I cock my head and wait.
“Do you think you could make me that really good iced coffee you made last night?”
I smile. It’s a small thing. Maybe even an insignificant thing. But right now, I’ll take any tiny piece of the old Trevor that shines through. “Coming right up.”
Two hours later, without hearing a peep from the back, I slip into the office. “How’s it going?”
He shakes his head. “You do this all by yourself? Shit, Ava, running a business, even a small one, has tons of moving parts.”
“It’s not that hard because I’ve been doing it for so long. I started working here when I was fourteen.”
“You did?”
I nod. “You got me the job.” I swallow. “Because you didn’t want us to be apart any more than we had to be.”
He clicks the mouse a few times, practically ignoring my statement.
I guess that must have fallen under the category of ‘too much,’ so I change the subject. “Jason said you apologized and offered to take him out for a drink.”
“He turned me down. Something about taking night classes. Oh, and I met Chelsea and Gray. They seem pretty knowledgeable.”
I take a minute to tell him about our other two employees, Leah and Bug, who he hasn’t met yet.
His stomach grumbles loudly, and he checks the time then looks up at me. “We should go to lunch.”
“Um… that’s not really the way it works around here. I don’t take lunch per se. But if you need a break?—”
“I didn’t mean I needed a break, Ava. I was asking you to lunch. But if you don’t take lunch, how about a drink later? After closing?”
Not wanting to lie about why I can’t have a drink, I say, “I think lunch sounds like the better option. But it’ll have to be a late lunch.” I eye the clock. “With Jason here, I can knock off around two if you think you can wait.” I motion to the storage room. “There’s plenty of things you can snack on to tide you over.”
“Great. Sounds like a date.”
For a second, I’m giddy. This is what I wanted to happen. I’m going on a date with my husband. But giddy is not what I should be feeling, because my husband is most definitelynotthe man I’m going to lunch with.
He’s a new person. A different man. ButI’mthe same. Can we ever fit together the way we used to?
Someone much older and wiser than me—Maddie’s grandmother, Rose Gianogi—once told me all people who come back from serving their country, no matter what capacity, will be different in some way. Even more so for those who were close to combat zones.
Oh, the things he must have seen. He’d have been different even if he hadn’t lost his memory. I’d seen small changes in him over the years—subtle things I didn’t notice at first, then it kind of crept up on me all at once. And yet, I still loved him. So I can still lovethishim.
Can’t I?
Chapter Twenty-One
Trevor
Two o’clock rolls around and Ava appears in the doorway. I blink several times and rub my eyes. They’ve gone blurry from all the information I’ve gone over. It’ll take weeks or months to catch up on all of it.
“There’s a diner across the street. Goodwin’s. You always loved their bacon mac-and-cheese. Interested in trying it?”
I stand. “Sure. Who doesn’t love macaroni and cheese?”
Secretly, I hope Idolike it. Because just like the iced caramel macchiato, the little things like that seem to put a smile on Ava’s face. And she has an amazing smile.
She doesn’t smile at me all that much. I get it, there’s not much to smile about. But sometimes when she talks to other people, like when I saw her talking to Chelsea earlier in the storeroom, one of them must have said something amusing, because that smile came out… along with a dimple in her left cheek.
If my loving a stupid plate of bacon macaroni and cheese will cause that dimple to make an appearance, then I’m going to fucking love it, even if I hate it.
