Rocket Man

by Melanie Greene

  “He talks too much,” Serena told Liza, “and he thinks he’s more charming than he really is.”

  “So we can discount him. That leaves Dillon.”

  Serena didn’t answer.

  “Liza’s right, Toots. That leaves Dillon.”

  “Didn’t Emily give you guys a lecture about workplace relationships after all that stuff with Ricky?”

  “It was about harassment and the one for the offices is in a couple of weeks, so look forward to that. Anyway, she said there aren’t any rules about dating coworkers.”

  It was really Janice’s bright red ears that gave her away. “She said this during the harassment training? Or...in a separate conversation?”

  Janice sipped her smoothie until Liza nudged her. “Okay, I asked her, just, you know. Theoretically. Not because I’m interested in anyone.”

  Liza laughed, “Oh, sure.”

  “And maybe I was just asking to clear things up so Serena and Dillon can start holding hands in public.”

  “You are such an altruist.”

  “You are avoiding the topic, Toots. I get that there’s nothing going on between you and Johnnie, but there is clearly some vibe between you and Dillon. He is pitching woo at you all the time, and my question is, are you two playing ball, or what?”

  “That,” Liza said, reluctantly getting up to help the customers who’d just walked in, “is one seriously messed up metaphor. And just because I’m missing all the details doesn’t mean you don’t have to fill me in later.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” Janice replied, and turned back to Serena. “Spill.”

  So Serena had admitted that she and Dillon had been skirting around the edges of a relationship, and that she’d been confused by the hives and shortness of breath when they’d gotten close.

  “But that’s what you’re always like when you’re around cats.”

  “But Dillon didn’t have a cat! At least, I didn’t think he did. I never imagined he’d get one without telling me.” And wasn’t that interesting, she mused. How many other coworkers, besides Janice, would she expect to hear that type of domestic information from? “Looking back, I know it was stupid. I should have figured I was allergic to something around him, not to Dillon himself. But, well, I’d get short of breath a little when I just heard his voice, too. And sometimes flushed, too.” She trailed off, too embarrassed to meet Janice’s sparkling eyes.

  Her friend took a little bit of pity on her. “Hey, it’s not such an inexplicable mistake. And it’s kind of not the point, too.”

  “It’s not?”

  “No way. I’m far more interested in the fact that you’ve been sneaking off together behind my back.”

  “Oh, God, don’t ever let Eddie know about those basketball tickets! Swear it.”

  Janice laughed. “What a disaster that would be. No worries, Toots, that cat stays in the bag. But the fact remains that you and Dillon have been enjoying a little one-on-one time and you both seem pretty interested in enjoying a lot more of it. Am I right?”

  “Well…I mean, yes. Yes, I’m interested.” Serena looked out the window for a bit, trying to find a way to articulate all of the swirling thoughts she had. “I think he must be, too. I think that was the reason for his email yesterday.”

  “Ya think?” Janice was very good at sarcastic when she wanted to be.

  “Yeah. To tell me about it so I’d know why I’d had to get out of his place so fast. So I’m pretty sure we’ll be getting together or, you know, seeing each other more, whatever.”

  “Toots!”

  “Janice, don’t. I mean, the reason I didn’t tell you any of this before....”

  “And don’t think you’re out of the hot water yet.”

  “I have reasons! I don’t want this to be a thing, an awkward thing, for everyone at work. I mean, hardly anything’s happened yet, and you and Eddie are both already giving us looks.”

  “I think Jorge suspects, too.”

  Serena groaned.

  “And maybe Anica.”

  “What? Anica? No. No way. Why would Anica know anything? There’s barely anything to know yet!”

  “‘Yet.’ I like that. I knew you two would be getting your groove on.”

  “Janice. What about Anica?”

  “Oh, calm down, Toots. I’m not for sure. But she’s given you two a bit of a look a couple of times. And there’s something about the way she always attaches him to you—it’s always ‘Serena and Dillon and Jorge,’ never ‘Serena and Jorge and Dillon’ or whoever.”

  Serena ran a few conversations back through her head and realized Janice was right. Maybe. “But no one knows anything for sure. And if we start, like, dating for real. Well, just imagine.”

  Janice waggled her eyebrows.

  “No, seriously. Stop that. I’m talking about everyone going out for drinks, or staring at us in the lunchroom, all that stuff.”

  “Not to mention you giving him orders now.”

  Serena blanched a little. “Not to mention that. This promotion—this maybe promotion with no real parameters, which by the way is a bullshit kind of thing for Anica to be doing—anyway, it doesn’t help make things less weird with us.”

  “Poor Anica. She has no idea how to share her power.”

  “Yes, I pity her so.” Serena sighed. “I wish she’d either make it official or keep it more under wraps for now.”

  “Hmm.”

  Serena gave Janice a sharp look. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Oh, you know. Just that you’re basically saying the same thing about Dillon. Keep everything under wraps until it’s all official. Has it occurred to you, Toots, that you’re just a little obsessed over having things official and defined?”

  “What’s wrong with wanting definition? Do you think the way Anica’s handling it is the best way?”

  Janice stood and took their trash to the bin. “No, but is it the worst way? You’re getting some leadership experience. You’re getting everyone used to the idea that you’ve got more authority. It might make an official transition easier, when that happens.”

  From behind the blenders, Liza gave Janice a ‘call me’ signal and waved as they headed out the door for the return to Lanigan. Serena expelled a deep breath and let Janice pull her into a light jog. “Okay, so, I’ll let Anica be wishy-washy, but can you please, pretty please with sugar on top, not let anything slip about me and Dillon until I know what’s really going on?”

  Janice rolled her eyes. “Toots. You know I don’t eat sugar.”

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Serena dropped everything on her entry-way bench when she got home and, snatching up the envelope with Dillon's book, headed to her office. She grinned as she docked her iPod and opened the top door in her supply cabinet. Perfect—fine mesh netting, spray starch, a roll of string. She rummaged a little more and came up with a blue bucket and some matching heavy paper stock, and set about fashioning a new handle that made the bucket look like an oversized teacup. Or mostly like one. She wrote ‘tea’ on the pail, just to be sure, then set it aside to play with the net.

  Spreading it out across her blade-scored worktable, she measured and cut and starched and reinforced with cardboard and whipstitched the netting until she’d created a tea-bag shaped container for the Barkley book. Her final touch was, of course, to find a Sir Charles saying (“You can’t fake hustle. You either have to be into the game or not”) and print it on the blank side of a page from a Scandinavian design book she’d been slowly denuding over the past few months. She clipped the corners of the tag and attached it to the end of the string she’d hung from the mesh bag.

  She’d just set the bag inside the cup and stood back to admire her creation when the doorbell rang.

  Dillon was practically tapping his foot in frustration while he waited for Serena to answer the door. Her car was in the carport, so he knew she was home. Or probably home. Sometimes people in this overheated city walked places. But probably she was home. Just as he’
d been, just sitting around checking for messages every ten minutes and debating whether to call. Okay, every five minutes. But for fuck’s sake, he’d sent her the picture of Tobias and the kitten, and she hadn’t said a damn thing to him. Oh, sure, a smile here and there, maybe a few looks that might mean something. But that was no indication that she was ready to talk. Or have sex. So finally he’d pulled up her change-of-address email and mapped a route to her place.

  Her house suited her, at least from the outside. At least, it suited the Serena he thought he knew. If anyone had asked him to speculate about where Serena would hang her hat, he’d have easily imagined this little bungalow with peach brick and tangerine shutters. The sunset-colored hibiscus plants anchoring the small but colorful flower beds fit her sense of style and bright, appealing personality. The whole place was welcoming but not ostentatious, and it seemed to exude the warmth and openness Dillon had always associated with Serena.

  Until she’d gotten freaked by a kitten and spent weeks barely uttering a word to him.

  He knocked again—maybe a little firmly. Maybe almost pounding on the pale wood of the door, until he saw movement through the beveled glass of the window and attempted to get a grip. At least it looked like she was home. And alone.

  He fixed a hopefully-friendly look over his tense jaw and when Serena opened the door said, inanely, “Hi.”

  Serena was an idiot.

  She was just staring at Dillon. Dillon, in his new cerulean shirt, which echoed his eyes in the sunlight. Dillon, whose eyes, now that he was shadowed by her front porch, were deepest cobalt but still blazed intently at her.

  Dillon, who had just shown up on her doorstep.

  She finally remembered how to talk. “Hi.”

  If that could be defined as talking.

  “Hi,” he repeated, then stood there some more. Finally he glanced over her shoulder, as if scoping out her house, then back at her. “This is a new shirt.”

  She blinked. “I can see that.”

  He looked down at his chest, where the fold lines from the shirt being wrapped around cardboard were still visible, despite them having had a full day of gravity and motion to help them disappear. He nodded, then fished a small box out of his messenger bag. “I also got you some allergy medication, in case there are any traces of Maisy on my shoes, or something.”

  Serena just melted. He was looking at her so straightforwardly, but there was the hint of caution in his eyes. And he’d gone shopping to ensure she was safe to breathe around him. And there he was, at her front door, just being himself. She was such a goner, it wasn’t even funny.

  Inhaling deeply, she stepped back. “I got you something, too,” she said as she gestured him into her home.

  He ducked a little as he came under the threshold. A tall man’s habit; she’d noticed him doing that before. It seemed a little reverential in this case. The first time he’d been on her turf. Serena could practically feel the air molecules inside stretching around Dillon, rearranging to accommodate his presence in her front hall. Her hyper-awareness tripped her up a little, made her shy.

  Made her babble. “I was going to call you. To see if you were busy this weekend. I was just finishing this up, this present for you. I mean, for your birthday, so it’s late, but. Well. Oh, this is the living room. There’s the dining room through there, the kitchen. Wait here a minute, I’ll get your gift. Or do you want to see my office? No, never mind, it’s a mess. Sit there, I’ll be right back.” Almost shoving him towards the sofa, Serena retreated to the office.

  She leaned against the worktable a moment, staring unfocused at the neat row of framed prints lining the wall above her desk. With a quick shake of her head and a breath to prove that she was still able to, well, to breathe, Serena told herself to get a grip and go back to Dillon. So she picked up the giant blue teacup and sedately headed back.

  Dillon sank a little into the soft fabric of Serena’s sofa. Her living room was colorful but not over-bright. He sensed that she’d put a lot of thought into choosing her paint colors, her furniture, her accessories. Not that that was surprising—her office was the most appealing room at Lanigan, even though she had the same mass-produced desk and credenza and chair as everyone else. Now that he was ensconced into this external representation of Serena’s entire vibe, he kind of got why Shannon had been so exasperated when they’d furniture-shopped for his townhouse. He stood by his vintage posters of the Millennium Falcon and, of course, the one and only NCC-1701 herself, the USS Enterprise. Otherwise, his walls matched his floors and his chairs were comfortable, so he’d never had a complaint about his space before. Serena, though—and where was she anyway?—Serena had created a room where he could instantly imagine spending a ton of time relaxing with her. Watching a ball game. Talking. Hanging out with friends. Hanging on to her hand. Touching her, being with her, and where the hell was she right now?

  Before he could go snooping around her house looking for her, Serena emerged from the hallway off the dining room, hands behind her back. Dillon forgot his impatience at the sight of her—and not just because holding her arms that way did extremely nice stretchy things to the front of her shirt. If she was nude in his arms, and he pinned her wrists behind her, he could seriously feast for hours on her upthrust pink areolas, her arching breasts, opened wide to his gaze, his touch, his mouth.

  His mouth was dry, and as Serena walked towards him, Dillon lifted his eyes slowly from her chest, past her inviting collarbone and throat, the curve of her jaw skimmed by her fall of hair, and her glossy lips. Her lips, which were parted as if waiting for him to meet them with his. To press, to lick, to exchange tongue for tongue as their mouths explored each other, the first of many mutual explorations.

  He landed at last on the soft grey of her eyes. Probably his own face held too much of his raw lust, his desire to get past the last weeks of questions and uncertainty, his determination to subdue whatever it was about her that had made her run away and give in to their pull towards each other. In some ways he knew her better than he had before they’d laughed in the farmers market together, before she’d exposed herself for him against his front door, before she’d avoided him rather than face the fallout of her escape. In theory, it should all make it easy enough for them to move forward, now that they both knew why she’d run. But despite that, he was now less easy with her than he’d been even when trying to pry an apology out of her after seeing her with the gristly accountant.

  If his expression worried her, she didn’t let on. Her eyes didn’t hide from his, but met them steadily, slightly tilted up under cheeks that lifted in a wry smile.

  “Happy birthday,” she said, and brought her hidden gift forward.

  Dillon stood and walked to her, making a conscious decision not to mention that his birthday was two days before, with all its implied ‘when you wouldn’t be in the same room with me.’ Instead, he looked from her slight blush down to the creation she was presenting to him. It was a smallish blue bucket, but she’d transformed it into a coffee cup. Or, he modified as he read it, a tea cup, complete with oversized tea bag that held something tissue-wrapped inside it.

  An unguarded laugh escaped him as he caught hold of the colorful tag and read the little saying on it. He shot her a quick glance, remembering teasing her about her making her own tea bags. Well, she’d done it for real this time, whatever she normally did with all the herbs and vegetables she grew.

  “What is it? I don’t want to undo all your work,” he said, pulling out the faux tea bag.

  “No, go ahead.”

  “You’re sure?”

  But she nodded, so he ripped a little at the mesh until it gave way enough for him to pull the book out from its enclosure.

  “Hey! Sir Charles!” Dillon turned the slim volume over, grinning outright now. “My hero, you know.” She nodded again, and he was caught by the light in her eyes. “You remembered. Thank you, Serena. This is great.”

  She cleared her throat a little. “What it says o
n the card? To be in the game or get out?”

  It was his turn to nod. She was a little fidgety and that meant a little nervous. All at once his mouth was dry again. He was trapped by her uncertain gaze.

  “I want to be in the game. With you. That’s—that’s why I picked that particular piece of Barkley’s wisdom.” She laughed. “There was so very much to choose from. But trash-talking Larry Byrd didn’t really have the right tone for this occasion.”

  Dillon set the gift and packaging down on her coffee table and took the final steps to bring him to Serena. Such a small step, but a giant leap. There was Houston, rubbing off on him again. Houston, where he could stand inches from this beautiful woman, meet her clear bright gaze, and tell her his biggest truth.

  “I want that, too.”

  And for the first time in way, way too long, Dillon reached out a hand and touched Serena.

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Serena could barely believe her own words. She’d blurted them without planning them out at all. And she’d been rambling like an idiot, too. Disconcerting, confusing, irritatingly compelling man!

  But he seemed to like her present. He appreciated the packaging. He’d been pretty mad before, but he’d still shown up on her threshold today, which meant forgiveness, right? And here he was. In her living room. Touching her.

  She melted into his hand as it cupped her face. And her own hand cupped his jaw in return—slightly bristly from the scruffy ‘haven’t shaved in a day or two’ look he sometimes wore, but square and firm beneath the beard, and moving so willingly towards her own.

  And the kiss. It was magnets, colliding. Dillon's hand moved up into her hair, one finger tracing the outline of her ear, skimming past the ‘come hither’ earrings she’d put back on, thinking of him, as he pulled her closer. As she pulled him closer. She stretched her body up, leaning into and up him to wrap around his shoulders and bring his face to hers. Every individual muscle in his lips sent separate questing little shock waves through her nervous system, and every individual nerve she possessed ended in fire between her legs.