Through the windows of the restaurant, Ash sat in a corner booth staring at the candle flickering on the table. I could see him, but he couldn't see me, or hadn't looked up to notice. He was expecting Cat, a girl he thought he knew. A girl he thought he could trust. And he was about to get Catelyn, a girl he didn't want. A girl who made him feel like a monster.
A tear trickled down my cold cheek. I thought I only had one choice in this situation—to tell him the truth and suffer whatever fallout came.
But I realized in that moment there was another choice. A harder choice, but in some ways easier, or maybe better.
I could make Cat disappear. If she broke up with him, maybe he'd be willing to give Catelyn another chance. Maybe he'd see that she was the woman he needed. Because for all Bridgette's words, I couldn't accept that Cat was a part of me. She was an act, a role I played for money. I couldn't be her, because to be her meant I didn't know myself at all anymore. It meant I'd become someone I couldn't admit to myself, let alone other people.
I dug through my purse and found a pen and a paper. Scribbling a note, I chose my words carefully, then handed it and some cash to the valet and asked if he'd deliver it. He agreed, slipping into the restaurant, a blast of heated air making me shiver harder.
Placing my hand on the window, I drew a heart around the man sitting alone at the table. "I'm sorry, Ash. But you have to let go of her. She's not real. She never was."
And then I turned and walked away.
Chapter Thirty
The Blue Dress
I TORE DOWN my posters that night and cried myself to sleep, the ache in my heart growing bigger by the minute. Donna from The Pleasure Palace left multiple messages, frantic that one of my 'regulars' kept calling, upset and wanting to talk to me. She asked about what to tell him. I skipped classes the next day, preferring to wallow in private, and finally called her back late afternoon. "Tell him Cat doesn't work there anymore. I'll be back to work next week for everyone else, but he's not to know I'm still there and should never be transferred to me."
She pressed for details, but I evaded her questions and hung up, ready to renew my moping for a few more pathetic hours. Cat had broken up with Ash. I'd explained it in the note, told him to move on, that I couldn't cross this line of meeting a client in person, that he should reconnect with the other girl in his life.
Self-serving? Perhaps, but it was my last hope.
But while he tried to call Cat every night, he never reached out to Catelyn. When I saw Jon on campus, he made polite conversation but would sulk and walk away if I brought up Ash.
A week came and went, and I was due to start back at The Pleasure Palace, but I begged off for a few more days, unwilling to give other men what I wanted to give Ash alone. I knew I risked my job and future, but the whole thing made me sick to my stomach. School suffered, I didn't sleep or eat and Bridgette started giving me those lingering worried looks that annoyed the hell out of me.
"Why don't you just reach out to him? Invite him to coffee? Anything is better than this moping miserable Catelyn."
"I can't. I don't even know how to reach him."
She closed her textbook and scooted her desk chair to face my bed, which I refused to move from. "I can help with that. I'll get you his number."
"If I call him, he'll recognize my voice," I said. And I realized the fatal error in my plan even as Brig said it.
"If you want him, you'll eventually have to talk to him on the phone. You can't keep it a secret forever. You should have met him that night and gotten it over with."
And she was right. I couldn't live my whole life not talking on the phone to him if we ever did end up together. Maybe enough time would pass and he'd forget about Cat's voice and just think about mine.
So I waited. And hoped. And tried to study.
And one day all of my patience paid off.
Bridgette and I had gone back to her parents' house for a long weekend at the end of January when a package arrived for me.
"Who's it from?" Brig asked.
I opened the card first, and smiled my first real smile in a month. "It's from him! He's invited me to dinner tomorrow night."
I handed her the card and opened the box. My heart thumped hard in my chest as I battled with my own feelings. He'd sent a dress that looked exactly like the one I'd pretended to wear as Cat in Greece. Deep blue that turned to a swirl of white and blue at the hem, like surf. Did this mean he knew the truth? Or that he really wanted Cat and he was settling for Catelyn?
I held up the dress and Bridgette whistled. "It doesn't matter why he picked that dress. You're wearing it, and you're going, and I don't want to hear another word about it. He invited you, Catelyn. Not Cat."
She was right. This was my chance to set things right with Ash, and I couldn't let my own insecurities interfere.
For the first time since my alter ego broke up with Ash, I didn't cry myself to sleep. And it had been over a month since my stalker had texted or called. Life was looking up, even if the police still had no leads on the killer.
***