She ran a hand through her hair, and the soft cotton of a man’s oversized white shirt brushed her cheek. Drawing the collar away from her neck, she peeked inside, then let out a breath in relief. At least she still had her bra and panties on. Maybe this wasn’t as bad as it seemed.
Bad enough, though, Mary Catherine. Bad enough.
Unwilling to subject herself to a lecture in the voice of her dead mother, and not quite ready yet to face finding out what—or, more to the point, who—lay beyond the closed door, Cath sank back into the pillows and squeezed her eyes shut, making a polite request of the universe to remove her from this situation and put her somewhere else. Anywhere else. Aspen would be nice.
Nothing happened.
Damn it, she didn’t want to be here. She’d been here before, and she’d sworn she was never going to wake up in the wrong bed again. When her mother died, she’d made up her mind to be a better person. She’d planned to prove to herself and whatever was left of Mom, ghost or spirit or what-have-you, that she could pass as an upstanding human being. Mary Catherine Talarico 2.0 paid her bills reliably, drank rarely, worked her fingers to the bone, and, most important, avoided men like the plague.
Yet here she was. New Cath had obviously taken a pretty catastrophic fall off the reform wagon. The question was, how?
A sense memory from the night before offered itself up: her hand wrapped around a cocktail, and the pinched voice of the Blind Date saying, “Cheers.”
Oh, God, the Blind Date. The glass of wine with dinner that had turned into two glasses because the man was excruciatingly boring, some kind of engineer who worked for the Newcastle municipal council and kept quantifying everything. He’d told her what her meal was costing him to the penny and the exact number of calories in her wine, and she’d ordered a third glass for the sole purpose of spiting him.
That had been her limit for the evening, established in advance. Three glasses of wine. But three glasses of wine wouldn’t have impaired her memory or landed her in this bed. So what—
She smacked her palm into her forehead. The concert. Amanda hadn’t warned her they’d be venturing out to a club at the end of the Northern Line to listen to a very talented drag queen sing Patsy Cline songs. If she had, Cath would’ve begged off regardless of how badly she wanted the straitjacket, because Patsy Cline made her cry. Always. The singer had been her mother’s favorite, Patsy’s smoky voice the perpetual soundtrack to rainy afternoons in the Chicago brownstone of Cath’s girlhood.
When the Patsy impersonator had launched into “Crazy,” Amanda had taken one look at Cath wiping her wet cheeks and sent the Blind Date up to the bar for a round. He’d come back with some cocktail called a K-12 that Cath had never encountered before, and she’d been too rattled to ask what was in it until afterward, when the tip of her nose went numb.
Cath turned her face into the pillow, which smelled of summer and clean cotton. She wondered how many different varieties of stupid one woman could be.
A great many, obviously, because she was here. Wherever here was.
God, she hadn’t gone home with the Blind Date, had she? What if he’d dragged her back to Newcastle, and she’d been too drunk to remember any of it?
Please, please, let this be Amanda’s spare bedroom.
She pulled the summer-smelling comforter up over her face and willed her pickled brain to release the details of what had happened after the Drink of Doom.
Her brain gave her snapshots of a dodgy, solitary walk back to the Tube. The echoing clomp of her heels down underground staircases and over concrete hallways. The buzz of the fluorescent lights making her heart race as she wove her way toward the Northern Line. Waiting for the Docklands train at Bank, staring at her shoes and trying to breathe herself calm. The hot whoosh of stale subterranean air on her face as the train arrived. She’d been on her way home to Greenwich, alone. So how—
Oh. Canary Wharf. The evening unfurled more rapidly now. The thick jasmine perfume of the woman seated next to her making Cath’s mouth water, sour and vile. Rushing off the train before the doors could close. Later, leaning on the map kiosk, watching the strangers on the platform as her stomach settled.
A black and clawing loneliness had crept into her bones, eating the marrow and leaving behind an ache she didn’t know what to do with. A million miles from Chicago, from anything resembling a real home, she’d been in tears, bleary and tired and fuzzy when she’d spotted City’s familiar face.
Then, his hand at the small of her back, guiding her onto another train. His keys in the lock of the flat.
Of all the guys in London, she’d gone home with City.
Cath relaxed, relieved to know whose bed she’d slept in—and to confirm she’d only been sleeping. Even drunk, lonely, and out of her head, she wouldn’t have thrown herself at City. He wasn’t her type at all. When she fell, it was for the bad apples, the unapologetic scoundrels with funny stories, wiry bodies, and battered guitar cases. Not for guys like City. Not for men who were good.
And she’d been watching City long enough to know he was definitely good. He was the sort who helped mothers carry their strollers down the station steps and gave up his seat on the train to anyone female, old, or less fit than himself.
Come to think of it, he didn’t sit much.
She flipped back the comforter and swung her legs over the edge of the mattress, scanning the floor for the outfit she’d worn last night. No luck, but the sight of the red wool rug brought back a sudden, dismaying image of herself sitting splay-legged on it, giggling helplessly, arms tangled up in her own shirt. She’d shouted for City to come and help her. She could still feel his hands at her rib cage, large and warm, pulling her to her feet. Unzipping her skirt. Smoothing his T-shirt over her shoulders, as impersonal as if he were dressing a child.
How utterly humiliating. How utterly Cath.
But no, that was the old Cath. Bad Cath. New Cath had been doing pretty well before last night’s cocktail had knocked her flat on her ass. What had the Blind Date said it was? Some kind of energy drink thing with tequila and gin and triple sec and she didn’t know what-all else. The sort of cocktail undergrad girls with low self-esteem downed by the pitcher on spring break in Florida. Had she not been half stoned on wine and pain and Patsy Cline, she’d never have let it past her lips.
You did, though. And how many mistakes does that make, Mary Catherine?
She counted, pushing her fingers into the mattress one at a time.
One. You agreed to the blind date.