But when Molly would call him back the next day, it would go straight to voicemail. She knew Jake well enough by then to understand how he operated; she knew he’d probably passed out and forgotten to charge his phone overnight. She didn’t let herself think about Maxine being on the tour, because she just couldn’t go there. Molly trusted Jake—she had to. Trust was relationship oxygen. Without it, she and Jake wouldn’t survive.
She had a text from him when her plane touched down in New York.
Lost my charger for forty-eight hours—just found! Can you talk?
The next month went on like that. Jake on the road, partying, missed calls, drunk texts, crappy communication. During the first substantial conversation they’d had since Jake left—a couple of days after Molly got back to Brooklyn—she asked if there was any news about Dixon paying for her to come meet him on tour or if he’d heard from Bella. Jake had sighed audibly, and she’d imagined him sitting on the edge of the bed in his hotel room, rubbing the back of his neck the way he did when he was agitated or hungover, or both.
“Fuck. No. I need to check in with Ron. I’ll do that today.”
“What about Bella?”
“Bella?”
“Bella.” Molly could no longer mask the aggravation in her voice. Pent-up frustration bubbled to the surface. “Are you serious, Jake? The literary agent you know. The one who’s had my manuscript since November.”
“Right. Shit.” Jake’s voice was gravelly and pained. “I’m so sorry—no. I’ll email her this afternoon, I promise. We’re going to a lunch now with some friends of Jerry’s. I’ll do it after that.”
But Jake hadn’t done it after that; he didn’t do it at all. Molly had never been overly brash or confrontational, so she seethed silently, in the privacy of her own mind. It was something Liz had always told her she needed to work on. Throughout the rest of January, she taught her morning classes at Bhakti, miserable as she braved the cold during the walk back and forth from the apartment, her mind spinning between missing Jake and resenting Jake, the feelings clashing and clawing at each other inside her heart, an ever-present gnawing in her stomach. The Jake she’d fallen in love with had her best interests at heart; to say he’d always gone the extra mile for her was an understatement. Molly wondered if she’d been fooled, duped, but then her love for him would bubble up and she’d be hit with a paralyzing mixture of fear and longing.
Her breaking point came the afternoon of January 26. It had been the longest month of Molly’s life, the Jake-less days trickling by—languid, interminable. As agonized as she’d been over their relationship, she still counted the minutes until he was back in New York, back in her arms. Their long-distance dynamic had been terrible—unacceptable, she knew—but once he was back, they would fix it. The old Jake—the adoring, reliable Jake, the one who buoyed her—was still in there, and he’d be home in less than a week.
It was a Sunday, and Molly was catching up on some emails when a new message from [email protected] appeared in her inbox. Molly didn’t recognize the address, and she didn’t know anyone named Lenore Smith.
There was no text accompanying the email, just a single photo attachment, which Molly double-clicked. The image came to life, filling her computer screen.
Molly’s breath stopped in her throat; she felt the color drain from her face as an overwhelming déjà vu took hold. The photo showed Jake kissing a girl—a girl who wasn’t Molly. She couldn’t make out the details of her face, but she wore a fitted magenta minidress, and her arms were wrapped around Jake’s neck, pulling him close, their lips pressed together in the middle of what looked like the dance floor of a grimy club. The girl’s hair was so blond it appeared almost white, a detail that told Molly it couldn’t be Maxine. A strange part of her expected to feel a shred of relief over this, but the horror was too all-encompassing.
Molly’s heart dropped into her gut. She felt too sick to move. Her hands trembled as she slapped her laptop shut and stared at the wall in front of her, her eyes fixed to the space beside Jake’s Led Zeppelin poster. She didn’t know how much time went by before she made her way into the bathroom and threw up.
Liz told her to dump him; Nina told her to talk to him before she jumped to any conclusions; Everly came over with a bottle of Tito’s and held Molly while she sobbed on the couch.
Molly waited until Jake got home to confront him. Nina said it was important to see the look in his eyes when she did.