Page 69 of Indigo Sky

There was sincerity in his eyes. Nothing unhinged. Nothing misguided.

The guard I had kept up around Nate lowered just a bit, and I nodded because you know what? Sometimes, every now and then, I missed him too. Even if I didn’t miss who he was, even if I didn’t miss the awful things he had said or done. There had been good times with him at one point. And those things I did miss. I missed when we had been real friends, brothers. I missed who he had been to me and my parents.

“Yeah,” I said quietly with a nod. “I miss you too.”

“What are you doing after work?” His eyes lit up with hope.

“I have errands to run,” I quickly lied, not wanting him to know I was grabbing a late lunch with Kate. I didn’t want him to know about her. Not after the way he’d acted with my girlfriends in the past. “But what are you doing tomorrow?”

“I actually have a date,” he said, stretching his lips into a happy grin.

“Oh, nice.” I crossed my arms and nodded. “Good for you, man.”

“Yeah, this girl … fuckin’ gorgeous, bro. Smokin’ hot. I seriously won the jackpot.”

“That’s great.”

Huh…

If Nate had a girlfriend—a good one, aseriousone—then maybe that could be enough to settle him down. Get him on a decent path.

“Yeah, but, uh … what about Thursday? Whatcha doing then?”

Thursday was two days away. I didn’t have work at Midnight Lotus, and I didn’t have plans with Kate. If I went out with Nate, maybe grabbed some lunch or a beer, it could be my opportunity to see if he’d changed much over the last few years. Maybe this distance I had put between us was unnecessary. Maybe we could be friends again. Maybe we could even double date.

A longing tugged at my chest.

“Thursday’s good for me,” I said. “You wanna grab lunch or something?”

His grin broadened as he clapped my shoulder with gusto. “Hell yeah! There’s this taco place that just opened up over on Meadowlark. You down?”

“Count me in.”

“Awesome. I’ll meet you there at four?”

His smile was infectious; I couldn’t help it—I smiled back.

“Yeah,” I said, nodding. “I’ll be there.”

***

A comfortable silence shrouded our table at the diner. Kate sat across from me, her eyes on the menu in front of her. I already knew what I was going to order, so my focus was on the only thing that seemed to matter these days—her.

Her hair was twisted into two pink braids, like one of those girls on that show my mom liked to watch,Little House on the Prairie. She toyed with the end of one braid as she absentmindedly chewed the corner of her lip, flipping one page to the next. I knew that, later, at the club, she’d be wearing something sexy and revealing until she wasn’t wearing anything at all. But right now, she was anything but revealing in a gray sweater at least three times too big, a pair of black leggings, and black Adidas sneakers.

In two weeks, I’d been out with her a total of four times—always at this diner, always at this table—and while our time together hadn’t made it past a peck on the cheek and she’d always worn far more clothes than I’d seen her wear at the club, these hours spent here felt more intimate than anything I’d ever experienced with a woman before.

And that was pretty stupid, right? All we did was talk when we weren’t chewing, and sometimes, we did both at the same time. I felt like I should’ve wanted more from this—I should’ve wanted sex or to cop a feel at the very least. Don’t get me wrong; I did. I wasn’t fuckin’ dead. But I was okay doing this. You know, taking our time. Getting to know each other. Assuring we weresomethingbefore we weremore.

She raised her head only slightly to glance at me, a smirk tugging at her lips. “What?”

“Huh?”

“Why are you looking at me like that?”

One side of my mouth lifted into a sheepish grin. “And how exactly am I looking at you?”

She held my gaze for a moment—one, two, three thunderous beats of my heart. The smirk dropped from her face as her chest rose with a deep breath, her eyes widening with something that made my heart race and my mouth dry—anxiety or fear, maybe. Then, she swallowed and looked away, returning her attention to the menu.

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