Page 104 of October
“What do you mean, not just that?”
“Molls, if we just stand out here, wewillget interrupted again, and I don’t want to get interrupted, babe. Can we please go inside and talk?”
Hearing the concern in her voice, Molly nodded, and Finley nodded, too, but toward the open back door that was probably meant for people needing to go to the bathroom and not people needing to have serious conversations about the state of their relationship. Molly followed her inside, but since neither of them had been here before, they had no idea where to go. She walked through the long hall with Finley in front of her, and when Finley turned, Molly realized they were in the living room. Finley then sat on the sofa, facing the front window, and Molly sat down next to her, leaving some space between them because she had no idea what was about to happen.
“I’ll start,” Finley said, looking down at the floor.
“No,Ishould start. This is all my fault.”
“What’s your fault? I left, Molls. I left you this morning, and–”
“I made you leave.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“Yes, I did, Finley. You know what happened last night, don’t you?”
“IthinkI know what happened,” she said. “Did you?”
Molly nodded in confirmation, letting the shame wash over her for making Finley feel like she was responsible for all this.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“I guess it happens,” Finley replied. “Was it not–” She looked up to meet Molly’s eyes. “Was it not good at all?”
“What? No, it wasn’t that.” Molly moved closer to her on the sofa, taking Finley’s hand in her own. “I just couldn’t focus. I couldn’t get out of my own head. You were on top of me and coming, and I thought you wanted me to come, too, but I couldn’t, and I felt like I needed to, so I–”
Finley nodded and asked, “And the second time?”
“Yes,” Molly replied. “Youdidn’t do anything wrong.Idid. This is all my fault.”
“I pressured you last night, Molls. I got jealous because of Ava, and I pressured you. I feel horrible. I feel like you were trying to tell me something before the bar, and I didn’t listen. Then, Ava was there, and I thought about how you and I still hadn’t called this thing between us anything official, which meant that you might still want to go out with her, or maybe you didn’t, but she did. I let it get to me, and I started touching you. I knew what I was doing, and then, we were at your place, and I could tell you weren’t really there sometimes.”
“I told you that I wanted it.”
“Wanting it and being ready are two different things,” Finley pointed out. “I made you feel like we had to do that last night, and I am so sorry. I’d never–”
“You know what I’ve really been struggling with?” she interrupted.
“What?”
“There’s the ex-girlfriend being a perfect specimen of a woman, yes.”
Finley laughed a little and said, “She’s far from perfect. If you want a list of her imperfections, I can give you one.”
“I mean that that’s only part of it. Yes, I was worried I wouldn’t be enough, or that when I touched you, it wouldn’t be good, and it did get to me when you were touching me, but there’s more to it than that.”
“What?” Finley asked, squeezing Molly’s hand.
“I fantasized about that with you so many times, Finley. I wasn’t joking before when I said that in my fantasies, we’d done it on my desk, in the server room, in the kitchen, and in every room in my apartment and in yours. I didn’t know what your apartment looked like back then, of course, so it was mostly in mine.” Molly took a deep breath. “I let myself ruin what could have been. That’s what I’m so mad about.”
“What do you mean?”
“I should have told you that I wasn’t ready yet. Not last night, anyway,” she replied. “I got really turned on, and I let my libido and the chance of finally being with you get in the way, even though my brain kept telling me over and over again that–”
“It was a mistake?”
“No,” Molly said quickly. “Being with you can never be a mistake, Fin.” She cupped Finley’s cheek with her free hand. “But I should’ve been strong enough to tell you that I would have loved another long make-out session and maybe to let you get to second base or third, depending on where your bases are. My second base is shirts off.”
