Can't Look Away(80)

“God.” An incredulous expression crosses Nina’s face. “No wonder you want to stay friends with Jake’s wife. The women in this town seem brutal. Sabrina actually sounds normal.”

“Yeah, Sabrina really is so great.” But all of a sudden, it hits Molly: she hasn’t seen or heard from Sabrina in nearly ten days. They haven’t spoken since before she met up with Jake at Skipping Beach. Her stomach flips. How is that possible?

Nina studies her. “You okay?”

“I just—hang on.” Molly digs her phone out of her purse, scrolls through her messages. Her last text to Sabrina is outgoing, sent Sunday morning. Dinner at Dune next week? I’m craving their calamari.

Molly remembers sending the text. It was a few hours before her walk with Jake, and she’d been harboring guilt over the fact that she hadn’t said anything to Sabrina about their plans. She didn’t want to make a big deal of it. Molly had hoped they could have dinner in the next few days so that she could casually mention how she and Jake had caught up in person, emphasize how platonic it had been.

But, of course, it hadn’t been platonic at all, and in the days that followed, Molly had been too absorbed in her own emotional shitstorm—Jake, Hunter, the embryo that may or may not have implanted inside her—to remember that Sabrina had never answered her text.

“That’s weird.” Molly placed her phone down on the table, glancing from Nina to Everly. “I just realized I haven’t heard from Sabrina in a week and a half—which isn’t like her. She comes to at least one of my weekly classes at Yoga Tree. And she didn’t reply to my last text.”

Nina tilts her head in thought. “When’s the last you heard from her?”

“The day before the embryo transfer, she wished me good luck. So early last week.”

“Well, don’t jump to any conclusions. It doesn’t mean she knows about you and Jake. There’s no way he would’ve told her what happened.”

“Agreed.” Everly sips her matcha. “People just get busy in the summer, you know? Follow up with her.”

“I guess.” Molly shrugs. “God, living in this town has made me so self-conscious. I should really be worrying less about Sabrina and more about Hunter. And Stella. And the fact that I’ve fucked up my marriage.”

“Molly.” Nina squeezes her forearm. “Take a deep breath. Just slow it down, okay?”

Molly glances at her phone. “Shoot, it’s eleven thirty. I gotta go.” She groans. She wants nothing more than to stay in the comforting cocoon of her closest friends, but she has to be at Yoga Tree to teach the noon Vinyasa flow.

The three of them hug goodbye on the sidewalk outside Gwen’s.

Nina’s eyes brighten. “Maybe Sabrina will show up at your class?”

“I’m not counting on it.” Molly sighs.

“Don’t panic,” Ev says. “It’s great you’re still teaching so much, by the way.”

Molly gives a strained smile, thinking suddenly of Bella’s voicemail, the one she still hasn’t deleted from her phone. Molly has the sharp urge to mention this to her friends—she never told them Bella tried to get in touch; she never told anyone—but Nina is already opening the door to Everly’s Lexus. Their time is up.

“We’ll see you in two weeks,” Ev calls with a wave.

Nina gives a little shimmy. “Can’t wait to party with the six-year-olds!”

Fifteen minutes later, Molly sits behind the front desk at Yoga Tree, signing students in to class. After her heart-to-heart with Nina and Everly, she feels calmer, her confidence partially restored. It’s amazing, the healing powers of best friends. And she knows they’re right about Sabrina. People are busy, people forget to respond to texts all the time—Molly is overreacting.

Before she goes into the studio, where her students wait in child’s pose, Molly takes out her phone.

She has one new text—Jake. I can’t stop thinking about you …

Fuck. Molly breathes slowly, tries to ignore the heavy, buzzy feeling in her body. The electricity in her stomach, like she’s a magnet being pulled.

She deletes his text. Then, she crafts a new message to Sabrina.

Hi, stranger! Missed you in class this week. How are you? Want to walk this weekend? Or grab lunch? Let me know!



Molly tries not to cringe at her own desperation, her hypocrisy. She hits Send before she has the chance to change her mind.





Chapter Thirty-one

Sabrina




You’ve been texting me, Molly. You kissed my husband on the beach—you probably fucked him in his car—and now you’re texting me as if everything is normal. You’d like to know if I want to go on a walk with you. A fucking stroll. Well, the answer is no—I don’t want to go on a walk with you, and I don’t want to grab lunch. What I want is to destroy you.

And if you don’t believe I have the power to do just that, listen to this. Listen to what happened the last time I saw your old pal Liz Esposito.

Throughout the remainder of my twenties in New York, Liz and I maintained a casual friendship. We were mainly just gym buddies, but every now and then—usually after one of Erin’s Pilates classes—we went out for drinks and a bite.

Liz and I had a lot in common, actually, and I genuinely enjoyed her company. For starters, we both came from moneyed families and from parents who possessed little to no interest in monitoring their children. In turn, we’d adopted a similarly unfettered approach to many aspects of our lives.