Page 4 of Christmas By The Shore

Cat came to a red light and glanced at her friend, nerves settling over her with an uncomfortable suddenness. “Oh. I take it that means I know the person, too.”

“You sure do.”

“And they’re someone I’m not exactly on good terms with?”

“Bingo.”

She gulped. There was only one person in Cat’s life who fit this description, and she hadn’t seen or heard from him in nearly a decade. The light was still red, so she turned to face McKenzie head-on. “Chris was there?”

“Chris and Monica.”

At the sound of her ex-boyfriend’s wife’s name, Cat inhaled sharply and focused her attention back on the road. Her fingers curled tightly around the steering wheel, and she couldn’t stop her brain from bringing an image of the happy couple to mind. It was a photo she’d seen on Chris’ Facebook page a few years back, from their wedding day. She had the good sense to remove him as a friend after that, but the genuine excitement she’d seen behind their smiles was burned into her memory forever.

“I thought they were living in Chicago,” Catherine said, trying to sound like she didn’t care one way or another. Her voice cracked, however, and betrayed her every emotion.

“They were, up until recently. He said they just moved back,” McKenzie told her. “I guess they wanted to be closer to family because… Monica’s pregnant.”

At that moment, someone made an ill-timed right turn directly in front of the car, and Cat had to slam on the brakes, sending both her and McKenzie forward against their belts. Hissing from the pain, Cat lay on the horn while McKenzie leaned out the window and shouted, but the driver sped off and disappeared around the next corner. Cat pulled over to the side for a second and rubbed her sore chest.

“You okay?”

“I’m fine,” McKenzie answered, though she winced a little as she tried to loosen her seatbelt. “That was nuts.”

“Yeah. It was.”

“What a jerk.”

Despite the commotion, McKenzie’s words from before were still ringing in Catherine’s ears, and she couldn’t shake them. The two remained silent for the time it took Cat to compose herself and get back on the road. As they approached the offices where McKenzie was scheduled to meet with the marketing department to discuss updating the cover of her first book, Catherine let out a heavy sigh and sat back in her seat once parked.

“So… Monica is pregnant.”

“Apparently.”

“And they moved back here so that they would be closer to family because they are going to start having kids.”

“Well, I don’t know if it’s kids plural,” McKenzie said. “Chris didn’t exactly get that far. If you can imagine, I didn’t stick around to have a full-on conversation with them. No offense to Monica or anything, but there’s nothing more boring than talking to someone—who’s baby isn’t even here yet—about what preschools she wants to try to get the kid into.”

“What neighborhood do they live in?”

“No idea.”

Catherine was worried that if they’d purchased a house near her, she would accidentally run into one or both of them. She truly wasn’t sure she could handle the humiliation. There was one last question she wanted to ask McKenzie before getting out of the car. It was pathetic but still burned on the tip of her tongue, so she had to spit it out.

“Did Chris ask about me?”

“Of course he did,” she said, and Cat relaxed a little. “And don’t worry, I told him that your

career was really taking off and that you had been dating up a storm.”

Cat nearly choked on the sip of coffee she’d just thrown back. “You saidwhat? Dating up a storm? What does that even mean?”

“It means exactly what it sounds like it means!” McKenzie laughed.

“Ugh, why would you tell him something that’s such an obvious lie?”

“What would you rather I have told him? That you haven’t had a serious relationship since he broke up with you nine years ago? Or that the last time you went on a date was before the pandemic? I’m not going to do that!”

“It hasn’t beenthatlong,” Cat said. McKenzie raised a brow at her, and Catherine took a second to do a little mental math. She gasped. “Oh my god—it has been that long! How did that happen?”

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