Page 70 of Reinventing Cato
Vigge eased in next to him.
Not enough room. Not in the car, not in my life. I have enough problems.
“Are you okay?” Vigge gave him a curious look.
Breathe slowly. One, two, three, four, five, breathe.Speaking was beyond him.
Vigge didn’t say anything else, he just sat and waited. Once, he looked as if he was going to reach for Cato’s hand, but he didn’t. Cato’s disappointment, hurt and sadness eventually overwhelmed the anxiety about what had happened to his mother, and his breathing calmed.
“What…do you…want?” Cato rasped.
“This is twice you’ve run out on me.”
“You told me to fuck off!” Cato pulled himself together before he spoke. “I was wrong to look at those photos. Okay? Just as you came in, I was about to walk away.”
“Right.”
Damn you!“You overreacted.” Cato fought to stay calm, to keep his heart rate down or he’d slide back into not being able to breathe. “We could have just had a civilised conversation…where you called me a dickhead and I apologised, but you told me to get out. I don’t call that running out on you.”
“No. Sorry.”
Cato heard the apology but he was on a roll now. “And the first time, when you wanted me gone in the motel, you might not have used the wordsfuck offbut you said it with your back. I spoke and you ignored me. I didn’t run.”
Vigge gave a heavy sigh. “Is… Is what’s happening here because of me?”
“Me, lying curled up in the back of my car, breathing too fast? No.”Wanker. “I had another anonymous text sayingA reminderand then I heard my mother got run off the road this morning by a driver in a silver car who didn’t stop. Her Golf’s totalled.”
“Shit. Is she okay?”
Cato nodded. “Get out of my car, please. I want to drive home.”
“Come back to the house and talk.”
“I don’t want to.”
Vigge stared at him for a moment. Cato wasn’t sure if he wanted to be pushed to stay or not.
“Let me have your phone. I’ll get it looked at by someone at work. I’ll make it official.”
Cato gave a huff of disbelief. “Whoever this is has just shown what he or she can do. My mother had the accident at ten. The text was sent to me twenty minutes later. I’m not reporting those threats to the police. I don’t want you to, either. I want to go home.”
When Vigge climbed out of the car and closed the door, something withered and died in Cato. He wanted Vigge to fight harder, not just give up. Cato exited on the other side, opened the driver’s door and stared at Vigge across the roof of the car. “Look at that top photo and then check out the shape of the constellation Cygnus.”
“What?”
Cato sat in the driver’s seat and Vigge came round to his side and grabbed hold of the door as Cato tried to pull it shut.
“Please don’t go,” Vigge said. “I did overreact. I’m sorry.”
Too late.“I can’t do this now.” Cato slammed the door and drove away.
He had to stop again another couple of hundred metres down the road to start the satnav. He had enough to try and deal with without getting lost.
~~~
It had just gone six when Cato pulled up outside the house. He turned off the engine and exhaled. He’d had an ache in the pit of his stomach the whole way back. Not the sort of ache that saidwell, that’s the end of that,but more one that saidI don’t want this to be over even though Vigge is a twat and so am I.It meant something that Vigge had come after him, but did it mean enough?
Cato felt even more guilty now about all the guys he’d treated badly. He was considerate, physically. He wanted them to get as much pleasure in the sex as him. But emotionally, no, he’d not given a fuck. Not until now. He’d finally registered that along with a physical connection, came an emotional one. It had been there with Louise and Max, but he’d told himself one-night stands were different. Even if he’d not felt it, the other person had. Sometimes. Now Cato was the other person.
