Eyes Wide Shut

Chapter 14

No matter what I did, I couldn’t put myself back to sleep. Counting backwards, deep breaths and I even downloaded an app on my phone that was supposed to coerce me to sleep; that didn’t work out too well. I tossed and turned, trying to get comfortable, thinking every time the new position would help. I was restless, my mind constantly going back through all the moments from today, yesterday… the past couple months.

            I knew she loved me back. In fact, there was nothing I was more sure of after pondering about it for the past two hours I had been lying in this bed. Mollie was shy and even with boys, she was never the one to act on her feelings first. But I knew she wanted to tell me… tell me she’s been feeling the exact way I felt about her. I could see it in her eyes, feel it in her touch. All those nights she made the first move, there was no one to judge her, no one to make her feel like she had to second guess herself; she was free.

            Countless nights we would stay up talking about how she was afraid of admitting her feelings for Andy and then later on, for David, because then that would mean the relationship would go to the next level and then from there, they would go public and once you go public, it got messy. Questions got asked and everyone wanted to know every little bit of their relationship. As much as Mollie loved being photographed and her time in the spotlight, she also hated the media following her personal life. That’s why no one knew the logistics of any of her relationships. Rochelle and Marvin loved for everyone to know how much they loved each other, their favorite things about each other, etc. She didn’t. She did whatever she could to keep that aspect of her life private. She didn't even talk about her boyfriends in interviews. I knew this was her thought process every time she liked someone. So I knew confessing her feelings for me would be a lot more than just saying, “I love you.” It meant there was possibly a label to be put on it, people finding out, people judging, her image changing, and just controversy she has always avoided.

            That was the hardest part. Knowing she couldn’t just be herself because of the  industry we were apart of. The public eye always watching our every move. I guess I didn’t think about all that stuff because it didn’t matter to me.

            “Frankie?” I hear a soft, desperate call coming from the somewhere in the sea of black that surrounds me. Her voice worried and frightful. I knew she had been crying, I could just feel it.

            I feel the bed’s movement as she climbs under the covers.

            “I’m scared,” she says clinging on to me, “I keep thinking he’s going to break through the door and it’s going to happen again.”

            She’s clenching me so tight. I’ve never seen Mollie cry so much in a consecutive time period in the 4 years I had known her. And here we are again, her crying into me, but yet I can’t bring myself to console her. I hated how selfish I was, but I couldn’t help it. Did she care at all about how her words affected me? It wasn’t fair to me to keep me hanging like she always did. Emotionally confused all the time, when all she had to say was just say how I knew she felt.

            “I’m sorry,” she changes subjects out of the blue, still sobbing, “I’m so sorry for whatever I said to you last night.”

            She continues to sob, needing breaths in between in order to be able to speak. She is broken. Just completely and utterly broken. I knew she wouldn’t be like this if she were lying about the hospital. I immediately began to regret giving her a hard time. Her grip tightens around me and her leg wraps around mine, pulling herself as close as she could to me.

            “I can’t lose you, Frankie. I just can’t.”

            “Shhhh. It’s okay, babe.”