2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) (7 page)

Sunday, January 2
^nd

Catherine woke up disoriented, a pink chalky taste
left on her tongue from the Pepto-Bismol her mother had forced on her—Elizabeth
Hemmings’ cure for anything that ailed you, even if it was all in your head.
She blearily took in her surroundings, vaguely remembering coming in the
apartment and throwing herself down on the couch. She’d only had the strength
to get that far after two hours in the car torturing herself with an abysmal
station committed to soft rock dedications through the dark of the night. Driving
on autopilot, she’d used her conscious energies on sobbing, sniveling, and
singing; comparing herself to the losers trying to win back their exes using Rod
Stewart and Journey. But at the same time she wondered just how long it would
take to drive to Nekoyah and where she could get her hands on a boom box,
because everyone knew that the proper way to win back the love of your life was
John-Cusack style, by way of Peter Gabriel. It was only by the grace of God
that she hadn’t gotten pulled over for breakup driving—following too closely,
abrupt breaking, dipping below the minimum speed limit, crossing lanes without
a  blinker, riding on the reflectors for miles at a time.

Her phone came to life, vibrating beneath her with the
strains of a song she couldn’t recognize what with all the cushioning and clothes
in the way. She grabbed for it, reaching in her pockets and then fishing in
between cushions, finding several stray popcorn kernels and some spare change that
was probably left over from an old relationship. She reached the phone that was
wedged tightly and yanked it free. By this time she was breathing heavily from
all the squirming around—
God I’m out of shape
. She tried to peer at the
name and number on the screen but she couldn’t see anything on the small
display, making her wonder if her contacts had fallen out of her eyes in the
night—
or maybe I cried them out
. She fumbled with the buttons, trying to
turn off the phone. She wasn’t in the mood for a conversation with anyone right
now. She just wanted the noise to stop.

“Hello?” a faraway voice called out to her.

Damn you, big bumbling fingers!

“Catherine?”

Her heart started beating double-time. Of course it
was him. “Brown Eyed Girl” was his song for her and so she’d made it her
ringtone for him. She’d always hated her brown eyes, wishing she had a more
unique shade of blue or green or blue-green—basically anything less shit
colored. But Fynn always made her feel special, even sang that song to her
during karaoke when his sister insisted on that as her birthday outing, saying
her gift was getting to watch him suffer.

“I can hear you breathing,” he said plainly, a slight
uptick of frustration noticeable.

She quickly held her breath and debated hanging up the
phone. She wasn’t ready to talk to him. She wasn’t sharp enough straight out of
sleep, or even certain of what she wanted or needed to say. Her head was too
foggy and her eyes, well, she was blind.

“Seriously?” Fynn asked. “You have nothing more to
say?
Shit
is going to be your last word to me?”

“Excuse me?” she played dumb, wishing her voice
sounded less I-just-woke-up and more I’m-trying-to-place-where-I-know-you-from
(considering all the other men who’d been calling her since the breakup).

“I was returning your call,” he said, enunciating
slowly and firmly. “I just got in.”

That one hit below the belt.
Just got in? I’ll see
that and raise you….
Thinking as quickly as her sluggish mind would allow,
she said, “Hold on a second, I was in the shower and I had to run for the
phone. I’m dripping wet.”
Take that!
She hoped picturing her naked would
be like a knife to his gut, just like imagining what he’d done last night was
doing to her.
Where the hell did he go? Who was he with all night? Did he up
and screw the first girl he saw?
The thought just about killed her even
though she had given him—both of them—license to do just that. Too bad she
hadn’t thought of doing it. She pulled the phone from her ear for thirty
seconds, the longest seconds ever, and then put it back in place again. “You
still there?”

“Yeah, I’m here.” His voice was strained but steady.

“How are you doing?” she asked, cringing in
expectation of the answer. That damn Catherine Marie and her automatic
pleasantries. This was not the time for such things. There was only one good
answer to this question:
I’m miserable, thanks for asking
.

“How do you think I’m doing?” He sounded surly now.

“I don’t know how you’re doing. You seemed fine with
being alone this weekend… and there you are, alone,” she jabbed smartly, going
back to the original point that had set her off in the first place—a dangerous
move.

“Just what the hell is that supposed to mean?”

“I—”

“Listen, I just called to find out why
you
called since you didn’t leave a message. Unless ‘shit’
is
the message,”
he said, cutting her off. Obviously, on second thought, he’d decided he was uninterested
in what she meant.

“I guess I must have butt-called you.” She tried to
say it lightly, reining in the animosity that was percolating because he
sounded so completely pissed off. She could feel her breathing going a little wonky
with the lie, and she could hear Catherine Marie in her head, scolding her for
playing games rather than just coming clean.

“What?”

“I had my phone in my pocket. My ass must have dialed
when I wasn’t looking,” she snorted, something she found embarrassing but he for
some reason had always found endearing.

“Well, I guess that’s it then.” No mingled humor in
his words. No smile in his voice. He just sounded ready to end the
conversation.

Okay, so he used to find me endearing
.

It seemed that he wasn’t going to make this easy. She
would have hoped that by now he would understand she could be totally
irrational at times—like the other day when she dumped him. It was the B-side of
her passionate personality.

“Have a nice life, Catherine Hemmings,” he said, his
voice suddenly as warm and buttery as ever.

“That’s not fair,” she pointed out quickly before he
could hang up. He knew what that voice did to her. She felt it through her
whole body.

“I don’t think you should be the one crying foul right
now.”

She could hear the hurt, smothered in buttery goodness.
She checked her frustration and tried to sound magnanimous and
normal.
“I’m
glad you called me back,” she said quickly, putting herself out there just far
enough—using
glad
to sound appropriately interested but not desperate. Dealing
with relationships was a chess game of intonations and inflections and
carefully chosen words.

Silence greeted her, like maybe he’d already hung up.

“I mean, what if you were my one call from jail or
something,” she snorted nervously again.

“Well, considering we are
worlds
apart, I
should hardly be your one and only.” He let the words she’d used against him
dangle there in the miles between them.

“Touché,” she said simply, allowing him the direct hit
and swallowing back the certain dread that was rising in her throat. He wasn’t
one of those boyfriends you could yank in and out of a relationship. Fynn
wasn’t into dating games. She took a deep breath and tried to plow on. “How was
your New Year’s?”

“Seriously?” Cold and abrupt.

“Yeah, I mean, I thought we could still talk. I thought
we could be friends—”

“You want to be pen pals? Is that what you want?”

“I didn’t mean—”

“I wanted to—I was rea—” he stopped, frustration
oozing through the phone like a physical presence. “Listen, I don’t need any
more friends.”

“But I don’t want to lose you completely,” she
practically whined.

“You just don’t want to see me anymore.”

“That’s not it.”

“Then what exactly does breaking up mean in your
world, Cat?” he asked icily.

The tone, his words, totally shattered her. He didn’t
call her Cat. He never called her that. Her friends called her Cat. But isn’t
that what she was asking him for? Friendship? “I just asked a simple, civilized
question,” she said piteously.

“Oh!” he exclaimed, drawing it out like it was a
revelation. “My New Year’s—my whole weekend—was absolute crap. Is that what you
want to hear?”

“No.” She felt her lips begin to tremble. Actually,
she did want to hear that; she just felt bad that she had caused it. “You were
out all last night… it couldn’t have been that bad,” she pointed out,
undisguised fishing.

“I was at my sister’s. Babysitting my nephews so she
and Klein could go out.”

“Oh.” She felt like a total heel. But she was also
incredibly relieved to banish the thoughts of him entwined in some other
woman’s arms and legs and—

“What did you expect I would have been doing? Up until
Friday I had a girlfriend I really cared about. Love doesn’t go away that fast.
Especially not when you’re blindsided by the end.”

The silence was hers this time as she weighed her
courage and strength to say what needed to be said. This was the moment to fix
things if that was what she truly wanted. She looked at the pictures on the end
table, her tired eyes finally able to focus on the truth before her: there was
love in those frames—friends, family, Fynn—while the flesh and blood Catherine
was adrift. The past forty hours had been torture.

“You have nothing to say?” he prodded.

“I knew I was wrong the moment it came out of my
mouth,” she admitted in a rush, remembering the overwhelming feeling of emptiness
that had suddenly overcome her when she let him go.

“Then why didn’t you say something right then?” he
asked plainly.

“Because I’m—”

“Stubborn?” he offered. “Hardheaded?”

“Because I was an idiot,” she said lowly, embarrassed
and yet feeling a sense of relief sweep through as Fynn’s voice softened into a
cautious version of the good-humored tone she knew him for.

“It completely blew my mind how you could—I mean, I
thought everything was fine between us. Great in fact,” he said seriously.

“It was—it is,” she said hopefully.

“Then why would you put on the brakes? Why would you
try to see other people? Did you meet someone?”

“No. It’s not that. Not at all,” she assured him
quickly.

“Because you get what you get with me, Catherine. If
you’re interested in someone else, then you should go ahead, but I won’t wait
here on the other end for you to figure it out. I don’t need to date around. I
know what I want.” His words were absolutely liquid.

She felt tingling warmth spread through her, knowing
she was the only one in his sights.

“So what is it
you
want?” he asked earnestly.

“I want to see you. What time is it?” she asked
breathlessly, his words like kisses against her skin.  

“It’s eight.”

“Your time or mine?”

“You know I always speak to you in your time so you
don’t get confused,” he said, and she could hear the smile on his lips.

“And you know I always ask.” God, she wanted to tackle
him right through the phone. She ran through the mental calculations—how long
it would take to get to the airport, to Minnesota, into his bed.

“Catherine,” he warned, “I can hear your mind
churning.”

He knew her completely and it was terrifying and
exciting all at once. “I want to come see you. I’ll take whatever flight I can
get,” she said excitedly, new life filling her to bursting. “I’ll call you when
I land so you can get your new girlfriend out of the house before I get there.”

“Very funny.”

“I mean it.”

“Are you serious? After the other night, are you sure
that’s what you want?” He sounded tentative, like he was feeling out a crazy
person.

“Of course I’m sure.”

“It’s just another wild swing. Maybe it would be
better—”

“Fynn, I was just frustrated and annoyed, and I’d been
running myself ragged to reach the airport… and then to have the flight
canceled; it just seemed like everything was purposely in my way the other day.
Like fate was putting up obstacles.”

“Fate?”

“I know. It’s ridiculous. I guess I just lost it
because you didn’t seem to be that upset when you found out I couldn’t make it
for the New Year.”

“What was I going to do, stomp around and spit nails
and rail against God himself?”

“Maybe,” she said, thinking that was exactly what
she’d done. She wished he
had
been that mad. Sometimes his overly
rational and laid-back acceptance of what was out of his control was unnerving.
Especially when she was so impassioned about everything from getting her
Quarter Pounder meal and finding she’d gotten stiffed out of the second slice
of cheese, to getting splashed with muddy water by a passing cab. Or missing
the elevator that would have gotten her to work under the wire…. Or any number
of other mundane things. In her mind, if he really cared at all about her, he
would have been irate about the weather coming between them. So she’d freaked
out a teensy bit. It wasn’t pretty, but it was the truth.  

“Listen, I
wanted
to spend New Year’s Eve with
you. I have the champagne in a bucket of lukewarm water as we speak. It was
already chilling when I heard the flight was canceled.”

She felt the smile spread on her face. “I wish you’d
told me.”

“It was going to be a surprise. When I knew you
couldn’t make it I was taking it in stride for you. I didn’t want you doing
something crazy—”

“What? Like dumping you?” she prodded jokingly, cringing
that perhaps it was too soon.

“Like hopping in the car and driving here,” he said
gravely. “I didn’t want you on the road in all the snow…. Getting dumped? I
never saw that coming.”