Rocket Man

by Melanie Greene

  “Oh, Dill, sorry. Want something of Justin’s?” Shannon finally noticed something other than the kitten. “Hey, look at Toby, he’s loving on his uncle! Oh, he just looks so happy. Justin, grab the camera!”

  Justin steered him to the den. “Quick, sit down in here. All she does is gurgle over things now, and I have a feeling you’re next.”

  “No, sit in the brown chair, Toby looks so sweet in his yellow romper against the brown chair. Zoom in close, honey, get their heads together. Oh, my baby and my baby brother. Look, their eyebrows are just the same! Maisy-kittie, have you ever seen the like?”

  Apparently the kitten had seen enough of the like to be disinterested now. She sauntered off to re-explore her home and figure out the many intriguing things that had changed in her absence. She would be in for quite a surprise when she got to the bedroom and found a bassinet in front of her favorite sunny window.

  “Thanks again for taking the cat, Dillon,” Justin said.

  “She was no problem. Glad to help.”

  “Remember when Shannon was seven months along and saw the kitten adoptions and I told her maybe getting a kitten when we were about to have a baby wasn’t the easiest idea?”

  Dillon didn’t answer, just let the new baby smell and the new parents’ babble wash over him for a couple of minutes, content. Not that they needed his input—Shannon and Justin had a well-established ritual of talking to each other through comments to him, a habit that had started when they were newly dating and Dillon and Shannon had been orphaned by a reckless driver.

  He’d been sixteen—his mom just three weeks before had taken him to the DMV for his license—and Shannon was twenty-one. She’d moved out of her apartment near UCLA so he could stay in the house and finish high school. She’d also scaled back on her heavy hours at college. Dad always called her the Imprudent Student, but after the funeral she spent ages with her advisors working out a plan that had her graduating from college the same month that Dillon finished high school. The new five year plan gave her a chance to turn her minor into a second major, but it also allowed her to be home with her brother in the mornings and most evenings.

  Justin had been a rock. He and Shannon had only been on three or four dates before the crash, but they’d been good ones. Intense enough to keep him coming out to the suburbs and willing to do whatever he could to help them both adjust to this new life. His parents ran a financial services firm, and he’d made free with their expertise to help Shannon, and later Dillon, work out what needed to happen with the estate and set up budgets and plans to get them both through college.

  He’d also gotten Dillon to start talking again. Shannon couldn’t do it. She tried, and she tried, and she tried, but the more she pried and commented and broached topics, the more he curled inward. He’d known it wasn’t truly fair. He knew her life had also gone to hell, and that she was no more wanting to suddenly be in loco parentis than he was wanting to be anyone’s life-changing responsibility. But he just couldn’t speak to her constantly kind and concerned face.

  Justin didn’t have a trick to get him magically communicating again. He simply tried one strategy after another, not giving up. When sports talk failed, he moved on to music. Dillon ignored that, too, and cooking, and girls, and, despite the research Justin had done to come up with something to say, sci-fi. (Justin was strictly non-fiction.) He took Dillon and Shannon surfing, to movies, and hiking in the hills. Of course, he was pretty intently pursuing Shannon at the same time—not that she needed much pursuit—but his efforts for Dillon were genuine.

  And then one day he’d mentioned to Dillon that Shannon was so glued to her books that she could go hours without making eye contact with him. And Dillon had told him about an infamous Thanksgiving dinner when Shannon was in AP-level World History. Their folks had moved her to the foot of the table just so she could spread out her notebook and texts while the relatives passed yams around her.

  “Uncle Bob just about blew a gasket. Respect for elders, honoring of customs, appreciation for food that has been set before you, on and on. Meanwhile, I was, I guess, ten or so? And so jealous. Mom told me no way could I bring my Star Wars book to the table, and she just wouldn’t believe I had to do a history report about it the next week. But it says ‘a long time ago’ right there in the intro!” At the sound of Dillon's laughter, Shannon’s head had jerked up from her chapter on post-Industrial farming techniques in the American South, and stared unblinking at Justin long enough for him to wink cheekily at her.

  It was a breaking dam for Dillon. His school therapist Ms. Blodgett—it turned out that having suddenly dying parents buys a kid a lot of time with the school therapist—claimed that seeing Justin and Shannon move into a relationship phase that removed any first-blush blinders gave Dillon the confidence to feel as if he was once again under the stable, loving care of two good adults. Dillon thought it was realizing that Justin loved Shannon enough to find her irritating sides endearing. It meant that Shannon’s happiness was no longer fully dependent on Dillon's happiness, which took a hell of a lot of pressure off him.

  Looking back now, a dozen years later and with Shannon and Justin’s firstborn son cradled in his arms, Dillon gave a little credence to Ms. Blodgett. The years that he’d stayed in LA while Shannon and Justin moved to Houston had been good for letting their relationship grow up, so they didn’t treat him as a responsibility so much anymore. Not that they wouldn’t do anything for him—and vice-versa—but he was able now to do what he wanted without looking for their permission. They were his best friends, not his guardians.

  But he was glad they had Toby—and Maisy—so Shannon especially could channel all of her caretaker tendencies somewhere besides him.

  “This baby of yours is the toast of my office, you know,” he told them.

  “Well, of course he is. Look at him! Oh, he fell asleep, you can’t see his big eyes now. When he wakes up remind me to take a picture of the two of us with him—you’ll do that, Justin? And find the tripod, we need to get one with all four of us.”

  “Magnolia, too, she makes Eddie forward all of the pics to her. I think they’re about ready to start a family.”

  “How’s Eddie feel about that?” Justin asked.

  “Cocky. How else?”

  “Typical.”

  “Yep. Oh, I didn’t tell you, Jorge got engaged.”

  “And what joke did Eddie make about that? And did it make Jorge clam up again?” Justin asked. Justin was more incisive with each passing year.

  “If you ever give up banking, you should become a therapist,” Dillon told him.

  “He’s going to start an advice column in the quarterly newsletter,” Shannon said, settling down on the sofa beside her husband. “Isn’t this weird? I think it’s the first time since he was born that we’ve been awake and neither of us have been holding him.”

  They took the opportunity to smooch, and Dillon looked down at the baby. He was something else. Huge for a newborn, yes, but still such a tiny and mighty force. He did have the Hamilton family eyebrows—straight from Dillon's dad, the original Tobias. He hoped Toby would grow up with his grandfather’s sense of humor, too, and his mom’s capacity for love, and his dad’s patient dedication. And, eventually, his Uncle Dillon's way with the ladies.

  Or not.

  He used to think he was a reasonably attractive and decent guy to date. Women had approached him, even back in college, and he’d had girlfriends fairly consistency for much of his life. He was tall, he had pretty eyes—he’d been told so, anyway. No one had ever told him his kisses were so repulsive that they had to leave the room immediately. Or flat-out fled without a word. “I’m fine.” What the hell, seriously? A two word text, and twenty-four hours later, still nothing else?

  It was so unlike the Serena he’d thought he knew. They’d texted and emailed outside of work pretty often—more often than he’d realized until this unwarranted silence over the past day; whenever the Rockets played, and sometimes just for no rea
son. Not to mention all the back-and-forth at work, and the after-hours things the group did. And worse than the lack of follow-up communication was the fact of her running off to start with. In the middle of—well, of everything. Leaving him hurting with lust, fine. He was mature enough to handle wanting a woman but not being able to have her. Hell, that had been standard operating procedure with Serena since his interview at Lanigan, when he’d idiotically asked her out and been rejected.

  But there was more to her than the body that called to his, the smile that socked him in the gut, and the face he felt he could sculpt, he knew it so intensely. Serena was a siren, yes, but also, she was a solid and sympathetic soul. So what had he done that was so egregious that she was running from him? No way—no way—had that kiss not been consensual. And even if he’d gone too far for her, had been too intimate (but how could he have been too intimate for her, when he could remember with burning ferocity each moment of her fingers upon his cock). No, no matter how he parsed it, her running off and her goddamn two word text were way off, reaction-wise.

  He sighed and cuddled his nephew closer. Well, he could just dedicate himself to being a great uncle, and maybe one day when he was old and all alone, he could buy a house next door to Tobias and at least his nephew would stick by his side. Best to start him a college fund soon; he’d buy the kid’s affection, if he had to.

  “What’s that look for?” Shannon asked him.

  “What look?”

  “That mopey look. You look like when you spent a week at surf camp and still couldn’t stand on the board.”

  “Thanks for that memory.”

  “Poor Dill,” Shannon told Justin, “he was so damned determined, but no matter what the instructor dude —”

  “Kev.”

  “Right, Kev the Kool. No matter what Kool Kev showed him, he’d lose his balance as soon as he got one foot under him. By the end of the week, the other kids were calling him ‘Wax Off.’ I had to pick him up, part of my newly-licensed responsibilities, and he would just slam himself into the car every afternoon. If I had the radio on, he’d shut it off. If I had it off, he’d turn it on full volume. It was all I could do to keep a straight face.”

  “I was eleven.”

  “And a total klutz.”

  “Shut up.”

  “Okay, no more trips down memory lane. As long as you tell me what’s going on with you now.”

  “Nothing.”

  Justin laughed. “Want me to turn the radio up?”

  “No.”

  “Come on, it could wake the baby, then he could scream a little, that might help set the mood.”

  Dillon stood up. “Come on, Toby. Let’s go get some chicken.” He looked down at the little placid face, the one with his and his dad’s eyebrows, and felt a lurching wave of love surge through his gut. “You’re my guy, you know that? You get me. We’re gonna grow old together, ‘kay?”

  “Oh, Dill.” Shannon looked stricken.

  “Dillon,” Justin began, then hesitated. “Hey, man, come here. Sit. Shannon will get us all our dinner.” He shot her one of those married-people-communicating looks that Dillon normally found amusing, but was irritated by at the moment. Nevertheless, he let Justin pull him down on the sofa beside him, shifting the limp deadweight of snoozing Toby up against his collarbone. The soft baby smell was more soothing than he’d have liked to admit.

  “So. Girl trouble?” Justin asked.

  Dillon just snorted.

  “Come on, you’re hardly subtle. Someone’s bugging you—who, and is she an idiot, or what?”

  “It’s not a big deal.”

  “Which is why you’re stealing my son? Who, for the record, is my guy, not yours. What you’re holding right there against your chest is the man who will change my diapers in fifty years.”

  “Shannon can do that.”

  “Shannon barely changes Toby’s diapers now, and he’s the completely compelling fruit of her womb, who’s only burdened us with a couple hundred of them so far. I don’t see her attitude towards them changing when it’s her crotchety old husband who’s incontinent.”

  “Hire a nurse, then. Toby will be hanging with me.”

  “Have your own kids.”

  “Right. Cause the potential mothers are lining up on my damn doorstep.”

  Justin reached over and plucked Toby away with no by-your-leave. As if he just had the right to touch his nose to the button nose of his sleeping son. As if seeing their identical wispy blond hair head-to-head was a necessary reminder that Toby belonged with Justin, not him. It wasn’t like he wanted to raise the kid himself. But what was wrong with being the cool uncle, the one the kid turned to for adventure and advice? It wasn’t so much to ask, and Justin had everything. Wife, son, cat, home, happiness. He was just a selfish bastard, apparently.

  “Dillon. I love you. Now get your head out of your ass and tell me what’s bugging you. Or who.”

  “It’s nothing.”

  “Right. Believable. Never mind, then.”

  Dillon studied Justin, this man who’d stepped in so crucially when he was a lost and angry teen. Who’d fathered the incomparable Tobias, and named him after Dillon and Shannon’s dad. Who was looking at him like he would be happy to sic Shannon on him if he didn’t come clean.

  And so he confessed. Not quite everything. But the attraction to Serena that he had back-burnered for so long. The moments of late when he’s allowed himself to move towards instead of away from her—the Rockets game, Eddie’s, the farmers market. “And we went back to my place, I thought with—well, with a certain agenda in mind. But as soon as we got inside, right in the middle of...of a kiss, she bailed.”

  “Bailed?”

  “Left. Ran off. Not a backward glance.”

  “Jesus. Was she—I mean, did you do anything?”

  “‘Anything’?” What the hell did Justin take him for?

  “No, not that. You know what I mean—say something she might have thought was weird, or, like, bit her?”

  “Bit her?”

  Justin shook his head. “This is an embarrassing conversation. When you were seventeen I just snuck a box of condoms into your desk drawer and we never had to talk at all.”

  “That was you? Thank God. All this time I thought it was Shannon.”

  “Well, she told me to.”

  “Christ.”

  “It was no picnic, but at least I didn’t put any thought into whether you were a considerate lover or not.”

  “Fuck off.”

  “Hey! Baby ears!”

  “Toby doesn’t exactly care if I curse yet.”

  “Watch it, or you’re going to be subject to the swear jar, too.”

  Dillon snorted. “Okay, when I hear the two of you go an hour without cursing, I’ll consider it. But to answer your not-quite-stated but probably offensive question, no, I can’t think of a damn thing I did that would make Serena take off like a bat out of hell.”

  “And has she said anything about it? Have you asked her?”

  “Well, no. I texted her.”

  “Classy.”

  “She. Ran. Away. I think if she wanted to hear my voice she wouldn’t have done that. Besides, I asked in the text what the problem was.”

  “And she answered?”

  “Yeah. After like, an hour. ‘I’m fine.’ That’s all she wrote.”

  Justin gave a low whistle. He was very good at low whistles—could draw them out for ages, and finish with a nice melodramatic warble. It was a skill Dillon had always envied. “Sounds like you’re better off.” At Dillon's derisive look, he added, “No, really. I know you said things had simmered for a while there, and I won’t pretend we haven’t wondered, from the way you’ve talked about her.”

  “You’ve what?”

  “Never mind, just that whatever you’ve thought might be between the two of you until now, it looks like you’re mistaken. Or maybe she really is hot for you but has some deep psychological issues preventing her from attaining intimac
y.”

  “There you go with your advice column again.”

  “The bank has no idea what a resource they have in me. The point is, actions speak louder than, well, not words in this case, but suppositions. She took a hike, and hasn’t tried to explain herself or apologize. That’s not a situation that screams out for you to pursue it. So, you have two choices.”

  “Yeah? What are they?”

  “You can take Toby off for a diaper change and forget entirely about Serena, or you can change his diaper and ask her to explain herself, and then forget about her.”

  Dillon stood and reached for his stretchy-curly waking warm bundle of a nephew, giving Justin’s shoulder a squeeze on his way past him towards the nursery. Talking it out had, kind of, relaxed his heart about it all.

  But getting to the point where he entirely forgot about Serena wasn’t going to be a smooth road, no matter how simple his brother-in-law made it sound.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Serena stretched and rolled over to glare at the clock. 7:22, as always. Her internal alarm had dragged her away from a very pleasant dream. A dream in which being up close and personal with Dillon had no adverse reactions whatsoever, except for the residual throbbing at her core. Groaning, she rose and switched on the morning news to keep her company through her morning routine. After dressing in a new cinnamon-orange top and her most comfy khakis, Serena gathered some parsley and chives from the pots in her one sunny window, chopping them to add to her omelet before brewing her first cup of tea.

  She certainly wasn’t admitting to herself that she’d dressed up for a typical Monday workday. Sure, she’d blown out her hair so the waves fell smoothly down her back, and applied the cosmetic counter makeup she’d stress shopped for on Sunday, but really, so what? And yes, the top was new, but she was due for some new clothes now that the weather was warming up. She wasn’t thinking at all about the axe-murderer whose door she’d nearly orgasmed against when she picked out the pretty gold sandals.