Seth loves shopping. He loves to take me to the natural grocery store to buy hand-ground peanut butter and nutty bread. He knows the vendors at the farmers market, and proudly introduces me to them: “My girlfriend, Molly.” He’s friendly with the girls who own the local wine shop, and they point him toward bottles of ruby-tinted pinot noirs and skin-fermented orange wines that remind me of the sun.
At night, Seth grills lake-caught fish and midwestern steak while I make us herby salads and summer corn. We open wine and eat on the deck under the July sunset. When darkness finally falls, the sky’s so clear you can see the Milky Way.
Seth talks about our future. We should try long-distance for six months, he says, and take stock. FaceTime every day. See each other in person at least once a month.
He brainstorms places we could meet—places neither of us have ever been, where we can make new memories together. Santa Fe. Yosemite. Orcas Island to see whales.
He wants to see my house, and burrow in my stuff.
I still think about my dad. I think about how he and my mom were high school sweethearts, and that didn’t stop him from destroying their relationship. I think of how he still cheats, sheds marriages like last season’s clothes. I think of all the nice guys I’ve bailed on, back before I stopped dating people who might care if I leave them.
Instead of quietly obsessing, I talk to Seth about it in the dark.
He’s tender in hearing out my fears, but optimistic. We love each other, he reassures me. We know each other. This can work.
He writes a gratitude list in his journal every night before he brushes his teeth, and makes me do it too.
I’m thankful for mornings listening to Chopin as the smell of toast and pesto drift around me in a sunlit cabin.
For lake water crisping up my hair.
For a job that lets me disappear into this momentary life.
For sex on the deck at midnight when the stars are out and the neighbors are asleep.
I’m grateful, in a word, for Seth.
CHAPTER 31Seth
Every time I hear Molly Marks softly snore beside me, my heart flips over. I wake up early just to hear the breathy rhythm of it. The proof of her beside me.
She sleeps in while I do my morning workout. But I know she gets up in secret to brush her teeth, because when I join her in bed after I shower her breath is minty fresh.
Her suitcase is such a mess I itch to fold and organize her clothes. (I manage to control myself.) But hanging from a hook on my bathroom door is a bag with neatly packed compartments of skin care products, sorted in the order she applies them. It takes her fifteen minutes every morning, another twenty in the evening. She says she doesn’t meditate, but I think this is her version of it.
After she does the products, she smells amazing.
In fact, she always smells amazing.
The first morning we woke up together she said she didn’t eat breakfast—“not to worry about her.” Maybe, she said, she’d have a protein bar later. A protein bar! I made her scrambled eggs anyway, and it turns out shedoeseat breakfast if you make her something delicious, infused with love. Every day while I’m preparing it, I brainstorm what to make tomorrow, trying to topmyself. Trying to use every tool at my disposal to make her associate me with sensuous delights.
She likes to wander around my place while I’m cooking, tinkering with this and that, asking me the provenance of furniture or books or records. She rifles through my possessions with an intense curiosity that flatters me, but also makes me slightly nervous. I hope she likes whatever she is finding.
Sometimes, when I have to work, she takes out her laptop and writes. She’s the fastest typist I have ever seen, using the tips of her long nails to fly across the keys. It’s as though her ideas have overtaken her body, transforming her into those flying fingers.
Yet she often complains of being stuck, or uninspired. “How can you say that when you write so fluidly?” I ask her.
“I delete a lot,” she says. “I delete hundreds of thousands of words a year.”
Imagine that. Hundreds of thousands of words, gone. I wish that I could have them.
At night she asks me questions about my cases and my clients. I never share identifying details, but we talk about the law, the issues that my clients face. “I’d rather never marry than get divorced,” she says.
“That’s why you have to marry your soul mate,” I say.
She looks away.
I have yet to get her to agree that I am hers.
