“I . . . mostly knew you were joking. Sorry. I should have come to your door. I was just trying to figure out how to respond.” I handed her my phone, the picture pulled up. “I was about to send you this.”
“Oh my word! The two of you together are so adorable.”
“I thought so too.”
She smiled and rolled her eyes. “How’s Avery doing?”
“She seems great. She says she feels good.”
“How’s the baby eating? Is he sleeping for her?”
“Um, good? I guess? I know she, um . . .” I squirmed in my seat. There were technical terms for what I was trying to say. And Avery hadn’t hesitated to throw them at me, telling me I had better not wimp out. But I couldn’t remember anything she’d said. “The um, the milk is good?” Oh sheesh. “No! Not good. I mean, I wouldn’t know. I just mean, she has some.”
Lilly froze and smiled. “You had to work hard on that one, huh?”
“Shut up. She’s my sister. It’s weird. Plus, I don’t know all the terms and stuff.”
“It’s okay. I’m following. Her milk is in, and baby is eating great, yeah?”
I stared at the ceiling, wondering why I’d started a conversation about my sister’s boobs. “It’s pretty much all he does. Like it’s impossible for me to be over there without Avery just pulling . . .” I started to gesture, but no good was going to come from it. “Can we change the subject? Please?”
Lilly laughed. “Does it help to know it’s totally normal?”
“What, the baby eating all the time? Or how uncomfortable I am right now?”
She grinned and shrugged her shoulders. “Both? I promise it’ll ease up in a couple of months. Will you tell her to call me if she has any questions? Or if there’s anything I can do?”
I raised an eyebrow. “Is that a typical thing you nurses do?”
“No, but neither is dating a patient’s brother. Plus, I like Avery. And her baby is really cute.”
“Yeah? I think I remember you telling me in the hospital you thought he looked like me.”
“I did say that. It’s true. Though, you wear facial hair way better than the baby.”
My shoulders shook with silent laughter. It was going to be a good date.
Chapter 7
Lilly
He looked good. I mean, the guy made tired, scruffy, I-slept-in-a-hospital-recliner-all-night look good. So of course, all niced up for a date was far from disappointing.
My cell phone buzzed with a text notification and I slipped it out of my pocket. “Sorry. This is my friend—she’s actually on her way into town tonight.”
“Yeah? Do we need to reschedule?”
“Oh no! I’m good. She won’t be in until after ten—she’s driving and with the weather all crappy, it’s taking her forever.” I pulled up my camera. “Here—take a picture with me? I’ve told her about you so let’s give her some photographic evidence.”
He took the phone and held it out in front of us, reaching over to wrap his other arm around me. “Talking about me already, huh?” he said. “I’ll take that as a good sign.”
We smiled and he tapped the capture button then handed me the phone. I pulled up the picture.
“How does it look?”
I smiled. “We look good.” I texted him the picture.
He pulled it up on his own device. “You look amazing. I look like a guy that has really good luck.”
“So where are you taking me, Mr. Lucky?”
He shifted the car into gear. “Nine Mile over in Montford. You know it?”
“I know the Nine Mile right down the street. There’s one in Montford too?”
His face fell. “There’s one right down the street?”
I pointed out the window. “Um, right there, actually.”
“We’re just going to pretend we didn’t see that one. You good with that?”
I laughed. “Sounds good to me.”
“I picked Nine Mile at Avery’s recommendation, and she only mentioned the Montford location and then I didn’t connect when you said you were in West Asheville . . .” He sighed. “Sorry. I’m not actually very good at stuff like this.” He looked sheepish and uncomfortable and it was totally adorable.
“I think you’re doing just fine. And you’ll love Nine Mile. The food is great.”
He pulled onto the freeway. “So your friend’s coming in town?”
“Yes! My best friend, Emma. She’s a musician up in Cleveland but they cancelled her concert this weekend so she decided to brave the roads and drive home. Her sister’s birthday is tomorrow and she wants to surprise her.”
“Sounds fun. Is she staying with you?”
“Tonight, yes. She’ll be with her family tomorrow night.”
The questions kept coming. How did Emma and I meet? How long had we been friends? Did I like living in Asheville? Did I have any siblings? He was easy to talk to and seemed like he really cared what my answers were. Like it wasn’t a game. No trying to impress or playing it cool. He was just interested. And he wasn’t afraid for me to know it.
“What about you?” I asked him. “Did you grow up around here?”
“Born and raised,” he said. “Growing up, I always thought I’d want to leave. I went to school in California, at Berkeley, and it was great out there. But I missed the mountains. With my job I can pretty much work from wherever I want and I wanted easy access to east coast hiking. So I came back.”
“Yeah? What kind of work do you do?”
He scratched his beard and gave me a sideways look. “You have to promise me it won’t be a deal breaker.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Done. As long as you aren’t a pimp. That would definitely be a deal breaker.”
“Ha! No. Not a pimp. But girls sometimes think my work is . . . juvenile. Like it’s just an excuse to play games all day.”
“Games. Video games?”
He nodded. “I’m a game developer. Have you ever seen Vision Studios? Over on Patton and Hilliard?”
“Oh yeah, with the big arch over the door, right?”
“That’s it. There’s just two of us, and we’re still in the toddler stage of business development, but things are going pretty well.”
“So what does game developing mean? Is it different than designing?”
“Yeah. The guys who design the games come to us with their vision and we write the code that makes it happen. And we don’t necessarily just do games. We just finished up a training simulation for a driving school in north Asheville, and we’ve done instructional animation for video tutorials. The games are the most fun though.”
I tilted my head and looked at him. “It sounds amazing. It’s really been a deal breaker before?”
He pulled into a parking spot on the street just past the restaurant and shifted into park. His jaw was tight and he kept his eyes forward. “Just once.” He opened his car door. “You ready to go?”
Okay. Touchy subject. “Sure.”
When I opened my car door, I found a threatening patch of ice that stretched all the way up to the curb. I’d have to step wide to miss it—so wide, I wasn’t sure I’d not land on my butt. Travis rushed over and offered me a hand. He braced himself against a light pole and stretched his arm out, holding onto me as I navigated my way across the ice.
“Next time, remind me to park somewhere that isn’t a hazard to your health.”
I squeezed his hand and held it up. “If you let me keep this, I’ll forgive you.”
It was the first time we’d really touched since our initial handshake, except for his arm around me in the car, and that was through bulky coats and stuff. This was skin on skin and it felt pretty fantastic. His hand tightened around my fingers. “I won’t say no to that.”
The ease of our conversation continued through dinner. Everything felt easy. Almost too easy. I half wondered if any minute he’d tell me something that would bring everything crashing down.
It’s not like he was perfect. His table manners
were kind of terrible. He ate like he was in a race and all the food was going to be gone if he didn’t get to it first. And he tended to get lost inside topics he was really passionate about—hiking, gaming, craft beer drinking—going on and on without taking a breath. But it was more endearing than it was annoying. He was so completely self-aware, making fun of himself every step of the way. All his quirks really just made me like him more.
But there was one hard question I wanted to ask. After our dessert plates were cleared, I leaned back in my chair and crossed my arms.
He gave me a questioning look. “What? You look serious all of a sudden.”
“I’m getting ready to ask you a serious question.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
I took a deep breath. “You said your profession had been a deal breaker before.”
He sank back into his chair, mirroring my position, arms crossed across his chest. “Yeah?”
“I could tell by the way you talked about it, it was a big deal. Were you in love?”
He sighed, but nodded his head. “Yeah. I thought we were.”
“Was it recent?”
He shifted and ran his hands over his hair. “So many questions.”
“Sorry. I don’t mean to pry, except I totally do mean to pry. It’s important. Knowing what you’ve been through. Where you’re coming from. Don’t worry. I’ll tell you my history too if you want.”
He studied me for a second, then his lips turned up in a half smile. “You say exactly what you’re thinking, don’t you?”
I shrugged. “Not always. But why make things more complicated than they need to be? I like you. I just want to get to know you better.”
He forced out a breath. “Her name was Darcy. We broke up four months ago. We were together for almost two years.”
Yeesh. Four months was not a lot of time after a relationship that long. “That’s not very long ago. Bad break up?”
His eyes darkened and he shook his head with a sigh. “I don’t know. I’m not very good at talking about this kind of stuff.”
He looked wounded. Like a puppy that had been kicked into a corner. Whatever this girl did to him, it wasn’t good. I reached across the table and squeezed his arm. “Hey, don’t worry about it. We can talk about something else.”
He looked at me then, his eyes genuine and warm. “She screwed me up pretty bad, Lilly. But I’m coming out of it. I can’t tell you I’m completely over everything, but . . . I can tell you things are looking up.” He took my hand. “Especially now.”
Part of me was scared. I really liked this guy and didn’t want to be a rebound. And I couldn’t help but wonder what had happened between he and Darcy. But the honesty was nice. And the chemistry between us was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. It was a gamble, sure. But I wanted to be all in. I smiled and motioned my head to the door. “Let’s get out of here.”
Chapter 8
Trav
She liked me.
I mean, she’d told me flat out. She’d been open and friendly and flirty and didn’t play all coy and hard to get. And she listened. That was maybe the best thing of all. How she genuinely seemed interested in my work and my hobbies and whether or not I really did think the garlic bread dipped in rose sauce was the best thing I’d ever tasted.
That she didn’t freak out over my d4. 3amaged past with Darcy was an added bonus. She seemed cool with just about everything. Not high maintenance. Not stressed. Just, confident and happy and chill.
We drove back to her apartment and I parked on the street, this time right at the foot of the front walk that led up to her house. “Cool house,” I told her.
“Thanks. I just moved in. It’s funky and old and the kitchen is totally retro, but I like that part. That they didn’t just gut the house to make it modern. Whoever remodeled worked with the old feel.”
“Sounds awesome.”
“You want to come in and look around?” Her eyes locked on mine. “I mean, Emma will be showing up any minute, but, it’d be fun to have your company until she does.”
I nodded. “Sounds good.”
The inside of her house was cool. Old bricks, high ceilings, plaster walls, old school crown molding. “This place is awesome.”
“Isn’t it? Now I just need to find a roommate.”
“It won’t be hard. Not with a place like this. And not in West Asheville. Isn’t everyone begging to live around here?”
“Yeah, but I don’t want just anybody. I keep hoping Emma will change her mind about Ohio and move home. But it’s a pipe dream. She’ll never do it.”
I picked up a picture from the bookshelf. Lilly, and another girl, flanked by two guys on either side. “Is this her?”
Lilly looked over my shoulder. “Yeah. That was prom.” She pointed at the guy beside Emma. “Grayson. Her high school boyfriend. And that’s Ryan.”
“So you do have a history.”
She snorted. “Hardly.”
I put the picture back on the bookshelf and sat on the couch. “Hardly?”
She sat beside me, and turned sideways, kicking off her shoes before pulling her feet up under her. “Ryan was my boyfriend from my junior year of high school until half way through my senior year of college.”
“That sounds a lot more than hardly. That’s a long time.”
She shrugged. “Well, yeah, but he’s pretty much the only boyfriend I’ve ever had. I mean, I’ve dated since then. I just haven’t met the right guy.”
Until now. The words hung between us, unspoken, but her eyes reflected the same certainty I felt. This thing between us—it was good.
I shifted and turned so we were facing each other, propping my elbow up on the back of the couch. I wanted to kiss her. Bad. I swallowed the hard lump of nerves that had formed in the back of my throat and dropped my gaze to her lips. “I, uh . . .”
She smiled and leaned forward, a whisper on her lips. “I know.”
I reached up, wrapping my hand around the base of her neck and moved to close the distance between us when a sharp knock sounded at the door.
Lilly jumped back, her hand flying to her chest and her eyes wide. “That must be Emma.”
Great. Emma.
“Sorry. I really wanted to . . . but I haven’t seen her in months and . . . where are my shoes?”
“They’re under the coffee table. Here.” I pulled them and nudged them in her direction.
She shoved them on and rushed to the front door. “Stay a minute, will you?” she called over her shoulder. “I want you to meet her.”
* * *
Emma was great. Maybe not as great as it would have been to actually kiss Lilly, but all and all, I wasn’t disappointed with how the evening went. And it had been nice to see Lilly and Emma together. She was the same person with her as she was with me, which made me think I was seeing the real Lilly. Authenticity was important.
Just before midnight, after I’d left her and Emma to their catching up, Lilly sent me a text.
I’m glad you got to meet Emma, but I’m sorry we were interrupted.
Yeah. Me and her both.
Schedule a do over? I texted back.
Her response was immediate. Yes, please.
I smiled into the darkness of my room.
Buster stuck his head in my bedroom door. “Yo, you still up?”
“Yeah, man, what’s up?”
“How was your date?”
“Good, actually.”
“Yeah? You really like her?”
I wrinkled my brow. These were not Buster-esque questions. “Yeah, I do.”
“Then I’m not excited to give you this.” He walked in and dropped a box on the foot of my bed.
“What is it?”
“I think it’s a pie. It smells like one, anyway. Darcy brought it over earlier.”
“Darcy? She was here?”
“Yeah, man. She said something about you not answering her texts. There’s a card, I think.”
I sat up and reached
for the pie box. So Darcy really was serious about wanting to talk. Save that first conversation we’d had the night before baby Travis was born, I hadn’t responded to her messages. I was preoccupied with Lilly and helping Avery out, and . . . mostly I just wasn’t sure what to say to her.
I opened the card.
Travis- I realize you have far more reasons to ignore me than you do reasons to respond. I’m so sorry I hurt you. Can you give me the chance to explain? I’ve been rethinking things. And I miss you. Remember the restaurant from our first date? We had blueberry pie for dessert. I remember how much you loved it. It was hard to convince them to sell me an entire pie, but when I explained how important you were to me, they finally relented. I hope you’ll forgive me. Love, Darcy
Buster dropped into my desk chair. “What does it say?”
I handed him the card and pushed my head into my hands.
“Dude, that’s pretty intense.” He tossed it back onto the bed.
“It wasn’t blueberry pie.”
“What?”
“The pie. It wasn’t blueberry. She had blueberry pie. I ordered Lemon Chiffon. Which is a stupid thing to remember except she doesn’t like lemon and she acted all weird when I ordered it instead of the blueberry she insisted was the best thing she’d ever tasted.”
“That is a weird thing to remember.”
“History according to Darcy. I really wished I’d have recognized that as the first clue to what was coming. Order the pie I want you to order. Wear the clothes I want you to wear. Have the job I want you to have.”
Buster stared, expressionless. “Yeah, she was pretty much psycho. Glad to see you’ve figured that out.”
I read over the card one more time. There was an undertone of sincerity, even if she’d gotten the pie wrong. Darcy wasn’t good at apologizing. That she’d managed the words I’m sorry in any form was pretty impressive.
Buster stood. “This means you’re not going to eat the pie, right?”
I rolled my eyes and shoved it into Buster’s hands. “Here. Take it.”
He pulled a fork out of his pocket and opened the box, shoveling out an impressive first bite.
A Little in Love With You: A Love at First Note Novella Page 4