"Do I have a projection screen?"
He nodded. "Our guy can be here in two hours with everything you need. He'll get all the A/V set up for you. All you'll need to do is hit play."
"Is the mattress idea stupid?"
Marty laid his head down on his folded arms again. "I know now. I know why you didn't get laid for years because you have to question whether a mattress is a good idea."
My exhale was slow and steady. "Fine. Keep the mattress. I just didn't want to be, you know, presumptuous."
"And you're doing the constellation thing, right?" Marty lifted his head. "Stars are some romantic shit, Noah. You can stand behind her, all that touching, show her where to look and everything."
I rubbed my temples. "Yes, Marty, we should be able to see Pegasus pretty clearly. But I thought, I don't know, shouldn't I tie it in? Make some connection to our love story?"
"That's on you, buddy. I'm just here to run the camera."
"Yeah," I said dryly, "make sure you zoom in properly if she breaks my heart."
"She won't," Rick said. "What's the story of Pegasus?"
I grimaced. "It, uhh, sprang from Medusa's severed head. That's how he was born."
Rick swallowed like his mouth was full of sand. "Maybe … don't use that." He patted me awkwardly on the back. "Why don't we watch the tape from the beginning one last time, all right?"
Marty groaned. "I can't. I can't do it. He's made us watch it eight thousand times in the past two days, Rick. I see them almost kiss one more time, I'm going to lose my mind."
I glared at him. "And whose fault is it that you got it on film?"
"Like I knew what you guys were doing when I came back upstairs! I didn't even realize I caught anything until I got back to the office."
Rick held up his hands. "Okay. Marty, go take a breather. Noah, you and I can take it from the top. But I promise," he said, "it's perfect. She'll love it."
"This better work," I muttered. He started the video we'd made again, and just like I had every single time we watched it, there was an unsettling sense of rightness in every second. The fact that I missed it, from the very first day, seemed impossible now.
We watched quietly, and I found myself smiling when we got to the snippets from the day we did yoga. Marty fought tooth and nail for the scene where I blatantly checked out her ass, and he was right, it was funny. A chink in the armor, a break in my control, almost as though she'd scripted it herself from the very beginning.
There was a brusque knock on the door, and I sighed, punching the pause button on the remote.
"Want me to get it?" Rick asked.
"No. It's probably a neighbor or something. I keep managing to avoid the greeting committee."
I yanked open the door.
And there she was.
"Wha-" I stammered. "Molly?"
Her brother stood behind her, a cunning grin plastered across his face.
She glared over her shoulder at him. "He just … showed up here and wouldn't tell me why."
When she faced me again, her cheeks were flushed bright pink, her eyes bright with nerves.
The fact that my house was a mess, nothing was ready, no lights were strung, and no soft music was playing under a sunset-dim sky or that I looked like a crazy homeless person didn't matter. There were a thousand details that could have made it the most perfect night in the world, but suddenly, they were completely inconsequential.
The excess boiled away, reducing the moment down to the bare truth, the unbreakable bones of what I needed to know, what I needed to trust in.
She was here. And I loved her.
"Will you come in?" I asked.
Molly blinked. "You knew I was coming?"
I gave Logan a loaded look. "You were supposed to be delivered a little bit later," I said meaningfully, "but yes. Logan agreed to help me."
Her lips curled in a smile. "Then I'm sorry I'm early."
"I'm not," I answered.
The smile widened, and it blew through me like a veritable wrecking ball. That was always what Molly had been to me. A weapon of mass destruction, testing every limit I'd ever given myself. And I didn't want it any other way.
Standing back so she could enter the house, I glared at Logan. "What was that for?" I hissed.
He leaned up to smack me on the shoulder. Hard. "That was for sleeping with my sister, asshole." Then he grinned. "Welcome to the family."
As he ambled back to his truck, he whistled, and I couldn't help but shake my head at how this entire thing had played out. Ten years in the making, an inevitable conclusion that was impossible for me to avoid.