Page 97 of October
“We’re dating. I can’t imagine she’ll want to takethatstep with me anytime soon, after what I pulled last night.”
“Finley will understand. Just invite her. We’re heading over around two.”
“But do I have to? I was planning on sitting around my apartment, moping and eating a bunch of junk food.”
“Molly, you can do this. You can finally have the girl you’ve always wanted because she’s totally crazy about you.”
“How doyouknow that?”
“Please, we can all see it. We were talking about you after you left last night. I could tell from the Saints’ game. Gwen said she could, too, but I think she’s just lying.” She smiled. “Finley lit up around you that day. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen her like that, honestly, and I’ve spent more time with her than you have. I can tell you for sure that I never saw her look at India how she looked at you when you were stabbing ketchup-covered garlic fries with a plastic fork. Then, last night, she was all over you, and I’m sure some of that was jealousy because Ava was there, but she looked happy, Molls. Like, really happy. And I’m sure right now, she’s probably just as worried as you are about what happened last night.”
“You think she’s worried?”
“I would be. If I thought Gwen had faked it with me and possibly more than once, yeah, I’d be worried I wasn’t good enough and she had pitied me instead of just being honest. I’d worry she didn’t feel like she could trust that I wouldn’t make it about me or her. It would be about us together. I’d worry that maybe she’d had second thoughts about us and–”
“I’m not having second thoughts. I want her. I love her, Jules. I love her in the way you love Gwen. She is building me a computer Idon’tneed, and she went shopping for my new puppy. She loves that I eat junk food like a kid, and she–”
“She what?”
“She’s beautiful when she comes, and I want to be the one to make her feel that good.”
“Molly, you were,” Juliet told her with a soft smile. “She was withyou.”
“It’s not like I actually moved or anything.”
“That doesn’t matter. She was withyou. Youdidmake her feel good. We’re eating breakfast, but I think you should call her after. Invite her to the party. There will be a lot of people there, so you can just be with her around everyone else for a while, and it might help ease the pressure before you talk to her.”
“Do you think it’ll be better the second time?”
“I think itcanbe, if you talk to her and tell her what you’re thinking or feeling.”
“Yeah,” she said and stared down at her bacon. “She’d love that I got extra syrup to dip my bacon in.”
“She’d probably think it was cute,” Juliet said.
“I’ll call her and invite her.”
“Good.”
“And I’m going to talk to someone else, too.”
“Someone else?”
“A therapist. For real, I mean. I think I need to find out why it’s suddenly hitting me when it never did like this before.”
“I’m not going to talk you out of that if you need it, but is it impacting you in any way outside of Finley?”
“Sometimes, but it’s usually pretty mild.”
“Well, do whatever you think you need to do, Molls, but my guess is that it’s extra heightened because you’re dating the woman you’ve been drooling over for years, and that’s scary.”
“Hey!” Molly laughed. “I didn’t drool.”
“You sure? I sat across from you for a while there, and I seem to remember drool.”
“Asshole,” Molly said through her laughter.
CHAPTER 27
