Page 93 of My Best Friend Is Broken
My phone buzzes. Another text from Nicky.How’s it going? Molly behaving himself?
He’s teaching me to swear in Italian. I think we’re having a corrupting influence on each other.
That sounds exactly right. Stay safe. Love you.
“He’s checking on us again, isn’t he?” Molly asks, loading the dishwasher with practiced efficiency.
“Yeah. Do they ever stop worrying?”
“Never. It’s actually kind of sweet once you get used to it. Though I did have to set some boundaries about the constant surveillance when Dario and I first got together.”
“Surveillance?”
“Oh, he had people following me everywhere. For my protection, obviously. But it felt suffocating until we had a very firm conversation about trust and autonomy.” He closes the dishwasher and turns to face me. “The thing about being with someone powerful is that they’re used to controlling everything. Sometimes you have to remind them that loving someone doesn’t mean owning them.”
The words hit home in a way I wasn’t expecting. Because Nicky does try to control things, doesn’t he? Not in a malicious way, but in the constant need to keep me safe, to protect me from everything, including myself. And I’ve been letting him, partly because I needed that protection, but also because it was easier than setting boundaries.
“How did you get Dario to back off?” I ask.
“I told him that if he didn’t trust me to handle my own life, then we couldn’t be together. That I needed to be a partner, not a possession.” Molly’s expression softens. “It wasn’t easy. He’s very stubborn, and his instinct is always to protect. But eventually he understood that respecting my autonomy was part of loving me.”
“And he stopped the surveillance?”
“Well, he scaled it back significantly. There’s still security, but it’s discreet now. And he asks before making decisions that affect my life instead of just implementing them. And he has stopped ruining my clothes by putting tracking chips in them.” He grins. “Progress, not perfection.”
We move to the living room, settling onto the sofa with the kind of comfortable ease that suggests we’ve known each other much longer than two days.
“Can I ask you something personal?” I venture.
“Always.”
“How do you deal with the violence? Knowing what Dario does, what he’s capable of?”
Molly is quiet for a moment, considering the question seriously. “I don’t love it. But I accept that it’s part of who he is, part of the world he operates in. He’s never violent with me, never makes me feel unsafe. And he’s trying to move the family toward more legitimate business, to reduce the need for that kind of work.”
“But it still happens.”
“Yes. And when it does, I choose not to know the details. I know he comes home sometimes with blood on his hands, metaphorically speaking, but I don’t ask for specifics. That’s my boundary. I’ll accept that part of him exists, but I don’t need to be intimate with it.”
It’s a more nuanced answer than I expected, and it gives me permission to have similar boundaries with Nicky. To love him without needing to know every dark thing he does, to accept that he lives in shades of gray without forcing myself to examine each shadow.
“Gym time?” Molly suggests, breaking the contemplative mood. “I need to work off those scrambled eggs, and you can show me what this fancy building’s gym looks like.”
We change into workout clothes and head down to the basement, where Molly immediately commandeers the sound system and puts on aggressively upbeat pop musicthat would probably annoy me if it weren’t so perfectly him.
“Right,” he says, surveying the equipment with the eye of someone who knows their way around a gym. “What’s your usual routine?”
“Weights mostly. Some cardio. I’m trying to rebuild strength after...” I trail off, not sure how to finish that sentence.
“After everything,” Molly supplies gently. “I get it. I’ve had to rebuild too, many times. It’s hard work, but you’re clearly making progress.”
We workout side by side, Molly chattering away between sets about everything and nothing. He tells me about the first time he met Dario’s family, about accidentally insulting his aunt in Italian because he mixed up the words for “lovely” and “ridiculous.” He talks about his plans to go back to school eventually, maybe study something useful now that he has the financial security to make those choices.
“What about you?” he asks as we move to the treadmills. “Any plans beyond the doctor work?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead, honestly. Right now I’m just trying to get through each day, build some stability.” I increase my speed slightly. “But maybe eventually I could get proper qualifications. Actually become a paramedic or nurse instead of just someone who patches people up off the books.”
“That would be amazing! You’d be brilliant at it.”
