It’s a disco ball.
Or, at least, a woman wearing a dress the approximate size of a disco ball—the shortest, tightest, sparkliest dress I’ve ever seen outside of a Katy Perry video. Her legs are long, set off by towering silver stilettos. Her dark brown hair is down to her ass.
She’s Molly.
My Molly.
Emanating such a glow that if the dentists were not groping her with their eyes, I’d think I was hallucinating.
But she’s real.
She raises her hand at me and waves.
She looks terrified.
My heart turns over.
Whatever happened between us, I don’teverwant to see Molly Marks looking scared.
I wave back and walk toward her.
Time slows down, just like in the movies.
One ofhermovies.
“Seth,” she mouths.
“Molls,” I mouth back.
And just as I’m close enough to take her hand—
I trip over an umbrella stand and fall directly into the hot tub.
Like, with my entire body.Kablam. Neck-deep in the stew.
I catch myself just in time to avoid smashing my skull onto a Baja shelf. A scrum of sixty-somethings converges around me, screeching in alarm.
Molly’s face looks like a very beautiful, heavily made-up version of Edvard Munch’sThe Scream.
She runs toward me, elbowing her way through the retirees, and kneels at the side of the tub, to which I am clinging for dear life.
“Oh my God, Seth!” she cries. “Are you okay?”
“I’m calling 911,” Dr. Yun shouts over the din.
“No, no, I’m fine,” I rasp at him. My voice is hoarse from emotion and the hot, chlorinated water that went down my windpipe. “Just wet. And embarrassed.”
Molly offers me her hands and I take them and she helps pull me up.
But I’m chest-deep in burbling water, and the incredibly goyish salmon-colored chinos my mother insisted I wear to this party weigh me down, making me clumsy.
I slip again, and this time I take Molly down with me.
Her sparkly body flies forward, knees first, and she topples into the water with a scream and a huge, 104-degree Fahrenheit splash.
We both clamber for the sides of the spa, limbs twisted, trying not to drown each other. My baggy pants are getting caught on her spiky heels. Her sequins are scratching my bare forearms.
“Are you okay?” Molly gasps, once she’s gotten herself somewhat righted.
