“No. He’s just a friend. We grew up really awkwardly together.” I laugh, remembering Billy at the ripe old age of fourteen telling me that he needed me to tell Juliet Preston he wanted to kiss her. I passed her a note. They locked lips and braces and it took an emergency room visit and a pair of needle-nose pliers to get them apart.
In eleventh grade, when my boobs still hadn’t shown up, and I went to school with them stuffed with Kleenex so they looked like I had been to Dolly Parton’s doctor, he punched Kyle Lockhorn for following me around and pretending to sneeze all day. Kyle beat his ass afterward, but Billy tried to defend me and that made him one of my very best friends. Since then, we talked a few times a year, ended up on the same vacation once, and sometimes we plus-one each other at events we can’t get out of and don’t really want to face alone.
“How are things with Walker?” She cocks her head and stares like I might hide a detail from her.
“They’re things with Walker.” I’ll tell her everything, but I want her to work for it a little. When she got with Hunter, she made me drag the details out of her. I thought I was going to have to rent a wench.
“Belle?”
“He’s good. Great.” And yet there’s something bothering me. “I just keep… waiting for the other shoe to fall.”
“Why?” Molly doesn’t understand because she has Hunter and he’s amazing. He’s gorgeous and he would never look at another woman.
“I think I’m conditioned to expect the worst.” And I usually do. It’s a trait I can’t help. I don’t want to be this way. I just can’t help it.
But Molly, good, kind, sweet Molly, doesn’t understand. She wouldn’t. A man wouldn’t leave Molly. Ever. Wouldn’t choose some blonde party girl with eyelashes as fake as her boobs. Molly is the antithesis of a blonde airhead. She’s beautiful with dark eyes and coal black hair she wears straight and silky, and she’s smart. So damned smart she always knows the final Jeopardy answer.
She pulls me to the kitchen. It’s a pretty open floor plan so we’ve only moved a few feet, but she has a basket of muffins on her counter. “Sit. Have a blueberry.” She knows my guilty pleasures revolve around all things blueberry. And I have never turned down one of Molly’s blueberry muffins in my life. Not looking to start now.
I pull of the wrapper and she sits beside me. “Let me just sniff it.” She leans in.
“Just have one.”
“No. No. The dress is altered already and I’m not risking it.” She takes another sniff.
“Then why did you make them?”
“Hadley.” She shakes her head. “I have zero will to say no when it comes to her and she wanted to learn to bake.”
I fake shock. “I’ve been asking for this recipe for… years. Since baking club in high school.”
She laughs. “Maybe Hadley will share it with you.”
I look around. This place was Hunter’s before he met Molly but her personal touches are all over it. There are the plaids in the curtains, and a pair of bright yellow throw pillows on his gray sofa. A throw rug in front of the sink and another under the coffee table with a lot of yellow in it. Molly has imprinted all over Hunter’s life. Just like Maisie said.
“Walker’s one of the good ones, Belle. And just because you got hurt by that last jerkface”--Molly almost never swears– “doesn’t mean every guy is. Walker’s honest. He dates a lot but he doesn’t string women along.”
I nod because unless a person has been through it, and there are a number of support groups out there for this kind of thing, there’s no explaining it. So I just agree. A lot. “I know.”
“And just because what’s his name was bad, it doesn’t make all guys bad. Look at Hunter. He’s amazing.” I couldn’t deny it. But I couldn’t base my decisions on her good fortune when my continued to be no so good. “Not all guys are bad is all I’m saying.”
“They aren’t all good either.” It would be easier if I didn’t see the image of Ethan with Shana in my head everytime I think of him. Which I do a lot more when people bring him up. I want to be angry about it, but this is Molly.
“I think you might have some PTSD or some other deep-rooted trauma from what happened with that… that… asshole.” She looks down at the table for a second like she can’t believe she said it. “But I know Walker. Be patient with him. Don’t overthink it.”
That is easier said than done. I have a tendency to think things to death.
She chuckles. “Does he make you happy?” I shoot her a glare. I’ve already told her he does. “Okay, so he does. Do you have a compelling urge to make him happy?”
I think for a quick second about the phrasing.Compelling urge.Yeah. I want to be the one who is responsible for the smiles on his face and the deep, rich laugh that makes my body tingle. “I don’t know that I’d call it compelling.” It’s as close to a denial as I can get without lying. And she cocks her head, shoots me the doubt eyes. “Okay, fine. It’s compelling. An urge. Well… more of an impulse. Maybe. Possibly could be called a compulsion.” I shrug. “That’s not my word, though.”
She laughs. “When you admit something, you go full on. I like it. Makes it easier to tell you that you would be a fool to let this one get away.”
I shake my head. “They don’t get away from me, Mol. They run screaming in the opposite direction into the arms of slutty fake best friends.”
“I’m your best friend now.” She grins and wags her eyebrows. “You lucky girl, and I don’t want Walker. I’m kind of happy shacking up with his bestie. So no worries there.” She grins. “And you’re both going to be at the wedding. You should go together.”
I know she’s trying to help. That she’s in love with Hunter so she’s convinced the rest of the world should find and be in love, too, but I’m not ready for the L-word. Not unless that word islust. And then I’m all over that one.
