Can't Look Away(32)

“Are you fucking kidding me?” He stared at the picture for what seemed like ages, his eyes narrowing in horror as he took in the details. “I can’t believe … Molly.” He turned toward her, his breath choppy. “This is exactly what I was just telling you about. This is the random girl who came up to me in the club and kissed me for two seconds. This is her.” He stabbed his finger at the screen. “Where … Where did you get this?”

“Some random person sent it to me. I told you.” She pointed to the email address.

“Molly.” His voice had grown raspy and panicked. He shook his head in disbelief. “Someone must’ve set me up. Oh god. Oh god.” Jake dropped his face into his hands. Several moments passed in silence. When he looked up, a lone tear snaked down his cheek. It was the first time Molly had ever seen him cry. “I … I think this girl was a crazy fan. She must’ve had a friend take the picture or something. She must know I have a girlfriend—I mean, anyone who wanted to know could find that out. But I don’t know how she got your email address. I know that sounds insane, Molly, but that has to be it. It’s the only thing that makes remote sense.”

Molly studied Jake’s face, the way it was twitching in agitation and terror. She exhaled, flooded with confusing relief. The anxiety had dropped from her body like a second skin, but what was left was boiling anger. Because while the past several days had consumed her with the horrifying reality that Jake had been unfaithful, it wasn’t the whole picture. That wasn’t the reason she’d been a wreck for the entire month. She’d banked on her own forgiveness; she hadn’t expected the anger that rose inside her, unyielding and lucid.

Molly and Jake fought all night, the next few hours a blur. She let the emotions tumble out of her subconscious like lava—every last one—escaping the stale, stuffy place they’d been brewing for weeks. He apologized; he owned his distant and aloof behavior—his absence from every element of her life—with genuine, ashamed admission.

At one in the morning, she stuffed a canvas tote with clothes and toiletries. She didn’t fully want to, but she couldn’t stop remembering the way her mother had looked at her in Naples, that mixture of worry and foreboding, an image she couldn’t shake.

“Never put up with a man who puts you second,” her mother had said on New Year’s Eve, after Molly had been particularly quiet at dinner. Molly’s mother was the strongest person she knew—she always had been. She was the type of beautiful, successful, steadfast woman who’d never let a man walk all over her. Molly had never doubted her mother when she kicked her father out, told him to never come back.

She was only in third grade then. When she got a bit older and would ask for details on why Dad had left, her mother’s answer was simple and pragmatic: he was selfish, he strayed, he was careless with money.

Molly had always been grateful to have a mother like hers as a role model. As she and Jake argued, the words played on repeat inside her head: Never put up with a man who puts you second. It was a piece of advice that made all of this so refreshingly simple.

“I’m going to stay at Everly’s for a bit,” Molly said.

Jake sat on the couch and rubbed his eyes, which were red around the rims. “Please don’t.” He stood, his tall, strong body a magnet threatening Molly’s stance. “I fucked up, but I didn’t cheat. You have to believe me.”

“I told you, Jake, it’s more than that.”

“I know, I just … I don’t know what happened. I got sucked into this … other world when I was on tour, but it didn’t mean for a second that I stopped loving you. My love for you is everything. It’s my baseline, my reason for getting up in the morning. You have to know that.”

“It doesn’t fucking matter, Jake!” Molly was sick of yelling, her throat raw. “It doesn’t matter if you love me if you can’t actually show up for me. My dad loved my mom, and he was a piece of shit!” She closed her eyes, which were swollen from crying. He was selfish, he strayed, he was careless with money. So far, Jake was two out of three.

She heaved the canvas bag over her shoulder—a shoulder that had become bonier in the last several weeks—and blinked.

“So, what, I’m a piece of shit, then?” Jake stared at her, shaking his head in disbelief. He looked as destroyed as she felt. “I’m not your father, Molly.”

She swallowed. She was so thirsty, suddenly. “I love you, but the past month has been hell for me, and I can’t just…” Molly sighed, heavy with exhaustion. “I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen. I need to go.”

Molly left the apartment before she could change her mind, stepping over the bouquet of roses that now lay on the floor, the brown paper crinkled, the snow-colored petals littering the entryway.

It was cold outside, but the air felt fresh in her lungs. Molly had almost forgotten it was a Saturday night; despite the late hour, Driggs swarmed with barhopping twentysomethings, loud and drunk and oblivious to her pain. That was the thing Molly loved most about New York—the city never let you get too caught up in your own problems; it was always reminding you that there was something more, something bigger than yourself.

A vacant taxi cruised down Driggs, and Molly stuck out her arm. She gave the cabbie Everly’s address.