But he finally chilled out a bit after she got a couple bottles of hard cider down him. After that…
No, no, not that. Molly wasn’t gonna think about that. She gathered the preceding events in her mind, but not like a timeline. More like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. So much effort of thought to shove them into any broken order.
They sat together on her couch, and Molly talked quietly, prayed silently, and tried to comfort him. Their legs were folded crisscross, and they faced each other, gently holding onto each other’s arms. She used to play with the squishy skin on the inside of Matt’s elbows, so she’d probably been doing that.
Then he leaned in and kissed her on the mouth.
Astonished, she pulled back from him—but just slightly.
They were friends. No more. Her rule, not Matt’s.
Matt always wanted more from her. With her. Whatever. Molly knew it, always had. He asked her out on a date before he remade himself into her friend. Even as they got closer, as Matt became her closest friend, he sent out signs. Maybe unconscious hints, but maybe not.
Molly wasn’t stupid, though; she could tell. He wanted a partner, a lover. She knew it wasn’t right. God forgive me. This water couldn’t burn hot enough.
She scrubbed the sleep out of her eyes and wished she could rub out the memory of all the too much she saw of her friend last night.
Knowing what he wanted all along, Molly never should have let him become such a big part of her life.
She’d liked it, though.
It was selfish, but Molly didn’t get a lot of contact with friends or much respect from anyone. Matt gave her both in overwhelming amounts. He was always sending emails (“Hey, good morning! How’d your interview with Starfarm go last night? They do 80’s covers, you said?”), txts, and borderline inappropriate gifts (“Listen, Soaring Eagle comped me these chips when I did the show there. Must’ve forgotten they were in my bag. You should take them up and cash them in.”)
All this interest and generosity from a man who didn’t trust the people he saw every day. The confidence he invested in Molly was potent. She practically got high on it sometimes. Matt needed Molly, and she liked how it felt.
He loved me, and, God, it was absolutely lovely to be loved.
For three years, Molly rationalized. Told herself Matt “needed her witness,” so the more contact they had the better.
Whatever. It had never been that.
Her skin, now, burned red head to toe from water far less blistering than the shame she set them up for.
The truth: in order to satisfy Molly’s own socio-psychological weaknesses, Molly had let Matt into a place where his emotions were constantly stretched, twisted, and played around. By her. She also let Matthew settle where he could easily chip and carve away at the façade of rules Molly put up between them.
Last night he broke all her rules. After the first kiss, he closed the paltry distance Molly’d made. Kissed her again.
Molly hadn’t known what to do.
So she didn’t do anything.
And Matt kissed her until it had seemed like a good idea for her to kiss him back.
Mercy. The electricity. If she’d been drunk off him before, this was blackout and hard tripping all wrapped up in a little electron interaction.
After that, it got more overwhelming. The feelings. The fears. The conflicting sensations.
Matt was so careful.
He must have known how much of her was freaking out.
Even so, Molly saw a side of herself she’d never witnessed before. Something bold and desperate, a dark, burning corner she’d wanted to believe wasn’t there.
She never forgot the wrongness of it, but Molly hadn’t wanted him to think he wasn’t valuable or attractive. (I wanted him too.) She wanted to comfort him, and nothing else worked. It went too far, but after it got past a certain point, Molly thought it wasn’t fair to say, “No.”
And, besides, God, I was lonely and, for once, I wanted to feel something else.
It hadn’t worked.
But, man, it had been—No. Don’t think about that.
Think about… Not—no, think about…
It was exhausting. A million thoughts in her head. Now and then. They tangled together into knots then fell into pieces like confetti. Nothing solid enough to grab on to, nothing Molly could make sense of…
Except for the one dark thing now, this morning, the morning after.
The guilt.
Yeah, that was solid enough.
In the shower, she slid down onto her knees. The burning water rained over her like fire from heavens rent. Molly cried, choking back her sobs so there was no chance Matt could hear them. “God, forgive me. Please, forgive me.”
She knew They had; They would no matter what.
But what about Matthew? He was Molly’s friend, she his “best mate,” but now? How he could respect her after what she’d done? Molly’d gone against everything she had told him she believed all this time. How could he believe anything she said anymore?
Molly rubbed her palms up and down her face, pushed the hot wet hair out of her eyes. As if her tired red soul windows could ever see a solution to this mess she’d caused.
And she was the one responsible. Why hadn’t she just spoken up, said no, told him to stop?
Instead, when Matt asked—and he had, of course, California legal and all that—Molly’d said, “Yes!”
She’d known it was wrong. Molly always thought herself as such a good girl, but after this, all illusions were gone. She’d have been better off with bar-hopping one night stands.
It would have been bad enough to have sex with some stranger she met in a bar, but Matt? Molly knew he’d been in love with her for years. She didn’t return those feelings, and exploiting them to boost her own self-damaged ego was about as close to unforgiveable as a thing could get.
∞
Matt Kelly fought his lungs for air as he made coffee in Molly’s weird carpeted kitchen. She only had the two tiny quadrangles of counter space, and Matt’s dizzy head could make his shaky hands only so dexterous.
Why did I come here? If he was to be honest with himself, Matt’d been planning—or at least, hoping—all along the night would end exactly as it had. And if he was honest, Matt had known all along it shouldn’t ever go that way.
I should not have come here.
But he’d had to go somewhere. He’d needed someone around to keep him from doing something stupid.
That worked out great, huh?
It seemed silly now in the gold light of morning. Yesterday evening, Matt’s handler from the club had been late getting him from the airport. No biggie. It happened. Matt spent huge chunks of his life sitting around flight terminals for the sake of his career. What was another fifteen minutes? It wasn’t like they could meet him at the gate anymore anyway.
They weren’t used to bringing comics in from the west coast, and they so clearly hadn’t thought through the logistics. Getting Matt’s rental car from an offsite vendor, for instance, from a place with no shuttle service from the airport. Or maybe the airport was too small for any of that. Whatever.
So the handler picked Matt up to ferry him to the rental office.
Again, whatever.
Only the guy had been so insecure about the late ride for the semi-famous actor and comedian, he’d gotten angry about the situation. He couldn’t be grizzly with Matt, of course, as Matt was the celebrity who deigned to work their fledgling club—for his own ulterior motive, named Molly—as well as the so-called victim of his negligence. Furthermore, it wasn’t Matt’s fault. For once. The hapless escort also couldn’t be ticked at the idiots who made the stupid arrangements, because they probably were his bosses. So what did he do?