Page 24 of About that Fling (The Can’t Have Hearts Club #2)

Jenna turned to see a petite blonde woman making her way toward them. Their eyes locked, and the woman blinked in surprise. “Jenna? What brings you here? Are the two of you together?”

“Ellen.”

Jenna uttered the word at the same time Adam did, and some immature part of her wanted to call “jinx” and laugh about the whole thing.

But most of her wondered why Adam was so affected by the sight of Mark’s ex-wife.

“Hello, Ellen,” Adam said. “I didn’t realize you’d moved to Portland.”

“Well, when Mark relocated with—with her —it just made sense to do the same. I can work from anywhere, and it was important for Katie to have a relationship with her father, even if he does make piss-poor decisions in life.” She frowned and looked at Jenna.

“Sorry, Jenna. I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I know Mia is your friend.”

“It’s okay,” Jenna murmured, even though it wasn’t. She’d only met Ellen twice before, both times at Mia’s house when Ellen had shown up to retrieve Katie. She hadn’t been pleasant.

With the tension radiating off the woman like sonic waves, Jenna wasn’t feeling too pleasant herself.

“So what brings you here?” Ellen asked, looking from Adam to Jenna and back again, a hint of amused suspicion on her face.

“I’m in town doing some mediation work at the medical center where Jenna works,” Adam supplied, finding his words first. “Jenna’s part of the bargaining group, so we’re preparing some team-building exercises in advance of next week’s session.”

“Nonviolent Communication,” Jenna supplied, feeling stupid and out of place uttering the words. “With handguns.”

“Right,” Ellen said, frowning. “I’m not familiar with that method.”

Adam cleared his throat. “What brings you here, Ellen?”

“Oh, just came out for girls’ night. I took up target shooting as a hobby last year, so this helps me unwind. Blow off a little steam, you know?”

“Absolutely,” Jenna said, remembering how frustrated Mia had been when she’d learned about Ellen’s new hobby.

“She keeps guns in the house with Katie,” Mia had said, raking her fingers through all that red hair. “Guns! With a twelve-year-old sleeping down the hall.”

Thinking of Mia filled Jenna with a lukewarm mix of fondness and guilt, and she forced herself to turn her attention back to the conversation at hand.

“So, it’s been good seeing you,” Adam said. His tone sounded almost normal now, but Jenna could see the tension in his jaw. “Take care, Ellen.”

Ellen blinked, visibly surprised by the dismissal. “Of course. I hope you’re doing well, Adam. All things considered.”

“It’s water under the bridge,” he answered. “Let bygones be bygones. Forgive and forget and all that.”

He was spewing clichés like some sort of broken motivational tape, so Jenna mustered up the most genuine smile she could, and made her best effort to save him from whatever was troubling him.

“It’s great running into you, Ellen. I saw Katie the other day.

She’s growing into such a smart, beautiful young woman. You must be so proud.”

Ellen’s eyes narrowed, and Jenna wondered where she’d misspoken. Was it the reminder that Katie had Mia in her life? Another female role model who was nothing at all like Ellen herself?

“Right,” Ellen said, nodding sharply before turning away. “Have a nice night, you two.”

“Shoot hard,” Adam called. “Or shoot well. Or—” He shook his head and lowered his voice. “Whatever the fuck you wish someone at a shooting range.”

Jenna watched as Ellen vanished into the crowd. When she was certain the woman was out of earshot, she turned back to Adam.

“What the hell was that?”

“What do you mean?” His expression seemed less guarded now, but he hadn’t unclenched his jaw.

“You acted like you were being forced to make conversation with a serial killer.”

“Not a serial killer. Maybe someone convicted of chronic jaywalking or a few instances of petty theft.”

“What?”

“It was a metaphor.” He sighed and took a step forward with the line. “There’s some history there.”

“Besides the fact that she used to be married to the guy who stole your wife?”

He flinched at the words, and Jenna regretted them instantly. She opened her mouth to apologize, but he’d already moved on.

“It’s more complicated than that.”

“How do you mean? Mark and Ellen had been divorced for a while when he and Mia had their—” she stopped, cleared her throat of the word affair.

“When Mark and Mia got together. Mia told me Ellen and Mark divorced more than a year before that.” She paused as it occurred to her she only knew Mia’s version of the story. “Right?”

He shrugged. “Sort of. Mark and Ellen split up, but they were working on patching things up. Dating again, trying to see if they could make it work. For their daughter’s sake, and because there was a lot of history there.” Adam’s jaw tightened again. “Then Mia came along and derailed things.”

Something flared in Jenna. Defensiveness for her friend, and maybe a touch of annoyance at being in this situation in the first place. “According to Ellen.” Jenna wasn’t sure if she meant it as a question or a statement, and she saw Adam’s brow’s lift ever so slightly.

“You don’t believe it?” he asked. “That Mia would knowingly wreck someone else’s relationship?”

“No, that’s not what I meant. I mean, obviously I know about what happened with your marriage. She was up front with me from day one. She takes full responsibility for the affair, Adam.”

“Okay,” he said. It sounded like agreement, but his jaw hadn’t unclenched one bit.

“I’m just saying, I think she would have told me if the affair broke up two marriages instead of one. That’s all.”

“Does it matter?”

“Maybe,” she said, not sure why it did. The line moved forward and Jenna shuffled along with it, only dimly aware of the hum of female voices around her and the distant crack of gunfire. “Is it possible Mark never told Mia he and Ellen were trying to patch things up?”

“Anything’s possible. Is anyone ever the villain in their own version of a story?”

“What do you mean?”

“Just that when someone has an affair—” his face twisted a little on that word, and Jenna longed to reach for his hand, but she stayed still.

“When someone has an affair, that person can always find a way to justify it in their mind. In their explanations to other people. Even if they admit later on that it wasn’t the right choice, deep down, they can tell the story in a way that convinces you it was a reasonable choice. ”

“So what’s the alternative?” she asked, surprised by the prickliness in her own voice.

“You want her to wear a scarlet letter? To don a hair shirt and spend the rest of her life hiding in a cave doing penance? People make mistakes, Adam. It happens all the time, and they can’t be expected to spend the rest of eternity being punished for it. ”

Adam shook his head and took a deep breath. “Look, I don’t want to argue about this. I’m sorry. This is a tender subject for me, and yeah, I’ll admit it—it bothers me sometimes to know you’ve only heard Mia’s side of the story.”

“Is there a side you want me to hear?”

“No. I’m not interested in an endless game of he said, she said .

” He shook his head again and took another step forward with the line.

“I just want you to consider the possibility that things are more complicated than it might seem. It’s not a simple case of, ‘her husband neglected her, so she had an affair,’ nor is it a cut-and-dried instance of ‘his evil wife cheated and broke his heart.’ Both stories are completely true and completely false, and we can’t pick just one to believe. ”

“Okay,” Jenna said, glancing up to see they’d almost reached the front of the line.

Ellen was nowhere to be seen, which was a bigger relief than it should have been.

Jenna took a few calming breaths and tried to steer the conversation onto slightly safer ground.

“How did you know Mark’s ex-wife, anyway?

Did you join a support group of thwarted exes or something like that? ”

“Something like that,” Adam said, and took a step to the front of the line. “I slept with her.”