Page 65 of The Catch

“Hey, Cat!” Emma chirped as she came into the room to greet her. “Where’s Josh?”

Adam’s eyes were burning a hole into the back of Cat’s head as she dug through their kitchen utensils and pretended not to hear Emma’s question. She finally found a large slotted spoon and turned back around to see her friends wearing matching expressions.

“You know, it wasn’t that long ago you two used to be excited to seemewhen I showed up.”

“That’s not an answer,” Emma said.

“We had a… disagreement.”

“Shoulda known it was too good to be true,” Adam said, shaking his head.

“We didn’t break up.” Cat sighed, wishing she’d just made up an excuse not to come. “You still have your new best friend.”

“I’m saying this because I’myourfriend, Cat. Don’t fuck this one up.”

“Why are you assuming it was my fault?” She sounded more incredulous than she actually was, given the fact that it was completely her fault.

“Because that’s what you do,” Adam said, his face reddening. Adam, the guy who still played Hacky Sack and designed kids educational websites for a living was raising his voice. Cat froze like a child being scolded. “You always duck out of the way when something goods about to hit, Cat. I really thought this was different. I thought you were gonna let him stick around a while, but nah, it’s starting. I can already see you making up problems.”

“Adam,” Emma said softly, “give us a minute.”

“Yeah, all right.” He took the bowl Cat brought and headed back into the living room. “Sorry, Cat. I really hope you two fix this.”

Cat watched Adam’s back as he retreated out of the room, then she went to the refrigerator to help herself to a beer, hoping to dodge Emma’s eyes. “I should just go home,” she said, once she was left alone with Emma.

“Don’t be silly. There’s no need for that.”

“I don’t feel like going in there and repeating this conversation with everyone else.” She gestured to the next room where the rest of the group was laughing and enjoying themselves.

“So don’t.” Emma threw an arm around her shoulders and dragged her into the living room. “Hey guys,” she said. “Cat’s here. She brought food. She didn’t bring Josh. Don’t ask.”

The room went quiet, save for the zealous announcers chattering on the TV. Sonya looked back and forth between the two. Sonya’s boyfriend kept his eyes mercifully on the television, trying his best to ignore the situation. “We’re talking about this later, Cat,” Sonya said, eyeing her in that watchdog way of hers.

Adam’s expression had softened by then, and he pretended to punch Cat’s arm. “God damned soap opera around here. I thought y’all came to watch football?”

“Go, Virginia.” Cat pumped a fist in the air listlessly as she found a spot in Adam’s armchair to begin her Academy Award performance of an exuberant Cavs fan. In reality, she wasn’t seeing a thing that was happening on the screen. All her current headspace was being used to analyze the fact that Josh’s absence was already dulling an event she’d been looking forward to all week long.

Josh pulled out the last bottle of beer from his fridge, forcefully popping the cap on the edge of his counter, then he sunk into his couch and flipped on the television. The football game he was supposed to be watching with Cat blared through the room, but his stomach rumbled even louder. He never did get breakfast, and since he was supposed to be at Cat’s for the whole weekend, he hadn’t bothered stocking his refrigerator with any food before he left. Now he was out of beer, too.

Unfortunately, going to the supermarket wasn’t in the cards, since his liquid diet for the day had left him too buzzed to drive. He grabbed a pillow from the end of the couch and wedged it behind his head, hoping the ache in his stomach could at least edge out the ache in his chest. That old expression “feeling no pain” was such a crock. He was well past the point of inebriation, and he still felt every ounce of misery that came from fighting with Cat.

From the first moment he’d laid eyes on her, he knew Cat would either be his salvation or his undoing. He’d taken the chance anyway, without regard for the consequences. He thought she was taking it with him, but the doubts she had when they first met had suddenly snuck back in, like the bitterness that snuck up on the fall air and turned it to winter.

He tried to lose his thoughts in the game, focusing on the satisfying, angry crack of the helmets and the cheers from the crowd of people who still found some part of this day to enjoy. He could tell by the first quarter that it was shaping up to be a blow out, though, and his attention strayed. Had Cat still gone to Emma’s house? Was she was laughing and enjoying her friends, while he sat there applying an alcohol compress to the bruise her words left?

Figuring things out, seeing what happens—he never would have described what they were doing in such tentative terms, but she’d used them, right before she suggested he might be prone to the type of emotional naivety that could bring them both down. Did she really think that he was being careless with her? He’d never been careless with anything in his life. But he supposed walking out wasn’t the best way to convince her of that.

He picked up his phone, contemplating calling her and apologizing for the way he’d reacted, ending the whole argument right then and there. The problem was, if she was dealing with it better than he was, just going on with her day, he really didn’t want to know about it.

He changed his mind and dialed Dylan’s number instead.

“Hey,” Dylan said after one ring. Josh could hear the sound of the same game he was watching in the background. “What’s up? I thought you were at Cat’s for the weekend.”

“I was, but now I’m not.”

“Okay…You wanna swing by and watch the game?”

“I can’t. I’ve had too much to drink. Why don’t you come over here? Bring some food or something.”

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