The Good, The Bad and the Molly – Chapter Eight

When I was of sound mind and a clear head, I liked to pride myself as a rational person, someone who knew the best thing to do. I would have known what the best course of action would be. I would have known whether it was wiser to wake Molly up and explain everything to her immediately, or wait under the following night when the household was just getting settled for the night.

I couldn’t be labeled ‘of sound mind’ from the moment Chris caught me. Once he gave me the twenty-four hour warning, I became a zombie. Before I myself knew it, I was waiting until nearly twenty of my hours were up, electing to talk to Molly the following evening. Was it the best course of action? I didn’t know. I wanted what was best for Molly, but… fuck, I couldn’t start pretending I only had her best interests at heart now.

We saw each other during the day, just once or twice. Enough to make things awkward as hell for me. At one point, Chris was also in the room, and I didn’t even dare look at his face. I had to leave the room. Even if this was all a ruse and Molly knew, even if Sleeping Molly was actually just a devious Molly too afraid to tell me, I couldn’t face reality in front of Chris. It scared me too much.

It was just about midnight when I gathered strength I didn’t know I had, assertively knocking on the door and answering the open door with, “We need to talk.” Molly, of course, barely said a word, and worriedly invited me in. I took the invitation quickly, and sat down on her bed.

“…What’s going on?” Molly finally asked me. I was sitting on the edge of her bed, head buried in my hands, not knowing how to proceed.

“…How’re things with Carson?” I finally asked. “You still staying away from him?”

Molly broke into an annoyed smirk. “Aaron.” she chastised me. “I’m a big girl. I can take care of myself. What Carson did was… uncool, but it’s in the past. He’s in the past. Don’t worry, I’m not going to… let him in or anything. What did you call them? ‘Fuckboys?’ I’m taking your advice well.”

She sat down beside me on the bed and smiled warmly. “I appreciate that you care so much. But really, you don’t have to get worked up over this.”

I sighed heavily. “That’s… not what I… came over to say.” I began, my nervousness impacting my speech more than I could ever remember in my life. I felt like a weak, scared kitten. I knew that what I was about to say could destroy everything, and yet I had to be the one to do it.

“Okay…” Molly slowly replied, looking at me, confused. “What did you come over to say?”

“Look, I…” I tried again exasperatedly. “You shouldn’t… you shouldn’t like me any better than Carson. I’m him. I’m worse than him. I’m a… you shouldn’t be okay with me. At all.”

Molly’s eyes never left my face. “I don’t understand.”

Now or never. “Molly, I’ve had a crush on you for as long as I can remember. That’s the truth. That’s the long and short of it. I had a crush on you. I knew that you don’t, didn’t… whatever, I knew the feelings weren’t exactly mutual. So I hid the feelings, but after that whole incident where we saw each other… y’know… naked… I just thought there was something. I hoped, I fantasized, I fucking obsessed…”

Molly’s face sported a completely serious look. “Aaron, that’s completely fine.” she replied coolly. “You’re allowed to have feelings. I can’t say…” She tore her gaze away from me for the first time. “I can’t say they’re mutual, if we’re just going to be fully honest here.” She returned her stare to mine. “But this doesn’t change anything, it doesn’t have to impact our friendship. Just because you have a crush on me doesn’t have to undo our years of friendship together. I’m not in high school. I told you, I’m a big girl. I can take it.”

She took my hand and placed it into hers, and smiled gently. Instinctively, I pulled my hand away, guilt setting in more and more with each passing second.

Molly nodded weakly. “Right.” she replied awkwardly. “I guess if I just admitted to you the feelings aren’t mutual, holding my hand is kind of a… consolation prize, huh?”

“No. No, it’s not that.” I felt the shakiness return to my voice. I took a deep breath and squeezed my eyes shut, not daring to look at her any longer from here on out. “I was already in a haze from seeing each other naked, and then we slept in the same bed.”

“Oh no, was it too much? That must have drove you crazy. You should have said s-”

“Molly, shut up.” I said with more anger at myself than for her. She didn’t reply, so I opened my eyes, and saw an even more serious look on her face. I couldn’t tell if she was angry at me, but at this point, I knew I needed to clear everything up for her.

“When you were asleep, something happened. I’m not sure if it was conscious, but you… came on to me during your sleep.”

“Excuse me?” Molly asked, her serious face not waning.

“You started cuddling me and kissing my neck. I tried to wake you up, but you didn’t respond. I didn’t know if this was y-”

“Aaron, if this is a joke, it’s not funny.”

My heart sank. I had no clue why I held out any hope that she was intentionally doing this, but that hope was shrinking exponentially with each response Molly gave. “Molly, it’s no joke. You actually did this. You were cuddling me and kissing me. And I had years of pent-up romantic… romantic tension with you, and I thought maybe this was your way of coming onto me but being too anxious to say it-”

“No! No it wasn’t!” Molly exclaimed incredulously. “If I did have any kind of f- wait.” She paused her story, straightening her back nervously. “How were you going to end that sentence?”

My fear reached a crescendo. I closed my eyes again. “I thought maybe this was your way of coming onto me, so I… I k-kissed you back.”

Molly looked at me as if I just shot a family member. “You what?” she weakly asked me.

“I kissed you. On the collarbone. You… seemed to enjoy it. Sleeping Molly… seemed to enjoy it.”

“Sleeping Molly?! Aaron…” Molly tried to form words but none were coming. She looked mortified.

Fuck it. I was through the looking glass. It was time to push onward. “That night, I felt you up and f-fingered you to orgasm.” Molly said nothing, but sank her shoulders in and moved her arms in front of herself. She recoiled from my comment. “The next day, you looked so happy, and I wondered if I caused that. I thought I made you happy.”

I turned towards her for my last glimmer of hope. Maybe she’d realize I did make her happy. Maybe she’d shake it off, or see how I cared so much about her. Hell, maybe she’d spontaneously forget this whole thing happened and we could go back to being friends. All I needed to see was a smile on her cute, beautiful face.

Instead I saw a scowl, a horrified scowl, and a single tear dancing its way down her face. I had never seen Molly looking like this in my entire life. It didn’t even look like Molly. It just looked like some young woman, some poor young woman afraid for her life. My heart was on fire, every bit of breath getting caught in my throat.

“I wanted to know for sure, so the next day ,when you were at school, I…” I threw my arms up in resignation. Couldn’t get much lower than here. “I went through your stuff. Your computer, your internet history. I found a bunch of porn stories. It… they gave me hope. Like maybe you read a particularly crazy one and wanted to conduct your own scenarios or something.”

“Aaron, what the fuck…” Molly couldn’t muster the strength to do anything more than mutter those words, her hands now clutching at her chest and neck.

I couldn’t even look at her anymore. I couldn’t let her stop me. “So then there was this girl, this girl I was fucking, named Holly.” I paused. “Oh yeah, I have a lot of casual sex too. Yet another fucking thing I was hiding from you. Sue me.” At this point, using humor to detach myself from the situation was the only way I was getting through this. “Holly was, uh… she’s kinda fucked. She learned I had a crush on you, and she asked me if I wanted to try to get it to happen again, to convert you or something.”

I heard a noise. A soft yet piercing noise. It sounded like the worst thing on the planet. What I said broke the dam, and now Molly was crying uncontrollably into her hands. I gulped and had to steel my own nerves. I had to continue. “She set everything up, planned a lot of it. She got me to destabilize your bed, she got me to plant the dog hair…”

Molly’s crying was quiet but noticeable before, but now her sobs were like screams. “No!!” she practically screamed into her hands.

I was crying now too. I could feel it. I had to continue. “I’m sorry, Molly. I-”

“Shut up! Just stop!!” her muffled cries begged me.

I ignored her. “When we shared the bed again, the second night, it happened again. More. You blew me.” I was now fully ready to yell to the world how disgusting I was. I turned to Molly. “You blew me, Molly. In your sleep. You don’t remember it, and I was too weak and too much of a monster to stop you.” My voice found this weird power to it, the kind of power you get when you know your world is already burning around you. I felt like I was going to pass out.

“So I took it a step farther. I got in your bed, after you were asleep. You blew me again, and… I ate you out.”

“Please shut up!!” Molly’s voice was only getting more shrill as her crying never subsided.

My life was over. Any chance of me being with her was over. In a ‘fuck the world’ kind of way, it was almost freeing. Now at least she knew I was a sick fuck. “Then as I tried to sneak back out, Chris caught me, and forced me to tell you. And now, here we are.” I sighed deeply, the sounds of Molly’s inconsolable crying deafening to my ears. “I should have told you. I should have told you who I was before this sleeping shit even started happening.” I didn’t even know why I was still talking at this point, but I continued nonetheless. “This is me. This is who I am. I don’t even know who I am anymore. I’m not even a fuckboy, I’m lower than anyone I’ve told you to stay away from.” I swallowed. “I’m a God damned monster.”

I was out of steam, and with another sigh, I collapsed down on the bed. A few seconds went by with nothing happening but Molly continuing to cry, before she eventually, slowly, lifted her head from her hands. Her eyes met with mine for maybe a second before she got up and bolted out of the room with lightning speed. I heard the front door slam and sighed again, raking my hands over my face.

It was over. I had told her. And the results were in – she had no idea what I was doing to her. She didn’t like it. I was indeed a fucking monster. With the last of my strength, I got up off the bed and calmly walked out of her room, shutting the door behind me.

As soon as I did, the bathroom light flicked on again and once again I saw Chris, leaning against the wall, this time nodding solemnly and approvingly.

“I shouldn’t even be fucking surprised at this point.” I muttered.

Chris ignored me.