He sat in a slip-covered recliner, wearing only his boxers, his guitar next to him on a stand against an exposed brick wall. “I’m not sure I know that one.”
“Play something. Anything ...”Take me anywhere.
“That one, I know.” He grabbed the guitar, strummed an F chord followed by a B-flat.
His guitar skills were above amateurish, and his singing above average, barely on both accounts. But the sweetness of having someone sing to her and play guitar, the smell of him in the room ...Don’t fall in love. Don’t fall in love.
“Something ...” He moved toward her, crooning lyrics she knew by heart, where they were going, the uncertainty, the mystery. She cocooned herself in the comforter.
“Are you wooing me?” she asked.
He set the guitar down and unfurled her from the blanket. “And how.”
Leo’s room had gone dark except for a beam from the streetlight that streaked across their tangled feet at the end of the bed. She stroked his stomach while he dozed, the gentle strip of hair that ran up to his navel, the animal grooves of his abdomen. Even though it scared her, she let the dream in. He would go back to Yale, and they would keep seeing each other, as often as possible because they couldn’t stand to be apart, and he could come to Maine and she would show him the railing and tell him that crazy story, and he would tell her that none of that mattered to him, that she was good. “Go and love. Go and love.” Her grandfather’s final words. How strange that they came to her now. She closed her eyes, put her scarred palm to Leo’s cheek.Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.“I love you.” She said it so quietly it felt like the words were still rattling around in her mouth.
“Hmm?” he mumbled dreamily, half asleep. He pulled her hand down, cupped it with his against his chest. “And I love ... your hands.” He turned into her, nuzzled, and fell asleep.
She didn’t blame Leo. It was a dumb moment to say something so important. She’d been caught off guard. But it was clear to her too. Whatever this was, it was not love, would never be love. At least notfor Leo. All Leo loved about her was her damaged hands.Walk away now.Love and go.
Molly slipped out of bed, stepped into her underwear, pulled on the dress Leo had draped over the chair next to his guitar. She watched as honey wine lulled Leo into deeper sleep, watched him spread and curl like a nocturnal plant. She didn’t need to embarrass him or try to break his heart to make him see she was no good. She didn’t need to make a scene, wouldn’t guilt him into professing love because he felt sorry for her. She didn’t need his excuses, didn’t need him to pretend. What he loved about her was what she did for him in the darkness. She wasn’t about to stick around to see how ugly an end could be. Instead, she left the room, the apartment, the building, Leo.
She told her housemates she didn’t want messages, didn’t want to know if he called. “If he comes to the door, tell him I left town.” Camille had only hooked up with Henry a couple of times, so his departure a week before hadn’t been the same thing. Still. Molly didn’t want to endure Camille’s questions until after Leo was gone, and it seemed likely he would come by the bakery. She called in sick, feeling sick enough. One night, she heard a motorcycle revving by the house, the noise disappearing around the block. When it came by again, revved and went quiet, she knew he was there. She went to the window. He stood next to the motorcycle, arms folded, looking up. She turned out her lamp. In the darkness, they watched each other for minutes. It didn’t feel to Molly like they were fighting for each other. It was a standoff. Who was tougher. He didn’t know her at all. She was the tougher one. Finally, Leo reached into his back pocket and walked toward the house until Molly couldn’t see him anymore. She waited. When the doorbell rang, she almost gave in and ran down. But then she saw him walk back to his motorcycle. She imagined flinging open the window, yelling something that would change the fact that he didn’t love her. But he didn’t look up. He jump-started the bike and took off. The revving faded, and Leo was gone.
There was a soft knock at the door and Yarrow’s voice. “Molly?”
Molly opened the door.
“This was on the mat. I think you might want it.”
Molly took a cassette tape from Yarrow’s open hands.Swimming Eyes 1992.
Molly listened to the songs over and over, pouring over the lyrics but also reminding herself that it wouldn’t do her any good to read something into it. The mixtape was a gesture, a booby prize. That was all.
She tried to make Camille understand. “We had a perfect night together. Why ruin it with a bunch of goodbyes? I’ve known the whole time. Leo wanted to be the good guy and pretended this thing mattered to him, but it was a summer fling. Nothing more.”
“Was that all it was for you?” Camille asked.
Molly deflected. “He probably has some preppy girlfriend back at his cushy Ivy League school. The last thing I need is to try to get in touch and have him completely blow me off.”
Camille slid a tray of muffins into the case. “Suit yourself. But I would have tried to hang on to him if I were you.”
She didn’t want to admit that when the phone rang at the house, she jumped to answer it. Yarrow’s man Larry had been persistent, and she’d given in, allowed him to come over in person to apologize to everyone in the house for laughing when his black cat, Dante, had slipped out and killed an oriole in the yard. “It was easier for me to make the bird’s death something small and inconsequential than to confront my own mistake.” Molly had looked around the room, searching for eyes she could catch that would second her own skepticism. But everyone listened in earnest, until Yarrow told Larry that laughing at someone else’s pain wasn’t cool but that he’d redeemed himself, which made everyone relax, apology accepted.
The house got an answering machine, and at the end of her shifts, Molly checked it first thing when she got home. It was never Leo.
“You should call him,” Yarrow said one night. They were sitting at the kitchen table, eating tabbouleh salad and whole wheat bread Molly had brought home from the bakery. She’d lost her desire for junk food, craved sours to suit her mood. “He might be your soulmate.”
“Is Larry your soulmate?”
Yarrow smiled. “No. But that doesn’t mean Leo isn’t yours.”
It wasn’t like she hadn’t thought about it. She missed everything about him. “I don’t know what I would even say. We’re beyond small talk.”
“You could thank him for the poem.”
Molly furrowed her brow. “Poem?”
“The mixtape?” Yarrow said, tilting her head. “The song titles? It’s like a poem, don’t you think? That’s the beauty of the mixtape as a form of expression. You get the songs and lyrics. But then you get the arrangement. And that tells a story. Leo left you a love poem.” She took Molly’s empty bowl to the sink. “I like you, Molly. But you’re not very perceptive.”
