Page 28 of Letters to Molly (Maysen Jar 2)

“I’m happy even on the days when the kids are with Finn.” Happy. Lonely.

“Gavin seems like a nice guy.”

“He is nice.”

He’d come into the restaurant every now and then to say hello, and Poppy had been pulling for him since the beginning. She thought his goatee and tortoise-shell glasses were sexy.

“Why don’t you give him a chance?” she asked.

“Maybe.” Last night, I’d considered dating again, but then I’d had sex with Finn and remembered I didn’t have time to deal with this kind of drama. Not that I could share that with Poppy. “Timing hasn’t worked out with Gavin. We’ll see how I feel if he asks me out again.”

She rolled her eyes. “You can ask him out.”

“No.” I scoffed. “Never happening. The guy asks out the girl.”

It was one of those things I’d been hung up on since I was a teenager. Maybe because of my parents’ conservative upbringing, but I liked the idea of a man courting a woman. I liked it when the man took charge and went out on a limb to show the woman he was interested. When he jumped out of his comfort zone because she was worth the risk.

The letter in my purse popped into my mind.

I should have asked Finn about the letter. Why didn’t I? It had been right on the tip of my tongue, but I’d chickened out and swallowed it back.

Ignorance was bliss, right? Knowing why he’d sent the letter now, why he hadn’t sent it back then, was guaranteed to sting. The truth was, I didn’t have the guts to bear that pain.

After we’d divorced, things between us were strained fo

r months. Finn was so angry at me, rightly so, that he wasn’t able to look at me. He spoke to me only when absolutely necessary. We moved around each other like magnets turned the wrong way, pushing instead of pulling.

Then one night he came over to talk.

It was right after Poppy had started dating Cole. My theory was that he’d finally stopped punishing me because she’d inspired him.

Poppy had found happiness after heartbreak, and Finn wanted that too. He admitted to being an asshole since the divorce and confessed he was tired of the animosity. I’m ready to let it go, he said.

I remember holding my breath as he spoke that night. I sat on the couch, stupidly thinking for a few blissful seconds that he wanted to get back together. That the next words out of his mouth would be he still loved me, he forgave me, and he wanted to put our family back together.

Nope. He wanted to date again. To move on, like Poppy had. She’d found love after Jamie had died. She’d found Cole.

He wanted new love too. If I’d had any oxygen left in my lungs, those words would have stolen the rest. The tiny shards of my broken heart had turned to dust, because he’d wanted closure.

Was the letter another piece of his quest for closure?

Finn would never forgive me for having a one-night stand with another man. He’d made it clear that he was looking for the next Mrs. Alcott, not at the former.

My guess was this letter was another mechanism for him to put things to rest. To dissolve everything Finn and Molly.

I didn’t need or want Finn to spell it out for me, so along with last night, I was pretending that letter had never happened. If Finn had something to say, he could be the one to bring it up, not me.

“Will you make me a promise?” Poppy asked.

“I don’t like the sound of this.”

She giggled. “Please say yes if and when Gavin asks you out. Say yes if any guy asks you out. I want you to be happy, Molly-moo.”

“Ooof. Pulling out the big guns.” She must be really worried about me if she was using the nickname she’d given me our freshman year in college. “The last time you whipped out the Molly-moo was when you needed me to take the kids so you and Cole could disappear to go ‘skiing’ in Big Sky and not actually leave your hotel room.”

She laughed. “That was a really good weekend. And I recall getting a Poppy-bear when I was hesitating to eat my first dinner with Cole.”

“Remember that, do you?”