You suck, Matthew Kelly.
Every break he got he checked his txts and emails for something from Molly.
There hadn’t been much.
Today, nothing so far. And even if it was just noon here, in Michigan it was already well into the arvo. She txted maybe every other day, but she hadn’t called him for several weeks, not since…
Man, even now he could feel Molly’s breath tickle past his ear as he—he pushed the thought away. Frowned and sighed.
Stupid sexy memories. Matt barely got his grip on his IPhone and passed it hand to hand to wipe his sweaty palms on his khaki-clad thighs. Molly didn’t answer his calls anymore either. She would respond oh-so-politely to his emails, her writing short but not sweet. No passion. None of the colorful detail she’d always been about.
He slipped out the studio airlock and began to thread his way through the complex maze of The Lot, the living façade which was Hollywood production.
They never were “in a relationship,” but Matt’s non-relationship with Molly was the best relationship he’d ever had. Having someone to talk to—day or night—about the garbage in his head. Out here, Matt never knew when people were being real or playing a role. Molly told him they couldn’t all be horrible, but he never dug past his heart-deep layer of suspicion. These big empty egos talked for hours about their projects, their style, their possessions. They never said anything.
Matt shook his head as he shoved his phone back home into his pocket.
Empty talk bored him, but deep conversations were dangerous. More than once Matt’s words got twisted and served up for the masses in someone’s Twitter feed.
Invented scandal in real-time sold tabloids like water in this literal desert, but he didn’t need or want that sort of drama in his life.
Molly, he trusted. What was more, Matt felt good about the trust she placed in him.
She didn’t trust him anymore, though. That was a given.
He bit his bottom lip. Wrestled with another memory. Gave up fighting and let it linger a bit longer than was strictly necessary.
Matt sighed. How was she getting on? Molly wasn’t close to her parents. Mother Katherine and her distracted husband were openly down on their younger daughter’s religious beliefs. Molly’s older sister was a busy single mom. Molly never mentioned other friends and told him only occasional bad date horror stories. She almost never went out unless she was reporting on where she went.
She needs me.
Before that night, the insecure part of Matt (the part he pretended wasn’t as strong as it was) liked Molly’s dependence on him.
Now he worried she didn’t have anyone.
His heart twisted then fell into his guts. Under the noonday L.A. sun, darkness stretched out inside Matt’s mind.
Then he swore to himself.
Molly’s life was her business. He had to focus on his life again. The majority of it. Which didn’t—and never had—included Ms. Molly Cooper.
Mondays were pre-production days. The script meetings ran from well before dawn until an early lunch. The actors made notes and argued for changes, and the writers’ assistants edited right on their wireless tablets so the updated drafts would be printed, bound, and ready for the afternoon reading and evening walk-through.
Cafeteria-style lunch catering with loose themes—Mediterranean one day, Tex-Mex the next, organic salad bar on the side for the folks watching their weight, which was pretty much everyone in the whole industry—was provided on the lot.
Sometimes, though, Matt needed to escape all the productive noise for a while. He often locked himself inside his assigned Airstream trailer and ate random packaged tucker from Trader Joe’s in Silver Lake, where he lived. Monday—thanks to the final script’s printing and binding process—was the only day he had enough free time to grab lunch off the studio lot.
Not that he was eating much these days. Mostly Matt stared blankly at his food and did the same thing he did when he was supposed to sleep, work, exercise or, well, anything: wondered how he could convince Molly to be friends with him again…and, maybe later, something more.
Like that was possible. Despair creepy crawled up Matt’s spine then bit in at the base of his brain like a venomous spider.
He skirted around a parade of production assistants who lugged various props and equipment, and was ducking under a portable piece of ancient European-looking set background when his stupid IPhone buzzed from his back pocket. Matt fumbled for it without slowing his pace.
The screen said “Molly.”
The first light of hope he’d seen in weeks. Matthew almost dropped the phone. He beat his demons back, but not far. Anymore, they were dead strong.
He slipped between two warehouses, which may have been sets or storage. As he dashed across a narrow back-lot throughway, Matt poised his thumb over the phone’s “Accept call” button…and got clipped by a golf cart.
The production assistant driver slammed hard on its brakes. The wheels squeaked on the recently resurfaced white pavement as Matt hand-vaulted over the snub-nosed hood.
Matt vaguely hoped the cart’s cursing passenger—an overly tanned middle-aged guy who wore a three-piece tailored suit and clutched a designer briefcase to his chest—wasn’t anyone important. Still, he struggled to care too much about the potential impact this incident of half-hearted parkour might have on his career.
Even with Matt’s hands still shaking from the accident, the issues with his (definitely former) best mate dwarfed every other concern in his current mindset.
Matt scrambled after the phone, which had skittered across the blacktop. In one piece, thank God, though surely a bit scratched and scuffed. Matt could not lose that phone.
He couldn’t lose Molly.
Man, it was one night!
Their friendship was good. He needed it. Molly needed it. They got a bit too familiar. So what? Why not appreciate it for the enjoyable experience it had been in the moment and not let it affect the rest of their friendship?
Okay, yeah. Even Matt knew that was complete crap.
Newly Acquired Truth: sometimes the person you most want to make love to is the absolute last person you should have sex with.
By the time Matt reunited himself with his slightly worse-for-its-adventure IPhone, he’d missed her call. Way missed. Idiot. He dialed her back. No need to open his contacts app; her number was imprinted on Matt’s memory like a cattle brand. While the phone rang, he took a deep breath. Prayed to a God he didn’t believe in that Molly’s earlier call wasn’t a fluke, or God forbid, a butt-dial. I need her. I’ll die if she doesn’t answer the phone.
It rang three or four times, then went silent. Molly didn’t say hello.
A glance at his phone confirmed they were connected, and with a strong signal too. Her lack of greeting threw Matt off, though. He resisted the urge to say something lame like, “Hello? Can you hear me now?” and tried to inject fun and normalcy into his tone. “Hey, lady, how the heck are ya?”
She only sighed.
“Sorry I missed you a minute ago. I’m just headed out to lunch. I’m crossing the lot and got myself hit by a golf cart.”
“Oh, no. Are you okay?”
The sympathy angle always worked with Molly. Matt felt enough guilt, though, about their current situation he decided not to milk it anymore. This time. “I’m fine. I vaulted myself over the bonnet. It was actually kinda cool. Just, you know, crazy morning, so. Anyway.”