“Are you two for real?” Hannah scoffed. She rolled her eyes before moving her hands in a shooing motion. “Get out of my bakery. This place is sappy enough.”
Molly laughed as she turned away from Hannah’s counter, hoping that Nicholas didn't see through her as easily as Hannah did.
She wanted him to think she was as cool as he was.
Chapter 20
Molly
Nicholas and Molly sat side by side on a bench, right on the edge of the relatively empty park. They watched as a few teenagers hung out near the back of a pick-up truck, clamoring with shared laughter from time to time.
Their breath rose like dragon's breath as they sat with their cups and talked. Molly almost wished she hadn't worn a warm jacket so she could steal his again. She liked having the scent of him wrapped around her.
Molly’s mind wandered back to when she and Hannah used to hang out in the park between classes, often trying to glean information from each other’s scribbled notes, while eating out of the same family sized bag of chips they’d been working on for a week straight. She'd loved those times with Hannah.
“What’s wrong?” Nicholas asked, scooting a bit closer to Molly on the bench, his eyes looking down at her with concern. “You’re so quiet.”
“Nothing,” Molly lied. She looked up into his hazel eyes and sighed. “Well, something. Hannah might be moving to New York soon.”
“Really? Good for Hannah,” he replied, taking a sip of coffee.
“Good for Hannah. Not-so-good for me,” Molly said. She looked down at the Sweetness & Light to-go cup and sighed. “It’s not like I don’t have other friends, but Hannah was the first friend I ever made here. She's my best friend. The idea of her not being here anymore feels...”
“Wrong?” Nicholas suggested the word before he wrapped his arm around Molly’s shoulder. He gave her a gentle squeeze. “Like something just won’t be right if she moves away?”
“Am I being dumb?” Molly asked. “You can tell me if I’m being dumb.”
“No, you’re not being dumb,” he said gently. He pulled her closer to him and she didn't resist. “You’re being sentimental.”
“See, the way you say sentimental feels like you’re using it as a fancy way of saying ‘dumb,’” she told him, glaring up at him.
“You’re not being dumb, Molly,” he said softly. Nicholas gazed down at her. “And I think there’s something sweet about how sentimental you are. I lost touch with that part of myself. I think it's from moving around so much when I was a kid. All that moving made it hard to connect too much with people. I didn’t really see the point of connecting. I was just always waiting for the next move.”
“Your parents moved around a lot?” Molly asked. It was hard to see Mr. and Mrs. Kerstman living anywhere but here, since that's how she'd always known them. She realized she didn't actually know much about them from before they owned the shop.
Nicholas nodded. “My mother had the opportunity to teach abroad when I was younger. We spent a semester or two in London, some time in France.”
“Oh. France doesn’t sound so bad,” Molly said with a smile. “I’ve really only been to New York and here. Well, and one disastrous trip to L.A.”
“A disastrous trip to L.A.?” Nicholas asked, raising an eyebrow.
“I don't really want to talk about it,” she told him. “Disastrous, remember? I didn't really stay long enough to get a feel for the city, though. I haven't really been anywhere.”
“Really? No magical, whirlwind romances overseas? You seem like the type,” Nicholas told her with a smile.
“I’ve only had one big romance, really, and it wasn’t so much a whirlwind. More like a very long train ride to nowhere. It had just been driving around in a loop for five years.” Molly admitted, before blowing out a breath.
“What happened?” Nicholas asked. He swallowed hard.
“Remember that disastrous trip to L.A?” Molly grimaced, closing her eyes. “Roger Freeman happened. We dated all throughout college. I thought we were going to get married. He got a job out in Los Angeles after graduation, and I got my job here. I didn’t mind when he moved so far away, because I thought he loved me.”
Nicholas made a non-committal noise that he was listening.
“But... it turned out that he loved L.A. more than he’d ever loved me,” she said, hoping that explained it well enough. She didn't want to go into the lurid details. Airing that dirty laundry never helped anyone.
“You haven’t dated anyone since then?”
“A little, but never anything as serious. Never anyone I saw myself with long term,” she said with a shrug. “It’s hard, you know? Building up that trust again. It’s not that I don’t want to be with someone, it’s just that—”