Page 21 of Love in the Lab (Delaneys in Love #2)

Chapter eighteen

Molly

A nother lively Saturday night for Molly Delaney , I think dejectedly as I slump on my couch and queue up the next Anne of Green Gables movie. I’m torturing myself, of course.

I couldn’t find the energy to go to the lab today, my hard-won routine failing me at a time when my work is all I have left. By choice. I chose this.

So, it’s a couch day. Honestly, as much as getting out of bed this morning felt insurmountable, I’m surprised I made it all the way to the couch.

Some days are like this, and I’ve found that, despite all my instincts telling me to fight through the malaise, giving in produces better results.

I can wallow for a day and then be back on track the next.

The ache in my chest is new, though, since yesterday morning.

Unfortunately, wallowing isn’t conducive to even the most basic parts of adulting, like feeding myself. The only food I have left in my kitchen from my parents’ visit requires preparation, and I’m certainly in no place to do that today.

But I can make ready-to-eat food appear on my doorstep with my phone in just a few presses of a button. I order chicken tenders, my lifelong comfort food, and watch Anne while I wait for them to arrive.

Twenty minutes later, a notification on my phone tells me that the delivery person can’t get through my apartment building’s front entry door.

I groan. I’ll have to go all the way downstairs to get the food.

I briefly consider if it’s really worth it until my stomach growls.

Fine. I heft myself up from the couch. I don’t bother to put on shoes as I walk out the door while messaging the delivery person to wait for me.

Soon I’m back upstairs, bag of food in hand. I twist the knob to open my apartment door, but it doesn’t turn, and the door doesn’t open. It’s locked.

My apartment door has two locks, and they both use the same key.

One is a deadbolt that I have to remember to turn to the left to lock the door from the inside before I go to bed at night.

From the outside, it can only be locked or unlocked with the key.

I didn’t bring a key with me, and therefore, the deadbolt can’t possibly be engaged.

The second is a doorknob lock. This one has a button on the doorknob on the inside of the apartment that I can press to lock the door from the outside.

The door will still open from the inside when the lock is engaged but then requires the key to open it from the outside.

I drop my head into my hand. I must have forgotten to unlock the doorknob on my way out. Now I have to go all the way back downstairs and outside barefoot to grab my hide-a-key from the bushes—

Except I don’t have a hide-a-key in the bushes anymore, do I?

I groan. There has to be another solution. My brain cycles through ideas. The building super is out of town this weekend, and their backup lives an hour away. I don’t know any of my neighbors. I pat my pockets. I definitely don’t have my keys, right?

I consider calling to Beaker through the door and somehow getting her to bat the doorknob enough to swivel the button. I’m scraping the bottom of the barrel for ideas that don’t involve the man I rejected yesterday morning.

I don’t really have a choice. As embarrassing as it is to have to text Jonathan to let me into my apartment, a part of me thrills in anticipation of seeing him. If he’s even willing to come.

Molly:

I know you’re mad at me but I need help

My phone immediately starts to ring. I answer, and before I can say anything, Jonathan’s voice echoes into the hallway. “What happened? Are you okay?”

I hear loud music and talking in the background.

He’s out, not sitting around his apartment alone like I am.

I sigh, rubbing my knuckles against my chest. The ache there has only expanded upon hearing his voice.

“I’m okay. I locked myself out of my apartment, and I don’t have a hide-a-key outside anymore. ”

Jonathan’s silent for a few seconds, likely remembering, like I am, how he insisted on holding onto my spare apartment key. “Are you somewhere safe?” he asks.

“Yes. I’m in the hallway with my food order.” I sheepishly explain how I came to find myself in this predicament.

“Okay. I’ll be right there.”

“If you’re busy, I can figure something else out,” I hedge.

I’m not sure what that “something else” would be, but I’ve inconvenienced Jonathan so much already.

He’s a handsome, single man out on a Saturday night.

He doesn’t need to interrupt his evening to rescue his …

whatever we are to each other. Just plain coworkers? Frenemies?

He should be out, meeting people. He deserves to meet a nice, uncomplicated woman without all my baggage. He deserves everything he wants.

“No, I’m not far away. I can come,” he insists. I puff out a relieved breath and give him the code for the front entry door.

The call disconnects, and I sit on the floor with my back against my apartment door. I open the bag of food and eat my chicken tenders while I wait. When I finish, I lean my head against the door and close my eyes.

It’s not long before I hear Jonathan’s familiar footsteps coming up the stairs. I open my eyes and jump up as the footsteps start to echo in the hallway itself.

“Hey,” I greet him breathily as I drink in the sight of him.

His black button-down shirt is slim cut through the torso, tucked neatly into dark-wash jeans that contour to his hips and legs.

His black derby shoes are different and more stylish than the leather work shoes he wears to the lab.

His curls look neater than normal, as if he put product in them.

It’s a study in contrast with me clearly dressed for a night on the couch. He looks like he could have been on a date. Was he on a date?

“Were you on a date?” I blurt.

Jonathan doesn’t answer my question, instead asking one of his own. “Is that my shirt?”

I glance down at my holey leggings and baggy red T-shirt, which yes, is indeed the one I borrowed from him that first day of fieldwork. The material is so soft and feels so cozy against my skin. Add to that the fact that it’s a piece of Jonathan, and wearing it makes me feel less alone.

It’s a guilty pleasure. I never expected him to see me in it. My face heats, and I’m sure it matches the shirt when I lift my head. I can’t read Jonathan’s expression. His eyes are guarded, his face aloof.

Something feels weird about the interaction. I know I’m the one who inserted this emotional distance into our relationship—and for good reason—but I miss the back and forth. I miss him . And something else is missing, something I can’t put my finger on.

Jonathan pulls his keys from his pocket and singles out the one for my apartment. He slides the key into the keyhole and turns it until we hear the clicking noise that indicates the lock is disengaged. He removes the key and hooks his finger through the key ring.

He takes a step back, but I don’t move to open the door. “Jonathan—” I start. I have no plan for what I want to say; I just know that my heart has been weighed down and miserable these last couple of days without him.

He interrupts me. “I hope you’ve been keeping an eye on the potential hurricane that’s in the Caribbean. They say it might come this way.”

I haven’t been keeping an eye on anything. I haven’t even heard about it. I realize, though, what’s so different about tonight, why Jonathan feels all wrong. He hasn’t smiled once since he got here.

Not a grin or even a smirk, and certainly not the wide relaxed smile that makes my knees wobble.

The ache in my chest grows to a throb. I scrabble for anything he might be willing to give me.

“Jonathan, please.” I hate how querulous my voice sounds, how vulnerable. “Can we please try to be friends?”

He shakes his head, his expression shifting from the restrained indifference he’s shown since he arrived to a weariness that matches the way I feel. “I can’t be friends with you.”

“Can’t or won’t?” I ask, echoing his challenge to me from the other morning.

Finally, here’s a ghost of a smile, just the smallest uptick at the corners of his mouth. “It’s not that simple.”

“Why not?”

“I can’t just take what I feel for you and stuff it into an undersized box.”

The implication being that I can. After all, he’s seen me do it.

I took my joy at being out on the water and crammed it into a box labeled “fear of the ocean.” I funneled my loneliness into a box called “dedication to my work.” Now I want to take whatever this big soft emotion I’m feeling for Jonathan is and force it into a box, slapping the word “friendship” onto it, after calling it “hatred” for years.

Jonathan runs his hands through his hair. “Caring for someone else doesn’t follow strict rules or schedules. You know, with the way you obsess over couples like your sister and her boyfriend, and Anne and Gilbert, and Matthew and Marilla—”

“Matthew and Marilla are brother and sister,” I can’t help but correct.

He pauses. “Really? That’s, um … weird. I could have sworn… Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that I find it surprising that you don’t seem to believe in love.”

I drop my eyes to the floor. I can’t face him as I say possibly the most vulnerable thing I’ve said to anyone ever. I owe him this much. “I do believe in love. I just don’t believe it’s meant for me.”