saying you haven’t slept together?”
I shook my head again.
“I’m surprised,” she said. “You seem pretty cozy.”
“I don’t know what happened. I was so into her, and then…I guess it fizzled out.”
That wasn’t an entirely true statement. I knew exactly what had happened. Molly happened. The fucked up part was that I’d had no problem being with other women while I crushed on Julia. I hadn’t been celibate for the last year while I was biding my time with her. Maybe that was a shitty thing to admit, but it was the truth. Yet my crush on Molly seemed to make me incapable of sealing the deal with Julia. I’d slept at her place once, but only because I’d fallen asleep while we were watching a movie. Though lately, Julia had been asking me to stay over and had also made it her business to let me know she was on the pill. I had zero doubt that if I hadn’t been reining things in, I would’ve fucked her already.
“Perhaps you only wanted her because you couldn’t have her,” Molly suggested. “It’s human nature to want things that are off-limits.”
I looked down for a long time, giving it some real thought. When I raised my head, my eyes locked with Molly’s. “I’m pretty sure that’s not it.”
Molly’s lips parted, and my eyes fell to stare at them. Her breathing seemed to speed up and become shallower, and I became acutely aware that I was sitting on her bed. Has her room always been this small? The longer I sat there, looking at her luscious lips, the more the walls felt like they were closing in around me.
The talk we’d been about to have when her father ended up in the hospital really needed to happen. And I really needed it to happen in a safer room.
I stood. “Do you think we could talk…in the living room?”
Molly looked confused but lowered her knees and began to get up off the bed. That’s when I noticed she’d taken off her bra.
I cleared my throat. “Hey, Moll?”
“Yeah?”
“Could we talk in the living room and can you put a bra on?”
The corner of her lips twitched. “Yeah, sure. I’ll be right out.”
***
“You want another margarita?” I asked.
“Are you having one?”
I’d already had one and knew it wasn’t a smart thing to do since I’d just had a medication adjustment. “I shouldn’t. I have to get up early tomorrow.”
Molly pouted. “Have one with me.”
She was pretty much impossible to resist. What the hell? I was determined to get out of the funk I’d been in all night anyway—well, the funk I’d been in for over a week now.
“Alright. One more.”
While I went to the kitchen to whip up a fresh batch, Molly got herself settled in on one corner of the couch. After I finished, I walked over to the sofa and handed her one of the drinks in a salt-rimmed glass. “For you.”
“Thank you.”
I went to sit beside her, then thought better of it. The chair adjacent to the couch was probably a smarter idea, mostly because it was as far away from her as I could sit without leaving the room.
She sipped her drink and spoke with it still at her lips. “Are you sure you don’t want to sit in the kitchen? I think that would put another four feet between us.”
I squinted at her with a smirk. “Wiseass.”
Molly took a gulp of her drink and set the glass on the coffee table.
“Can I ask you something, Declan?”
“Of course. Whatever you want.”
“What’s going on between us?”
Shit. Okay. We were having this conversation. Maybe I should’ve taken a shot of tequila in the kitchen instead of sipping this margarita.
“That’s a pretty big question.”
“I know. And I can’t believe I just came right out and asked it. But I’m so confused lately.”
I let out a deep breath. “When you were a kid, did you ever play the fill-in-the-blank game?”
Molly’s forehead wrinkled. “I don’t think so. How do you play?”
“It’s easy. One person starts a sentence, and then you go around the room and each person has to fill in the blank for the rest of the sentence. Sometimes they use it as an icebreaker at corporate events for people to get to know each other. Like, someone will say, ‘When I was little, I wanted to be a blank, and then everyone fills in the missing word by saying fireman or whatever.”
Molly nodded. “Sounds easy enough.”
“It’s usually played with a group, but it’ll work with just two people.”
“I take it you want to play now?”
I nodded. “With a few caveats: we tell the absolute truth, neither one of us gets to avoid any questions, and in fifteen minutes, we both go to our rooms. Alone.”
“Wow. Okay. Hang on a second. I think I need to prep for this.” Molly took a big swig of her margarita, placed it on the table again, and sat up a little straighter. “I have a feeling I’m going to regret this, but I’m ready. Let’s play.”
“I’ll start with some softballs.”
“That would be good.”
“Let me set the timer on my phone first.” I set it for fifteen minutes and gave some thought to a nice, easy first question. After a moment I said, “My favorite color is blank.”
“So now I just finish the sentence?”
“Yup.”
“That’s easy. My favorite color is pink.”
“Perfect. Your turn.”
I could see the wheels in Molly’s head turning. “If I could have one superpower, it would be to blank.”
I didn’t hesitate at all. “Telepathy with animals.”
Molly laughed. “Totally not what I expected.”
I shrugged. “What can I tell you? I was obsessed with those Dr. Dolittle movies when I was younger.”
“Figures. Your turn.”
I could do this all night with Molly, but I needed some real information, so I steered things in another direction.
“Tonight when I saw Julia touching Declan, I felt...”
Molly bit her bottom lip.
I knew she was debating filtering her response, which defeated the entire purpose. I gave her a little nudge. “Just say what belongs in that sentence, Moll. Don’t overthink it. There’s no right or wrong answer.”
I’d assumed she might say jealous, but I found her answer a hell of a lot more amusing.
“Stabby,” she said. “Tonight when I saw Julia touching Declan, I felt stabby.”
I smiled and nodded. “Nice.”
She lifted her margarita and knocked back half of what remained. “My turn. I asked Molly to come out to the living room for our talk because blank.”
It was me who now gulped from my glass. I’d started to consider what I could say, but Molly caught on real fast.
“Uhhh…no filtering,” she said. “Just say it, remem
ber?”
“I’m not so sure that’s a good idea.”
“It’s your game. I agreed to play by the rules, so you have to, too. Spit it out, Mr. Tate.”
“Okay. Don’t say I didn’t warn you, though.” My eyes found hers. “I asked Molly to come out to the living room for our talk because when I was sitting on the bed so close, I couldn’t stop imagining myself inside her.”
Molly laughed nervously. “Oh…wow.”
I finished off my margarita and set down my glass. My meds definitely intensified how it affected me. A few drinks and I felt damn drunk, which was why I seemed to have lost my filter. “I’m just going to say it, Molly. Forget the game. I’m extremely attracted to you. I have been since the first time I laid eyes on you. But lately… It’s getting harder to fight.” I shook my head. “In my experience, things often happen in the other direction. I’m physically attracted to a person, and once I get to know them, that wanes a bit. But with you it’s the opposite. The more I get to know you, the stronger my physical attraction becomes.”
Molly looked down and then back up at me. “What about Julia?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m attracted to her. I’m not going to lie about that. But it’s different.”
“Different how?”
“She’s pretty and all—without being disrespectful, it wouldn’t be a hardship to be with her. But I don’t feel like a caveman when I look at her, like I want to conquer every part of her body and make it mine.”
Molly blinked. “You feel that way about me?”
I nodded. “Yeah, I do. Are you attracted to me, Molly?”
“Very.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t admit this, but if you were any other person in the world, I wouldn’t be fighting it anymore. I wouldn’t be sitting all the way over here.” I shoved a hand into my hair. “Christ, I wouldn’t even have left your bedroom to come out in the living room… I’d be in your bedroom for days.”
Molly swallowed. “But yet here we are, and you’re all the way over there…”
“Do you remember what you said to Julia earlier when she asked about Will?”
Her brows drew together. “No. What did I say?”
I remembered her words verbatim, not that they were news to me. I’d pretty much known all along the woman Molly was. “You said, ‘I’m looking for more than just someone to screw.’ I’m only here for a few more months, Molly. I live and work in California. Your life is here in Chicago. Do I think the two of us could enjoy the hell out of each other during the time I have left? Absofuckinglutely. But I can’t promise you anything long term, and as much as it makes me feel…stabby to think of you with Will, I also don’t want to come between you and a guy you’ve liked for a long time. What if I ruin your chances at a good, long-term thing for just a couple of phenomenal months?”
Molly was quiet for a long time. “If you’d never met me, and things with Julia had evolved to where they are now, would you two be…together?”
We both knew the answer to that question, so I tossed it back to her. “If you’d never met me, and things between you and Will had evolved to where they are now, would you be happy with him?”
Molly frowned. We stared at each other until the timer on my phone went off.
“I could stay out here and talk to you all night, Moll. I don’t think either of us is surprised by the things we’ve just admitted. But now that we’ve said what we needed to say, we need some time to think things through—alone. That’s the reason I set the timer.”
Molly smiled sadly. “You’re a smart cookie.”
I winked. “Don’t tell anyone. I prefer to be underestimated and let people think I’m just a pretty face.” I paused. “Why don’t you go get some sleep? I think we could use a few days to think about everything.”
She nodded. “Yeah. That’s probably a good idea.”
Molly stood. For a few awkward seconds, she looked unsure how to say goodnight to me. Eventually, she walked over and gave me a hug. “Goodnight, Declan.”
God, she smelled so damn good. Where the hell was a caveman’s club when I needed it?
Molly walked toward her bedroom. When she got to the door, she stopped and spoke without looking back.
“Hey, Dec?”
“Yeah?”
“Maybe you should lock your door tonight. That margarita really went to my head.”
I smiled. “You too, babe. You too.”
CHAPTER 17
* * *
Molly
“So what’s going on in the adventures of Molly these days?” Emma twirled her fork in a container filled with spaghetti and shoveled it into her mouth.
“Not much. The usual. I’m supposed to go out with Will Friday night, and last night Declan and I admitted that if there were no Will for me or Julia for him, we’d be banging all over the apartment.”
Emma’s eyes bulged, and she started to cough. “Oh my God. You just made pasta go down the wrong pipe.” Her eyes watered as she reached for her bottle of water.
I chuckled. “Sorry, but you asked.”
Since we worked the same shift in different departments, we sometimes managed to schedule our dinner break together. If it hadn’t worked out for us tonight, I probably would’ve asked her to go for coffee after our shifts ended, because I needed to talk to someone.
“Last week you said you were attracted to him, but he had no idea how you felt.”
I sighed. “Yeah, I was wrong.”
Emma shook her head. “So the feeling is mutual?”
“Apparently…”
“And you guys talked about this, but nothing physical happened?”
I nodded. “We’re taking a few days to think about things.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I have no damn idea.”
“Well, you’ve been head over heels for Will for years.”
“I know I have. And honestly, if it weren’t for Declan, I’d probably be super excited about where things are going with Will and me. At first he said he wanted to keep things casual, but he’s since told me he could see things progressing with us, and that someday he wants a wife and kids and stuff.”
“Isn’t that exactly what you want? A guy you’re crazy about who’s looking to settle down with the right woman?”
“It is, but…” I shook my head. “I don’t know. I’m confused.”
“Well, let’s look at the pros and cons of each relationship. Tell me what you like about Will.”
“We have a lot in common. He’s an obstetrician, and I’m a labor and delivery nurse. He’s handsome and levelheaded. I love the way he’s always so good under pressure, and how much passion he has for his work. He’s smart, yet he never tries to show off, like a lot of other doctors do.”
“Okay. That all sounds awesome. Now tell me the cons.”
I couldn’t think of much. “If we were to go into a serious relationship and then split up, it might be awkward at work.”
“That’s fair. What about Declan? Tell me what you like about him.”
“I like how thoughtful he is. When I first found out about my dad’s illness, Declan had just moved in. Yet he always asked how Dad was and made sure he was around when he thought I might be upset and needed to talk. He just seems to know when I need support, and he makes himself available and never makes me feel like it’s a burden. He’s very funny and makes me laugh all the time, and…” I pointed to the eggplant rollatini I had in front of me. “He’s also a great cook. And, of course, let’s not forget that he’s ridiculously hot.”
“And what about the cons?”
Unlike Will, there were some glaring cons related to Declan. “Well, for starters, he lives two-thousand miles away in California. He also travels all the time for his job, and he travels with Julia—the woman he’s currently fooling around with that he’s been pining over for almost as long as I’ve been dreaming of a relationship with Will. We don’t have that much in common—he’s kind of a leave
the clean dishes in the dishwasher because you’re just gonna use them anyway kind of person, whereas I like things put where they belong.”
Emma nodded. “Well, they both have a lot of pros, but Declan has a lot more cons. And one of them seems pretty major—he lives in California, Molly. How much longer is he even here?”
I frowned. “A little over four months.”
“Is that where his family lives? Where his job will be when his work here is done?”
I nodded. “He has four sisters and both his parents there, plus nieces and nephews. Chicago was just a temporary assignment. He’s hoping to get promoted once he goes back to the corporate office in California.”
“So, say you pick Declan. What happens when his time here is up? Does he uproot his life and move here? Or do you leave your mom and sister and your sick dad?”
I sighed. Neither sounded ideal. Not to mention, we hadn’t even kissed. So thinking about any of this was putting the cart long before the horse. “I know what you’re saying.” The choice should’ve been simple. Yet it wasn’t.
“Do you want to know what I think?”
I had a feeling I already did. But I nodded anyway.
“If you pick Declan, you’re going to wind up very hurt in four months. And you’re going to be kicking yourself in the ass over the one who got away.”
After dinner, Emma and I both went back to work, but I couldn’t stop thinking about our conversation. Making a list of pros and cons was right up my alley—a way of organizing my thoughts to make the right decision. So later, when things were quiet on the floor, I took out a notepad and again listed all the pluses and minuses for each man. Declan’s were pretty much the same as I’d rattled off to my friend. But when I listed Will’s cons again, I realized I’d failed to admit the biggest obstacle currently standing in my way.
He’s not Declan.
***
That Friday night, Will and I were in the back of a cab, on the way to our date.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
With a glimmer in his eye, he placed his hand on my knee. “It’s a surprise.”
“Well, now I’m intrigued.”
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