Obsessed With You by Jennifer Ransom Page B

though Zachery and Neil were outside.
    “ Zachery wants to have sex and
I’m holding him off,” Cathy whispered.
    “ You mean y’all aren’t
doing it?” Lindy asked, incredulous. “You seem so close.”
    “ I can’t do it,” Cathy
whispered. “Because I’m not over my broken engagement.”
    “ Hmmmm,” Lindy said. She cut
an ear of corn.
    “ I like being close to someone
because I’m so damn lonely,” Cathy admitted. “But it’s not
fair to Zachery.”
    “ Why don’t you let Zachery
decide what’s fair to him,” Lindy said.
    “ Lower your voice!” Cathy
admonished. She put the new potatoes in a colander and ran water over
them.
    “ Next week is Valentine’s
Day,” Cathy said after a few minutes. “And Zachery is going to go
all out. He’s got reservations at that expensive restaurant in
Destin. I think he’s going to expect something at the end of the
night.”
    “ Men are always expecting
something, honey,” Lindy said. “Doesn’t mean you have to give
it to ‘em.” She started giggling and Cathy joined her.
    “ But seriously, Lindy,” Cathy
said after she got control of herself. “There’s other things—too
much to go into right now with them out there.”
    “ You could come by the shop on
Monday,” Lindy suggested. “It’s always a slow day. I can get
some sandwiches from the B and B and we’ll have lunch. Ladies who
lunch.”
    “ That’s a good idea,” Cathy
said. “Now let’s get this stuff out there. Surely that pot’s
boiling by now. Grab that wine. I need it.”
    It was warm enough outside that
only a light jacket was needed. Cathy and Lindy put the corn and
potatoes on the table, which Cathy had covered with a plastic
tablecloth. She checked the pot.
    “ It’s rolling now,” she
said. Cathy poured in a mixture of oil and boiling spices. Lindy
stood by the big pot with the potatoes and slid them in, jumping back
so hot water wouldn’t scald her. Cathy did the same with the corn
pieces. They stared into the pot before putting the lid back on.
    “ Boo,” Neil said behind them.
Lindy screamed a little.
    “ Don’t do that!” she said.
Neil put his arm around her. “I was just joking,” he said.
    “ It’s not funny,” Lindy
said, but she was smiling. Watching them, a feeling of sorrow and
bitterness ran through Cathy for all she had lost.
    “ I forgot the sausage,” Cathy
said getting up from her seat.
    “ They can get that,” Lindy
said looking at Neil and Zachery. “Y’all go on in the kitchen and
cut that smoked sausage up into three-inch pieces. Think you can
manage that?”
    “ I think we can,” Neil said.
    “ It’s nice out here,” Lindy
said after Zachery and Neil left. “It must’ve been great growing
up right on the bay.”
    “ It had its plusses,” Cathy
said. “When I was younger, I spent my days on the shore or the
pier. Grandpa and I fished all the time.”
    “ What about your mother?”
Lindy asked. “Did she fish, too?”
    “ No, not really,” Cathy said
in a faraway voice, remembering her mother. “She stayed inside most
of the time watching TV.”
    “ Oh,” Lindy said. “I don’t
think I’d be able to stay away if I lived here.”
    “ She was grieving,” Cathy
said.
    “ I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t
mean to bring up a painful subject.”
    “ It’s okay,” Cathy said.
But she felt tears stinging her eyes.
    “ I’m an idiot,” Lindy said.
“Now I’ve upset you.”
    “ No, no,” Cathy said with a
wave of her hand. But the tears fell anyway. Lindy moved over closer
to Cathy and put her arm around her.
    Cathy turned to Lindy and said
tearfully, “Can you put that sausage in? I need to get myself
together.”
    She went out the front door so
Zachery and Neil wouldn’t see her. Their laughter floated on the
air from the patio as she walked along the edge of the woods toward
the bay. The moon was only a fingernail in the dark sky, but Cathy
knew her way to the pier. She walked out across the water and