Page 38 of It's Always Been You
She blows out a breath. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you’re still the only person in the world who can make me do something I don’t really want to do.”
I shrug, trying to mask how happy that makes me. “It’s a gift. So, what is it?”
In a move that is also very unlike her, Molly fixes her gaze on the table when she speaks. “I was going to say, if you hadn’t forced me out of your life, you could have actually had me withyou when you went looking for diners in different cities instead of going to find diners to remind yourself of me.”
It should hurt, but it doesn’t. Instead, I feel a gust of relief that this is what she’s thinking. Because all I want is to get on my damn knees and tell her that I’ll do whatever I can to fix what I broke, but I can’t do that unless we’re talking about it.
“Look at me, Rory.”
She shakes her head and presses her lips together. I reach across the table with my free hand and tip her chin up so her eyes meet mine.
“Don’t ever be afraid to tell me what’s in your head. I said I want to know everything, and I mean it. And you’re right.”
Molly sighs, but her steady gaze holds mine. “Talking around it seems useless, so we might as well just get to it. I know I’m right. I’m always right. But it doesn’t feel fair of me to think that. It never has. You were twenty-two, Gabe, and your entire world collapsed. You had to bury your parents and deal with all the logistics of death, and you also had to be a pseudo-parent to your sisters when you were just barely an adult yourself. I loved you. God, I loved you so much, and I know you loved me too. We loved each other more than was probably reasonable. But we were too young to handle what life threw at us, and that love, enormous as it was, couldn’t sustain us through it. It wasn’t your fault, and it wasn’t mine. It was bad luck and bad timing. No one is to blame.”
It’s strangely healing, listening to her dissect what happened between us in that clear-eyed, level-headed way of hers. And it’s a weird sort of relief to hear that she hasn’t been blaming me all these years. But still…
“I blame myself,” I tell her. “I’ve blamed myself since the second you walked out of my house. I wanted to get in touch with you a million times in a million different ways between then and now. At first, my grief was too huge to be able to doanything except try and put one foot in front of the other so I could be there for my sisters. And then, once I came out of that haze of grief and my sisters and I were mostly functional again, it didn’t seem fair to get in touch with you. By then, I had started my company, and I was tied to California because that’s where Ames and Liv were. I would never have uprooted them after they had been through so much. But it also wouldn’t have been fair to ask you to uproot your whole life to come to me. You were in law school by then and you were building your own life. I never would have asked you to give it up for me after how badly I hurt you.”
Molly gives my hand a squeeze. “For what it’s worth, if you had called me while I was in law school and told me to come to you, I would have. I would have chucked it all and flown to California and helped you raise your sisters, and we could have gone traveling together and found a diner in every city, just like you said you did. But it would have been the wrong decision for me. Law school is where I met Hallie, Julie, and Emma. I was broken, and they brought me back to life. They became my family, and I can’t imagine my life without them. Then we built our firm, and I’m so proud of what we’re doing. I love my life here with them, with Allie and the guys, and Julie and Ben’s parents who are kind of like everyone’s parents now. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about you all the time. I missed you too.”
I feel emotion tightening my throat, and I let go of one of Molly’s hands to scrub a hand over my face, trying to pinpoint the source of my feelings. When I scrape everything else away, I think what I’m left with is awe. I’m in awe of Molly and the life she has here. What she’s built, the family she’s made, all of it. And I’m so grateful for her brilliant, analytical mind and the fact that she’s willing to sit here with me after all the years thatstretched between us and talk about this. I think talking to her is what I missed the most.
I give her a wry grin. “Thank you for not hating me.”
She grins back at me. “Oh, I did for a while. You’re not the only one who’s had their fair share of therapy. So, it’s your turn now. Ask me a question, Gabe.”
I consider what to ask her. We could keep going, dissect all our feelings about the last ten years and how it all ended. I think we’re both vulnerable enough for it. But for the first time since I saw Molly ten days ago, I don’t feel any sense of urgency for it. What she’s given me tonight is more than I thought she would give me, and there’s time enough for the rest. But there is one thing I’ve been curious about.
“Do you still dance?”
Molly makes a face and shakes her head. “Pass. I don’t want to talk about that, but I’ll pretend you didn’t ask it and give you another shot. I won’t even demand my extra question. I’m magnanimous like that.”
She smirks at me, and I’m curious as fuck, but I decide to let it go. She’s given me enough of herself tonight.
“What made you choose law school?”
Molly smiles a little. “That, I’ll tell you, but it’s going to sound really stupid, and far less well-adjusted than I am now. Just keep in mind that I chose law school before I discovered therapy.”
I chuckle a little. “Noted.”
“After I left you, the thing I couldn’t stop thinking about was your parents’ estates. How complicated it all was and how I couldn’t help you. I was so frustrated because I have a genius IQ and a photographic memory, but the intricacies of transfer tax law and the California probate system eluded me. After stewing over it for months, I got it into my head that if I had been able to help you with it, you wouldn’t have asked me to leave. I knew I couldn’t go back in time, but I wanted to learn it anyway, so Idid. And like I said, law school was where I met my best friends in the world, so even though my reason for going was a little stupid, I’ll never be sorry for it.”
“My parents’ estates were a clusterfuck. I would have hired you in a heartbeat.”
She scoffs. “Well, obviously. I’m the best.”
I have literally no doubt about that. She’s the best at everything she does, and I’m so fucking proud of her and everything she’s done with her life. I loved her when we were younger; I have no doubt about that. But sitting here, listening to her talk, makes me certain that the way I could love the grown-up version of Molly will make how I felt back then seem like puppy love. And I need to slow my roll because everything I have ever wanted is sitting right in front of me, and I’ll be damned if I fuck this up.
“It’s your turn again. Ask me a question.”
She asks immediately as if she had this one queued up. “Is the name of your phone an homage to me?”
“It’s an homage tous, Rory. All our most important moments happened by our tree. I wanted to memorialize that.”
“By naming a phone after it?”
I shrug. “It was what I had. Inventing the phone brought me back to life the way your friends did for you. That’s why it happened so fast. I worked basically around the clock for more than a year on it, and the stars aligned perfectly. All the tech worked seamlessly, and we never had any real issues in development. It was the first good thing that had happened to me since my parents died, and it felt wrong for you not to be a part of it. Giving it that name kind of made me feel like you were. You’re brilliant, Rory. I knew you would understand the name as soon as you heard it, and that gave me an odd sort of comfort. Like you would know I was thinking about you, even over time and distance and everything that was so fucked between us.”
