About That Fling

by Tawna Fenske

A buzz from the vicinity of Adam’s pants made her lose her train of thought. His jeans were a tangled mess on the floor, but even from this distance, she could see the back pocket appeared to be vibrating.

  “Do you need to get that?”

  He shook his head. “Whoever it is can wait.”

  Jenna nodded as the phone went silent and the pocket stopped vibrating. She waited a moment, remembering what Mia said about boundaries and Mark leaping out of bed to answer his ex-wife’s calls.

  She took another bite of pie and chewed before speaking again. “Like I was saying. Maybe in a month or so after things start to settle, we could see where this goes. Maybe we could go away together, just the two of us. A chance to reset, maybe connect outside the sphere of work and exes and—”

  The phone buzzed again. Adam took another bite of pie, but Jenna shifted uncomfortably, shooting another look at his pants. “Are you sure you don’t need to get that? The person’s awfully persistent.”

  “I’m giving you my undivided attention.”

  “I know, and I appreciate that.” She bit her lip, thinking of Sean. Had she ever had his undivided attention? The phone went silent, and Jenna started to relax. She opened her mouth to speak again, but the phone started buzzing.

  “Please get it,” she said. “What I’m saying can wait.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

  She nodded. “Positive. If you don’t answer it, I’m going to sit here fretting about it and I’ll never remember what I was trying to say anyway.”

  He smiled and rolled over, stretching to reach the jeans. “Anyone ever tell you that you worry too much?”

  “All the time,” Jenna said, watching the smooth lines of his torso as he grabbed the phone and drew back, his abs contracting as he sat up.

  She watched as his expression went from relaxed amusement to something else entirely. The color seemed to drain from his face, and Jenna swallowed hard as he studied the readout on the screen, then hit a button.

  “Shelly? What is it, what’s wrong?”

  Jenna set her fork down, the apple pie all but forgotten. Who was Shelly? Was it any of her business? She should probably leave the room and give him some privacy. Maybe she could wash the plates or put some clothes on or—

  “How long does the doctor think she has?”

  Jenna froze and looked back at Adam. His face was pale and tense, and his fist was clenched in the sheet. She stared at that hand, thinking how gentle, how capable it had felt sliding over her body just moments ago.

  “I’ll be there tomorrow,” he said. His eyes slid to Jenna’s, and she knew something was about to change between them. “I won’t be coming alone.”

  Chapter Twelve

  “Are you sure about this?”

  Jenna shoved her hands in the back pockets of her jeans while Adam tossed his suitcase into the trunk of her car. He looked up at her and smiled, and every unsure part of her suddenly felt a whole lot more certain. And turned on. But mostly certain.

  “Positive,” he said. “You said, and I quote, ‘maybe we could go away together, just the two of us.’”

  “Right. I was thinking more like a romantic weekend.”

  “Visiting my dying grandmother isn’t your idea of romance?”

  Jenna bit her lip. “I’m sorry, Adam. I’m just so sorry. I don’t know what I’d do if something happened to Aunt Gertie.”

  “It isn’t quite the same,” he said. “Nana hasn’t been herself for years. We’ve been in the final stages of Alzheimer’s for a while now. My sister Shelly—she and I have been saying our goodbyes to her for five years. In some ways, this is a formality.”

  “Still, I’m sorry you didn’t get a better goodbye. Maybe if you’d been able to get up to Seattle sooner—”

  “Shhh,” he said, nudging the trunk shut and turning to press his lips against hers. It was probably more about halting the flow of nervous words than a passionate gesture, but it still felt good.

  He drew back and smoothed her hair back from her face. “Let’s not make this about what-ifs. I want you with me this weekend, Jenna. I need you with me. I need some light and laughter and joy in a situation that might be pretty grim. Can you do that for me?”

  She nodded, then handed him her keys. “Yes. Would you mind driving? Seattle traffic makes me nervous.”

  “You’re sure you don’t want to take my rental car?”

  “I’m sure. I told Mia and Gertie I’m going to Seattle to spend the three-day weekend with some old friends. They’d think it was weird if I didn’t take my car.”

  “And I think it’s weird you’re calling me an old friend when we’ve been acquainted a few weeks.” He smiled and moved around to the driver’s side. “It’s okay. We’ve got a three-hour drive to get acquainted better.”

  Jenna turned and opened the passenger door, trying not to feel giddy at the prospect of six whole round-trip hours in a car alone with Adam. Truth be told, that was the part of the journey Jenna looked forward to the most. She was nervous about meeting Adam’s family, about tagging along for something that should be a solemn occasion.

  But there was something about joining him for a trip like this that made things between them seem more real.

  “I want my sister to meet you,” he said, sliding into the driver’s seat as Jenna buckled herself in beside him. “After I got divorced, Shelly got protective. Swore she never liked Mia anyway, which is never very useful to know after the fact. From the moment I started dating again, Shelly’s been suspicious of any woman I went out with more than once.”

  Jenna regarded him warily from the passenger seat. “So the fact that your sister hates my best friend and judges all the women you date is supposed to make me feel better how?”

  He grinned. “She’s going to love you. You’re the first woman since before I got married who’s meeting Shelly in person, so that’s significant. When I told her you were coming, she knew right away what it meant.”

  “Which is what?”

  “That we’re more than just a fling. That things are getting serious.”

  Jenna bit her lip and tried not to grin like some goofy idiot. “Is she going to sit me down for a stern discussion of my intentions with you?”

  Adam laughed. “Shelly doesn’t do stern. She does wedgies and dirty jokes, often within ten minutes of meeting someone. You can relax.”

  “Well, still. If she hated Mia—”

  “You’re nothing like Mia,” he said. “Shelly will notice that right off the bat and adore you.”

  Jenna kicked off her clogs and tucked one foot beneath her on the seat, not sure whether to feel defensive or pleased about that. She settled for saying nothing, nestling back into the passenger seat as Adam steered the car onto the I5 on-ramp headed north toward Seattle. It was just after five thirty on Friday evening, less than an hour after the bargaining team had broken from a long negotiation session to grudgingly wish each other a good Labor Day weekend.

  Three whole days. That’s what she had alone with Adam, after telling everyone she was going away to visit a group of old college roommates for the weekend. Mia had seemed delighted.

  “I’ll stay at your place to watch after Gertie,” Mia had insisted. “She needs someone to drive her to that meeting with the TV people, and I need a break from being home with Mark.”

  “Things still aren’t going well?”

  Mia had shrugged and trailed a finger over one of the roses in a vase at the center of her dining room table. “We’re both trying. He brought me flowers last night. I made his favorite bourbon pecan chicken for dinner. We tried the Compassionate Communication thing again last night, and it wasn’t so bad.”

  “Sounds like progress.”

  “I hope so. Maybe we’ve just had too much drama in the last couple years. Between moving to Portland and planning a wedding
and the pregnancy and everything—” She shrugged. “Maybe we just need a little break.”

  “For the weekend, you mean?”

  “Just the weekend,” Mia had said, kissing her on the cheek. “Have a good trip, sweetie.”

  Jenna had nodded and smiled and tried not to feel too guilty about the whole thing. Was it wrong to let her best friend babysit her aging aunt while Jenna flitted off to Seattle to make nice with Mia’s ex-husband’s family? The whole thing sounded like a soap opera.

  You’re not exactly going to Seattle for a party, she argued to her guilty conscience, and her conscience had to admit she had a point.

  She looked over at Adam. The last remnants of sunlight glinted through the windshield, making flashes of cinnamon in his hair. He wore his glasses, which sparked glints of green and gold in his eyes. He’d changed from his suit into jeans and a faded T-shirt with the logo from a brewery in New Hampshire, and she wondered when he’d gotten it and who he’d been with.

  He must have felt her eyes on him, because he glanced over and smiled. “What are you looking at?”

  “You.” She stretched her legs out, feeling oddly relaxed for someone en route to a death vigil. “You’re lovely to look at.”

  He laughed and turned his attention back to the road. “Thanks.”

  “Tell me something about your grandmother before she got sick.”

  Adam signaled left and passed a semi, then merged back into the middle lane. He looked relaxed behind the wheel, at ease. One hand rested on the edge of the passenger seat, the tips of his fingers grazing her knee. Jenna liked seeing it there.

  “My grandma was always a survivor,” he said. “She had triple bypass surgery in her sixties and breast cancer in her seventies.”

  “Wow, that’s a lot. She sounds tough.”

  “She was. Is. After the double mastectomy, she said she didn’t want to bother with reconstructive surgery or implants. Said she was proud of her scars, and thought one of them looked like a jack-o’-lantern.”

  “Sounds like a spirited woman.”

  He nodded, his eyes still on the road. “I went to visit her one afternoon around Halloween, and she disappeared into the bathroom. When she came out, she’d drawn a full jack-o’-lantern face in eyeliner over one of the mastectomy scars.”

  Jenna laughed, trying to picture the old woman in her mind. It wasn’t hard. “That sounds like something Gertie would do.”

  “Your aunt reminds me a lot of Nana. My grandfather had to stop her from showing it off to trick-or-treaters at the door.”

  Still smiling, Jenna angled a little in her seat, letting her bare forearm brush the tips of Adam’s fingers. They were warm and felt so natural trailing over the bones in her wrists. “Tell me another story.”

  He slid his palm over her knee and rubbed it thoughtfully. “She never could stand to see anyone mistreated. One time my grandfather was having the riot act read to him by a woman who got mad at him for leaving his cane propped up against his chair. Nana was in the bathroom at the time, but she came back just in time to hear the woman yelling at him for being careless. She called him a crotchety, clueless old man who didn’t care if people tripped over his stupid cane and broke their necks.”

  “What did your grandmother do?”

  “She stood there for a second, assessing what was going on. Gramps is hard of hearing, though he tries to play along like he knows what people are saying, but as the woman was yelling all these nasty things at him, he just nodded and smiled and said how nice the weather was that day.”

  “The weather?”

  “That just made the woman mad, so she tried to grab his cane.”

  “Jesus. So then what happened?”

  “Nana just cleared her throat and said, ‘excuse me.’ As soon as Gramps’s tormentor turned around, Nana decked her.”

  “What?” Jenna laughed, picturing a little old woman smugly sucking a bruised knuckle. “She hit her?”

  “Yep. She was aiming for her jaw, but just got her shoulder. Still, it was a good punch. She grabbed the cane back and told the woman not to touch any member of her family ever again. Guess it worked. No one ever messed with Gramps—or with Nana—after that.”

  Still laughing, Jenna shook her head. “I’d have loved to see that.”

  “I’ll have to show you the video sometime.”

  “There’s video?”

  “Yeah. It was at my wedding. Actually, Gramps’s tormentor was Mia’s mom.”

  Jenna blinked. “Seriously?”

  Adam nodded, while Jenna’s mind reeled. She’d heard this story before, but from a completely different viewpoint. She could hear Mia laughing a little sadly over cocktails one night not long after they’d become fast friends.

  I’m divorced, yes. Probably should have known the marriage was doomed when one of his relatives punched my mom at the wedding, and I realized it was the first time all day he’d stopped complaining about how much everything cost and actually smiled.

  Jenna must have fallen quiet for a few beats too long, because Adam shot her an inquisitive look. “What’s on your mind?”

  Jenna looked out the window, considering. “Do you think there’s any chance Mia regrets leaving you?”

  Adam didn’t respond right away. He also didn’t ask what prompted the question, which surprised her. She studied the side of his face, enjoying the way his eye color changed in the flash of oncoming headlights.

  “Do I think she regrets the affair? Sure, in hindsight I think she realized it wasn’t the most graceful way to exit a failing marriage.”

  “No, I don’t mean that, exactly,” Jenna said. “I guess I meant—I don’t know, do you ever think she wants you back?”

  Something dark flickered in his eyes, but it might have been the headlights again. The sun had dropped low behind the coastal range to the west, casting dark shadows on the interstate. “Why would you ask that?”

  “I don’t know. Just wondering, I guess. Is it harder to be the person who leaves or the person who’s left?”

  “That’s a question I’ve thought about myself.” He turned and looked at her as if assessing something. Jenna waited, hands folded in her lap.

  “I’ve never told anyone this before,” he said.

  “What?”

  “About six months after she moved out, Amelia’s car broke down. She was in a seedy neighborhood on the south side of Chicago. It was late at night and her tire blew out.”

  “That must have been terrifying.”

  “She called me. Mark was out of town, and the place she got stuck wasn’t too far from my office. It was late at night, but she knew I’d still be working.”

  “She couldn’t have called a tow truck?”

  “She could have, but she didn’t.”

  Jenna tucked her other leg up under her, feeling chilled even though Adam had switched the heat on a minute ago. “What did you do?”

  “I went to get her, of course. It was nearly midnight, and I was scrambling on a case I had to present the next morning, but I didn’t want her to get hurt. So I went.” He took a breath, and Jenna waited, not sure she wanted to hear the rest of the story.

  “Did something happen?”

  She tried to keep her voice from shaking, but must not have succeeded. Adam glanced over, then shook his head. “Nothing like that. Not like you’re thinking. But I can’t say it wasn’t on her mind.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “I let her wait in my car while I changed the tire. After I finished, I got back in and told her she was good to go. That’s when she broke down crying. She kept saying how sorry she was, how she felt scared and confused and that she missed me.”

  Jenna gripped the armrest, hating the image of Mia in tears almost as much as she hated the thought of Adam sitting solid and strong beside his ex-wife with his arm around
the back of her seat, trying to comfort her.

  “Was it the first time she’d apologized for—for what happened?”

  “God, no. She’d apologized so many times at that point that I’d stopped hearing the words. But this was the first time I’d seen any sign she genuinely regretted it. That if she had a do-over, she’d have done things differently.”

  “She wanted you back?”

  He nodded tightly, just once. “She said she did. Right then, I think she believed it. I told her no. I gave her a Kleenex and sent her on her way. Called later to make sure she got home safely.”

  “Did you ever talk about it again?”

  “Yeah. A week later, I got an e-mail from her. It was all businesslike, mostly talking about divorce papers and court dates. Toward the end, she apologized for her ‘moment of weakness.’ That’s what she called it. Said she hadn’t meant anything by it and could we please forget the whole thing happened.”

  “And did you?”

  “Not exactly, but I’d mostly pushed it out of my mind until now.” He cleared his throat. “The thing is, I believed her. She really didn’t mean it. She didn’t want me back. But the fact that I screwed up her narrative—well, that threw her for a loop.”

  “Her narrative?”

  Adam seemed to hesitate a moment, his eyes on the horizon. Or maybe he was just watching traffic. It was surprisingly thick for a Friday evening with stars pricking the black sky and a soft spatter of rain on the windshield.

  “When you make a decision to leave someone, you tell yourself a story,” he said. “You convince yourself you have no choice, or the relationship is doomed, or the person or the situation is so awful that this is the only thing you can possibly do. Maybe it’s true, but you believe the story with all your heart. You have to believe it if you want the courage to leave.”

  Jenna nodded. How many times had Mia said that? I had to leave, I was dying inside.

  How many times had she said it herself? I couldn’t marry Sean. Not after everything, I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with him.

  “So you messed up her narrative by coming to her rescue,” Jenna said. “By leaving work to be there for her when she needed you.”