“Those little patches of sand on Lake Michigan don’t count.”
“They most certainly do.”
“You really go swimming in Lake Michigan in the winter?”
“Not in the winter, but this time of year it’s still bearable. A nice polar swim.”
“You are so wholesome.”
“I know.”
“You should have called me. I could have given you some bars and restaurants to try. Taken you out.”
He leans back in his seat.
“Molly,” he says slowly. “Not to be awkward. But I got the distinct impression you didn’t want me to call you. Like, ever again.”
I’m quiet. I know, of course, that I’ve been inconsistent with no explanation, and that this is likely confusing to him. But being clearer would require me to process my own emotions—which is something I find highly distasteful, as my long-suffering therapist can attest.
I drum on the steering wheel, grateful that the traffic frees me from the obligation of looking at him.
“Yeah,” I finally say. “I regret that.”
“You do?” he asks. There’s an intensity to his voice that tells me this information is not nothing to him.
That he really cared when I told him not to contact me.
There’s a long pause while I gulp down my innate resistance to even the faintest hint of vulnerability. But I owe it to him.
“I do,” I make myself say. “I’ve been debating whether to get in touch with you for months to apologize. For overreacting that night.”
He’s staring at me.
“I would have liked that,” he says. “I didn’t … realize you felt that way. Obviously.”
“Yeah.” I look determinedly ahead. “I’ve missed hearing from you.”
He shakes his head and laughs softly. “Wow.”
“And when I saw you at the game,” I confess to the rearview mirror, “I realized how dumb it was not to just get over myself, because I was really happy to see you. I mean, how many times in my life have I been grateful to Marian Hart?”
He snorts, but his voice goes soft. “I’m touched, Molly.”
For a moment, we’re both silent. I gather the courage to glance at him, and he’s looking at me sadly.
“But, you know,” he says, “I am aware I was out of line during that conversation. It was … too much. I understood why you felt the way you felt.”
Floating underneath his words is the unspoken thing he said. I’m carrying a torch for you. I wonder if it’s still true. If I dare ask.
No. That’s not the kind of thing one asks. It’s the kind of thing one has to earn back.
I fiddle with the air conditioner vent instead of saying anything.
The truth is I have no idea what to say.
Being a more socially adept person than me, Seth changes the subject.
“So how are you?” he asks.
“Right now? Kind of damp.”
“I mean generally speaking.”
“I’m doing okay.”
“So specific and expressive.”
I shrug, because I’m not going to tell him I’m exhausted from the nonstop social maneuvering of scrounging up work, and bored of the oppressive October heat, and lonely from my latest string of empty hookups.
“I’m fine,” I say. “Not much to report.”
“Oh come on. How’s your movie with Margot Tess going? I want to live vicariously through your glamorous life.”
I really, really don’t want to talk about this. See: scrounging up work. But I’m not going to lie to him. So I say, “Not happening. At least, not with me.”
He looks at me with the kind of disbelief that a person with a normal job has at the vagaries of a career in film. “No! What happened?”
“Margot decided she wants to take the script in a more ‘mainstream’ direction. Thought my voice was too ‘prickly.’”
