Page 119 of Meant to Be

CHAPTER 27

Joe

For several months after Cate and I got engaged, everything was so damn good. Exciting and hopeful and justwonderful. I realized that beyond how much I loved her, being with her also allowed me to escape being a Kingsley, at least in part. Our relationship was the first thing in my life that didn’t feel foisted upon me—like Harvard, and law school, and my respectable job as a prosecutor. Even the campaign felt like another weight on my shoulders, a burden of my legacy. But with Cate by my side, that pressure felt manageable. She kept telling me that I could do it. That she was proud of me. That I didn’t have to be my father, but that I was more than the free-spirited, risk-taking lightweight persona I’d always tried to hide behind.

Then, suddenly and overnight, everything changed. That was my perception, anyway, though maybe it had happened more gradually, and I’d just been too busy with my campaign to notice.

I’d returned from Peter’s bachelor party in Miami, his wedding only two weeks away. My flight landed around two, and I called Cate the second I walked in my door from LaGuardia. It had only been forty-eight hours since I’d seen her, but I missed her a crazy amount.

Elna answered their phone, and after we chatted a few seconds, she put Cate on.

“Hey! Where’ve you been?” I asked her. “I tried you twice yesterday. Did you get my messages?”

She said yes. Nothing more.

“Are you okay?”

“I’m fine. Just a little under the weather…”

“Oh, shoot. Do you think it’s the flu? It’s going around.”

“No,” she said. “It’s mostly just a headache.”

“A migraine?” I asked, familiar with those from my mother’s spells over the years.

“I’m not sure,” she said, sounding both vague and distant.

“Okay. Well, can I bring you anything? Meds or soup?”

“No. I’ll be fine,” she said. “I just need to lie down.”

“Okay,” I said. “Check in with me later, okay?”

“Will do,” she said, then quickly hung up.

—

Later that night,when I hadn’t heard back from Cate, it crossed my mind that she could be mad about Peter’s bachelor party. She hadn’t asked any questions, but I was sure she assumed strippers were involved—which they had been. In the scheme of bachelor parties, it had been on the tame side—just the standard antics in a hotel suite—but I was still feeling guilty, wishing that we had taken a sailing trip instead.

At the risk of interrupting her sleep, I called Cate back. She answered on the first ring, sounding wide awake.

Wondering why she hadn’t called me, I asked her how she was feeling.

“Pretty much the same,” she said, her voice as flat as it had been on the first call.

“Oh…Well, I’m sorry to bother you again—but I was just worried…are you upset with me about the weekend?”

“The weekend?”

“I mean—the stripper stuff…It’s all so stupid…but harmless. And I just wanted you to know that nothing happened.”

“Jeez, Joe,” she said. “I wouldhopenothing happened.”

Feeling a little stupid, I said, “Yeah. Totally…I didn’t even get a lap dance. In case you were wondering.”

“I wasn’t. But thanks,” she said with a little laugh that I couldn’t read.

“Okay…so you’re sure you’re not upset with me?”

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