For Love and Family by Victoria Pade Page B

vibes thing.” It was Willy’s turn to look over at Hunter. “Is she right?”
    Hunter didn’t answer. He only shrugged.
    â€œSo there is something goin’ on?” Willy asked, sounding surprised.
    â€œThere’s not really anything going on…” Hunter hedged, thinking about the kiss he and Terese had shared the night before. The kiss that had almost happened the night before that. The kiss that he’d been itching for and still should probably not have let happen at all.
    â€œYou like her,” Willy said as if he were seeing it for the first time.
    â€œSure, well enough,” Hunter said noncommittally. “Terese is a nice person. A world different than her sister.”
    â€œHer sister who is also Johnny’s birth mother.”
    Was there a criticism in Willy pointing that out? Or was it just that that fact bothered Hunter so much that he was overly sensitive to it?
    Hunter couldn’t be sure. So he didn’t take issue with it; he only confirmed it. “Right, Terese is a world different than her sister, who is also Johnny’s birth mother.”
    â€œBut they’re still sisters,” Willy persisted.
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œAnd you’ve got a little thing for the nice sister?” Willy asked.
    â€œI don’t know,” Hunter answered, opting to be honest when he could easily have denied it and put his friend off the track. “But I know that it isn’t what you’d call the most ideal situation.”
    â€œThat’s putting it mildly,” Willy observed.
    Silence reigned for a moment before Willy spoke again, this time treading somewhat more carefully. “This is the first time this has happened since Margee. You maybe being attracted to a woman.”
    â€œYeah,” Hunter agreed equally as tentatively.
    Regardless of how tentative it was, it still seemed to solidify the possibility for his friend. “So it is happening?” Willy asked.
    â€œI don’t know. Maybe something is.”
    â€œSomething like what?”
    â€œI don’t know,” Hunter repeated once more. “I just…I don’t know. I guess I’m sort of enjoying having her around.”
    â€œHer in particular or just having a woman around the house again?”
    Hunter hadn’t considered that, and he did now, hoping that maybe his friend had hit on an easier answer to whatever it was that was happening with him when Terese was around. Hoping that it wasn’t Terese herself, that it was just having a woman around again that was appealing to him.
    But no matter how he looked at it, he came to the same conclusion. “It’s Terese in particular,” he confessed.
    â€œOh,” Willy said. “How so?”
    Hunter thought about that, too, wanting to figure it all out. Wanting to know what the hell was happening to him.
    Then, despite realizing that he was beginning to sound like a broken record, he once more began with, “I don’t know. She’s just not what I expected. Even after she came with me to the hospital last week, and I could tell she was nicer than her sister, I still thought she’d be… Well, stuck-up or stiff or so snobby and straitlaced that she’d get on my nerves.”
    â€œBut she isn’t stuck-up or stiff or snobby or straitlaced,” Willy said, as if he’d realized that, too.
    â€œNo, she isn’t any of that. There’s no doubt that she didn’t grow up the way we did, that she’s from a whole different world, but she’s still down-to-earth and open to things she hasn’t done or experienced before. She doesn’t turn her nose up at anything. Orlook down it at anyone, either. She’s interested in things other than herself. She’s open to learning what she doesn’t know. She listens—to me and to Johnny even when he’s talking her ear off. She’s honest—she’ll answer any question either of us