Or maybe in the past.
He loved his wife. The realization gave Mina comfort. When she rubbed her hand against his biceps, he shook his head, smiled and looked down at her. And the night was going to be okay. She could hope for the best in this relationship.
“Go home, then,” she said with a pat on his shoulder, “before we both think a trip to the drugstore is needed.”
She loved to watch him smile. For the first couple of weeks of their acquaintance, his face had been neutral at best, and now she was standing close enough to notice how his smile lifted the corners of his eyes as well as his mouth. With his easy smile, any worry left in her heart. Mina stepped back into his arms for a hug. He kissed the top of her head. She pressed a kiss against the base of his neck.
“Slowly, then,” she said into the fabric of his shirt.
“But if we see each other often, then it will seem fast.”
“Go home.”
He smiled again, dropped a kiss on her mouth, then left. She watched him walk across her lawn to his house, seeming to forget that his truck was parked on the street in front of hers.
CHAPTER TWELVE
MINA HAD A sleepless night. Once the glow of the date had worn off, she had succumbed to the temptation to think about all the things that could go wrong. The only benefit of her restlessness had been that she’d gotten up and drawn. Anxious feelings of love and rejection were perfectly suited to her newest book project, an illustrated collection of poems by Lermontov and Esenin. The pictures were avant-garde and risky and not really a comic at all, but she’d seen the characters as she’d read the poems, and she was self-publishing this one.
Even now, washing her coffeepot and mug, she was tempted to look out the window. To see Levi sitting in his house, maybe his phone at his ear. To check that his sister wasn’t scaring him out of a relationship. To reassure herself that he was there, and the possibility that he’d be a fixture in her life remained a possibility.
Hope was painful. It had a way of clenching your heart and holding it hostage. Hope pulled Mina in multiple directions. It made her want to wrap her arms around her body, using the pressure to withstand the tightening of her ribs. But that was a protective response, and it wouldn’t get her anything other than sore elbows and shoulders.
Instead, she rinsed soap off her mug and placed it in the dish drainer. She found it harder to follow the other path hope illuminated, even though she knew it was the smarter one. She had to keep her arms by her sides and her eyes on a positive future. She had to breathe through the rigidity until she could relax, waiting out the moment when hope broke through the surface and flowered into faith and trust. She knew from experience—not all of it good—that a relationship only blossomed if she believed.
So Mina concentrated on the hot water coming out of the faucet as it sluiced over her hand. She reminded herself again that anyone who could be easily talked out of a relationship with her by his sister wasn’t worth her time, no matter how good a kisser he was and how soothing his smile.
As she pulled the stopper out of the sink, she let her worries drain away with the dirty water. They were still gurgling together when her phone rang.
“Hi, Mom,” Mina said, after only a split-second debate over whether to answer the phone or not.
“Hi, honey. How’s Montana?” Her mom’s voice was fast and high-pitched, a dead giveaway that she was worried.
“Good. Why do you ask?”
“You’ve not posted to Facebook recently, and so I don’t know what’s going on in your life.”
“Mom, Facebook is hardly a good way to know what’s going on in my life. Besides, I’ve been busy with work and making new friends and the house and everything.”
“New friends?” The same hope Mina had just been battling cracked through her mother’s voice.
“Yeah. And I went on a date last night.”
Mina heard her mom’s breath catch and thought she could hear her mom’s mouth open and shut. She imagined her mother waving her hand at her husband, trying to catch his attention and give away that their daughter had big news without saying anything Mina could overhear.
“And he knows about my HIV.” Better to get all the news out to her mom at once. Her mom wouldn’t get up the courage to ask the question for another couple of weeks. Until then all their conversations would revolve around how to share the news, when to say it, the last time Mina had had a boyfriend and how he had taken the news, as well as how he’d treated her afterward.