Epilogue #2
Cat stepped back from the hug, eyes gleaming. “I’m glad you made it and that Jade didn’t go holding you up all night! I thought I’d never see you again and Daniela would pout that you weren’t here and then I’d have to cheer her up!”
“Uh-huh… cheer her up,” I said, mostly just to myself, not even signing it.
I wondered what… cheering her up looked like.
She and Daniela still hadn’t gotten together, as far as I understood, but they’d been more and more inseparable.
And if they’d kinda sorta had sex a little bit another time, well… I wouldn’t be surprised.
“What was that?” Cat said. I shook my head.
“Nothing,” I said, picking up the signing again. “Just… happy to be here! I mean, it’s been ages since I was here, last night.”
“Tell me about it,” she laughed, slumping back against the bar. “I love the Pride events and I’m glad I got to help out, but I need like two weeks of never looking at a timetable again. Kev! Get me another drink!”
Jade frantically shook her head at the bartender, and he nodded, pouring a plain soda water and squeezing some lime in.
Cat had her back to him, and in this state, she probably wouldn’t notice, but it wasn’t enough to cover for the situation completely, because Linda came huffing over to the three of us, signing pointedly.
“Cat, you cannot have another drink already.”
“I’m good! I’ve got the constitution of a horse. I’m a cat with horse lungs.”
“Lungs aren’t even relevant to your alcohol tolerance,” Jade said.
“It’s non-alcoholic,” Kevin said, speaking behind her. “Don’t tell her.”
Linda relaxed. “My god. Okay, sure, horse-lungs.” She turned to me with her little upside-down smile, looking tired and content in equal measures. “Hey. Thanks for showing. You’ll be unsurprised to learn Cat was pre-gaming.”
“Shocking…”
“Hey. I can see what you’re saying!” Cat said.
“I’m gonna go sit her down,” Jade said, and Cat pouted.
“I’m not a child!”
“I know, you’re a cat. With horse lungs. Now come on.” Jade stopped signing and took her by the wrist, leading her meandering across the room towards the back, almost spilling her soda water. Linda shook her head before she turned back to me, relaxing with a small smile.
“Relieved now that the chaos is done?”
“I feel like I want to lie down for a week.”
“I’d drink to that if I hadn’t left my wine over with Kaitlyn when I saw Cat trying to order a drink.”
It wasn’t lost on me that Kaitlyn was sitting at a table far away from where Charlie was talking to one of the donors on the rear terrace.
If Linda and Charlie were hanging out separately at this kind of event, I could imagine what that meant.
“Well, take a raincheck, then,” I said. “How are you feeling?”
“Tired. Stressed. Relieved.”
“Relieved about…?”
She slumped against the wall with a sigh. “Is it obvious?”
“Just wondering if anything happened since you and Charlie aren’t…”
“We’ve been having a lot of conversations. Usually not easy ones.”
Even now, there was still that part of me that panicked briefly like oh my god I ruined their relationship. But I was learning to rise above it. “What kind of conversations?”
“About what we want, about what we need. About how we feel. She was offering to change, to do this differently, and I don’t know…
” She shrugged, and then she shrugged again, more dramatically this time, clearly at a loss for words.
“Maybe. But I feel like now that I’ve started pulling the bandaid, I just want to get it off.
I feel like we should just take a break and see if we actually want to get back into it.
I’ve been realizing I don’t think she’s all that happy, either.
Trying to rush into having a solid relationship and a nice house and all these things so that she feels like she’s doing well, and then she was getting frustrated I wasn’t lining up with the life she had in mind. I don’t know. It’s been a lot.”
I softened, touching a hand to her arm, gently, just for a second.
That was a massive commitment for Linda, who generally acted around physical touch like it was a rattlesnake trying to bite her, but I was one of the few she let do it.
“I’m sure it must be exhausting,” I said softly.
“But I’m glad it’s moving forward. Be gentle with yourself if you can, okay? I’m here for you however I can be.”
“I’m more worried for Charlie than I am for myself. I want to be single at this point. I don’t think she does, and I don’t think she wants to get back into dating.”
“I get that. But you’ve got to trust her to take care of what she needs and then do what you need for yourself, right?”
“Guess maybe you’re right.” She elbowed me. “Look at you. So wicked smaht.”
“Wicked smaht. That’s me.”
“I’m gonna get my drink and go back to annoying Kaitlyn. You wanna join me?”
“Oh, yeah, absolutely, I’ll just be making the rounds a bit first. See Cat and Daniela. Um…” I cleared my throat. “Say, do you think, uh…”
“That they want to fuck?” she deadpanned. “Yeah, probably.”
Want to was an understatement. But I wasn’t about to tell her that part. “Okay, great. Do you think everyone else can see it too?”
“Abby’s planning a party for when it finally happens.”
“Oh, thank god. I found my people. I’ll check in with her on the party preparation.”
I did, of course—I made the rounds anyway, grabbing a drink and going through the space chatting to people I hadn’t gotten a lot of opportunities to talk to properly over the past month, and I made promises to catch up and hang out with people another time soon here and there and everywhere, and one of them of course was Abby, who I still felt awkward and embarrassed around but who acted as carefree as if nothing ever happened.
She was unsurprised to learn I was also waiting for Cat and Daniela to happen, offered to add me to the group chat, which was how I learned there was a group chat and that yes, everybody knew about Cat and Daniela except for Cat and Daniela.
I was already tired by the time I got out to the back terrace, where we had slices of narrow views through the trees out to the valley below, and I leaned against the railing with my barely-touched drink in hand just trying to get a second with it before Charlie joined me, sliding the door shut as she stepped out with me.
“I hope you don’t mind if I crowd your space for a minute, dear,” she said, and I smiled exhaustedly at her.
“You’re welcome to, just don’t expect the most intelligent conversation from me. My brain is fried. I don’t know how you’ve managed to keep together with the event preparations while working as much as you do too.”
“Simple, I have control issues, and if I’m not doing that, then I go mad.
Micromanaging people is my therapy.” She leaned against the railing, fingers curling over the coarse wood as she looked out over the view behind the place.
“I haven’t smoked in almost ten years, but it’s times like this I really miss having a cigarette in my lips.
Not even the act of smoking, just having it there, like I’m missing something without it. ”
“I didn’t know you ever did smoke.”
“Kicked the habit when I moved to Vermont.” She shook her head, laughing dryly.
“I lived in New York before that. Worked in Manhattan, representing billion-dollar real estate conglomerates. Very high-powered job. Very bad for my health. I had a breakdown and left… classic midlife crisis, I suppose. I don’t talk about it much.
I’m not fond of the life I had before then.
Drinking, smoking, drugs and long nights at the office, being vaguely aware my wife was having an affair and choosing not to notice.
Life sneaks up on you. Before you know it, you’ve wandered so far off the path you want to be on. Quitting smoking is hard, you know?”
“I mean, I’ve heard, yeah. Pretty famously.”
“People talk about how you’ve got to have your reason.
Your why. Something to focus on in dark days.
Lots of people in these quitting-smoking groups have just had kids and want to live healthier for them, or their partners have given them an ultimatum, or they just lost a parent and it gave them a wakeup call to not go the same path. Noble reasons. Mine was anger.”
“Anger?”
“Every time I picked up a cigarette, I thought about how stupid I looked, and it pissed me off. I got so angry at myself every time, and I can’t recommend it as an approach, but I guess it worked.
” She shook her head. “Didn’t realize I was doing that thing where you replace one addiction with another.
Lots of people do it with alcohol—they quit smoking and turn into alcoholics instead.
Some with sex. The worst is when people replace it with gambling.
But I replaced it with getting righteously indignant.
Forcing people to go along with my will. ”
I couldn’t find anything to say, really, but luckily she wasn’t waiting for it. A smile ghosted over her features, and she looked up at the starry night sky.
“And now I’m trying to kick that habit, and what do you know? I get the urge to smoke. I need to find a less annoying bad habit to pick up instead, because clearly something is going to fill the void. Candy Crush, maybe.”
“I… heard you and Linda have been having some heavy conversations lately.”
She closed her eyes. “We had a bit of a fight a week ago. Kept escalating until she yelled that I was treating her like a dress-up doll. I yelled back, we slept in different rooms, and I woke up the next day knowing she was right. Still spent most of the next day hiding from it, though. But I eventually put on my big girl panties, apologized to her, and we’ve been…
figuring things out. I don’t think we’re going to be seeing each other anymore.
Apparently I treat people like dress-up dolls. ”