Everything
(I Wish You Were Mine alternate reality)
Wednesday, September 02, 2020
Mollie Carrington couldn’t believe what she’d just seen and heard upon arriving home from college classes on a Thursday night in December. She needed a place to study and didn’t think Madison would be home because she worked as a secretary during the day, much to Madison’s dismay…
Mollie entered the house with unease, seeing an unfamiliar car in the driveway of the little condo she and her sister lived in. It was an expensive car… upon looking at it, Mollie noted that it was a Porsche… silver with a leather interior and what looked like a killer sound system…
Before so much as reaching the living room, Mollie knew that her sister was with a man… and from the guy’s voice, Mollie knew that Madison wasn’t with her boyfriend, Jackson… She was with someone else. It filled Mollie with sadness and rage knowing that her sister could do something like that to a man who loved her and never did anything to warrant the treatment she gave him. If Mollie were Jackson’s girlfriend, she’d never do to him what Maddie was doing…
So her sister wouldn’t know she’d come home and heard what she’d heard, Mollie shut the front door quietly, and locked it, sneaking back to her little blue Honda Civic and heading to the only place she could think of… She headed to Jackson’s house. Upon ending up in his driveway, she wondered if she’d made a horrible mistake. She felt like she was betraying her sister… especially when she hadn’t seen anything other than the odd car in the driveway… but Mollie had suspicions even before today that Madison was cheating… and the thing was, Jackson was the salt of the earth. He didn’t deserve to be lied to or cheated on.
Another thing flashed through Mollie’s head as she hit the button on the front gate of the Houston mansion Jackson called home… actually, it was arriving at this grand entrance that did it… But it occurred to Mollie that Madison was probably just using Jackson, and every other rich or powerful guy she’d dated so far to get ahead. Mollie hadn’t wanted to believe it, but the more she watched her sister around Jackson’s house and the way she networked at events… she would be a fool not to see that Maddie was a bit of a gold-digger, and she didn’t care about anyone but herself. Even Mollie knew that her sister resented having to take care of her after their mom died…
When she heard the speaker crackle just a tad, Mollie’s chest tightened, just for a second.
“Who is it?” Jackson’s voice asked.
“It’s Mollie…” she was about to say her last name when the gate opened and she pulled through.
She’d barely pulled all the way up through the tree-lined drive, past the little lake on the left when Jackson came up to meet her, telling her to use the circle driveway to park. It was a little joke they had. The joke stemmed from the first time Mollie went with her sister to dinner at Jackson’s house and on the tour he’d given her, she’d expressed a deep amusement with his circle drive… so now, every time she came over, that’s where he had her park.
A wave of regret flooded her when she realized that all the rapport they’d developed over the past few months would be gone once she revealed why she’d come.
Oblivious to this, Jackson opened her car door for her once the car was off, pulling her into a warm hug. Good lord he smelled good… like sandalwood and bergamot…
She felt guilty for enjoying the embrace as much as she did, especially knowing that after what she was going to tell him, he probably wouldn’t feel much like being near her… Jackson must have sensed that something was off with her because he invited her inside, fixing her a cup of coffee…
Mollie wondered if she’d actually be able to finish it, but thanked him anyway…
Once they were both seated, Jackson asked what was on her mind.
“You’re going to hate me… but I have to say it… otherwise it feels like lying…”
“Ok?” He raised an eyebrow, looking a little distressed. But then he told her in a kindly tone, “I won’t hate you. I promise.”
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep… you haven’t heard what I’m going to say yet.” She tried to sound firm, but her hand shook and she had to grasp the steaming mug of coffee to make it stop.
“Mollie, I couldn’t hate you if I wanted to, no matter what you do or say. You’re the salt of the earth… quite possibly the nicest person I’ve ever known…”
She took a sip of her coffee, sighing after and biting her lip. Why did this feel so cruel… telling him the truth?
“You may not think so soon…”
Jackson shifted a little uncomfortably. “Just spill it, Molls… I can take it.”
“Ok…” she sighed loudly. “I think Madison is cheating on you… I’ve had some suspicions, but today. I came home, there was an expensive car in the driveway and a man’s voice coming from her room… it really sounded like… sex…”
The word made her uncomfortable since it was in relation to her sister and she was talking to her sister’s boyfriend who was the one being cheated on, allegedly…
Jackson’s face fell a little and it looked like his heart sunk from the expression on his face.
But he nodded. “I’ve had my suspicions too…” and he told Mollie of about four occasions where a weird interaction happened or he noticed a weird car in her driveway… an embrace with a man that lasted too long in his opinion… and everything fell into place.
Mollie inhaled sharply, letting everything he’d just said sink in.
In the end, Jackson thanked Mollie for letting him know about Madison, and within a week, the relationship was over… he hadn’t mentioned to Maddie that it was Mollie who told him about the affairs. He didn’t even mention that. What he said to her was that he sensed that he felt more in the relationship than she did and he thought they should break up. Madison had seemed shocked when he broke things off, but ultimately, it didn’t seem to affect her, which really brought home the fact that Madison didn’t really care about Jackson… What surprised Mollie was that just three months after breaking it off with Maddie, Jackson asked if she would go to dinner with him. She had no problem saying yes although she wasn’t sure why he wanted to have dinner with her. It was so out of the blue. They hadn’t really talked since the break-up… mostly because there hadn’t seemed a reason. But also, with their connection being Madison, a connection which had been severed, there just wasn’t a reason for them to be thrown in each other’s path. But that wasn’t to say he’d ignored her. No, Jackson had still sent her a text message here and there, and she’d responded…
Once she arrived at the upscale Italian restaurant he’d picked, Mollie was faced with a sensation of butterflies in her stomach that she hadn’t expected. After all, as far as she knew, this was just a dinner between friends… but the atmosphere and the way Jackson came dressed in a suit and tie, which she knew he hated… it suggested that this was something other than a meeting of friends. Mollie knew what it felt like.. but she was afraid of thinking it, or allowing her heart to hope for it… She’d been burned in the past with similar relationships…
But somehow, this seemed vastly different.
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