“So,” I make myself say. “What have you been up to for the last year?”
He blows out a breath, very obviously grateful that I changed the subject. “Oh, you know. Working. Doing yoga. Sitting around in my lake house listening to Cat Stevens and crying.”
“Sounds healthy.”
He nods. “Yeah, well, I’ve been working through some stuff. Meditating. Writing in my journal.”
He says it like he’s telling me a secret.
“Oh?” I ask. “Anything about me?”
He nods.
“Most of it.”
I swallow.
“Like what?”
“Like how much I miss you.”
I stare at him.
I can’t believe it.
He’s doing the romance beat.
“Like how much I regret always being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” he continues.
He squeezes my hand. I can barely breathe.
“Are you single, Molly?” he asks.
“Yeah,” I whisper.
“Good,” he whispers back.
He moves in and puts the faintest trace of a kiss on my cheek. Out of the corner of my eye I see his brother through the glass doors, and I blush. Dave isn’t looking at us, but still, I don’t want to be spotted.
“Not here,” I say.
I grab Seth’s arm and lead him down the terrace steps. A few hundred feet away there’s a cluster of banyan trees. They’re eerie in the fading light, casting shadows across the grass. We walk through the grove made by their trunks to a picnic table in a clearing under a canopy of hanging roots. We can still hear the band and the murmur of conversation, but we’re hidden from the party.
I sit down on top of the picnic table and Seth comes and stands in front of me, his shins pressed against mine.
I open my legs to make room and pull him toward me. His kiss is soft and tastes like lemon. It’s sweet, and slow, and it reminds me of the way we kissed in high school, in the early days of our relationship, before we knew what we were doing. I felt so drawn to him and yet so clumsy. So afraid of getting it wrong that I almost didn’t want to risk it.
I feel that way now.
I pull away.
“Seth, I’m scared.”
“Oh Molls,” he says tenderly. “Why?”
“Because I don’t want to ruin it.”
He comes and sits beside me on the table.
“What do you mean?”
“I feel like last time, when we were texting”—I don’t say “sexting,” but I assume he knows what I mean—“I made things weird. And I don’t want to do that again.”
“Molls, if you mean your video…”
I nod. I am not ashamed of my sexuality, but that was one of the few times I have extended myself like that. I feel a bit bruised that it led to him severing contact, even though intellectually I know that the circumstances, not the video, was the reason Seth needed time.
I’m hurt, but also embarrassed to be hurt.
“Molls, it had nothing to do with the video. If you knew how many times I’ve watched that video…”
“You saved it?”
I saved his as well. I keep meaning to delete it, but it makes me so, um, let’s say, amorous that I can’t make myself do it.
“Baby,” he says. “Even thinking of it has me…” He takes my hand and puts it over his groin. I look down in shock, because he has a full-on erection. I can see the outline lewdly through his pants.
I bury my head on his shoulder, feeling cleansed of all the horrible shame I’ve been harboring.
