Jake finished his beer, then two more. The bottle of Jack went around the bar a few more times, dulling the edges the way Jake liked. He felt light and buzzy. When Maxine passed him the whiskey again, Jerry intercepted.
“That’s enough for Danner.” He grabbed the neck of the bottle and took another pull for himself. “You guys are on in twenty. Backstage in ten, Jake.” Jerry wandered off, and Jake realized that he and Maxine were alone at the bar. Well, not alone—people had begun to funnel in for the show—but Sam and Hale had disappeared. Had they gone backstage already?
Jake stood. He felt dizzy, shaky on his feet, and regretted the last couple of whiskey pulls. With those, on top of the Brooklyn Lagers, plus the IPA he’d chugged getting ready at home, Jake was on his way to being drunk.
Maxine moved toward him, lifting her chin so that it brushed his chest. Her bee-stung lips curled into a grin. “Jakey.”
He drew in a breath, shaking his head. “I can’t, Maxine,” he told her. “It’s different with Molly. You know that.”
Maxine placed a hand on the side of his neck, the pads of her fingers gripping his skin. She stepped closer, blinking up at him. Her shirt was tight and low-cut, revealing a generous sliver of cleavage. He hated that he was turned on. It was just biology. It almost made him angry, the physical way his body responded when his heart was somewhere else. Alcohol made the resistance feel even more impossible. Maxine’s pillowy lips brushed his. Jake closed his eyes and let the haze of his mind take over.
When he looked up, when he blinked over Maxine’s shoulder to find Molly staring directly at him, Jake thought he had to be dreaming. He held her hazel gaze for a passing moment, disoriented. But then the realization hit him, a dropkick in the gut: he wasn’t dreaming. He was there, at the Bowl’s crowded bar, much drunker than he was supposed to be, Maxine’s arms coiled around his neck.
Jake shook Maxine off him, panic rising in his chest. A primal, blinding fear locked each of his senses. No. No.
Molly vanished into the crowd as he fought his way toward her, pushing between throngs of concertgoers, some of whom recognized him, who called out his name. He ignored the fans, but by the time he reached the exit, Molly was gone. Then a hand yanked his shoulder, jerking him around.
“Jesus, Danner, where the fuck have you been?” Sam looked furious, his face beet red, and he was out of breath. “It’s ten past eight, we’re supposed to be onstage right now. Let’s go.”
The performance was Jake’s worst to date—sloppy and half-hearted—and as a result, the worst show in Danner Lane’s short history. Afterward, Sam and Hale wouldn’t look at him. They left Brooklyn Bowl with Jerry and Maxine without saying goodbye, leaving Jake alone in a prison of his own self-loathing.
He stumbled down Wythe, calling Molly again and again. But she didn’t pick up, and finally her phone stopped ringing at all, so Jake went home and crawled into bed. He fell into fitful bursts of slumber, and at 6:00 a.m. when it was clear good sleep was out of the question, he got up and left the apartment.
A girl was just buzzing into Molly’s building when Jake arrived. She balanced a cardboard tray of coffees, and Jake held the door for her, then followed her inside. He practically sprinted up the three flights of stairs.
Molly opened her door almost right away when he knocked, which told him she’d been up, that she hadn’t slept, either.
At the sight of her—bleary-eyed, tangled blond hair—Jake’s eyes filled. He wasn’t used to crying in response to his emotions, but he was too panicked to be unsettled by his own vulnerability, the way he normally might’ve been. He loved her. He’d suspected it for a while, but now—in this terrible moment—he knew for sure. He loved her in a way he’d never loved another human being before in his life.
“Nothing happened,” he said breathlessly. “Maxine—she came on to me.” It was the truth, and Jake needed her to know it. “There was all this whiskey—” He paused, the pain of the memory lodged in his throat. “She kissed me, Moll. She kissed me for half a second, and I pushed her off of me. I swear.”
Molly reached behind Jake to close the front door, which felt like a positive sign. She wasn’t kicking him out. At least not yet.
She rubbed her eyes and walked into the living room off the kitchen, sinking down onto the couch. He loved the way she looked in her oversize NYU T-shirt, her long legs tucked underneath her. He wanted to crawl into her lap and stay there forever.