Rocket Man

by Melanie Greene

“So you can’t remember names, is what you’re saying.”

  “Actually, I’m better at it than you’d expect. Or than I’d expect, at least. But it charms the customers and disarms the loading dock, so I stick with it.” She nudged his shoulder. “You’re not answering my question about your hair, Toots.”

  He caught himself rubbing at his forehead again, and stuck his hands in his jacket pockets. “Dandruff,” he smiled down at her, and headed back to his office.

  Serena drafted three or four different emails and one train-wreck of a text to Dillon before giving up on written communication between them. He was the writer. She could draw him an apology picture, she supposed, but it seemed a little off base. She’d tried it, once, when she was testing that she’d set the drawing table up at the right angle in her home office. Not because of Dillon, specifically, but she’d had to draw something and it was the first thing that came to mind. All she really wanted to say was that she didn’t want him to hate her, and that she was sure he wasn’t really dangerous. No matter what the articles Rachel crowded her in-box with said. Rachel and Gill had told Natalie the whole story, of course, and Natalie had tapped into some realtor-accessible database to find that not only did Dillon have no criminal record in Texas or California, but he also had pretty decent credit and only owed $22,000 on his townhouse. It was way more than she’d been comfortable with her friends snooping into on her behalf, even if it did calm Rachel's fervor a little. “He’s never been caught, anyway,” Rachel conceded.

  Serena had lingered at the end of the day Monday but chickened out and hurried to her car when she heard him walking out with Eddie after work.

  She wasn’t trying, exactly, to hide that she and Dillon had personal things to say, but Eddie’s presence sure wouldn’t lay any soft groundwork for Serena to explain that she was allergic to Dillon. To give her a chance to, oh, go to a shrink to find out what was wrong with her, so they could go back to kissing. Or more. Or less, even. But leaving things as they were was clearly not a good idea. Ignoring and avoiding him hadn’t worked. Trying to maintain an appropriate work distance hadn’t worked. Shifting uncomfortably every time they were in the same room was definitely not working. He wasn’t taking the habitual chair next to hers. He wasn’t watching her doodle silly things in the margins of their meeting notes and jotting down captions to her cartoons on his own copy. Their eyes weren’t meeting with an unstated smirk whenever Johnnie started a sentence with ‘Bro’ or ‘Dude.’

  Serena was lonely. Janice was bolstering her when she could—when she wasn’t chit-chatting with Dillon so they were both leaving her behind. And as a modern independent woman who’d prided herself on building a life of self-sufficiency, Serena shouldn’t care so much if she had a work buddy or not. Or so she told herself. But apparently she counted rather heavily on Dillon's company. Thanks to several days of chastising herself whenever she thought of him, she knew he was on her mind with alarming frequency. For work, for friendship, for fantasizing. Sometimes for all three bundled into one erotic office-based imagining that she sure as hell hoped no one but her could read in her thoughts. It only added to all the damn blushing she was doing whenever he caught her glancing at him. Since she could no longer tell if the blush was the start of a rash or not, she was keeping herself doped up with antihistamines. As with her other allergies, just thinking about the hives made her neck itch, so every other moment she was near Dillon, Serena was rubbing under her collar and focusing on deep breaths. It must have made her quite the strange sight.

  Everything was going in circles in her mind, which prompted her to do the unexpected: she called her mom on the way home, and invited her over. At the very least, her mom had lots of relationship experience and had seen Serena in hives over the years.

  Everything was in good shape at Hakeem, which didn’t stop Serena from nudging each chair into alignment and adjusting the curtains and lamps for optimal afternoon viewing. When the bell rang, Serena finished a round of deep cleansing breaths before opening the door. “Hi, Mom.” She leaned forward to kiss her rouged cheek before standing back to gesture her in. “Was the traffic okay coming over?”

  Becky Lofthouse-Colby-Russo squeezed her arm on the way past and wasted no time before setting off to explore the house. “Well, Serena, it’s quite lovely,” she said, as her daughter trailed her from the living areas down the hallway. “I suppose you can redo the paint if that orange gets to be too much, but be sure to use a base coat first. Maybe with a blue tint, in case the color bleeds through.”

  “I know about base coats, Mom,” Serena said, instead of saying that she’d never repaint her office, because it was her favorite color and it was uplifting every time she went in there.

  “Oh, I do like this,” Becky said, stopping in actual admiration in the middle of the bedroom. She did a slow three-sixty, nodding, and turned to Serena. “This room has a great energy to it. Very affirming. You should be proud of this room.”

  “I am. I’m proud of the whole house. I’m glad you were free to come see it. Do you want some tea?” She led the way back to the kitchen, where her mom carefully pulled herself onto one of the stools at the counter. “I have sun tea, or I can brew hot.”

  They settled in with their drinks, and Becky gave her all her updates, the majority of which were about Zane’s three kids. Regina and Rufus were excelling in college, apparently, and Ridley’s wife—Becky’s face brightened considerably as she relayed this news—was going to have a kid. “I’ll finally be a grandmother! And just in time for Thanksgiving. It’s wrong to wish for the baby to come early, but I think a birthday so close to the holiday is tough on a child, don’t you? Zane said I could wish for one week early, but nothing more, in case it’s bad karma.”

  Serena remembered about the calming breaths, and didn’t comment on the “finally” part, or mention that she would really be a stepgrandmother, which wasn’t exactly the same thing. She even said she’d call Ridley to say congratulations, but Becky told her not to, because it was still early days. “They’re only telling family for now, just in case.”

  So it wasn’t very easy for Serena to focus on the memory of the two of them in her early teens, her mom telling her things about not crying over spilt milk when a guy she’d crushed on had started a very public relationship with the girl who sat next to her in geometry. Still, she did it, and concentrated on telling Becky about some of the favorite things she’d found while shopping for the house, and a story about Rachel and baby Hannah, and the promotion waiting for her in the wings.

  “Well, that’s excellent, Serena, about time you got your due. You’ve been there for a decade.”

  “Just under four years, actually.” A decade ago she’d still been in college.

  “Really? Are you sure?” Becky sipped her tea. “Well, I guess I can’t keep up. It’s hard enough to stay on top of your current address. Maybe that will change now that you have this house. A mortgage really settles a person down, I was telling Ridley and Neera that the other day. Zane and I said we’d help them with a down payment, of course. We want them to live close, if they can manage it, to make all that baby minding easier on us old folks, but you know Neera,” she sighed, not giving Serena a chance to point out that she’d only met her stepsister-in-law maybe three times, “she’s set on this school district thing, has charts about demographics and graduation rates for practically the whole west side of town.”

  If she bit her tongue for just a minute or two, her mom could talk on and she wouldn’t have to think too hard about everything being said. Down payments and babysitting and the obviously frequent contact with people who’d been essentially out of Becky and Zane’s house for at least a few years. She was an adult now, and theoretically just as responsible as Becky for the dynamic between them. No amount of yogic breath control worked, though, and in the end she resorted to going to the fridge to pull out some fruit and cheese for them to munch on before she was ready to calmly head the conversation in another direction.


  “So, Mom, I haven’t told you about the date I had.”

  It was a little amusing how quickly Becky became focused. Her face actually rearranged somehow—maybe her eyes weren’t as widely open and her smile was a little easier?—and she looked more like the Mom of old days. Serena reached for a few grapes and reminded herself that she had called Mom up to invite her over because she actually wanted something from her, and that theoretically mothers liked it when their kids turned to them for advice.

  “Well,” she said a little slowly. “It’s actually a little complicated. I was wondering if I could get your opinion.”

  “He’s married, isn’t he?” Becky asked, eyes wide again. But without the smile.

  “No! I wouldn’t.” Serena blew out a gust of air. “After the way I grew up? Really, Mom? I can’t even believe that’s the first thing you think of. When Dad left you for Alice—hell, even when he left Elaine for Tennessee—how can you not remember all the times you told me what a betrayal it was for a woman to sleep with a married man? Trust me, it was very well drummed into my little head. I even managed to decide it was horrible for a man to sleep with a married woman. So just so you know, even though you never said it, I applied the lesson equally across gender lines.”

  Serena stopped ranting and narrowed her eyes at her mom. “And by the way, given how you moved directly from Samuel’s house to Zane’s, don’t think I’ve never suspected cheating on your part.” Well. She’d been holding that one in for nine years. Not that she felt better that it was out in the open.

  Becky stood up. “Well, I’m sorry, Serena, that I’m such a bad and suspicious mother. Obviously you can’t really be looking for anything but some validation from me, since I’m of low moral character and not fit to have an opinion about your life.”

  “Mom. Come on, that’s not what I mean.”

  “I’ll accept that as if it was an apology.” She made a show of looking at the dainty gold watch on her wrist. “I should be heading out, Serena. Zane is cooking tonight, and I don’t want to be late. Maybe next time you call you could invite us both over, offer to make us dinner perhaps? He would be honored if you started to think of him as a member of your family, after all this time.”

  And they were back to the same ground as always. “I do think of him like that. Didn’t I send him a birthday card?” She took in her mom’s tense mouth and added, as sincerely as she could muster, “I’d love to have you both over for dinner sometime. That sounds delightful.”

  Becky bestowed an approving smile on her, but still headed towards the door. “Here, I brought this for housewarming,” she said, pulling a small package out of her handbag. “It’s a smudge stick. White sage, of course. Be sure to put it out in some salt when you’re done cleansing the house.” Becky leaned in for a kiss, leaving a faint coolness on her cheek as she retreated. “Goodbye, Serena.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Well, his day hadn’t started with a fart cushion in his desk chair, he could say that for it. Dillon was not otherwise finding a lot to celebrate. But he was playing nice. Justin had called the night before for a quiet chat while Shannon nursed Tobias to sleep. He’d be irritatingly logical and practical when Dillon confessed what a balls-up he’d made of asking Serena for an explanation, and grumbled about how awkward Lanigan had been since Serena had returned and their mutual silence had grown more palpably strained. So Dillon had had to agree to be non-judgmental and calm and to ask her again.

  “You’re not so stupid you think you can leave it like this, are you?” Justin had asked.

  “You’re a real supportive guy, has anyone ever told you that?”

  “I think they put it in my yearbook. Are you going to ask her nicely?”

  “She’s not acting nice.”

  “Which is always a good excuse for your own bad behavior, of course.”

  “So turn the other cheek is your advice?”

  “No, be a better person is my advice. Look, you’ve told us a thousand nice things about Serena since the day you met her. What you’re describing doesn’t sound like the same woman you’ve talked about all this time.”

  “I don’t know why you keep insisting I talk about her all the time.”

  “And we always thought when the two of you got together it would be, you know, an easy kind of relationship. So we’re a little surprised by this whole thing.”

  “It has occurred to you that I don’t want you talking about my love life with my big sister, hasn’t it? And what do you mean ‘when’ Serena and I got together?”

  But Justin had just laughed, and then Shannon had come on the line to tell him she was sure Tobias had smiled, even though the books said he was too young yet for smiling, but a mama knows what a mama knows and she knew a smile when she saw it.

  He knew he’d be grilled again soon enough, so he was making an effort—and it was effort, no doubt about it—to be not only civil but also nominally open to a real conversation with Serena.

  But not, of all days, on his friggin’ birthday.

  Three rolled around soon enough—Eddie had taken him to lunch, but without shots. As usual, one-on-one with Eddie was a different experience than Eddie in a group. His overkill practical jokester persona faded considerably when his audience was reduced, and Eddie was merely genial as they ordered their burgers. Justin had armchair-diagnosed Eddie with a social insecurity that led to the class clown antics when in groups. And Dillon, keeping this in mind, saw it in action often enough. Only when Eddie was at home with Magnolia was he able to be the same carefree, funny—but not cruel—guy that Dillon knew from their lunches and one-on-one time on the basketball court. He thought Eddie might know it about himself, too, at least a little bit. Or that Magnolia did. It explained Eddie’s bribing people with beer can chicken or Mags’s peanut butter cake for the third Friday of the month cookouts at his place; when he got the work gang onto his own turf, he could finally shine in a group setting.

  Dillon caught himself staring at the salt shaker as he held it over his glob of ketchup. Perversely, he salted the fries instead of the sauce, and decided not to add that to the list of things he was analyzing. It was his damn birthday, after all, and he was allowed to at least get through it without worrying about people who’d turned their backs on him.

  But not without being subjected to a conference room party, it seemed. He’d made one attempt to get out of it by bringing a concern about the Galveston B&B proposal to Anica’s attention, but she’d just rolled her eyes at him and told him he could deal with it in the morning. So to the slaughter he went, lamb-like.

  There were balloons. All colors. No streamers, at least, which gratified him. At Ida’s birthday celebration the previous week, whoever had hung the streamers had been a good foot shorter than he was. Or very bad at extension. Something, because he’d managed to knock about half of them over just by walking from one part of the room to the other, which had amused everyone to no end. Johnnie had given him about a dozen high-fives.

  Everyone was there. Well, everyone from the offices—the warehouse gang didn’t bother with the office birthdays. Ms. Lanigan handed him the card, and Janice’s still-surprising clear bright soprano led the singing, and he smiled nicely, for all the world as if he was actually enjoying the attention. He read the card aloud, dutifully. “Happy B-D,” “Feliz Cumpleanos,” “Hey! Let’s Get Hammered!” and “Have a great year,” all with vaguely decipherable scrawls. That last one was signed, “Serena Colby.” With her last name, yet. How many fucking Serenas did Serena think Dillon knew?

  The day was shaping up to rival the surprise party Shannon had thrown for his seventeenth. Because what does a high school guy like more than a surprise party with, like, his seventh-grade lab partner and who knows who all showing up? It was the first birthday since their folks had died, so he got the theory that Shannon was operating under—distraction and whatever—but it failed. He’d thought about just going out for food with the team after their next game as a token celebration, but Sha
nnon had invited all of them and another random twenty people over instead. The dark house, the “Happy Birthday!” banner, the shouts and laughter and camera flashes—a complete horror of a party. And unlike when he was a teenager, he no longer thought walking out of the room was an option, so he just had to stand there and act like all his coworkers’ exclamation marks on his birthday card meant the world to him.

  Anica was pushing him towards the knife on the table. Oh, and the cake. Why did the honoree always have to cut the cake and pass it out? Shouldn’t someone serve him so he could retreat to a corner and an undisturbed sugar high? But, no. He sliced, he dished, he repeatedly wiped the whipped cream off his increasingly sticky fingers.

  “None for me, thanks,” he heard Serena tell whoever was passing out the plates. Dillon glanced up.

  “Watching your weight?” Johnnie asked Serena, handing the slice to Anica instead. “Cause your bod is almost as sculpted as Janice’s, you know. Don’t get too scrawny.”

  She shook her head. “No, but thanks? Oh, wait, I forgot—I don’t thank people for objectifying me.”

  “Ditto,” said Janice from her spot to Dillon's left. “Give me another slice of cake, will you, Toots?”

  He turned to her long enough to comply, but kept his ear on Johnnie and Serena.

  “Well, excuse me. Didn’t mean to hit a nerve. I was only complimenting you.”

  “Johnnie, you have so many fine qualities. Please don’t make me focus on the negative ones.”

  “And what does that mean?”

  “I think,” put in wrinkly grey Neil from accounting, “that Serena prefers to be treated as a coworker instead of a party girl.”

  “I think,” said Serena, “that even what you call party girls are due for respect no matter how much you might admire their physical forms.”

  Emily from HR almost-casually wandered over at that point to draw Johnnie away for a little talk. Good old Emily from HR. But Neil was leaning into Serena again, and from his expression, was murmuring apologies in her ear. She shook her head a little and shrugged and then gave him that smile again. Damn her.