Obsessed With You (7 page)

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On Sunday Cathy followed the
sandy path to her grandfather’s house. It had been several days
since she’d seen him and she missed him. Eileen was at the stove
when she walked through the kitchen door.

“
Hey, sweetie. I hope you’re
here for lunch. I’m making beef stew.”

“
I’m definitely here for
lunch,” Cathy said. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve been
meaning to call you about your job offer, but I’ve been so busy
painting the house.”

“
That offer’s good anytime,”
Eileen said. “I can always use you and since it’s part time,
you’ll still have plenty of time to do other things. But whatever
you want to do is fine by me.”

“
That’s very generous of you,
Eileen. I’ll just play it by ear for now, then.”

“
Lunch ready yet?” Grandpa
said from the hallway before he was even in the kitchen. “Oh, hey,
honey. I didn’t realize you were here.”

“
I’m staying for lunch,”
Cathy said.

A couple of hours later, Cathy
walked back home with a full stomach. She had eaten well in the last
twenty-four hours. She thought she might skip supper or just have a
bowl of soup. It was her choice because she didn’t have to ask
anyone else what they wanted to do. Her choice. That was the plus
side to being single. She decided to concentrate on the plus sides of
it, since that’s what she was living anyway.

On Monday morning, Cathy jumped
out of bed with purpose. She put on some old jeans and a raggedy
T-shirt and started painting her bedroom in a dusky green color
called Sea Glass. Thankfully, the bedrooms and bathroom had been
covered in sheetrock decades before so she didn’t have to deal with
the damned slats. Standing on the tall vintage stool from the
kitchen, and was able to reach the high places. The cutting in went
fairly smoothly with only a few errant strokes on the ceiling. She
painted for two hours and when she was done, her room sang songs from
the sea. She shoved the bed back into place and lay down on top of
the white chenille spread, exhausted.

Neil came by later that afternoon
to inspect her work.

“
Don’t worry about that paint
on the ceiling,” he said. “We can cover it up.”

Cathy painted the other bedroom
Oyster Gray on Tuesday. She was driven to paint and get as much done
as possible before Thanksgiving on Thursday. On Wednesday, she
painted the bathroom a color called Coral Reef.

And then on Thanksgiving, she
rested. She and her grandfather went to the B and B for Thanksgiving
dinner. The tables in the dining room had been reconfigured into two
long lines of tables placed end to end. Guests and locals filled
their plates at the buffet before sitting around the table. Eileen
had placed tiny pumpkins and gourds throughout the centers of the
tables and lit white candles. It was a beautiful fall feast. Cathy
was proud of herself that she only thought about Aaron twice during
the day, once when she filled her plate and thought about the dinner
she had made the year before and once when she returned home to her
empty cottage and wondered how he had spent the day.

The weeks through the holiday
season didn’t exactly fly by, but they were filled. Cathy finished
painting all of the rooms, including the kitchen and the cabinets.
Neil stopped by some days to help her out. Sometimes, Lindy was with
him, sometimes not.

One day, close to Christmas,
Cathy went to Lindy’s shop. Wooden wheelbarrows and various
planters full of poinsettias sat outside by the front door. Inside,
it was so colorful with vintage fabrics and furniture that Cathy
didn’t know where to look next. Lindy rushed over to her. She was
always excited to see Cathy, always so full of life. Cathy really
envied that quality in her.

Lindy showed her around the shop
and then took her upstairs to show her the apartment where she and
Neil lived. It was a cozy love nest, decorated completely in vintage.
Cathy knew that Neil and Lindy didn’t have much money, but it
didn’t seem to matter.

Back downstairs, Lindy motioned
Cathy to a little tea table and said she’d be right back with some
tea and cookies.

When she returned a few minutes
later, she set a flowered teapot on the table and poured the tea into
matching cups.

“
I’ve got some news,” Lindy
said. “You’re the first to know.” She held out her hand. The
diamond on her finger flashed in the well-lit room.

“
I’m so happy for you!”
Cathy said getting up and giving Lindy a hug. “Have you set the
date?”

“
We’re thinking in the spring
or early summer. Neil doesn’t want to wait. He said he let me get
away once and he’s not taking that chance again.” She giggled.
“He proposed last night and we’re going to tell our parents
tonight. But I wanted you to be the first to know since you’re our
best friend.”

Cathy was best friends with a
couple. That was unusual, but she never felt like a third wheel
around them. She felt she was somehow a part of their relationship,
as weird as that idea was.

“
I’m honored that you told me
first,” Cathy said. She felt tears in her eyes and willed them not
to fall.

“
Hey, girl,” Lindy said. “I
didn’t mean for this to upset you.”

“
I’m not upset,” Cathy
protested. “I’m so happy for you both. You’re my best friends.
You’ve helped me more than I can say.”

“
I’ve been thinking about the
things you told me,” Lindy said. “And some things just don’t
add up.”

“
Like what?” Cathy asked.

“
Like how she got your cell
number when you said it wasn’t public.”

“
I told you how that might’ve
happened.”

“
Yeah, I know. But it doesn’t
seem like you really think Aaron was capable of cheating on you.”

“
I thought he wasn’t, but I
had no choice but to think he was after everything was said and
done.”

“
Right,” she said taking a
sip of her tea.

“
We’re going to Pandora’s
on New Year’s Eve,” Lindy said changing the subject. “Wanna
come with us?”

“
What’s Pandora’s?”

“
It’s a bar on the coast.
They’re going to have a band and there’ll be dancing and
everything. We can bring in 2014 in style!”

“
Okay,” Cathy said. She
didn’t have anything better to do and it would be good to be
distracted from thinking about Aaron and their New Year’s Eve the
previous year. They had spent the evening at an expensive hotel
restaurant before returning to her townhouse to watch the ball drop
in Times Square. Later, while they were making love, Aaron told her
he loved her for the first time.

“
Earth to Cathy,” Lindy said.

“
Oh, sorry,” Cathy said.
“That sounds like fun.” She suddenly felt so lonely.

On the drive back to the cottage,
she thought about her sapphire engagement ring she had left on the
bathroom counter. Had Aaron now sold the ring? What had happened to
it?

She was crying by the time she
pulled up to the cottage. Unfortunately, Neil’s truck was there and
he was leaning against it. Cathy tried to compose herself and paste a
smile on her face.

“
Hey,” she said getting out
of her car.

“
Hey. I came by to give you
some news.”

Cathy burst into tears. She was
so ashamed of herself for doing that, but she couldn’t stop it.

“
Hey, now,” Neil said.
“What’s wrong?” He put his arm around her and she cried big
tears against his chest.

“
Let’s get you inside,”
Neil said leading her toward the door. “I’m going to call Lindy
to come over. You look like you need to talk.”

“
No! I don’t want to ruin
Lindy’s big day,” Cathy said.

“
I see she’s already told
you,” Neil said. “She never could keep a secret.”

Neil sat Cathy on the couch and
called Lindy.

“
Hey, babe,” he said into the
phone. He called her babe, too. That made Cathy cry even harder. She
didn’t even hear the rest of Neil’s conversation with Lindy.

“
She’ll be here in a few
minutes,” Neil said. “I’m going to get you a glass of wine
while we wait. Got any wine?”

Cathy motioned toward the
kitchen.

Neil came back with a glass of
wine for her and a beer for himself.

“
I’m sorry, Neil,” Cathy
said. “Everything just sort of hit me all at once. I’m really
happy for you and Lindy. Very happy.”

“
I know you are,” Neil said.
“It’s gotta be hard to see us get engaged, though. We should’ve
thought about that.”

“
No, you shouldn’t have.”

A few minutes later Lindy burst
through the front door without knocking. She took one look at Cathy
and dropped her purse on the floor to run sit by her on the couch.

“
I’m sorry, Cathy,” Lindy
said. “I was so happy about our getting engaged that I didn’t
think about your feelings.”

Cathy decided then and there that
Neil and Cathy were the best friends she had ever had. The both of
them were saints, angels on earth, or something like that. And they
were so right for each other. She’d never seen a better pairing.

“
I’m ecstatic for you both,
really I am,” Cathy said. “I don’t want you to feel responsible
at all for my falling apart. It’s my own history, not yours.”

Lindy put her arm around Cathy’s
shoulders. “I’m here to listen if you wanna talk,” she said.
“Or we’ll leave you alone if that’s what you want.”

Neil stood up. “I need to run
an errand,” he said. “I’ll see you later, babe, and you too,
Cathy.”

After Neil shut the front door,
Cathy said, “Lindy, I’m okay. I don’t want to ruin your happy
day with my tears that have nothing to do with you.”

“
You couldn’t ruin my day if
you tried, sister,” Lindy said.

So Cathy told Lindy about the
last New Year’s Eve and about her engagement ring on the bathroom
counter. “Last New Year’s was the happiest day of my life, to
have Aaron say he loved me. He could have a lot of women, a lot more
sophisticated than me, but he wanted me. Me.” She held her hand up
to her chest. “I believed him.”

“
I happen to think you’re a
good judge of character,” Lindy said. “I don’t think you
believed in him for no reason.”

“
I’m confused about
everything,” Cathy said.

They talked a few more minutes
before Cathy shooed Lindy out to get ready for her big night of
telling the parents about their engagement.

“
I’ll be seeing you soon,”
Lindy said at the door. “And you don’t have to go with us on New
Year’s Eve if you’re not up to it. You can think on it.”

Cathy had experienced some sad
Christmases in her life. After her father died, then her grandmother,
then her mother. The holidays seemed to be more about loss than
anything, and now she was feeling it again. She didn’t get a tree
for her cottage, but she half-heartedly helped Grandpa decorate a
tree and attended a tree-trimming party at the B and B. She kept it
together, but just barely. She was glad when Christmas was over.
She’d be even happier when New Year’s came and went.

On New Year’s Eve morning,
Lindy called to ask Cathy if she was going out with them.

“
I think I will,” she said.
“I’ll try not to be too much of a drag.”

Lindy laughed. “If you fall,
we’ll catch you,” she said.

Pandora’s was crowded when they
arrived around ten. The band blared from an area in the corner and
people were practically wall-to-wall with drinks in their hands and
pointed hats on their heads. They stood at the bar and ordered
drinks—beer for Neil and margaritas for Cathy and Lindy.

“
Neil’s going to keep his
drinking down so we can have fun,” Lindy shouted in Cathy’s ear.
Was there ever any end to Neil’s good-heartedness?

They stood at the bar for a few
minutes to get their bearings. The band played songs by The Rolling
Stones and The Beatles, then newer ones by The Dave Matthews Band and
Jason Mraz.

“
Do you mind if I take Lindy
out for a dance?” Neil shouted in her ear.

“
Of course not! Please do!”
Cathy said. She felt bad that Neil felt he had to ask her if it was
okay if he and Lindy had a dance. But she knew he didn’t want to
leave her alone unless it was okay.

Cathy looked around the bar while
they were gone, but it was so packed she couldn’t see much. She
could definitely hear. The band was loud. Someone near her left a
barstool and she grabbed it. She was staring at the bottles of liquor
on the wall when she felt a tap on her shoulder.

Lindy stood there all smiles with
Zachery on her arm. “Look who I found,” Lindy shouted.

Cathy smiled at Zachery and he
smiled back at her. “This girl’s crazy, you know,” he said
motioning at Lindy.

“
I know that,” Cathy shouted.

Neil came up beside Lindy and
took her off for another dance, leaving Zachery and Cathy alone, if
you could call it that in the crowded bar.