“None of that’s your fault.” But he’d probably feel the same. Hell, he felt guilty now for having a better childhood. His parents had been strict but fair, madly in love, and stable. His only worry growing up hadbeen disappointing them.
“Sure.” Pots clanged in the background and she swore under her breath. “Are your parents still traveling the world saving people?”
“No.” The claws of grief were no longer so sharp, but they still clung. “They were killed in a bus crash in Honduras eight years ago.”
“Oh, no. I’m sorry.”
“Yeah.”
“Were they on vacation?”
“Working,” he said, trying to push away the selfishanger that rose up whenever he thought about it. When he’d finally needed them, his parents were gone. Childish, but there it was. “They were there with an NGO to provide medical aid, but they never made it to the camp.”
“Damn.”
That about summed it up.
Kurt extended his walk to the next neighborhood, reluctant to take her voice into his home where he might never get it out.
“We should probablycome up with a story about how we started dating,” she said after a long moment of silence. “And make up a few visits over the last few years.”
He’d rather eat cat food. “That’s easy enough. We stick to the truth. I called you three years ago to help out my team on St. Isidore and we started talking again. We’ll have to whitewash it a bit because I don’t want anybody to connect my team to thedead rebels.”
“I think hiring me to fly them off the island is enough. And then we decided to meet up in DC to reminisce about our glory days as AWACS maintainers?”
“Sure.” Kurt had loved being a mechanic for the E-3 AWACS—basically, a Boeing 707 topped with a rotating radar dome, that provided air traffic control from the sky—but he’d loved being a PJ more. “We met up and things developed fromthere.” Things like kissing and touching and loving.Fuck.
Yeah, that too, if he had his way.
“That’s a little vague,” she said.
Exactly. Kurt stopped walking and took several deep breaths.Get it together.“You plan to share details with Glenn?”
“Uh, no. But people at parties, especially engagement parties, love to share how-they-met stories. I just thought we should have a few more detailsfigured out in case anyone asks.”
“Go for it.” Why had he agreed to this torture again?
“Okay. We spent the day at the Air & Space museum, because we’re total stereotypes.”
“The main one, or Udvar-Hazy?” he asked, just to be contrary.
“I’ve only been to the one on the Mall.”
“Okay. We met at the museum in DC,” he said, fully able to imagine spending a day surrounded by flying machines, chattingwith her as if they hadn’t set fire to their friendship. “Then what?”
“Neither of us wanted the day to end, so we took the Metro to Georgetown for dinner at a little Italian restaurant near the Potomac.”
“And then?” he asked, feeling a little breathless.
“Since we’re sticking close to the truth, I kissed you outside the restaurant after dinner.”
Unh. Direct hit. As if it had happened yesterday,he could feel her lips on his when she’d completely blindsided him outside a restaurant in Oklahoma City. After two years of pretending he was fine just being friends, that soft, warm,deepkiss had hit him like an IED. Total annihilation.
“And then we got a hotel room because getting to my house in Fairfax would take too long,” he said, giving them the ending to the evening he’d always wanted.
“Wow. Straight from idle to full afterburners. You move fast.”
He hadn’t moved fast enough. He forced a smile, hoping it would make his words come out more playful. “Didn’t you know Easy is my middle name?”
