Can't Look Away(41)
“Thank you.” Sabrina smiles. “I can’t believe I’m only just having you over.”
“When did you two get married?” Hunter asks, breaking his silence. Molly notices the empty tumbler in his hand—he’s already drained his scotch.
“Earlier this year. January.” Jake’s eyes flicker to his wife. “The wedding was in Miami. Sisi’s from Palm Beach.”
“Guilty. I’m a Sunshine State girl.” Sabrina grins and spreads her thin, toned arms across the back of the chair. In her short-sleeved white caftan, her dark hair falling over her shoulders in two glossy plaits, she looks like a petite Grecian goddess.
And then the memory shakes loose from the deep-seated roots of Molly’s past. She hears Jake’s voice on their very first date, words she replayed countless times in her head during their first few months together, weighing their significance: Sisi wanted to move in together, and I guess … I guess I didn’t love her as much as she loved me.
Sisi was Jake’s ex-girlfriend Sisi, the one he’d dated before he and Molly met. He hadn’t mentioned her often during their time together, but the name was still permanently implanted in some crevice of Molly’s mind. Sisi was Sabrina?
“Molly’s grandmother used to have a place in Naples,” Hunter tells Sabrina. “She passed away last summer, but before that, we used to go down there after Christmas every year.”
“I’m so sorry to hear that.” Sabrina’s face falls. “Naples is beautiful.”
Molly’s mind is still back in 2013, remembering Sisi, and it takes her a moment to register that she needs to respond. “It is.” She smiles tightly. “And thank you, but it’s okay. My grandmother lived a long life. I do miss going to Florida, though.”
Sabrina nods. She picks up the bottle of rosé from the ice bucket and refills Molly’s glass. “Okay, I’m sorry, maybe I had a little too much wine before you guys got here, but I’m just putting two and two together…” She glances from Jake to Molly, her emerald eyes shiny. “You and Jake know each other from way back when, and your name is Molly. You’re not … Molly Molly, are you? Like, ‘Molly’s Song’ Molly?”
Molly is momentarily stunned; it doesn’t seem normal that Sabrina is asking this question in front of Jake. Then again, isn’t this what drew her to Sabrina in the first place, her willingness to cut through bullshit and say something real? She glances at Hunter, who stares into his empty glass. She’s grateful for the wine dulling the edges of this excruciating moment.
She opens her mouth to speak, but Jake answers the question first.
“Yes.” His voice is even and cool, and he’s looking at Sabrina strangely again. “Molly and I haven’t seen each other in—god, I don’t know how many years. Not since the height of my Danner Lane days.”
Molly wishes she could climb out of her own skin. More than anything, she is desperate to know what is running through Hunter’s head beside her. She wants to crawl into his lap and melt away.
“Wow.” Sabrina’s expression is indecipherable. “Crazy.”
“Crazy,” Jake repeats.
“Well, no need for this to be awkward.” Sabrina’s mouth lifts into a hopeful smile. “You’re both married now! And Molly and Hunter have a gorgeous daughter. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but I see the four of us being great, great friends.” She winks at Molly. “Moll and I already are.”
“A daughter?” Jake’s sandy eyebrows jump as he turns toward Molly. “I didn’t know you had kids.”
“Stella,” Hunter declares proudly, placing his tumbler down on the teak table a bit too hard. “She’s the best.”
“Stella.” Jake works through both syllables slowly. His eyes land on Molly’s again, and she feels for a sharp, fleeting moment as if they’re alone, as if it’s only the two of them in the entire universe, as if it always has been. He smiles. “What a great name.”
“She’s a doll,” Sabrina says brightly. “She’s almost six, right?”
“Yep. I can’t believe it.” Molly stares into the bowl of her wineglass, which is somehow empty again.
“Is she a summer birthday?” Sabrina asks.
Molly nods. “August.”
Sabrina stands, smooths the front of her caftan. “I’m going to pop the salmon in the oven. We can eat in fifteen.”
Dinner is served in the dining room, another pristinely decorated space that leaves Molly even more curious about the source of Sabrina and Jake’s—or the Danners’, she supposes she should call them—finances. She knows nothing about Jake’s current income, but can’t imagine the profits of a few years of way-back-when rock band stardom would’ve extended so far as to get them a house like this in Flynn Cove.
“Jake, what do you do for work now?” Hunter asks, and Molly thinks perhaps spousal telepathy is real. “Sabrina mentioned the new music venture, but is there anything aside from that?”
Molly shifts uncomfortably at the way Hunter phrases the question.
Jake swallows a piece of sourdough, and Molly watches the rise and fall of his Adam’s apple. She still can’t actually grasp that he’s here, right in front of her. She is sitting in Jake’s grass cloth–wallpapered dining room. She is eating roasted salmon off Jake’s Mottahedeh china. The Jake she knew didn’t own matching socks.