The third thing? The scarf she started in their knitting class with Charlie and Agnes. She made a two-by-two-inch square before calling it quits. Mostly because her square looked like she’d been in a car driving over an extremely bumpy road while she made the stitches. They were lumpy and they were bumpy and not one of them was even.
Charlie didn’t even try. He sat back and talked to Agnes while she sorted her own stitches. Charlie dished out all the reasons knitting class was better than bingo. The key point being because, at the end, Agnes would have a sweater. Apparently, that was worth the price of admission.
Was it Molly or were the two of them being a little snippier with each other than usual? He hadn’t once put his hand on her knee and Agnes was definitely grumpy.
Maybe Charlie really was rubbing off on her?
“Bingo wasn’t that bad; you’re exaggerating,” Agnes said on a huff. “Like the salt in the pasta. Not too much.
Nothing you need to fuss about.”
“It was that bad. That’s why I’m not doing it again.” He harrumphed. “And the pasta was too salty. Somebody threw in a whole brick of the stuff.”
Meanwhile, Gavin took to knitting like he’d been doing it his entire adult life.
“What’s up with the two of them?” he asked. “Trouble in paradise, I guess?” Molly shrugged. “Shouldn’t you…you know. Fix it?” Gavin asked.
She let out a long sigh. Probably. That was probably in her wheelhouse.
There were only the four of them in the class. Really, it was just the four of them in the back yarn room where the saleslady came in and out sometimes to check on them. There were walls and walls of yarn. Four of them, actually. All four sides of the room were filled with various fiber types.
The lesson itself was brief. Oh, it was enough to get Gavin and Agnes going. But Molly? Not so much.
So she sat like a good little Molly in her folding chair and let Gavin do the knitting in their not-a-relationship.
“I can’t believe how even you got your rows.” Molly stared as Gavin tied another loop and then moved the knitting needles into place for the next row.
“Yeah, don’t tell anyone. I might lose my street cred.” He said this as he sat back with a good amount of man-spreading and a whole ball of yarn at his disposal.
“You don’t have any street cred, Gavin.” Molly giggled. “Also, don’t say street cred. You’re too…you to use that term.”
“Okay, then don’t tell my brothers because they’ll make
fun of me.” He gave her a knowing smile. The kind of smile that came from understanding a person on a level deeper than knitting together.
She shifted. Sometimes when Gavin looked at her like that, she got the feeling he saw way too much.
“That I would believe,” she said. His brothers probably would give him hell about his newfound ability, but that’s not because of the knitting. They’d likely be jealous of his ability on that front. They just liked to give their older brother crap whenever they could. Apparently, that was a sibling thing. So Molly had observed.
Sometimes she liked to watch Kellan and Brady interact with Ollie because it was so foreign, the way they bonded as a team. Maybe it wasn’t blood that connected siblings. Probably more the shared years of experience that bonded people together. This was her theory, at least.
“Are you going to make fun of me?” Gavin asked, looping a small bit of yarn over the needle, pulling tight.
That’s probably where Molly went wrong. She didn’t keep her loops tight enough.
There was a life lesson in that thought, she was certain.
Probably best not to dig too far into it.
“Do I get to wear the scarf?” she asked, seeing as his scarf actually looked like the beginnings of a scarf and not a Kleenex. “At least once?”
“Uh, yeah. We’re on a date.” He looped a stretch of yarn over his needle and pulled again, his fingers moving deftly. She’d give him that—he was good with his hands.
“Would it really be a date if I didn’t knit you a scarf?” he continued.
“No, I don’t think it would be. You’re right.” She conceded that point. “And if I get to wear the beauty of that scarf, then I won’t make fun of you.” Especially since he’d sprung for the more expensive yarn. The super soft kind.
Also, they’d had some mommy and boyfriend alone time before they left for their date, and he did the curlicue thing with his tongue no less than three times. So she wasn’t feeling like she’d be making fun of him for anything ever again.
