2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series)

by Heather Muzik

  “An intervention!” Catherine exclaimed. “You’re staging an intervention in my living room!” She knew she never should have given her friends keys to her apartment. This was exactly the type of thing that corrupted trust.

  “Cat, we love you,” Georgia said softly, reaching for her.

  So help me, if she pets me like I’m some goddamn scared kitten I will scream intruder and have them all locked up.

  “Then why is she here,” Catherine said, gesturing at Lacey.

  “She’s here because she’s part of your family and she wants to help,” Georgia said in a placating tone reserved for the unstable.

  “Yeah, right,” she humphed. She’s here because you two are inseparable friends and I’m your charity case to pity and fix. But then she turned her laser-sharp focus on Tara. “So this is why you had nothing to say to me all day. I thought you were jealous of my promotion—not that you deserve one,” she said snarkily. “I can’t believe you were busy plotting behind my back!” She was pissed as hell and not willing to take it anymore. Her eyes swept the room, looking for the rest of the busybodies who wanted to “fix” her—sure that her mother and her first grade teacher, Mrs. Davis, were likely hiding in the shadows, waiting to pounce with their two cents worth of wisdom. And what about Drew? She was probably live on speaker phone this very minute. A bridal party standoff with an unwanted cling-on—Lacey Stemple.

  “Cat, we want to help,” Georgia offered. Obviously she had made herself leader of this ambush.

  “I can’t believe you’d come here like this. It’s my life. I get to choose how to live it.” Smacking her chest forcefully to make her point, right over top of her surprisingly still-beating heart that at times over the past few days she’d been sure would just give out on her.

  “We just want to understand,” Georgia pleaded. “You seemed so happy with Fynn. Did something happen? Did he do something un—”

  “Did he screw some Nekoyan skank?” Tara asked.

  “No,” Catherine countered quickly.

  “Did he screw anyone else?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Is it drugs? Is he an alcoholic? Abusive?” Tara asked in quick succession, covering all legitimate bases for a sudden breakup.

  “It’s nothing like that. He’s… pretty much perfect that way,” she admitted.

  “By all means, I can see your problem with him,” Tara said facetiously.

  “What happened?” Georgia asked earnestly, giving Tara a look of warning not to scare off the crazy lady with any sudden noises or movements.

  “It’s everything,” Catherine blurted.

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Tara exclaimed, ignoring Georgia, unwilling to coddle or be diplomatic.

  “Nothing’s wrong with me,” she said righteously.

  “You throw away a perfectly fine man and try to tell me that nothing is wrong with you?” Tara threw up her hands in disgust. “I guess I’m trying to work the wrong side here. Maybe I should hop a plane to Fynn and comfort him in his time of need instead of trying to straighten you out—”

  “Don’t even joke like that,” Catherine said grimly.

  “You don’t own him. He’s a free agent. And I like his whole sexy Minnesota vibe. I could make him feel all better—”

  “Not helping,” Georgia growled, stepping between them before Catherine could lunge, which was probably a good idea considering at that very moment she was discovering her inner Springer—imagining all the ways she could throttle her friend, tossing chairs and pulling hair and—

  “I’m just trying to get her to feel something,” Tara leveled.

  “I feel plenty,” Catherine admitted. “I feel alone and sad and angry and—” That’s when she noticed her wedding dress had been brought out to say its silent piece in all this, too. “—and fat,” she added, resigned. The beautiful flowing fabric was like her kryptonite.

  “Maybe you should crawl on your knees to Nekoyah and apologize to Fynn. That will help with your little weight problem,” Tara offered.

  “She’s not fat. She looks terrific,” Lacey noted, squeezing into the conversation.

  “Tell that to the dress,” Tara said wryly.

  “Why do you have to say stuff like that?” Georgia asked. “Is it some kind of disorder? Were you born without a filter?”

  “I tell it like I—”

  “Because it doesn’t fit,” Catherine wailed suddenly. “I should have known that everything was doomed when even my perfect dress didn’t fit—how could my perfect marriage ever fit?”

  Take the Cake

  Thursday, February 10th

  -51-

  A sixteen-hour whirlwind of wine and whine—crying, sobbing, weeping, bawling, even occasional howling—had led her here: tens of thousands of feet in the air, absolute certainty that Fynn was the one—the only one for her.

  Female roundtable consensus? She’d been a total idiot. Again. Twice within the year that had hardly even gotten started yet. Yes, she finally came clean about the other dumping somewhere between bottles three and four—like coming clean to your lawyers so they could build the best defense. Both marrieds agreed that wedding stress absolved her of some of her guilt in this case. Temporary insanity was a valid plea for a bride—heck, Lacey admitted she’d considered wringing Connor’s neck or putting a pillow over his face in his sleep over his lack of interest or assistance planning their wedding. But dumping? That was going too far.

  Catherine was now a repeat offender. A chronic dumper. That meant that drastic relationship-saving measures were in order, which explained the plane…. Georgia: You have to go to him. Tell him what you told us. He loves you. He’ll understand. Lacey: You guys are perfect together. Besides, I need you to get married and have kids to take the edge off with your parents. Your mother is smothering us with her grandmothering (Lacey might just be human after all). Tara: Go screw his eyeballs out. Make him forget his name. If you can do that, he’ll forget everything. There’s your happily ever after, bee-atch. Of course Tara also believed it should be a skydiving plane so she could parachute right into Fynn’s arms—a death-defying act to make up for a relationship-defying act. Tit for tat.

  Needless to say, she was flying commercial.

  Catherine squirmed in her seat, trying to steady her resolve, while Tara slept soundly next to her, snoring lightly, the rest of the unencumbered. She was chaperone by default. Someone had to be there as moral support and cattle prod to force her through her apology tour that would hopefully win her back her Mrs.-to-be title. Unfortunately her other someone was a nursing mother with too much baggage. And Lacey had agreed to run interference in Chesterton in case Connor or Mom or anyone else in the family, or friends of the family, started asking questions. Catherine hoped that hard-ass-bitch exterior would come in handy.

  It had been almost a week and she’d had no contact with Fynn. She was terrified that this time he really had moved forward, and if he had moved on or otherwise refused to take her back then she would certainly end up an old maid… because Joel Fynn Trager had ruined her for other men. He was steady, strong, loving, sexy, gorgeous, funny… and accommodating. Who else would have willingly put up with her this long? Or found her endearing when she was actually clumsy and awkward? … So what that he hadn’t come to New York to see her hardly ever in all these months! He had come without question when she asked. And offered to come when she couldn’t make it out to see him. And came on his own when he thought she needed him—but she’d kicked him in the gut rather than hugging him. What’s wrong with me?

  And further, Nekoyah was permanent for him and therefore anyone with him. He’d never hidden that from her. Everything about how she’d acted up until this point had said she was on board. To turn around now and act like it was crazy of him to think she should move to Minnesota was unfair…. And all because she was afraid to say goodbye to over a decade worth of her existence—a largely sorry, passionless existence that she wouldn’t trade for anything because eve
ntually it led her to him. It had served her well, but she definitely didn’t need it around anymore.

  When the plane touched down she became even more uneasy. “Is the air thinner here?” she asked Tara as they disembarked. But it wasn’t Tara. It was a complete stranger who looked at her like she’d just asked what planet they’d landed on. She swirled her head in every direction, unable to find her supposed friend who had obviously forgotten what her job was and was off doing what Tara did best—being oblivious.

  She slipped into the strong current of passengers arriving in Minneapolis/St. Paul as a way to force herself forward since she didn’t have Tara to propel her along—fat lot of good she is. As she approached the car rental agencies, she saw the TruAuto sign and her heart began palpitating like she was about to take on public speaking rather than simply ask for a car to rent.

  “Can I help you?”

  Catherine found herself face-to-face with the same woman who had greeted her last spring when she first started down the road that led her to Fynn. Maybe being here right now, speaking to Deanne, was fate. Maybe this was all part of the universe’s grand plan for her. Maybe her whole freak-out about the wedding, ridiculous and humiliating at it was, was actually part of her spiritual path…. Or maybe she was in fact certifiable.

  “Ma’am?”

  And there it was; that ugly word that always followed her throughout Minnesota. Only now it felt oddly like home to her.

  “Yes, Deanne. I was looking to rent a car.”

  “I can certainly help you with that,” she said, none the wiser that she had dealt with this particular “ma’am” before. “Business or pleasure?”

  “Business,” Catherine said with a smirk, remembering the exchange like it was yesterday—last time she was embarking on a mission to reclaim a piece of her past, this time a mission to reclaim her future.

  “And your name is?” Deanne asked, hands poised over her keyboard.

  “Actually, I don’t have a reservation. I was hoping to rent on the fly.”

  “Well, I’m not sure what we have available. There are a lot of events taking place around the city….” she said, scrolling down her screen.

  “I’m sure there are,” Catherine agreed, a queer smile on her face to be up against the same rental odds.

  “She’d love your little beeber car,” Tara added helpfully, appearing from out of nowhere with a candy bar in hand that Catherine feared she may have swiped off of someone unwitting.

  Deanne looked to Catherine questioningly, as if awaiting a translation, or some kind of sign that she needed to call security to take the strange woman away.

  “She means a Smart car,” she said with a grimace.

  “Oh, yes, we do have our Smart e-drive available. Here at TruAuto we pride ourselves—”

  “Great. It makes my friend here feel like a giant among men,” Tara interrupted her sales pitch, slumping over and slinging an arm around Catherine’s shoulders to accentuate how short she was.

  “Now, you do understand that you will need to charge it if you go—”

  “Oh, I know,” Catherine assured her.

  -52-

  Tara reached for the GPS.

  “I don’t need Glenda telling me what to do,” Catherine said quickly. “I’ve been here, like, goshmillion times.” A nervous giggle bubbled up and escaped.

  “Glenda? You named the GPS?”

  Catherine wouldn’t dignify that with a response. The first time she came here she’d been all alone. There was nothing odd about becoming attached to a friendly voice while she was in a strange place.

  “Whether you need directions or not, I’m turning Glenda on.” Tara caressed the plastic unit. “You like that, Glenda? Or do you like it rough,” she said silkily.

  “You’re sick.”

  Tara chuckled, entering Nekoyah on the keyboard. “You just keep your eyes on the road and head in the game. You have some groveling, pleading, begging… and maybe some sucking or blowing to do if you get my drift.”

  “Eew.”

  “Come on. Lighten up.”

  “How the hell am I supposed to lighten up?” Catherine practically screeched. “And why the hell did you make me rent this thing again?” she demanded while she was at it, sick of being herself and watching everyone pass by her literally and figuratively.

  “This, my dear,” Tara said, opening the glove compartment and rifling around, “is the way back into that fine man’s pants.”

  “Not everything is about sex, Tara. I am trying to get back into his heart.”

  “Dealing with men is like endovascular surgery. You can go in through the groin and reach just about anywhere you want from there.”

  “Again, eew.”

  “I’m just sayin’.” Tara shrugged, like it was useless to fight the truth.

  They drove in silence for a while, Catherine tightening her grip on the wheel with each mile she got closer to her destination. What if he isn’t even there? she worried. Where else would he be? Catherine Marie reasoned, the same definitive certainty she had about everything. Wasn’t that the crux of her argument, though—that he was all about Nekoyah? Of course he’ll be there…. Which was almost as scary as him not being there.

  “Exit in five hundred feet,” Glenda piped up suddenly.

  Catherine stayed in the middle lane.

  “Exit now,” she reminded her.

  “Shut the hell up, Glenda,” Catherine hissed.

  “Do it, Cat,” Tara commanded out of a doze.

  She kept driving.

  “Recalculating your route,” Glenda said brightly, unperturbed by Catherine’s willful disobedience.

  Tara was not as forgiving. “Where are you going, Cat?” she demanded. “You can’t avoid talking to him. I’ll drag you there by your hair if I have to.”

  “Glenda’s way is a pain in the ass. I’m going the way Fynn does.”

  “You better not be shitting me.”

  “I’m not,” she lied. Truth was she’d frozen when she saw the exit. Terror-stricken about what awaited her on the other end of this ride. For better or worse her uncertainty would be gone. She looked to the sparkling diamond on her hand, wondering if this was the last she would see it—if the whole reason she forgot to hand it over to him the other night was so she would have to contact him again even if she didn’t come to her senses. But she had come to her senses and she wanted to keep it.

  Tara watched her every move thereafter and wasn’t satisfied until she saw they had indeed reached Main Street, Nekoyah—thanks to Glenda, who had a head for such things.

  “Is it time for a Chinese fire drill?” Tara asked. They were stopped at a red light halfway through the quaint old part of town.

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do we need to swap? You look like you’re about to bolt or be sick. Either way, I can chauffer.”

  “I’m fine,” Catherine said, gritting her teeth because she wasn’t fine… not at all.

  “Whoa,” Tara whistled as they pulled away from the light and she turned to look behind them. “People are lining the streets. Something’s up.”

  “They are not.” Catherine waved her off. But she glanced in the rearview mirror anyway, unable to see anything but the grill of a truck reflected there.”

  “I’m telling you, they’re watching us.”

  “Hysterical,” she snorted, though it was so completely not.

  “Either they think we are the clown car at the start of the circus caravan, or you’re the mean dragon lady who dumped their prime Nekoyan man and they’re preparing for a lynching,” Tara offered unhelpfully.

  Catherine swallowed back a dose of bile-flavored angst. “Let’s hope it’s the circus.”

  *****

  When they reached Fynn’s driveway they found the gate closed up tight. “I guess he isn’t home,” Catherine announced, pulling a U-turn in the middle of the street. “It was worth a try.”

  “Oh no you don’t.” Tara grabbed the wheel and wrenched it toward th
e side of the road, forcing Catherine to hit the brakes or hit the fence. “He doesn’t keep a lock on that thing. Just open it up and drive right in.”

  “That would be trespassing,” she pointed out certainly. “If there is one thing he hates probably even more than me, it’s trespassing.”

  “And if there is one thing that you do best… it’s trespassing,” Tara noted, which was true considering that was how she got to him in the first place.

  “I just think that maybe we should go get a bite to eat and come back later,” Catherine said, meek and mealy.

  “I’m fine. I had a snack at the airport, remember?” She whipped a Snickers wrapper out of her pocket to prove it.

  “Well, I’m hungry then.”

  “You are not. Now go.”

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” Catherine mumbled as she got out of the car and opened the gate, prepared to blame every move she made on Tara when the cops asked—a victim of Stockholm syndrome doing her captor’s bidding.

  She got back in and drove through.

  “Stop right here,” Tara commanded.

  “Why?”

  “We have to close the gate. If he isn’t here, you don’t want him to come home and think someone is here waiting to ambush him.”

  “But I am.”

  “He doesn’t need any warning. I’ll go close us in.”

  Catherine waited impatiently, pattering her hands on the wheel and shifting in her seat, until a tap on the glass startled her and she turned to see Tara’s leering face. She rolled down the window.

  “Got antsies in your panties?” Tara taunted. “You might want to get those checked.”

  “That was so funny I forgot to laugh,” she said, a schoolyard zinger she thought entirely apropos for the moment. “Get in the car.”

  “Oh no.” Tara backed away. “I’m not coming.”

  “What?” Catherine exclaimed.