Molly
THE PARTY WAS amazing. Naomi, Uncle Abe, and Serena had outdone themselves. The plates, cups, and various candle displays looked gorgeous.
“I can’t believe the quartet sounded so good,” Mrs. Penkar from the penthouse said, smiling. “And they never sound good. The food was beautiful, too.”
She nodded as she watched the partygoers mingling on the dance floor. Aunt Linda would have loved this, she thought
But Jon hadn’t shown up. The anger in Naomi’s expression had gotten more obvious the longer the party went, but Molly wasn’t going to let him destroy her party. The building’s party.
“Come on!” said Kelsea from the first floor, who grabbed her wife, Claire, and dragged her onto the dance floor. “They’re playing music we can dance to. Let’s move.”
Finding herself without an option in the face of Kelsea’s enthusiasm, she followed the couple onto the dance floor. Together, they danced to the string quartet’s interpretations of various tunes. Some of them were questionable, some recognizable, and all fun.
She headed off the floor as the music slowed, leaving Kelsea, Claire, and the other couples who’d joined them to dance to a slower, more traditional song about being home for a holiday.
She smiled, watching the happy couples dancing, only to find her gaze drawn toward the handmade glass menorah. It was gorgeous. “Wow . . .”
When she got past how well the menorah reflected the light, she realized that she was looking into a pair of familiar brown eyes. Jon’s eyes.
“You made me a home, Molly,” he said. “I had a space. It wasn’t very much. I wanted something that I could bring you into, so that I didn’t worry about having a mess.”
“I—”
He shook his head, but this time he looked sad. “You must have had a vision. So you asked me questions, and I answered them. I thought it would be good for me to take care of it, to take responsibility for my own apartment. I didn’t want you to be in charge of decorating my apartment, because I wanted you to be able to relax there with me. It was horrible of me to assume you couldn’t relax and really enjoy a space you worked in. But that’s on me, not you. So anyway . . .
“Anyway, I’ve never been good with material change, and when I really think about it now, I think I would have procrastinated no matter how much I’d spoken about wanting a relaxing space. I was already making my own excuses, even thinking how having a pain in my back from that horrible futon was the reason I knew I was back in New York.”
She heard a laugh, and knew it wasn’t her.
“Yeah. It is funny. But the thing is, you saw through my excuses without even seeing them. You listened to what I said I wanted, and you gave it to me in a way that said ‘me.’ You made that space mine in a way I couldn’t believe was possible no matter what I’d said.”
“Thank you.”
“The thing is, though, there’s something missing, something that I couldn’t add with my own stuff. And that ‘missing’ thing is you. The kind of you that would come over a lot, and leave things and let your stuff intermingle with mine, so I could smell your scent on the pillow when I come back from a trip, see your dishes in my fridge . . . that I’ll let you into places that aren’t just my apartment. Right now I heart you, but I feel like . . . I know there’s more than that ‘heart’ between us. I want a beginning, a new one. Another chance.”
“You trust me to respect your limits?”
He nodded. “Yeah. Because I think some limits are too silly to have and need to be challenged.” And then he smiled. “I expect you to know the difference between the hard ones and the soft ones.”
She nodded. “Okay.”
He put his arms around her, and she felt the press of his lips on hers. He tasted like latkes, sufganiyot, and wine. And maybe the sweet hint of forever.