“Molly, that’s not true—”
But it is true. There is no conceivable future in which the answer to his question will be anything but no. I used to worry that he’d leave me because I’m too cynical or too mean for him, but really it’s me who is going to leave, who wasalwaysgoing to leave, because I love him too much to ever stop being scared.
“Stop, please,” I say. “Please. Let’s not drag this out.”
“Don’t talk to me like that,” he says sharply, like the words are being excavated from his soul. “We can take all the time you need. Fuck, Molly, I’m sorry. I timed it wrong, I see that, I understand, but you don’t have to answer right now.”
“I answered.”
His face tightens. I can see him beginning to believe this is real.
“Let’s just call this fifteen minutes ago, when things were good,” I say quietly.
He looks like I’ve stabbed him and he’s holding the wound, refusing to believe in the blood even as it drips through his fingers.
“Callit? Do you mean, like,us?”
“Yeah. I’m not ever going to be your happy ending, and I don’t want to live under a ticking clock. So let’s just hit the pause button at the part where it was perfect.”
The last trace of gentleness flickers off his face.
“We’re not in a fucking rom-com, Molly.”
“No. You’re right. We’re in Joshua Tree, on Thanksgiving. And I’m grateful, however this has ended, for the time we spent together.”
I think I’ve cobbled together a sentence that sounds right. The kind of thing that he would say.
But his face contorts in pain, and I realize he’s reading my earnestness as mockery.
“Right,” he says shortly. “Beautiful. Thanks for that.”
CHAPTER 37Seth
Molly Marks once said, after that first night we slept together, that I would always love her more than she loved me.
I guess she was right.
I turn away from her and lunge for the front door. Cold desert wind whips against my face and makes the tears beading on my lashes sting as I stagger out into the yard.
I hate that I’m crying. Not because there’s any shame in it—I’m a crier, God knows—but because I thought I’d be tearing up with joy right now. I thought Molly would be in my arms, wiping the drops from my cheeks and teasing me for being so emotional.
The string quartet is still there, instruments poised, watching me for a signal, like there might be a redo.
I tip them and tell them to pack up.
The devastated way they look at me is humiliating.
I walk around the house to the fire pit and fumble in my pocket for my phone. I need to talk to someone.
I call Dave.
It rings a couple of times, then goes to voicemail. Right. It’s getting late on the East Coast, and he’s probably bathing his kids or cleaning up thekitchen with his wife, who loves him. A phenomenon it is looking likelier and likelier that I will never experience.
I don’t leave a message because Molly has ingrained in me that voicemails are annoying. Presumably, they are even more annoying when the person who leaves them is crying.
I guess I’ll just sit out here all night with my throat aching and the wind pushing smoke into my eyes, alone.
But then my phone vibrates.
