Jake lowered himself to sit beside her, slowly, carefully—testing her limits.
“I’m in love with you, Moll,” he said helplessly. “I know it’s the absolute worst time to say that for the first time, but I can’t not tell you. It’s all I thought about all night. That I love you and if I lose you, if I fuck this up, I’ll never forgive myself.”
Molly looked at him, her eyes shiny and wide. He touched the faded scar above her left eyebrow, tracing it with his finger.
“Do you promise, Jake?” She blinked back tears. “Do you promise that’s all that happened with Maxine?”
“I promise.” He wrapped his arms around her neck, pulling her close. He inhaled the vanilla and sandalwood scent of her, as precious to him as his own heartbeat. “I promise.” He whispered it again and again, his face buried in her hair.
Years later, when the acoustic version of “Molly’s Song” would release and a shot at a solo career would finally begin to feel possible for Jake, he’d think back to this night, to how close he had come to losing Molly. Of course, he did lose her, eventually. And he would wonder, not for the first time since he started writing music again, where in the world Molly was, right at that moment. He’d wonder if her hair was still long and wild, the way it had been when they were together. If she still ate cinnamon raisin toast with peanut butter for breakfast every morning. If the scar above her left eyebrow was the same, or if the years had faded it further.
Three lines would drift into his mind then, without much effort. He’d grab his pencil, catch the words before they escaped him.
Wild hair
Wild heart
Take me back to our wild start
Chapter Twelve
Sabrina
Obsession has always interested me. The best artists, the most brilliant innovators, they’ve all been driven by it. It straddles the line between passion and insanity; it instigates creativity and genius despite the darkness in which it lingers. To be obsessed with someone or something is to adopt a single-minded drive that reduces the rest of the world to sheer insignificance.
That’s how it was for me, with Jake. I couldn’t shake him from my system, though I will admit: I didn’t try very hard. Fixating on Jake was an itch I took pains to scratch. I fed it like my own precious beast. I thought of the blood constantly, disappearing down the toilet, and wondered where it had gone. The remnants of our baby. A life that would never be.
My closest friends from FIT, Debbie and Elena, didn’t know about the miscarriage, but still, they were worried about me. They tried to set me up on blind dates with “catches” named Chad and Owen and Derek. But I didn’t want Chad or Owen or Derek; I wanted Jake. Jake, whose callused fingers plucked the strings of his guitar the same expert way they plucked all the right strings inside my body.
He had been mine for eighteen perfect, euphoric months, and now he belonged to someone else. He belonged to you. It wasn’t right.
In the midst of my grief, I’d lost weight, and stupid Debbie went so far as to call my mother in Palm Beach when she saw how much. I suppose fifteen pounds is a lot for a petite gal whose BMI is already on the verge of low. But Debbie didn’t understand that my mom lived most of her waking minutes in a reclined position in front of Bravo or by the pool, desensitized on painkillers. When she did muster the energy to leave her couch or chaise, she played golf with other rich housewives and nibbled lettuce under the clubhouse terrace.
Still, Mom did bother to text me one evening in March. It was the first time I’d heard from her in months.
Debbie says ur not eating. U have to eat little shrinking Sisi!!!
I decided right then and there that I was done being called Sisi. It was a name that made me feel like a child, and I’d started going by Sabrina at Marc Jacobs, anyway.
Nobody at work seemed to notice or care about my diminishing waistline—all girls in fashion are twigs; disordered eating is par for the course. I still loved my job—I’d gotten a big promotion in the fall—and was grateful for the escape work provided. But when I left the office each evening, my thoughts had nowhere to go. I’d get back to the privacy of my apartment, pour myself a generous glass of chilled white wine, and think of nothing but Jake.
And you, Molly. Over the years, I’ve spent a great deal of time focused on you.
Jake started posting more on Instagram that first year you were together. His photos were often of the band, informational posts regarding Danner Lane’s past and upcoming shows. But there were also plenty of you.