Obsessed With You (6 page)

“
I don’t do Facebook,” Neil
said with a laugh. “My gallery tried to get me into it to promote
my painting, but I refused.”

They talked some more about high
school, including one math teacher, Mr. Edison, who was quite a
character with his bow ties and pencil-thin mustache. By the time the
meal was over, Cathy had laughed many times.

As Neil walked Cathy back to her
car, he said, “Would you like some help with your painting?”

“
Well, I can’t really afford
to pay anyone to paint. That’s why I’m doing it myself.”

“
I didn’t mean for you to pay
me,” Neil said pretending indignation. “Have you ever painted
before?”

“
I painted my bedroom when I
was a teenager,” she said.

“
I’ll bet it was lavender,
right?”

“
How’d you know?” she said
laughing.

“
Us painters know a lot,” he
said. “But seriously, I was thinking you might need some help, at
least getting started. I don’t mind doing that.”

“
Could you come over tomorrow?”
Cathy asked.

“
I’m finishing a job in the
morning, but I could come in the afternoon.”

“
Okay,” she said. “I won’t
attempt anything until you get there.”

Neil opened her car door and
waved goodbye. She watched him go back into the paint store before
she turned onto the highway and headed to the cottage. When she got
there, she walked out on the pier before she unpacked her car. She
sat for a while, hanging her feet over the edge, looking at the vast
blue water. She and Aaron had talked several times about making a
trip down here, but they never did, and now she was happy about that.
His ghost was nowhere to be seen in her bay town.

Chapter
Eight

Cathy heard Neil pull up to the
cottage a few minutes after one the next afternoon. She watched him
as he got out of his white truck and walk up her steps. He had been a
cute boy in high school and he had turned into a handsome man.

“
These are some good colors,”
Neil said as he looked at her paint cans.

“
They’re from the Seaside
series,” Cathy said. “I want the place to reflect its
surroundings.”

“
Which room do you want to do
first?”

“
I was thinking the living room
since that’s where I spend most of my time.”

Neil looked around. “These
slatted walls are going to be a little more work than sheetrock. You
can roll ‘em, but them you’ll have to go over each groove where
the slats meet with a brush.”

She and Neil pulled the furniture
away from the walls into the center of the room. He placed a drop
cloth on the floor along the bottom edge of the wall.

“
I’m going to show you how to
do the cutting in,” Neil said. “Got a stool?”

Cathy retrieved a stool from the
pantry. Neil poured the Sandy Shores paint into a plastic container
and stood on the stool. He could reach the ceiling with ease.

“
Now, a lot of people believe
in taping everything off,” he said. “But with this angled brush,
you can just pull the paint along and keep it in a straight line.”
He pulled the sand-colored paint along at the edge of the ceiling. It
stood in stark contrast to the dingy white walls. She couldn’t wait
to get those walls all covered in paint.

Neil moved along with the brush,
scooting the stool down when necessary. He reached the first corner
and turned to her. “Wanna try?”

Cathy pulled her dark hair back
with a clip. Neil handed her the brush and pail and she stood on the
stool. She couldn’t reach far enough.

“
Looks like you need a ladder,”
Neil said with a laugh. “I’ve got one out in the truck, but why
don’t you let me finish cutting in for you? It’ll be a lot
quicker. You can roll.”

Cathy didn’t argue with him. In
what seemed like just a few minutes, Neil had gone around the
perimeter of the room and around the doors and windows before he
started over with a second coat. He poured some paint into the pan
and showed her how to load the roller. He rolled the paint onto the
slats horizontally.

“
Normally, I’d be all over
the wall with the roller, but these slats force us to go sideways.”
He handed her the roller and she loaded it up. It dripped onto the
drop cloth as she moved it to the wall.

“
Got a little too much on the
roller,” he said.

She returned it to the pan and
rolled it some more to squeeze the extra paint out. Then she started
on the wall. It was cumbersome work, at first, but she finally found
a rhythm with it. When she started the second wall, Neil ran the
brush between the slats on the first wall. After two coats, they
stepped back. The room was completely transformed into a cozy and
inviting space. The late afternoon sun glinted in places off the
semi-gloss paint.

“
We’ve got time to do the
baseboard today if you want,” Neil said.

Cathy got the can of cream paint
and handed it to Neil. He poured it into another plastic container
and dipped another angled brush into it. He expertly painted all of
the baseboards and doorframes without getting a drop of paint where
it shouldn’t go.

“
You might want to use tape
when you do that, if it makes you more comfortable. And you’ll want
to tape the windows, I guess.”

“
I guess you don’t have to
tape them,” she said.

“
I don’t use tape much,”
Neil said. “But I’m an expert.”

She laughed. “I don’t know
how to thank you, but I can offer you a beer.”

He followed her into the kitchen,
giving a low whistle when he entered the room. “This is a real
vintage kitchen,” he said. “Don’t see ‘em too much anymore.”

He ran his hand along the red
Formica countertops. “This stuff’s still in good shape. Are you
going to keep it?”

“
Definitely,” she said. “I
have a lot of good memories of making cookies with my mother on those
counters.”

“
The cabinets look like they’re
in good shape, except they need a paint job, of course.”

“
I’m going to paint them
cream,” she said. “And the walls that blue color. Then I was
thinking of replacing the hardware with some of those glass knobs,
maybe green ones.”

She handed him a beer and they
went out to the pier. The sun was setting now in the November sky. It
would be Thanksgiving soon. She recalled last year’s Thanksgiving
when she had worked all day to make turkey and dressing and several
side dishes. Aaron told her it was better than his mother’s, and
that was saying a lot.

Cathy blinked her tears away,
hoping that Neil didn’t notice. If he did, he didn’t say
anything.

“
Do you ever fish out here?”
he asked.

“
I used to, but not for years
now.”

“
Lindy would love it out here,”
he said.

“
You should bring Lindy over
and we’ll fish. I’ll even make us a picnic lunch,” Cathy said.
She didn’t know why she was feeling so friendly all of a sudden.
Maybe she was going to be all right after all.

“
Okay,” he said. “I’ll
bring the beer.”

“
How about this Saturday? I
heard the weather’s supposed to be good.”

“
Let me call Lindy and make
sure she hasn’t made other plans for us. You know how that is.”
He pulled his phone out of his pocket. Cathy went further down the
pier to give him privacy while he talked to Lindy.

“
She says that sounds fun,”
Neil shouted a moment later from the end of the pier. “She can’t
wait to see you.”

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

Neil and Lindy arrived at eleven
on Saturday lugging a cooler.

“
It’s so good to see you,”
Lindy said giving Cathy a hug.

She looked around the living room
and dining room, which Cathy had already painted.

“
It looks good in here,”
Lindy said. “Let’s see the kitchen. Neil told me all about it.”

Good old Lindy. She was as blonde
and petite, and as perky and cute as she used to be. Guess that’s
why she was a cheerleader in high school.

Lindy went into the kitchen ahead
of Neil and Cathy and made a beeline for the vintage stove.

“
Babe, you didn’t tell me
about the stove!” Lindy said excitedly.

“
Lindy runs a vintage shop in
town,” Neil said by way of explanation for his girlfriend’s
excitement at a stove.

“
Yeah,” Lindy said. “Lindy’s
Vintage. We’ve got some stoves in there, but none as nice as this
one.”

Lindy walked around the kitchen
touching every surface, from the countertops to the vintage kitchen
table. She even opened the Hoosier cabinet doors and admired the
Fiesta ware on the shelves.

“
Please excuse her for
snooping,” Neil said with a laugh. “She can’t help herself.”

Cathy laughed. “It’s okay.
It’s nice to have someone appreciate this old stuff.”

Cathy grabbed her cooler of
smoked turkey sandwiches and potato salad. Neil went to his truck and
brought in three fishing rods.

“
I didn’t know if you had one
anymore so I brought an extra,” he said. “I also got the shrimp
heads.”

“
Yum,” Cathy said.

Everyone who grew up on the bay
knew how to fish. They all threaded their hooks with shrimp heads and
threw their lines out, but not very far. They reeled their lines in
slowly, coming up empty time after time.

“
Got one,” Lindy said. She
wound her taut line in slowly, pulling up a nice-sized trout. She
held it out to Neil. “You do it,” she said. “I hate that part.”

They laughed and joked through
the afternoon, stopping to eat at one point, drinking beer from the
cooler all day long. Neil caught two fish and Lindy and Cathy each
caught three.

“
The women win!” Lindy said
doing a little dance on the pier.

“
Winners get to clean the
fish,” Neil said laughing.

Lindy frowned prettily.

“
Just kidding!” Neil said
grabbing her into a bear hug. Cathy couldn’t help but be envious of
their easy relationship. She missed being in a relationship and all
of its perks—someone to talk to, someone to eat with, someone to
sleep with, and especially someone to have sex with. She realized she
was lonely and admitted to herself that she missed Aaron. Even if he
was a cheater, she missed him and the life they were planning
together.

“
Cathy, can we cook the fish at
your house tonight?” Lindy said. “Or are you sick of us already.”

“
I’m not sick of you! Let’s
get going.”

Neil cleaned the fish behind the
house while Cathy and Lindy prepared the pan for frying the fish and
another for hushpuppies.

“
Neil said you had a broken
engagement,” Lindy said as she stirred the batter for the
hushpuppies.

Cathy was a little taken aback at
Lindy’s directness, but she shook it off.

“
I’m sorry, I don’t mean to
pry,” Lindy said. “I just thought you might want to talk about
it. I wouldn’t tell a soul, except for Neil, of course. I tell him
everything.”

Cathy decided she did want to
talk about it. She told Lindy everything—about the woman who called
her, about the photo, and about how Aaron had gone to play golf on a
crucial day in their relationship. She even told her about the
birthmarks.

“
How did she get your cell
phone number?” Lindy asked.

“
I don’t know,” Cathy said.
“I’ve never been able to figure that out. Unless she got it while
Aaron was asleep or in the bathroom or something.”

“
Assuming that he was really
with her,” Lindy said.

“
Right, assuming that.”

“
Do you think he did cheat on
you or was somebody out to get him?”

She was about to answer when Neil
came in with a tray of fish fillets. She and Lindy busied themselves
with dropping the spoonfuls of batter into the pot of grease and
flouring the fish. Neil got a beer and went into the living room.
They heard him turn a football game on.

Cathy whipped up some fresh
tartar sauce and everything was ready. As they sat around the kitchen
table eating, Cathy said, “We’ve talked about everyone but
Zachery. What’s he up to?”

“
You dated him, didn’t you?”
Lindy said.

“
All through senior year,”
Cathy said. “Of course we weren’t as cute as you and Neil were.”

Lindy giggled. “We were cute,”
she said.

“
And you still are,” Cathy
said.

“
Zachery has a trucking
company,” Neil said. “He’s made a lot of money from what I
hear. We see him sometimes out at the bars.”

“
You should come to the bars
with us sometime,” Lindy said. “Sometimes they even have bands.”

Cathy was exhausted by the time
Neil and Lindy left close to eleven. It had been a full day, and she
had managed to stop thinking about Aaron through most of it. She
slept soundly for the first time since she’d been back home.