“I can’t help myself. You’re so crushable.”
“You’re so cheesy.”
I yawn. “I’m so tired.” It’s eleven p.m. in Los Angeles, making it one a.m. in Chicago.
“Are you going to conk out on me, Rubenstein?”
“No. I’m going to take a shower in your adorable bathroom. AndthenI’m going to conk out on you.”
“I’ll get you a towel.”
I enjoy washing my hair with Molly’s shampoo, the bottle of which identifies the name of the familiar, intoxicating scent of her hair—neroli.I slather myself with her eucalyptus soap, which floods the shower with the scent of spa treatments. The luxuriousness of her bath products makes me question my own affinity for drugstore brands that profess to smell like “man.”
I come out of the bathroom with a towel around my waist, releasing a cloud of fragrant steam into the hallway. Molly is waiting on her bed. She’s changed into a white, gauzy, floor-length nightdress that reminds me of a virginal Victorian maiden about to get corrupted by a sexy ghost in a candlelit attic.
“You smell like me,” she observes.
“I know. I can barely resist myself.”
She gestures at the night table on “my” side of the bed. (Molly is dogmatic about sleeping on the left, no matter where we are.) “I got you some water and Advil PM, in case you’re too wired to sleep.”
She knows me well.
“Thank you, my queen.” I hang my towel over a hook on the back of the door and climb naked into her bed.
I turn to face her and run my finger along the lace cuff of her nightgown. “Am I allowed to see what’s under your Jane Austen getup?”
“The lady is feeling a bit chaste tonight. Do you mind?”
The uncomfortable thought flickers up again that she might still be pissed about Dezzie. I’m always harassing Molly to talk through her anxieties. It’s bad form on my part not to broach this, even if I’m a little scared to.
“That’s all right,” I say. “But, Molls?”
“Yeah?”
“Are you still upset? Over my not being able to represent Dezzie?”
She stiffens. “A little,” she admits. “But I do understand. I think?”
“I would do it for you in a heartbeat if I could. For both of you.”
“I know. I don’t want to be unfair to you. I guess it’s just this terrible reminder of all the ways things go wrong. Even for people who were happy.”
I hold her tighter. I know this is bringing up everything that happened with her dad.
“And I was thinking about how your whole life is dealing with stuff like this,” she says. “And telling myself, okay, maybe this is the universe’s way of showing me that your job is a positive thing, that I don’t have to feel guilty about it, that you can help my friend. But when you said you couldn’t, it was likeof course not.How stupid of me.”
I hate to hear this. My career is one of the few things about myself I can’t promise to change for her, and it saddens me that she might always feel conflicted about what I do—that it might be a tension we just have to live with.
“I get it,” I say. “I wish more than anything that I could fight for her. Not to be selfish, but I feel like this was an opportunity to prove myself to you, and Rob ruined it. But Dezzie will find a great lawyer—we’ll make sure of it.”
Molly leans over and gives me a peck on the lips. “You don’t have toprove yourself to me, Seth. But I have my issues, and they don’t go away just because I love you.”
Oh God, the relief to hear those words.
“I love you too,” I whisper back.
I hold her in my arms until her breath slows, grateful that we’ve survived our first real fight as a couple.
