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“Well,” their mother started.'Please don't say it mom. Just this once keep your mouth shut.'“Aunt Beckett brought her number five this evening.”
“Jesus,” Kyle whispered. “Five cats.”
Ruth cleared her throat. “How about we leave Josie's cats alone and eat dinner before it gets cold.”
“How about you eat dinner, I’m heading to bingo. It’s two for twenty tonight with a grand prize of a thousand big ones.”
“Oh no you don't.” Ruth scurried towards the front door, blocking her aunt's exit. “Josie didn't order all that food for nothing. We are going to sit down, eat, and celebrate. I insist.”
“And Iinsiston making it to bingo on time. Move it or lose it Ruthie.” Josie could see her mother's nostrils flare, her blue eyes darkening with an unreadable emotion before her mother repeated her demand that they all sit down, eat, and celebrate. “Oh, for the love of... ” Aunt Beckett rolled her eyes upward. “We all know you're going to throw some party or what not. I'll celebrate then.”
“Listen here-” Ruth started, then sighed. “Fine. Go.” She stepped away from the door. “I'll let you know when the party is.”
If reverse psychology had been the goal, it would have failed miserably. Aunt Beckett didn't have to be told twice. She shuffled out the door without so much as a goodbye. It took every ounce of Josie's willpower not to chase after the old woman and beg her to'take me with you.'
Chapter Two
Josie
‘I’m sick of following my dreams man, I’m just going to ask where they’re going and hook up with them later’ - Mitch Hedberg
Dinner wasn’t going the way Josie thought it would. Aunt Beckett abandoning family night to go play bingo should have been a sign that things weren’t going to go according to plan. Instead of focusing on the engagement, Kyle kept trying to circle back to her fictional boyfriend. For her part, Ruth tried to keep things on track, but Kyle wasn’t having it.
“I was thinking next month.” Ruth glanced between Kyle and Jonas, her brows arching slightly when neither of them answered. “For the engagement party,” she prompted.
“That sounds great,” Jonas finally answered.
Kyle pushed the last of his spaghetti around his plate, his brows knit together in a perplexed scowl. Without warning, he dropped his fork and twisted in his seat so that he faced Josie. “Where did you meet this guy?”
“Oh for pete’s sake,” their father grumbled.
Josie resisted the urge to groan. She should have known Kyle wasn’t going to leave well enough alone. For every vague answer she’d given, he’d poked harder. Her mind raced, trying to come up with a believable meet cute location. “Delilah’s,” she managed to squeak out. It wasn’t inconceivable that she wouldmeet someone at her favorite coffee shop. She went there at least twice a week for a vanilla chai and chocolate filled croissant.
“Delilah’s,” Kyle echoed.
“Yes.”
“She goes all the time,” Ruth offered. “Carl,” she hissed, elbowing their father, “tell Kyle that Josie goes all the time.”
“She’s told him. You’ve told him. He doesn't need to hear it from me.” Nodding his silver head, like that was that, Carl turned his focus back to the pile of food on the plate in front of him. “Thought we were celebrating his engagement,” he grumbled between bites.
“As did I,” Jonas shot Kyle a pointed look.
For a moment, Josie thought Kyle was going to say something more, instead he let out a sigh. “Mom, next month sounds great for the engagement party.”
Tucking her chin against her chest, Josie stared down at her plate. The tension hovering just beneath the surface was her fault. She shouldn’t have lied about having a boyfriend.‘It was a lie of necessity,’she silently reasoned. Was it though? Was creating a fictional boyfriend just to get out of a blind date really a necessity? Necessity or not, the lie had been told and it had revealed a side of her brother she hadn’t seen before.‘Stop dwelling on it. So what if Kyle thinks you have too many cats.Youthink you have too many cats.’It wasn’t his attitude towards her cats that got to her, it was the way he implied that she had no life. She had a life. Maybe it wasn’t full of romance the way Kyle’s was, but she had a life. A life that now included a fake boyfriend.
‘One thing is for certain, I can’t be dumped anytime soon.’If Kyle thought she had no life before the boyfriend lie, she could only imagine what his opinion of her would be if she was ‘dumped.’ Poor Josie, all alone with her cats; like that was a fate worse than death. Josie had watched too many of herfriends jump into relationships out of fear of being alone. It was like they’d rather pretend they were happy with their serial cheaters than wait for the right person. There was no way in hell Josie was going to be one of those girls.‘Better to be alone than delusional,’her bestie Louise liked to say. It felt like a good motto to live by. Besides, she wasn’t alone. She had her family, her friends, and, she smiled, her cats.
***
The rest of dinner went the way Josie had originally thought it would. Her mother gushed over Kyle and Jonas, while her father dropped hints that they’d save a lot of money by hosting the engagement party, maybe even the wedding, at the dance studio. The only thing missing was Aunt Beckett’s snarky remarks. Josie couldn’t blame her for choosing bingo. Hell, if she had known bingo was an option, she would have chosen it herself. Anything had to be better than the tense shitshow she had just sat through.
“I’m going to call it a night,” she announced when the conversation had steadily turned towards planning the engagement party. A wave of sadness hit her as she rose to her feet. Earlier, she had been looking forward to helping plan things, and now she just wanted a tube of cookie dough and a sappy Hallmark movie where everything always worked out.
She was halfway to the door when she felt a hand on her shoulder, slowing her steps. “We good?” Kyle asked. Without turning around, Josie shrugged. It was a complicated question. The way he’d implied she didn’t have a life, and that she wasn’t trying to have one, hurt. Maybe her life didn’t look the way he thought it should, but it was her life and she liked it. “Jos.”
The panic in his voice made her sigh. She could practically feel her parents and Jonas staring at them. “We’regood.” She gave him a quick hug before ducking out the door and walking the short distance to her apartment.
