Rocket Man

by Melanie Greene

  And there was the blue-eyed boy looking displeased with the party hat perched on his blonde tuft, next to a calico kitten batting at the tassels that sproinged from the top of the baby’s hat.

  Serena slumped back in her breakfast-room chair and stared at the screen. Cat sitting? At his place? She hadn’t seen one, but it must have been there. He’d told her on Saturday that he was going to his sister’s house on Sunday, so he’d probably returned the creature then. Well, fuck a duck. This explained a lot—this undoubtedly explained everything—and now...now! Oh, this meant very good things for her body. No more breathlessness, not of the bad kind, anyway.

  She sat up and hit ‘forward’ to send the photo to Gill, Rachel, and Natalie. Subject: “CAT! HE HAD A CAT!” No need for more—they’d get it immediately. Time for some chair dancing while she grinned at the adorable little Toby and his beastly kitten. Dillon had had a cat! Serena bubbled over with relief.

  As she brushed her teeth she looked over the outfit she’d chosen. It was fine for basic work attire, but that was no longer her top dressing agenda of the day. So she changed her slacks for a dark denim A-line skirt, and switched to the dangly earrings that brushed her neck when she wore her hair caught loosely up. Singing to a bit of Van Halen, she grinned at her reflection in the full-length mirror in her bedroom, and hurried off to work.

  Clearly he’d figured it out himself, she thought on her way in. So the photo and message had to be directed at her. She was mulling that over when her cell rang. “What are you wearing?” Natalie demanded.

  “Morning to you, too,” she answered, removing one of the dangly earrings so she could hold the phone to her ear. “Hang on, I’m exiting.” Once she was on the feeder road she gave Natalie the rundown.

  “Lose the earrings.”

  “I love these earrings. They’re hot.”

  “Right. Lose them.”

  “But why?” Serena whined, then winced. Whining was not a good indicator of an in-charge woman with a handle on her emotions.

  “Serena, listen to me. I am over the moon about this cat, goodness knows I didn’t want to hear anything more about basements from Rachel. Basements. I know she’s not a native Texan, but when has she ever seen a basement in her life?”

  “I think they have basements in Colorado.”

  “I don’t care if they do or not. She’s been to seventy of my open houses, she knows about no Houston basements.”

  “Okay, and we all appreciate the free wine and cheese, but why can’t I wear my earrings?”

  Natalie tsked at her. Tsked! “Get a grip, Serena. You can’t wear your flirty ‘have sex with me on this conference table’ earrings because answer me this—how did Dillon find out you were allergic to cats?”

  “At his birthday party. He had strawberry shortcake. It came up.”

  “Uh-huh. And what day was that?”

  “Wednesday.”

  “And what day is today?”

  “Friday,” she sighed, again, a little poutily. Dang.

  “Right. So, he’s known for two days—two days, Serena—and he dealt with it by emailing a bunch of you a picture?”

  “It’s a cute picture.”

  “Do I care that it’s a cute picture? No, I don’t. I care that he chose this passive-aggressive journey of silence and indirect semaphore to get his message across.”

  Serena pulled into the parking lot at Lanigan, noted that she was already seven minutes late, and tried to be fair. “I didn’t tell him why I ran from him after the farmers market. I just left, Nat, and if I’d told him I was allergic to him we could have figured it out sooner.”

  “Well, you didn’t. And that’s a shame. Didn’t help that Rachel was filling your head with all kinds of nonsense at that point, but never mind. What matters is how he should behave, not some scorecard of whose turn it is to act like an idiot. You can’t move forward with this guy unless you’re both open and honest with each other. If he’s really into you, and really respects you, then the moment he found out his nephew’s kitten caused you to break out into giant disgusting pustules, he should have pulled you aside and said, ‘Hey, Serena, I think if we go back behind the dumpster and make out like randy teenagers we’d be able to get to second base without sending you to the hospital.’ But he didn’t. He emailed—let me look at this again—yes, five people, only one of whom is hot for him, and without even a postscript to tell you that he’d be waiting naked in the boardroom during the coffee break should you want to drop by.”

  “Wow. Nice imagery.”

  “I spend all day describing kitchens that haven’t been updated for forty-two years as ‘quaint’ with ‘vintage touches.’ Sometimes I have to break out of the rut. Now lose the come-hither earrings until he’s earned them.”

  Serena had no intention of obeying, so she just said she had to rush off—which was true enough. But sly Natalie had either gotten to her on a subconscious level or just delayed her enough to throw Serena off her normally organized game. As soon as the elevator doors closed and Serena glimpsed herself in the brushed chrome walls, she groaned. She’d left the earring she’d removed to take Natalie's call sitting in the cup holder in her car. Marveling over her friend’s powers of mind control, she stashed the other earring in her bag and headed into her office for the day.

  It wasn’t long before she saw him. She’d suspected it wouldn’t be. Of course, she didn’t have her ‘come hither’ earrings, and Eddie had him cornered going over something probably work related, so she had no idea how to convey to Dillon that she was on the same page as him. Or, that she thought she was. She opened her mouth two or three times, trying to formulate an even half-coherent sentence. “Your kitten gave me hives,” seemed out of place, as did, “Care to come over tonight?” or “Does my inability to breathe around fur relegate me to the unfuckable column in your little black book?” It got to the point that even anti-sensitive-man Eddie was giving her funny looks, so she just mustered up as much of a smile as she could and fled.

  She ended up turning practically into Janice’s arms. “Toots, you have to come for smoothies with me today. I need you,” Janice muttered, and if Serena hadn’t known better she’d have thought the way Janice placed her body was a deliberate attempt to keep her from making eye contact with Dillon.

  “I....”

  “I mean it, Toots. I won’t even make you jog.”

  “Will you let me drive there?”

  Janice scoffed. “As if.” She glanced down at Serena’s cute heeled sandals. “You have runners in your office, right?”

  Serena grudgingly admitted that she did, and they all headed into the ten o’clock meeting.

  She tried to sit beside Dillon. There was an open seat there and everything. And it was on his left, which was the perfect situation for her to draw her right-handed doodles and him to add his left-handed captions on her notepad. But before she could grab the chair, Anica gestured her over to sit at the head of the table beside her. Oh, right, promotion. Authority. Moving up the corporate ladder—or the corporate table, in this case. More important than her sex life, at least while she was actually at work.

  Janice took the chair by Dillon, and Serena did not trust the glint in her eye. She got a brief moment to half-smile at Dillon before Anica leaned in to check with her about scheduling. Meanwhile, Johnnie was leaning back in his own chair, the better to take in the way Serena’s skirt rode up her thigh. Tugging it down only drew attention, so she gave up.

  It was energizing to take the lead on the Blue Capri B&B account, and Serena noted with no little pleasure the way Eddie’s head bounced back and forth between her and Anica while he explained the parameters of what the hotel owner wanted. Plus, she’d dreamed up a really luscious agate and Blue Grotto color palette that worked beautifully with the fonts she’d provisionally picked out for their rebranding. She was buzzed by the work, and the undercurrents that she sensed when Anica deferred to her. It was a clear signpost about Serena’s future role at Lanigan. She held bac
k a ferocious smile when Eddie saluted her with his water bottle, but she was sure everyone could see it in her eyes.

  Of course, it also meant that when most of the others—including Dillon—filed out after the general part of the meeting, she stayed behind with Anica and Janice and Eddie and Miguel. Johnnie, the other graphic designer, hung back for a few moments with clear hopes that Anica would give him a ‘stay here’ nod, but finally trailed out after the others. Poor Johnnie, Serena thought smugly. Then she caught herself and gave herself a little lecture about humility and everyone having their role to play and all sorts of other stuff her mom’s second husband, Erik, had quoted from his business management books over dinner for several months in a row. The day Erik had graduated from his part-time MBA program had been a blessed one in their home. Of course, so had the day he and Mom had separated and they’d moved out.

  Erik: incredibly nice, incredibly boring. Not a bad way for Mom to get over the toxicity of her marriage to Dad, but not close to being, as Rachel would say, her ‘forever guy.’ Neither had her next husband, Samuel, been, though at least that had more legs on it. She’d not liked Samuel as much as she’d liked Erik, though, and only pretended to be shocked, her second year of college, when her mom had totally dumped Samuel to move in with Zane and his three teenagers. Well, the three kids part had been weird. Was still weird. Seeing all the Facebook posts of Mom with Ridley and Regina and Rufus, her big proud grin at graduations and dancing with Ridley at his wedding—his wedding! the kid was barely into his twenties, but whatever. She felt a little bad about missing his wedding reception, but didn’t honestly think she’d been missed. She hardly knew Zane or the Three Rs. Unlike, apparently, her mom, who seemed to have found her place in life. Erik probably had a corp-speak quote to apply to that, too.

  When they’d been living with Erik, Serena had been eleven or twelve, and she’d cared a hell of a lot about whether or not Kent Penny had stood next to her in the lunch line or taken the seat behind her on the bus. Sometimes she even got off at his stop and followed Kent to the turn-off for his street before she went on home. They never talked, but Serena knew to the inch how close he came when they passed each other. She’d more than doubled her age since then, and was once again obsessing over seating arrangements and banal quotes about effective workplace motivation. Maybe if she’d gotten up the nerve to talk to Kent before the divorce and subsequent move to yet another school, Serena would be a little more evolved on the relationship scale now.

  She wished she had on the earrings, though.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Dillon felt as antsy as he had back in fifth grade the day his dad was going to pick him up to go to an early screening of a new Star Trek movie. He’d never admit it to anyone, but he’d rewritten that email with the cat news three or four times. Okay, six times. He’d been a communications major. With honors, even. Good lord. It had taken him a ridiculous amount of time to perfect, and he didn’t end up sending it by the end of the work day, which had been his plan. His little fantasy involved her getting the email, realizing about her allergy to Maisy, and showing up in his office ready to pick up where they’d left off. Well, maybe not actually pick back up in his office. Or, okay, in his office—his fantasy included everyone else leaving on the dot of five except the two of them, so their floor would be empty. And he had a door on his office and everything.

  But, alas, he’d spent so long redrafting the message that it had gone out after everyone had gone home. He’d been forced to spend the evening forcing himself not to wonder if she would check her email from home. Magnolia and Eddie had seen it—Mags had sent him a reply about how Eddie was reconsidering using Dillon's genetic material for their own child. And Eddie had followed with a contradictory, and fairly rude, reply. They’d gone back and forth a few times before an impatient Dillon had replied to them both that maybe they should just go have sex already and leave him out of the foreplay.

  But with all of that activity—all of those moments when his phone had beeped that he had an incoming email—nothing had been from Serena. He’d finally gone to bed, resigned to her not knocking on his door. But he had left the light on over his front steps, just in case.

  So he’d shown up to work in one of the new shirts he’d bought to ensure that no trace of Maisy lingered about him. It was about time he sent his jacket in for dry cleaning anyway, though despite the warmer weather he felt a little exposed without it. He’d spent as much time in the hallway near Serena’s office as he could as nine o’clock approached, not precisely stalking her. She might not see the email until she got to her desk, and he wanted her to see it before they talked. Dillon's mouth tightened as he remembered the frustration of lingering in the hall when Serena was five, then ten minutes late.

  A few minutes before the morning meeting, he’d left his desk to try again, and at first he’d been glad when Eddie had waylaid him just outside Serena’s door.

  “Hey, Dillon, look. About the stuff with Magnolia?”

  “Not interested in hearing about your sex life,” he’d answered, but with a smile. Eddie and Magnolia were both such big personalities, but they suited each other really well. They each knew when to pull back from being the dominant one, and that was as far as he was going to go with analyzing their relationship, now that the specter of their bedroom had been raised.

  “Naw, it’s more than your virgin ears could handle. But Magnolia made me swear to apologize to you.”

  “Not a virgin, man.”

  “Sure, sure, keep saying it, it’ll turn true.”

  Dillon shook his head. “You are so full of it. Your wife makes you say sorry? Very manly.”

  “Hey, I am a man of the new millennium. I can do what Magnolia says and still be the alpha stud she fell for.”

  “Sure you can.”

  “Yeah, well, she told me to take you to lunch today.”

  “You told her we already go to lunch every Friday, right?”

  “Well,” Eddie scratched the back of his neck. “She probably knows that. Anyway, I’m supposed to buy.”

  Dillon started to beg off, weird as that would be given that they did eat together every Friday that Eddie wasn’t having a lunch meeting with a client. Serena came out of her office just then, and words died in his dry mouth. She’d surely checked her email? He met her eyes, and she didn’t look away. She didn’t say anything, but Eddie was going on and on and on. Dillon glanced back at him and nodded a little, probably agreeing to some lunch scheme or another, and then Janice managed to get Serena turned away from him. Damn her.

  “Come on, then,” Eddie said, leading him into the conference room. “And send a text to Magnolia, will you? She’s all embarrassed now.”

  “No problem.” He typed her a couple of lines, all the while watching Serena move into the room. Anica pulled her away from him, then Janice took the seat beside him and leaned forward, blocking his view. He could see behind her, though, and did not miss even a little bit of the way Johnnie eyed Serena’s legs in Dillon's favorite blue skirt. Only her orange plaid skirt topped that one in his ranking of Serena’s sexy skirts.

  She hadn’t responded to his email. He checked his phone again. Nope, no reply. But she hadn’t run from him, either. She’d even brushed right up against his chair on the way into the production meeting. Dillon counted that as a triumph, and despite the fact that Eddie dragged him off for Chinese food and he got involved in a monster of an afternoon conference call that tied him to his desk past the point of sanity, the anticipation of more triumph sustained him for most of the day.

  “Mango papaya today, Liza,” Serena told the Smoothie Shack girl.

  “Ditto, and put protein powder in them both,” Janice ordered. At Serena’s curled lip she said, “You have to balance your intake of nutrients. We’ve talked about this.”

  “Can’t I just eat a cheese stick when we get back to the office?”

  “No, you cannot. Besides, if, as I suspect, Toots, you are going to shortly be eng
aging in aerobic activity, your muscles will thank me.”

  Liza gave her an arch look and Serena blushed. “Janice!”

  “Do tell,” Liza said, handing Janice her change.

  “Do not tell. I mean, there’s nothing to tell!”

  Janice laughed. “And hens have teeth and frogs have fangs.”

  “I believe her. Also, I have this bridge on sale, direct from London, are you interested?”

  “You two are absolutely hilarious.” Serena categorically did not stomp on her way to the table in the corner.

  Janice followed after leaning in to whisper something to Liza, who giggled.

  “Whatever she said, she’s lying!” Serena called over to her, but Liza had turned on the blender and gave her a cheeky ‘can’t hear you’ gesture.

  “Toots.”

  “I don’t know what you think you know.”

  “What I know know? Know for sure? Nothing. I’ll tell you what I’ve seen with my own two eyes, though.”

  And then she paused long enough that Serena had to give in and ask, “What?”

  “I know that Dillon was pumping me for info about your allergies. I know that Johnnie was memorizing the curves of your thighs during the meeting today. I know that Dillon glared at him until Johnnie looked away. And,” she glanced up then shifted over so that Liza could sit down beside her as she delivered their smoothies, “I know that you’re allergic to cats and Dillon just got rid of a cat.”

  “Hmmmm!” Liza raised her eyebrows. “Dillon I know about, but who exactly is Johnnie?”

  “Frat boy idiot at work,” Serena said.

  “Well, that answers that question. I didn’t think he was your type.”