Chapter 9 Caterina #2
The room tilts, just enough to make me reach for the desk with my free hand. Pru watches my face the way she watches a fuse.
“You don’t get to own me because I let you touch me,” I say. “That’s not how any of this is supposed to work.”
“Maybe if you weren’t you and I wasn’t me. In our world, things work differently,” he says. “I keep what belongs with me. You can argue about fairness with a priest.” The line is almost dry humor. Almost. “Go spend a fortune on a wedding neither of us will remember.”
“Excuse me?”
“Because all I’ll be thinking of,” he adds, “is taking you in the confessional again. I’ll be replaying it over and over while you become my wife.”
The sound Pru makes is the sound a cat makes when it sees a bird on TV and realizes it can’t get through glass. “Absolutely not,” she whispers, and then louder, “Absolutely not.”
“Pru says absolutely not,” I tell him.
“Prudence is welcome to say it to my face,” he says. “Tell her to put it in her calendar for five tonight. The maid of honor should probably be at the chapel walkthrough.”
“I haven’t—”
“You’ll be there,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at two-thirty. You should wear black. You look delicious in black.”
I look down at my legs—bare, chilled, goose-fleshed—and up at Pru, whose eyebrows are climbing toward the acoustic tiles. “No.”
“Underwear optional,” he adds, like he’s talking about weather.
I pull the phone away from my ear and stare at it. “You’re not serious.”
“I’m always serious,” he says. “Hang up, Kitty. Drink your coffee. Let my cousin take your measurements and lie to you about how fun cake tastings are.” A beat. “We’ll discuss nicknames later.”
“Outside the bedroom,” I offer weakly.
“Maybe,” he says, and I can hear the smile even if no one else ever will. “Two-thirty.”
The line goes dead.
I set the phone on the desk like you set down something that might explode if you breathe on it. Pru leans her forehead against my shoulder and swears into my T-shirt.
“He is a menace,” she says. “And regardless of what you think right now… you don’t have to do any of this if you don’t want to.” Pru blinks a few times, eyes hot. “You’re a person. You’re my person.”
I cover her hand with mine. “I know.”
We stand in the middle of our ugly dorm room with its cinderblock walls and its bulletin board clutter and its laminated rules about toaster ovens, and we exist in the small, honest universe of girls who would throw themselves in front of things for each other.
Then someone knocks, polite, and the universe expands to include an Irish cousin with a strict calendar and a pen she’s going to use to wrangle me into submission.
Aoife slips back in and reads the room. She doesn’t soften her voice into pity. “Right,” she says briskly. “Which one of you wants to be distracted by lace, and which one of you wants to fight with me over guest lists?”
Pru’s chin juts. “I’m fighting.”
“Brilliant,” Aoife says. “You can argue about seating arrangements while I talk Saint Caterina into not stabbing me with a safety pin. I like you.” Aoife turns to me.
“Have I mentioned that I like you? If you asked me to add pockets for a weapon in your dress, I would cry happy tears and send my tailor flowers.”
The first true smile of the morning tries to happen; I let a corner of it. “Pockets,” I say. “Plural. And not decorative. Something you can actually fit things into.”
“Saints preserve us,” Aoife says, actually delighted. “We are going to be best friends.”
“No,” Pru says, very fast. “She’s my best friend. Find your own.”
“I have a dog,” Aoife says. “He’s my real best friend. I only collect saints in a professional capacity.” She opens the folio, produces a measuring tape, a form with too many lines, and a pen that looks expensive enough to hurt someone with. “Arms up, love.”
“I am not wearing black,” I announce suddenly, more to the room than to the people in it.
Pru claps once. “Correct answer.”
“Turquoise,” Aoife says instantly. “I saw a jewel-toned pantsuit in your closet while I was snooping.”
“Turquoise is too loud,” I say, and then, because I am tired of life always being something that is done to me instead of something that I get to do, “And loud’ll be perfect. Pru, can I borrow it for today?”
Pru sags onto the bed and puts a pillow over her face. “My best friend is going to battle in a teal power suit, and I’m going to cry because that’s hot.”
“You can wear black if you want,” Aoife tells her, cheerful. “Just to balance the aesthetics.”
Aoife finishes punishing someone on the phone and tucks it away.
“And for the record, Cayce can want whatever he wants,” she says.
“He’ll still call you beautiful because you are, and he’ll smile while he takes pictures with you in turquoise because he knows what side of the lens the future lives on. ”
“You talk like this all the time?” Pru asks.
“Only on Tuesdays,” Aoife says.
“Isn’t today Monday?” I point out.
“I feel like today is a very Tuesday kind of day, don’t you?”
I shrug and give her the point.
I should wear a black dress. I think about it, obsess over it while I pick out dress samples and swatches and everything else that’s put in front of me for a wedding I never thought could happen.
When I step out into the afternoon light hours later, I’m not wearing black and Cayce doesn’t look surprised in the slightest.
“Not a dress,” he says. His voice carries the barest hint of disappointment.
“Not black, either,” I say.
“Underwear?” he asks, as chilly as the November weather around us.
“Categorically present,” I say. “Don’t die mad.”
He laughs, and I’m thrown completely into chaos because whatever reaction I expected, this is not it.
“Come along, kitten.” He holds out a hand to me. “I can’t wait to see you wage war on the Church.”