Serena decided on that night that she would not stay until closing at the bar. In fact, she wouldn’t even go to the bar at all until Steven returned. He had texted her a few times and called her once. It was boring, bureaucratic stuff he was dealing with at the meeting in Tampa. He wanted to come back to Luna Bay as soon as possible. He missed her. She missed him. He loved her. She loved him.
She spent the rest of her evenings without Steven at the cottage. Nonna was usually in bed by the time she got home after the dinner rush, but one night she was sitting in her chair in the living room, drinking a glass of red wine and watching television. Serena put on her gown and robe and went downstairs to join Nonna. She realized she had been missing her grandmother. She got a glass of wine and sat down in the living room.
“What are we watching?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s that “Storage Wars” show. I like to see what they get when they open the storage units.” She watched the show with Nonna without talking. When it was over, Nonna turned the television off and turned to Serena.
“What brings you home so early tonight?” Nonna asked.
“Steven’s out of town and I decided to spend some time at home,” she said.
“Oh,” Nonna said noncommittally. “When will he be back?”
“In a couple of days, I think.”
“How is Jeff doing? I’ve been meaning to come down there, but I’m so tired when lunch is over that I just want to come home.”
“He’s doing great,” Serena said. “The girls love him.”
Nonna looked over at her then and studied Serena’s face in a way that made her slightly uncomfortable.
“Does that bother you?” she asked.
“Of course not,” Serena answered. “It’s good for business. You should come down there and see him one night. You’ll be amazed.”
“I think I will,” Nonna said, taking a sip of her wine. “I think I’ll go tomorrow night, as a matter of fact.”
And that’s what Nonna did. Serena went home to get her after dinner and took her back to Rossetti’s. She and Nonna sat on barstools and ordered martinis. Jeff made them in his usual way, throwing the shaker, pouring the drinks dramatically into the glasses. Nonna laughed. Jeff set the drinks down and stayed there to talk to Nonna. Angela stood at the end of the bar. Jeff walked over to her, talking to her, explaining it to her, Serena supposed. And then he was back to her and Nonna. At one point, Nonna and Jeff spoke Italian to each other and Serena only picked up a few words that she knew. Nonna sparkled with happiness and that made Serena happy.
When they left, Serena said, “You should come to the bar more often, Nonna. Jeff was really happy to see you.”
“I think you’re right. I should come more often.”
When they got home, Nonna said she was ready for bed. It was late for her. Before she went upstairs, she said, “I noticed Angela seems to like Jeff a lot.” She looked closely at Serena after she said that, waiting for a reaction.
“Yeah. She does. I think he likes her a lot, too. I think they’re seeing each other.”
“That’s what it looks like,” Nonna said before she walked up the stairs.
Serena got a glass of wine and went to sit on the back porch. She lit a candle, which cast a flickering light over the porch. She remembered how she and Jeff had sat on the porch with the same light. She remembered how they had gone out in the yard to the cypress trees and laid a blanket at their feet. She remembered how they had made love out there, under the moonlight. Two nights in a row. Then she heard her text signal, bringing her out of the past with Jeff.
It was Steven. “I’m coming home tomorrow,” he texted. “I want to see you as soon as possible. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too,” she texted. “I can come over after dinner tomorrow, okay?”
“See you then,” he wrote. “I love you.”
Serena continued to sit on the porch for a little while longer. For the first time in a long time, she had solitude to think. Really think. She asked herself why she was jealous over Jeff and Angela if she was so in love with Steven. She didn’t have the answer.
She asked herself why Steven left the room whenever Carlos called. She asked herself why Carlos called all the time, why Steven didn’t just turn his phone off if it bothered him so much. She wondered why she hadn’t received Steven’s text when he went to deal with the oil spill. She wondered why she hadn’t heard anything about an oil spill.
With those thoughts, Serena went to the Internet and keyed in “oil spill in Louisiana.” Thousands of sites came up about the big BP spill. The Louisiana governor had been all over the news at that time. She keyed in “oil spill in July in Louisiana.” The only sites she got were still related to the BP spill, mostly about payments to the victims. Steven had never discussed the spill again and she had never asked about it.
With these thoughts weighing on her mind, Serena went to bed. She couldn’t go to sleep no matter how much she tried. She couldn’t relax her mind or stop the thoughts that were swirling there. The covers became a prison and she threw them off. The ceiling fan blew warm air across her. At one point, she gave up and went downstairs and poured a glass of wine. She found herself back on the porch with its flickering light.
She picked up her phone and keyed in “Steven Calloway.” Hundreds of sites came up—writers, track stars, LinkedIn pages, Facebook pages—but none of them were Steven. For the second time in that long night, she gave up and went to bed. Finally, after a few minutes, she fell into a restless sleep.
When she woke up it was after ten and Nonna was already at Rossetti’s. After showering, she did a load of laundry and watched television. Before she left for the diner crowd, she packed an overnight bag. It wasn’t Saturday, but she missed Steven so much she wanted to spend the whole night with him.
When she went into the kitchen at Rossetti’s, Brittany was at the bread station.
“I wanted to ask you about something,” Brittany said. She looked a little nervous.
“Okay. What?”
“You know how much I love making bread,” she said. She took a tendril of hair and began to twirl it with her fingers. Serena had seen her do that before, when she was stressed or nervous.
“I’ve been watching people on TV make bread a lot and a lot of them use a food processor to help. It’s not that I don’t love kneading, but we have so much to make here, I was wondering if we could do that.”
Serena thought for a moment. Rossetti’s bread had always been hand-made without mechanical assistance. But Brittany was right. There was too much to get done without some kind of help.
“You know what I think?” Serena asked. Brittany looked like she was expecting the worst. “I think that we should get a Kitchen Aid mixer with dough hooks and a food processor if we need it. You’re right. We’ve got too much to get done without some help.”
Brittany’s smile was wide. She hugged Serena. “Thanks,” she said. “I don’t think we’ll regret it.”
“I’ll go out in an hour or so and get one,” Serena said decisively. “I guess your job will be to figure it all out once we have it.”
“That’s no problem,” Brittany as she punched down dough in the large bowl.
Serena heard her text signal. “Excuse me, Brittany,” she said as she walked to the office.
Steven texted, “I’ve had car trouble. They can’t get the part until tomorrow. I’m delayed getting back. Looks like it won’t be until day after tomorrow.”
The disappointment at not seeing Steven that night or the next hit Serena hard. She didn’t realize how much she’d been counting on it.
“I’m sorry,” she texted back. “I’ll see you when you get here.”
Then she wondered, why the hell isn’t he calling me? So she called him. His phone rang and rang, but he didn’t answer.
She put her phone back in her pocket and sat down behind the desk. If Steven was coming home today, then he would have gotten on the road early in the morning. Wh
y was he just now letting her know in the early afternoon that he had car trouble? Wouldn’t he have known that early in the morning?
Serena wasn’t happy with where her mind was going these days. But she couldn’t stop it. Steven’s absence over the last few days had given her breathing room. Room to think without constantly thinking about Steven and when she would see him. Steven and his touch. Steven and his jokes. Room to breathe.
It was just as well Steven wouldn’t be home that night because Serena was exhausted from a night of no sleep. She needed rest more than anything. She did go to Fort Walton to buy the Kitchen Aid and a Cuisinart food processor for Brittany. The girl looked like a kid at Christmas as she took the mixer out of the box and set it up.
When Rossetti’s closed for dinner, Serena didn’t hang around for a drink at the bar. She went straight home and straight to bed where she slept deeply through the night. The next morning, she checked her phone and Steven had left her a voice mail. “Hey, sorry I missed your call. I was dealing with the car and left my phone in the car. I had to go back and get it later when I realized it. Anyway, I’ll see you soon. I love you.”
Nonna was walking up the porch steps as Serena was closing the door on her way to Rossetti’s.
“I feel like I haven’t seen you lately,” Nonna said. “I heard you up last night. Is everything all right?” Nonna looked concerned and Serena hated to cause her grandmother worry.
“Everything’s fine,” she said. “Steven was supposed to come home yesterday but he had car trouble. He’ll be back tomorrow.”
Nonna put her hand on Serena’s arm and looked intently at her. But she didn’t say anything else except, “Have a good evening.” As Serena walked down the porch steps, she felt guilty about lying to her grandmother. The truth was that everything felt off kilter. Nothing seemed right. But she couldn’t worry Nonna with her problems.
It was Friday and Rossetti’s had a good band scheduled for the after-dinner crowd. Serena decided to stay for a couple of drinks. Without asking, Jeff brought her a Cosmopolitan and set it on the bar in front of her. She took a sip of the icy pink liquid. Tiny shards of ice met her lips as she sipped.
After Jeff had filled several drink orders, he came back over to Serena.
“Where’s Steven?” he asked.
“He’s in Tampa for a meeting. He was supposed to be back yesterday but he had car trouble.”
“Oh,” Jeff said.
They talked for a few minutes about Rossetti’s and the upstairs that Jeff was going to start working on soon. He asked her if she would help him pick paint colors. “I don’t know much about colors and what would be right,” he said. “Could we go to the paint store and pick it out?”
She agreed. In between filling drink orders, Jeff came over to talk to Serena. At one point, he asked her about Steven and where he was from. “It’s one of the Carolinas, I think,” he said.
“He’s from South Carolina. The Charleston area,” she said.
“My roommate in college was from that area,” Jeff said. “His parents had a house on one of the islands around there and I spent a spring break with them. It was incredible.”
“I’ve never been there myself,” Serena said. “She wondered if she ever would go there, to meet Steven’s mother. That would be the only reason she could see herself ever going there, but Steven had never suggested it. He had never even mentioned the possibility of taking her there, showing her where he was from. Steven knew all about Luna Bay and the coast. He had met her grandmother. But they were still early on in their relationship, Serena reasoned. There would be time for meeting his family down the road.
Late in the evening, Jeff came over to Serena. He took her hands in his. “You seem troubled, Serena,” he said. “Is everything all right?”
Serena looked into Jeff’s blue eyes. She wanted to talk to him, tell him everything that was on her mind. That’s what bartenders were for, right? Tell them your troubles? Jeff’s big hand felt warm and comforting on her smaller hands. Protective. She started to speak when a clattering on the bar beside them drew their attention. Angela had put her tray down on the bar, loudly, and she didn’t look happy.
Jeff withdrew his hands from Serena’s and walked over to Angela. “I need two Manhattans and a draft,” she told Jeff concisely. “Coming right up,” he said moving away to make the drinks. Angela stood at the bar glaring at him, waiting on the drinks. Serena looked away. When Angela had her drinks, she moved out to the floor and Jeff walked back over.
“Looks like you’re in trouble,” Serena said, trying to sound lighthearted.
Jeff looked out into the room, at Angela she supposed, and looked back at Serena. “No trouble,” he said.
“I need to go,” Serena said, sliding off the barstool. “It’s late and I’m tired.”
“See you tomorrow,” Jeff said. “Maybe we can go to the paint store soon.”
“Sounds good,” Serena said. She glanced at Angela, who was taking a drink order at the table in the back. She could be a model, Serena thought. Why is she spending her time as a barmaid in a backwater town like Luna Bay?
Serena slept again, but this time she dreamed. Steven was grabbing her hand, saying “Come on, let’s go.” He said that over and over in the dream. She didn’t know where he wanted her to go. She kept thinking about Nonna. “What about Nonna?” she said in the dream. But there was no answer, just, “Come on, let’s go.” Everything in the dream felt ominous and threatening. She felt confused and worried.
Serena woke up suddenly, startled. She was gasping. When she realized it was a dream, she fell back against her pillow. The feelings of the dream stayed with her for much of the morning. When she finally went to work, she was so busy that all thoughts of the dream fell away, and by early evening she could barely remember it.
During the dinner rush, her phone vibrated in her pocket. She walked to the office to answer the call from Steven.
“I’m finally home,” he said. “I want to see you.”
Her heart was beating fast at the sound of his voice. “I want to see you, too,” she said.
“I’m not up to coming to Rossetti’s tonight. Can you come over after work?”
“Yes,” she said instantly. “I’ll be there around nine-thirty.”
She couldn’t wait for dinner to be over. At nine, she told the staff she was leaving and walked out to her car. Her overnight bag was still in the back seat from the other night when she thought she’d be seeing Steven. She drove to the coast to Steven’s house. When he opened the door, she fell into his arms. Nothing was in her mind but kissing him and making love with him. Which they did. Twice. Her world was spinning smoothly again.
They slept together for a while and then woke up at about the same time in the early hours of the morning.
“I’m starving,” Steven said.
“Me too,” she responded. “I’ll see what I can throw together.”
“I don’t think there’s much in there,” Steven said. “I haven’t been to the store in a couple of weeks.”
Serena opened the refrigerator. There were three eggs, butter, and a green shaker of Parmesan cheese. Not her favorite, but she would make it work. She opened the cupboard and found an unopened package of vermicelli and some garlic powder. She started a pot to boil for the pasta. She cracked the eggs into a bowl and whipped them with a fork. While she was waiting for the pasta to cook, Steven’s cell phone started to ring. It was in the living room on the coffee table. Who in the hell would be calling him at this hour? She walked over and looked at the screen. Carlos. This is ridiculous, she thought. Just ridiculous.
She walked to the bedroom and told Steven that Carlos was calling.
“How do you know?” he asked, startled.
“Your phone was ringing and I walked over and looked at it,” she said.
He got out of bed and followed her into the kitchen.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought he’d gotten the message. I don’t know why he
keeps calling me.”
“This is just about ready,” she said in reply. She poured the steaming pasta into the colander, then put it back in the pan. She added butter and salt and pepper before pouring in the beaten eggs. She was making a carbonara, of sorts, without any milk or cream. When the eggs were cooked, she added Parmesan cheese and put the pasta into two large bowls. Steven sat at the table and twirled the pasta around his fork.
“I can’t believe you made something this good out of nothing,” he said.
“Are you going to call Carlos back?” she asked, putting her own fork into the pasta and twirling it. She put it in her mouth. Damn. It was good. Better than she expected it to be. It would be tons better with some pancetta or bacon, but it was still good.
“I’ll see if he left a message. But I don’t want to call him back at this hour. I’m going to have to have a talk with him about calling me.”
He walked over to his phone and checked the message that Carlos had left.
“It’s nothing,” he said when he got back to the table. “His girlfriend walked out on him. Again.”
“That doesn’t sound like nothing,” Serena said.
“It is,” Steven said. “It happens every other day.”
They went back to bed with full stomachs. “I love you, Serena,” Steven said, kissing her good night.
She woke up the next morning around nine and went into the kitchen to make coffee. Thankfully, Steven did have coffee and some nondairy creamer. It would have to do. The man had been so busy he hadn’t been able to get to the store, so Serena gave him a pass.
Steven was still sleeping soundly, exhausted from his trip, so Serena took her coffee to the deck to watch the sea. Seagulls swooped into the ocean while their smaller bird cousins walked along the shore. She watched an older couple walk past the house and down the beach, holding hands. Serena hoped that she would be holding hands with her husband when she was old. A school of porpoises moved through the water rhythmically, and Serena followed their course.
Serena's Choice - Coastal Romance Series Page 10
