This could be a metaphor for our dynamic in high school: him always yearning for more. Me, always just a gesture short of the devotion with which he showered me. He had such an endless capacity for affection. And I already had the poison pill I still possess: an instinct to flinch and pull back just when other people most crave my love.
“Your turn, Rubes,” Marcus says.
Seth leans back and casually wraps his arm around my shoulders.
“It was the day this one agreed to go out with me,” he says.
He’s definitely toying with me.
“We were at a speech and debate tournament in Raleigh freshman year,” he goes on, eyeing me with what I can only assume to be mock-fondness. “Marks here won, of course. After that a few of us ended up in Chaz Logan’s hotel room, and we were talking about the Supreme Court, because we were pretentious little fuckers. Molly went off on a very eloquent tangent defending Constitutional interpretation over strict constructionism, and she was so smart, and she looked so pretty—I thought my heart was going to just melt out of my chest. So when Chaz kicked us out to go to sleep, I asked if she wanted to go talk by the pool, since we were wired. We put our feet in the water, and I told her that all I could think about while watching her do her perfect oratory was how badly I wanted to kiss her.”
Everyone at the table is looking at us like we’re in a Hallmark movie. I want to wriggle out of my seat and run into the ocean, because being eaten by a shark would be preferable to the combination of shame and embarrassment that is currently choking me.
Seth chuckles, as if he is telling this story at the rehearsal dinner for our wedding. “And do you remember what you said, Molls?” he asks, staring pointedly into my eyes.
Everyone waits, smiling.
I clear my throat, hoping I can get out the words.
“I asked you what you were waiting for.”
CHAPTER 4 Seth
Molly is squirming.
Admittedly, making her squirm was my intention, but now I feel slightly bad for her.
I assume everyone at the table knows how things ended between us.
How she deleted her AIM account and holed up at her father’s ski chalet all the way out in Vail, and I commenced a six-week crying jag and lost twenty pounds.
How she never replied to my emails.
How she avoided all our old haunts on college breaks.
How she basically broke my heart and then threw it into a garbage can in some random park for good measure.
At thirty-three, I should be over this.
And I am!
At least, I thought I was. But I wasn’t expecting to see Molly ever again.
Marian, who is a doll, cries, “That is so sweet! You two were adorable.”
“Not as adorable as you two were,” I say back, with a smile.
Marcus throws one of his buff, former-quarterback arms around Marian. “Want to sneak in a dance before the entrées, pretty lady?” he asks.
I wonder if they are rekindling something this evening.
I hope they are.
They’re both single. Neither of them can stop touching each other. If I had to place bets on who from our class might end up together someday, it would be these two.
Georgette and the Frenchman also excuse themselves, leaving Molly and me alone to either pick at our scallops or find something neutral to talk about.
I would ask her to dance—I’m a total dance hound—except I have dignity, and the vibe is a little excruciating, now that I’ve brought up the unmentionable. Especially because I can’t stop looking at her hair falling over her shoulders in that dress.
I need to get away from her.
“I’m gonna go say hi to Jon,” I say, rising. Jon is one of my best friends from high school, and we hung out all last night with his boyfriend, Alastair, and our other BFF, Kevin. So there’s no pressing reason to greet him, other than not wanting Molly to sense that I still, inadvisably, seem to have a crush on her.
I thought she’d be relieved to see me go, but instead she grabs my sleeve.
“Hey,” she says. “Um, before you go, I just … I wanted to tell you I’m sorry.”
All arousal flees my body. I feel uncomfortable. Being pretend-nice while internally seething with resentment is a position of power. Being apologized to makes me feel like a victim. Like the pathetic boy who got his heart broken.
“For what?” I ask, trying very hard not to seem vulnerable.
“You know, for how things ended. For disappearing.”
Yeah, I really don’t like this. I wasn’t courting pity. I was trying to shame her for being a rat. Those are not the same thing.
Nevertheless, she still looks the way she did when we were alone together and she dropped that too-cool-for-school act.
I’m disturbed by how much I’m still touched by it.
