Can't Look Away(25)

When he looked up, when he blinked over Maxine’s shoulder to find Molly staring directly at him, Jake thought he had to be dreaming. He held her hazel gaze for a passing moment, disoriented. But then the realization hit him, a dropkick in the gut: he wasn’t dreaming. He was there, at the Bowl’s crowded bar, much drunker than he was supposed to be, Maxine’s arms coiled around his neck.

Jake shook Maxine off him, panic rising in his chest. A primal, blinding fear locked each of his senses. No. No.

Molly vanished into the crowd as he fought his way toward her, pushing between throngs of concertgoers, some of whom recognized him, who called out his name. He ignored the fans, but by the time he reached the exit, Molly was gone. Then a hand yanked his shoulder, jerking him around.

“Jesus, Danner, where the fuck have you been?” Sam looked furious, his face beet red, and he was out of breath. “It’s ten past eight, we’re supposed to be onstage right now. Let’s go.”

The performance was Jake’s worst to date—sloppy and half-hearted—and as a result, the worst show in Danner Lane’s short history. Afterward, Sam and Hale wouldn’t look at him. They left Brooklyn Bowl with Jerry and Maxine without saying goodbye, leaving Jake alone in a prison of his own self-loathing.

He stumbled down Wythe, calling Molly again and again. But she didn’t pick up, and finally her phone stopped ringing at all, so Jake went home and crawled into bed. He fell into fitful bursts of slumber, and at 6:00 a.m. when it was clear good sleep was out of the question, he got up and left the apartment.

A girl was just buzzing into Molly’s building when Jake arrived. She balanced a cardboard tray of coffees, and Jake held the door for her, then followed her inside. He practically sprinted up the three flights of stairs.

Molly opened her door almost right away when he knocked, which told him she’d been up, that she hadn’t slept, either.

At the sight of her—bleary-eyed, tangled blond hair—Jake’s eyes filled. He wasn’t used to crying in response to his emotions, but he was too panicked to be unsettled by his own vulnerability, the way he normally might’ve been. He loved her. He’d suspected it for a while, but now—in this terrible moment—he knew for sure. He loved her in a way he’d never loved another human being before in his life.

“Nothing happened,” he said breathlessly. “Maxine—she came on to me.” It was the truth, and Jake needed her to know it. “There was all this whiskey—” He paused, the pain of the memory lodged in his throat. “She kissed me, Moll. She kissed me for half a second, and I pushed her off of me. I swear.”

Molly reached behind Jake to close the front door, which felt like a positive sign. She wasn’t kicking him out. At least not yet.

She rubbed her eyes and walked into the living room off the kitchen, sinking down onto the couch. He loved the way she looked in her oversize NYU T-shirt, her long legs tucked underneath her. He wanted to crawl into her lap and stay there forever.

Jake lowered himself to sit beside her, slowly, carefully—testing her limits.

“I’m in love with you, Moll,” he said helplessly. “I know it’s the absolute worst time to say that for the first time, but I can’t not tell you. It’s all I thought about all night. That I love you and if I lose you, if I fuck this up, I’ll never forgive myself.”

Molly looked at him, her eyes shiny and wide. He touched the faded scar above her left eyebrow, tracing it with his finger.

“Do you promise, Jake?” She blinked back tears. “Do you promise that’s all that happened with Maxine?”

“I promise.” He wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling her close. He inhaled the vanilla and sandalwood scent of her, as precious to him as his own heartbeat. “I promise.” He whispered it again and again, his face buried in her hair.

Years later, when the acoustic version of “Molly’s Song” would release and a shot at a solo career would finally begin to feel possible for Jake, he’d think back to this night, to how close he had come to losing Molly. Of course, he did lose her, eventually. And he would wonder, not for the first time since he started writing music again, where in the world Molly was, right at that moment. He’d wonder if her hair was still long and wild, the way it had been when they were together. If she still ate cinnamon raisin toast with peanut butter for breakfast every morning. If the scar above her left eyebrow was the same, or if the years had faded it further.

Three lines would drift into his mind then, without much effort. He’d grab his pencil, catch the words before they escaped him.

Wild hair

Wild heart

Take me back to our wild start





Chapter Twelve

Sabrina




Obsession has always interested me. The best artists, the most brilliant innovators, they’ve all been driven by it. It straddles the line between passion and insanity; it instigates creativity and genius despite the darkness in which it lingers. To be obsessed with someone or something is to adopt a single-minded drive that reduces the rest of the world to sheer insignificance.

That’s how it was for me, with Jake. I couldn’t shake him from my system, though I will admit: I didn’t try very hard. Fixating on Jake was an itch I took pains to scratch. I fed it like my own precious beast. I thought of the blood constantly, disappearing down the toilet, and wondered where it had gone. The remnants of our baby. A life that would never be.