“Bloody Marys?” Dani held up the drink special menu to the table when the waiter arrived. Sonya and Emma each held a finger up.
“I’ll have cranberry juice, please,” Cat said.
Oh right. This. “Why no Bloody Mary, Cat?” she asked in a perfectly pleasant, I don’t suspect anything voice.
“This place uses too much horseradish.”
“Why don’t you have a mimosa, then?”
“Why don’t you just drop it?” Cat snapped.
Woah. Dani’s jaw dropped. Emma and Sonya exchanged a look. Cat wasn’t one for snippiness. Her mood typically waffled between bubbly and sarcastic, but she was never downright bitchy.
“Forget I said anything,” Dani said, holding her hands up.
“Sorry,” Cat muttered, obviously embarrassed by her display. But it didn’t really seem like remorse.
Dani changed the subject. “I had a date last night,” she said, turning her attention to Sonya and Emma. “Mike. He’s a freelance journalist.”
“Oh!” Emma was her biggest audience when it came to dating stories. She’d been married the longest, so hearing about Dani’s weekends was like taking an exotic vacation. “How did it go? Was there chemistry?”
“It wasn’t terrible.” She tried to picture Mike’s face and pick out the best parts to share, but a flash of Dylan’s bare, tattooed chest hovering above her manifested instead.
What the hell?
She chugged some ice water. “I mean, I’m not sure he’s soulmate material, but we had fun. He took me to a concert downtown and dinner. It was romantic, I guess.”
“And did you have your cheat night?” Sonya asked, her eyebrows raised.
Her cheeks flushed guiltily. She was sure Sonya noticed.
“What’s that?” Emma instinctively turned her question to Cat for the answer, and Dani felt a stab of longing. For the first time in maybe ever, she and Cat were both keeping something from each other. She saw it on Cat’s face too when she realized she was out of the loop and her cheeks pinked under Emma’s gaze.
Between this weird tension with Cat and the feeling that she was skirting a line of betrayal talking about Dylan, anonymously as it may be, she started to feel as queasy as if she had had a wild night out.
Cat shrugged. “I have no idea what she’s talking about.”
“You didn’t tell them?” Sonya asked.
Dani’s phone buzzed with a text. She was grateful for the proverbial bell-save until she looked at the screen and saw it was from Dylan. If her face was red before, now her skin felt like it was on fire. She swiped the phone off the table and read.
Dylan: Saw Cat last night. She was twelve shades of green. Couldn’t eat her dinner.
Dani’s eyes bounced from the screen to Cat who drank her water in tiny little sips. Perfect timing, Dylan.
“I didn’t not tell them,” she said, looking pointedly at Cat. “I haven’t seen either of you, and it wasn’t a Facetime convo.” Vindication coursed through her, but then her stomach sank when she remembered the conversation they’d all had about Cat. God, this brunch was the worst. “I joined a dating site and I can’t have sex with the matches, so I have an, um, arrangement with a guy for the time I’m doing this. Something casual.”
“A dating site?” Emma asked at the same time Cat asked, “Who’s the guy?”
Heat crept up Dani’s neck and she fiddled with the ends of her hair. Cat was smart, and they knew each other on a different level, but after examining the way she chewed on her straw casually, Dani could tell Cat didn’t suspect anything. She was mad about being kept in the dark about the entire thing, though. That much was clear. Which was really rich coming from someone who was potentially hiding a whole baby.
Her phone buzzed again, but Dani shoved it in her purse without looking. “It’s no one you know,” she said. Just your husband’s best friend. Ugh. Her conscience came armed with a sledgehammer today.
Luckily, the waiter arrived with their meals, including her cocktail and Cat’s cranberry juice. Cat had skipped her usual eggs over easy and ordered french toast with an excessive amount of whipped cream instead. She obviously wasn’t forgoing alcohol for the health benefits.
“I don’t know why you’re all of a sudden so concerned with finding your soulmate,” Cat said, smothering her plate with syrup. “None of this seems like you.”
Dani shrugged. “I’m turning over a new leaf.” More buzzing from her purse. For God’s sake, Dylan. Not now. She reached in and turned it to silent.
“Yeah, but why? It’s like you made this timeline up in your head,” Cat continued. She pushed around her soggy french toast with her fork. “Nothing has really changed. You just decided to put all of this pressure on yourself for no reason.”
Were they fighting? Did she miss a memo? “That’s easy for you to say, Cat. You’ve already found your person.”
“You didn’t even want a person before this.”
“Do I need to remind you who you were when you met Josh?” Everyone just accepted Cat’s transformation from bitter man-hater to lovey-dovey newlywed. But apparently they all thought Dani was irredeemable based on the reactions she kept getting.
“Yeah, but I found someone who changed my mind,” Cat said. “You changed your mind and now you’re trying to find someone. It’s backwards.”
“So?”
“So what if it doesn’t go like that? What if you make a plan and it doesn’t come to fruition through no fault of your own? You’ll be upset.”
“I guess I might consider that point of view if I had any idea why you would bring this up when I’m two dates into this thing.”
Cat’s eyes narrowed. “To be fair, I’m just now hearing about it.”
The table went silent. Dani swallowed her retort. It wasn’t the same. Cat was making a conscious decision to keep something really, really important from her. She wouldn’t feel the same guilt. She wouldn’t feel any guilt at all. Maybe Cat was right. Maybe there would be consequences, but Cat’s feelings about the whole thing didn’t get to be one of those consequences. Not now.
“You’re right, Cat,” she said. “I should have told you. We’ve always told each other everything and I don’t want that to change.”
Cat looked chastened, but tears still burned behind Dani’s eyes. The tension pushed on her chest, making it hard to breathe.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” she said, pushing her chair away from the table. “I’ll be right back.”