Page 15 of Unbelievable You

It was very cute.

“Everything okay?” I asked as she swiped the message alert away and looked up at me.

“Just my parents being my parents,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “What’s going on?”

She stared at me for a second, as if trying to figure out if I was joking or not.

“You’re a stranger. You don’t care about my issues with my parents.” She crossed her arms.

“Just because I’m a stranger doesn’t mean I don’t care about other people. And you seem upset.”

“I can’t tell if you’re fucking with me or not,” she said.

I grinned at her. “I’m not fucking with you. Do you want to maybe get some pie and talk about it?”

“Pie?”

I nodded and leaned a little closer. “Yeah, pie. It’s too late for coffee, but it’s always a good time for pie. There’s a place right around the corner that’s open twenty-four hours.”

Hunter raised her eyebrows, still waiting for me to admit I was joking.

“Come on. You look like a woman who’s in need of pie.”

I presented her with my arm to escort her and she bit back a smile.

“Give me ten minutes and I’ll meet you out front,” she said.

Progress. That was progress.

Thirty minutes later we were both seated at the diner with slices of pie in front of us. Hunter had ordered strawberry and I’d gotten a slice of their lemon meringue. It was such a classic and so lemony it made your face pucker. Cups of tea sat steaming in front of us in thick scratched mugs.

“So,” I said when she had taken her first bite. “What’s going on with your parents?”

Hunter chewed and swallowed and went for another bite. “They want me to go to law school.” I’d expected her to tell me to mind my own business again.

Pie was magic sometimes. She was clearly enjoying it and I was enjoying watching her. I had a bite of my slice and savored it. Perfection.

“Let me guess, they’re both lawyers?”

Hunter pointed at me with her fork. “You got it.”

“And you don’t want to be.” It was a statement more than a question.

She shook her head and cut another bite of pie. At the rate she was going, she’d need another slice.

“I’ve never wanted to be a lawyer. Never. But I went along with it until I was in my junior year of undergrad. They were on me about the LSAT and looking at law schools and I told them that I wanted to take some time off after I graduated. I wasn’t sure if they’d keep paying for school if I told them it wasn’t going to happen. So I waited and put them off until I graduated and said that I would never be going to law school. Five years later and they haven’t let up. Well, my mother hasn’t.”

She sighed and put down her fork, as if she wasn’t going to finish her slice of pie.

“There. That’s it. Not interesting.”

Waves of hostility rolled off her, but I knew most of them weren’t directed at me.

“Only child?” I asked.

She glared and then the hostility turned toward me.

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