Life Reconstructed: Chapter Twenty-Eight

Her excitement had been worth it, after all. Sitting across from Matt the following evening in a trendy bar and grill on the south side of the town, Cat settled back against her plush, leather chair as the server enquired over Matt’s meal. High, arched windows danced around two of the four walls in the exposed brick building. Dim, amber-lighting set off a quiet, affluent glow against a backdrop of black-tie servers, polished mahogany tables and an impressive wine and beer list.

“…steak, prepared med-rare, please,” Cat heard Matt say. A snap of remorse bit at her stomach. She loved steak; she’d ordered the chicken marsala though. She was never really sure what the dating etiquette said when it came to price expectations…. Snapping back to attention, she watched idly as the server made a smiling gesture before taking his leave.

Alone for the first time that evening (since they’d driven there separately and the hostess had only just seated them before the server promptly arrived with wine list in hand), Cat tried to swallow past an entirely expected attack of nerves.

“So, how’s the—”

“Did you get any—”

At the simultaneously-poised questions, both Matt and Cat stopped speaking. Blushing a little, Cat waved Matt onward. “I’m sorry. Go ahead.”

“Oh, I was just going to ask, we never did get a chance to talk about what happened with the kitchen after last Saturday?”

Cat flapped her wrist dismissively. “It went great. My friend Alex came over to help me finish.”

“Alex?”

Cat rather enjoyed the predatory note that slipped into Matt’s question. She hadn’t done it on purpose, but she relished the split second of victory that she received upon acknowledging the very gender-neutral quality of the name. And she very much relished the downward pull of his lips.

“She’s one of my neighbors,” Cat said, with just the right touch of emphasis. “So, we finished up painting and when everything was dry, bam-boom I threw the doors up together.”

Matt chuckled, leaning back in his chair as the server returned with both of their drinks. “Bam-boom, huh?”

Swirling her glass of wine, Cat refused to meet that teasing tone of voice. She shrugged. “Well, it’s pretty bam-boom to me now.”

“Fair enough.”

Taking a healthy drink, Cat mirrored Matt’s pose. Leaning back into the barrel-chair, she let her arms lay loosely on the curved, wooden rests. “Did you get much done on Amelia’s project yesterday?”

A crack of tension spilled across the table at the words. Over the rim of his beer, Matt’s eyes crinkled across the table at her. Then, with slow precision, he took a drink of his dark beer. “You mean, after I’d taken care of my biggest distraction?”

Cat giggled. “Oh, is that what I was?”

“Yes, and you know it.”

She smirked down at her glass of chardonnay. “Yes, after I left.”

“I got through three different mock-ups.”

“Three?” She whistled. “That must have taken awhile.”

Matt shrugged. “Yeah, I suppose.”

If there was anything that Cat had learned about Matt, if you wanted to know something you really had to pull and dig for the information. She’d rarely met a man who liked to talk less. “How long where you at it?”

He seemed somewhat reluctant to answer her question. “I emailed the proofs to Amelia around eight o’clock.”

“Eight o’clock?” Cat’s eyes rounded as she did the quick math. “God, that was…almost ten hours.”

Matt shrugged again. His shoulders seemed a little tense with the action now. “Yeah, well, I sort of lost track of time.”

Cat eyes gleamed with amusement.

“What?”

“I don’t know,” she confessed, her finger playing with the stem of her wine glass. “It just seems…odd.”

“That I’d do a thorough job?”

“Oh, of course not,” Cat snapped, her eyes flipping upward at the remark. “Don’t be ridiculous. It’s just, for a man so staunchly opposed to doing this kind of work, you sure get sucked into it.”

“It’s not that I don’t love doing it.”

“Well, obviously.”

“But, as I’ve said to you on more than one occasion, I already have a full-time job. More than full-time job. I can’t afford to spread myself too thin. And if I really wanted to make a go of something like this—”

So he’d thought about it. Cat determinedly bit back the answering smile to this confession. He’d thought about it. That meant something.

Still, Cat wasn’t interested in another spirited debate on that subject. Not tonight. Raising her hands up, Cat smiled across the table at him. “Okay, okay, I surrender. Still, I don’t see why you couldn’t just pick up gigs on the side, when you had the time. Or make a few pieces to sell in your store.”

Matt didn’t respond directly, instead all he said was: “I could, or I could be spending the evening out with a beautiful woman. I think I made the wise choice.”

And really, what could she have possibly managed to say to that?

 

 

 

 

“I heard a certain someone went on a date with my grandson yesterday,” Birdie announced on Monday evening. Staring with unusual fixation on her cards, she let the words travel across the Canasta table.

“What? Who?” Erna asked. Leaning so far forward that everyone had a view of her cards, she waited for Birdie to continue.

Groaning silently, Cat prayed the older woman would show some tact. Pulling her own cards up to just under her eyes, she watched as Birdie slowly laid down a meld on her team’s board. Then her eyes flicked over to Cat.

“Care to comment, Ms. Cat?”

“You?” Pointing a gnarled finger at Cat, Mary practically shouted the word—which felt a little more like an accusation than a declaration.

Sighing, Cat set her cards down on the table. But unlike Erna, she had the forethought to turn them face-down. She knew her face was pinched, closed-off. She didn’t want to spend the evening in interrogation mode. “We had dinner.”

But dammit! At the words, her mouth moved of its own accord, the shape shifting, melting into a shy smile. And her eyes dropped their hard emotion, falling to the table.

“And?” Harriet asked, elbowing Cat none-to-gently. “How’d it go?”

“I think it’s pretty obvious by her mucky face,” Mary said on a snort. “Just look at the girl, she’s practically ready to fall off her chair.”

“Oh, I am not!” Cat said, but the vehemence in her voice gave her away.

“Was he a gentleman, my dear?” Birdie asked, laying a soft hand over Cat’s. “Now mind, I don’t want the details or anything but…”

“He was a perfect gentleman,” Cat assured her, and it was true. After dinner he’d walked her to her car. Wrapping his arms around her, he’d given her a sweet, soft kiss before asking her if she had any plans for Wednesday evening.

“N-no,” she’d told him.

“Good,” he’d winked, letting his arms break from around her shoulders. “You do now.”

“What?”

“I’m not telling yet,” he’d whispered. Bending down, he’d given her one final kiss before whispering goodnight.

“Oh, shit—the girl’s gone officially loopy,” Mary said, gesturing to Cat’s admittedly distracted face. “That’s it,” she cried, giving Cat a dark look. “This is the last week I’m going to partner with her.”

“Mary.”

“At least until she can manage to mention his name without getting that stupid look on her face,” Mary said, but there was just the smallest inkling of a smile on her face. “She’s absolutely useless to me now.”

“Cut the girl a break,” Harriet said, shooting Mary a frown. “Have you seen the boy, lately?” Using her cards like a fan in front of her face, Harriet cooed. “My God, he’s a hunk.”

Cat giggled.

Erna blushed.

Birdie laughed delightedly. “Takes after his grandfather.”

“I’d be falling off my chair if that men took me as far as across the street, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Jesus, Harriet. Keep it in your pants.”

“Oh hush. You know you’d be making googly eyes, too.”

“I am not making googly eyes.”

“Oh, honey, even a woman with cataracts couldn’t mistake that gleam,” Harriet assured her.

“Can we just play?”

“We can,” Mary muttered, gesturing to the other ladies at the table. “It’s you we’re worried about.”

“And just who brought our team such high scores in the last round when she picked up the pile?” Cat mused.

“Lucky,” Mary muttered.

“My foot,” Cat muttered. But Mary was right. She was holding at least one card in her hand that should have been laid out on their board. She was losing her focus.

 

 

 

Cat wasn’t sure when the idea took root. Perhaps it had been right at the very beginning. Birdie talking about Matt’s passion for woodworking; or perhaps it had been in the reluctant but nonetheless frenetic obsession he’d shown once he’d started on her cabinet door; or maybe it was in the squeal of excitement she’d heard in Amelia’s voice when she’d called her office that Tuesday afternoon.

“Oh my God, the man’s a genius,” Amelia cried upon hearing Cat’s professional, “Good afternoon, Fireside Credit Union Lending and Loans Department—”

At the words, Cat had felt her stomach drop. “Matt?” Just saying his name was enough to turn her stomach in a frenzy of anticipation.

“Of course, Matt.”

“The wardrobe?”

Amelia sighed. “I mean, I was blown away when I got the mock-ups on Sunday. The originality in those designs, I was breathless.”

“Probably not speechless, though,” Cat intoned.

“Never! But girl, I had a time just picking out which one I liked best. I wanted all of them,” Amelia continued, her voice picking up pace as her excitement grew. “And then, today, he asked me to stop by and get a look at what he’s done so far—just to make sure the concept is matching what I had in mind.”

“Which would be hard, since you never had anything in mind.”

“It was gorgeous, Cat,” Amelia continued, not paying her friend any notice. “I mean, the artwork, the detail. Oh my God—he’d only started on the top crest but, it floored me.”

“What were you expecting?” Cat asked. “Utter crap?”

“Honestly? I don’t know,” Amelia admitted. Through the phone, Cat could just make out the low sound of Amelia’s radio. “I mean, I thought they’d be good and all, but these…”

Cat leaned forward. “Yes?”

“He’s got a gift. You were right.” Amelia laughed. “I mean, I only agreed to this so that you could get closer to Matt but now…” she whistled off-pitch, “I’m reaping some serious rewards myself.”

“You did that for me?” Cat asked, slightly taken aback though she supposed that she shouldn’t have been. She supposed that she knew that. Still, hearing it was something…special.

“Well, of course. I got your back, girl.”

“And if he really had sucked at woodworking?”

Amelia was quiet for a moment. “I mean, I doubt it could have been much worse than what’s already there. And anyway, you had confidence in him. I trusted you.”

Cat felt a peculiar pull on her stomach, a tingling in her nose. Sniffing, she pressed the phone more tightly to her ear. “God, I love you.”

“’Bout time you admitted it.”

It definitely had something to do with the obvious love he couldn’t hope to disguise when it come to the few projects he begrudgingly took on, almost all of his free-time spent in the back of that warehouse, his attention so focused he’d simply forget everything else. When he’d taken her out on Wednesday, he’d stopped in to show her how far he’d come on the wardrobe. Standing beside him, she’d felt his swell of pride as his hand had swept out over the sawhorses displaying individual pieces that, when even while indistinguishable as a whole, Cat could see were fabulous. Walking forward, she’d let her finger run across the deep grooves and the swirls and whirls at the edges of the doors.

Looking up at Matt, she’d felt bereft of words. “These are beautiful.”

Staring down at the intricately carved doors, Matt hadn’t been able to disguise a smile. “Yeah, these were interesting to work…”

It was probably the longest she’d ever heard Matt speak at one given time. Staring raptly up at him as he explained some of the frustrations he’d encountered trying to line everything up, Cat had been mesmerized. She hadn’t understood most anything that he said, but she’d nodded mutely alongside him, taking a deep sort of pleasure in this unusual moment—where the usually taciturn Matthew McBoy couldn’t seem to shut up.

Because he loved what he was doing so much. Wednesday had been the only day he’d taken off, working on Amelia’s project.

“Well, don’t work yourself to the bone,” Cat had teased over dinner that evening. “Amelia meant what she said. She really doesn’t have a deadline.”

“Yeah, I know. I just…”

He didn’t need to finish that sentence. She knew what he just.

He just couldn’t help himself.

 

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