The Good, The Bad and the Molly – Chapter Nine

For a guy that enjoyed having casual sex with several women a week if I was lucky, I wasn’t much of a partier. I was more into talking to people one-on-one, and seeing where things went from there. Even if I was looking for someone to share a bed with for the night, trying to put the moves on someone in any kind of public setting felt weirdly wrong. Almost disrespectful. It was super clear that a party wasn’t my type of atmosphere, even before I wound up going with Molly.

Well, ‘going with Molly.’ It didn’t really count as going with her, seeing as she had no idea I was there. One side of me knew that I couldn’t reveal myself. Even with the amount of time that had passed, I couldn’t just re-inject myself back into her life. But at the same time… I had to protect her. Yes, I could protect her from myself, but that didn’t mean there weren’t other things she needed protection from too.

Probably most of those things co-existed together perfectly in the atmosphere of a party. When I got there, it was like I was hit in the face with a wall of everything. The sound, the people, the lack of space, everything. I had to shove my way through people to get to the less populated areas. Luckily for me, I wasn’t a partying type, so very few people recognized me, and fewer still made any kind of motion in my direction. Once or twice, a girl I had slept with locked eyes with me. The most any of them did was raise their eyebrows and smile a little.

That was a past life now. Ever since the winter, I couldn’t bring myself to resume my old lifestyle. I just couldn’t do it. It wasn’t just Holly I broke things off with – it was every one of them. Truth be told, there weren’t too many left. A weird truth I only myself realized about the casual sex world is that no one stays in it for too long, and if you have stayed there for long, you were usually the type that others would avoid. Some came and went because they got new boyfriends or girlfriends, some left because of a change of heart, some just left the area because they couldn’t get tied down to anything. But everyone left. I guess I was leaving too.

I needed a hobby or something. This new ground I had found wasn’t exactly an improvement. I went from sleeping around to following my own housemate when she left for a party. That said, at least I was thinking of her feelings for a change. If nothing else, this was me atoning for my past sins. It couldn’t cleanse a lifetime of sin, but perhaps it could cleanse the last few months.

That said, I wasn’t going to atone for anything by just being at the same party Molly attended, and it didn’t help matters that I couldn’t find her anywhere. I had checked the less populated areas first – the kitchen, the backyard, the basement, even the ‘introvert room,’ so named for the backwards-minded people who insisted on going to parties but also didn’t want to be around people. Frankly, as soon as I saw this party had one such room, I would have bet my last dime she’d be in that room. If I hadn’t made sure, I would have guessed she hadn’t even left the house to come here in the first place.

As time went on, the inevitable struck me. Molly wasn’t in the populated rooms, and I didn’t see her leave. Which meant either she vanished into thin air, or she was behind one of the closed doors. Private rooms. Which meant one type of thing was happening, and knowing Molly, I couldn’t be sure how comfortable she’d be with the fact it was happening.

I reduced myself to asking around, seeing if anyone even knew who Molly was. “Hey, have you seen Molly around? Molly Sharpton? I’m her ride home.” Little things that wouldn’t raise suspicion, at least not the suspicion of others. I had to admit, over time, I was getting pretty suspicious myself, and just decided to go for it. I listened at doors, and opened every door I could find. Most of the time I just found couples making out, people trying weed, or just people enjoying one-on-one ‘life chats.’

I don’t know what the fuck I was expecting when I would find Molly. I just knew that I was on autopilot. I sure as hell wasn’t expecting her to fall into my arms and forgive me for everything, but I also wasn’t expecting a reward. I just wanted to protect her. When I did end up fighting her, I got two very rude awakenings. Number one, she was on top of some guy, her top still on but clearly wearing very little else, under the covers so no one bursting in could see them, with her riding him for all she was worth. I had never seen Molly like that before, but it only took the microsecond before the guy she was riding saw me that I could see the bottles strewn across the place. I had never known Molly to drink, but clearly she had been drinking, a fair amount judging by her uncharacteristically sloppy and jagged movements.

Molly was having sex. Molly was having sex with someone other than me. Which was… understandable, but it reminded me of my inferiority, how I fucked up, how easily replaceable I was. It would be a lie to also say I viewed Molly as the type to have sex with… well, anyone. Which made what I did more suspect, sure, but it made me hate the guy she was riding all the more. How’d he do this, what lies did he tell her?

The second rude awakening came when I saw the guy’s face. Who else would it be? Captain Suave from first semester. Carson or whatever the fuck his name was. He never stopped trying. I backed off after it was clear that Molly didn’t want what was happening. That was the difference between us two, and now it looked like the heartless persistence had persevered. Even still, upon seeing me, as if I was the one in the wrong, Carson immediately snapped to attention and started waving me off. “Yo, shut the fucking door! Shut the door!” he repeated, using a hand to swat away at me from afar. “Babe, just stay where you are.” he told Molly. Molly froze, not daring to look forward, and in that moment, I realized how lucky I was that she wasn’t looking at me. If she saw me, saw what I was doing, she wouldn’t forgive me for still keeping this up. Carson wasn’t the villain. I just had an ability to move on.

Of course, I was realizing this while staying frozen like a dumbass. Eventually I regained myself as Carson and now Molly were telling me repeatedly to leave, with Molly not even knowing who I was. Like a zombie, I backed away a couple of steps and gingerly shut the door.

Who the fuck was Molly? I didn’t know anymore. Not shy, having sex with some guy (and it felt creepy to admit it, but I knew for a fact she considered herself single, without a partner) while high and possibly drunk. I had let her slip between my fingers like sand, and now it was clear I had lost her.

No, I couldn’t accept that. I was fighting this whole time. I had accepted Molly wasn’t mine to have. Nor anyone’s. So who the fuck was this guy? Clearly she still needed protecting if other guys were just going to swoop in and try to scoop her up. At least I was taking responsibility for my actions.

I stumbled over to a couch and sat down, sighing heavily. Like a movie, people were passing by me in fast-motion, their silhouettes becoming blurs as they all moved around me. I sat, motionless, looking at the floor, probably just looking like someone who had partied a bit too hard and was now taking it easy.

A few times someone would sit down next to me on the couch, for their own reasons. I gave them a quick glance before my gaze fell again to the floor, my mind in a flurry. At one point, I couldn’t quite remember when, I looked up at the person sitting down next to me and froze on the spot. Red hair. A distrusting but all-the-same concerned face. Molly.

She was evidently still under some sort of influence, but she wasn’t blackout drunk. She could still think coherently, or so it seemed. “What are you doing here?” she simply asked. I was amazed I could hear her small voice over the room.

I shrugged, wanting to disappear from this situation entirely. “Would you like the answer if I gave it to you?”

Her look of concern didn’t vanish. “Do you think you’re taking care of me?”

“No.” I answered honestly. “But I think I’m looking after you.”

“I don’t see the difference, Aaron.”

“One is a lot more selfish than the other.” I replied, chuckling in my honesty. “I’m not very good at giving you space.”

“I can see that.” she replied a little coldly.

“It’s my overthinking.” I tried to explain as plainly as possible. “If I hear you’re going out to a party, my mind immediately jumps to the worst-case scenario, and I’m worried. So this is a way of calming myself down. I know you hate me, but I couldn’t bear what would happen if something happened to you.”

“Please stop being so dramatic.” Molly huffed. “I don’t hate you. I just don’t like being around you. I have every reason to feel that way. I get you’re worried, but I want to be able to live my life. That means the opportunity for failure, or getting hurt. If you hurt me and now you want to make sure I never get hurt again, not only are you not letting me live my life, but the only hurt I’m going to feel is from you.” She chuckled, the first time I saw any kind of happy emotion from her since I caught her having sex. “If you want to think selfish, let me get hurt on my own terms. That way I won’t associate hurt with you and you alone.”

I nodded grimly, returning my gaze to the floor. “I get that. Like, realistically. Emotionally, I probably am not going to understand that for a while.”

“Well, write it down or something. I’m going to be way less patient with you next time.”

“There shouldn’t be a next time.” I rebutted, and returned my gaze to her. We half-smiled at each other. “Are you happy?”

“What?”

“Just, in general. These days. I never got the chance to ask you. Are you doing well, are you happy?”

“Of course I’m not.” It was her turn to break her gaze away from me. “I have moments, but yeah, no, I’m not.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.” was all I could think to say.

“It’s not like I was happy when you had your way with me either.” she added, stinging me with the simplicity of her words.

“Yeah.” I croaked. “I’m sorry for that too.” Neither of us said anything for a while, even as we locked eyes again twice, the second time being much more awkward than the first. Internally, I was begging myself not to say anything stupid, but the silence in a sea of noise eventually got to me. “Can I ask a stupid, selfish question?”

“I guess.” she replied flatly.

“Did I actually mean a lot to you? I mean, I get the feelings weren’t mutual, but even just as a friend.”

“Aaron, that’s a stupid question.” she replied dismissively.

“I know. I already said that.” I shrugged.

“You’re just looking for validation.” she continued.

“I said that too. Selfish. I just need to hear it.”

“Why should I give that to you?” she asked me, her eyebrows lowered.

“There is no ‘should.’ You don’t have to. I’m asking.