Page 16 of Joy to the Girls (She Gets the Girl #2)

The second we get back to our cozy room at the inn, I make a beeline to the bathroom and turn on the shower.

“Babe, are you coming?” I call out, then step back to take a deep calming breath. After she warms up and gets out of the shower… I’ll tell her the truth.

Alex appears in the doorway a moment later, still wrapped in her big fuzzy blanket. “Come on. Let’s get you warmed up. Oh my God, you must still be freezing.” I rub her arms over the blanket while the water heats up.

“Molly Parker?”

When I look up to meet her eyes, she’s looking right back into mine. And the way she’s looking at me makes me stop rubbing her shoulders and hold my breath so that the only thing I hear is the running of the water and the beating of my own heart under my skin.

“I love you.” She says it slowly, quietly. Three little words said with such depth that I find it impossible to believe that they’ve ever made anyone else feel like… this .

I pull the blanket off her shoulders and then wrap my fingers around the bottom of her sweater, revealing her bare skin underneath. Goose bumps rise along the path of my fingers as I peel it off.

“I love you, too,” I whisper, and the second her head is freed, she’s kissing me and pulling my shirt off at the same time.

“Will you Dirty Dancing lift me?” she asks as we pull apart just long enough to clumsily step out of our jeans. Then I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and pull her lips almost back to mine.

“No,” I whisper against her lips, and she laughs into my mouth.

“Fine then—” She digs her hands into my hips and surprises me by lifting me up onto the bathroom counter. A gasp escapes me as she tucks herself between my thighs, and I wrap my legs around her, locking her in. She kisses down my neck and across my shoulder blade as I undo her bra and then—

“Ow!” I yelp, jolted out of her gravitational pull on me that I hadn’t even realized I’d gotten sucked into.

“What?!” Alex yells, startling away from me.

I reach behind me to find the culprit and pull out a fake mini holly bush in a plastic pot next to the sink. A sign. That this is not something I should be doing when such a huge secret lies between us.

“This just poked me in the ass!” I hold it out to her, and she takes it but immediately throws it over her shoulder into the bedroom.

She pulls me off the counter and right up against her.

“Get in with me,” she says, her voice like butter as she flicks her head toward the steamy shower.

And oh my God do I want to.

My feet even move to follow her before my brain can catch up.

“Wait, stop,” I say more to myself than to her when it finally does. She turns to look at me, her eyebrows questioning. “There’s something I have to tell you.”

Alex shakes her head as she wraps her arm around my lower back and pulls me smoothly into her. “We can talk after.”

“No, I have to tell you now,” I reply, but she’s already leaning in to kiss me hard. It takes everything in me to push her gently away from me and take a step back. “Alex, I’m serious.”

My chest aches as my brain tries to convince my mouth to just say it , but it feels like I can’t get past the lump in my throat.

I have no idea how she’s going to react, if she’ll still want to have sex after, if she’ll still feel the same way about me.

Will she be more upset that I want to go or that I haven’t told her until now?

But Cora is probably right. My mom is probably right. Alex loves me.

This isn’t going to change that.

And… I can’t keep this from her anymore. I don’t want to. She’s the first person I want to tell these types of things to. I have to stop worrying and just get it over with, like May did tonight. Rip the Band-Aid off.

“There’s something I’ve been wanting to tell you. Well… something I should’ve told you a long time ago,” I say, looking everywhere except at her.

She takes a very long, very deep breath. “Okay, good. Because there’s something I have to tell you too. Well… ask,” she replies.

My eyes jump instantly to hers and she looks… nervous?

I grab my shirt from off the sink faucet and slip it on, then cross my arms over my chest and she mirrors me.

“What do you have to tell me ?” I ask. I mean… is she going abroad next fall too? I instantly remind myself to tamp down my attitude, considering the massive secret I’ve been keeping this whole time.

“Why do I have to be the one to go first? You go,” she says, defensively too as the hot shower steam fills the bathroom.

“Fine. We’ll both say whatever it is on three. Okay?”

“Fine,” she replies.

“One.”

I close my eyes.

“Two.”

I hold my breath.

“Three.”

“I’m doing an MFA program abroad in London!” I finally admit.

“Will you move in with me?” Alex asks at the same time. Both of us pop our eyes open so wide, they might just fall out of our heads.

“What?” she asks.

I close my eyes again and shake my head, trying to comprehend what she just said. “You want to move in toge—”

“Molly.” Alex holds her hand out to cue me to stop talking. She enunciates every word that comes next. “What do you mean you’re doing an MFA program in London ?”

“Well, it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a… a while….” I stop talking when I see her eyes turning glossy. But not because she’s sad. She’s angry.

“Yeah. I’d say, Molly.” Her voice shakes as she tries to keep it low. “That’s usually what happens before you make a life-altering decision to move out of the country for however many years.”

And of course she’s right, but her tone, her immediate rush to anger, makes my blood begin to boil too because—

“See, this is exactly what I was afraid of. I knew you wouldn’t take it well. I knew it. But then Cora and my mom both told me it would be fine , that you would understand why I need to do this, and I was naive enough to just believe them. Or maybe I just hoped they were right.”

Alex lets out a laugh drained completely of humor as she turns her back to me.

“You told Cora but not your girlfriend of three years ?”

I throw my arms up in the air and let them slap back against my sides. “Well, I’m telling you now… and look how well it’s going.” I turn my back to her too, watching her distorted reflection in the fogged-up bathroom mirror. “I wonder why I waited so long.”

“Molly, have you even thought about our future? Not just yours?” she asks loudly, emotion filling her voice again as she finally turns back around to face me in the mirror.

Tears roll down her red cheeks, burnt from the cold.

“Because I have. All I’ve been picturing for months is us in an adorable town house that I found on Mintwood with a fenced-in yard for the dachshund corgi mix you’ve always wanted.

Or if you hated that, above the bookstore on Liberty, because I know it’s your favorite spot in the city.

Us in a million different places because none of the details mattered as long as I was with you.

And in all the different versions I’ve dreamed up of next year, of our future, not a single one has included you going to London and leaving me behind. ”

I can’t believe I actually thought she would support me in this. I can’t believe I thought she’d have my back. Always. I finally make myself turn around to face the real her instead of a reflection. Tears fill my eyes, and again I have to fight to speak past the lump in my throat.

“Well, then, I guess I’m not the only one who kept their plans a secret.

Because all these ideas, all these plans, it wouldn’t be our future, would it, Alex?

It would just be your future, you planning and bringing me along like it’s freshman year all over again.

You never even asked me about any of it,” I say before turning and walking out of the bathroom.

She slams the door behind me not a second later.

I throw myself onto the bed, burying my face in the pillow, and quickly soak it through with tears.

Fuck. FUCK. FUCK!

What is happening? How did it go this way?

I thought I’d get to tell her all about the meeting and the campus and the program and everything I’ve been holding in for all these months.

I knew it would be hard for her to hear, but I thought once she let me explain why I need to do this and why that doesn’t mean I don’t want a future for us, she’d at least try to understand.

She’s always been the one who has seen me completely, who has known exactly what I need even when I don’t know it. I thought she’d be able to see how different I am from the girl she met freshman year and know that I need this. I thought she’d support me.

I lie there in the dark listening to the sound of the water sloshing against the bottom of the shower, wondering what Alex is thinking. Wondering if I could fix all this by walking back in there right now. Wondering if she even wants me to.

Eventually I hear the squeak of the nozzle turning off and the glass door sliding open. When she finally steps into the room, I can see her silhouette in the bathroom light, but I know it’s too dark for her to see me. She drops her towel and then pulls a shirt over her head.

I wait for her to say something.

I wait for me to say something. Anything.

But neither of us does, even as she climbs in next to me. We lie there with our backs facing each other, and she lets out one very heavy sigh. It’s the last sound heard from either of us all night.