Page 85 of The Wild Card
Then, somewhere in the midst of Winnie announcing their wedding, the warmth in my chest cooled, then froze.
I’m not sure if hearing about the wedding reminded me in a very real way that Collin and I aren’t a real couple, or if it was hearing that Tank is walking Winnie down the aisle. Which caused me to think of my own parents, who won’t stop blowing up my phone, telling me I’m being foolish and should come home. Even Winnie saying her family situation is a long story made my throat tight.
Then there was the sudden feeling of otherness that hit me like a sucker punch listening to them talk about Winnie’s wedding. I had nothing to contribute. I barely know Winnie and James. I’ve never met Val—who they referred to earlier as their third musketeer.
Now I can’t shake this raw, icky feeling of gloom and doom that’s spread like dark, poisonous ink in my chest.
“Stupid,” I tell the weepy girl in the mirror. “You can’t get so caught up in something that’s not real. They aren’t your family or your real friends.”
But it’s too late for the lecture. I’m a moth in a spider’s web, getting more caught up the harder I struggle. Not just with Collin, but also with the whole group of Grahams. I’m pretty sure the only way I’m getting free will involve pain.
“Molly-girl?” Collin’s voice comes through the door of the single-person bathroom. “Are you in there?” I don’t answer, and after a moment, he continues. “I’m assuming you are since the guy I just walked in on in theotherbathroom was definitelynotyou and definitely not happy to see me while he was sitting on the toilet. I guess that’s what he gets for not locking the door.”
I laugh, though the end of it is more of a sob. I bite my lip until my breathing is even. “I’m in here.”
“Can I come in?”
“You want to come into the bathroom with me?”
“I mean, not if you’reusingthe bathroom. I know we didn’t talk about things like pooping in our list we made?—”
I’m laughing again as I open the door and yank Collin inside. He lets me shove him up against the tiled wall by a flyer advertising a monthlong wine special.
I poke him in the chest. “How do you do that?” I ask.
“Do what?” he asks with a smirk.
Flattening my palm on his chest, I toy with one of the buttons on his shirt. “Make me laugh even when I’m feeling sad?”
His smile drops and immediately, he reaches out to cup my cheek. “Why are you sad, Molly?”
When I don’t say anything, he gently tugs me into his chest, wrapping me up in a hug I didn’t know I needed so badly. I collapse into him with a shuddery exhale. He’s warm and solid, the muscles of his chest flexing under my cheek. His big hands stroke up and down my back, soothing but also making my skin whir and hum.
“You know you can talk to me?” Collin says, tilting his chin down so it rests on the top of my head. “I’m not just good for a laugh.”
“I know,” I whisper, wrapping one of my arms around his back. The other is still on his chest, trapped between our bodies, my finger still on the smooth button of his shirt. “You don’t just make me laugh. You make me feel safe. You make me feel”—I search for a word, hesitating before using the one that best fits—“treasured.”
“Good,” Collin says.
“It just sometimes feels a little too … real.”
He says nothing to this, but his hands pause for a moment on my back. Then one moves up my neck into my hair, his long fingers gently combing through my hair.
I’m glad he can’t see my face, cheeks red from what I just confessed, and what I didn’t. Which is that Iwantit to be real. But I suspect Collin can hear it in my voice, probably saw it in my expression the moment he walked into the bathroom.
Right—we’re still in a bathroom. I should pull away, should check my face one more time and get out of here, hoping no one notices us leaving together.
“I know what you mean,” Collin says.
Though he doesn’t say anything more, like, perhaps that he also wants it to be real, I feel like it’s there in his words like it was in mine.
Or, I could just be reading into it what I want to.
“Thank you,” I say, tilting my head up to meet Collin’s gaze, which is heavy on mine. “For the hug. For being willing to listen. For coming into the bathroom to check on me.”
“Anytime.” He says the word easily, but also with weight, like he wants me to know he really means it.
And I almost start spilling secrets right here and now. About how I barely have money in my account after paying off my student loans; about the brand endorsements I’ve been turning down because I just can’t bring myself to do it; about my dad’s micromanagement of my life, which the longer I’m away from it, the more it feels like it borders on coercive control; about the way I want so badly to find my own way, forge my own path, but can’t seem to settle on what that means or looks like or what I really want to do.
