Page 60 of Indigo Sky

I got out and immediately spotted Kate's little Toyota. The car was empty, and with a groan, I wondered how long she'd been waiting for me inside. With my stomach in a gazillion knots, I hurried inside. I hadn't been this nervous to see a woman in … God, I couldn't remember how long.

The last time I'd been out with anyone was on a double date Joe and Becky had set up with another teacher at the schoolthey worked at. They thought it'd be a good idea to hook me up with a nice girl, one established in her career and life. But we had absolutely nothing in common, and that was made blatantly obvious by her incessant commentary about why I should look into prosthetic eyes instead of wearing an eyepatch—even after I’d told her that the extent of my injury had left it impossible to do so without major reconstructive surgery.

At the end of the date, without any questions about how I felt toward her, Joe had clapped me on the shoulder and quietly said, "Sorry about that."

Needless to say, I never saw her again, and I hadn't been on a date since … well, not until now.

I waited for the hostess to seat a family of five and took a look around the diner, hoping I'd spot Kate … and I did, almost immediately.

Hard to miss the girl with the bright pink hair, sitting in the middle of so much beige.

The hostess came back the moment I started to walk in Kate's direction.

"Sir, I'll take you to your seat," she said from behind me.

"I'm meeting someone," I threw over my shoulder, keeping my gaze only on the woman I'd come to see.

The walk to her table felt like walking on a cloud. Serene and surreal, drifting between awareness and a dreamlike haze.

She hadn't noticed me yet. Her eyes were on the menu in front of her, so I took a second to appreciate hownormalshe looked. She wasn't naked. She wasn't in the leggings and sweatshirt she wore before and after her time onstage. She wasn't all dolled up beneath a thick cover of makeup. And, hey,don’t get me wrong; I wasn’t saying I didn't appreciate every side of her because I did. But this side—the one wearing a pair of skinny blue jeans, a cropped T-shirt beneath a cardigan, and a bouncy ponytail—was different. It wasnew, and if I had to choose, it was easily my favorite. This was the side I could see myself curling up on the couch to watch a movie with. This was the side I could imagine cooking dinner with.

This was the side that feltreal.

This was the side that felt most likeKate.

She turned abruptly to look up at me as if she'd sensed me there. Her lip looked better now—not as red, not as angry—and she let herself smile.

"Hey," she uttered wistfully on a held breath.

"Sorry I'm late," I said, dropping into the seat across from her. "Work sucked."

She laughed, her cheeks pink and her eyes twinkling. "What else do you do? I mean, when you're not kicking ass at the club."

I loved that she’d said it like I didn't spend most of my time standing at a door, trying not to fall asleep. I loved that she’d said it like I wasimportant.

"I work at a gym."

"Ah," she replied, gesturing toward my arms. "That explains the muscles."

"Hey, not everyone who works at the gym works out," I said pointedly, swiping the menu from beneath her nose in a playful gesture, making her giggle. "I don't think my mom has everworked out in the time I've been alive, and she's worked there for … I don't know … thirty years or so maybe."

Her lips curled upward. "You work with your mom?"

"Different areas, same gym."

"That's adorable."

I flipped through the laminated pages and perused the dozens of options. My appetite had more or less disappeared on my way here, but now, with the conversation flowing easily and the air between us feeling as normal as ever, my stomach was grumbling once again with a reminder that I hadn't eaten a damn thing since seven o'clock this morning.

"Are you close with your mom?" Kate asked, folding her arms on the table.

I nodded. "Yeah, I'd say so. I get along with both of my parents."

"You see them a lot outside of work?"

I turned the page and looked through their list of crepes and pancakes.

"Well, I live with them, so …" I lifted my gaze from the page to assess her reaction, to see if she now thought I was some basement-dwelling loser for still living with my parents at my age.

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