Flying

  Stella’s throat closed with emotion, so tight she couldn’t answer. Her hands shook so that the ice cubes clattered, and she set the glass on the counter, then tucked her hands in her pockets. She looked at him, trying to think of what to say, how to answer. How to leave.

  Matthew put his own glass down and came around the island. He took her in his arms before Stella could even think about pulling away. He stroked a hand down her back, then up again to cup the back of her neck. He breathed warmth against the top of her head.

  He held her. That was all.

  “There’s no way to know what might’ve been different.” Stella’s voice caught like silk on barbed wire, shredding. “There’s no way to ever know. And it’s useless to blame myself....”

  “But you do,” Matthew said. “All the time.”

  “Yes,” she said.

  “I understand,” Matthew said.

  It would’ve been easy to brush off his answer as trite, but the sound of his voice stopped her. She listened to the sound of his breathing for a moment. She believed him.

  * * *

  Stella drank the rest of her gin rickey, but not another. That one was enough to give her a pleasant buzz, and that made the movie Matthew put on that much funnier. Sitting next to him on the couch with her legs curled under her, occasionally holding his hand or resting her head on his shoulder, sometimes with him leaning against her, it was companionable. And sweet. And...normal.

  Normal like brushing her teeth at the sink next to him, like showering and putting on her pajamas and climbing into bed next to him. When he spooned her, that also felt normal. Stella waited for him to slide his hand from her belly to between her legs, to nip or nuzzle at her neck, but Matthew’s breathing slowed and he did neither of those things. He fell asleep, and that felt normal too.

  She woke in the morning better rested than she could remember being in months. Longer than that. Years. Funny how toward the end of her marriage she’d yearned with a burning fire to no longer have to share her bed, and yet it had been the warmth of a body beside her and the soft shush-shush of Matthew’s slight snores that had soothed her to sleep so sweetly.

  Maybe it was just him, Stella thought as she rolled to face him. Maybe he was special. Different. She thought of Craig, how often she’d dreamed of how perfect it would be if they’d found their way back to each other, and yet when they had, how very obvious it had been to her that he wasn’t what she wanted anymore.

  Matthew still slept, both hands curled beneath his chin under the pillow. Practically angelic. Definitely hot. She wanted to slide down his body, take his cock in her mouth and wake him that way. Or at the very least, kiss him. But, ugh, morning breath, and a quick look at the clock told her she didn’t have time for any of that. She settled for tracing the line of his bare shoulder and pressing a kiss there. He didn’t wake, and she didn’t do it again.

  Stella slipped from Matthew’s bed and dressed quickly. She didn’t need a shower, and she brushed her teeth in double time. If she didn’t move her ass, she was going to miss the only direct flight back to Harrisburg. She’d be lucky as it was to get a seat on it.

  In the bedroom, Matthew had rolled to face the other direction but didn’t appear to have woken at all. Stella packed her bag and slung it over her shoulder and debated about kissing him again, at least to wake him enough to tell him goodbye. But what would she do if he pulled her into bed and wanted to fuck her one more time?

  More important, what would she do if he didn’t?

  She settled for scrawling a note for him, thanking him for the wonderful weekend. She signed her name, her real name, though writing it down made her feel stranger than telling him had. What she did next, though, made her palms sweat and her stomach leap and twist and threaten to climb out up her throat.

  She left her phone number.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Getting up in the dark sucked. So did getting home in the dark. It was one of the few things Stella despised about her otherwise pretty fantastic job.

  What made it worse, of course, was pulling into her driveway with no outside lights on to greet her. Or any inside the house either. Tristan obviously wasn’t home and probably hadn’t been home either, Stella thought, since the kid couldn’t enter a room without turning on all the lights or exit without leaving them all burning.

  She pulled into the garage and gathered her things, juggling her travel mug and the giant water bottle she always had the best intentions of finishing but never did. The mail slipped from her fingers as she slung her bag over one shoulder, keys dangling from her other hand. Her jacket snagged on the car door and she almost had to do an entire dance routine just to get herself inside the house—everything made more complicated by the lack of welcoming light. Maybe she ought to get some timers.

  In the kitchen, Stella dumped everything on the kitchen table and considered the task of making dinner. She’d left some leftover meat loaf defrosting in the fridge that morning—a quick glance showed her it was still there. With some instant mashed potatoes and a salad, it wouldn’t be a bad dinner, but suddenly a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich and a handful of chips sounded ever so much better. If her son were here Stella would’ve made the effort at a real dinner, but alone...what was the point?

  Stella sorted through the mail while she ate her sandwich and mentally ran through all the tasks she still needed to get through tonight. Laundry. Balance her checkbook. Pay bills. Find out from Tristan what his upcoming schedule was like and what weekends he’d be with Jeff. She had a phone call from her mother to return, along with one to her best friend from high school, Lisa. They’d been playing phone tag for weeks.

  Which was why, when her phone pinged with a text message, she swiped at the screen without bothering to see who it was. At the single word—hi—from an unrecognizable number, Stella paused. The area code said it was from Las Vegas. Well, whatever had happened there was going to stay there, because Stella had never been to Sin City and didn’t know anybody there either.

  The second message came a few minutes later as she put her plate in the dishwasher and was pouring herself a glass of iced tea.

  Stella?

  She paused, then typed Who’s this?

  It’s Matthew. From Chicago.

  As if she knew dozens of Matthews. For all he knew, she might. Or it had been so long—another couple of weeks—that she’d forgotten him. Stunned, Stella stared at her phone while heat rose inside her, burning up her throat and into her cheeks. Her heart pounded. She blinked rapidly, for the moment finding it difficult to breathe.

  Carefully, she put down her tea and the pile of mail she was intending to go through while she ran a hot bath upstairs. She cradled her phone in both hands, willing herself to be calm. Not an idiot. At least he couldn’t hear her. Or see her, thank God, there was that.

  Hi! What a nice surprise, she typed.

  I got your note.

  Obviously, she thought, but didn’t type. Great. I’m glad. It’s nice to hear from you.

  The front door creaked open, and she went through the living room to greet her son. Her phone pinged again as she found Tristan in the entryway, kicking off his sneakers but, typically, leaving them where they fell as he headed toward the kitchen through the shortcut of the dining room. He’d almost bypassed her entirely, making this like some kind of Benny Hill farce, but she just caught him.

  “Hey,” Stella said. “First, put your shoes where they belong, please.”

  “I will. Starving.” Even in his sock feet, Tristan’s steps sounded like the boom of a marching band.

  Her phone pinged again, and she pulled it from her pocket to peek at the messages. Matthew had sent her a picture of a platter of spaghetti and a glass of wine. It made her laugh, along with the caption—

  Bachelor’s feast.

  “Hey,”
she said again, heading after her son after the brief distraction of her phone. “Shoes. Now. Not later. There’s...”

  He’d already discovered and pushed aside the meat loaf in favor of a foil-wrapped helping of pizza from the weekend. Stella cringed, imagining it as a playground for food poisoning. She shook her head.

  “Tristan, throw that away. Or at least heat it up!” Her phone pinged, but Stella didn’t grab it up right away. As much as she wanted to get back to her conversation, she needed to get things straight with her kid first. “Didn’t your dad feed you?”

  “Wasn’t at Dad’s.” Tristan spoke with his mouth full, pizza sauce smearing around his lips. He chomped noisily, a habit he’d picked up from his dad and one Stella loathed.

  She paused, looking up from her phone where she’d been about to reply with something lame like LOL. “What? Where were you?”

  Tristan pushed past her, pizza in hand. She reached to snag his shirt, but he was too fast, and she clutched at empty air. He started for the stairs.

  “Tristan!”

  He stopped. Turned. Gave her the longest, most annoyed sigh a teenage boy could give his mother. “What?”

  “First, don’t talk to me in that tone of voice. Second. Shoes. Third, you know the rules about food—” Before she could even finish, Tristan gave another huge sigh, this time with a grunt attached to it. He stomped through the living room to the front door, where she heard the thump and thud of his shoes being flung against the wall. Then his pounding feet heading back toward the stairs. “Hey!”

  She hadn’t even needed to go to the front hall to see that he hadn’t put his shoes where they belonged, since they belonged in his room or in the closet. “Tristan!”

  “What, Mom? Jesus!”

  “What is your problem?” Stella put a hand on her hip, aware of her phone pinging in her palm and wanting more than anything to get back to that and not have to deal with this. “And where were you?”

  “Went with Steven and Joey to the mall.”

  They stared each other down. Tristan gave her a wide-eyed and somehow also sullen look of faux innocence.

  Stella frowned. “You didn’t tell me you were going there, nor did you ask permission.”

  “Dad said it was okay.”

  Stella rubbed her tongue against the back of her teeth to keep herself from blurting out an answer. Tristan wasn’t with his dad until the weekend; therefore Jeff was not the person to ask for permission. Tristan knew that. More important, Jeff knew it.

  “Did your dad pick you up from school and take you? Because I know you didn’t come home first.” She also knew that Jeff couldn’t have picked Tristan up from school, since he’d have been at work. Cynthia could have, but it was unlikely that Tristan would’ve asked her.

  Even if she hadn’t known that, the guilt on his face would’ve given him away. “Steven drove.”

  Stella said nothing. A mother’s silent stare could be more effective than any amount of screaming. Tristan stared back with uncharacteristic defiance.

  “Dad said—”

  “It’s not up to your dad,” Stella said through a tight jaw. “When you’re staying with your dad, he gets to decide. But not when you’re with me. And you know how I feel about Steven driving you, and you knew what I’d say if you asked me, so asking your dad is the same as disobeying me, as far as I’m concerned. You’re grounded from the computer and PlayStation for the rest of the week.”

  Since she was ninety percent positive his haste to get upstairs was so that he could get online and play games with his friends and not so he could do some homework, Tristan’s response was not a surprise. The vehemence of it, however, was. Tristan pounded his fist on the railing and barked out his dismay so loudly that Stella stepped back.

  “What? Not fair!”

  “It’s more than fair.” She forced herself to remain calm, not to raise her voice. Don’t show fear, she thought suddenly, thinking of a documentary she’d seen on feral dogs. Keep eye contact.

  Muttering a series of words she definitely ought to rebuke him for, Tristan turned and stomped up the stairs. He went into his room and slammed the door behind him so hard she heard the crash of something from inside. She thought for a moment about following him, yanking open the door, demanding his respect. She knew better. Still, her heart was pounding and her stomach churned.

  Her phone pinged. Is this a bad time?

  Sorry, Stella responded. Was dealing with my son.

  A few minutes passed after that without a reply, which she thought was fair since it had taken her the same amount of time to get back to him. The next message that came through made her smile and clutch her phone to her chest. He was asking if he could call her.

  Of course. Anytime. That’s why I gave you my number.

  Her phone rang a scant minute after that. The caller ID didn’t list a name and read Las Vegas again, not Chicago, but it had to be him. Taking a deep breath, Stella answered, “Hi.”

  “Hi,” Matthew said. “How are you?”

  “I’m fine. Tired. Long day.” She didn’t even want to look at the clock now, the promise she’d made to herself of a long, hot soak in a scented tub with a few chapters of her book not looking so promising. “You?”

  “Something like that. So,” Matthew said after a few seconds of silence. “Trouble with your son?”

  Stella climbed the stairs, pausing at the top to listen for any noise of computer games coming from inside Tristan’s room. She thought wearily of opening the door and taking the computer away altogether, just to be sure, but honestly if she couldn’t trust him to obey her when she disciplined him, taking the laptop from him would be the least of her worries.

  “His dad and I don’t agree on some things,” she said lightly. “So he likes to ask his dad for permission to do the things he knows I would say no to. And he thinks I won’t figure it out.”

  “But you do. Moms always do.”

  “Of course.” She laughed a little and went into her own room, where she closed the door firmly and sank onto the bed with a sigh. “And I don’t really want to have another argument with his father about it, but I guess I’m going to have to.”

  “Uh-oh. Sounds bad.”

  She hesitated, lying back and toeing off her shoes as she settled into the pillows. She knew her reluctance to let Tristan drive with his friends was directly tied to her own issues. She knew there were plenty of parents who either didn’t worry as much or who managed to put aside their concerns to allow their kids some freedoms. She knew how it would sound when she told Matthew the issue...as if she was some kind of crazy helicopter mom who couldn’t let go.

  “I don’t like him to drive with his friend Steven,” she said flatly. “The kid’s only just reached the point where legally he can take passengers, and he wrecked his mom’s car once already. Didn’t total it or anything, but he did rear-end another car. I don’t like them joyriding around aimlessly. Tristan’s dad doesn’t seem to have the same concerns, and he’s a lot...” Stella cleared her throat, trying to think of what to say that wouldn’t come out sounding like total bittersauce. “Well. Jeff is always more concerned about what will make his life a little easier than maybe what’s the best choice. That’s all.”

  “Ah.” Matthew cleared his throat. “Makes me dread the teen years.”

  “How old are your girls?”

  He didn’t say anything at first, for so long Stella watched the numbers on her clock change. It hadn’t seemed like too personal a question. Not to someone who’d had his mouth on her pussy and his dick inside her, anyway.

  “Six and eight.”

  Her breath came a little short. “Louisa is eight? Beatrice is six.”

  “Yeah... How’d...? Oh. Yeah, I guess I told you?”

  Stella smiled. “Sort of.”

  As s
ilence fell between them, Stella remembered one more reason why she preferred flying to going on dates. Getting to know someone was like navigating a room full of broken glass in bare feet and a blindfold. It was way too easy to step on something that would make you bleed.

  “So...long day?” he asked, breaking the silence. “What do you do?”

  That was the sort of neutral question that it was fine to ask even of strangers. And she’d already told him the worst thing of all—the memory of that admission, that unburdening, painted her throat and cheeks again with heat. “I work for a company that retouches photos.”

  “Really?”

  He sounded so surprised that Stella laughed. “Yes. Really.”

  “People still need that?”

  “We deal with companies that take school and church pictures. Things like that. Sometimes I’ll get someone’s wedding pictures, senior pictures, things like that, but most professional portrait photographers use Photoshop and stuff to do their own retouching. I get stuff that comes in bulk.”

  “Huh.” Matthew made a soft noise.

  “What do you do?”

  “I look for work.”

  She blinked at that, not sure what to say until he laughed; then she laughed too, although she wasn’t sure what, exactly, was so funny.

  “I teach some adult education classes,” Matthew said. “Night school.”

  “What do you teach?”

  “English.”

  Stella made the same noise he had. “Huh.”

  “So...retouching. Sounds sexy.” Matthew laughed.

  He was flirting. She settled deeper into the mountain of her pillows. “Does it?”

  “Yep. All that touching. And retouching.”

  She laughed out loud at that. “Oh. Sure. Smoothing wrinkles and erasing moles. Totally sexy.”