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Seeing her with him made me want to bleach my eyeballs.
“Nice legs.” Oh no he did not! He did. He fucking did!
After spending an inordinate amount of time trying to push her away, having her actually go did not feel good.
“Jesus, that’s a big damn dick, Joe.” “Shut up, Molloy,” he snapped. “Don’t fucking say that. It makes it worse.”
“Nice everything.”
She sucked in a sharp breath before whispering, “When we’re grown up and gone from this town, we’ll get our happy ending, won’t we?” “Yeah, Shan,” I replied, hitching my bag up on my shoulder. “You’re going to have an epic happy ending.” “So are you, Joe,” she replied softly. “I just know it.”
“There’s only one small problem with your song choice,” I offered dryly. “I’m not your babe, Molloy.” “Whose fault is that?” she came right back with, not looking away and not backing down. “Hmm. I wonder.”
Molloy asked, switching up CDs and pressing track three on her stereo. The Goo Goo Dolls blasted through the speakers.
“Yeah, Molloy.” My voice was thick as I wrestled with a million complicated fucking emotions. “It is.”
“Bullshit. Comfortable isn’t as good as it gets,” Joey challenged, narrowing his eyes. “You shouldn’t settle for comfortable, Molloy. You shouldn’t settle for anything less than being in love to the point of madness. The only person that you should be settling for is the person who unsettles you the most. The person who drives you to the brink of suicide because he or she makes you feel so fucking much that you can’t catch your breath or remotely function without them.
“And what’s more is you won’t want to. You won’t want to breathe, or feel, or fucking function without them. That’s how you’ll know that it’s a real relationship, Molloy. Only when you’re feeling the most discomfort you’ve ever felt in your entire life should you even consider settling. Because that’s when you’ll know you’re in love, which sounds to me like a hell of a lot nicer way to live than settling for someone you have nothing in common with because it’s comfortable.”
“If you only knew what I was trying to spare you from, you wouldn’t push for this.” “Push for what?” I demanded, heart thudding violently. “Your friendship?” “Push for anything from me,” he roared back. “Fuck!”
“And nice legs.” “I’m wearing jeans tonight.” “Not in my head.”
“Any more debauchery and your wings won’t take you up to heaven.” “Then I’ll just have to stay in hell with you, won’t I?” she teased back, swiping the bottle out of my hand and taking a huge gulp.
“If I had a packet of Rolos right now, I’d give you my last one.” “Yeah?” I smiled, indulging her. “Well, if I had a packet of Rolos right now, Molloy, I’d give them all to you.”
I was her…nothing. I was her nothing.
The emotions that had been drowning me for five years.
“I always check the product before I make any purchases.” “And?” She blew out a shaky breath and nodded. “Oh, I’ve been sold on you for a long time now, Joey Lynch.”
“Have you seen your girl?” Joey taunted. “Of course I was interested. In fact, I was very fucking interested. Still am.”
“I see you, Joey Lynch,” she continued, stroking her nose against mine.
“Hmm?” Reaching up, she cupped the back of my neck. “Don’t look at you like you matter?”
“You need to run.” She shook her head. “I don’t run.” “Run,” I desperately urged. “Run, Molloy.” “I’m staying right here,” she whispered. “With you.”
“The quintessential lost boy.” Her lips grazed mine as she spoke. “Don’t worry, Peter Pan, I’ll be your Wendy.”
“Ride it out, Molloy,” he coaxed, using his fingers and tongue to touch me in ways that made my body burn and my back arch off the mattress. “Fuck my tongue, baby.”
I smiled sweetly up at him. “Tell my dad that you prefer servicing his daughter rather than the cars in his garage.”
“Hmm,” Joey slurred. “If you let me come out of the doghouse, I’ll let you cum on my face.”
“I am who I am, Molloy, and who I am is not good for you!”
“You should want me to leave, Molloy,” he argued. “You shouldn’t be blocking the door, baby. You should be holding it goddamn open.”
“No, and thank fuck for that because contrary to how I act sometimes, I don’t want you to run,” he admitted gruffly, chest heaving. “I want time with you, Molloy. I do. I want to be all kinds of right for you. But I have walls and limits and boundaries, and the only way I can be with you, get close to you, is if you stay the fuck behind them!”
“There are going to be times when I look like this, and I’m not going to be able to give you an explanation. I can’t give you the words, Molloy, because those words will cost other people too much.”
“Joey.” My lips twitched. “Molloy.” “Nice shirt.” “Nice legs.”
“Not Jesus, just Joey.”
“But don’t ever think that I don’t have feelings,” he said, and then pressed a kiss to my mouth. “Because the only time that I allow myself to feel anything is when I’m with you.”
“You can either come or you can kill me,” he warned, prying my thighs open. “You can’t do both.” “The first one,” I quickly replied, breathless. “I can do the second one later.” Joey chuckled. “That’s my girl.”
“I’m not your boyfriend, Molloy.” “Oh yeah, I forgot,” she shot back with a grin. “You’re my bitch.”
One minute I was twelve years old and locking eyes on her at the school gates, and the next I was seventeen, standing in her house, about to tell her father that she was mine.
“Do you love my daughter?” Heart thumping violently in my chest, I felt myself nod. “Entirely.” And then I heard myself say, “For about five years now.”
“I took a chance on that boy, and I’m glad that I did because the man that small boy turned into is a man who I am damn proud of.”
“Because I love your brother, and your brother loves you. Keeping you safe is important to him, which makes it important to me.”
“Don’t hate me, Molloy,” Joey mumbled, falling into the passenger seat the moment I let him go to open the car door. “You’re all I have to wake up for in the morning.”
He was going to break my heart, I knew it. I could see it coming from a mile away, and I still couldn’t seem to get my self-preservation instincts to kick in and protect me from the inevitable.
“I absolutely don’t love you, Joey Lynch,” she breathed, fist knotting in my shirt as she tugged my face down to hers. “And I always won’t.”
“The first time I laid eyes on you, and the first time I understood what it meant to have my heart beating for someone outside of my family.”
“That’s your lot, Lynch. Your first, last, and only virgin. You just signed your dick away in a blood oath, buddy.”
“It’s like you know you’re about to get your ass handed to you by exposing yourself to this person, and you know that you’re fucking around on the edge of something that could potentially break and ruin you, but it’s just so damn thrilling, so consumingly addicting that you’re willing to take the risk and do just about anything to be with that person.”
“He’s all alone in t-the world.” “No, he’s not,” I assured her in a shaky tone as I ran for the door with only one destination in mind. “He has me.”
“When I was small, I used to ask him what the words of the song meant. He would always say that one day, when I found myself in love with a girl, I wouldn’t have to ask him what the words meant because I would already know.” His arms tightened around me. “Turns out he was right.”
Aoife Molloy had a heart of gold and was hell-bent on handing it over to a piece of shit like me. She was my momentary escape from all of the fucking dark. She was the only bit of brightness I had in my life, and it scared me to think of how little else I had going for me.
Without her, I had nothing. Without her, I was nothing.
“Because you might not love yourself, but I do. I love you enough for the both of us,” she whispered, fisting my cock in her hand. “And if keeping you here with me means that you’re off the streets and safe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
