I nodded in agreement. “It’s supposed to be nice this weekend, I think.”
Liz stuck her arm out at an approaching cab. “Thanks for the drinks, Caitlin. I’ll get the next round.”
I smiled to myself as her cab pulled away. I watched it break at the light before hooking a left on East Forty-fifth Street, relief drenching my bones. I hadn’t fucked it up. I’ll get the next round. There would be a next round.
Liz would be my ally. She would be my inside source of all knowledge of you and Jake. And knowledge is power, Molly. The more I knew, the easier it would be for me to tear the two of you apart—for good this time.
Chapter Twenty-six
Molly
2015
That first day at the coffee shop, Molly and Hunter didn’t get any work done. After ten minutes of sitting across from each other—half working, half chatting—Hunter closed his laptop and asked if he could buy her a cup of coffee.
She glanced down at her latte. “I’ve got one, but thanks.” She closed her own computer. Molly was sick of picking apart her manuscript, endlessly searching for ways to make it worthy of a book deal, and the man in front of her was nice to look at. Not Jake attractive, but tall, dark, and handsome in a grown-up looking way that reminded her of the dads in kid movies who shaved every day and wore crisp, clean suits to work and always carried the newspaper. Molly thought he had to be at least thirty.
“Right.” Hunter’s smile was slightly crooked, but endearing. Like that cute actor, Molly couldn’t remember his name. Rory’s love interest on Gilmore Girls. “So what are you working on?”
“Editing a novel.” Molly gave him a synopsis of the manuscript, explained that she’d been signed by a literary agent but that they were still trying to find the right editor for it. She noticed, as she was talking, how much confidence she’d acquired over the past two years. She used to hate discussing her writing with strangers—it had made her feel exposed, presumptuous. But then Jake—a successful “working” artist—had deemed her a writer, and it became a label she stopped questioning, one she started to wear with pride. Molly wondered, fleetingly, why she had needed Jake to believe in her before she believed in herself. It didn’t feel romantic or fated, as it once had in the beginning. It felt wrong.
“That’s huge that you have an agent,” Hunter said when she’d finished speaking, his expression genuine. “My aunt is a writer, and she’s never been able to find representation, not in thirty years. She’s self-published three novels now, each of which have about seven Amazon reviews. All by family members, I’m fairly sure.” Hunter smiled. “No, really, publishing is a tough business to crack. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with a literary agent. Well done.” He blinked. His eyes were the color of milk chocolate, and something in them was so familiar.
“Thank you.” Molly knew he could be trying to flatter her, but his words felt authentic. “And what do you do?”
She listened to Hunter describe his job in sports marketing, a career that seemed to fit him entirely. The industry wasn’t particularly interesting to Molly, but she could tell that he was genuinely passionate about his work, and she’d always found passion attractive.
When the waitress came by, Hunter ordered another coffee, and Molly followed suit. She didn’t think too hard about it. It was nice talking with a man who wasn’t Jake, someone who wasn’t consumed by his own impenetrable self-torment, who hadn’t thought to ask her once in the past two weeks how she was doing.
Their conversation flowed into the afternoon, the tables around them emptying and filling with new customers. Molly learned that Hunter had grown up in Connecticut, where his mother and older brother still lived. He’d gone to Dartmouth and, after graduating, had spent a year traveling through South America before moving to San Francisco for business school, then back to the East Coast. He’d recently moved out of the Murray Hill apartment he’d shared with friends and into his own place, a one-bedroom in a high-rise on Kent, overlooking the river. He played in a weeknight soccer league and loved sports, and woodworking was a longtime hobby. And, he confessed to Molly, he’d recently broken up with someone. They’d dated for a year and change, and he hadn’t felt serious enough about her to keep it going.
Hunter interlaced his hands on the table, and Molly noticed the half-moons on his neatly trimmed fingernails—the opposite of Jake’s, which were bitten down to the quick. She needed to stop doing this, stop comparing everything about this stranger to Jake.