Page 70 of The Catch

She pressed the voicemail icon, and her eyes rolled shut in relief as soon she heard Josh’s voice. Then the relief hardened like a stone in the pit of her stomach. While she’d been crying herself to sleep on Dani’s couch, Josh had been sitting in his Jeep, waiting for her and wondering where she was. He’d come back—apologized for leaving even after she said what she said. Defeat and exhaustion wound their way through his voice as he spoke, but he ended his message with an earnest “I love you”, proving yet again that he wasn’t going to let her ruin this for them. She wasn’t sure whether to curse or cry.

Her finger swept to the return call button before the last syllable of his message was finished, and it took four excruciating rings before his thick voice offered a sleep-slurred hello.

“It’s me,” she said, though modern calling technology had rendered that bit superfluous. “I got your message.”

“Just now?”

“My phone was dead.” He didn’t reply and the realization that he might not believe her twisted in her gut. “Can I come over?”

Josh’s outward breath crackled on the phone. “It’s a long drive, Cat. Why don’t you just tell me what you want to say over the phone?”

What she wanted to say? What did that mean?“Josh. I want to see you.”

There was a long pause before he answered. “Yeah. Okay. I’ll be here.”

It wasn’t the enthusiastic invitation she’d hoped for, but she would take it. “I’ll see you in an hour.”

Josh’s Jeep was parked crooked in the gravel driveway as if he’d given little care to where it landed when he’d arrived there in the dark. A fresh layer of frost shimmered on the dying grass of his lawn. He must have been cold the night before, sitting in her parking lot, waiting for her to come home. He would have been worried, probably frustrated, and cold. The thought made fresh tears spring, but Cat wiped them away. She couldn’t go in there a blubbering mess. She had an apology to make.

She knocked on Josh’s front door, and it opened almost immediately as if he’d been waiting by it. Though he certainly didn’t look eager.

Josh hovered in the doorway, his hands hanging restlessly at his sides. He didn’t reach for her. He didn’t smile. He was wearing the same clothes as the day before: jeans, a long-sleeved t-shirt, the same color as his eyes. His eyes were puffy, his hair a mess—the sight of him made her want to crumble.

“Hi,” she whispered, feeling like her voice would crack if she gave it any more volume.

“Hey.”

She stepped closer, standing on her tiptoes to kiss him, but fear started to claw at her belly when her mouth bounced off of the corner of his. “Josh…”

He dropped his eyes to the ground.What is happening?

Despite his coldness, Cat threw her arms around his waist and buried her face in his chest. It felt like an eternity, crying into his shirt while he stood wooden, tense, but finally, he wrapped his arms around her back and shoulders and whispered a tinyshhhinto the top of her head.She clung to it like a security blanket.

“You came back to my house last night,” she said.

“Yes.”

She dabbed at her eyes with the sleeve of her shirt. “You were there all night?”

“Most of it.”

“I’m so sorry for what I said, Josh.” When she’d heard his message, she was sure she was rushing over here to put this all behind them, but it wasn’t going at all how she planned. She needed to fix this, get him to look at her the way she was used to. She put a hand on his chest and tipped her head to meet his eyes, but instead he ran a thumb along his lip, his gaze dropping to the ground between them.

“Where’d you sleep, Cat?”

It hit her then, as she watched him square his jaw, every awful thing he must have been imagining flashing in his eyes. Guilt burned at the back of her throat like a match. Did he really think…

“I went to Dani’s,” she said, desperate to erase the thought forever. “Hey… ” She touched his cheek, prickly with a second day’s worth of stubble, and forced his eyes to hers. “Josh, I was at Dani’s. I drank a bottle of wine and my phone was dead. We watched movies and I slept on her couch.”

She watched him watching her as the story tumbled from her mouth, bating her breath as she searched for some sign of where they stood. Finally, he let the weight of his cheek rest in her palm, his eyes closing with what she hoped was relief.

“I left because I was afraid you’d come back and I’d see something I didn’t want to see,” he said.

“No, Josh.” Tears rushed her eyes again. “Can we go inside?” Her fingers ached from the cold, and her muscles were stiff from shivering.

Josh stepped aside, closing the door behind her, then walked straight to the couch and dropped onto it in a boneless heap. “I’m sorry I left, Cat. I shouldn’t have walked out like that. That’s not how I want things to be between us.”

“I’m sorry, too,” she said, allowing herself the indulgence of touching his arm. He was looking at her with a sort of exhausted misery that made her gut hurt, and she had to fight the urge to crawl into a ball on his lap and hold him until all of this weird tension melted away.

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