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Cat hadn't needed to consult her calendar to know the significance of the date - not after Kara's enthusiastic 'gift' this morning of two rather earthshattering orgasms and a whispered run-on sentence that had included a number of earnest declarations of love, followed by the words "Happy Six Months Since We Moved in Together Day!"
That explained it all, and though she'd played it off with her trademark sarcasm, Cat was secretly charmed by Kara's devotion and her made-up anniversaries and the sheer intensity of her love, as if it contained the brightest of Sol's sunbeams and nothing else. She'd gone through her entire day without firing a single employee, and had even caught herself humming some ridiculous love song or other while she was working alone in her office. Oh, she'd have denied it if she'd been caught, would have explained it away as a tickle in her throat brought on by the air conditioning or some such, but the truth of the matter was she was in love.
Blissfully, completely, undeniably in love.
It was a coup as far as Cat was concerned. To find a partner who was present for both her and her son, who supported her unreservedly and who patiently weathered the storms between them, interested more in the 'us' part of their relationship than anyone else had ever been... Cat was not normally a romantic, but the likelihood of finding someone like Kara so late in life had seemed a little like fate. Kara's otherwordly origins only served to reinforce that notion.
Not wanting their unorthodox anniversary to go unacknowledged, Cat decided to call in a favor with a friend, Manju Alam, the consulting Executive Chef at Elaichi, National City's only 5-star Goan restaurant. Once the reservation for Elaichi's most intimate private dining room had been secured, Cat closed down her laptop, donned her sunglasses, and grabbed her bag, intent on calling it a day so she could wine and dine her girlfriend properly.
Unfortunately, Kara's desk in the reporter's bullpen on the fifteenth floor was decidedly empty.
"If you're looking for Kara, Miss Grant," offered one of the other nameless minions - Patrick or Phillip or Peter or something, "she's probably down at Noonan's showing the new guy the ropes."
"The new guy?" Cat asked, mildly intrigued.
"Mike," confirmed the scruffy-bearded millennial with a pair of glasses so thick, Cat wondered what he would do if he ever lost them. "He started Monday, but he's been in with benefits or in orientation meetings all week. He starts at his desk tomorrow, technically, but you know Kara. She wanted to be sure he starts off on the right foot and everything. He's a little... green."
"Mmm," Cat said, noncommittally. "Noonan's, you said?"
"Yes, Miss Grant." The reporter smiled at her as if she didn't frighten him at all. Cat wasn't sure she approved. "They left a half-hour ago."
"Thank you - er - what's your name again?" she asked. Normally she wouldn't care, but he was trying to be helpful.
"Isaac," he said. "Isaac Posner, Fashion desk."
Not one word of that seemed the slightest bit likely, but who was Cat to argue. She'd thought his name was Paul. Or something.
"Thank you, Isaac Posner, Fashion desk," she said, looking down her nose at him in a way she hoped was intimidating. "Don't let me keep you from your... work."
---
Noonan's was more crowded than Cat had expected it to be at this time of day, and she stood just inside the doorway, searching tables and booths for Kara's tow head. Just as she was becoming frustrated and wishing she had a few of Kara's 'extra' skills, the ring of Kara's laughter caught her attention, and she saw her girlfriend with her head thrown back, clearly enjoying whatever her companion - Mike, was it? - had said.
When her jollity faded, Kara leaned forward, swatting Mike on the shoulder playfully. The man grinned and leaned in to share something else with her, using the noisiness of the café to get just a little closer to Kara than was appropriate, in Cat's opinion. She was about to wave to get their attention, when a voice at her shoulder stopped her dead.
"They make a cute couple, don't they?" asked the woman, her short-cropped gray hair and her crinkle-eyed grin pegging her somewhere between sixty-five and seventy years old. "Do you know them?" she continued, apparently content to gossip with Cat rather than focus on the barista's line. "Oh, are you her mother?" A tray of glass shattering two tables away did not derail her. "I can see the resemblance."
Cat leveled a baleful glare at the woman that should have emptied Hell of all its demons. The busybody didn't even flinch.
"No," said Cat dangerously. "I'm not." She turned on her heel and left without another word.
Aisha, the waitress who'd dropped the tray of dishes, knew Kara and Cat both, and she rushed toward Kara's table just as Kara turned toward the door, looking as if she'd seen a ghost.
---
Cat cancelled their reservations at Elaichi, giving some half-assed excuse to Manju about an emergency with Carter. She'd make it up to him, of course. Someday.
Not today.
She sat in her study, the one she'd furnished to look exactly like her father's, and poured herself another bourbon. She had one light on, the antique brass banker's desk lamp that had actually come from her father's desk, liberated from Katherine's claw-like clutches by a sizable donation to her charity foundation and Cat's promise she'd never ask for anything else.
Cat stared at it, as if waiting for it to impart some tidbit of wisdom. Where was the dream sequence touched in sepia? The lost memory of a love saved, snatched from the jaws of destruction by a word or gesture too sweet to discount? Hell, where was her heart, for that matter? What had beat red with joy just this morning now seemed like cold ash in her chest.
"Cat?"
Kara's voice was soft, tentative - as if afraid of waking a sleeping beast.
Cat didn't answer her, didn't even look in her direction. She took another sip of her bourbon instead.
Kara took a step inside the study, releasing the doorknob as if letting go of the lifeline tethering her to the Earth.
"Aisha told me what happened," she said, and there was such a concrete quality to Kara's words, such an intonation of otherness, of this-doesn't-have-anything-to-do-with-me that Cat almost laughed.
"Did she?" asked Cat, voice dripping with derision. "Pray tell, what wisdom did the Oracle at Noonan's impart unto you?"
Kara ignored the bait, and instead got right to the point. "I'm not leaving you for Mike, or for anyone else, Cat. Not ever."
The only acknowledgement Cat gave Kara's statement was the cessation of her breathing. Kara being who she was, she also heard the infinitesimal creak of Cat's crystal tumbler as she gripped it in her hand, her knuckles going white around it.
Kara skirted the desk until she was next to Cat's chair, and she knelt in front of her, placing both hands on Cat's knees. Cat continued to stare at the lamp, savagely ignoring the prickle of tears in her eyes.
"What that woman said was stupid and ignorant and unnecessary, but most importantly, it was immaterial."
That got Cat's attention and her eyes snapped to meet Kara's. She opened her mouth to respond to that assertion when Kara continued.
"Her words aren't important, Cat," she said softly. "What's important is how they made you feel. Unseen, unheard, unrecognized. Invisible. Worthless." Kara squeezed Cat's left knee gently. "Am I close?"
Cat answered with a single sharp nod of her head and looked away. "How would you know that?" she asked hoarsely.
Kara reached up to cup Cat's cheek in her palm. "Because I know you, Cat. I know you better than anyone on this planet - except for Carter, of course, but he sees you through a child's eyes. I see you through the eyes of an equal, through the eyes of a lover and a friend." Kara smiled sadly up at Cat. "I know, for instance, what that woman said to you today isn't far off from something your mother would and probably did say to you when she found out about us."
Cat shook her head, not wanting to admit Kara was right, but unable to deny it, either. "She said the most vile things. About my motives for pursuing you. About how disappointed in me my father would be if he knew. About how sad and cliché my life is, with four divorces, one child who barely speaks to me, another who's 'on the spectrum,' and a girlfriend half my age."
"First things first, fuck her," said Kara, her jaw creaking with fury. She stood and began to pace. "Seriously. Fuck. Her. She doesn't know you, or Carter, or Adam, for that matter. She doesn't care about you like a mother should. She doesn't even seem to care about you like another human being should!" Kara crossed her arms as she raged and Cat wondered if it was a gesture of self-comfort or if Kara was attempting to keep herself from punching the wall. "Katherine Grant's entire raison d'etre is to make everyone she touches miserable or suicidal or both, so fuck her. You're the goddess of this household, the Queen of All Media, and the best thing to ever happen to me, Cat. She's just a small-minded, waspish troll stuffed into an old, dried up heart. Let her stew in her own hatred. We don't have time for her anymore."
Cat's lips twisted in a wry smirk despite her mood. "Will you be relaying that message to the troll or shall I?" she asked, a hint of her usual sarcasm lacing her voice again.
Kara shoved her glasses back up her nose and scoffed. "I'll send a note by courier to her cave under the 6th street bridge," she groused, her anger receding. Determination replaced it, and Kara crossed back to Cat, reclaiming her place at Cat's feet.
"Second," she said, looking up into hazel eyes that didn't seem quite so bleak anymore. "From everything you've ever told me about your father, Cat, I think he would be happy for you - for us. I think he would see how happy we are - and we are happy, Cat, even on days like this, when one or both of us need to be reminded of that fact." Kara rose up to kiss Cat's cheek, then pressed her forehead to Cat's, taking both of her hands into her own.
"I know he died too soon, too suddenly, and when that happens, it slashes a hole in your heart, one you think can never be filled. But we try to fill it anyway, or we get scared, and try to ignore it, to deny its existence." Out of love - oh, so much love - Kara pretended she didn't notice the tears on Cat's cheeks. "It will never heal, Cat. I wish I could tell you it would, that you'd wake up one morning someday, safe and sound again. You won't. But I promise you, when the pain comes, whether suddenly, like a bolt out of the bright blue sky, or rolling in slowly, like a storm in the night, I'll be here to hold you through it. Like you do for me. Okay?"
Cat held Kara's hands with an iron grip and looked up at her, eyes filled with tenderness and remorse both, wondering how she could possibly deserve someone like Kara, who saw through Cat's complicated deflections and avoidance mechanisms as easily as she saw through walls, who wouldn't let her hide. "Okay," she whispered. "I love you, Kara. I'm sorry for-"
Kara stopped Cat's apology with the most delicate of kisses, heart breaking at the taste of Cat's tears on her tongue.
"I appreciate your apology, Cat, but what I really want from you is a promise." Kara pulled back and looked deeply into Cat's eyes.
"What kind of promise?" asked Cat, confusion rumpling her forehead.
"Promise me the next time you think it would be better to push me away before I have a chance to leave you, you'll ask yourself this question: Where would she go? The answer is nowhere, because you're the only home I have left, Cat, the only one I want, the only one I need. Now and always. Will you do that for me?"
Cat nodded. "I will. I promise."
Kara smiled, finally, relieved, and pressed another kiss to Cat's lips. "Good," she said. "Now, do you think you could be ready to leave for dinner in a half an hour? We have reservations at Elaichi at seven and I don't want to be late. Manju promised me all the Goan Lobster I can eat, and we have the caravan tent private room. This is, like, the perfect date for our anniversary."
"But I cancelled those reservations!" Cat said.
"Using an emergency with Carter as your reason, Cat? Of course Manju called me to find out what was going on! Long story short, I uncancelled our reservations, moved them to seven, and ordered two bottles of their best red zinfandel to be opened and breathing on the table when we get there. So chop chop," she said, pulling Cat out of her chair. "Spicy lobsters are calling my name."
Cat wiped the remnants of tears from her cheeks and pouted. "There was a time when you were more captivated by me calling your name," she grumbled.
Kara kissed the pout off Cat's mouth, then grinned at her. "That's what I'm having for dessert," she said cheekily. "And between you and me," she added, leaning in to stage-whisper in Cat's ear, "I'm probably going to want seconds. Maybe even thirds. So prepare yourself."
Cat rolled her eyes and flashed Kara her own cheeky grin. "If you're still conscious after I get through ravishing you, we'll talk," she said, heading for the master suite.
"That's like asking me which I like better: chocolate or vanilla," Kara called down the hall after her. "It's all dessert to me, Cat!"
fin