About That Fling

by Tawna Fenske

  “I can’t wait to meet your gentleman friend, Gertie,” Mia said, swallowing her bite of pizza. “Is this the guy who went to Cornell?”

  “Oh—well yes, he did, but it’s not Arthur. My date is Adam.”

  Mia blinked. “What?”

  “Adam.” Gertie frowned, glancing at Jenna. “Oh, dear, I’m sorry. We can find a different table if this is going to be a problem.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Mia said, reaching for her root beer. “If Jenna can handle eating pizza with her ex, I can do the same.”

  Jenna bit her lip and looked at Sean, who appeared to be engrossed in either a stock trade or a game of Angry Birds. It was tough to tell.

  “You’re sure it’s okay?” Gert asked, looking from Mia to Jenna and back again. “I could try finding another table, though I don’t see anything free. I told Adam I’d find us a place by the time he parked the car.”

  “I’m a big girl, Gertie,” Mia said. “Besides, I feel like I owe Adam an apology for some things I said earlier. This is my opportunity to make nice.”

  “In that case, we accept the invitation,” Gertie said. “I’m going to run over to the bar to order some drinks. Any idea what Adam likes?

  Mia shrugged. “He’s not very experimental. Probably a Bud Light or something.”

  Jenna took another sip of her wine and pushed it aside, wishing the waitress would bring a glass of water. Sean was smiling and nodding, pretending to follow the conversation while his thumbs fluttered over the screen. Jenna cut her eyes to Mia, who was watching Sean with a bemused expression.

  “Isn’t this what you said the whole relationship was like?” Mia murmured under her breath.

  “Pretty much,” Jenna murmured back.

  “I see some things never change.”

  “Sure they do. Isn’t that an iPhone 6? They didn’t have those when we broke up.”

  “You’re right, I stand corrected.”

  Jenna leaned closer, not that there was much risk of Sean overhearing or lifting his gaze from the phone. “Which is worse,” she whispered. “The ex who changes everything about himself after you split, or the one who doesn’t change a damn thing?”

  “I’ll get back to you on that one.” Mia reached for another piece of pizza.

  Gertie returned to the table and set down two mugs of beer. “I hope one of these is what Adam likes.”

  “I’m sure it’ll be fine,” Mia said.

  Jenna bit her lip and glanced toward the front of the restaurant. As if on cue, Adam appeared in the doorway, his dark hair tousled and windblown. His shirtsleeves were rolled up, too, but seeing his forearms made Jenna shiver in a way Sean’s didn’t. Adam was scanning the room, and Jenna sat breathless as his gaze moved from table to table, looking for Gertie.

  The instant his eyes locked with Jenna’s, she felt a surge of static. He felt it, too, she could see by the way he stepped back, then moved toward her in slow motion, wading through a sea of bodies and noise and clatter.

  “Ladies,” he said, nodding at Jenna, then Mia. “This is a surprise.”

  “Adam.” Jenna took a deep breath, half of her wishing the ground would swallow her up, while the other half fought the urge to throw herself into his arms. “Uh, good to see you again.”

  Sean glanced up from his phone, then stood and extended a hand. “Hey, I’m Sean. You’re Gertie’s boyfriend?”

  Mia rolled her eyes. “I think you missed part of the conversation, phone boy.”’

  “What?” Sean frowned and studied Adam. “Hey, you look familiar. Have we met before?”

  Adam gripped the back of a chair, clearly undecided about whether to sit down. Jenna couldn’t blame him.

  “I don’t think so. I’m from Chicago, just here on business.”

  Jenna could tell he was deliberately standing a few feet away from her, but she could feel the tension radiating from him anyway. She glanced at Mia, who gave a helpless shrug, then looked down at her own phone vibrating on the table. She smiled, which Jenna took as a good sign. Mark must have replied favorably to the cleavage shot.

  “Aunt Gertie grabbed you a drink,” Jenna said, nodding toward the center of the table where all the glasses had been shoved to make room for the pizza.

  “Thank you so much,” he said, reaching for Jenna’s wineglass before she had a chance to say anything. “Mmm, Sangiovese? This is excellent.”

  “Um, actually, that’s yours.” Jenna pointed to one of the mugs of beer. “But you’re welcome to finish off my Sangiovese. I’m done drinking for now.”

  Mia glanced up from her phone, regarding her ex with a curious look. “Since when do you like wine?”

  “I’ve been branching out,” he said, pushing the glass back toward Jenna. “Sorry about that. Here—I don’t want to take your drink.”

  “Please, take it. I’m done. I’m sure Gertie or Sean would love the beer.”

  Sean nodded, distracted, his eyes on Adam again. “Chicago, huh? I don’t know, I never forget a face. Did you go to school out here?”

  Adam picked up the wineglass again and shook his head. “Nope, Cornell University Law School. Maybe I have one of those familiar faces?”

  “Huh,” Sean said, clearly still puzzling it out.

  “Have the other beer, dear,” Gertie said, nudging a mug toward Sean. Jenna shot her a grateful look, hoping the amber suds were enough to distract her ex from interrogating Adam. Across the table, Mia glanced down at her phone again and smiled. At least someone was connecting well with a loved one.

  Adam turned back to Jenna. “I thought the two of you went to some fancy restaurant downtown?”

  “We did, but we changed our minds.”

  “A woman’s prerogative,” Mia murmured, tapping out a message on her phone.

  “So I hear,” he said lightly. “Sorry, I would have gone someplace else if I’d known. Gertie wanted pizza, so I just thought—”

  “Cornell University Law School,” Sean said, sticking with the basics of macho posturing and career comparisons. “So you’re an attorney?”

  Adam turned and gave Sean a polite nod. “I’m in corporate mediation now. I work on contract with organizations experiencing turmoil.”

  “Ah, let me guess—Belmont? That must be how you know Mia and Jenna.”

  “That’s how he knows Jenna,” Mia said, looking annoyed. “He knows me because we once shared a last name and a bank account.”

  “Actually, you never took my name,” Adam said, shrugging. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”

  “I was speaking figuratively,” Mia said. “It seemed better than suggesting we shared bodily fluids.”

  “Good point,” Adam said, taking another sip of wine.

  “I know!” Sean snapped his fingers. “The bathroom.”

  Everyone turned to look at him. “It’s over there,” Adam said, pointing to the far corner.

  “No, I mean that’s where I know you from. You were talking with Jenna last time we were here. I wouldn’t have noticed, but she was gone a long time.” He cocked his head to the side, considering. “Wait, that’s who you had to run off and meet that night?”

  Jenna felt all the blood drain from her head. She gripped her root beer glass, swallowing hard. “What? No, we just ran into each other. We’d been working together and stopped to say hello and—”

  “Hey, it’s no big deal,” Sean said good-naturedly, returning his attention to his phone. “Just trying to figure out why he looked so familiar.”

  “Glad we could piece it together for you,” Adam said, not looking particularly glad. Not that it mattered. With the mystery solved, Sean’s attention was already back on his phone.

  “Wait, how come you never mentioned this?”

  Jenna cut her eyes across the table. Mia was frowning, her own phone gripped in her hand.
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br />   “What?” Jenna said, palms feeling sweaty all of a sudden. “I told you I came here for pizza that night—August fifteenth—you know?”

  She waited for Mia to get sidetracked, to recognize the date and abandon her line of questioning. But Mia shook her head.

  “I’m not talking about the whole running-into-your-ex-on-the-anniversary-of-the-miscarriage thing, though I do think—”

  “Miscarriage?” Adam frowned.

  Sean looked up from his phone, apparently sensing he’d missed something major. “What?”

  “Nothing.” Jenna said, digging her nails into her palms. “Go back to your game.”

  Jenna felt Adam’s eyes drilling into her like lasers. She swallowed hard, her gaze still locked on Mia’s disapproving one. She opened her mouth to explain, but Mia shook her head and held up her phone.

  “I’m not talking about that. Mark just texted. He said Ellen wanted me to ask you whether you liked the .32 Kel-Tec you were firing with or the .22 Ruger Mark III Hunter Adam had.” She looked from Jenna to Adam, then back again. “What’s going on here?”

  Jenna swallowed again, wishing like hell she hadn’t emptied her root beer or given her wine to Adam. The last bite of pizza had formed a sticky lump in the back of her throat, or maybe that was a thick wad of guilt. On the table, Jenna’s phone buzzed. She shoved it away, trying to keep her focus on coming up with an explanation that might appease everyone.

  “Jenna?” Adam asked. She looked at him, her heart twisting when she saw the stricken look on his face.

  “I—”

  “Sweetheart?”

  Jenna cut her eyes to Gertie, who was studying Jenna’s phone with frank interest. Jenna felt a flood of relief, certain Gertie had a rescue strategy. She’d get her out of this, away from Mia’s accusing gaze and Adam’s bewilderment and Sean’s clueless oblivion.

  “Yes, Aunt Gertie?”

  “Why is my agent calling you?”

  Jenna’s mouth went dry. “I, uh—I’m not sure.”

  “You’ve spoken with her recently?”

  “She called the house sometime last week, but—”

  “You’ve obviously been in contact beyond that,” Gertie said, nudging the phone toward her. “You’ve got her name and number programed into your phone.”

  Gert’s expression was more curious than angry, but Jenna’s palms were slick now with fear and dread and guilt. She opened her mouth to speak, but realized she didn’t have any words at all. Not for anyone. She looked from Sean to Mia to Gert to Adam, all of them staring at her with some mix of confusion and anger and betrayal.

  Jenna stood up, legs shaking as she knocked her empty root beer glass over. She had to get out of here. She had to leave now, before everything came crashing down around her. If she could just rewind, take back all the lies and half-truths and cover stories that weren’t covering anything at all anymore.

  Everyone at the table was staring, some confused, some angry, some hurt. “I’m sorry,” she said, righting her empty glass, only to knock it over again. “I didn’t know—I just—excuse me.”

  She turned and ran from the restaurant.

  Chapter Fifteen

  “Jenna, wait!”

  Adam was breathing hard by the time he caught up to her on a street corner less than a block from the restaurant. He watched her hesitate, then turn to see him chasing her down, determined to—what, exactly?

  He didn’t know.

  She froze, rooted in place, coiled with an energy that said she was on the brink of running again. “Adam, stop.”

  He halted beside her, breathless and caught somewhere between hurt and frustration. “What are you doing?”

  Her eyes flashed in the hazy light of a street lamp, and she looked like she wanted to be anyplace but here with him. “Go back inside,” she whispered. “I just—I need a minute alone.”

  “You could get a minute alone in the bathroom. You’re escaping. Running. In high heels, for that matter. You’re going to break an ankle, Jenna.”

  She looked down at her boots as though noticing them for the first time. “So you chased me down the street to make fun of my shoes?”

  “No, I chased you down the street because I want to understand what just happened back there.”

  He watched her throat move as she swallowed, her fingers clenching and unclenching at her sides. “You want answers. So does everyone in that room, Adam. I can’t give them to you.”

  “Running away isn’t the answer, Jenna. Hiding isn’t going to get you anywhere.” He cringed, hating the patronizing tone in his voice. Apparently, so did Jenna.

  “So what are you, some sort of expert on coping strategies?”

  “Kind of. It’s one of my areas of specialty, actually.”

  She rolled her eyes. “It figures. I’m sure you can plot out my behavior on a chart, figure out why I’m as fucked up as I am. Go ahead, Adam. Judge me. Tell me all the psychological reasons I created this whole mixed-up mess of lies and deceit and cover-ups.”

  “I’m not judging you, Jenna,” he said, forcing himself to keep his voice calm and even. “I just want to know what’s going on.”

  “You want to know why I didn’t tell you about the miscarriage.”

  He raked his fingers through his hair, hating the pain in her eyes. “Look, maybe it’s none of my business, but it seems strange, doesn’t it? We spent an entire weekend together sharing family stories and intimate details. You know the name of my grandparents’ dog and the poem my mother read at my wedding. You didn’t think to mention something as major as that?”

  “So I owe you the story?”

  “I’m not saying you owe me,” he said, resisting the urge to shake her. “I’m just saying, I thought we were on the same page. As far as intimacy and truth and sharing and—”

  “It’s where I met Mia.”

  “What?”

  “In a support group for women who’d had a miscarriage.”

  The air suddenly felt colder. “Mia had a miscarriage?”

  “It happens, Adam. To one in four women. Did you know that?”

  “No, I—I mean, I knew it was common, but I didn’t know the numbers. I’m sorry, I didn’t realize.”

  Still, something wasn’t adding up. He wanted to reach out and touch her, tell her they could get through this. That the half-truths and cover-ups could be over now, and they could start fresh. “So you had a miscarriage. Recently?”

  She looked away. “Two years ago. Right after I broke off my engagement to Sean.”

  “I see,” he said, not entirely sure he did.

  She looked back at him then, her eyes locked so tightly on his that he couldn’t look away, not even if he wanted to. “Sean is sterile, Adam.”

  All the air left his lungs. “What?”

  “You heard me. My fiancé—the man I was supposed to marry—wasn’t the man who got me pregnant.”

  He turned the words over in his head. They didn’t make sense, or maybe he just wasn’t grasping what she was trying to tell him. “What are you saying?”

  Her hands were balled at her sides now, fingers clenched into tight fists. “That I cheated on Sean, okay? That I’m no better than your ex-wife. Isn’t that what you’ve been braced for? To find out my tendency to cover things up, to pretend everything’s just peachy keen—that makes me just as untrustworthy as Mia. Congratulations on being right, Adam.”

  He stood reeling in the torrent of words. He didn’t know whether to hug her or push her away or push her for answers, but a tight ball of dread had formed in his gut. She’d lied. Cheated. Hadn’t he expected this?

  Part of him didn’t want to hear another word. Part of him wanted to hear the whole damn story. He took a deep breath. “What happened?”

  She shook her head. “Sean and I dated for about three years. We always had thi
s on-again, off-again relationship, but we kept coming back to each other. We talked about getting married, about having three kids and a dog and a house in Lake Oswego.”

  Adam nodded, trying to take it all in. He didn’t know what to say, so he was grateful she kept going with no prompting from him.

  “We used to break up for a few weeks or months even. We’d get back together and then break up again. It was a stupid cycle, really hurtful.” She took a shaky breath and kept going. “During one of the splits, I reconnected with an old college boyfriend. Technically, Sean and I weren’t together anymore, and I was lonely. It was a one-time thing, a stupid, casual fling.” She gave a dry little laugh that sounded hollow. “It was the only time in my life I’d ever had a one-night stand.”

  “Until me.”

  “Until you,” she repeated, her voice shaky. “I was on the pill, but it’s only ninety-eight percent effective. I guess I was one of the two percent.” She took another breath, looking weary and worn down. “Anyway, Sean and I got back together a few weeks later, and I found out I was pregnant right after that. I didn’t know what to do, but I figured odds were still pretty good he was the father. We hadn’t been apart that long, right? I was still figuring out how to tell him when he proposed.”

  “Out of the blue?”

  “It wasn’t totally out of the blue. Like I said, we’d been talking about it for a while. I knew he wanted kids, and we’d looked at rings before, talked about a future together. It seemed like a sign, you know?”

  “So you said yes.” His voice sounded flat, but not judgmental. He hoped, anyway.

  “I said yes.” She sighed. “I was scared, and I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want to marry him. The relationship felt like it was already on its last legs, and part of me knew that. But I didn’t think I could say no.”

  “Did Sean know you were pregnant?”