-1I'm sorry it's taken so long to get this chapter out. When you're Dexxed out of your head, you tend to only want to write crazy shit, not fan fiction. Sorry about that…

It's not all making out with these two, I promise. It's there way, I suppose.

This chapter just kind of went it's own way. It could have been chopped up but I wouldn't have worked; not to me anyway.

I still have some tricks, by the way.

I kissed her. Or maybe it was her who kissed me. Either way, it happened and while I found myself completely enamored with her afterwards, I became frustrated with myself. I was allowing my mind to consume me. The idea that it was okay to want her was slowly creeping in and taking hold of my rationale, my common sense. This led to me questioning what kind of man I really was. What kind of person could have feelings for someone such as Molly?

I was fighting all of the bad with the good and vice versa. Our quixotic flirtations and thieved touches couldn't be wrong; it was definitely a game we mutually went into together. It was harmless, innocent, pure in its simplest form. Unfortunately, that kiss, no matter how much I enjoyed it, and all that I was feeling and thinking wouldn't be seen as it was by anyone else who had the chance to witness it. Was I really just the hedonistic type who fell into such blatantly physical traps with no regard to other parties? Was I a malicious Humbert after all, preying on the admiration of a girl twenty-six years my junior for some fleeting moment of gratification?

Such thoughts then turned into me putting myself on some sort of psychological stand. I was the prosecutor and defense, judge and jury. In the end, I started to turn to a warped lesson from Freud. Maybe all of this was just transference - Molly was to be my chance do everything right that I'd done wrong with Jude; a new Lo for a new Annabel - but I knew in my heart that wasn't it either. Molly was absolutely nothing like Jude. She was nothing like anyone I'd ever got to know or been with. For everything that I'd seen in others and found fault with, such an attribute couldn't be found in Molly. She was totally and completely new.

So there you have it as best as I can put it out there for you. Instead of enjoying the bliss that I'd felt leaving the studio and walking with a new spring in my step, I was caught between being some sort of criminal and trying to figure out where all of this fit in my compartmentalized life. I know this must seem strangely confusing but imagine what it felt like to feign insomnia only to stay up half the night to find some definitive thing to call it. Readers, seeing as I can't label such a predicament, I can only hope that you forgive my incoherency.

I vowed after three days of such a melodrama that I'd put it on the back burner and let it be what it was going to be. I wouldn't fight it but I wouldn't charge ahead and expedite the process. Whatever Molly wanted was what I'd give her. It took some restraint on my part not to be the dominate male I was at heart and taking the reigns from her, steering it in whatever direction I felt it should be going in. There would be no pressure, no coercion, nothing. I won't lie to you, though, and say that I wasn't hoping that she'd want it to go a lot further.

The simplest things can become much more elaborate if you let it. A week-long vacation can turn into a three month trek across foreign terrain to have you reaching into the very depths of your soul, finding nirvana. Catching the last half of a Haydn concerto and hearing the pining from a violin can be the most heartbreaking thing in your life. Buying the wrong magazine can open doors and dialing the wrong phone number can lead to an hour long conversation with a complete stranger. When it all adds up, the easiest things are the most altering.

It was an ordinary, lazy Sunday. Molly and I hadn't really been working as much as joking about and writing stupid limericks about everything you could imagine. It was our thing, really. We worked on Sundays just to do what we'd been doing. We both slipped off to hospitality for water or coffee or something equally replenishing, the swinging door swaying behind us. She bent into the refrigerator for something, pulling back and taking a lean against the black laminate countertop beside me. She gave me a lopsided grin, bowing her head to her chest slightly.

"I thought it would be awkward afterwards, you know?" My head tilted, looking her over as she thought out what she was saying, knowing exactly what she was referring to. She lifted her head and looked at me straight on. "I'm really happy it wasn't."

Her smile grew as she knocked her shoulder into mine, dropping her head once more on a laugh. I smiled back, giving her a nudge in return. She leaned against my arm finally and we settled into an easy type of quiet, each of us staring off into a random direction.

"Next time, I promise won't catch you off guard." My gaze instantly snapped over in her direction. It was moments like these that I damned her cool exterior. She never wavered with her declarations, never showed anxiety when it came to dropping bombs. Sure, she was always the nervous, babbling little thing when it came to asking for something but when you knew her mind was set, she could seem downright icy. She glanced back at me while I continued to stare openly.

I took the gamble and with lightening precision I was in front of her, all of my previous self-control put to the side. Her legs were around my waist as I lifted her onto the edge of the counter. I grabbed at the belt loops of her jeans, wishing for just a second I could pull her totally pull her into me. For once, I was glad for the door that closed off hospitality to the rest of the staff, away from the condemning eyes that would look on with disgust as my mouth ravaged hers. I felt my neurons firing off one after the other but not in such a rapture but with my lingering confusions and questions. What the hell was I thinking?

Every thought dissolved as her hands held onto the sides of my face and she leaned forward into me. Feasting on her neck and collarbones, my hips pushing farther between her legs, she clung to me desperately; her nails raked over the back of my neck. I'm sure we looked primal, two people locked together and feeding off the other's motions so cannibalistically.

Finally, pulling away and panting, my arms wrapped around her back, I just stared at her. She went in for another self-satisfying kiss but I let it land on my cheek, my eyes closing for my own restraint. She gently stroked the hair at my temple, my small graying spot her point of fascination. With a quick peck against the edge of her mouth, I disengaged my limbs from hers, pulling her down from the countertop. I tugged slightly at the bottom of her t-shirt, covering the skin that had become exposed in our moments of abandon and giving back her modesty. I smoothed out the ever frazzled mess of her hair, her hand catching mine on the trip down.

"Will you drop me off tonight?" She gazed at me earnestly, offering only her quiet resolve for her change of heart. With a small nod for yes and another to signal our exit, I let water bottles lay forgotten as we went back to rhymes and laughs.

We sat talking on the moss green steps of her hostel, all of the people staying there buzzing in and out of the multitude of doors, every once in a while one of them stopping to greet Molly or asking if she'd be joining in on one of the evening planned events. She graciously declined all offers, gingerly pointing me out to her newfound friends.

She leaned over her thighs as she went through story after story about her life back in Toronto and her family. I lounged against the railing, intrigued in some ways by everything she was telling me. For every poignant story about past birthdays and silly anecdotes about the mischief her and her cousins got into, I found myself drawn farther into the little world she was creating.

"My mom? She's absolutely insane." She let go of a small laugh, resting her head on her knee, looking to be in total thought. "My dad isn't really any different, either. They love music more than life and pick play-fights with each other about who was a better guitarist or drummer. They also have this strange obsession with shaping things into letters. I guess they thought it would help me with my ABCs when I was younger but when you only get two letters, you don't really learn much."

I briefly remembered Jude when she'd got back from her first tour and the whole J-shaped pancakes thing. I never really got the appeal.

"Yeah, I knew a girl like that. She had some strange attachment to letter shaped pancakes."

"Oh, God! I've had M-shaped everything - pancakes, waffles, mashed potatoes, peanut butter sandwiches. If my mom and dad could, I'm sure they'd have their house in the

shape of some letter." She laughed lightly again, giving a small sigh. "You know, I really like Toronto. It's a great city - tons of stuff to do - but it's definitely not Montreal." She looked at me pointedly. "I wish I could stay here forever."

My heart skipped a beat when she said that. It made me think of that Queen song, "Who Wants to Live Forever?". I'd played that song mercilessly when I first arrived in Montreal 20-something years ago and once again, it was something else to relive. Who wants to have forever… Who wants to love forever… It sat bittersweet in the pit of my stomach, the cool evening breeze picking up as the Fate's emphasis on the moment.

"Forever's our today," I finally announced. Had I known then how true those words would be, I would have held out a little longer for forever. I wouldn't have allowed myself to think that nothing really lasted and kept some amount of hope that her idealism could morph into a perpetual state of realism. There were so many things I wish I'd known or realized or come to terms with before and during my time with Molly but as the saying goes, hindsight is 20/20; the present is always rose tinted.

She seemed content with my cliché use of the song lyric, content with what I could offer. We sat together chatting away idly for a bit longer, nine coming way too fast and today's forever ending with me hugging her and her giving my hand a small squeeze for goodbye. As I pulled away from the building, it was if everything was unwinding, laying in the floorboard of my car beneath the as pedal. I knew I held a trump card and if I had it my way, maybe her staying in Montreal could be reality. I just needed to have her sign yet again on the dotted line and I would have conquered and assimilated the truth into my own version. It never really occurred to me that it wouldn't not turn out the way I was banking on and now, I know that was my undoing.