Obsessed With You (13 page)

“
No need to be sorry,” Lindy
said. “Look, I brought the wine bottle and some glasses.”

They sat down on the pier,
dangling their legs over the side. Lindy poured white wine into the
glasses and handed one to Cathy.

“
Should I leave you alone?”
Lindy asked with concern.

“
I’m okay,” Cathy said
taking a sip of the wine. “It just came out of nowhere. I think
I’ve been holding things back when I need to be grieving over
Aaron.”

“
I took the stuff out of the
pot and put it in a bowl. We can throw it back in right before we add
the shrimp,” Lindy said.

“
Thanks,” Cathy said,
sniffling a little.

“
Oh, and I brought some paper
towels. I couldn’t find any Kleenex.”

Cathy took the towels and dried
her eyes, then her nose.

“
What are Zachery and Neil
thinking?” Cathy asked.

“
I told them you were thinking
about your mother and you needed some space. They’re fine. Watching
a movie, I think.”

“
I’ve been thinking about my
mother and my father,” Cathy said. “About how tragic it all was.
About how my dad called me Catbird and how Aaron called me Cat.”

Lindy didn’t say anything. She
just listened as Cathy talked. She told Lindy about her relationship
with Aaron, how close they had been. She talked about the wedding
that wasn’t and where it was supposed to be, in the gardens with
the trees ablaze in the background. She told Lindy about the cake
with autumn leaves cascading down the tiers.

“
That sounds pretty,” Lindy
said.

“
We should go back up,” Cathy
said. “I’m starving.”

“
Let’s talk on Monday like we
planned, okay?” Lindy said.

“
Okay,” Cathy said. “And
Lindy? I want to tell you that when we were in high school, I just
thought of you as a perky cheerleader. But you’re a good friend
now.”

“
Hey, I’m still pretty
perky,” Lindy said.

Cathy and Lindy walked side by
side down the pier and up the path to the back yard.

“
Let’s get this show on the
road,” Cathy called into the house. She and Lindy put the
vegetables and sausage back in the pot, then added six pounds of Gulf
shrimp.

Zachery came out with a radio in
his hand and plugged it up in the outlet on the side of the house.

“
Put it on ZBQ, Zach,” Lindy
said.

After fiddling with the knob, the
radio station from their high school years blared out.

“
Oh, they played this at our
prom,” Lindy practically squealed. “Come on, babe. Let’s
dance.”

Neil and Lindy started to dance
to the Goo Goo Dolls and Zachery put his arm around Cathy. They
laughed at Neil and Lindy, and Cathy hoped Zachery wouldn’t try to
dance with her. She wasn’t in the mood. But he didn’t. He kept
drinking his beer and kept his arm around her shoulders.

“
Soup’s on,” Cathy said
when the song ended. She and Lindy fished the food out of the
steaming water and put it into three large bowls, which they placed
in the middle of the table. With a big spoon and burning fingers,
they put the shrimp, sausage, corn, and potatoes on their plates.

“
It’s too hot but I can’t
stop myself,” Neil said.

The radio station from their
youth played in the background as they ate.

“
That guy, Richard Smith—the
one that owns the house now,” Neil said. “He’s pretty intense.
He’s got this dark beard and his eyes are kind of lonely looking or
something.”

“
Grieving,” Lindy said. “He’s
grieving something.”

“
He just sits in his recliner
all day watching TV,” Neil said. “I’ll look in at him and he’s
in the same position as the last time I looked.”

“
How old is he?” Cathy asked.

“
It’s hard to tell with that
beard,” Neil said, “but I think he’s in his thirties. Which
makes it even stranger that he sits there all day like my grandfather
used to do.”

“
He must not have a job,”
Zachery said. “Wonder how he gets money.”

“
He’s got an LLC,” Neil
said. “That’s how he paid me. Hell, I don’t care how he gets
his money. I’m just glad I’m getting some of it.”

As the evening wound down, Cathy
started dreading when Neil and Lindy would leave and she would be
there, alone with Zachery. He was getting more and more pushy about
making their relationship sexual. She shouldn’t have ever given him
the idea that was a possibility. Not right now. She wasn’t ready
for that.

When Neil and Lindy started
making the motions of leaving, Cathy turned to Zachery.

“
I’ve got a headache that’s
starting to pound in my skull. I’ll talk to you next week, okay?”

Zachery’s eyes flashed in
irritation, but he got up and followed Neil and Lindy out the door.
He didn’t have much choice with Neil and Lindy there as witnesses.
Cathy gave Zachery a quick kiss and shut the door. She wished that
had been the end of it.

An engine started and Cathy saw
headlights back away from the house. Then came the knock at her door.
She sighed as she opened it.

Zachery stared at her. “What’s
going on, Cathy?” he asked.

“
I’m sorry,” she said. “I
started thinking about my parents and it got to me. I’ve got a huge
headache and just want to get to bed.”

Zachery slammed his fist against
the doorframe, startling Cathy. “Dammit, Cathy,” he said. “You’ve
got to start letting me in a little bit. How can we have a
relationship if you keep things to yourself all the time? I sat up
here half the night while you were on the pier and didn’t even feel
like I had the right to go talk to you.”

“
I’m sorry, Zachery,” she
said. And she was sorry. She felt bad about the lack of progress in
her relationship with Zachery. But she didn’t want to lead him on.

“
I do know what it’s like to
lose a parent,” Zachery said. “You know I lost my Mom two years
ago and it still hurts every day.”

Cathy put her hand on Zachery’s
arm. He covered her hand with his.

“
I don’t think I’m ready,”
Cathy said. “I know it hasn’t been fair to you for me to be so
mixed up. But I’m not ready.”

“
I’m willing to wait until
you are ready,” Zachery said, but Cathy wasn’t sure about that.

“
Right now, I don’t know if
I’ll ever be ready. Maybe we’ve jumped in too soon,” she said.

Zachery took her hand and held it
to his mouth and kissed it.

“
Don’t say that,” he said.
“We were our first together. That’s gotta be special to you.”

Cathy didn’t know what else to
say. Zachery was special to her, had always been special to her as
her first serious boyfriend and the person she had given her
virginity to. But she wasn’t sure she could have a future with him.

“
It is special, Zachery,” she
said, feeling sorry for him and sorry for herself.

“
Then let me take you out on
Valentine’s Day, like we planned,” he said. “We’ll go from
there.”

Against her better judgment,
Cathy agreed. More than anything, she wanted Zachery to leave so she
could be alone. The evening had been difficult, though she had tried
to rally. When she shut the door for the second time that night, she
just wanted to get in bed with a cup of tea.

Chapter
Fourteen

Cathy spent Sunday in bed. She
went downstairs in the morning just long enough to make coffee and
some cheese toast. She carried it upstairs on the tray her mother had
always used to bring soup and crackers to Cathy when she was sick.
And Cathy did feel sick. Sick at heart.

She flipped the channels on the
TV for a while, settling for a few minutes on a movie, then moved on
to something else. She dozed off and on, waking up to the TV and
watching it again. After it got dark, she went downstairs and ate
leftover shrimp and sausage.

By Monday morning, Cathy was
restless. She had not worked in several months, except to paint the
house. She was involved in a relationship that wasn’t going to
happen and she knew she had to do something about that.

Lindy texted her around ten to
make sure she was still on for lunch.

“
Yes!” Cathy texted her. She
needed to get out of the house, go somewhere, do something, talk
about her misery.

Lindy’s Vintage was empty of
customers when she arrived.

“
This is my slowest day,”
Lindy said. “I’ve got our lunch on the table.”

Cathy dropped her purse on the
floor beside her and sat down. A tiered glass server was full of
sandwiches on the bottom tier and olives and marinated vegetables on
the second tier. The top tier held an assortment of brownies and
cookies.

Lindy poured hot tea into cups
and motioned toward the honey and cream in the center of the table.

After they had filled their
plates, Lindy didn’t waste any time in opening the conversation to
what was bothering Cathy.

“
So, what’s up with Zachery?”
she asked.

Cathy chewed a bite of chicken
salad sandwich and swallowed it while looking at Lindy’s expectant
face. She took a sip of tea before answering.

“
He came back the other night
after y’all left,” she said. “I tried to talk to him but I
ended up letting him talk me into keeping our Valentine’s date.”

“
And you don’t want to go to
that fancy restaurant?” Lindy asked. “I’d love to go there.”

“
It’s not about the
restaurant,” Cathy said. “It’s about the date.”

“
I know,” Lindy said. “I
was just thinking bout that sea bass they serve there.”

“
I’m going to have to cancel
the date,” Cathy said decidedly. “Sea bass or not. It’s not
worth it. And, it’s not fair to Zachery. I just can’t get
involved right now, not the way he wants to be involved.”

“
You mean where you’re doing
it,” Lindy said.

Cathy giggled. “Yes! I can’t
do it with him!”

“
Didn’t you tell me you lost
your virginity to him and him to you?” Lindy asked. “That could
be extra special.”

“
Yes, but there are some things
about Zachery that are bothering me. Aside from the pressure he’s
putting on me to ‘do it’ with him.”

“
Like what?” Lindy asked
before popping a Calamata olive in her mouth.

“
Like he seems to have a short
fuse,” Cathy said. “Several times when we’ve been out to eat,
he’s been rude to the waitress. It’s like he feels entitled or
something. Like it doesn’t matter how he treats her. Or him, in one
case. Like he’s the king or something. That bothers me.”

“
Neil said he used to get so
pissed off if he screwed up at a friendly game of basketball that
he’d slam the ball into the ground and walk off fuming,” Lindy
said.

“
I just didn’t see that in
him when we were together in high school,” Cathy said. “Though I
do remember he was very insistent that we go all the way. He
pressured me back then, too. I’m not sorry I did it, but I remember
his pressuring me.”

“
Why do you think he’s like
that?” Lindy asked.

“
I have no idea. His father was
very hard on him, I do remember that much. He complained about him
all the time. In fact, he’s still complaining about him.”

“
Didn’t his mother die?”
Lindy asked.

“
Yes, a couple of years ago. I
do feel bad for him about it. He always put her on a pedestal.”

They ate their lunch for a few
minutes without talking. When they had polished off the sandwiches
and most of the olives, they put the sweets on little pink Depression
glass dessert plates. Chocolate was exactly what Cathy needed to
stave off her building depression.

“
I keep thinking about Aaron,”
Cathy said. “How I’d have been married to him for four months by
now.”

“
Tell me about him,” Lindy
said.

Cathy thought for a minute. How
could she describe the essence of Aaron in words? She didn’t think
it was even possible, but she tried.

“
He’s really smart,” she
started out lamely.

“
And good looking?” Lindy
asked.

“
He’s very handsome. He has
dark brown hair and his eyes are an incredible blue color.” Cathy
searched for something to compare his eyes to. “They’re the color
of the bay on a sunny day. They’ve got little flecks of gold in
them around the iris. It looks like a sunburst in his eyes, but you
have to look close to see that.”

She sat there lost in thought,
thinking about Aaron’s eyes. Her own eyes started to get watery.
When she blinked, a tear streamed out of each eye, down her cheeks.

Lindy placed her hand over
Cathy’s hand. “I can tell you miss him,” she said.

“
When I left that day,
everything felt like it was smothering me. The phone calls, the
photo. It felt like a huge confusing mess and I couldn’t see around
it. And then, in the middle of all that, Aaron went to play golf.
That was the final straw for me.”