“Hey, Av.”
She opened the door farther to let me in. The old apartment was upgraded with stainless steel appliances in the kitchen, dark cabinets, and light gray wood floors throughout. The rest of the apartment was obviously furnished by a guy, with a cheap couch, old wooden tables that looked like they came from a yard sale, and a giant flat-screen TV hanging from the wall. There were small touches of Ava though, like the well-placed wall hangings, and a few tasteful photos.
She followed me while I walked around, stopping at one of the photos of a road with colorful fall trees lining it.
“Mom’s?” I pointed at it.
“Yeah.” She nodded. “She gave it to me for my birthday. I sure miss the trees over there.”
“Me, too.” I nodded, heading to the couch.
“Want a drink?” she asked, going into the kitchen.
“Just some water.”
This was my baby sister playing host for me in the apartment she shared with her boyfriend. Probably the only thing I regretted about joining the air force was how much I missed of my sisters growing into the women they were now. At least I’d been there for a few pivotal moments in the last year or so.
With two water bottles in hand, she sat on the other end of the couch, facing me with her legs crossed.
“You still run every morning?” I asked after taking a sip of my water.
“I try to.” She rolled her eyes. “It’s hard to drag myself out of bed after a long night at work.”
“Welcome to adulthood.”
She snorted. “Yeah. So how’s getting ready to have twins going?”
I laughed, flicking my water bottle lid at her. She flung her arms up dramatically to protect her face, then laughed at herself. “It’s awesome,” I said with much sarcasm. “She fights me on every damn thing. Doesn’t want to share anything. Doesn’t like talking about herself, or her health, or how hard she works.”
“Yeah, she never talked about herself the whole year I lived with her. I wish I would have asked her more while I was there.”
I messed with the label on my water bottle, wondering why I’d come to my sister to whine about my girlfriend. It wasn’t my greatest idea ever, but it was all I had at the moment. “She wouldn’t have shared anything. She doesn’t ever. Even all that time I emailed her, she just joked around with me and gave me a hard time.” I ran my hands through my hair, thinking about her phone conversation I’d overhead the night before. It hadn’t told me anything about her except that there was someone out there who she shared with. Her voice had even changed, almost like she had a completely different accent. “She ever tell you about someone named Del?”
She made a face, muttering, “Del?” Her mouth quirked while she thought on the name. “Never heard her mention anyone named Del. Who is it? Another guy?”
“No. I don’t think so” was all I said, not wanting to get Ava fired up about anything that hadn’t actually happened.
Instead I changed the subject to our family, bringing up Mom and Dad coming to Tennessee in the next week or so. But I kept thinking about this Del person, wondering who it could be. Her reaction when I mentioned the name the night before wasn’t defensive or angry, and she said she would tell me another time. It was unlikely that it was family, since she always shied away from the subject.
I would have to wait until later to bring it up. But I most definitely would.
Later that evening, I waited on the couch while Kate got ready. She’d taken a nap after I picked her up from school, so I’d chilled on the couch catching up to where she was on The Walking Dead. The weather in this state was shitty at best compared to the cool weather I was used to in Germany, but I figured I should wear jeans on our date, though I was sticking to a gray T-shirt. She’d picked some place called Brokers, saying she was craving a good steak. The pregnant woman was going to get whatever she wanted.
When she came out with her hair hanging in long curls atop a black-and-white striped dress that hugged her belly and hips and hung off her shoulders, I stopped breathing. The dress stopped right above her knees, showing off a good amount of those long tan legs. I stood from the couch, looking her over from the top of her head down to her spiked black high heels. It should have been illegal for her to look so damn sexy with that pregnant belly.
“You clean up good,” I commented a bit raggedly.
A smirk tugged at her red-painted lips. “You don’t look too bad yourself. But we better get going before I decide to change back into leggings and a T-shirt.”
As if she looked any less sexy in leggings. Women. They never knew how good they looked in just about any attire.
My nerves almost got to me when we started on our way. We’d flirted, slept together, and fought quite a bit, but we had yet to go on an actual date. She deserved better than what she seemed to be used to. I wondered if any guy had ever taken the time to take this bombshell on a date. With how damn hot she was on a bad day, I couldn’t believe no one had.
I rested my hand on her bare knee on the way to the restaurant while she chatted about an algorithm she was working on. The brains on top of her beauty sure were a plus. We could be nerds together and talk about things we both understood. It was one of the areas we’d connected on that night I met her when Ava first moved in.
The restaurant was an
