“Well, yeah, I don’t blame you!” Liam replied. “You were the best PR whiz kid S&G had in their arsenal. You were amazing. That’s why I was surprised to hear that you’d left. I can’t imagine you doing anything else.”
Liam took a sip of his stout, and when Molly saw his bicep flex under his T-shirt she faltered in her response. She felt her cheeks heat up, picturing the tattoo that was etched into his right shoulder blade under the soft cotton. She’d discovered the circular Celtic cross, acquired after Liam returned home from a hiking tour of Ireland, one rainy Saturday afternoon when the Phillies game they were supposed to see got washed out and they found themselves otherwise occupied. This was months after Liam started with Shulzster & Grace. It was also right before Liam’s on-and-off-again girlfriend from college moved back home from Colorado and asked him for another chance.
Molly had a necklace she kept at home that bore the same symbol as Liam’s cross. She’d tucked it away, far in the back of one her dresser drawers, soon after she’d wandered into Barnes & Noble that fateful Friday night. The pendant was still there, safely cushioned in its protective box.
“How about you?” Molly asked. “Do you miss it at all?” She meant the job, she thought.
Liam shook his head and laughed. “No way, Molly. Becoming a teacher was the best decision I could have made. That job is the hardest, most fun thing I’ve ever done. It’s a weird combo.”
“That’s funny. That’s exactly what my friend Dan says.”
Liam stood up straighter. “Wait, I think I know your friend Dan. He’s Jenny Kim’s husband, right?”
Molly nodded. Over Liam’s shoulder she spotted Jenny at the other end of the room. She was sitting by herself, and as Molly watched, Jenny looked around before pulling her phone from her bag in a discreet motion. Molly knew she was scrolling through the notifications, having seen her do it thousands of times to check for a text from Dan. Molly saw her friend’s shoulders sag for the briefest of moments, an uncharacteristic move for Jenny. A former coworker sat down in the seat beside her, ready to chat, and Jenny shoved the phone back into her bag in time to answer the friend’s question, all without missing a beat. Molly bit the inside of her cheek and turned her attention back to Liam’s eyes. Her blood began flowing a little more quickly once again. She could feel the baby moving inside her belly, reminding her of her place in reality.
“Speaking of married people, how are things with Stephanie? I saw the engagement announcement in the paper a while back,” Molly said. “I’m glad it worked out for you.”
Molly spoke the truth. Liam was one of the few men she’d met who deserved all the good that came his way. To her surprise, Liam shrugged and rolled his eyes to the side.
“Yeah, actually, it didn’t so much. She decided to move back to Denver.”
“What? I’m so sorry.”
“Nah, it’s okay. It wasn’t meant to be. Her job was more important to her, she said.”
Molly shook her head. “How so? What was she doing out there?” To Molly’s further astonishment, Liam chuckled. He placed his beer on the bar.
“Ah, she decided to go into full-time missionary work.”
“Okay . . .”
Liam laughed outright. “She became a nun.”
Molly laughed, too, before she could stop herself. “Oh, no, really? Oh, Liam, I’m so sorry. I guess you can’t really compete with God, right?”
Liam shook his head. “No, I suppose you can’t. So, she’s back there, and I’m back here, right where it all started.” He fell quiet, his eyes sweeping her face before meeting her gaze again. Molly didn’t speak.
“I gotta admit, Mol,” he said. “I’m a little jealous of you.”
Molly felt her eyes widen in surprise.
“I’m serious, Molly. It looks like you’ve got it all. Okay, so maybe not the job, so much”—Liam winced in apology as Molly grimaced—“but you have the important stuff. You’re getting married. You’re having a baby.”
He took another sip of his beer and shrugged, looking away from Molly for the first time since they’d begun talking. “I can’t wait to have children of my own one day. I think that’s why I like teaching so much—I have a hundred and ten kids to take care of right now while I wait for my one. And here you are, already there.”
He didn’t miss the look of dismay Molly felt flash across her face.
“Did I just embarrass myself? I did, didn’t I?” Liam laughed and looked around at the throngs of people in the bar. “I should go find my brother before I make it worse.”
“It was good to see you, Liam.” Molly’s voice was soft.
He and Molly looked at each other for a silent moment. Neither of them moved. Pat swept Liam’s empty pint glass from the bar—the bartender didn’t ask if he’d like to stay for another—and broke the spell.
“It was good to see you, too, Molly. Good luck with everything.” Liam reached his hand out and laid it on her belly, then withdrew it in a sudden movement. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to do that. That was weird.”
“It’s fine,” Molly assured him. “People do it all the time.”
She could feel the warmth where his hand had been after he’d walked away. She took a breath and looked at the crush of people around her, the noises and smells of the bar flooding her senses again with a shock. She noticed that her engagement ring had gotten stuck on her swollen finger and, wincing with discomfort, twisted it until the diamond was centered again. She couldn’t find Jenny among the groups of people around her, so she moved toward the bathroom. She was ready to leave for the show, and was determined to not look for Liam in the crowd once they got there.
Molly opened the door to the bathroom just as another woman was walking out, shaking her head at Molly as if in warning. Acting on instinct, Molly pushed her way into the room before she’d even heard the sound and rushed to Jenny when she saw her. Crumpled against the wall of an open stall, her best friend sat crouched on the filthy floor, arms wrapped around her knees. Her sobs were bouncing off of the dingy metal partitions beside the toilet. She was drunk, weeping, and mumbling about broken bellies. Molly patted Jenny’s hair away from her face, where it hung like a curtain, wet from her tears, as if Jenny were a child who’d been bullied on the playground and left behind.
Molly watched her friend wipe the smudges of mascara away from her eyes with the back of her hand. Jenny had everything that was important in the world waiting for her in an apartment in Old City. No, Molly thought, she didn’t have the baby yet, but when that baby did come, the child would be like a Sixers play-off game won in overtime: all the more exhilarating because the fight to get there was so much harder. Molly pictured Liam, single now, still out in the bar, talking with his brother. She had let him walk away because she’d thought he didn’t want her. She’d moved on, but he had come back, because sometimes life’s timing doesn’t move by our own personal clocks. Molly bent down, moving awkwardly around the weight of her swollen belly. She slung Jenny’s arm around her neck for support and helped her friend walk through the door.
Molly woke the next day with a brain like a mosh pit and a horrible need to use the bathroom, but she couldn’t figure out how to get out of her bed. One leg was trapped under her C-shaped pregnancy pillow, the other tangled in the mess of sheets that snaked under and around her swollen body. She looked over her shoulder for help, but Scott’s side of the mattress was empty save for a crumpled pile of T-shirts he’d left at the foot of the bed. Her back still throbbed from the pressure of being on her feet all night with a belly full of baby, and Molly pushed herself upright to extract herself from her self-induced trap. She rolled out of bed and stood, only to trip over another pile of clothes—Scott’s shorts, this time, and for some reason they were on her side of the room. She threw out a hand to steady herself on the dresser and trudged out to the bathroom in the hallway.
Once th
ere, she found a wet towel lying in a heap outside the bathtub. Molly stooped down to use it as a mop after her foot landed in the water pooling on the tile. She gulped when she saw that she was also clutching her fiancé’s dirty underwear in her hand, and dropped the boxers into the hamper faster than she knew her swollen fingers could move. She used the toilet and brushed her teeth, worries of Jenny swirling through her head, battling for dominance with the exhaustion that lay thick over her brain like a storm.
Molly was still wearing the oversized T-shirt of Scott’s she’d pulled on for bed the night before when she stumbled downstairs to the kitchen. She found her fiancé standing at the island in his pajama bottoms, barefoot and shirtless. He was scrolling through his email on his phone, intent, holding a coffee cup in his hand. Molly’s heart began pounding in her chest, moving at a much faster pace than her muddled thoughts. She reached for a glass of water, but stopped at the sight of the coffeepot.
“Is that the same coffee from yesterday morning?”
Scott waited a beat before he looked up from his screen. “Huh?”
Molly sighed. “Did you wash out the pot this morning? You didn’t do it yesterday.”
“Oh, shit, no.” Scott peered into his mug. “I was wondering why it tasted a little thicker than usual.”
“See?” Molly said. “That’s exactly what I mean.”
“Were you talking about something?” Scott’s forehead wrinkled into a question mark, and he lowered his phone to focus on Molly.
Molly’s heart slammed itself against her rib cage now. Dismayed. She was so dismayed. About the coffee, yes. But it was also the towels, the clothes, the crumbs, the constant, constant mess, and she wanted to rip the mug out of Scott’s hand and throw it against the wall, or smash his stupid phone to bits. She wanted to be destructive for once, to stop being so good all the time, to do something that would make Scott sit up and notice that this was all wrong. Him, she thought. Her entire life had been reshaped to wrap around Scott. Molly fought the urge to raise her voice and was completely unsuccessful.
“I’m always talking about something.” Molly’s voice was high-pitched, shaking. “I’m talking about how it’s not right that our floors are your laundry hamper. Or how I’m tired of cabinets crammed with empty Pop-Tart boxes and overflowing trash cans I can’t lift because you don’t empty them.”
Her chest was heaving, and she had to stop to catch her breath.
“Shit, Molly, calm down,” Scott said. “I was just trying to drink my coffee.”
But Molly had started, and after months of keeping silent, she wasn’t finished. It was all so little, but it wasn’t. It was huge and it was changing her life and he had to know. Scott was watching her with wide eyes, his mouth hanging open just a bit.
“Scott, this”—she gestured wildly at the mess surrounding them—“isn’t me. This isn’t how I want my house and my life to be. And I don’t want our relationship to be like this. We don’t have a housekeeper, Scott. And I don’t want to do it all.”
“Molly, where is all this coming from?”
“That’s what I’m trying to tell you! This isn’t new. I’ve talked to you about all of this before. I don’t want to bring my baby into a world filled with candy wrappers in the couch cushions, or floors that are so dirty our socks stick to them when we walk. I don’t want my child to think it’s normal to have to take a bowl out of the sink and wash it before getting breakfast in the morning.” Tears pricked up in Molly’s eyes.
There was a moment of silence while Scott regarded her. Maybe she just wasn’t meant to live with somebody else, Molly thought. Maybe she was the one with the problem. The olive color of Scott’s eyes had deepened while she was talking. When he took his turn to speak, his voice was calm.
“So,” he said, “why don’t you go cry to Liam about it?”
“What?” Molly stared at him.
“I said, go find Liam. See if he cares. Hell, sleep with him if that’s what you really want to do.”
“Why are you bringing up Liam?”
“Oh, don’t give me that, Molly.” Scott turned to her. “I swung by McGillin’s last night with my friends after work. I saw you getting all cozy at the bar with your old boy toy.”
Scott watched Molly stutter as she tried to reply. “So are you cheating on me now, Molly? You get what’s best of me, then run around behind my back with that tool?” He was glaring at her, the pupils of his eyes dancing to look at hers, but his tone wasn’t angry. It was hurt.
Molly stood in place. She couldn’t move. “You didn’t speak to me. I didn’t see you. Why didn’t you say something?”
“Because I didn’t want to have to punch the guy’s face in, that’s why.”
“So you just hung around the bar and watched me talk with him?”
“Nah, I didn’t hang around watching you,” Scott said. “We went to a strip club instead.”
He set his coffee cup on the butcher block island with a clatter, splattering the dark liquid all over its surface. Molly watched the stain spread across the wood.
“God, I can’t even see you without picturing the way you were looking at him. You don’t appreciate any of what I’ve given you, Molly. The attention. The love. And yeah, I’ll say it, the life you lead because of me,” Scott said. “You don’t respect it. And I’ve had it, Molly. You need to back off.”
Scott straightened and took a step toward her. “You’re a control freak, Molly. Do you know that? Everything has to be perfect according to your crazy standards. You have these, these rules. It’s suffocating.”
“My rules?” Molly sputtered.
Scott’s words felt like the stab of a knife into her lungs. She knew she should walk away, stop this from getting worse, but some stubbornness in her made her keep pushing. So Molly forged on, even though she knew they were spiraling out of control. Because she loathed the way he felt her up every time she walked past him, how he licked his lips instead of using a napkin after eating if he thought no one was watching, the insults he said were jokes, how he messed up her home and her confidence and didn’t seem to ever, ever want to make any of it better. As much as she cared for him, it all felt like she was acting a role in a movie Scott was directing. So now that there was so much fear in her heart she couldn’t find her way around it, Molly did the only thing she knew how to do. She focused on what she thought she could change.
“You leave dishes in the sink, all the time. We’re attached to other houses, Scott. You can’t leave food in the sink like that, or we’ll get bugs. Same goes with the spills on the floor, and the counters. It shouldn’t take this much effort to follow city health code.”
“It’s a few dishes, not a freaking landfill, Molly,” Scott said. “I’m not going to do everything you want me to.”
“Everything? Scott, I’m the only one who does anything around here. The groceries are in the fridge because of me. We have electricity because I write the bills. I clean the floors and do the laundry and make the meals. If I had any idea this was how you were going to be . . .”
Molly was so worked up she was sweating through her pajamas now. She could feel the cotton of Scott’s T-shirt sticking to her back.
“What, Molly? What would you do?”
Molly was silent.
“This isn’t just about a couple of dirty dishes, Mol, and you know it,” Scott said.
“Then what else could it be?”
He just looked at her. “Tell me, what choices do you have?” Scott asked.
Again, she couldn’t answer him.
“Go ahead, Molly,” Scott said. “Leave me. If you hate me so much, think I’m such an awful guy, then break it off. In fact, run to Liam and see how well he can take care of you. How long do you think you’ll be able to stay in this house once the landlord figures out you’ll never be able to buy it?”
A strange kind of desperati
on filled Molly, making her feel like she had to cling to the moment, hold on, make the argument last. Because she didn’t know what was going to happen after this. She didn’t know what to do. This was the father of her baby. This was the choice she had made. And she couldn’t let it all fall apart in front of her. She needed time.
There was a vein pulsing on the side of Scott’s neck. Molly couldn’t stop staring at it.
“You can’t just—” Molly couldn’t get any more words out. Scott’s voice dominated hers.
“What? What can’t I do, Molly?” Scott took a step toward her, towering over her with all the lean strength in his tall frame. Without thinking, Molly backed up and knocked her head into the refrigerator. A wine bottle that had been on top of the fridge fell to the floor, shattering into thousands of splintered shards. The wine splattered onto every visible surface in the kitchen. Scott was planted in front of Molly, facing her. She couldn’t move. She watched wine drip off of her cabinet onto the countertop, leaving burgundy streaks in its wake, like blood seeping from a broken nose.
“Molly, don’t you think I’m scared, too?” Scott pulled back. He ignored the mess and looked at Molly. “You’re not the only one whose life is changing.”
“But . . .” Molly tried to argue with him, but came up with nothing.
“But what? You act like I knocked you up on purpose. You’ve been with me for years, but suddenly want me to be somebody I’m not. And now I see you trolling the bars for better options? You paint me as the bad guy, Molly, but I think you’ve got it wrong.”
“That’s not how it was, Scott,” Molly protested. “You know me better than that.”
Molly didn’t try to stop the tears from coming. They were deadlocked, she and Scott, just pushing back and forth in the tight space of their relationship, and neither one of them was going to get anywhere unless somebody stepped out of the way. Forgetting that she was Jack’s daughter, Molly yelled louder than she’d ever heard herself.
All the Difference Page 18