Molly turned back to crumbling bacon. It was greasy work, but it was something to get her mind off things. "If only it was working," she grumbled.

"What? You're doing great so far. It's like I have my own little purple-haired sous chef." Her mom reached over to ruffle her hair.

Ugh! It was one of the hazards of being a short person with short hair. People always felt way too free to do that, even her own mother who should know better. Molly threatened to do it back with bacon fingers and stopped that nonsense.

Her mom put her hands up. "Okay, okay!"

"Seriously, though. Am I doing this right?" Molly held out her greasy hands.

Her mom considered her. "It might be easier if you crumble it using a paper towel, take more grease off the bacon and put less on you."

Molly bowed her head to her mom as she grabbed a paper towel. "That's why you're the head chef."

Her mom chuckled. "And don't you forget it."

"At least it's going way better than my attempt to make lunch for you last Mother's Day." She'd obviously inherited her culinary instincts from her dad. At least he was enthusiastic about making breakfast or barbecuing. Molly had little enthusiasm and even less skill for any of it. 

Deb Doyle laughed. "I think mac & cheese soup was an interesting idea. I'll have to work out the logistics of it one of these days."

"It wasn't an idea, Mom. I just didn't see the part on the box about draining the water." Yes, a terrible chef. She couldn't even make boxed macaroni. 

"You just need some guidance. I'll keep an eye on you so you don't go rogue."

"I'll even do the cleaning up. That's a sous chef thing, right?"

Deb nodded, considering. "Yes. Laundry is also a sous chef thing, so are toilets and dusting under the couch and cleaning out my car."

"Okay. Don't push it." Of course, at this point, Molly might eagerly do all of that and more, just to keep her mind off Jake and how many hours it had been, which was twenty-eight now.

"So why purple?" her mom asked.

To calm my damn self down!

"Just an easier transition from red," she lied. "It was too hot for red hair."

"Well, it's... cute! But maybe try a lighter purple for summer. Like a lavender. I could get you a matching pastel palette." Mom was trying, but Molly knew she didn't exactly get it. Molly had tried to explain it several times now – that, for her, changing her hair color was like changing clothes.

Maybe it was like how Jake was with that stupid crystal, but Molly was almost convinced her red hair had brought about that whatever-the-hell from the other day. Like a red cape in front of a bull, but not just for Jake... She'd joined in pretty enthusiastically, hadn't she?

No surprise.

She'd been crazy about him for too long to get sane now. Even back in second grade, the symptoms had been there.

Come to think of it, the other girls weren't to blame. It was really her mom who made it worse. The other girls might have teased Molly about having a crush. Her own mother had actually defined the thing and started the torture...

******************

Second Grade...

******************

"No. No, I'm not... I'm not crazy." Molly shook her head. 

"Oh, sweetie. I never said you were crazy," her mom said.

"Good. Because boys are the crazy ones." Molly nodded to herself. "Even Jake's really crazy when he wins at stuff."

"Jake?" Her mom grinned and leaned on her hand. "Any reason you keep bringing up Jake?"

"Deb..." Her dad pointed his fork.

Her mother threw up her hands. "What? I'm not teasing her. I'm only asking!"

Oh, no! Had word got back to her mom about the other girls calling Jake the b-word? "I-I was just saying that he won at Mario Kart last week and went nuts about it and did this stupid dance, even though I beat him like all the time. And I only lost because my hands got slippy." They needed to know that. "I always win at Mario Kart!" They needed to know that, too.

"You like beating him?" Mom prodded with a funny smile.

"Duh! I wanna win!"

"Atta girl," Dad said. "You keep it up! Doyles win!"

"A crush," her mother went on, "is when you don't care if you win as long as they don't lose. It's like... I don't know. It's like when your Dad and I play Scrabble."

"You always win," Molly piped up.

"Not always," her Dad said quickly. "There have been a few times when I..."

"Sometimes it makes me happy to see him happy." Mom patted his hand.

Dad's smile fell as he turned to her mother. "Wait a minute..."

"Josh, 'chestal' is not a word."

"You looked it up and said—"

"Well, you were so excited to finally win." Her mom shrugged. "Also neither is 'anyhoo.'"

"People say it," he grumbled. "Should be a word by now."

"Jake only beat me that one time," Molly said firmly. "I'm gonna win every other time."

"That's my girl," her father said, seeming to recover. "I taught you well. Doyles win!"

"Except at Scrabble and only if Mom lets you," Molly giggled.

"Yeah. We're having a rematch tonight," he growled. "This time, Molly holds the dictionary." He jabbed a finger at Mom. "You can no longer be trusted."

Dinner had been cut short to make room for Scrabble then and Molly got so distracted by the winning stuff, she almost forgot about the rest of it.

Dad didn't win, but she told him Doyles could lose sometimes if it was to Mom and that seemed to make him feel better. Enough that he laughed and hugged her to his side and told her, "Don't go boy-crazy yet, okay?"

"I won't," she promised. 

But later, she worried it was a lie. She started to see the signs. She thought about Jake a lot, even when he wasn't there. And when she beat him at Mario Kart, had her hands really gotten slippy or had she just wanted to see him win?

The next morning, it got worse. Their moms kept making them stand together and smile and do praying hands. And she didn't want to because... Well, with her veil and his suit, they looked like a...

"Like a little bride and groom," Aunt Jan said.

Molly tried to put her veil over her face so she didn't die right then.

"Are we seeing the future here, Janet?" Her mom had said, snapping pictures.

"If we're lucky," Aunt Jan said.

It was one thing for Molly to think it, it was another for them to just say it.

At least Dad agreed. "Don't listen to them," he said. "They're just teasing. They're being silly and girly."

"I don't want any more pictures," Molly said, marching away to the van. Why did everyone have to make it weird?

When they were at church, Karen and Chrissie pointed at her when she came in with Jake even though she always went places with Jake and only because they were neighbors and friends and nothing else!

When Karen whispered "boyfriend" as she went to get in line, she was so mad, her praying hands almost turned into fists.

Even Jake got weird about it later, talking about the bride and groom thing and acting like their moms could make them get married... "I don't care. She can ground me for a year and take away my camera and make me eat only carrots and I still won't marry you." There. That would tell him. She didn't have a crush. At all.

"I don't want to, either. But if they make us, then I'll let you be in charge. Okay?"

For some reason, that made her even madder. It made her want to push him in the dirt... which she did. And she decided she was not going to play with him anymore if people were going to point and giggle and act like it was something it definitely, definitely was not!

Of course, after a few hours of that, she couldn't take it anymore. Was she not supposed to play with Jake ever again just because other people acted stupid about it? So what if they said she had a crush? That didn't make it true.

When Jake was about to go home, she stopped him. "I'm sorry I pushed you. Wanna play Mario Kart?"

Jake shrugged and followed her to the living room. Lucky for her, Jake never stayed mad long. She wished she was more like him. He wasn't just nicer than the other boys. He was nicer than she was most of the time.

Maybe that was why she did it. At the last lap, she had a chance to shoot a shell at his car and she didn't. She even let her car go off the road. She guess she wanted to see if it made her happy to see him win.

It shouldn't have. He did this annoying thing where he pretended to slam the controller on the ground, screaming "VICTORY!" Then he danced around doing pistol fingers for what seemed like forever.

It should be really annoying, so she was waiting to be really annoyed about it.

"I don't do that to you when I win," she said, trying for that face Mrs. Stone made when the boys (wasn't it always the boys?) acted up in class.

"You should," he said, not even a little bit sorry. "It's how you know you're awesome!"

He was such a goof. She tried not to laugh, but somewhere around his third doofy dance around her, she couldn't stop giggling.

Oh, no!

******************

"Oh, no! Get out of here!"

"I'm not looking!"

Molly snapped back to the present as her dad attempted, with a hand over his eyes, to come into the kitchen and her mom swatted at his butt with a spatula.

"Hey! I'm just going for a beer."

"It's not even three-o'clock yet!"

"But it's Father's Day!"

"All damned day with this!" She swatted him again. "If you want something, get out and I'll bring it."

"Jeez, I'm going. And you shouldn't hit a man on Father's Day," he said as he backed out, eyes still covered. "It's against the law."

Her mom rolled her eyes. "Wow. They come up with new laws every Father's Day." Today alone, her mother had committed countless crimes – waking him up, telling him to put the toilet seat down, making him wait for his presents... "Next Mother's Day, I'm gonna make up a few laws for myself."

"There aren't any," he called from the living room. "It's a lawless day."

"Doesn't seem likely."

"Who's the lawyer in these parts?" he shot back.

"Your dad is such a dork," her mom muttered, though she was grinning.

Molly supposed she was kind of guilty of shipping real people, too. Even when they argued, it was like a game they played.

"Guess I have to bring him a beer," her mom sighed.

Molly shrugged and moved to the fridge. "I can do it. I'll clean up later. I feel like I'm not much help with the cooking parts."

"What? You've been such a—"

"No lying on Father's Day, Mom. It's against the law," Molly said before ducking out.

Everything she tried to do, her mom could do three times faster. Cooking wasn't working to distract her anyway. Maybe whatever her dad was up to would help.

She found him outside, unraveling the hose. She presented the beer to her father with a curtsy, as required by law. "Your highness."

He gave her a regal nod and took it. "I raised you right. You always follow all the Father's Day laws. Except one," he finished with a significant glance.

She shook her head. "Presents after dinner. Mom has laws, too."

"She's been getting it wrong for years."

Molly considered it, tapping her chin. "You seem to be okay with that law on my birthday."

"Because that's a birthday law. Not a Father's Day law," he said, not even blinking. "Also, birthday laws stop applying after the age of forty. Now, I don't expect you to know all this. This is something they teach in law school," he went on, finding his roll now, "and since you don't want to follow in your old man's footsteps -- big mistake, by the way, but fine -- you might never get the full..." 

He was impossible to argue with. He was entirely too good at making up absolute BS on the spot with a perfect poker face.

Then again, she was pretty good at that herself. Hadn't she been keeping her poker face on all these years?

It almost never slipped, and especially not in front of Jake.

******************

Jake was done. There was no way that dirty lump of glorified glass would be found! Not unless he could find some kind of metal detector with a crystal setting. Was there such a thing as a crystal detector? He'd bet there was, sold on some new-agey site ripping off idiots who believed in the power of crystals – idiots like him, he supposed.

He must be a believer by now, after spending a good two hours scouring the forest even to the point of crawling on the ground to try to find one. He'd probably have better luck finding the other one somewhere in the sewers.

He shuddered, hoping he hadn't reached that point... yet. But it did dangle in the back of his mind. A very tantalizing (and fairly disgusting) thought.

No.

The woods were a bust and the sewers were a hard "no, never." There had to be some other way to get one of these things. Maybe a jewelry shop. If the jewelry stores didn't have it, maybe the antiques mart would or even that head shop that pretended it wasn't a head shop. He could look online, but that would require waiting and that wasn't something he could do.

He could also stop wasting time trying to find a crystal and talk to Molly like a damned man!

Why the hell not? Jake thought, puffing up at the idea.

Why couldn't he just do it? Just walk right up to Molly, crystal or not, like a man, possibly with aviator sunglasses if he could find his, and tell her how he felt and that he knew -- he fucking knew -- she felt the same... or maybe close to the same... he was sure there were moments when...

He deflated, the heat and the doubt crashing down on him as he trudged out of the woods and back to his truck.

He couldn't jump into something like this without some kind of parachute or even a push. Usually, he'd pound three beers, brush his teeth, and make it happen. Then again, it's not like he'd actually made it happen that much up till now. After two girls in high school, he'd only thought it would get easier, but he hadn't even "destroyed the merchandise" once in college so far.

For one thing, college was way busier. Sure, the parties were better, but who had time? Other than a couple drunken make-outs with an RA that never went anywhere, he did go home with this junior girl one night before last Christmas break. But that didn't go anywhere, either – mostly because he fell asleep on her and she'd never forgiven him. She also told all her little friends. They still made snoring sounds if they passed him on campus.

And there wasn't much in high school, either. There was one college girl he barely remembered at a party at the end of his junior year. That was after he first lost the weight. It was also his first time. She said he needed to "work on it."

He finally did "work on it" with Rachel Boone, pretty much the entire summer before leaving for college. Molly and Dumbass Tommy started dating, too, almost right after he and Rachel got together, and broke up about the same time. It didn't work out for either of them, but that was fine. Molly had never really liked Rachel, anyway, and he only tolerated Dumbass Tommy. Not that he hated him or anything. Dumbass Tommy was too nonthreatening for that, like a kid or a yappy dog or... like a dumbass. He always seemed more boy than man next to Molly.

It was just as well the summer of breakups went down. He and Rachel weren't exactly a love for the ages. She was going to Michigan and he was going to upstate New York. They both knew what it was, and what it was was over quickly. Outside his longstanding thing for Juliet, he'd never felt that strongly about anyone. Besides, why did he need to be all tied up with some other girl when he would always have... Molly?

The realization hit him like a crapload of bricks.

This was actually all Molly's fault, anyway!

TBC