Chapter 13 #2
“If you mean Ronan, then nothing,” I answered. “He didn’t do anything.”
“And that’s the problem,” Kiya announced.
“No, it isn’t!” I snapped back, and her mouth fell open.
“Ok. I’m sorry, Cate.”
I took in a breath. “No, I didn’t mean to be rude. I was upset because yesterday was the anniversary of when my dad died, and I went to Ronan’s house and cried, and then he asked me to move in with him, and I don’t know what to do.”
Both of them sat frozen, gaping at me. Taylor revived first. “Your dad died? A year ago?” She leaned over the table and hugged me, crushing her lunch bag. “Christ! I’m so sorry.”
Kiya hugged me from the other side. “Cate, oh my God! We didn’t know!”
“I didn’t think it would bother me that much,” I told them. “We weren’t close. But it did, and I ended up crying on Ronan.”
“And then he asked you to move in?” Tay questioned.
I had fallen asleep as he’d watched the video clips of the offense he would be facing tomorrow.
It had been very cozy, curled up like that.
His couch was comfortable even without his pillows and he was a naturally warm person, very solid and with an arm that was nice and heavy to hold you against him.
So I’d fallen asleep, and I’d only opened my eyes because he was gently shaking me.
“Cate. I hate disturbing you, but you have to drive back home. You have work tomorrow and you don’t have your stuff here to get dressed. Cate, I don’t want to do this, but you have to get up,” he’d been telling me. Gradually, I’d roused.
I explained that to my lunchroom friends. “I conked out on his couch and when he woke me up, he said that it would make more sense if we lived together,” I told them.
“We’re together almost every night, anyway,” Ronan had said. “We eat dinner, we hang out. You’re here on weekends or we’re doing stuff. Car repairs would be easier for you because I have my lift.”
I had been yawning and hadn’t understood until he spelled it out: when my lease was over, as I’d just told him it would be soon, I could move into his house. “You could also have a pet, like a cat that wasn’t undead,” he had tempted.
“Holy Christ,” Taylor breathed. She and Kiya had returned to gaping. “Are you serious?”
“This sounds like what my dad would call ‘putting the cart before the horse,’” Kiya said.
“No, it wouldn’t be. Because we’d be roommates, like you guys are,” I responded, and they looked at each other. “He’s my friend and I love being with him.”
“So, you’re considering this,” Taylor said slowly. “Cate. Really? You’ve told us repeatedly how much you love living alone.”
“We know that you think our condo is disgusting,” Kiya said, and they both nodded. “You go like this when you visit us.” She mimicked the same face that Eddie had previously described, the one I’d made when I saw that the new flooring in the Junior Woodsmen gym and locker room was the wrong color.
Tay nodded again. “You told us how awesome your apartment is and how you don’t want a roommate,” she reminded me. “No one’s eating your food, no one’s making piles of clothes in the living room.”
“No one’s leaving dishes in the sink, no one is inviting over guests. No one’s making noise and keeping you up late,” Kiya continued. “I love you, Tay-Tay, but sometimes when she talks about it…”
Taylor nodded. “It doesn’t always sound so bad to be alone. By the way, all the clothes in the living room are yours, Kiya.” They had a disagreement about that.
“You’re both right,” I said when they were done. “Those reasons are exactly why I don’t want a roommate.”
“You especially don’t want Ronan as a roommate,” Kiya told me. “That situation would be complicated.”
“Not necessarily,” I responded. He had presented a few more ideas about it as he’d walked me to my car and he’d been persuasive.
“I’d feel better if you weren’t going home to an empty apartment.
I know you’re fine, but sometimes I think about you being there by yourself and I have to admit, I’m not crazy about it.
I’m more thinking about myself, though,” he’d said.
“What if there was a mouse here? Who would get on the table with me? It would be fun, too. We’re good together. ”
“It would be safer to have him as a roommate,” I said, echoing his argument, but Taylor immediately reminded me about the low crime rate in our area. “Bad things can happen anywhere,” I also reminded her. “He said that we’re good together.”
They looked at each other. “You’ve told us about him wanting to live alone, too,” Kiya said. “Now he’s saying, ‘We’re good together.’ What?”
“People can change,” Taylor intoned.
“No. I knew that my Cado wasn’t the long-term type,” Kiya stated.
It had been a while since we’d heard her refer to Channing in that way.
“I knew it, but I wanted to pretend to myself that he could suddenly be different. But I wasn’t going to turn into another person and neither was he.
If Ronan said that he likes living on his own and he doesn’t want a girlfriend, then we have to believe him. ”
“What about the stuff he’s saying now?” Taylor asked her. “It seems like everything is different and that’s not against the law! People can change their minds.”
Kiya’s eyes narrowed. “Are you talking about him, or yourself?”
“He hasn’t changed his mind,” I told them. I was thinking back to the dinner after his brother’s wedding. His mom had said something about me, and she’d used the term “girlfriend.” He had immediately corrected her, saying that I wasn’t, and I had agreed just as fast. I wasn’t.
“Ok, but now he’s—oh, Christ!” She held up her phone to show us the time. “We have to go!”
We all hurried. They did because their bosses were concerned about tardiness, and I did because I was along for the ride.
Back at my desk, I texted Ronan. It took a while for him to answer that he was really busy but he’d call me from the hotel.
I sat and worked on some marketing stuff, and then I went up to the Marketing Department to discuss it with Taylor.
She also invited one of her higher-positioned colleagues to look at the campaign for the Junior Woodsmen that the two of us had been doing in our downtime.
“Taylor, this is great,” the guy told her, sounding very pleased as he looked over her work. “I love this. I want to show Mary.” That was the big boss of the department, and Tay got really excited. “Have you talked to Antonio about your video idea? Let’s get him, too.”
It hadn’t begun as an organized meeting but it turned into a much bigger thing, and before I knew it, the head of the department had also joined us and was asking me about the budget.
All their heads turned toward me. “It’s really up to Mr. Gowan,” I said. It was really up to whatever he would sign, without knowing it.
“He hasn’t contacted me or anyone else here,” she mentioned, and I swallowed.
“I would bet that he hasn’t put numbers together. Yet. What would a budget look like for a campaign like this?”
She was very nice about my ignorance and I learned a lot about marketing and budgets, and also about how they all regarded Mr. Gowan.
“They think he’s an idiot,” I told Ronan later, when he called me that night from the team hotel.
“They didn’t say it directly, but everything in the discussion was about going over or around him.
No one suggested including him. One guy looked at the ceiling and did a little headshake whenever he said the name ‘Beau.’ And they all call each other by their first names, too.
Mr. Gowan had asked me to call him ‘Mr. Gowan’ but no one else in the organization seems to do that.
” Maybe, if he got canned, I could work in Marketing like Taylor and call my boss by her first name.
Or maybe I would be shown the door, too.
“So, he’s not so perfect after all. Ah, hell’s bells.”
“What’s wrong?” I asked immediately.
“My back. It’s all right.”
It was not all right. He’d mentioned a minor tweak, a little twinge, a slight soreness. All of it meant he had an injury and I questioned him carefully now about what the team doctors and trainers had said about that.
“They said it’s fine but they also said, ‘Stop riding in tiny cars, especially not to the grocery store,’” he answered. “It was oddly specific.”
“You only went shopping that day because you said that you wanted to listen to my engine, since you thought you’d heard a knocking sound. You hadn’t,” I reminded him. “I would have told you if there was something wrong.”
“I don’t know, Cate. You didn’t tell me about your dad.”
I froze. “What do you mean?”
“You should tell me if something’s bothering you before you end up crying in my kitchen about it. Ok? If you’re sad or you have an issue to deal with, tell me.”
Tell him? That seemed like an easy request but the issues I could have brought up were much more complicated.
I thought about the many forms Mr. Gowan had signed because I’d tricked him.
I thought about Ronan’s own suggestion that we should live together, which had put me completely off balance.
I thought about other stuff that I never discussed, but that had made me the person I was today.
I was a person who…well, if we lived together, he would find out who I was.
No. I was fine and I had achieved a lot. I could count those things up, all the great things I had done mostly on my own. I was better on my own.
“I’m going to renew my lease,” I heard myself announce. “I really like my apartment.”
There was silence.
“Thanks for the invitation, though,” I added. It sounded awkward and I also felt that way.
“Yeah, sure. You’re welcome. I know you said how much you love your place but you’ve also been talking about being lonely there.”
“What? No, I haven’t. I love it. I love being on my own,” I told him. “It was what I always wanted.”
“Great, you got what you wanted.”