Chapter 25: Our Secret Moments: Chapter 25

I’VE BEEN FLOATING through all my classes today like a ghost, not really sure what I’m doing with myself. Thanksgiving weekend is coming up and it’s the only thing I have to look forward to, and my surprise for Cat.

Sometimes I wish I could play football and do nothing else, but I know that’s unrealistic.

Surprisingly, I don’t hate my literature course. I actually enjoy it. Words and the meanings you can take from them have always spoken to me, sometimes more than watching movies has. Learning about older written texts and the context around them is cool, but Wes’s constant questions puts me off going to class. Especially when the season is in full swing and all I want to do is go to the gym and prepare myself for the upcoming games.

When I see a text from Cat an hour into my lecture, I welcome the distraction.

KIT-CAT U don’t have to come over today.

Do you not want me to?

KIT-CAT I do.

I just don’t think you’ll want to stay long. I’m taking out my braids and it’s not very entertaining.

I could watch you watch paint dry, Cat. Everything you do is entertaining to me.

KIT-CAT Fine, but you’ve been warned.

I know that’s not the only reason she doesn’t want me to come over. Today is the anniversary of her mom’s death, making it five years without her. I could only imagine what it would be like losing someone so important to you so young. Her mom was everything to her. As much as her dad was great, Pauline is the one I have to thank for turning my Catherine into the person that she is today.

It’s risky business deciding to go to her dorm in the middle of the afternoon when my sister or Elle could come home at any second, but I want to be there for her. I don’t know what happened to make her believe that she doesn’t need to be looked after sometimes and I want to prove her wrong, be that person for her. Everyone needs somebody sometimes and that’s fine. I can push people away when I need them the most, but I’ve tried to get it into my thick skull that doing that makes my problems a shit ton worse than if I just let the people who care for me be there when I need them.

This is exactly what I was made for.

I was made to be ridiculed by my best friend as I left my dorm with a huge box filled with goodies for Cat and an oversized teddy bear. I’ve consumed enough romantic media in the last few days to know that I’m on the right track of some sorts. My main goal is to be the comfort that I know she needs to do and make up for missing our library date.

After nearly tripping over several times as I made my way to her dorm, the door opened to the most beautiful sight.

My Catherine is wearing pink silk pyjamas, half of her hair is natural, curls flying everywhere whilst the other half is still braided, but it’s been shortened from the length it was a few days ago. Her face is in complete surprise despite the back and forth messages where she told me not to come and I told her I was coming anyway.

I hold up the bear in my hand, needing to crack her frown. It’s almost as big as her – big round eyes, a red bowtie on its neck and a tiny shirt.

“I come bearing gifts,” I say, moving into the dorm and she reluctantly lets me in. When the door shuts with a click, she turns to me, looking down at the box in my hands and then back to my eyes.

“I’m having a self-care day,” she says, a low edge to her voice that breaks my heart in two. She twists the necklace around her neck, a silver one that used to belong to her mom.

“Yeah, me too,” I reply, grinning. I walk past her to the living room where she’s set up her laptop and has a bag with the used hair extensions, a bag full of hair products and a huge wide-

toothed comb. I turn back to her and she’s still blinking at me. “Come here, Cat.”

“Connie,” she murmurs, slowly taking a step towards me, her pretty mouth opening and closing before she takes a deep breath. “You don’t want to be around me right now. I promise.”

I shake my head, setting down the stuffed bear on the couch. “Ask me where I want to be right now.”

She sighs. “Connor….”

“Ask me, Cat,” I press, stepping closer to her until she has to look up at me and she rolls her eyes lightly.

“Where do you want to be right now?”

“With you.”

I watch the second her eyes dim. Her chin wobbles and I immediately wrap my arms around her, letting her head rest on my chest. A sharp sob rips through her and she doesn’t have to say anything to tell me how she’s feeling because I can feel it.

I want to take away the pain from her, make it my own, carry the weight of the world on my back if it meant she could breathe for a second. I would take it all from her if I could, leave her with only the happiness and the light in the world.

I tighten my arms around her, resting my chin on the top of her head and she cries harder into my shirt as I rub my hand down her back.

“I miss her so much, Connor,” she says into my shirt, her voice cracking.

“I know,” I whisper, “I know.”

I let her take all the time she needs, holding her.

“I’ve got you, sweetheart,” I say shakily. “I’ve got you all the time, even when you don’t want me to. I just wish you could see that.”

I feel her nod against my chest and she slowly relaxes into me more. I hold her against me for a few more minutes, or maybe it’s hours. I don’t know. All I know is that I won’t let go until she tells me to.

When she eases up off me to look up at me, I wipe away the tears under her eye with my thumb, swallowing. I try my hardest to smile. “Get some bowls from the kitchen and I’ll set up everything in here.”

“For what?” she asks, swiping at her face with the sleeve of her top.

“You’ll see,” I whisper, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She smiles weakly before slipping away from me into the kitchen.

I rearranged her chaotic setup in the living room, taking down some of the pillows from the couch and placing them on the floor just in front of it, piling them on top of each other. I shut off her laptop, pausing her episode of Desperate Housewives and instead switching on the flatscreen across from the couch and putting on my favourite Disney movie, Frozen.

When she emerges back into the living room, she doesn’t say much when I place some candy and popcorn into the bowls she brought, pulling out a few soda cans to place onto the table. I rummage through the box, finding face masks and face massage rollers too, placing them in the corner. I’m satisfied with our spread. Maybe I brought too much food. But there’s no such thing, right?

Cat looks down at the coffee table and then back up at me. “You got all this for me?”

I nod. “I got all this for us. I’m having a self-care day too, remember?” I tease, smirking. I finally get a laugh out of her and I sit down on the couch, above where I piled the cushions on the floor, spreading my legs. I tap the pillows. “Sit down here.”

Her mouth twists to the side in suspicion, but she steps over the cushion and takes a seat between my legs. “What are you doing?”

“Can I help you take out your braids?” I ask, brushing the half of her hair that is still braided over one side of her shoulder. She tenses at the contact. “I mean, if you don’t want me to, I can just watch. I like watching you. Wait. No. That sounds creepy. I just mean—”

“You can help if you want to, Connie,” she says, cutting me off, turning to look up at me. “Thank you for asking.”

My hands shake a little when she turns back around and she starts to explain to me how to help her. She’s already cut off the ends of her braids, so all I have to do is unravel each one and then gently brush out her hair and clip it back with the other parts that have already been tended to. It’s a lot less daunting than I thought it would be, but if this means that I can help her next time, I’ll get used to it.

I find a rhythm, detangling her hair and letting the soft curly texture run through my fingers. We mostly stay quiet, watching the movie and eating the snacks as we continue tending to her hair. As I watch her relax into me, telling me her favourite parts of the movie, I realise that I want to know everything about her. I want to know her life so well that I know her better than I know myself.

“Can I ask you something,” I ask into the silence.

“Of course. Anything.”

“What actually happened last year, Cat? You know, with the breakup,” I ask. I still don’t know the ins and outs of what went down. All I know is that a few months later, she turned into a different version of herself, and watching that growth without the context had always confused me.

“We just weren’t cut out for each other,” she explains easily, giving me the same bullshit answer she gave the guys when we were in Oliver’s pool.

“Okay, now tell me the truth, Catherine,” I ask gently.

She shifts beneath me. “Why?”

“Because I like hearing you talk, so talk.”

I watch her shoulders rise and fall and I slowly sink beneath her, caging her in on the floor until she settles into my lap. She only has a few braids left and we could both do with a break. I catch her hand on her knee, turning her palm to face up as I start tracing the lines across the patterns on her palm.

“I realised that I’m not the perfect person to put up with when I’m going through a hard time. Sometimes, I don’t even know why. I’m just… sad. Which sucks because I have so many things to be grateful for and be happy about, but there are times where just existing feels like it’s a chore and I want to crawl up into a ball and sit in my room for a while. Some people don’t know how to deal with it, or they just ignore it and that’s what I felt like with Evan. He was kind and he was sweet. He never said a bad thing to me, ever, but the years after my mom passed were hard, Connor, and nothing helped. And I had those empty feelings more and more often and I thought it was better to cut him off. It was a sudden and rash decision, but I needed to be my own person without him because I didn’t feel like I was the best version of myself. I felt like a burden. And maybe that’s just me overthinking everything, but I could tell that we weren’t happy.”

I digest her words, trying to think of a response. “It’s okay to be sad, Cat. It doesn’t make you hard to deal with or a difficult person to be around.”

She shrugs. “I guess. I just felt like I was being tolerated or put up with by everyone around me. Even my dad. It didn’t feel like anyone actually cared. People would say that they’re here for me and then never speak to me when I actually needed them. It was like another thing that someone wanted to check off their bucket list just by checking in on me that first month.” I’m about to say something, but she continues talking. “With the breakup, part of me did it because I felt guilty because that year, I forgot my mom’s anniversary. I was too busy and caught up in a relationship that I forgot, Connor. I forgot about her. My dad was already caught up with work, JoJo had just been diagnosed and she was already too sick to remember herself. It was my fault. I had one thing to do, one thing I promised her, and I didn’t even manage to do that.”

I swallow, my eyes stinging at her words. I made her feel like that day at the library. I made it seem like I forgot about her even though that is the furthest thing from the truth. “I’m sorry, Cat.”

“What are you apologising for? You haven’t done anything wrong. It’s just me and my stupid brain,” she replies, laughing lightly.

“I’m sorry for not being there for you when I should have. You know, in the library,” I say thickly. She interlocks her fingers in mine, squeezing my hand tight. “And for anytime before that when you felt like you couldn’t talk to me because you could have, you know. I never want you to feel like you’re alone. I’m always here for you.”

“You’re here now,” she whispers, “That’s all that matters.”

“I’m here now and I’m here forever,” I tell her.

“Yeah?”

“Yep. Until you get completely sick of me and my baking,” I say and she laughs, the sound rushing over me like a wave. “Until then, I’m yours, Catherine. All yours.”

We manage to get through both of the Frozen movies in the time it takes us to eat most of the snacks and for us to finish doing her hair. Once we’ve cleaned up, I stand with my hands on my hips, waiting for my next plan of action.

“What next?” I ask.

She tugs her bottom lip into her mouth. “I’ve got to tame this mane,” she says, running a hand through her hair. It’s so fucking long and dark and curly and just beautiful. I can’t stop staring at it. At her. “Which means shampoo, conditioner, detangling and protective styling.”

“Can I help?” I ask immediately, not even thinking about it.

She frowns. “You’ve helped enough already, Connie.”

“And I want to help some more,” I say.

She studies me for a minute before she realises that I will fight her on this. She closes her eyes before nodding, walking towards her bedroom.

When we get to her room, she shows me all the products she uses in her hair and fuck, it’s a lot. She tells me how her Grandma JoJo used to do her hair as a kid and how it would take all day whilst she listened to reggae songs and told stories about her mom growing up in Jamaica.

When she guides me on what to do when she’s leaning over the bathtub, my hands curl in her soapy hair, scratching her scalp, I realise just how badly I’ve fallen for her.

“You know you’re the first guy to ever do that for me,” she tells me whilst she’s sitting in front of her mirror in her room. Her hair has been washed and detangled now and she’s twisting it. I asked to help again, but she told me she’d prefer to do this herself.

I’m deep within the millions of pillows she has on her bed, but I sit up, my eyes meeting hers in the mirror. “Do what? Help with your hair?”

“Yeah,” she whispers. “I dunno. I think people are scared to touch my hair. Which is fair enough, I’d rather you ask before you get all up in there. But no one I’ve dated has ever asked me what I’m okay with and what they could help me with. And honestly, it’s tiring as fuck having to deal with this on my own.”

There’s something in her voice when she says the last sentence that makes me think it’s not just her hair she’s talking about. Boys my age are fucking stupid. If I had a girl as smart and beautiful as Catherine on my arm, I’d be doing everything in my power to help her. I’d carry any of the weight she needed and she wouldn’t have to think twice.

“You know I’ve always got your back,” I say, winking at her. She shakes her head, laughing. “And I think your hair is stunning. I’d never do anything to make you feel uncomfortable. All you have to do is say.”

“Thank you. I appreciate that, Connor,” she says, dropping her eyes to the set of combs she has in front of her. When her eyes meet mine again in the mirror, my chest almost explodes. “I appreciate you.”

I smile at her before dropping back onto the bed, feeling absolutely content.