2 Months 'Til Mrs. (2 'Til Series) Read Free Page A

relationship was
just too crazy to keep up with. Besides, it was obvious that Fynn was hardly broken
up about not seeing her on New Year’s Eve—he’d been completely level and calm
and ridiculously even-keeled when he told her all flights were grounded because
of the weather. He even made platitudes that they’d seen each other for an extra-long
weekend at Christmas, like that would somehow make up for missing out on seeing
each other entirely this weekend—it was something like that; she’d blacked out
with frustration somewhere along the way. Whatever it was that he’d said it was
obvious he wouldn’t be pining away for her, threatening to hop a snowplow and
drive all the way from Minnesota to New York just to be with her. He sounded
more like we’ll-try-again-next-weekend guy than he did like snowplow man. So she
did the only thing she could do: she dumped him.
    Why can’t I have it all? Georgia found the love of
her life in New York, in the next apartment building. And now they have a house
in the Jersey suburbs and a kid and a dog. The whole nine. Why was my guy in
Nekoyah, Minnesota? Why did it have to be so complicated—all those miles, all
that vacation time? My relationship was on credit! I had to stop buying shoes
just to keep seeing him! It was economically infeasible. Any business
professional would have said to steer clear of our stock from the beginning. A
shaky foundation—
    “Mom, where do you want these?”
    Catherine whirled in place in the living room, facing
Connor, who stood before her with a platter in each hand.
    “Shit!” he exclaimed.
    “Did you just call me Mom ?” she seethed.
    “It was just—I mean the clothes… and the hair,” he stammered,
confused.
    Catherine touched the twisted updo self-consciously.
She’d let her mother have carte blanche on her whole façade, going into some
alternate state of being uncharacteristically agreeable just so she didn’t have
to admit why she was really here looking like hell. She certainly hadn’t wanted
to admit that this was just the first of what would be many Fynn-less holidays
in her daughter’s future.
    “How did I know that you aged thirty years in the last
twenty minutes?” he chortled. “Remind me not to have what you’re having.” He
nodded toward her wine glass—her chalice of security in the midst of the party
masses.
    “Yeah, well you’re going bald,” she retorted.
    He touched his ever-thinning hair. “Well, at least I
was invited.”
    “At least I’m not a total ass-hat.”
    “Catherine!” her mother gasped.
    Out of her periphery she could see her mother’s dishtowel
drop to the carpet. “But he was the one—” she pleaded.
    “You know better than that.” 
    “But—”
    Catherine watched her mother as she picked up the
dishtowel and walked out of the room, folding it as she went. Folding was
calming to Elizabeth Hemmings. She folded anything and everything. Once she
folded Catherine’s homework because it was sitting nearby during a tense phone
conversation. Catherine didn’t even fold her laundry.
    “Now look what you did. You upset our dear mother,”
Connor taunted, putting the platters down on the coffee table. As he
straightened he took several mushroom caps with him and popped them into his
mouth, asking around them, “So, you married yet?” His joker grin made even more
so by inflated mushroom cheeks.
    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked, hoping the
truth of her relationship status was undetectable under the color of her
growing anger.
    “After the whole proposal incident last spring… dinner
at Trivor’s with Mom and Dad,I figured
you and Fynn had to have gotten hitched by now,” he said, hardly
finishing what was in his mouth before adding a few more.
    “That wasn’t a proposal; it was an introduction,” she
growled lowly, wanting to keep the conversation out of party circulation. If
they weren’t among company she would have already pounced on him, slapping