Chapter 7

“I think that just about does it.” I confidently stated as I inspected my work. I prodded the wooden frame staring down at me and nodded. “Yup, we’re good. I think the mattress can go back on now.”

“Are you sure?” Molly asked me, arms close to her chest in hesitation.

I rolled my eyes, wiggling out from under the bed so I can stand up. “I haven’t let you down yet, have I?” I gestured back to the bed. “It’s just as I suspected. The thing just came loose. You’re honestly good to go at this point.”

Molly’s unsure expression loosened, then a smile appeared on her face. “Thanks, Aaron.” she replied, coming in for a hug, surprising me with her force.

I couldn’t help but chuckle, albeit hoarsely due to the force and passion of the hug. There were no two ways about it, Molly had a distinctive glow to her. And I knew about Molly, I knew about her life. I knew that there was a hundred-to-one chance that I had been the cause of it, that I had helped her become a happier person. She seemed so ... serene. So happy.

I hugged her back with as much passion, squeezing her slightly before letting go. Still smiling, she wordlessly walked over to her mattress, picked it up, and practically threw it down onto the bedframe. The frame, of course, stayed in place.

I looked over at her and shrugged. “What’d I tell ya?”

She shook her head at me, still somehow smiling. “You’re a dork.”

“I’m, at the very least, a useful dork.” I smiled back, posing with my arms.

Molly threw herself, practically headfirst, into the mattress from her standing position, then resurfaced dizzily. “Yup. Back to normal.” she beamed. “I’m so glad to have my own bed back.”

“Yeah, it’ll be nice for both of us to have elbow room again.” I replied, folding my arms.

Molly sat up on the bed. “You’re the one that likes to sprawl all over the bed when you sleep.”

“Do not!”

“Do too!”

“Oh, well then, excuse me.” I replied, getting onto her bed and lying down beside her. “Let me do my impression of you.” I then stretched my entire body out, intentionally squishing her sitting self against the wall as I did so. “My name’s Molly Sharpton.” I reinforced the point.

Molly playfully kicked me away, causing me to fall off the bed. “I do not do that, you dork.” she giggled. “Besides, I’m a shortie. What’s your excuse?”

“I sleep straight as a board.” I pointed out, standing up and dusting myself off. “And that’s a rare find. When you’re married in the future to Carson or whoever, you’re going to find out just how few guys are actually pleasant to sleep next to.”

Molly’s smile turned into a half-smug half-guilty one as she chewed on my words. “Yeah. Carson. About him.”

I almost leapt where I stood. “You didn’t.”

Molly scratched the back of her neck compulsively and laughed nervously. “No, I didn’t. It’s just...” She emitted another laugh in lieu of continuing.

I had to stop myself from leaning forward. “What? What is it?”

“You were just ... you were right.” Molly admitted, her humor fading from her tone. “Carson and I were talking today, and ... he sleeps around. We were just talking about our relationship history-”

“Short topic with you.” I winked at her, trying to keep levity in the situation.

Molly glared at me, albeit playfully, and continued. “He was talking so clinically and honestly about how he likes to sleep around, so I asked him what his kill count was.”

“Wow. Didn’t expect you to use a phrase like ‘kill count.’” I pointed out.

“Well, how else do you phrase it? I was just curious about how many he slept with. It was kind of fascinating to me. So he talks about it some more and then just flat-out asks me if I’d ever want to experiment with someone I trusted sometime. Then asked if that someone could be him. Didn’t even wait for my response.”

“Did you say yes?” I asked, as if we were sharing a joke.

Molly didn’t even look at me, she just looked at the ground and chuckled. “You know, I swear this happens with every guy I meet here. I think that maybe they’re friends with me because they actually like talking to me or believe that I can go somewhere with my life.” She looked up at me, her smile now faded except for the insecure shadow of her smile that hung on to her face to let me know she didn’t want me taking this too seriously. “I think one of my biggest insecurities is having no guy friends that don’t want me sexually, or romantically or whatever. It’s like I’m not enough as a person, I also have to return their desires too. Like I’m a bank. Like I’m not a person.”

I sat down beside her gently and looped an arm around her shoulder for support. She looked at me expecting me to say something, but I never did, just smiling sadly.

She took that as a cue to continue. “Carson was like the first guy I met here to make me think, ‘Huh. Maybe.’ Well, maybe fucking not.” Her smile was now gone. “I was totally fine with him sleeping around, but now that he’s asked me, it’s like a spell has been broken. Even when he told me he does that, it didn’t even register that that’s all he wanted from me. Until he asked.”

“It may not be all he wants from you. He might genuinely enjoy your company and just also ... also be a man, a hormonal man, and want to have sex with you.”

Molly’s smile returned softly. “I wasn’t expecting you to take his side today on anything.” I had to stomach the sudden discomfort that I wasn’t talking about him at all. “But maybe. It still doesn’t change much. He wants that from me. They all want that from me. That’s all they’re interested in, and the actual ‘getting to know me’ thing isn’t interest or whatever, it’s foreplay or it’s getting information so they know how to ask me at just the right situation where I’m weak and say yes. They don’t even know who I am.” She shook her head sadly. “If someone were to ask Carson to describe me in one word, it wouldn’t actually describe me. It would be some bullshit like ‘flawless’ to make me go all ‘aww’ but reinforce how ... how nothing I am to him. I’m nothing to him.” She was now pouting, still staring at the floor with my arm around her. Slowly, her eyes trailed up from the floor to meet mine. “In a word, Aaron. What am I?”

This was the perfect opportunity for cheesiness, but something held me back. It felt right, but something felt ... righter. A grin shone on my face as I quietly replied, “Short.”

Molly immediately grinned back, pushing me away playfully. “You jackass.” she laughed, then composed herself, going back into thought mode. “Maybe I wouldn’t like the truest answer anyway. ‘Naive.’ ‘Manipulable.’ I...” She stood up, clearly feeling fidgety, walked halfway across the room, and turned to face me. “You know, Carson had the biggest chance. Out of all of them. If you want to talk realistically, if he had just waited, or ... or fuck, cared...” Her face went blank as she stared at mine for a few seconds. “Thanks, Aaron.”

“What did I do?”

“You’re just ... there for me.” she replied slowly. “You’re the only one, I guess besides Chris, who can tell me they’re a friend that’s there for me and I’ll believe them. You’re a good guy, and actual good guy, and you’re right, most of these guys are just trouble. I wish guys like Carson were more like you. Maybe then I’d have some friends where I know they actually had good intentions and no ulterior motives.”

That was my breaking point. I couldn’t hide my expression from the dramatic irony of the moment any longer. Guilt took over and I suddenly looked away, right at the wall, a look of downright worry on my face.

“ ... What?” I heard Molly ask. “Are you okay?”

“I...” I felt my mouth go dry. I couldn’t finish the sentence.

“What?” Molly asked, more emphatically this time. She closed the distance between us and sat down beside me again. “Look at me please.”

Reluctantly, I tore my gaze away from the wall to look into her painfully serious face. “Do you need to tell me something?” she asked.

But I could never answer that. At least not with what I was clearly supposed to say. Guilt washed over me like the tide of an ocean. I couldn’t tell her what she needed to hear. Dark clouds hung in my mind as I felt more and more trapped.

The trap suddenly released its grip on me. Maybe I couldn’t tell her what she needed to hear, but I could at least substitute it with something I was sure she wanted to hear.

“I’m a bad person.” I said, uncharacteristically slowly, my mouth barely spitting out each word, feigning perfectly a state of vulnerability. “When you asked me to go clear the air with Daisy, I yelled at her.”

Molly just stared at me, nothing impacting her face. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, and maybe she too was playing a game of ‘he doesn’t think I know this, how should I react.’ It’s a shame neither of us were English majors; we would have loved the dramatic irony.

“I lost my temper.” I continued, keeping up the facade perfectly. “I lose my temper around her a lot. We don’t get along.”

“Is there a reason?” Molly asked, even-tempered.

I shrugged. “Probably. I think it just comes down to us not fitting well with each other.” Bullshit excuse, but ‘she’s a super-genius and we bonded over that and she even tried to help set us two up until I did stuff with you in your sleep while you may or may not have wanted it’ would have been a much less acceptable response. “I know how you are about ... y’know, honesty and stuff. I’m sorry I never told you. I just thought you didn’t deserve to have that bullshit to deal with.”

I lowered my head and felt Molly’s hand supportively patting my shoulder. “It’s okay.” she replied flatly. “She’s twelve, you know. People at that age aren’t exactly ... the most mature.”

“Some people our age too.” I replied bitterly, head still down.

Molly chuckled. “Yeah.” Silence filled the air for a bit. “Don’t worry about it, Aaron. I forgive you.”

“I’m...” I lifted my head. “I’m not a good guy.”

“Yes you are.” Molly coaxed me. “You’ve been an amazing friend. You’re not bad. You’re just ... complicated.”

“Complicated?” I repeated.

Molly smiled, albeit sadly. “I understand you have issues. I completely understand why you have them.” Her hand trailed to a part of my back that particularly stung, a place my dad hit me particularly hard. I winced. “With what you have to deal with, I’m amazed you’re as great of a person as you are.”

That broke the dam. Molly knew. It was my own dumbass fault for not wearing a shirt to bed, but she saw my back. She knew about ... about Dad, about the full extent of what he did. My whole life, she knew he and I didn’t get along, and I let her know a few of the things he said to me, but I had been trying to keep that, my wounds, as the one secret I had from her. I wasn’t great at not keeping secrets from her, but now she knew about him hitting me, and I didn’t even get to tell her.

It wasn’t a facade anymore. My vision became blurry as tears clouded my eyes. “Molly ... it...” I didn’t know what to say.

The next thing I knew, my head was on her shoulder and I was bawling my eyes out. I never cried. I never cried in front of her. I didn’t even know how to feel, all I knew was that it was too much. She knew me, the full me, with my fucked-up past. I could never forgive her. No, not her, myself. No, not myself, Dad. And here I was, bawling my eyes out like the world’s biggest loser, the sounds of my inconsolable sobs and an occasional “it’s okay” from Molly.

“This movie sucks.” I complained as I laid sprawled out over the loveseat in the living room, looking at my phone.

Chris looked back at me, annoyed. “It’s a great movie.” he reasoned. “It’s telling the complete story of a life.”

“The first half of the movie was about cows!” I argued. “Now I blink and suddenly we’re in World War Two?!”

“If you were paying attention near the beginning, you’d know they had already mentioned that.” Chris rebutted.

“Quiet.” Jerome ordered the two of us, barely shifting to look at either of us. Chris huffed and the three of us went back to watching Australia. I just rolled my eyes and my attention returned to my phone.

I had been putting off texting Holly for a bit. She was sexy as hell, and weirdly on-board with everything I wanted to do, with Molly or without, and to be frank ... it scared me. Holly knew exactly what I wanted to do and was okay with that. Part of me thought of her as a sick fuck for that, but then if I acknowledged that, I had to acknowledge that she was a sick fuck for supporting what I wanted. So what did that make me?

I had to just cave, and see what happens. It’s not like I could ignore her forever. I needed to just accept her pulling me in this direction and ride it out. Even if things ended badly between Holly and I, at least it was going somewhere, rather than prolonging the inevitable. With renewed determination, I pulled up my messages and typed one up.

-Have you got a plan to go forward?-

We liked to keep our texts as vague as possible. Holly had friends that liked to take her phone, and she was fine with them seeing sexts or whatever (apparently that was nothing new for her) but something like this was understandably a bit more volatile.

My phone buzzed. A response.

-Switch up the bedding situation. Go to them instead of waiting for them to come to you again. Try it in a new environment-

I could sort of see it coming, but I sighed in discomfort when I read it for the first time. I suppose if things were going somewhere with Molly, I had to up the ante at one point or another. A huge part of me wanted to, and it wanted Molly to admit she was awake the whole time and this was just our little game. Finally, we could admit the unspoken repartee to one another. But another part of me wanted to just stay where we were and enjoy that, in case...

I shuddered, then shook my head. Too risky. It felt too risky.

-I don’t think that’s a good idea.-

After hitting ‘send,’ I realized that the text could have been taken in a lot of ways. I had hoped Holly knew that I was hesitant on an emotional level, because as hesitant as I was, I was still weak.

-She’s a deep sleeper. You know that. If you really want her, this is your chance. If you’re not going to take this chance tonight, then what’s the point of taking it tomorrow? You want her, right? Prove it to her.-

I sighed again, causing Chris to tear his attention away from the movie to notice me. I couldn’t pretend I was 100% okay, so I mumbled, “Dad.” Chris winced and gave me a sympathetic smile, then went back to watching. I read over Holly’s texts a couple more times, and each time I read it, a little more adrenaline filled me and another wall was knocked down until the city had no defences.

-Okay. Tonight. I’ll do it.-

I instinctively put the phone into my pocket as soon as I sent the text, satisfied, scared, and disgusted at the same time with myself. Working myself up inside my head, I realized tonight had to be the make-or-break point. Both Molly and I knew that point would have to come soon, and it was better to just rip off the bandaid before the opportunity was lost.

I don’t know how much time before my phone buzzed again. I picked it up and looked at Holly’s name again. Who else would it have been, anyways?

-Good boy. ;)-

Attached to the text were three pictures of Holly, face and all, not an inch of clothes on her body. Interestingly, in all three pictures, she wasn’t holding a phone, indicating she wasn’t the one to take the pictures. In the first one she was biting her lip looking directly into the camera, standing straight up and holding her huge breasts in each hand, her right hand seemingly absentmindedly playing with her nipple. Her legs were slightly crossed in her pose, emphasizing her amazing hourglass figure. She practically screamed, ‘come here and take me’ with the photo.

The second one was her sitting on some sort of elegant queen-size bed, with her legs spread wide open to call attention to her exposed labia. It wasn’t fully exposed, given one of her hands, the hand that wasn’t on the bed to accentuate her pose, was on her clit, seemingly rubbing herself off as she took the picture. Once again, her eyes were glued to the camera, although this time her mouth was in an ‘O’ shape in a convincing display of her really getting into what she was doing. Her eyes could burn a hole through solid steel, and there was only one word blazed across those eyes - ‘lust.’

The third one was her on the same bed, only this time she was on her knees, looking back at the camera from behind. In this picture, she went all out - once again, one hand was supporting her on the bed, but the other was busy stuffing herself with a toy that looked like it should have been too large for her to handle, and there was even a training toy in her ass too. Her face was contorted, mid-scream, and you could see her juices coming out of her entrance and beginning to go down her thighs, departing her shapely, enticing ass.

I could barely stop staring long enough to notice she sent another message afterwards, no doubt written with smugness and an air of victory.

-Here’s your reward. ;) You’ll get more when the deed is done. Who knows? If you manage to fully convert her, I would be down for a threesome... -

I decided not to reply. Number one, I wouldn’t be able to top what I saw. Holly was devious and stopped at nothing to get what she wanted, and god damn if she wasn’t good at it. It felt like I had a raging hard-on for the remainder of the entire movie, which seemed to go on and on, until finally, after hours of me not paying attention, the credits started to roll and Jerome shut it off. After the movie, Chris and Jerome talked for a bit too long, to my immense discomfort, and just when I thought I wasn’t able to wait any longer, Jerome admitted he needed to get to bed.

The two of us remaining watched Jerome head upstairs, then Chris turned to me.

“Enjoyed the movie, hon?” he asked sarcastically.

“My mind was elsewhere for a lot of it.” I answered flatly.

“Ah. Right.” he replied, adjusting himself. “Do you want to talk about it?”

“I’m good,” I responded. “I think I just need to get some sleep and think things through a little bit, y’know, making decisions for the future and all that.”

“Yeah, it can seem difficult to truly know what are the right decisions in certain situations.” He took his eyes off of me to look into his tea cup. “But I think you know how to make good decisions, so I’ll spare you the lecture.”

It took me a lot to keep from chuckling. “Yeah.” I simply responded.

“I’m going to go to bed.” Chris got up, took his tea cup to the kitchen sink, then lazily headed to the stairs. “See you tomorrow.” He smiled sleepily.

“See you then.” I replied, trying to seem just as sleepy. When he disappeared up the stairs, I sighed for a final time, then sat up on the loveseat. This was it. The make-or-break point. The decision that was going to decide the future for both of us.

I want to say that my feet moved on their own, but I was very aware of when I got up, and I was super-conscious of every step I made as I made my way into the basement. I checked my watch - 11:48pm. There was a chance Molly was still awake, even though the light was off in her room, so I preferred to play it safe.

I shut off every light in the house after brushing my teeth, then went into my room and sat on the bed. And waited. I sat in the same pose for damn near an hour, just staring at my watch, watching the hands go in a circle over and over. Occasionally a song would play through my head to help me pass the time, but as tempting as it was to grab some headphones and experience the real thing, something held me back. It would have been an action. A single action could cause a chain reaction, it could wake her up, it could change things in one way or another. I couldn’t risk that.

Eventually, my watch read 12:35am, and I decided it was time. Gingerly, I got up from my bed, wearing nothing but my boxers, and prowled my way across the floor, making sure my feet made no noise at all.

I felt nothing as I walked. I barely even registered that I was walking in the first place. It was only once I had gotten to her door that I noticed how much distance I had covered, before opening the door, still without thinking. I opened it agonizingly slowly, to make sure I would not make any noise, and immediately slunk into the room.

As I had predicted, the room was pitch-black. I stopped once in the room and listened, making sure I could make out Molly’s breathing patterns, to see if she was truly asleep. It was hard to hear her over the sound of my beating heart, but once I was confident, I stopped holding my breath and begun to slink forward some more.

I stopped, I assumed right next to her bed, my movements so slow that even if I had knocked into something, there wouldn’t even be a shock of an impact. “Hey, Molly.” I barely whispered. If she responded immediately, I could play it off as being in an emotional situation or some shit, I thought to myself. Fuck it, she knew about my dad now. Maybe he could help me out here. First time in his life he would have.

“Molly.” I said in a normal voice, then testing it, repeated, “Molly.” in a decently loud voice. Molly didn’t so much as move. I could feel myself smile slightly and nod as I knew what I had to do. Breathing in and out a few times, I lifted a foot, then hesitated. I turned away from the bed, holding my head in my hands, then made a fist with my left hand and struck myself in the chest. It hurt a lot, but it pumped me up.

I lowered my hands to the blankets, gingerly picking them up so that I could crawl into bed with her. It was surreal, slowly moving my body so that eventually I was lying beside her. This felt like a new level of danger. Molly never invited me here. If she woke up any previous time, I could have played it off as something she started, hell, even just been honest with her. Now, if she woke up, I would have nothing.

Still, I was here now. No backing out. Slowly, tenderly, I shifted closer to her, until our arms felt the touch of each other’s skin. Contact. I waited until it felt like she acclimatized to my presence, and began to shift slightly, letting Sleeping Molly know I was here for her.