“I don’t lie, Emily. Lying is boring.”
“If Marian is here, why didn’t she text me?” Gloria asks. “Why doesn’t anyone text me?”
“I text you, my love,” Emily says, kissing her cheek.
“Marian didn’t text me either,” I point out.
They both give me long-suffering looks.
“Maybe because she can tell that you don’t like her?” Emily suggests.
“Why does everyone keep saying that?”
“Because you are very bad at hiding your feelings.”
Like, for instance, when I blurt out I like you! Point taken.
“Well, I told Seth we would walk down and say hi.”
Gloria stands up immediately. “Oh, we certainly will. Javier Ruiz? I have to hear about this.”
Emily insists we wait for the inning to end—excruciatingly, no one scores—before we make the trek down to Seth and Marian’s glamorous seats in the Loge. Marian is wearing a sparkly red jacket with RUIZ appliquéd on the back. She and Seth are surrounded by other women in matching jackets bearing different players’ names, all of them so preposterously glossy and well-groomed that I want to excuse myself to call a dermatologist, a colorist, a facialist, and a liposuctionist for emergency appointments.
“Marian Hart!” Gloria yells over the din.
Marian turns around, and her face lights up. “Glor! Get over here!”
Gloria prances down the vertiginous stairs in her platform mules, making me fear for her life, and throws herself into Marian’s arms.
Marian, as always, is radiant. She smiles and waves over Gloria’s shoulder. I wave back, doing my goddamn best to evince warmth and enthusiasm.
Seth laughs at me from behind Marian. “Good job,” he mouths.
“I would have called you, but I’m only here for the night,” Marian is saying to Gloria.
“Swooping in with your man, I hear,” Gloria says, poking her in the ribs. “Tell us everything.”
Marian giggles the giggle of a woman in love. “Marcus introduced us a few months ago. He’s Javier’s agent. We met, and it was just thunderbolts. We went on one of those dates that last all day and”—she blushes—“all night. And we’ve been together ever since.”
“Isn’t it hard if you’re in Miami and he’s in Chicago?” I ask, because I have a constitutional need to question other people’s joy.
Marian waves this off. “He travels so often it doesn’t really matter where he lives. We make it work. It’s so worth it.”
“I don’t suppose he has a friend for this one,” Emily says, pointing at me. “She could use a man with strong arms.”
“Excuse me!” I cry. “I have many suitors.”
I sneak a glance at Seth. His face is studiously neutral.
“Well, we should get back to our seats before the inning starts,” Gloria says. “But, Seth, see you at the shower on Saturday? It starts at two.”
“I’ll be there,” Seth says. “Text me the address.”
We get back to our seats just in time to see Tom Beadelman hit a home run, breaking the tie for the Dodgers. Gloria, Emily, and I scream until we’re hoarse. I exchange a high five with the heavily bearded gentleman to my right and a low five with his tiny daughter, who is whipping around one of those commemorative sweat towels they give you for free during the playoffs.
I bend down and offer her one of the Dodgers key chains Seth bought me. (I don’t actually have cousins in Iowa; I just wanted to run up the tab.) She smiles shyly and lisps out “thank you.” Emily side-eyes me like “who are you?”
I don’t care. The DJ is blasting “Don’t Stop Believin’,” the entire stadium (sans, I imagine, the sullen Cubs fans) is singing along, and I, for once, am happy.
My phone buzzes in the pocket of my cutoffs.
I pull it out to see a text from Seth.
Seth: Fuck.
Seth: We’re gonna lose, aren’t we?
Seth: I blame the Coors Light.
Above it, I can still see the bubble of my last conversation with him.
January 2
Molly: You’re sweet. But I can’t.
He had to read that before texting me, and he did it anyway.
I hope he’s texting me because enough time has passed since that awkward phone call in January, not because I said I like you. But either way, seeing his name in my phone adds to this strange feeling of joy.
