She ignores me. Gordie leans his full weight into her. Her grip tightens and her jaw clenches as she kneels, embraces my dog. I hear her sniffle once into his coat. Then again. She keeps her face buried and her shoulders curl inward like she's trying to make herself as small as possible.
Fuck. I have no idea what to do with a crying woman. Flirting, I can handle. Bickering, absolutely. But genuine tears in my kitchen turn me into the most useless man on the planet. I lower myself onto the stool next to hers and sit there like an idiot for a few seconds before I try.
I spread my hand over her back and rub in what I hope are soothing circles. "Hey. It's going to be okay."
Mollie pulls her face out of Gordie's fur and wipes her nose with the back of her hand. Her eyes are red and her chin is doing that wobbly thing that means more tears are on deck. "It's not just the apartment." She sniffles hard and stares at the counter. "I mean it is, but it's not. I worked really hard to get that place, Thorne. Like, embarrassingly hard. I budgeted down to the dollar every month so I could prove that I didn't need Beck to cosign my lease or my parents to float me rent."
I stay quiet because it feels like the right call.
"That apartment was the first thing that was just mine. Not Beck's little sister's apartment. Not a bedroom in someone else's house. Mine." She laughs, but it sounds miserable. "And now I'm sitting in yourkitchen wearing your clothes because I literally have nowhere else to go. It's like the universe looked at my whole independence thing and said, nahhhhh."
Her voice cracks on the last word. She presses her lips together, pissed at herself for letting me see it. Gordie nudges his massive head under her hand and she scratches him absently while she pulls herself back together.
"Sorry." She clears her throat. "I'm sure the last thing you want is me sobbing all over your dog and dumping my problems on you."
She's wrong. I want to hear every single one of her problems and then fix them with my bare hands. It’s an automatic thought, but so pathetic that I'd rather skate suicides for an hour than say it out loud. Trying to keep my face neutral, I shrug.
"You're allowed to have big feelings about losing your place, Mollie. That's not a crime."
She blinks at me like I've just spoken Mandarin. "Did you just say 'big feelings'?"
"Rosie's been teaching me emotional vocabulary. Don't make it weird."
That gets a real laugh out of her, small and watery but genuine. She wipes her eyes one more time with the sleeve of my hoodie and gives Gordie a final squeeze before letting him go. He immediately parks himself at her feet, enormous head resting on her toes, and settles in like he's appointed himself her personal bodyguard.
Welcome to the club, Gord.
Mollie’s been here two days and the house already feels different, better, in ways I'm not going to think about.
The house smells like her. Her shampoo, warm and a little sweet, and underneath it, whatever candle she's been burning in the guest room. Her twelve pairs of Converse are multiplying by the front door. Her aerial silks, something I didn’t even realize that she did for exercise, are in the doorframe. After a few days of watching Mollie almost crack her skull trying to hang upside down, I reinforced the spot where silks hang in the doorframe for her without being asked.
Because I’m a huge fucking softie on the inside and she clearly needed the help.
Gordie runs inside, barks at me, then gallops downstairs. Mollie gives a loud whoop of laughter as I jog after him. She's standing in the middle of the living room and Gordie has his front paws on her shoulders.
"Down," I tell Gordie, my expression pinching. Gordie drops but continues looking at Mollie, his tongue lolling.
"You're very sweet, aren't you?" she coos to him, petting his ears how he likes. "You scare everyone, but underneath you're a sweetheart."
"He’s deceptively cuddly."
"He slept in my bed last night." She picks up the stuffed sloth and moves it over to the couch. Gordie follows her, jumps onto the couch, and then settles against the sloth like they are old friends.
"He is cuddly," she notes. "It's extra cute."
"You might want to put the sloth upstairs if you don't want it to smell like Gordie."
She looks at Gordie and the stuffed animal lying together. "How can I deprive him?"
"Don't get used to this," I tell the dog. "It's only temporary."
Gordie closes his eyes, uninterested in my angst. Typical.
My phone pings and I avoid Mollie's glare by checking it. Then I groan. "Beck says that Rosie has something called impetigo and it's super contagious.”
"Impetigo sounds like something out of a zombie movie." She wrinkles her nose.
"You should follow my rules, then. Be a nice house guest or face impetigo."
