Sunday, January 29th
Ronan
I have the worst headache. It travels all the way down from the back of my head to my neck and shoulders.
I’m tense and stiff. What a shocker. I had a piss-poor night with sleep so light I’d be surprised if I logged any REM time.
It was all tossing and turning. No rest. I’m hungover without having had a single drop of alcohol.
I don’t even remember my drive home from Greenwich last night.
I was dazed, the image of Cat’s lips sealed to another guy’s mouth branded into my retinas as though I stared into the sun too long.
I couldn’t get it out of my head. I still can’t, and fuck if it doesn’t strangle me from the inside out.
I hadn’t planned on going to that party, but I found myself working through my class work surprisingly fast, churning out one assignment after another, and in just over three hours I was caught up.
Given how sparse my time with Cat had been over the past week, and the festering impasse we had found ourselves at just days ago, I decided not to wait until today to see her.
I was over the tension between us, the small talk on the phone. I wanted to see her, pull her into my arms, kiss her. I wanted to move past our disagreement in a real, substantial way.
Now I wish I had never left my apartment; then I’d still be blissfully unaware, my heart would still be intact, and I wouldn’t find myself in the position I’m in right now.
I’m run-down, drained, and achy. If I didn’t know better, I’d say I’m coming down with whatever virus plagued Shane last week.
But I do know better, know that what ails me is psychosomatic rather than physiological.
I’ve been here before, recognize the signs, that deep fatigue that demands I seek sleep.
I fight it. My body is merely manifesting the emotional pain.
It’s only eight a.m. I usually sleep in on Sundays—my one true rest day—but I’ve been up for thirty minutes already.
I have nine missed calls and fifteen text messages from Cat.
All the texts and seven of her calls are from last night, two from this morning.
I didn’t talk to her after leaving her with Vada and Tori last night, and I also didn’t read or respond to her messages.
I couldn’t. I didn’t know what to say to her, didn’t want to hear what she had to say to me—not in that moment, when she was obviously impaired.
And we were both in a heightened emotional state, which can only lead to disaster.
Not that today won’t be equally as destructive…
I shower and get dressed, but none of it feels real.
Seeing Cat with some dude pushing up against her felt like an out-of-body experience, like I was just witness to someone else’s life, and that feeling has not subsided in the past eleven hours.
Maybe this is just a dream, one of my too-vivid nightmares, one of those I can’t wake up from myself.
Fuck, I wish it was. I wish Cat or Shane would yank me out of my dream already, would tell me to wake the fuck up, that all of this was nothing more than a night terror.
But it isn’t. I know it isn’t, even though it sure as fuck feels like it.
Vada did as I asked last night—she drove Cat home, then dropped Tori off at the apartment where I was desperately trying to think of a way to shut off my brain.
In true Vada fashion, she immediately wanted to discuss the incident with me, wanted to hash out the painful details while Tori was in the bathroom throwing up.
I just told Vada to go home, making it very clear that I wouldn’t discuss anything with her that night. So, she left.
I checked on Tori, helped get her into bed, then sat on the couch trying to figure out what to do. I aptly ignored my phone each time the screen lit up with an incoming call or text from Cat. She stopped trying to get ahold of me at two in the morning.
Shane got home just before three, obviously unaware of the shitshow that had unfolded earlier that evening.
“Tori’s asleep. She’s trashed,” I told him. Shane chuckled knowingly, but my next words wiped his grin off his face. “Cat kissed some dude at the fucking party.”
He froze mid-step. “I’m sorry, what?”
“Cat kissed some guy at the party. I walked in on this asshole with his tongue in her mouth,” I said, nearly choking on my words.
“Did she kick the motherfucker in the balls like she did Drew?”
I shook my head and narrowed my eyes at him. “She wasn’t fighting him off, Shay. She was kissing him back.”
Shane spent the next hour trying to talk me off the ledge, telling me—over and over again—not to do anything rash, to sleep on it. “I know it hurts like hell, Ran, but I’m sure it was just a mistake. I’m sure it really didn’t mean a damn thing to Cat. She was drunk. It was a mistake.”
Yeah, he’s probably right, but what he doesn’t understand—what no one truly understands—is that the issue goes way, way deeper than Cat kissing another guy at a party while she was drunk.
And it’s exactly that realization that causes me to pull up in front of Cat’s at just before ten this morning.
I put my Mustang in park and slowly shut off the ignition.
I linger in my seat, breathing deeply. There’s a tightness in my throat, squeezing my windpipe as if I have a noose around my neck.
It only gets worse when I step out of my car and force myself to walk up the short walkway, then the steps to her front door.
I stand for a second, trying to gather the strength to knock.
Cat must have heard my car, must have seen me approach, because she opens the door before I can announce my presence.
“Hey,” she says meekly, her hazel eyes huge, full of emotion.
I can tell by the red rims around her eyes and her blotchy skin that she’s been crying.
A lot. She looks as beautiful as ever, even with her hair pulled into a messy bun, her oversized sweater—my sweater—and her pajama pants.
It doesn’t matter what she does, what she wears, she will always be utterly perfect to me.
Cat stands back, bidding me into the house. It’s quiet. Her parents and siblings must be out. It’s a good thing, because we really don’t need an audience.
I stand in the hallway, unwilling—or unable—to move deeper into the house, to walk to her room. I need to get this over with before the paper-thin resolve I built dissolves and we’re right back where we started. “I… We need to talk.”
She looks as tired as I feel. I bet she didn’t sleep any better than I did last night. The dark circles under her eyes make that obvious. “Yeah,” she says. I hear the regret and shame in her voice.
“Ran, I’m so sorry,” she says, her voice cracking, her shoulders heavy. She directs her gaze to the floor.
I nod. “I know.”
She lifts her eyes and searches mine. The emotions are etched into her face, reflected on her brow, her mouth, those beautiful hazel eyes.
“I don’t know what came over me. I shouldn’t have been drinking.
I know myself better than that. I promise it was meaningless.
I didn’t want this; I… I’m so sorry.” The words spill from her lips as if the speed with which she says them can stitch up the emotional wounds, could halt the damage done last night.
I want her to stop being so hard on herself. I didn’t come here to yell or make her feel even shittier about her obvious slip in judgment. “Listen, Cat, I’m sure you were still in a weird place after our fight last week.”
She nods hesitantly, like she can’t believe I’m letting her off the hook this easily. “But that still doesn’t excuse my behavior.”
Every part of me yearns to pull her into my arms, to tell her it’s alright.
It would be so damn easy, too. It would be so easy to ignore last night away, to avoid the painful, uncomfortable conversation.
I could just tell her that it’s fine, I forgive her, we all make mistakes.
Part of me truly feels that way. I know what happened last night was a mistake, that Cat didn’t set out to hook up with another guy, to…
cheat on me. I’m sure it meant nothing. We had a terrible fight a week ago that we never worked through; she was drunk. I get it. Shit happens.
But I can’t ignore it away. I can no longer avoid it; what happened last night was just what I had anticipated all along. It was inevitable. We’ve finally arrived at the point that I instinctively knew we would reach—the moment my mother always predicted.
I allow my eyes to close for a moment, to inhale Cat’s scent—lavender and rosewater—and really feel her presence. She was the absolute best thing to ever happen to me.
I take a deep breath, bracing for my next words.
“I think… I think we should break things off.”
My words are a black hole, pulling all oxygen from the room and into a vortex of darkness as I let the one thing that makes me truly happy slip from my hands. Saying it out loud hurts more than anything my mother ever did.
Cat recoils from me, her eyes wide with panic. “What? No! Ran, please,” she chokes, her eyes filling with tears. “I’m so sorry I hurt you. I know I messed up last night. I—”
“Cat, I’m not good enough for you,” I say. She falls silent. “I’ve never been good enough for you.”
“You keep saying that, but it’s not true,” she sobs.
“But it is. There are things that you want, that you deserve, that I can’t give to you. You deserve to have everything; you deserve to be happy.”
“But I am happy with you,” she says through her tears, her voice off-pitch, cracking.
“You say that now, until you’re ready to have a family, for example. Then you’ll start to resent me when I can’t give you what you need.”
She shakes her head adamantly, tears spilling down her face and dripping off her chin. “No, I won’t.”