I expect her to leave, but she lingers outside the flat, and something like an alarm starts bleeping in the back of my mind. “Hey, Molly, are you sure? You don’t look like everything is alright.”
Her lip trembles. “Oh, it’s nothing. I just…” She has to pause and swallow hard. “I was just walking to the subway, and I thought for a moment… Well, I thought someone was following me.” She makes a waving gesture as if to dismiss the idea. “But that’s stupid.”
I frown. “Did you see anyone?” I check the time. It’s late, but not so late the streets would be unsafe. In fact, Jen’s neighborhood is pretty safe. “Do you want to come in for a while?”
She hesitates. “No. I should go. It’s fine. I was probably imagining it.”
From what I remember of Molly, she isn’t the type to get flighty over nothing. I shake my head. “I doubt that. Come on. Come in.” I stand back, holding the door open and giving her a jerk of my head to support my words.
Molly’s hurried steps tell me everything I need to know about whether or not she really saw something on the street. As she passes me, I step outside the flat onto the landing and glance around, but I can’t see anyone. I close the door firmly behind us and follow Molly into the living room.
She sits on the sofa and presses her flattened hands between her thighs, tucking herself into a small shape.
I don’t like this one bit. “Jen’s not answering you either?” I ask her.
She shakes her head. Her skin looks paler than usual, making her red hair stand out dramatically against her neck and shoulders, which are bared by the off-the-shoulder black dress she’s wearing. My gaze skates down to a small tear in the fabric.
Rather than ask about it, though, I turn toward the kitchen. “I’m going to make a cup of tea. Or do you want hot chocolate?”
“Tea.” Her voice is squeaky, and she has to stop to clear her throat. “Tea please.”
The kettle boils, filling the flat with sound for a moment while I think. Molly and I were never the best of friends even when I was dating Jen. I’m fairly sure she thought Jen could do better.
Come to think of it, she was probably right.
In any case, l don’t really fancy a whole evening talking to Molly. But I don’t like how scared she seems, and I know she means the world to Jen.
I make the tea and bring the steaming mug over to set it on the coffee table by the sofa. Then I perch on the edge of the table rather than sitting beside her. “Listen, stay as long as you like. I know Jen would want you to. I’ll keep out of your hair. But I’m here if you want to talk.”
I expect her to blow me off with a sneer or a snarky comment. Instead her face kind of crumbles, and she lifts the hem of her skirt to twist in her fingers. “I think I made a really big mistake.” The next few sentences are half sobbed, and it’s hard to make them out, but from what I pick up, Molly describes a guy she’d been on a few dates with. Apparently things seemed great at first, but the more she saw him, the more red flags she started to see.
Molly describes him asking about her plans on nights they weren’t seeing each other and calling her at all hours of the night. The worst was when she mentioned she had a date with someone else.
“We’d never had the conversation about being exclusive, you know?”
I nod. I can sympathize. I’ve had more than a few girls latch on and assume we were a couple when we’d had one single date.
Molly sniffs. “But he was real angry. He threw my phone against the wall. Told me I belong to him now.”
“The fuck?”
She nods. “I told him never to call me again, of course, but as soon as I replaced the phone, he was calling and messaging all the time. I blocked his number, but I forgot I told him where I was meeting Matt tonight…” She trails off, and the pieces fall into place.
My eyes widen. “He followed you there?”
“Yeah. Confronted me in the bathrooms.” She points to the tear on her dress. “Did this.”
I scowl. “Motherfucker.” What kind of a prick gets off on intimidating women like that?
“Yeah. I just got scared he followed me after the date. I don’t even know what happened to Matt, my date. When I came out of the bathroom, he wasn’t there.”
I twist my lips into a grimace while I think. “Does he know where you live?”
She nods.
Not good. “Does he have a key?”
“No. Well I didn’t give him one, but mine went missing for a while and I kinda thought—”
