“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.