The One That Got Away (16 page)

W
hen Serena pulled into her reserved parking space at work, the fire red Passat sat in the far left corner of the administration building's parking lot.

Even with a blanket of snow flurries testing her vision, Serena recognized the car on sight, and her heartbeat immediately began to race.

Mouth growing dry, she took a deep breath, shut off her car's ignition and stepped from the driver's side door. Slamming it shut and activating her alarm, she searched in vain for Mr. Brewster, the lot's security guard. Any other day he'd be out here as employees pulled into the lot, directing them into specific spaces and prodding them for opinions about the day's news as they headed toward the back entrance.

Not today. With the early morning's dusky skies brightening slowly, the Passat's headlights were still noticeable as they blinked off and the driver opened his door. As Tony's black leather shoes hit the dusty white pavement, he closed his door forcefully and slid his hands into the pockets of his beige cashmere overcoat. Though he was a good hundred yards away, Serena heard his voice as clearly as if he was next to her. “Good morning.”

With still no other cars pulling in behind her, Serena gripped
her purse and began striding purposefully toward the main entrance. Stepping around the occasional patch of ice, the clack of her heels against the blacktop ringing in her ears, she cursed her inability to move faster. Tony, meanwhile, closed in fast, his limp doing little to slow him down. “All I need is one minute, Serena,” he said, his voice growing louder as he approached. “I just want to close the loop.”

As Serena arrived at the door, she felt him on her heels and turned to take him on. “I was wrong, Tony.” Her right arm jutting out like a spear, she felt her voice shake but knew her face was a mask of resolve. “I wasn't in my right mind that night, but I used you. It's that simple.” She stayed rooted even as he inched closer, his desire radiating like fumes. “I'm really no better than I was when you caught me with Jamie those years ago. Just forgive me and forget me, okay?”

Standing on the balls of his feet, Tony reached out and slowly slid his hands up and down Serena's stiff arms. Massaging them until her defensive posture softened, he let his words dribble out. “I should ask you . . . to forgive me,” he said, “but this was the only way I could get your attention. Answer one question, and we don't need ever need to speak again. Do you really want Jamie back, or would you rather rebuild your life with someone new—whether that's me or a complete stranger?”

Serena heard the question, felt the true answer rock her soul, and knew she could never share it. “It doesn't matter. Whatever the answer, you wouldn't be on my list of new people—first, you're not new, and second, I used you that night for nothing but a sex high. I was manic, Tony! I'd been spotty with my meds for weeks when we hooked up.” She regained her composure, lowering her voice to a whisper. “I was with you that night for all the wrong reasons. My fault, not yours.”

Pulling her close, he smiled nervously. “We talked about all that,” he said. “But I know you sought me out based on real emotions; you wanna know how? I'll bet my life you weren't manic the night of Devon and Kym's wedding.
You
called me that night, Serena, not the other way around.”

Tony's benign accusation sinking in, Serena knew he was right, and knew she couldn't acknowledge that inconvenient fact. “I have to go . . .”

Realizing she was pulling away, Tony gave in to the desperation gripping him. “Please, we need to talk this out. We can do it in a public place, wherever you're comfortable—”

A car's brakes squealed behind them and they both involuntarily turned toward it. After lurching into a nearby parking spot, the yellow Mustang's driver's side door flew open. As he stepped from the car, adjusting the fit of his woolly scarf, Levi Little's eyes shot toward Tony and Serena. Serena saw the flash in his gaze, recalled the security director's infatuation with her, and knew immediately she wanted out of this whole situation.

They stood, mute, as Levi strolled toward them. “Good morning, Serena,” he said, tipping his leather cap in her direction before glancing at Tony. “Good morning, brother.” He stopped suddenly, took another glance at the stress etched into Serena's brow. “Everything okay here?”

Tony had his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and his eyes aimed at the snowy sky, but his tone showed no fear of the larger man. “Mind your business, brother. Mind your business and keep moving.”

Serena grabbed at the elbow of Levi's overcoat as he turned toward Tony. “Levi, everything's fine. Get inside, away from all this cold.” As Levi huffed and spun back around toward the building's back entrance, Serena scolded Tony with her eyes.

“I'm going inside,” she said, stepping away after the door had shut behind Levi. “If I see your car from the window when I reach my office, I will call that brother or one of his guards.” Biting her lower lip to keep any tears at bay, she looked back toward him. “God, Tony, I am so sorry. Please go, just forget me.”

“Serena,” Tony replied, his chest heaving, the corners of his eyes stinging, “you walk away now, that's it.” Audrey's invitation from the night before rang in his ears, and for the first time he felt her presence as a comfort, a salve for the constant pain of this
woman's rejection. “There's another lady in the picture, one I won't hurt by starting something only to float back to you.”

One hand on the back door's handle, Serena resisted the swelling urge to learn more about this mystery woman. Instead, she turned away from Tony, hoping the strength in her tone was an effective mask. “Give her a chance, Tony. Maybe she'll be blessed by what I missed.”

W
hen Serena opened her eyes that morning, she nearly jumped when Jamie shifted in place. For more than three months she'd had the bed to herself, and she'd realized at bedtime last night that the initial loneliness that caused had quickly morphed into a comforting sense of liberation. Now that Jamie had earned the right to return to their bedroom, she realized his presence would feel like an intrusion for the first few days.

She was turning away when she felt him stir again. In seconds she felt his warm breath on her neck, followed by a quick hit-and-run kiss to her cheek. Her body tensed as if awaiting a blow, she shut her eyes in relief when he pulled away and flopped onto his back.

“Good morning,” Jamie said, his voice low and respectful as if he was in church. When she didn't rush to reply, he continued. “I feel very blessed this morning, Serena, just being here with you. And I'm really excited about the program tonight; it'll be our first family outing in forever.” Sydney's school had its Christmas program—which of course now had to be called a “holiday” program—and for better or worse, it would be the Kincaid family's first reemergence into the social scene. “And,” Jamie continued, “you should know, there's no rush, no specific timetable about anything else.”

Serena gave a friendly-sounding grunt and fought the urge to
shake her head. As much as she respected Jamie's ongoing metamorphosis, she knew good and well what his words meant.
I'm horny as hell, babe. Haven't gone this long without it in years, but I'll give you a few more days to get back to breaking me off regular.
He was only human, after all.

Letting her husband back inside of her, however, presented new problems all their own. As long as she kept Jamie at arm's length, Serena had found it surprisingly easy to hide the fact that her sex life consisted largely of reliving her one night with Tony. While her recent appointments with her psychiatrist and her lithium regimen had bolstered her ability to turn him away when he showed up at her job, the memory of him that day—the longing etched into his brow, the soulful plea in his eyes—intensified their rendezvous in her mind. In a way, it was as if she'd returned to her teens, when bad boys ruled her world, and Jamie and Tony had traded places. Where Tony was a bearded, limping mystery, the husband who'd let her down so many times had become a teetotaling, devout Muslim. Or at least he was trying to be one.

Serena knew that her years of cheating, of taking numerous lovers at the same time, were too far in the past for her to go back. The very thought of sleeping with Jamie, without first confessing what she'd done with Tony, made her gag with nausea. She'd tried to explain it all to Jade the day before, when she'd panicked as bedtime neared.

Jade, who never missed a chance to disapprove of what her girl had done, bore down on her like a sumo wrestler. “You and I both know that you don't
have
to tell Jamie what you did,” she said as they sat on her front porch. “Let's be real, girl. After all the fun Jamie's had on the side, it's really not his business if you finally lost it one time and went buck wild.” Pouring herself another glass of red wine, she'd shot a sudden glance toward her friend. “Of course, that's only true if you never see Tony again.”

Serena circled the rim of her wineglass with an index finger. “I haven't done anything to keep in contact with him. You know that.”

“You know what I mean,” Jade replied. The corners of her
small mouth dove into a frown. “Are you holding Jamie off because you're afraid to admit you cheated, or because you just want out of your marriage?”

Shocked, Serena sat still for a moment before shaking her head slowly. “Where do you get that idea? He's the one that cheated on me all along, remember? He's the one that had a kid by someone else. If I wanted out of the marriage, I'd have never let him back in the house, okay?”

“I don't know,” Jade had replied, eyes averted as if embarrassed to speak her mind. “I think you've convinced yourself that the only way to make the marriage work is to confess about Tony, because you know once you do that Jamie will step. Then you'll be free to hook up with Tony.”

Climbing from her bed, Jamie's new snores buzzing in the background, Serena considered calling Jade to tell her off. In the moment, she'd sat back and let Jade's loving accusations hang in the air before changing the subject, but her mind was full of rebuttals now. The only problem was they all rang false.

After going to Sydney's room and waking her younger daughter, reminding her they had to move fast in order to get to her basketball practice on time, she went to the kitchen and began setting out breakfast items. That was when she remembered to check in on Dawn.

Between her unsettling confrontation with Tony and her struggle to integrate Jamie back into her life, Serena had nearly blocked out Wednesday night's knock-down-drag-out with her older daughter. That was the night she invited her mother to stop by and broach the sensitive topic of Dawn's budding sexuality. Even though Dawn had sworn her to secrecy, Serena had been confident that her child would respond positively to her grandmother's loving counsel about abstaining from “fornication.”

It may have been her most disastrous parental calculation to date. The minute the word “sex” passed Jan's lips, Dawn's eyes rolled back into her head and her mouth went slack. “This isn't happening, this isn't happening,” she began saying to herself in a tight whisper. She had leaned forward, her elbows on her knees,
her chin resting against her lower neck. “Granny, I promise I'll keep my legs closed if you don't talk to me about this.”

Jan had scooted closer to her granddaughter on the couch, rested a hand against the child's shoulder. “Dawn, honey, there's nothing to be ashamed of in having certain feelings. The question is what you do about them.”

Dawn shook her head, seemingly unable to process the combined stimuli—her grandmother and the topic of sex. “I don't have any feelings, okay? I'm gonna be a nun, even! I swear!”

“Dawn,” Jan replied, her nose twitching at the sound of her granddaughter's tone, “watch your language now.”

“You lied, Mom! Straight-up lied!” Dawn was on her feet before Serena or Jan realized it, an index finger pointed toward Serena like a rapper's nine-millimeter. “Why'd you do that?” The words barely escaped Dawn's mouth before a bubble of her tears and spit covered it. “Why?”

Serena still wasn't sure how she and her mother finally got Dawn calmed down, but by the time Dawn went to bed Serena had apologized for breaking her daughter's confidence. Hoping to smooth things over some, she had even agreed to Dawn's request to attend a Friday night sleepover at the home of Celia, a former classmate of hers from Western Hill. Serena hadn't initially liked the idea of letting her sexually curious child out of her sight for that long, but had decided to show some trust and hope it would be rewarded.

When she dialed Dawn's cell phone and got voice mail, Serena grabbed her Pocket PC and looked up Celia's home number. “Hello, Jenny,” she said when Celia's mother answered the phone. “I can tell you've got a very quiet house right now. The girls were probably up until a few minutes ago, I suppose.”

“Oh, you better know that,” Jenny replied, laughing heartily. Serena had always liked Jenny, a divorced fund-raiser for the local Urban League. The lady had her hands full raising two girls and a son by herself, but never seemed down or full of complaints. “You must be trying to find your young lady.”

“Well,” Serena replied, chuckling softly, “she talks me into
buying her a cell phone on the basis it'll be easier for me to keep track of her, then never answers the darn thing.”

“Honey,” Jenny said, her voice humming with amusement, “she never answers the darn thing when she sees
your
number on the caller ID. In a weak moment, mine admitted she treats me the same sorry way.”

Serena's shoulders vibrated with laughter, and she savored the light moment. “No respect for the mommas, huh?”

“Uh-uh. Hold on while I go downstairs and pick through the crowd of bodies in sleeping bags.”

Nibbling on a fingernail, Serena cradled her phone on one shoulder and set up her frying pan for bacon and a griddle for pancakes. By the time she began stirring flour and eggs in a bowl, she was wondering whether Jenny had accidentally hung up on her. Just as she prepared to punch the
FLASH
button and call back, a breathless voice greeted her from the other end. “Uh, Serena?”

“Yes?”

Her tone uncertain, Jenny's words dribbled out. “I don't know where Dawn is, exactly. She and another girl aren't in the house.” She paused, and Serena pictured Jenny biting a lip. “I've searched everywhere.”

The news sinking in, Serena did all the right things, questioning Jenny and then young Celia with the precision of a prosecutor. As she continued her inquisitions, though, Serena's fears of foul play were dwarfed by a gnawing, dimming resignation: the cycle had begun. After Serena's lectures and every other blood, sweat, and tear, Dawn was pissing on it all, taking off on the very trail of tears her mother had warned her about.

“I'll find her, but I'll find you, too, Glenn,” Serena whispered under her breath after hanging up, visions of that condom from a few weeks ago filling her head. “You won't do her the way they did me.”