Chapter OneMolly
2013
Molly never would have gone to the concert in East Williamsburg if Nina hadn’t dragged her there.
It wasn’t actually a concert—not really—but one of those bars with a grungy back room where desperately-trying-to-make-it-bands played for free on the weekends.
Nina offered to buy Molly’s drinks if she came with, because Cash was going to be there, and Nina was dying to sleep with Cash for the third time. And if Molly was being honest with herself—which she almost always was—she knew she had nothing better to do, and that if she didn’t join Nina she’d sit at home in sweatpants and reheat Thursday’s pad Thai, twisting her fork into the limp noodles with the festering knowledge that, on this perfectly good and possibility-filled Saturday night—the first one of the new year—she should be somewhere else.
At the bar, Nina ordered two tequila sodas and pretended not to notice Cash at the other end, drinking Bud Heavies with his cohorts, their laughs open-mouthed and dramatized and, in Molly’s opinion, obnoxious.
“He texted, ‘Come hang tonight,’” Nina whispered anxiously, glancing toward Cash’s corner of the room. “And he texted me the address, but is it dumb that I showed, Moll? Is it desperate? Do I look okay?”
Nina’s chocolate hair fell in loose waves around her bare, bronzed-even-in-January shoulders—Molly would be forever jealous of her friend’s perfect Colombian skin. Dewy makeup smudged the apples of her cheekbones, and mascara lengthened her already-thick lashes. In a crimson silk top and dark jeans, Nina—as always—looked like a knockout.
“You look amazing,” Molly answered, ignoring her best friend’s first two questions.
The bar was filling up and getting louder, a rising drone of voices saturating the space and clouding Molly’s eardrums. She thought of the empty two-bedroom on Withers Street that she shared with Liz—they’d been roommates since sophomore year of college—and the pad Thai chilling in the fridge, and the twenty-five hundred words she hadn’t yet written that were due on Tuesday. Molly wasn’t into going out these days, not the way Nina, Liz, and Everly were. They’d all met at their small liberal arts college in Vermont, after which they’d migrated to New York together, the party vibe still very much their calling card.
Tonight, Liz and Everly were at some girl’s birthday thing in SoHo, and Molly hated to leave Nina without a wing woman when she knew her friend really, really liked Cash, even though Cash was, in her opinion, immature and uninteresting and not remotely good enough for Nina. And besides, Molly possessed the self-awareness to admit that she had been in a bit of a rut, and she needed to make herself go out more, if only because “out” was the place where life happened, where inspiration and possibility had the opportunity to strike.
Nina ordered another round and closed her tab, and the bartender watched her as she signed her bill—the way so many men shamelessly stared at Nina—and winked.
Nina handed Molly the full tumbler of ice and tequila—no soda this time, just lime—and Molly felt the first sip of the second drink spread through her limbs, dense and pleasant, anchoring her more decisively into the night.
“I always forget how much I like tequila.” One side of Molly’s mouth curled effortlessly as she sank back onto the barstool.
Nina tilted her chin forward and smiled. “You’re drunk off one drink?”
“I’m not drunk.” Molly twisted a lock of her wheat-blond hair, drawing in a breath. “I’m sorry I’ve been lame lately. I’ve been so in my head. With the writing stuff. I’m glad you dragged me out.”
“I’m glad I dragged you out so you could witness Cash ignoring me at the dirtiest bar in Bed-Stuy.” Nina drummed her freshly manicured nails—a shiny eggplant color—against the bar top.
“We’re not in Bed-Stuy, Neens.”
“This far from the river, we might as well be.”
Molly rolled her eyes as—suddenly—Cash appeared behind Nina. He slung one of his long, brawny arms around her delicate neck.
“Hey, girls.” Cash smiled widely. Nina beamed, her eyes blooming with delight as if she were five years old and meeting Mickey Mouse at Disney World.
“You remember Molly? You met at Everly’s apartment a couple of weeks ago.”
“I think so?” Cash’s thick eyebrows knitted together. “You’re the writer?”
The question caught Molly off guard. “No, I’m just—I’m getting my MFA.”
“In creative writing,” Nina chimed. She knocked back the rest of her tequila.
Cash pursed his lips, confused.
“I’m just not sure what I want to do with my degree,” Molly added quickly. “Maybe teach.”
“This girl is my smartest friend,” Nina crowed drunkenly, wrapping her arms around Molly’s shoulders.
“What do you do again?” Molly asked Cash.
He opened his mouth to speak, just as the bar lights dimmed. Someone cleared their throat into the microphone.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” a male voice bellowed theatrically from the stage. “It is my absolute honor to welcome my dear friends—friends who are more like brothers—the extraordinarily talented Danner Lane to the stage!”
The crowd cheered, the bar quickly emptying as dozens of twenty-and thirtysomething Brooklynites pushed their way toward the back room, toward the stage.
“There are a lot of people here,” Nina observed.
Cash pushed his thick brown hair back from his forehead. “Have you heard Danner Lane’s stuff? Jeb, one of the owners here, the guy who just announced them, is old friends with the Lane brothers. But they’re honestly sick—they’re on iTunes and Spotify now.”
Three guys—all of whom appeared to be in their midtwenties—stepped onto the stage. One sank down behind a massive drum set, and the other two held guitars, positioning themselves in front of the drums.
“Let’s move closer,” Cash suggested. His friends were still at the bar, but he led the way toward the front, worming through the tightly packed crowd, Molly and an enchanted Nina in tow.
“They’re brothers?” Molly asked loudly, glancing up at Cash.
“Those two are brothers.” Cash stabbed his middle and index fingers in the direction of the stage. “Drums and bass guitar. The other one is Jake Danner. He’s guitar and vocals. They all grew up together.”
The Lane brothers looked similar, with wispy auburn hair and pale complexions, their frames lanky. But Jake was the one Molly couldn’t take her eyes off of.
He was the color of honey—honey skin, golden curls that fell in front of his eyes as his fingers expertly plucked the strings of his guitar. When he looked up, Molly saw that his eyes were pale blue, and clipped right to hers, and she suddenly felt glad to be twenty-three and single, living in the greatest city in the world. Her mind—which had felt a bit dark and crowded lately—cleared.
Jake smiled broadly, and Molly felt a drop-kick in her gut. Keeping his eyes fixed to hers, he spoke into the microphone.
“Hey, East Williamsburg.” His voice was clear and perfect in pitch, edged with the slightest twinge of a Southern drawl. “It’s Saturday night, and we’re Danner Lane, and we’re gonna play some music.”
When the same thing would happen years later at Madison Square Garden—when Jake would find and hold Molly’s gaze in the crowd, this time of thousands instead of seventy-five—it would be habitual for them. Danner Lane would be opening for Arcade Fire, and they would be rising in the ranks—soaring, making it—but Jake would still need Molly, his Molly, the one who tethered him to the ground.
In East Williamsburg, he opened his mouth to sing, the melody of a famous Elton John song filling the room, followed by the most exquisite voice Molly had ever heard.
And now I know
Spanish Harlem are not just pretty words to say
Her life, Molly sensed in some deep, subconscious crevice of her heart, as Jake’s eyes pierced hers, would never be the same.
Chapter TwoMolly
May 2022
Meredith Duffy shoves a glass of champagne into Molly’s right hand, so forcefully that the golden liquid sloshes over the rim.
“… and Whitney lets Liam sleep in the DockATot,” Meredith is saying, her voice hushed. “It’s so irresponsible. I don’t know what business she has bringing two more kids into the world.”
Molly stares into her champagne flute, watching tiny bubbles race to the surface.
“I mean, you would never have let Stella sleep in a lounger, would you?” Meredith presses. She leans in toward Molly, so close that Molly can see the shrunken pores on Meredith’s unblemished nose.
“I didn’t have a DockATot with Stella,” Molly answers truthfully. “They weren’t really a thing back then.”
Meredith nods carefully, absorbing this, and Molly is, as usual, tired of these conversations. Like so many young mothers in Flynn Cove, Meredith seems to take great pleasure in backhandedly lambasting her friends’ parenting styles. The gossip makes her voice speed up and her pupils dilate with glee, like a narcotic. Molly doesn’t want to know what Meredith says about her behind her back, but she’s sure it’s something suitably passive-aggressive.
“Well, cheers to raising our babies right.” Meredith gives a thin laugh, then clinks her glass against Molly’s and tips the champagne back into her throat.
Molly sighs, counting down the minutes until she can leave. She gazes toward the living room, visible from the kitchen through the open floor plan, where Whitney Cooper has plopped herself onto an upholstered slipper chair in front of a pile of presents. Her belly is swollen and enormous underneath a pale-yellow empire waist dress—twins due next month—and despite this being her second baby shower, there is no shortage of gifts at her feet.
“Are you not drinking?” Meredith’s question is infused with mild panic as she studies Molly’s untouched champagne.
“Can’t.” Molly shakes her head, forces a smile. “I teach on Sunday afternoons.”
“Oh, that’s right.” Meredith exhales. “I’ve got to get to your class one of these days. Well, I’ll give yours to Betsy, then. God knows that woman is always ready for a top-off.” She plucks the flute from Molly’s fingers and is already halfway across the room, heading in the direction of a Pucci-clad Betsy Worthington, before Molly can respond.
With Meredith gone, Molly feels her shoulders relax. She counts her lucky stars that she really does teach Vinyasa flow at three, and she wasn’t forced to admit to Meredith that the real reason she’s not drinking is that she did her embryo transfer on Thursday and is under strict orders from Dr. Ricci to avoid alcohol as if she were pregnant.
And maybe she is pregnant, Molly lets herself imagine, in the middle of Meredith Duffy’s newly renovated kitchen, the chatter of female voices around her fading as the dream blooms in her mind. A baby brother or sister for Stella, finally. Molly pictures her daughter’s blond head bent over a bassinet, and a warmth spreads through her lower abdomen. Eight more days and she’ll know for sure.
The sound of a fork scratching across a plate pulls Molly out of her head, and she swallows the hope down like it’s something sharp. She stares across the room at Whitney’s giant belly and reminds herself that she probably isn’t pregnant, that she and Hunter have been through this too many times already, that they’ve set themselves up for one too many disappointments, all the while draining Stella’s college fund to try to give her a sibling. She’s lucky to just have Stella, Molly tells herself for the thousandth time. She has one healthy, beautiful child, and that’s something that millions of women struggling with infertility would kill for.
Molly takes a pink macaron from a white tray and drifts into the living room to watch Whitney open her presents. She looks at her watch, which reads five of two. Twenty more minutes, she tells herself, biting into the gooey cookie.
She makes small talk with Edie Kirkpatrick, who tells Molly much more than she cares to know about the various golf tournaments her husband is competing in across the East Coast this summer.
At two fifteen, Molly thanks Meredith for hosting such a lovely afternoon, then sneaks out the back door. It’s a ten-minute drive to the studio where Molly teaches, and technically, she doesn’t have to be there until fifteen minutes before class starts, but the thought of spending another second with all those women is more than Molly can bear.
She feels low as she drives across town, missing Nina and Everly so much that a lump forms in the back of her throat.
She thinks about what Hunter would say—what Hunter will say, when she tells him the shower was a drag. You don’t have to go to those things, Moll. Why bother if they make you so unhappy?
Because I actually do like Whitney, Molly will say. Whitney is one of the ones I could actually see myself being close with, and I wanted to show my support.
And then there’s the piece of it she won’t tell Hunter: that Meredith and Betsy and Edie and that whole group of women are the social scene in Flynn Cove and that the occasional bits of connection she feels when she’s with them are better than nothing. It’s better to have some form of female companionship in her day-to-day life—unfulfilling as it may be—than none at all. Right?
In the parking lot of Yoga Tree, Molly takes out her phone and crafts a text to Whitney.
Whit-so sorry I didn’t say goodbye, had to rush out early to teach. That was a beautiful shower and you are just glowing! Let me know if you’re up for a walk sometime in the next couple weeks, assuming the babes don’t come early! Xo
Molly rereads the text three times, chewing her bottom lip and wondering if her tone is overeager, or if it’s awkward or assumptive to call her friend “Whit.” God, she thinks. I didn’t used to be so insecure. I didn’t used to be so fucking neurotic.
Molly hits Send before she can agonize over it a second longer. She’s about to put her phone away when she sees a notification for a new voicemail, a call she must’ve missed during the baby shower. She doesn’t recognize the number, but it’s a 917 area code. New York. She hits Play.
Copyright © 2022 by Carola Lovering