Hooked

by Christine Manzari

  I twisted out of his grip, wiping the back of my hand across my mouth as I glared at him. “Go home,” I repeated. I turned my back on him and escaped into the house, slamming the door behind me even as he was calling out my name.

  I could hear him knocking as I made my way back to the den, but I ignored it. Brick by brick, I began building my emotional wall again, barricading him out of my heart. Every time I felt it start to crumble again, I just had to remember his lips on Bridget’s. He was no different than my father. He lied to me. I let myself believe for a moment that I could trust Huck, that we might have a future together. But he betrayed me and forgot me, just like my father had. It was too painful to risk my heart again.

  The knocking eventually stopped, but my phone started ringing instead. I put it on silent and laid it face down so I wouldn’t see his name popping up on the screen every thirty seconds.

  When Alicia came home from work, she peeked into the den where my mom was napping while I worked on my laptop. “There’s a young man out front waiting for you,” she said. “I think he’s been out there for a while. He says he’s not leaving until you change your mind.”

  I picked up my phone and wrote a text to Huck: “Stop being a prick. Go away. My mom is trying to rest and I’ve got enough problems without you messing with my head.”

  He wrote back: “Please come out and talk to me.”

  I turned my phone off. Eventually he’d get the idea. He couldn’t stay out there forever.

  — HUCK —

  34. LINGER

  It was the third night after I’d found where Cat and her mother were staying in Vegas, and she still hadn’t left the house. At least not while I was there watching. I usually went back to the hotel in the evening, but in the morning, I was parked in front of the house . . . waiting. She knew I was there. I saw her look out the window frequently, but she never acknowledged me, or the hourly texts I sent to her. I knew my behavior was bordering on harassment, and that she could probably call the cops on me, but I didn’t care and she never placed the call. I had this fear that if I left, if I went back to California, that she would disappear and I’d never see her again.

  Jay told me that she’d put her mother’s house up for sale. Once the house sold, I wondered if she would have any reason, other than Jay, to go back to California. She already quit her job and once her mother passed, what would she do? Where would she go? I had a lot of time to think while sitting outside the house, and the only absolute answer I came up with was that Cat was unpredictable. That was part of the reason I was so attracted to her, but it was also the reason she was so hard to hold on to, and why I was scared to go anywhere, even for a minute.

  I felt like if I could just prove to her I wasn’t going to leave, that I was there for her no matter what, she’d understand she could trust me. No matter how long it took, I would prove it to her.

  I would linger. I would endure. I would wait.

  Because Cat was worth it.

  — CAT—

  35. WATCHING. WAITING. WINNING.

  “Hey, Baby Girl, how’s Anita doing?” Jay asked.

  Even through the speaker of the phone, I could hear the warmth and worry in his words. I swallowed, trying to keep my voice even, but fear was lodged in my throat, threatening to spread through me like poison if I so much as disturbed it. “She’s been asleep for two days. She doesn’t even respond anymore.” A strange sound erupted out of my throat, forcing tears down my face. “I touch her hand, I talk to her, but there’s just nothing there anymore.” The words were hardly understandable past the quiver in my voice.

  “Cat.” My name was an apology and held so much more emotion in those three small letters than should have been possible.

  “Can you come?” I begged. “I know you have work and you’re busy . . . but . . . can you come? Please. I can’t do this without you.” I sniffled and I could feel my hand shaking as it held the phone to my ear. “I need you,” I whispered.

  “Already on my way,” Jay said. There was a loud banging sound and then I could hear a woman asking him something.

  “On your way? Really?”

  “At the airport,” he clarified. I heard the muffled female voice ask for his driver’s license.

  “Why?”

  “Huck told me your mom had gotten worse. Alicia has been giving him updates every day, and he’s been giving them to me.”

  “Huck told you?” Should I really be surprised? I knew Huck was out there waiting for me, I just hadn’t realized the lengths to which he was going in order to be involved. I figured since I was avoiding him, Alicia was too. I still wasn’t ready to talk to him, to risk my heart, but I had to admit there was a sense of comfort in knowing that he was watching over me. I’d expected him to leave after a day or two, but it had been over a week and he was still in his car. Watching. Waiting. Winning my heart back piece by piece whether I wanted it to happen or not.

  “Yes, Huck. How long are you going to make him sit out there?”

  “I don’t want to talk about this.” I couldn’t decide what I felt about Huck. My emotions were an ever-changing mix of anger, hurt, fear, betrayal, admiration, and surprise, as well as something else I was too scared to put a name to.

  “Well, that’s too damn bad. I’ve tiptoed around this for long enough. You’re my best friend, and I’m not going to let you ruin a good thing just because your Dad was an asshole.”

  “This isn’t about my Dad, Jay.”

  “Of course it’s about your Dad. All of your relationships are about your Dad.”

  “Not this time. I saw Huck kissing . . .”

  “I know what you think you saw, but you have to realize by now it wasn’t what it appeared. I mean, come on. The boy has been sitting outside your house for ten fucking days. In a rental car. In Vegas. That is not a guy who is pining over an ex-fiancée. That is a guy who knows what he wants and is fighting for it. He could be doing a shitload of other things that are way more interesting than waiting for you to come to your damn senses. Instead, he’s proving to you that he’s the real deal. And you’re just giving it up like it means nothing!”

  Jay had never yelled at me. Not really. Even when he didn’t agree with the insane things I said or did, he usually just teased me, but let me make my decisions no matter how awful they turned out to be. I could almost feel my mouth hanging open as he lectured me. “I’m not giving up,” I retorted.

  “You are. You think you need to be alone to avoid getting hurt, but guess what? That’s bullshit. You’re hurting right now because you’re alone. You don’t think you need him, but you do. Your heart has had a taste of happiness and now you’re being a complete idiot. But guess what? I love you too much to let you screw this up. You’ve got about three hours to figure out that mess in your head, Baby Girl. Because when I come walking through that door, Huck is coming with me. I’m done with the secret setups. You always manage to fuck them up anyway. He’s coming in, you’re going to forgive him, and the both of you are going to live happily ever after. Amen.”

  “It doesn’t work like—”

  “Nope,” he said, cutting off my argument. “For once in your life, you’re going to listen to me. And you’re going to like it. And you’re going to thank me. Got it?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “See you soon, Cat,” Jay said, his voice softening to the supportive tone he used with me when talking about my mom.

  “Okay,” I managed to say.

  “I love you.”

  “I love you, too.”

  ***

  I hadn’t moved since I hung up the phone. I was sitting next to my mom’s bed, holding her hand. Her eyes were still closed, just as they had been since yesterday. Her mouth hung open, releasing erratic breaths that were labored and burdened with a rattling sound. The hospice pamphlets that I’d gotten in the oncologist’s office had described the “death rattle,” but it was so much worse than I expected. It sounded like she was slowly drowning.

  I d
idn’t recognize the woman in the bed anymore. My mother’s beautiful chestnut hair was long gone, the chemo leaving behind a strange fuzz that was curly and gray. Her once youthful skin was now yellowed by jaundice and sunken over the bones in her face. I hadn’t seen the healthy flush of her cheeks in months. She looked like a skeleton pretending to be a person. Her vibrancy had bled away, her beauty had already faded, her words only existed in my memory, and all that was left of her life were the stuttering breaths that escaped in weak uncertainty from her mouth.

  The hospice nurse told me to talk to her. There was no certainty that my mom could still hear or understand me, but if there was the slightest possibility that she could, I wanted her to know I was here. She wasn’t alone and I loved her. I’d be with her to the end.

  “Jay is angry with me,” I said, lightly stroking the skin on her fingers. “He thinks I made a mistake by leaving Huck in Maryland.”

  I took a deep breath and stared at my fingers as they moved along hers.

  “Yeah, I didn’t tell you about that. I fell for him, Mom. Hard.” My bitter laugh filled the silence. I looked at her face, wishing she could look back at me and give me her advice and support. “Over the last few months, I got to know him as a friend. I started to like him. That weekend before I went to Maryland, everything just seemed to click, and I started to want more than friendship.”

  I paused to look at her again, my eyes narrowing in accusation as I remembered the conversation I had with her on Christmas morning. “That’s why you left for Christmas isn’t it, Mom? Did you know he would invite me to go home with him?” I knew it was impossible, but I imagined my mother was smiling, pleased at her matchmaking schemes.

  I squeezed her thin fingers between mine as I finally admitted the truth to her. “I wanted a relationship with him. I’ve never wanted commitment before, but I wanted it with him. I started thinking about the fraternization policy and what I could do to make us a possibility. I even considered quitting my job. I liked the things I was doing at work, but I started to realize I liked him more, that I was willing to make a change in my job to give myself a chance at a relationship with him. And then I accidentally stumbled in on him kissing his ex-fiancée.”

  I paused, not wanting to admit what I had done, knowing I had to in order to move past it. “I was stupid. Instead of confronting him, I grabbed a bottle of liquor, hid in a dark corner, and drank until I passed out.”

  I could almost hear my mother’s words of disapproval even though she didn’t twitch in the slightest. If she heard me, she couldn’t prove it. “Yup.” My lips popped around the “p” as I let the admission hang in the silence between us, feeling the embarrassment for what I’d done settle across my conscience. “I hated Dad for escaping his problems by drinking, but when things in my own life got so hard that I didn’t think I could handle the pain, I did the same damn thing. I bolted so I wouldn’t have to deal with Huck or my feelings for him. I’m such a coward.”

  My mom’s breath was still rattling, and I imagined that she was listening to me, quiet only because she was giving me a chance to explain my actions.

  “I was so angry at myself for considering giving up my job for a guy. For love. I thought it was a cruel joke. But guess what?” Another bitter laugh escaped me. “I ended up quitting anyway because I didn’t want to face him. I told myself that I was leaving my job so that I could be with you, but that was a lie. Work would have let me take time off. I could’ve kept my position at William Stone Media, but I was scared of seeing Huck again. Can you believe that? Me of all people—too scared to confront someone.”

  The rhythmic movement of my fingers on my mother’s calmed me. “I don’t know what to do, Mom. I know you don’t want me to be alone, and I know now that I don’t want to be. I just don’t know if I’m strong enough to take the risk with Huck. What if I give him my heart and a few months from now he changes his mind? Then what? He wouldn’t just break me, he’d shatter me. At least if my heart is lonely, it’s still in one piece, right?”

  My mom didn’t answer.

  Like a child, I crawled up in bed with her, carefully curling my body around her frail frame. With tears on my cheeks and the rattle of my mother’s breath as a lullaby, I fell asleep.

  — HUCK —

  36. THE LAST

  I entered the house that I’d been watching over for almost two weeks, and Alicia led us to a living room that had been transformed into a space for Anita. The first thing I noticed was that Cat was lying on the bed with her mother, clinging to her like a small child. Both of them were asleep.

  Jay reached up and rubbed the back of his head in a movement that was uncharacteristically indecisive. “I’ll just let you . . .” he said, using his other hand to motion to Cat while he backed out of the doorway.

  “She doesn’t want to see me,” I reminded him.

  “Yes, she does.”

  “I don’t want to make her more upset, she’s expecting you.”

  “But she’s hoping for you. Trust me, I know Cat better than she knows herself. Besides,” he said, following Alicia down the hallway, “I heard dinner was almost ready.”

  For weeks I’d waited to talk to Cat again, thinking about the things I would say to assure her how serious I was about us and to convince her how completely done I was with Bridget. Now that I finally had the chance to have my say, I found the idea of talking to her daunting. Cat left me. She quit her job. She told me to go home. Did I have any right to be here? Was I just kidding myself thinking there was more to our relationship? That it was worth fighting for? I knew what I wanted, but what if it wasn’t the same thing Cat wanted?

  I walked over to the bed, hesitating before I touched her, knowing that when she opened her eyes, I would know for sure whether I should stay or go. Her eyes would tell me everything, just as they always had. It felt like my last chance.

  I sat in the chair next to the bed, then leaned forward so I could gently run the backs of my fingers across Cat’s cheek. Her lashes fluttered a few times and then lifted in sleepy confusion. The second her eyes found me, it was all worth it—the last ten days, weeks of not knowing where she was, discovering she’d quit her job, finding her missing the day after Christmas, getting punched in the face, and every difficult moment between us since we first met. I saw heartbreak, sadness, and loneliness in her gaze, but most of all, I saw relief. Relief at seeing me. That was all I needed to know. I was staying.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked, sitting up.

  “Proving to you that we’re worth it.”

  “You stayed after I told you to go home. Why?” Her voice cracked on the last word.

  “Because the reasons you wanted me to leave weren’t good reasons. They weren’t true. I’m not in love with Bridget, I could never love someone who betrayed me like that. And you weren’t a rebound. Just because what happened between us happened quickly, that doesn’t mean it wasn’t genuine. You’ve made me fight for you every step of the way and guess what? I’m still here. I’m still fighting.”

  Cat’s gaze locked onto me as if desperate to believe my words. “How can you be sure we’ll be good together?”

  “Because we already are. We always have been. Even when we fight, we’re good together.”

  “That doesn’t mean what we have will last. What if it’s just the challenge that you like? I quit William Stone Media and I’m no longer forbidden. The challenge is gone.” She looked away, as if she was afraid of what she might see in my reaction.

  I reached up and grabbed Cat’s chin, turning her so she was looking at me again. “I’m no longer forbidden either, I quit William Stone Media two weeks ago.”

  Her lips parted in surprise as a gasp rushed in between them. “You quit your job? Why would you do that?”

  “I told you. I’m going to prove to you that we’re worth it. Whether you’re forbidden or not, we belong together. I wanted you to understand that I was going to pursue you no matter what. At least now that neither of u
s are working at my father’s company, there is no question of that. Besides, someone told me that I should be doing what I love, and I didn’t love being an art director.”

  “You quit your job? You just left your father’s company?”

  I shrugged. “The job might be what brought me out to California, but you’re the reason I’m choosing to stay.”

  Cat’s eyes glimmered with the promise of tears. “I don’t know what to say.”

  “Don’t say anything,” I said, coaxing her off the bed and into my arms. The second she was in my lap, her arms were wrapped around me, her head tucked into the safety of my shoulder, and she was crying as if she’d been saving it all up for the moment she was in my arms again.

  ***

  “Is it safe to come in, or are you two sucking face?”

  Jay didn’t wait for a reply and nearly got knocked over by Cat, who hurled herself across the room and into his arms. She was crying again, or more accurately, still crying. I’d only seen Cat cry once before, the day after her mother’s first chemo treatment, but now that she’d allowed the tears their freedom, she couldn’t stop. It seemed to be a mix of both grief and relief.

  “You came,” Cat mumbled to Jay.

  “I always will,” he said.

  “You were right.”

  “I always am.”

  She punched his arm playfully and then pulled him in for another hug. “Thank you, Cupcake.”

  “Someone had to set you straight, Baby Girl.”

  Alicia interrupted the reunion, bringing in dinner for everyone. She joined us, and we ended up eating in the den, Cat and Jay sharing memorable stories about Anita. Cat sat next to the hospital bed, often turning to ask her mother a question as if she expected her to answer, and then continuing the story as if she had. I’d never been around someone who was dying, and it was strange for me that the atmosphere was like any other gathering—cheerful and conversational—as if death wasn’t lurking nearby. After a few hours, Jay and Alicia excused themselves to go to bed. Cat came over to the couch where I was sitting and settled in close to me.