Page 68 of The Catch

Dani laughed, clamping her lips shut to keep from spitting out her wine. “Come on, Cat. You can barely cook an egg, and you pay someone to do your laundry.”

Cat laughed too, making her eyes water. Before she knew it, her laughter had turned into quiet sobs.

Dani gaped at her, her mouth wide open and her wine glass hovering underneath her bottom lip. “Are you crying?”

Cat wiped frantically at her eyes with the back of her hand. She was crying. She hadn’t let anyone see her cry over a man since high school. Not even Micah. All the tears she shed for him were in private; she wouldn’t give him that embarrassment on top of everything else. Yet here she was, sobbing like a melodramatic teenager over Josh. It was fitting, though. She hadn’t giggled, or played, or felt as light as Josh made her feel since she was a kid either.

“I’ve never seen you cry.”

“That’s not true,” Cat muttered, sniffing loudly. “I cried when I broke my wrist in fifth-grade playing volleyball.”

“No, you whimpered. I cried.” Dani walked around the island and took a seat next to her. “What happened, Cat?”

Dani’s soft expression hit her right in the gut, and her confession rushed out through her trembling lips. “Josh asked me to move in with him, and I brought up his ex-wife and told him he has a history of making bad decisions.”

Dani looked aghast. She should—it was awful. “Oh my God, Cat,” she exclaimed. “His ex-wife who cheated on him?”

Cat nodded, feeling the fresh slap of guilt on her cheeks.

“You really don’t know how to let someone love you, do you?” Dani leaned back on her own stool, crossing her arms around her chest and shaking her head.

“I thought I did. I was. Things were different this time.”

“You were doing really well. Even Emma was impressed.”

“It was just that Maria started talking about how it was time for me to think about settling down, let a man take care of me, and then Josh tried to pay for my groceries—”

“Wow. What an ass.”

Cat shot her a sharp look and continued. “Okay, but then Josh asked me to move in with him after five months! And he didn’t even consider it the other way around. He just assumed I should give up my place, changemywhole life trajectory to be with him. It was Micah all over again.” Cat sighed at her own retelling of the story. Hearing herself compare Josh to Micah sounded ludicrous, but she’d done it. “Adam was right. It was too good to be true.”

“First of all,” Dani countered, “Adam is never right. Second, I love your sisters, but they don’t know you, Cat. You grew up after they were already wives and mothers. If advice doesn’t come from me or Sonya or sometimes Emma, then it doesn’t count.” She smiled at Cat, but her amusement went unreturned. “So, what’s the real issue here? The timing, or the fact that you’d have to give up your place? If Josh had asked to move in with you, give up his house and move to the city, would you have done it?”

“I don’t know.” She was still swimming in the shallow end of this whole dilemma. The length of their relationship, his house or hers, those were excuses, black and white solutions to a grey problem. “It probably doesn’t matter anyway. I doubt that it’s a possibility anymore. I shot him down pretty hard.”

“Oh, Cat,” Dani sighed. “This can’t be what you want.”

“It’s not,” she said, finishing her glass of wine, and helping herself to more. She definitely knew that much. “I didn’t handle it well.”

“So, what did you think was going to happen?”

“I thought he would get it. He would understand that it wasn’t that easy. Or maybe I thought he would somehow convince me like he always does.” Her chest tightened as she replayed the conversation over in her head, how quickly it had slipped out of her control. She posed the tough questions, and Josh gave her the perfect answer. That’s how it was with them. But this time, she had questioned Josh himself—his judgment, his heart. She had no right to do that, but he hadn’t even given her a chance to take it back. She let out a short sigh of frustration, turning back to Dani with a frown. “I certainly didn’t think he was going to leave,” she said. “But that’s exactly what happened. After convincing me to trust him, he still walked right out the door.”

“No way,” Dani said, shaking her head at the suggestion. “It’s not the same, and you know it. He’s coming back. But maybe Cat, did you ever think that you always know how things are going to go because you’re the one writing the ending? I mean, one guy asks you for a mile, now you won’t even give an inch.”

Cat was quiet for a few minutes, accepting the admonishment. Micah had held her back from being her best self; that was a fact. But once she’d cut that tether and started running, she never stopped. She was running toward her own dreams, but also away from something. She wasn’t even sure what that something was anymore, but every man since Micah had somehow been incapable of matching her stride. They were weaker than her and threatened by it, or they were just as strong, but their interests collided with hers. Until Josh. He was strong, confident, and he made it clear her interests were his interests. Falling in love with Josh was like putting on a cozy winter coat after shivering in her own cold detachment for so long.

Maybe she just didn’t know how to be this happy. Maybe she had some deep character flaw that wouldn’t allow her to maintain that type of connection. She’d spent the last few years determined to move mountains to get what she wanted, but in doing so, she’d become one, and now she stood squarely in her own way.

“Cat,” Dani continued, “I know you don’t want to hear this, but there were two sides to what happened with Micah. Sure, he changed his mind after you had held up your end of the deal, and that was shitty. But he didn’t break up with you. That was your choice.”

“I couldn’t stay with him after he asked me to give up my dreams for his. That’s not the kind of person you tie yourself to forever.”

“Maybe. But you wanted the other part too, to be with him and have a life together.”

“So?”

“So, I’m just saying sometimes you can compromise. Do you want this thing with Josh?”

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