All the Difference (21 page)

“Molly.” His voice still held the same earnest warmth. “Hey. It's good to see you again.”

“You, too.” Molly smiled and, for all her effort, could not make the muscles in her face go slack. “It's good to see you, too.”

She couldn't think of anything more to add. For a brief
moment, with Liam standing so close to her, with the clamor of pub-goers calling out for drinks muted by the sound of the blood pounding through her veins, the weight of her troubles fell away. For that second, Molly forgot that she was pregnant, that she had a fiancé at home, that she was unemployed. She had no worries or fears about the weeks and months to come. They suddenly became the minor details of her life, the extraneous, the silly little minutiae that didn't really matter, especially when she was surrounded by the noise of the bar and the dim light and the knowledge that Liam was right in front of her. How Molly wished she could live inside a bubble of that feeling.

Liam smiled at her and placed his beer on the bar. As he leaned forward and lightly touched her elbow with his hand, all Molly could focus on was the feeling of her nerve endings sparking and the ocean-blue eyes of the man in front of her.

“How've you been? It's so funny to see you here. My brother and I are going to that concert at the Electric Factory later and stopped in on a whim to get a drink.”

“You guys are going tonight?” Molly touched his arm before she could stop herself. “My friend and I are going to that show, too. I heard tickets sold out in twenty minutes.” The band playing that night had recently exploded onto the popular scene, bringing with it a mix of bluegrass and folk music that quickly became trendy among other indie groups. Neither of them mentioned that it had been Molly who introduced Liam to the band's music, years earlier, on an impromptu weekend road trip to Maine because one of them wanted a lobster roll. Liam cleared his throat.

“So, I just ran into a couple of the guys from the office.” He cocked his head, curious. He hadn't seemed to notice the swell
of her belly under her shirt. “Word on the street is that life has gotten a little, um, busy for you?”

Molly laughed at his polite phrasing. “What have you heard?”

“Well, let's see. Apparently, you're what they call a ‘freelancer' now—” Liam grinned when Molly groaned.

“Well, that's the kindest way to say it, yes.”

“—and that you, for all intents and purposes, have settled down.”

So he'd known about the pregnancy, but was being discreet. Molly could have hugged him.

“I'm glad you're happy, Molly, really.” Liam paused for a moment and watched her face. Molly was very aware of the distance between them, the inches between his body and hers, and the impulse to lay her hand over his and keep it there.

Molly's smile faltered. “Well, you know. Thank you.” She swallowed hard. She noticed new laugh lines around Liam's eyes, and was startled by an urge to reach out and run her fingertips along them. She shook her head and chuckled. “I can't pretend I'm not itching to get another job, though.”

“Well, yeah, I don't blame you!” Liam replied. “You were the best PR whiz kid S&G had in their arsenal. You were amazing. That's why I was surprised to hear that you'd left. I can't imagine you doing anything else.”

Liam took a sip of his stout, and when Molly saw his bicep flex under his T-shirt she faltered in her response. She felt her cheeks heat up, picturing the tattoo that was etched into his right shoulder blade under the soft cotton. She'd discovered the circular Celtic cross, acquired after Liam returned home from a hiking tour of Ireland, one rainy Saturday afternoon when the Phillies game they were supposed to see got washed out and they
found themselves otherwise occupied. This was months after Liam started with Shulzster & Grace. It was also right before Liam's on-and-off-again girlfriend from college moved back home from Colorado and asked him for another chance.

Molly had a necklace she kept at home that bore the same symbol as Liam's cross. She'd tucked it away, far in the back of one her dresser drawers, soon after she'd wandered into Barnes & Noble that fateful Friday night. The pendant was still there, safely cushioned in its protective box.

“How about you?” Molly asked. “Do you miss it at all?” She meant the job, she thought.

Liam shook his head and laughed. “No way, Molly. Becoming a teacher was the best decision I could have made. That job is the hardest, most fun thing I've ever done. It's a weird combo.”

“That's funny. That's exactly what my friend Dan says.”

Liam stood up straighter. “Wait, I think I know your friend Dan. He's Jenny Kim's husband, right?”

Molly nodded. Over Liam's shoulder she spotted Jenny at the other end of the room. She was sitting by herself, and as Molly watched, Jenny looked around before pulling her phone from her bag in a discreet motion. Molly knew she was scrolling through the notifications, having seen her do it thousands of times to check for a text from Dan. Molly saw her friend's shoulders sag for the briefest of moments, an uncharacteristic move for Jenny. A former coworker sat down in the seat beside her, ready to chat, and Jenny shoved the phone back into her bag in time to answer the friend's question, all without missing a beat. Molly bit the inside of her cheek and turned her attention back to Liam's eyes. Her blood began flowing a little more quickly once again. She could feel the baby moving inside her belly, reminding her of her place in reality.

“Speaking of married people, how are things with Stephanie? I saw the engagement announcement in the paper a while back,” Molly said. “I'm glad it worked out for you.”

Molly spoke the truth. Liam was one of the few men she'd met who deserved all the good that came his way. To her surprise, Liam shrugged and rolled his eyes to the side.

“Yeah, actually, it didn't so much. She decided to move back to Denver.”

“What? I'm so sorry.”

“Nah, it's okay. It wasn't meant to be. Her job was more important to her, she said.”

Molly shook her head. “How so? What was she doing out there?” To Molly's further astonishment, Liam chuckled. He placed his beer on the bar.

“Ah, she decided to go into full-time missionary work.”

“Okay . . .”

Liam laughed outright. “She became a nun.”

Molly laughed, too, before she could stop herself. “Oh, no, really? Oh, Liam, I'm so sorry. I guess you can't really compete with God, right?”

Liam shook his head. “No, I suppose you can't. So, she's back there, and I'm back here, right where it all started.” He fell quiet, his eyes sweeping her face before meeting her gaze again. Molly didn't speak.

“I gotta admit, Mol,” he said. “I'm a little jealous of you.”

Molly felt her eyes widen in surprise.

“I'm serious, Molly. It looks like you've got it all. Okay, so maybe not the job, so much”—Liam winced in apology as Molly grimaced—“but you have the important stuff. You're getting married. You're having a baby.”

He took another sip of his beer and shrugged, looking away from Molly for the first time since they'd begun talking. “I can't wait to have children of my own one day. I think that's why I like teaching so much—I have a hundred and ten kids to take care of right now while I wait for my one. And here you are, already there.”

He didn't miss the look of dismay Molly felt flash across her face.

“Did I just embarrass myself? I did, didn't I?” Liam laughed and looked around at the throngs of people in the bar. “I should go find my brother before I make it worse.”

“It was good to see you, Liam.” Molly's voice was soft.

He and Molly looked at each other for a silent moment. Neither of them moved. Pat swept Liam's empty pint glass from the bar—the bartender didn't ask if he'd like to stay for another—and broke the spell.

“It was good to see you, too, Molly. Good luck with everything.” Liam reached his hand out and laid it on her belly, then withdrew it in a sudden movement. “Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to do that. That was weird.”

“It's fine,” Molly assured him. “People do it all the time.”

She could feel the warmth where his hand had been after he'd walked away. She took a breath and looked at the crush of people around her, the noises and smells of the bar flooding her senses again with a shock. She noticed that her engagement ring had gotten stuck on her swollen finger and, wincing with discomfort, twisted it until the diamond was centered again. She couldn't find Jenny among the groups of people around her, so she moved toward the bathroom. She was ready to leave for the show, and was determined to not look for Liam in the crowd once they got there.

Molly opened the door to the bathroom just as another
woman was walking out, shaking her head at Molly as if in warning. Acting on instinct, Molly pushed her way into the room before she'd even heard the sound and rushed to Jenny when she saw her. Crumpled against the wall of an open stall, her best friend sat crouched on the filthy floor, arms wrapped around her knees. Her sobs were bouncing off of the dingy metal partitions beside the toilet. She was drunk, weeping, and mumbling about broken bellies. Molly patted Jenny's hair away from her face, where it hung like a curtain, wet from her tears, as if Jenny were a child who'd been bullied on the playground and left behind.

Molly watched her friend wipe the smudges of mascara away from her eyes with the back of her hand. Jenny had everything that was important in the world waiting for her in an apartment in Old City. No, Molly thought, she didn't have the baby yet, but when that baby did come, the child would be like a Sixers play-off game won in overtime: all the more exhilarating because the fight to get there was so much harder. Molly pictured Liam, single now, still out in the bar, talking with his brother. She had let him walk away because she'd thought he didn't want her. She'd moved on, but he had come back, because sometimes life's timing doesn't move by our own personal clocks. Molly bent down, moving awkwardly around the weight of her swollen belly. She slung Jenny's arm around her neck for support and helped her friend walk through the door.

Molly woke the next day with a brain like a mosh pit and a horrible need to use the bathroom, but she couldn't figure out how to get out of her bed. One leg was trapped under her C-shaped pregnancy pillow, the other tangled in the mess of sheets that
snaked under and around her swollen body. She looked over her shoulder for help, but Scott's side of the mattress was empty save for a crumpled pile of T-shirts he'd left at the foot of the bed. Her back still throbbed from the pressure of being on her feet all night with a belly full of baby, and Molly pushed herself upright to extract herself from her self-induced trap. She rolled out of bed and stood, only to trip over another pile of clothes—Scott's shorts, this time, and for some reason they were on her side of the room. She threw out a hand to steady herself on the dresser and trudged out to the bathroom in the hallway.

Once there, she found a wet towel lying in a heap outside the bathtub. Molly stooped down to use it as a mop after her foot landed in the water pooling on the tile. She gulped when she saw that she was also clutching her fiancé's dirty underwear in her hand, and dropped the boxers into the hamper faster than she knew her swollen fingers could move. She used the toilet and brushed her teeth, worries of Jenny swirling through her head, battling for dominance with the exhaustion that lay thick over her brain like a storm.

Molly was still wearing the oversized T-shirt of Scott's she'd pulled on for bed the night before when she stumbled downstairs to the kitchen. She found her fiancé standing at the island in his pajama bottoms, barefoot and shirtless. He was scrolling through his email on his phone, intent, holding a coffee cup in his hand. Molly's heart began pounding in her chest, moving at a much faster pace than her muddled thoughts. She reached for a glass of water, but stopped at the sight of the coffeepot.