The One That Got Away Read Online Free PDF Page B

cell, probably taking calls in hushed churches, public libraries, likely even in the middle of making love, for all she could guess. If he hadn’t picked up, it meant he was as through with her as she liked to think she was with him.
    Accepting reality for what it was, Serena punched her phone back to life and grimly did her duty, dialing another number. “Hi, Jamie,” she sighed when he answered.

4
    A long line of excited young buppies and gangbangers—many of them scantily clad young women—clogged the sidewalk outside Excursions, a West Side nightclub. As Tony bobbed and wove through the crowd, mouthing respectful “excuse me’s” to the most belligerent-looking roughnecks, he smiled with pride at the evidence of his success. He had coordinated several “off the chain” book parties the past year, but tonight’s would set a new standard. Folk from across Chicago were out in full force, eager to hear his little sister Zora’s first public reading from One of the Boyz, her recently released novel. The excitement charging the air was unmistakable: after reading Boyz , the hottest urban novel since The Coldest Winter Ever, Chicago readers hungered for a glimpse of its creator.
    Tony’s financial ambitions—and debts—had fueled Zora’s growing career. Just a year earlier, he started generating extra cash by investing in up-and-coming artists. For his first project, he financed the reprinting of his old friend Mitchell Stone’s self-published novel Out of His Shadow . The book sold out three additional printings, earning Tony a 15 percent return on his money, a nice improvement over his stock portfolio.
    He was hooked after that, carefully selecting writers, painters, and poets with untapped potential and helping them spread theirwings. By the time his twenty-year-old half sister brought her first manuscript to him for feedback, he’d already started doing public relations for his artists, scheduling them on local radio like WHOT and V103-FM and coordinating high-profile readings at popular clubs like Excursions.
    As the club’s head bouncer frisked him and ushered him from the nippy night air into the club’s brick-walled, fluorescent-lit lobby, Tony had only one regret. Though Trey had promised to swing through, his other two best friends, O.J. and Mitchell, wouldn’t be by tonight. O.J. was away hosting a benefit for the United Negro College Fund, and Mitchell was in Atlanta visiting his older son, Clay. Tony was on his own tonight; he didn’t know why, but the realization was unsettling.
    Squirreling away his unrest, he coolly surveyed the growing crowd. Brimming with a few excess ounces of Coors Light, he savored the warm sensation flowing through his veins. He was in a much better mood than earlier, at Devon’s wedding. The suds distracted him from everything but one fact: Serena hadn’t left a message. It had taken a few hours to admit he wished she had.
    He should have just skipped the wedding. He loved his boy Devon, but his loyal attendance had done nothing but stir up pointless memories, starting with the chilly autumn day she strutted into Chicago’s DuSable Museum, where he was a high school senior giving tours to out-of-town visitors. Looking over the group of students from Cincinnati’s Princeton High, he’d considered stepping to several of the girls, but even at sixteen Serena was singular. Petite, curvaceous figure . . . close-cropped, boyish haircut . . . the face of a young Lena Horne. Tony applied his charms with the stealth of a panther, sidling alongside her as a movie summarized trader Jean Baptiste Pointe DuSable’s early adventures. By the time the auditorium lights came up, he had her hotel name and room number.
    Imagine his surprise that night, when an innocent postcurfew stroll along Michigan’s shore revealed something beyond Serena’s intriguing package. Her