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“What is it?” I asked.
“Did you cook all this?” she asked.
“I did.”
“Is that bread from scratch?”
“Yes,” I said, grinning.
“You didn’t make this. You had someone make it for you.”
“I swear, I made it myself.” Chuckling as I spread my napkin across my lap, I poured myself a glass of wine. I held it up to make a toast, and Ava quickly scrambled for hers. She was adorable, delectable, delicious in all the right ways. My eyes connected with her soft blue stare before they traveled along the skin of her neck.
My teeth were begging to taste her.
“To a wonderful evening in and good conversation,” I said.
“It’ll be the first time that second part has happened,” she said.
I laughed as we clinked glasses. Then we each took a sip. She dove into the food and piled it on her plate, unashamed of her appetite. I liked that in a woman, someone who wasn’t afraid to eat. The silence that fell between us was comfortable, but I didn’t want it to stay like that. I wanted to get to know her.
“Tell me about your family,” I said.
“Hmm?” Ava asked.
“Your family. Are you close with them?”
She slurped a noodle through her lips before she giggled and wiped mouth with her napkin.
“Um, well, yes, I am.”
“Did you grow up around here?”
“Have we never talked about this stuff?” she asked.
“We haven’t, no.”
“Because it feels like we’ve talked about this stuff.”
“We’ve talked about everything but this stuff.”
She giggled, and the sound put a large smile across my lips.
“Well, in that case, no. I didn’t grow up around here. I actually grew up in Virginia on a farm.”
“Oh, really? A farm girl? How was that?” I asked.
“As boring as you might think. My parents still live there, though they don’t maintain the farm like they used to. When I was growing up, we grew corn, tomatoes, and beans. Plus we had chickens, a few dairy cows, pigs we raised for food, and goats.”
“Why did you specify dairy cows?”
“Because they weren’t raised for food.”
“Gotcha. Wow. I would have never taken you for a farm girl.”
“My father always teased me that I was meant for the city. So when I went off to upstate New York for college and found a job in my chosen field in the heart of the city, it didn’t shock them one bit.”
“Do they ever come visit you?”
“No. They can’t stand the city,” she said, giggling.
“Probably much different than the traffic in Virginia.”
“They came once, and every time my father heard someone cuss, his eyes bulged.”
The both laughed before she took a sip of her wine.
“Anyway, I go visit them as much as I can, especially during the holidays.”
“Sounds like a great family,” I said.
“What about you? Are you close with your family?”
“Mmmm, not so much my father, but my mother, yes. She actually lives here in the city. I moved her with me when I opened my practice.”
“Why not your father so much?” she asked.
I took a bite of my bread to gather my thoughts. “My father was an alcoholic. I never knew him sober.”
“Logan, I’m so sorry. We don’t have to talk about it if—”
“No, no. It’s fine. It’s—it’s actually very easy to talk with you,” I said.
Our eyes connected, and the smile that crossed her cheeks ignited a fire in my veins. It was the truth. It was so easy to talk with Ava. It always had been. This topic of conversation was no different. It was as if I almost wanted to talk with her about it, which was really odd because I never wanted to talk about my father with anyone, ever.
“I never knew him as anything other than an alcoholic. He popped in and out of our lives for years before my mother finally closed the door on him. Once she did, he never bothered reaching out, which was fine with me because I had no passion to know him.”
“Men like that make me sick,” Ava said.
“Me, too. I can’t understand how people can abandon the families they create, even with addiction and things like that. My mother did everything to help that man. She enrolled him in rehab, staged interventions, had private conversations, and took him to his doctor visits and therapy appointments. It was like he didn’t care. It angers me to think about it to this day, all she gave him and what he left her with.”
“I’m so sorry, Logan,” she said.
“It’s fine. It really is. When I was a teenager, I vowed that I’d take care of my mother one day. So, I graduated high school early, enrolled in college early. I graduated from there early. I worked in the industry until I had the cash flow to start my own business. And when I raked in my first big year, I moved my mother to the city so I could take care of her.”
