Chapter 33 Catarina
CATARINA
Sunday afternoon, I did something I hadn’t in probably too long: I went to church.
St. Pedro’s was the church where I used to go when I was a kid. Somewhere along the line, I think after I turned twelve or so, I stopped going.
I slipped in the side door. The old cathedral was mostly empty and had that musty but holy scent that was hard to express with words. A few older women in the back couple of rows made the sign of the cross and then exited as I sat down in a pew.
The last twenty years of my life seemed like they had gone by in a flash.
My earliest memories, my father’s death, studying abroad in Ireland as a teenager to perfect my English, then moving to the United States to pursue my dream of being a doctor.
And after all that, it seemed like things had fallen apart again.
I took a deep breath, and I knew why I had stepped into the church. Because I wanted an answer to the unanswerable. Why did it all happen like this? Was it some sort of karmic justice for past misdeeds of mine in another life? Perhaps in this life? Something my dad did?
It was the question of all questions. Why did innocent people sometimes seem to be punished in their earthly lives?
I kneeled—something that just had never sat well with me. Why would I kneel in the presence of a God who thought my father’s life wasn’t worth living?
Still, I kneeled, closed my eyes and thought about everything I had done, and why it could be poetic justice in some way that I had voluntarily left the only relationship with a man that seemed to cut through to my heart.
I had always been weird about men. When my college boyfriend at Yale started wanting to have sex after a few months—which was a totally normal request, looking back at it—I freaked out and wanted to know why he only wanted me for his ‘little plaything.’ It was childish, really.
What I couldn’t see then was that I was truly scared of how attached I might get to him.
Looking back on it, those pesky issues never quite went away.
My post-Yale life at University of Michigan med school seeped into my head. There, I had really lost control of myself on a larger scale. I recalled a few of the nights out there with fright.
I would go out by myself to bars and see which boys had the balls to flirt with me. Most would get discouraged. Except for one. That one night.
What was his name? Our night was so perfect together, I knew it couldn’t be topped. Every time I tried to push him away, he came back ten times stronger and wouldn’t stop. In one night, he said he loved me and wanted to marry me. And I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
As I lay there, a pool of lazy post-sex ecstasy, I watched him sleep, and I knew he couldn’t be serious. Not me. Not a man who oozed the sex appeal, confidence, and had the skills in bed this one did.
Any man who fucked me like he did on the first night was too good to be true.
So, I did the smart thing for a woman who was extra protective of her feelings: I wrote out a note on a napkin that said ‘Love you too, always,’ signed it with a ruby red lipstick kiss, and sneaked out of his room before he knew I was gone.
Then I blocked his face and his name—Duke—out of my mind for good.
I wondered why this story was flooding back to me now, but I thought it might be an omen, so as I kneeled with my eyes closed, I decided to say a prayer for him.
“Dear Lord or God, I hope Duke, wherever he is, has found peace and I hope that I didn’t mess him up too bad from sleeping with him. Amen.” I let my arms fall to my sides, and stayed kneeling for a few more moments.
I felt his presence before he touched me.
The luscious lips I remembered only by how they felt on mine: like a lock and key.
Cold, hard lips pressed against mine as I knelt, and a strong palm wrapped behind my head to steady me.
I didn’t dare open my eyes. Because this was all a dream. It had to be. I moaned, and the lips felt so damn familiar, the stubble was two days old, by my calculations.
Finally, our lips separated. “Duke?” I said.
The voice whispered in my ear. “Fio, you’ve got some fuc—I mean, freaking—explaining to do. Sorry about the F word, big guy. Not in your house, I know.”
A bewildered smile crossed over my face and I opened my eyes to see Dustin LeBlanc leaned over into my pew in the front, his face inches from mine.
On the scale of likeliness, Dustin LeBlanc appearing at my local church and finding me, in my hometown, two days after hockey playoffs had ended, was so close to zero, it was hard to process.
But this was happening. And he had heard me praying.
My heart beat so fast I thought it might explode.
“D-Duke isn’t someone I was cheating on you with. It was—”
“Me. Duke was my college nickname,” he said.
My heart dropped to my stomach as I tried to process the facts put in front of us.
“Duke? Why?”
He snorted. “Because I hated Duke.”
“You . . . hated them, so that became your nickname?”
“Hey, I don’t get college dorm room buddy logic, either. So the first chance I had after college, I killed the nickname.” He leaned in. “And who the hell—I mean H. E. double hockey sticks, sorry again, big guy—is Fio?”
I swallowed. “Fio was my secret mission name.”
“And was your secret mission that night to break a guy’s heart?”
I stood up from kneeling, and looked Dustin his gorgeous blue eyes, and started walking away, out from the pew.
I didn’t know where I was going or running to, but the feeling of stress percolating in my stomach was too much for me to take.
I felt Dustin behind me, saying something, but the words sounded all clouded.
It didn’t make sense.
“How did you figure it out?”
He locked his eyes on me. “Turns out I had an old college video from that night. You looked a lot different back then, but I still recognized you. I think I had blocked you out of my mind after that night.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat, my eyes unfocusing.
“I can’t believe this. We basically had a one night stand—twice! This feels surreal!”
He nodded. “I spent the whole plane ride processing it.”
My lip started to quiver. I felt his hand on my hip. “That night in college, you said you loved me. All I could think was, ‘how on earth can this crazy man say that and mean it?’”
He shrugged and took a deep breath. “When I think about that night, it’s almost like I wasn’t the one saying those words. It was just something I felt. I know it’s crazy, but I’ve always had great gut instincts, and that night I went with my gut. I knew you were the one.”
I wiped a tear away from my cheek and ran my hand down the front of his shirt, feeling his chest.
“You came all this way for me, the girl who ghosted you—twice?
And that’s when it hit me.
He came here to tell me off, in person.
My heart was going down in flames, and it was totally justified.
Then I felt him take me by the hips. I protested, but he picked me up with his big palms, opened a door, and sat me down.
“Hello? Kit Cat?” he boomed. “Are you listening to a word I’m saying?”
“No,” I said, crossing my arms. “We’re in the confessional. We can’t be in here, you know.”
He was blocking the only door out.
“Cat. Just listen to me for two seconds! What’s gotten into you?”
I closed my eyes and a silent tear rolled down my cheek. He reached out with a finger and caught it.
“What are you still doing here?” I babbled. “Now you know I’m a bad person. I mean who ghosts a guy like that, right? But I swear, I didn’t remember it was you. I blocked your face out of my mind.” I looked him in the eye. “Duke had a crazy beard.”
“Yes, I did. Those college years were fun.”
I tried to force my way out one more time, but he just chuckled, holding his arm out like a bar in front of me.
“Why are you keeping me here?” I went on. “Now you know I’m—in spite of my doctor credentials—not a good person.”
He just stood there. Well, ‘stood’ was an overstatement. In the confessional, he had to crouch down and keep his head turned to one side to fit.
“Why do you keep staring at me like that? What’s gotten into you? Don’t you get it?”
“I think you’re the one who doesn’t get it.”
“What more is there to get?”
“It was always you.”
“What was always me?”
“The one I was in love with. I’ve never been in love with another woman, besides you. And it’s still you. Don’t you see? It’s always been you.”
A giant lump crept up in my throat, and my voice came out a hoarse whisper. “You’re not going to run away?”
He didn’t budge, and the slightest hint of a grin tugged at his lips. “But you’re the one who runs, Cat. Not me. Don’t you see? We don’t have to run. We can go back to the United States now, and we’ll win. We will win.”
I shrugged, unable to bring myself to look him in the eye. “I don’t know. Wouldn’t you want to be with some sane girl who doesn’t make up names? And who makes you wait a month to fuck, like the rules say?”
“Fuck the rules.”
I shot him a dirty look.
“Oops,” He added. “Good thing we’re in a confessional.”
I laughed. “Maybe you should sit down for a minute. You look uncomfortable like that.”
“I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
“Why not?”
“If I get any closer to you, I’m going to have at least one more sin to confess.”
I felt my body heat. “But Dustin,” I said, and showed him the ring I still had on. “It’s not a sin. We’re married.”
He bit his lip. “Cat, you are crazy. Just so you know. Literally ten seconds ago you told me to let you out so you could run away and never see me again.”
I started unbuttoning the first button of his button-down, short-sleeved shirt. “I’m the queen of ice,” I said. “But once you burn through to my heart, I’m forever yours.”
He finally sat. “The queen of ice. I like that. Did you come up with that?”
“No. It was my grandmother,” I said, then flashed my eyes at him. “She says the only person who would have married me was the king of fire.”
“I love it. Maybe next time instead of a rabbit we can do some Game of Thrones cos-play? Because you’re giving me all sorts of dirty ideas.”
“We’re in a confessional, you know. You should probably stop thinking those things.”
“I think the universe owes us some leniency at this point. What do you think?”
“Shut up and kiss me, Duke.”
“Yes, my queen.”
We kissed, and I had to stop him.
“Wait a second here,” I said. “So are you…moving to Spain? What’s going on?”
“No, I’m bringing you back to the U.S.”
“How? My visa is still not active.”
“You’re back in, now. Winterborne saved you. Well, he and some guy named Phil
teamed up.”
I dropped my jaw. “Winterborne and Phil? No. I thought Winterborne hated us.”
“Me too. Turns out, he thought we were a hilarious couple.”
I poked Dustin. “No! I don’t believe you. You’re making this up.”
Dustin leaned in and whispered, nibbling my ear. “He said a couple who was as forthright about their cosplay as us, would never be making up their romance.”
I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
“You should have never doubted this relationship,” he said. “So now I think it’s time for you to repent.”
“How about some Our Fathers?”
He ran a hand under my shirt, and I could feel my skin heating up.
“Or how about we have some make-up sex?”