Rocket Man

by Melanie Greene

  “You were great,” he told her, genuine admiration and pleasure she was bound to hear behind his words.

  “It went well,” she agreed. “I mean, really well. I think she’s persuaded to sign off on just about everything.” Serena pulled out her phone. “I’m going to text Anica, then I need twenty or thirty minutes to organize my notes. Are you super hungry?” She looked up from the screen and the silver sparks in her eyes just about blinded him. Those were happy sparks, and Dillon had gone too long since he’d seen them.

  “No rush,” he said. “I’ll work on deciphering the rest of my notepad.” But before he stood to retrieve it and his laptop, Dillon let the rest of his right leg press up against her left. She didn’t press back, but she didn’t shift away.

  Dillon wondered what the equivalent of silver sparks were in his own eyes, and if Serena ever looked for them. If she was seeing them now.

  Relentless steamroller for the win, he thought, and hummed a little “gate, gate, gate” under his breath as he moved to the love seat to start typing.

  He lost track of time until Serena stood and stretched. “I’m going to take a quick shower, if you can wait another bit before we get dinner.” He looked up to answer, but the things that stretching did to the front of her shirt rather left him at a loss for words. Never mind the silver flecks, it had been way too long since he’d held her breasts. Hopefully his nod was enough of an answer. Serena ducked her head a little self-consciously and went through to the bedroom. Dillon rubbed his jaw and considered shaving. But Serena had once called him ‘delightfully scruffy,' so he settled for splashing water over his face at the wet bar, toothbrushing, and a clean white button-down.

  He looked around the room, which boasted cute seating areas and a nicely maintained antique sideboard, but not much in the way of fur rugs and large pillows in front of the little fireplace. Not that it was really cool enough for a fire, but he had some hopes that there might be romance later. They’d screwed in any number of settings, of course, but the whole point of the steamroller was to get her to hear and accept his love. The Grotta Azzurra parlor was romantic only in a costume drama kind of way, with the delicate wood legs on the tufted love seat, the candelabra on the sideboard, the fresh flowers on the side table. Frankly, he didn’t want to break anything.

  Now, the bedroom, it had possibilities. Nice sturdy carved headboard, a mirror on the armoire opposite the footboard, side lamps that cast a diffuse but distinct light across the mound of pillows. The only problem was whether Serena would get prickly and resistant if he headed there as if she was bound to be of the same mind. Sure, she’d seemed fine with his putting both their bags in the same room, but he wasn’t going to forget that she could easily move to the other bedroom. Or banish him. So he would be content with the love seat and candelabra, if he had to, but damned if the steamroller agenda didn’t also include condoms.

  There was a box of matches in the sideboard, along with a small CD player and selection of music. Dillon was flipping through the options when he heard Serena come up behind him. Still crouching in front of the music, he half-turned and, slowly, looked up the length of her body, to her face.

  Serena was wearing low sandals with straps that coiled around her ankles and disappeared up her calves, under the fringed hem of a long batik-print skirt that wrapped around her waist and was secured on one hip with a knot that Dillon instantly imagined untying in numerous ways. His fingers, spreading it slowly open. Her hands, letting the whole thing drop as he stood back from her and watched. His teeth, inhaling her scent as he rested his cheek upon her belly. Her torso was hugged by a kind of tie-dye looking long-sleeved t-shirt that played call-and-respond games with the greens in the skirt, and revealed the exact heft of her cleavage. A couple of chains of colored beads dangled over her exposed clavicles, putting Dillon in mind of a string of bright candies, and he could practically taste the sugar on her skin. Silver hoops peeked through the loose waves of her hair, which she’d held tight to her crown with a couple of narrow braids in that fairie queen look he loved.

  She was just so fucking gorgeous. He was a lucky man. Well, he sure as hell hoped that he was a lucky man, anyway.

  Slowly, Dillon hauled breath into his lungs and rose to his feet. She’d stopped close enough to him that, when he stood, she had to lift her chin to meet his gaze. Close enough that she’d have no trouble reading his avaricious look. Close enough that, if it had been a week earlier, he’d have taken that half-step forward to ensure she knew the instant reaction of his groin to her appearance.

  But it wasn’t a week earlier. So he stood his ground, silent but speaking volumes with his silence. With his hitched breath, and devouring eyes, too, of course, but the silence was the stronger element, the intruder between them.

  Serena watched him a long, long time. Dillon fantasized about mind reading along with all the other fantasies, but his only clue was the way she pressed her glossed lips together, biting just a little, before glancing quickly aside.

  “I, um, thought we could go down to Pier 21. There are a couple of good seafood places there? Or there’s a Greek place on Seawall that’s fun, but...maybe not that quiet. I want to be able to talk?”

  Dillon ran his hands through his hair, which was infinitely less appealing than running them through hers. Serena’s ‘talk?’ sent a million calculations and permutations flashing through his mind, but the suitcases sharing a room and the possibility of meeting her brother and, most of all, the low knot in her skirt kept tipping each equation to a hopeful conclusion.

  Relentlessly steamrollering ahead, he said the pier would be great.

  And so it was. The restaurant they picked had a twenty minute wait for an outdoor table, so they walked past a maritime-god-looking statue and a succession of light poles hung with semaphore flags to the prow of an old sailing ship.

  “It’s the Elissa,” Serena told him. “The Official Tall Ship of Texas.”

  “Texas has an Official Tall Ship?”

  “Why, of course. Doesn’t California have an Official Tall Ship?”

  “I wouldn’t begin to guess. What did the Elissa do to earn the position?”

  “No idea,” Serena said flippantly. “I know she was built in 1877, and she docks here, and I think there’s something about the—mizzenmast?—that means something. It was all in the research I did for Blue Capri.”

  “Okay, then. And probably it’s the square sails.”

  “What’s probably the square sails?”

  “There’s no square sails on the mizzenmast, see?” He pointed. “The fore mast and main mast have square sails, but the mizzenmast doesn’t.”

  Serena stopped walking by his side and pivoted so she faced him. “You sail?”

  He laughed. “Sure, some. I mean, we never owned a boat, but I am a California boy. I went sailing with friends plenty of times when I was young.”

  “I thought it was just surfing.”

  “Oh, I’m a far better surfer than a sailor. Or, I used to be. It’s been years since I did either. I’ve heard there are some decent waves on the Gulf, but I haven’t yet persuaded myself to try. The Pacific spoiled me.”

  “Superstar that you are.”

  “Superstar that I am.”

  “You are a man with many facets yet to explore. Surfing, sailing, superstar. So you really know what you’re talking about? The mizzenmast is a real thing?”

  He couldn’t resist tucking a strand of her flying hair back behind her ear. He was determined, in his steamroller way, to keep it light, in the present. He’d spent enough time of late being beaten up by the past. But he’d locked that ‘yet to explore’ into his calculations, and thought the sums were getting better and better. “Yes, it’s a real thing. It’s that one in the back. I’ve only sailed on single mast sailboats, but I still know my fore from my aft, thank you very much.”

  “I’ll just bet you do.” And Serena raised her eyebrows suggestively at him.

  Dillon thought that, odds were,
he was a very lucky man.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Their table was ready.

  So, this was it. No backing out now. She’d brought up quiet talking time, she’d dressed to please, she’d gathered materials. Altogether, she’d transparently orchestrated the night so there could be no question about Something of Import Happening, and Dillon had clearly not had any trouble reading the signals.

  Right, then. She waited through the specials—Dillon nixing a strawberry swirl sangria before the waiter even finished describing its many fine, if toxic to her, qualities. Like the girliest girl ever, or perhaps just a nervous woman, she left the selection of a bottle of wine entirely up to him.

  And then they had their wine, the kitchen had their order, and as anticipated, the patio felt private and intimate. The sun was still wandering down towards the bay in front of them, and the conversations of other diners was inaudible beneath the breeze and the occasional clinking of chains for the small boats pulled up into the docks. Serena indulged in a long gaze at the dying light playing in the Elissa’s rigging, collected her thoughts, and reached for the small sheaf of papers in her bag.

  “Is there going to be a test before dinner?” Dillon asked, quirking his head around to try to see.

  “Yes, you fail, you get no snapper. It’s a harsh rule, but I recommend you accept it graciously.”

  “Wow, if I’d known, I’d have opted for the crab shack instead.”

  “No, their test is essay-style. This one is multiple choice.” Serena edged her chair a little closer to his and put the papers down on the corner of the table between them. “You’re being silly, and I’m a little nervous, and I don’t think it’s a good combination.”

  Dillon immediately took her hand. His thumb smoothed over her knuckles, and Serena almost dispassionately noted how quickly just that small affection calmed her jitters. It was really quite ridiculous for her old hang-ups to have so much power over her, when clearly a strong new impulse was lurking in her heart.

  “Hey,” he said, his voice sweeter than it had been all week. “I can stop being silly. Even though it looks like you’re about to make a pitch here.” Serena blushed a little, but maybe the dusky light didn’t catch it. Dillon went on. “I get that you’re nervous. I’m sorry you’re nervous. I’m a little nervous myself. And now I’ve said nervous a million times and it can’t be helping.”

  Unexpectedly, he leaned in and kissed her, soft and quick and lips clinging just a moment before he retreated with a smile. “Aching to do that for hours now.”

  “Days,” Serena said. But mentioning how very long it had been put some of the wariness back between them. She tightened her fingers on his briefly, then smoothed the papers under her palm, and left her eyes on her hands as she began. “Dillon. I’m sorry if I’m being too formal. I really just have one basic thing to say to you. But I realized if I just said it without trying to explain more, it wouldn’t be very honest. I think I need to be really honest, I think that’s the best thing.”

  His mouth was dry. Shame to burn a thirty dollar bottle of wine on thirst quenching, but Dillon needed some bolstering along with the liquid. Stupid, foolish idiot move to have kissed her. Now she couldn’t even look him in the eye. Him, with his jokes about tests and presentations, so childish. She was right to be nervous, since he clearly was misreading everything. His body language must be making her want to run screaming. Too bad she was his ride home.

  Serena glanced up to see Dillon staring off at the ship lights in the distance. He’d settled into the back of his chair, feet planted as if on the verge of scraping it backwards, further away. Well, she knew going in that he might not want to hear her. Their appetizer sat barely touched, the only good thing about the calamari at the moment being the fact that its presence was keeping the waiter away from their table.

  She drew in a lungful of briny sea air and made a desperate stab at organizing her thoughts. She was a graphic artist; this is why she’d brought visual aids. “Okay,” she said, and this time Dillon looked at her. She so wanted to be able to read the expression in his cobalt eyes, but he was entirely guarded.

  “Okay, you don’t know this about me, but when Natalie and I first met—I mean, met again, in college—I practically refused to believe she’d been my stepsister. I wasn’t remembering a thing about her. She had to write her mom to send up some snapshots of us with our parents before I would agree she was right. It wasn’t as if I really thought she was lying. I mean, Serena Colby isn’t the most usual name, and she knew things only a stepsister would know. Or someone who’d known a lot about me at twelve, anyway.

  “My point is, well, it’s the same thing with my brother. I mean, of course he’s just a kid, so it’s not like he wants to do all that much with me, but I was already in college when Dad divorced Fran, and Jonas was a preschooler. I hadn’t met Natalie yet, that was a year or so later, and by the time she had badgered me into connecting with the kid, I already hadn’t seen him in so long I figured he would never remember me.”

  Serena checked Dillon's eyes. He was still giving nothing away. Okay, fair enough, she hadn’t managed to get to any of the point yet. “Well, Natalie made me visit him off and on, take him to those Disney movies, but I do the same thing with Jonas as I do with her. Only living in the present. Maybe some of the future, but not much. Not by a long shot. I’m trying to fix it, Dillon, I really am. I even invited my mom and Zane to come over for dinner next week. Just, I guess, not so much building bridges but kind of surveying the site to see if a bridge might stand there someday. I’m being slow about it, probably. I know I need to like, embrace my past or some such mystical realization.” Serena laughed some, but Dillon was still stuck in neutral, so she pressed on. “So that’s what I do. I keep the past locked in a safe little room, and stay away from things that remind me. Like my parents, for example. I checked my calendar yesterday, and it’s been five months since I’ve talked to my dad, and that was only because neither of us really knew anyone else at Jonas’s Bar Mitzvah. My mom—well, we talked for a while, but it wasn’t the smoothest. I look at you, and you have no idea how I admire, and envy, your relationship with Shannon. And maybe you have that because you two lost your parents, and I should figure out how to have a good relationship with my parents.”

  Serena stopped abruptly, shook her head some. “Wait, I’m sorry.”

  Dillon asked, “For what?”

  “Just, I’m getting off track. I’m talking about me here. I shouldn’t have even mentioned Shannon or your parents. I mean, not now. Of course later, all you want. Here,” she finally flipped over the pages on the table, giving the waiter a little shake of the head when he tried to remove the calamari plate.

  “I listed them all. By the time I graduated college and got my first place of my own, I’d lived in twelve houses, between my parents and stepparents. Until second grade with Mom and Dad. Well, he moved out when I was in second grade, but I stayed mostly in the same house with Mom until that summer, then we lived in a duplex close to my new school, until she married Erik. By then, Dad had divorced Alice—she was the one with the evil twins who gave me hives, I told you about her—and lived on his own in some nothing apartment until he married Natalie's mom.” She pointed to the number six on the city map where she’d pinpointed the various addresses, best she could remember. “But then Mom and Erik split, so Mom and I moved to a different duplex, were on our own until she met dumb Samuel. Well, you get the point. I practically never stayed at Dad and Tennessee’s house, which was later just Dad’s, then Dad and Fran’s until they had Jonas and sold it. Their new place was way up in Conroe, but that was the last one I used my floor plans for.”

  Serena moved aside the map, and wished she hadn’t made it. She’d hoped it would get a smile out of him, but he hadn’t seemed to even look much at it. Hopefully the next part wouldn’t fall as flat.

  “So when I was little, after I had the hives and Alice and Dad had to put me in a separate room from the twins, he
took me shopping for my very own bedroom furniture. I thought it was the greatest thing ever. I’d actually been doing this for a while with my stuff at home. It started with my dollhouse, I think. I just loved rearranging the floor plan. And one day I figured that I could rearrange the furniture in my own room, just like with the dollhouse. Well, the bed was heavy, but I put my back into it and shoved it until I had it where I wanted it.”

  Serena stole another look at Dillon, to see if he was interested, if he maybe had cracked a half-smile at the cute kid story, anything. But, no. He was listening, but entirely self-contained.

  “Eventually I ended up using graph paper and making scale size cutouts of my bedroom and furniture. I even made little 3-D models of it all at some point, but that fell apart ages ago. When I was little, though, I just drew a lot of pictures of my room with the furniture in different places. And when Dad took me to get a whole second set of bedroom furniture, it felt like a huge treat. I’m sure the salesperson was confused about why I was testing how heavy everything was before I would pick anything out.” She smiled. “There was a dresser I absolutely loved, with a built-in jewelry drawer, but it was as heavy as sin, there was no way I’d have been able to shove it around on my own, so I passed it up. It was all great, you see? Because I got to rearrange two sets of furniture.” She opened the well-worn graph paper pad, with the cover she’d decoupaged as a teenager, and flipped through the succession of room plans within.

  Serena was extremely conscious of the fact that Dillon hadn’t moved or spoken much since she’d started. She wanted to get it right, tell him everything, but she hadn’t thought that would put her into such monologue territory. Maybe she had been wrong to do all this. Maybe he wanted her to shut up and let him eat his fish, which, she gathered from the increased hovering of the waiter, was just about ready to serve.

  But she hadn’t made a Plan B for a reason. She needed to say it all, as honestly and thoroughly as possible. Okay, then. Onward.