Page 44 of Bed and Breakup (Dial Delights #15)

Robin

By the time I finish airing out the dining room and sweeping up the sand and ash spilling out of the fireplace, I’m covered in grime and fucking fuming.

“What was that?” I say, bursting into the penthouse apartment to find Molly freshly showered and wrapped in a robe, reading a book in our armchair. “I thought we were in this together.”

“Really?” she says, jumping back into fight mode so fast I wonder if she was even really reading. “Because it didn’t seem like we were ‘in this together’ when you blamed me for the damper closing.”

“And it didn’t seem very ‘in this together’ when I had to lead the tour because you were too busy moping around and giving me angry looks.”

“Right,” Molly says, tossing her book on the footrest. “Because playing HGTV-show host is so much harder than all the manual labor I did.”

“Why are we doing this?” I say, throwing my arms up. “The whole point of this stupid thing was to get back on the same team, sell the inn, and leave on a positive note. If that’s not happening, why are we even here?”

“We’re supposed to be fixing things between us.

Sharing the burden of the reno. Moving past all the things we used to fight about.

” Molly’s expression goes pained, then quickly guarded, gaze hardened, jaw set.

“And instead we’re fighting over the same old garbage.

I’m still doing all the grunt work, you’re still getting all the glory. ”

“I’m not going for glory! I’m trying to sell the inn, like we agreed, so we can both benefit. And you don’t want to lead a tour anyway!” I rip off my soot-covered shirt and stomp into the bathroom. “I’m done with this argument. I need a shower.”

I slam the bathroom door behind me and turn on the water. I pull off the rest of my filthy clothes and step under the cool stream, mumbling comebacks I wish I’d thought of a minute earlier. My eyes are closed when I hear the door open.

“Fine, give up,” Molly says over the sound of water hitting tile. “Might as well move out now too. Leave me alone to handle the rest by myself, again. ”

Annoyed to hell, I slide back the shower curtain, not at all bothered by the fact that I’m fully naked. “I’m not leaving,” I say firmly. “We’re seeing this through to the end, together, like we planned.”

Molly’s eyes travel down my body, then drag themselves back up to my face. I let her look. “That was the plan the first time too, yet I still found myself standing alone on the porch while you drove away,” she says, her voice shaking.

I see something in Molly’s expression now that I was too distracted by my own rage to notice earlier: hurt.

Molly’s not being logical or mature right now because her inner child is afraid of being left.

These past five months have shown me so many ways she’s grown, ways both of us have evolved.

But maybe Key was right. I’ve set her up to feel that pain of being abandoned all over again.

We get so caught up in our old fight patterns that I forget things are different now, that what drove us apart the last time doesn’t have to this time.

This arrangement is supposed to be healing, not digging deeper into old wounds.

I step out of the shower and wrap Molly in a hug.

“What are you doing?” she says, tense in my arms, sooty water dripping on the floor around us.

“I’m sorry, Moll,” I say into the fabric of her robe. “I shouldn’t have blamed you for the fireplace. This fight? This is the old us. Not the new us. Can we take a breath and let this old shit go? Be kind to each other again?”

Molly inhales, exhales, then relaxes into me. “I’m sorry for leaving you to clean up,” she says, voice cracking. “This morning, the stress, the flat tire…it took me back to—” She can’t bring herself to say it.

“To then,” I finish. “When I left you.” It’s the first time I’ve said it out loud like that.

I’ve always tried to deny it, to insist that I asked her to come with me, that, if anything, she abandoned me by not agreeing to go to Portland, a plan I made without her input.

I see now that neither of us was blameless, even if both of us felt like the victim.

I rub circles on Molly’s back as I say, “But until recently, we’ve been enjoying being here together. Haven’t we?”

“That’s what scares me,” Molly admits, pulling back with her arms around my waist. “The longer we’re here together, living in this weird nostalgia world, the harder it’s going to be to leave it. Don’t you see that?”

“Yeah, I do,” I admit. Every day I’ve spent with Molly has made it harder to picture leaving, even if every day is supposed to take us closer to the end we planned.

“But I have to figure out how to move forward,” Molly says. “So do you. Your dreams were always bigger than this inn. I’m sorry I didn’t support you like I should’ve back then. You deserve someone who cheers you on, not someone who stands in your way.”

“ Never, Molly,” I say, stunned. I grab Molly’s face between my hands and look at her earnestly. “I never felt like you were standing in my way. I could only ever dream so big because of you.”

Molly’s glance darts across my face, looking for truth.

“I mean it,” I say. “My parents, they always pushed me to be something I wasn’t.

You saw me for who I was. You encouraged me to trust myself, to learn new things, to follow what excites me instead of what impresses others.

Hell, buying this inn was a huge leap of faith, and it’s the only reason I’ve built this career.

I couldn’t have done any of it without you. ”

“I tried to talk you out of opening your restaurant,” Molly says, her voice wobbling. “I tried to convince you to stay here. Because I was selfish.”

I move my palms from Molly’s cheeks to her shoulders, then run them all the way down her arms to grab her hands.

“You weren’t selfish,” I say truthfully.

“I was so eager to prove myself that I was willing to walk away from this beautiful thing we built without figuring out what happened to it next. I promised to be a partner to you, then I made decisions for both of us without really asking what you wanted.”

“I was selfish too,” Molly says, tears dropping from her eyelashes.

“I was so lost in my fear that I wasn’t enough for you that I looked for ways to prove myself right.

So when the opportunity came up for you in Portland, I didn’t fight hard enough for us.

I think there was a part of me that wanted you to leave so I wouldn’t have to keep dreading that it was coming. ”

“You were always enough,” I say, my heart cracking wide open. “I wanted you to come with me. I wanted it to be us in Portland, starting something new. I thought you were too afraid to leave Arkansas. Too afraid we’d take a big swing and miss, and I couldn’t let it keep me from taking the swing.”

“I was afraid.” Molly’s voice quavers. “I’m still afraid.

Afraid to choose someone, something, someplace, and put my whole heart into it only to have it not choose me back.

Especially after I thought we chose each other and the Hummingbird, for better or worse.

I felt like you’d changed your mind about what you wanted back then, and I desperately wanted us to stay like we were in the beginning.

But we couldn’t stay the same. No one can.

Change is the only constant in life, and it’s hard and scary and unpredictable and takes things I love from me.

But I have to accept that nothing lasts forever. I have to learn to let go.”

“I think I’ve been afraid of standing still,” I say, tucking a tuft of Molly’s hair behind her ear.

“After our feature on Inn for a Treat, after all those producers came knocking, and with my dad pushing me to do something bigger, I got it in my head that the Hummingbird was just a jumping-off point. That I was meant to do more. So I chose fame. I chose to go to a bigger town where I could capitalize on my moment in the limelight. Instead of appreciating what I had, I wanted to see how far I could go.”

Molly gulps. “Maybe that’s not a bad thing,” she says. “Maybe it’s smart to look forward instead of back, like I always do. You can still go even further after this is over.”

I pause, wondering if Molly’s right. I’ve done a lot of looking back since I’ve been in Eureka Springs, and it’s taught me a lot.

This conversation alone has changed the way I look at my marriage, my life choices.

I wish the answers for my future would fall out of the sky and land right on top of my head.

“I…I don’t know if I want to go further,” I mumble, looking down at the puddle of water around my feet.

“Not after everything I built fell apart.”

“Things that fall apart can still be fixed.” Molly lets go of my hand to wave toward the bathroom around us. “Like this inn. We brought it back. You could do the same for your career. You can still get what you want.”

“Maybe.” I wipe the tears from Molly’s cheeks and kiss a patch of freckled skin.

Could what she said about fixing things that fall apart be true for our marriage?

Do I want it to be? Eureka Springs and Molly seem like my past, not my future.

But in this moment, with her in my arms, vulnerable and honest and hopeful, I have to wonder.

“For right now, all I want is to enjoy my time here with you, for as long as I can,” I say, the only thing I know to be true.

Molly looks from my eyes to my lips, then leans in and kisses me.

It starts slow and soft, but a rhythm and heat rises behind it, and soon her robe drops to the floor, our bodies pressed together, hers clean and mine still covered in murky gray droplets.

She pulls her lips away for a breath. “Then let’s live in the moment, yeah? ”

I don’t know how we went from fighting to a teary heart-to-heart to being so hungry for each other, but this could be one of our last chances.

I pull Molly into the shower with me, my hands searching out her most sensitive places.

I want to kiss her until every past pain has disappeared, make her heart race enough to drown out the fear of what’s ahead, touch her in the right spots to make us both believe there’s nothing left in the world but us.

—

I’m jolted awake by a buzzing near the bathroom door, where I left my pants.

I gently pull myself from Molly’s softly snoring body and find my phone in the pocket. Seeing my manager’s name on the screen, I quietly shut myself into the bathroom. “Hey, Edgar,” I say. “How’s it going?”

“Are you sick?”

“No?” I say in a confused voice.

“You sound weird,” Edgar says. “Your voice is all hoarse and low.”

“I, uh, just stepped away from something.” I clear my throat. “But I can talk for a minute. What’s up?”

“Amazing news,” Edgar says, more chipper than I’ve heard him in a while. “Are you sitting down?”

I perch on the closed lid of the toilet.

“I am now.” Edgar’s been dying to get me to L.A.

for some guest spots, but once Molly and I made the agreement with Clint, I told him I was out of commission until we sell the inn.

He’s still been emailing me at least once a week with fresh ideas for what I can do next.

I get it. Asking someone who’s so good at his job to sit on his hands is pretty cruel.

“Anders Prescott is leaving his role on Blue Plate Special, ” Edgar tells me.

“Wow, really? He’s the face of that show. How is it going to survive without him?” I say before I begin to realize why Edgar’s calling.

“With you,” Edgar says.

“With…what?”

“They want you to be the new host-slash-judge of Blue Plate Special !” Edgar says gleefully.

He lists a few key details, including a jaw-dropping financial offer that makes my previous TV wages sound like peanuts.

“This is huge,” he continues. “It’s an established brand with a big viewership, so it’s unlikely it’ll be canceled anytime soon.

The producers love that you’ve won before as a contestant, and your appearance as a guest judge back in 2019, and they were big fans of You Can Take It with You.

They want to get you to L.A. as soon as possible to shoot promos.

What do you say? How soon can I get you on set? ”

“I…I have to think about it,” I say, feeling a disconnect between my brain, my heart, and my mouth.

“What?” Edgar says, flabbergasted. “This is a career-defining opportunity of a lifetime. What on earth do you have to think about?”

“Like you just said, it’s a career-defining decision,” I say, just as shocked as Edgar that I’m not jumping at this chance like I would’ve five months ago.

But I’m not the same Robin I was then. “It’s an incredible offer, really.

I know that. Thank you for the negotiating I’m sure you’ve already put into it.

But it also deserves thorough consideration. ”

I hear Edgar’s heavy exhale and can picture him at his desk in his L.A. office, face-palming. “Okay, I hear you,” he says with all the patience he can muster. “Take a few days. A week, even. Maybe the suspense will make them want to pay you even more. But get back to me ASAP, okay?”

“I will,” I promise. After my conversation with Molly, I’m unclear if looking back or looking forward is what will put me on the right path.

I don’t know which I’d be doing by taking the Blue Plate Special role.

And I’m not sure which I’m doing here at the inn.

It feels like both. Or maybe looking within instead of outward.

The only thing I’m clear on is that I’ve got more thinking to do.

“All right. I’ll send over the details for you to review,” Edgar says, the clicking of his keyboard audible through the phone. “Talk soon. I’m sure you’ll make the right decision.”

He’s already hung up by the time I say, “I hope I do.”