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Behind me, Austin grunts. “You never hug me like that.”
* * *
Miss D’s reaction to Trevor being in town is similar to mine, although she doesn’t bother hiding her genuine emotions. She cries when he hugs her and tells her how much he’s missed her. The truth is, Ididget a tiny bit emotional when I saw him. I’d been hoping that since Ava and I are together again that I’d soon see Trevor, but she always talked about how busy he was and how hard things were for him money-wise. I almost,almost, offered to pay for him and Amy to come out because I knew how much she missed them. But I also knew she wouldn’t accept… just like all the other times I’ve offered to pay for things.
“I can’t believe it,” Miss D says, grasping Trevor’s hand on the table. She looks at each of us in turn while we wait for our lunch to arrive, tears at the corners of her eyes. “All my kids are here!”
“Yeah, but I’m your favorite, right?” says Trevor.
Miss D giggles, pats his hand.
“And Connor doesn’t count,” he adds. “He’s notyourkid.”
“Not yet.” Miss D winks at me. “But son-in-law sounds good.”
Ava chokes on her soda.
I can’t help but smile. “Someday, Miss D,” I sing, leaning back in my chair. “Someday, your daughter’s going to make an honest man out of me.”
“Shut up!” Ava whisper-yells, pink blushing her cheeks.
“What?” I shrug. “As if that’snotgoing to happen.”
“But not for a few years, right?” Trevor says, a threatening lilt in his tone.
I smirk at him.
He adds, “Once she gets her degree, and you’re in the NBA, or whatever you decide to do, then maybe…”
I laugh once. “What? Am I going to have to ask your permission?”
“Yes,” all three of them say in unison.
Now it’s Trevor’s turn to smirk at me. “See that?” he says, pointing at me. “I’malways going to be the favorite.”
* * *
I stay with Ava over the weekend and spend the time showing Trevor around campus, as well as Durham. He spends that time trying to convince Ava and me to transfer to Texas A&M. We visit Miss D every day, sometimes twice a day, and at times in between, we catch up on our current lives, reminisce about the old, and laugh. We laugh so hard, it hurts. And Ava—as much as she’ll deny it to his face, she misses him a lot more than she lets show. But I can tell. I can see it in the way she looks up at him, the way her eyes find a sense of calm whenever he’s around her. And maybe I should be jealous that I’m not quitethereyet, that she doesn’t look at me like that, but we have something we never had before.
We have time.
And we havecommunication.
I’d told her that first night together that it was important to me that webothbe open with what we were experiencing and what we were feeling. That if at any time she was feeling a certain way and she needed something from me—time, space, orme—that she tell me that up front, and in return, I’d do the same.
No more secrets.
No more hiding what we felt so the other wouldn’t feel the weight of it.
We were a team now.
A duo.
Michael Jordan and Scottie Pippen.
I lost her at the basketball reference, but she agreed anyway and said she felt the same. We needed to be solid. A fortress. Then she made an analogy about strands of a rope and something about one fraying, and I told her it didn’t make sense. She retorted that Jordan and Pippen didn’t make sense. Which is fucking bullshit, and I told her that, too. Then we got into an argument that lasted all of five seconds before she was dry humping my leg again.
Now, we’re in bed, and she’s fast asleep while I’m wide awake. She stirs beside me, flipping her head from one side to the other. Now her cheek’s on the patch of drool on her pillow, and I consider waking her to let her know, but…eh.
