As soon as the door closed behind him, Molly stood and fled the café.
∞
The next day, when Matt picked up Molly for her appointment, he found her on the porch of the downstairs apartment, talking to a middle-aged woman. She waved at him, gave the older lady a hug, and headed towards his rental car.
“Your neighbor?” Matt waved a hand at the woman while Molly buckled her seatbelt.
She nodded, smoothed her colorful flowered dress over her knees. “Ellen. She’s lived there for several months, but I didn’t talk to her much before. She was sweet when I told her about the baby.”
“That’s nice. What about your parents?” He pulled the auto out into the street.
“Annoyingly jubilant. After all, they’ve been telling me my faith was a lie since I was twelve years old. They never miss a ripe opportunity to say, ‘We told you so.’”
Matt glanced at her, noticing an unusual tightness in the set of her chin. He should’ve gone with Molly when she told her parents. Another major fail on his part. Poor Molly. Her left hand rubbed at the back of her neck. He wanted to kiss her.
He looked back at the road. “I’m sorry, sweetie. So sorry.”
“No different than I expected. What about your mom?”
Matt laughed softly. When he’d Skyped his mum to give her the news, Iris’d jumped out of her chair and done an end zone dance across her kitchen floor. “Oh, she’s thrilled. She’s finally getting a grandbaby.”
“I’m glad. My sister’s excited.”
“Really?” He wrinkled his nose.
Matt had met Laura quite a few times. Because he was so close to Molly, he tried hard to charm her sister. The elder Cooper sister didn’t share Molly’s religious beliefs and, by her own frank and uncomfortably detailed accounts, went through intimate partners faster than Matt ever had. He was ashamed to admit to himself he’d harbored hopes Laura would be able to help him loosen Molly’s hang-ups. Matt’d gotten the distinct impression, however, that she didn’t like him. At all.
Molly’s sister’s habit was to greet him with, “Well, if it isn’t our favorite resident alien,” where “favorite” sounded the exact opposite and with major emphasis on the last word. As if Matt was a blood-sucking body-snatching shape-shifter from the outer reaches of the Andromeda galaxy instead of a normal earthling human male.
Even if once upon a time Matt’d lied about his youthful age then outstayed his tourist visa, he eventually won the green card lottery in spite of it. He’d also taken classes, learned the pledge and “Star Spangled Banner,” and applied for citizenship twice. Only, once he’d made a clerical error on the application, and the next time got one too many wrong on the civics test. Oh, well. These days Matt paid enough in American taxes he could’ve sent this kid of theirs through college instead.
“But, yeah, my sister can’t wait to be an auntie,” Molly was saying. “She loves kids.”
Matt shook his head. “She doesn’t love me.”
“She’s never understood why you were friends with me. A big sister, you know, she’s protective. It doesn’t matter, though. I’m sure she doesn’t plan to deal with you too much.”
“I’m the father of your child.”
Molly shrugged. “I haven’t seen or heard from her Baby Daddy since she told him she was pregnant.”
He reached for her hand just as she looked away. “I’ll be better than that. I swear.”
She bit her bottom lip. Sighed. “Anyway, Laura said she wants to help with babysitting and stuff. My nephew’s in school all day now, so she has a little more time.”
Personal feelings aside, for Molly’s sake, Matthew was relieved she had Laura’s support. He put his hand back on the steering wheel. “I’m glad you’ve got at least a couple of people here in Michigan to look out for you.”
Her eyes flickered his way like a frightened butterfly on the wing. Molly smiled at him briefly then looked back through the windshield. Her right hand absently fingered the skin inside her left elbow.
Molly used to touch him just there when they’d sit together and talk.
Matt missed her touch. He missed those talks, too. He still could get lost just watching her. Drive, Matthew. Matt stared out the windscreen, but only sorta saw the road.
“I am too,” she was saying. “For a long time, you were practically my only friend. That wasn’t good. And it’s not enough, especially now.”
“Why, especially?” Matt asked, though he almost thought better of it.
“Because of what happened, what we did.”
Three years of frustration sparked through Matt’s brain and off his voice. He couldn’t help poking at her infuriating modesty all over again. “Can’t you even say it? It’s sex. We just had sex.”
“There’s no ‘just’ in that sentence. Things have changed. They had to.”
He’d known she was going to say that. “Why? Will you never be able to trust me again?”
“Matthew, obviously, it was never you I couldn’t trust.”
Huh? “What does that mean?”
“It was me. Maybe you don’t understand, but you were the naïve party in this situation.”
“Oi, are you serious?”
“I knew all the consequences of sleeping with you—from the physical and hormonal to the emotional and, most of all, the spiritual. Which is something I know you can’t possibly comprehend. I had promised both God and myself I wouldn’t cross that line, and I betrayed both of us. All of us.”
He pounded on the wheel. “So you made a mistake! Everybody does sometimes.”
“Oh, Mattie…” Molly’s sigh was loud. “I didn’t just make a mistake, I crumpled. I wasn’t coerced. You know that better than anyone.”
No, not coerced. But she certainly was seduced. By him. Matt remembered every bit of it. He’d never played a part so well. Three years of mental rehearsals had paid off like gold rush. “Molly, you don’t. I knew the game, and—”
“You didn’t pressure me. I was the one who invited you into my bedroom. And you gave me a chance to stop things before we… I mean, right before you…”
He remembered the moment so, so well, but reliving it now only made him uncomfortable.
For Molly’s part, she skipped right over even the vaguest or clinical description of it. “You asked if I was sure; I said yes.”
“I wanted you to say yes!” More than I’ve ever wanted anything.
“I acted like you belong to me, and-and you don’t.”
“I wasn’t trying to own you, Molly.” Matt always made that clear from the start: he wasn’t about owning any woman. Ever. But what had he wanted then? Just to borrow her, body and soul, for a little while? The implications of that were far from flattering.
“I chose my lonely, miserable life. And I convinced myself it was okay to escape it by using my best friend, one of the only people who ever trusted me.”
Though Matt didn’t understand Molly’s feelings, his heart broke for her, for her faith, and for himself. Without their friendship, his inner life was a third-world slum with no way out. “That’s not what happened. You didn’t use me. I was there too.”