AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Pulling out a barstool from underneath the kitchen island, I sit. There are so many places to start. So many explanations as to why I’m leaving. For a moment I’m overcome by the emotion clogging my throat.
“You’re going to him.”
“I am. I…”
“You don’t have to explain yourself to me, Cat.” Leaning her elbows on the counter, she grins. “Although at some point, I want all the details.”
“Details?”
“Um, how did you end up withthe cop? And how the hell did you seduce him?” Throwing her head back, she laughs. “These things don’t justhappen.”
“I wanted him the first moment I saw him.” Stunned at my own words, I stop for a moment to think it through. Could that be true? I remember our eyes meeting and the kick in my stomach.
“Are you saying it was love at first sight?” Suzy raises her eyebrows mockingly. “Because you know I don’t believe in that bullshit.”
“Not love, no. But…want.Need.Recognition. It felt like everything I’d done, everything that had shaped me, was supposed to happen so that I’d be standing there atthat second in time with him. It felt like…my butterfly finally found a resting place.”
“You girls and your goddamn butterflies,” Suzy sighs. “You’re all too goddamn romantic for me.”
“I’m not—romantic. I…” I swallow the emotion in my throat. “I never even thought that something like this was possible for me after everything.”
It’s true. Of all the possible outcomes I have imagined for myself, none of them ever included falling in love with a man—acop. For so long I have been a plaything, to be used and discarded at will. And after enough time passed it was hard to imagine anything else…Until that night Aiden took me up the Twelfth Tower and showed me that I have more options now than I ever did before. And even though he didn’t mean for me to interpret him as one of those options, he was.Is.
“Why?” Suzanne’s voice is biting. She pushes off the counter and paces, three steps back, three steps forward, as if she needs to work off her restless energy. When she turns to me, her brown eyes are slit with frustration. “Why do you deserve to be any less happy than,” she throws up her hands, “Mother Theresa? Because you made some mistakes? Mistakes which you’ve paid for!”
I don’t have a good answer for her. It always just felt like my role in life was to recover from the sins I’d made in my past. Sure, maybe I’d thought about the future, but the girls were always,alwaysin it. I’d just assumed we’d be those rich old crones, weathered from our choices, living somewhere together, probably inappropriately whistling and hooting at hot, young men as they passed by.
“There are so many choices now,” I say. “So many options, so many Catherines that I’ve never considered before.”
“Like?”
“Catherine the Girlfriend,” I say quietly, and although it’s far too soon to say it aloud, I think:Catherine the Wife.
“Catherine the Mother?” Suzy suggests.
My heart trips a little as the word leaves her mouth. Unable to acknowledge the faraway possibility just then, I say, “Catherine the Baker.”
“I don’t know if that counts. You were always Catherine the Baker.”
“True.” I chuckle, but my eyes sting with the overwhelmingness of it all. It’s so much to take in, the infinite possibilities of Catherine.
“It’s okay to be scared, Cat.”
“I know.” Aiden’s smile flashes in my mind. “I am. Suze, I’mpetrified. But when I’m with him…the fear it…Changes. It doesn’t go away but it takes on this edge of excitement. Because even if everything goes wrong, I know, without a doubt, that he will be there to help me, and I-I’veneverhad that before.”
“Um,excuseme?”
“You know what I mean,” I laugh.
She winks and, walking to the refrigerator, takes out a bottle of Champagne. “Look what I picked up today.”
“You knew.”
“Isuspected,” she counters. “And if you didn’t,” she shrugs, “I figured we could have gotten trashed anyway.”
“Aiden’s meeting me at four.”
Suzy glances at her watch. “How much damage can we do in three hours?”
