Page 8 of It's Always Been You
I try and hang on to some of my sisters’ confidence, but the truth is, there’s a non-zero chance Molly is going to tell me to fuck right off, and I would deserve it.
There were so many times over the years when I almost came back for her. Begged her for another chance. But I had my sisters, which meant my life was chained to California. Havingher would have meant asking her to uproot her entire life, and after the way we ended, that was never something I would have asked of her. If we ever got our second chance, I wanted it to be when I could turn my entire life upside down to be with her because Molly deserves nothing less.
I don’t deserve her. I probably didn’t deserve her even before my parents’ deaths broke me and then I broke us. But for almost fourteen years, Molly has been the reason my heart beats. Even after I let everything fall apart, just knowing she existed was sometimes the only thing that got me out of bed in the morning. Conjuring her face in my mind let me put one foot in front of the other when it felt like I had a permanent thousand-pound weight sitting directly on my shoulders.
For a decade, I’ve been trying to put myself back together. To make myself into the man she deserves—someone even better than I was before my whole world came tumbling down. Someone deserving of the magic of Molly Jenkins.
I think I’ve done the job. Or at least, I’ve tried my best.
Now, it’s her choice.
I’ve already made mine.
It’s time to get my girl.
The thought of seeing her face propels me up the stairs onto the small front porch.
Taking a fortifying breath, I turn the handle and push open the door.
Chapter Two
Molly
“Ifigure it’s our thing now. Taco bars for big celebrations. Anyway, it’s Maddy’s favorite,” my best friend Emma says, smiling over at her newly adopted daughter, who is sitting on the couch with Emma’s grandparents. The rest of our family and friends wander around the living room we use as a reception area and chat in small groups. The mood of the whole house is happiness and love. It’s perfect.
“And yours.”
I put down my plate of tacos and pick up Emma’s hand to admire her engagement ring. I feel a rush of pure happiness at the look on my best friend’s face. At the love and contentment when she glances down at the ring that used to belong to her mom, who died when Emma was eight. The ring that Jeremy Wright, former professional hockey player and love of Emma’s life, put on her finger earlier today right before Emma finalized Maddy’s adoption.
It’s been a big day, and if I have anything to say about it—which I usually do—it’s about to get bigger.
“We’re not just celebrating an adoption today anymore. It’s engagement o’clock up in here, and we’ve got another weddingto plan. Hang on, I’m going upstairs to find my wedding binder. We can get started now.”
Before Emma or anyone else can tell me it’s too soon to start planning a wedding, and to let Emma and Jeremy enjoy being engaged and newly minted parents before we dive into dresses and flowers and venues, I fly up the stairs and straight into my office.
I’m glad Emma decided to have the joint engagement/adoption party in the house we turned into our office, because for reasons I can’t remember right now and probably aren’t important, I stored the wedding binder here.
I pause in the center of the room, turning a slow circle, trying to remember where in the chaos I put it.
Most people know me as the smart, competent estate planning attorney with a photographic memory and an encyclopedic knowledge of the tax code. They assume my color-coded file folders and multi-colored pens are for organizational purposes and that my surroundings must reflect the stoic nature of the law I practice.
Most people would be wrong.
In reality, plain files are ugly, black pens are boring, and organization has never particularly interested me. Some people might call me messy, but I’ve never seen it that way. Nothing about me is orderly. Not the clothes I wear or the food I eat or my love of people and parties or my dual passions for complex tax law and art and design, or my third former passion that we don’t talk about. So I’ve never seen why my office or my home should be either.
I wasn’t meant to be structured. I was born to stand out. I live life way, way out loud. I’m not everyone’s taste, and that’s fine with me. Nine years ago, I found my people, and they love me exactly for me. I’ve never needed anyone else. Except for that one time when I did, but we don’t talk about that either.
Besides, we have a binder to find and a wedding to plan.
Julie got married first, in a surprise backyard wedding last summer, with no binder necessary and no planning help required from me. She was so damn happy, and her husband Asher is such a good guy that I wasn’t salty about it. Not much, at least. But our other best friend Hallie’s wedding to Julie’s brother Ben required all the planning, so last fall, the binder was born. And now Emma is marrying Ben’s best friend and has an adopted daughter who is my little sister in sparkles. It’s a complex web of friendship and pseudo-family, and it’s the most important part of my life.
Hallie, Julie, Emma, and I have been best friends since our first year of law school. Almost two years ago, we said fuck off to the patriarchal boys’ club that is big law, and we now own a law firm together in Hallie and Julie’s hometown of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
I’m a California girl through and through, and until my senior year of college, it never occurred to me that I would settle anywhere else. But when fate hands you a shattered heart at twenty-two, an unexpected career path, and the three best friends any girl could ever hope for, you listen.
“The closet,” I mutter, striding over and opening my office closet door.
Jules, bless her, tried her hardest to organize it for me when we first started our practice, but it never stayed that way for long, and eventually, she gave up. It’s an organized sort of chaos, though. Like, I can instantly locate my client files, or my favorite treatise on generation-skipping transfer tax law. But the more obscure contents of my office closet, like the scarf I tore off and tossed in here last week when it was itching my neck or the binder that contains everything a girl needs to plan a perfect Pittsburgh wedding for her best friends, can be difficult to locate.
