About That Fling (23 page)

“Did you ever talk about it again?”

“Yeah. A week later, I got an e-mail from her. It was all businesslike, mostly talking about divorce papers and court dates. Toward the end, she apologized for her ‘moment of weakness.’ That’s what she called it. Said she hadn’t meant anything by it and could we please forget the whole thing happened.”

“And did you?”

“Not exactly, but I’d mostly pushed it out of my mind until now.” He cleared his throat. “The thing is, I believed her. She really didn’t mean it. She didn’t want me back. But the fact that I screwed up her narrative—well, that threw her for a loop.”

“Her narrative?”

Adam seemed to hesitate a moment, his eyes on the horizon. Or maybe he was just watching traffic. It was surprisingly thick for a Friday evening with stars pricking the black sky and a soft spatter of rain on the windshield.

“When you make a decision to leave someone, you tell yourself a story,” he said. “You convince yourself you have no choice, or the relationship is doomed, or the person or the situation is so awful that this is the only thing you can possibly do. Maybe it’s true, but you believe the story with all your heart. You have to believe it if you want the courage to leave.”

Jenna nodded. How many times had Mia said that?
I had to leave, I was dying inside.

How many times had she said it herself?
I couldn’t marry Sean. Not after everything, I couldn’t spend the rest of my life with him.

“So you messed up her narrative by coming to her rescue,” Jenna said. “By leaving work to be there for her when she needed you.”

He nodded. “Something I hadn’t always done. I can admit that.”

“Sometimes, kindness is the worst thing,” she said. “Especially if it unravels your entire justification for something you’ve done. Something you might not be very proud of in the first place.”

He looked at her. “Very true.” He glanced back at the road, quiet again. “How about we talk about something else? Something more uplifting.”

Jenna untucked her feet, lowering them to the floor. She let her left hand drift so it was touching his now, fingers twining with fingers.

“More uplifting than your dying grandmother and your painful divorce?”

He smiled, his eyes flicking to hers. “Sure. Like the Holocaust.”

“How about dead puppies?”

“The black plague?”

“Euthanasia?”

He lifted his hand, folding his palm over hers. He slid them both to her knee, the heel of his hand rubbing her knuckles like the space behind a cat’s ears.

“That’s what I love about you, Jenna. You always know how to make me smile.”

She smiled in response, almost a required reaction to the word
smile
. Or maybe the word
love
. It was getting difficult to tell.

Early the next morning, Adam drove from their Seattle hotel to his sister’s house in Ballard. Shelly had tried to convince them to stay over the night before, but he’d insisted he didn’t want to bother her by arriving late.

It wasn’t the whole truth.

In reality, he wanted more time alone with Jenna. He’d made sure to book a hotel room with two beds, not wanting to presume anything.

But Jenna had taken one look at the setup, tossed her suitcase on the bed closest to the door, and turned to smile at him. “Looks like we’ve got a place to store our bags.” She’d grinned wider, then pulled her sweater off over her head and reached for the button on her jeans. He stood there blinking at her in the rosy light of the hotel room, utterly transfixed by the creaminess of her skin, the static that made her hair float like a halo around her head.

He was absolutely certain he’d never seen anything so beautiful.

Adam shook his head and hit the blinker, bringing himself back to the present. Probably not a good idea to show up with a hard-on for his first visit with his sister in three months.

He turned onto the narrow avenue where Shelly had lived for the last five years, counting off houses and hoping he’d remember which place was hers. He’d been there plenty of times, but he usually came straight from the airport from some nearby city where he’d been contracted to do mediation.

He glanced over at Jenna, who was smoothing her hair with her hands. Reaching over, he rested a hand on her knee. “You’ll do great.”

She gave him a weak smile and nodded. “I hope so.”

“Just be yourself.”

“Yeah, but which self? The professional self who stoically holds it together in business meetings about illicit penis pictures, or the self who gets giddy on wine at girls’ night?”

Adam grinned and pulled into his sister’s driveway. “You weren’t that stoic.”

“My stoic self is insulted you think so. My girls’ night self admits you’re probably right.”

He turned off the ignition and leaned over to plant a quick kiss on her mouth. The temptation to make it a longer kiss surged like a wave, but he resisted. “Just be whichever self feels right in the moment. Maybe not the one who did that swirly thing with her tongue last night, though.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” she said, and reached for the door handle.

Shelly was waiting on the doorstep before they even got all the way up the walk. Her brown curls frizzed in the Seattle drizzle, and she was barefoot and slender in jeans and a bright blue tank top. Spotting Adam, she hurled herself at him, engulfing him in a hug that smelled like sunshine and the floral perfume their mother used to wear.

“Hey, doofus! Long time, no see.” She squeezed him hard, then released him. “Now get out of my way. I need to meet the new woman in your life.”

He turned to see Jenna extending a polite hand, but Shelly pulled her into a hug.

“No need for the handshake bullshit,” she said, squeezing Jenna so tightly Adam heard her spine crack. “We’re a hugging family.”

Adam stepped aside to give them space, while Jenna laughed and hugged back with equal fierceness. “I’ve heard so much about you.”

“I’ve heard almost nothing about you,” Shelly replied, giving Jenna another squeeze before drawing back to glare at Adam. “My brother’s communication skills leave something to be desired. We message each other a dozen times a day over Words with Friends, but I have no idea what you do for work or for fun or even what your last name is.”

He watched Jenna’s shoulders relax, and she met Shelly’s grin with one of her own. “Full name Jenna McArthur, and I’m the Chief Relations Officer for Belmont Health System. For fun, I read spy novels, practice target shooting, and drink copious amounts of good wine. Here.”

She reached into her handbag and pulled out a bottle of something with a lot of Italian words on the label. She handed it to his sister with a reverence other women might reserve for religious artifacts. “My favorite Chianti from Italy. I hope you like it.”

“Oh, I like it,” Shelly said, reaching out to take the wine. She looked over at Adam and gave him a smile that made something swell warmly in his chest. “I like it very, very much.”

She turned and walked into the house, waving them to follow. “Bathroom’s down that hall if you need it. Want to drive together to Nana and Gramps’s place?”

“That sounds good,” Adam said, resting his hand in the middle of Jenna’s back as he guided her into the living room. “Would you mind if we headed over right away? I’d like to get there as soon as visiting hours start.”

“I’ll just grab my keys,” Shelly called. “Jenna can ride up front with me.”

“What, you don’t want some brother-sister bonding time?”

“Nope. We’re already bonded, jerk. I spent my entire childhood with you pulling my pigtails and stealing my candy and fighting with me about who took longer showers.” Shelly grinned as she led them out to her bright orange MINI Cooper. “I already know your annoying ass. Now I need to get to know Jenna better.”

“I promise I will neither pull your hair nor hog the shower,” Jenna replied, settling into the passenger seat of Shelly’s car. “No promises about the candy though.”

The two women chatted all the way to the west side of Seattle, and by the time they reached the assisted living facility, it was clear they’d become fast friends. Adam watched from the backseat, feeling equal parts relief and nostalgia. It had never been like this with Mia and Shelly, not even before the affair. There had always been something stiff in their interactions. Something guarded and even a little competitive, though he could never figure out which of them set that tone. No matter how many courses he took in counseling and human behavior, there was no accounting for chemistry.

He’d wondered sometimes how Mia and Jenna had become so close after only two years of friendship. Now, seeing how quickly his sister connected with her, he didn’t wonder anymore. Jenna was easy to love quickly and fiercely.

Love
.

He’d said the word to her yesterday in the car, and watched her eyes widen.

That’s what I love about you
, he’d told her, and he meant it. But he meant more than that, and he wondered if she knew.

“Here we are,” Shelly said, pulling into a parking spot. “How much did Adam tell you about what to expect?”

“I know your grandmother is in the last stages of Alzheimer’s, and that your grandfather barely leaves her side,” Jenna said. “Not even when the nurses come to tend to her.”

Shelly nodded and reached for the door handle. “There’s a good chance Nana won’t wake up at all. She’s been sleeping a lot lately, and honestly, that’s better. Before this, she went through a real combative stage.”

“Does she recognize you?”

Shelly shook her head, and Adam watched her features pinch with sadness. “Not usually. Not anymore. When she’s lucid these days, she doesn’t even seem to know who Gramps is, though she does perk up a little when he sits by her bed and plays Beatles songs on his guitar.”

Adam swallowed hard and pushed the passenger seat forward, clambering over it to emerge from his sister’s clown car into the drizzly morning air. They filed through the front door together, stopping to sign in at the front desk. Shelly signed first, then Jenna. Adam looked at her signature, feeling an odd swell of pride when he saw she’d written “lady friend” in the relationship field.

Shelly led the way down a corridor bathed in fluorescent light and the cloying pine scent of cleaner. She stopped in a doorway at the end of the hall and knocked loudly before trooping in.

“Hi, Gramps! Look who’s here to see you!”

Noticing Jenna’s hesitation, Adam stepped past her and into the cramped little room. He watched Gramps’s eyes go wide with surprise, then delight. As the old man struggled to get to his feet, Adam hurried to his side.

“Don’t get up, I can hug you right where you are.”

He wrapped his arms around Gramps, surprised at how bony he felt. He wore a faded Chicago Cubs sweatshirt Adam remembered buying him for Christmas ten years ago. His pants were baggy enough to fall off his hips if he stood up, so it was probably best to keep the old man sitting. Drawing back, Adam glanced at the hospital bed where Nana lay. She seemed peaceful enough, though her face was creased in a frown.

“Good to see you, son,” Gramps said, and Adam turned back to see Shelly smothering him in a hug. “Shells said you were bringing someone with you?”

“I did,” Adam said, waving Jenna into the room. She took a few timid steps forward to stand beside him, and Adam felt his heart twist with affection for every damn person in this tiny room.

“Gramps, meet Jenna,” he said. “Jenna, meet Gramps and Nana, also known as Floyd and Edie.”

Jenna smiled and took a step toward Gramps. She seemed to hesitate, and he saw her rub her palm against her thigh, readying herself to offer a handshake. Instead, she stooped down and wrapped her arms around the old man’s bony shoulders.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you, sir.”

“Call me Gramps, everyone does. Even the nurses and doctors.”

“Gramps,” she said, trying out the word as she drew back from the hug and stood upright again. “I see you’re a Cubs fan? My grandfather took me to see them play at Wrigley years ago.”

“Wrinkly ears?” He scrubbed his hands down his face, frowning. “Sure, I’ve got wrinkly ears, wrinkly cheeks, wrinkly jowls. That’s what happens when you get old.”

Jenna blinked, her mouth dropping open in horror. “No—I—Wrigley Field. Um, baseball? Adam told me in the car you’re a fan of the game.”

The old man grinned. “Oh yeah? What else did he tell you about me?”

“He said you worked as a lumberjack for forty years and that you’re very good with your hands.” She smiled, warming up a bit. “He also said you love dogs—that you had some really great ones when Adam and Shelly were growing up.” She pointed to a framed photo on the end table beside him. “That must be Shaggy on the grass next to you in that photo?”

Gramps raised a bushy eyebrow. “Saggy ass? Well, missy, you’re getting a little personal now. An old man can’t help it if things start to droop a little bit here and there as he gets older. ’Course Edie never had any complaints in that department.”

Adam stifled a laugh and turned away, leaving them to get acquainted. He edged over to his grandmother’s bedside. She looked small and pale, as though she might blow away if he sneezed on her. Not that sneezing on old people was ever a good idea. He’d done enough jobs in healthcare to know that.