Can't Look Away(45)
“I don’t understand why Bella is this heavily involved in the editing process,” Molly told Jake one Sunday afternoon, when they were working in the living room. “She’s an agent. I thought editors were supposed to do the editing.”
“Well, what does Bella say?” Jake glanced up from the coffee table, where he was scribbling notes on a new song.
Molly stretched her neck to the left and yawned. “I try not to ask her too many questions. I’m just lucky she signed me.”
“You’re not just lucky. You’re an exceptional writer, that’s what you are.”
A smile crept across Molly’s face. “Well, luckily,” she started, twisting around in her desk chair, “Bella thinks this is our last revision before she starts sending the manuscript out to editors.”
“That’s so exciting, Moll. Think about it—you could have a real book deal, practically any day now. It’s amazing.” Jake smiled.
“It is kind of amazing, isn’t it?” Molly gazed at him dreamily. “But I don’t want to get my hopes up.” She closed her laptop, standing. “I’m going to rinse off.”
In the shower, Molly lathered her hair with Garnier Fructis—Jake’s signature shampoo—and inhaled its sharp, citrusy scent. She’d been using his shampoo ever since she moved back in; it was her way of luxuriating in the small things about him she’d so desperately missed.
Staying at Everly’s had been fine, given the circumstances. Everly lived in a true one-bedroom in Dumbo, walking distance from the digital agency where she worked as a junior strategist. Between work and staying at Sage’s, she was almost never home, which meant that Molly mostly had the apartment to herself.
She’d kept as busy as she could. She subbed extra yoga classes and scheduled drinks with friends she hadn’t seen in ages and cooked new recipes in Everly’s kitchen. When Bella finally called, apologizing profusely for the delay and eagerly offering her representation for Needs—which she’d devoured—Molly was so happy she almost forgot she was miserable. Still, the way she missed Jake was a hole in her heart, and not being able to share her good news with him seemed to only make her pain worse.
She knew about “Molly’s Song”—everyone did. One night, a week after it released, she was out with Nina and Liz and Ev, and noticed friends of friends of friends whispering and pointing in her direction. She knew what they were saying. That’s Molly—like the Molly—from “Molly’s Song.”
It was a good piece of music, and she knew it was making Danner Lane even more famous, but she didn’t care. It wasn’t enough. If she let herself remember the way she felt when Jake was on tour—the sudden and silent way he disappeared from her life—the anger in her heart grew so overwhelming she thought she might implode.
It was Nina who convinced her to go to the concert, when Molly told her about Jake’s email and the VIP passes.
“Your ex-boyfriend, who you still clearly love, who’s so in love with you that he wrote a song about you that is currently the actual most-played song in the universe, is performing at Madison Square Garden, and he wants to serenade you there in front of thousands of people. This is an astronomical life moment, Molly. You’re going. And I’m going with you.”
The day before the show, Molly was still on the fence. She was packing up after subbing back-to-back classes at Bhakti when her boss approached her behind the front desk. Veronica was Bhakti’s studio manager and possessed the most quintessential yoga body Molly had ever seen.
“You’ve been getting so much great feedback lately.” Veronica squeezed Molly’s shoulder.
“Have I?” Molly forced a smile, her mind elsewhere.
“Absolutely. I hear it from students all the time. Plus, there was that girl who called here raving about your class. She sent you an email, right?”
“Huh?” Molly cocked her head. “What girl was that?”
“Oh, I can’t remember her name…” Veronica pursed her lips in thought. “It was about a month ago, maybe six weeks? This girl called the studio asking for your email address. She said she loved your class and wanted to write to you. You never heard from her?”
Molly shook her head. She cared a lot about her teaching; she would have remembered if a student had emailed her. But six weeks ago was when she received the email from [email protected]. She knew exactly when it was because the image of Jake kissing the platinum blonde had been living rent-free in her mind ever since. If someone had called the studio asking for her email address, it lined up with Jake’s story. It was plausible that the perpetrator was a crazy fan who knew about Molly, who’d somehow figured out that she taught at Bhakti. Hadn’t Jake tagged the studio in a photo of her on her mat last fall? The thought gave Molly the heebie-jeebies even as it flooded her with welcome relief. She’d suspected Jake had been telling the truth, and now she felt herself moving closer to this conviction. By the time she got back to Everly’s apartment, she felt certain of his honesty. Still, it didn’t negate the rest of his behavior on the tour. And she couldn’t forget how much his disregard had hurt her.
The next night, Molly put on her favorite pair of jeans and a lilac crop top. She’d let Nina do her makeup, and they’d headed to Madison Square Garden. And when Jake walked out onto the stage, when his bright blue eyes found hers in the midst of tens of thousands of concertgoers in the biggest arena in New York City, it felt exactly like it had that very first night she saw him play at the Broken Mule—like they were the only two people there. And something in Molly shifted. She felt the anger that she’d been holding on to so tightly dissipate. She felt the power of them—the magic of what they had been and still had the potential to be. And she finally saw, with the lightning bolt of clarity she’d been yearning for, that refusing to forgive Jake wasn’t going to keep her heart safe.