Sunshine In The Morning (Spring-Summer Romance Book 1) by Alex Greenville

much. About everything. Twice. Most of it was nonsensical information, ranging from his health to his score in some virtual reality game. All harmless, and boring.
    She couldn’t help but compare the evening to her time with Aarin though. They were night and day different. Aarin was older and wiser. She preferred his quiet confidence given with his experiences of life. What he’d faced had made him strong and given him a perspective she respected. He had things to look back on that guided his footsteps and a gentle mannerism brought on by his time teaching. Plus, she and he had so much in common, their love for books and literature being the biggest.
    Still, she didn’t want to give up on Scott initially and so, more than once, tried to steer the conversation onto something interesting. But he was inexhaustible, continuing onward as if he hadn’t been interrupted at all. “I” seemed to be his favorite pronoun, along with “me” and “my” during their dinner conversation. Afterward, forced into a movie seat beside him, she lost track of the plot, forced to hear him relate the scenes to moments in his life … as if what he’d been through held any candle to someone as amazing as Aarin.
    She gave up listening toward the end, sliding down in her seat, and all but sprinted from the theater to the car once the credits rolled. On the ride home, packed tight against him, he made one attempt to drape his arm around her. She shrugged it off. She exited Dalton’s car, once back at the dorms, and didn’t look back. She was halfway down the hallway when Karen called from behind.
    “Wait … Lydia …”
    Lydia halted, her frustration pulsing on the surface.
    Karen skidded to a stop at her side. “I … I’m sorry. You had a bad night?”
    Lydia exhaled. She couldn’t hate Karen and, frankly, was surprised she wasn’t going home with Dalton. Just the same, she couldn’t act happy either and found her reply too sharp. “I had plans tonight, you know. Aarin and I were supposed to work on curriculum.”
    Karen’s gaze changed. “Aarin? You mean, Mr. Kai?”
    Lydia realized, too late, her faux pas. “Mr. Kai,” she corrected. “He … he and I … we were supposed to continue into second … semester work … and …” She sounded too scattered.
    Something Karen noticed. “You’d rather do that than go on a date?”
    Lydia raised her chin. “He wouldn’t have bored me stiff. We can talk about almost anything and see eye-to-eye whereas the only thing Scott sees is himself.”
    She whirled and made to surge forward, but Karen, once more, brought her to a halt. Snagging her sleeve, she turned her around, her expression far too knowing, and the longer they stood there, the hotter Lydia’s face grew.
    “I’m tired,” she said. She yanked free and left Karen standing in place.
    Seated on her bed fifteen minutes later, her pajamas on, legs folded crosswise, she stared at her cell wondering if she dared send Aarin a message. She finally opened a text window. The date stunk, she said. I’d rather have spent time with you. Her fingers shaking, she dared herself to hit send, her stomach immediately balling into a knot.
    His answer was a half hour coming. We have tomorrow, he replied.
     

     
    He’d almost not seen Lydia’s text. His hand better than usual, he’d opted to mow the yard, and the exercise had done him a world of good, reminding him, in a strange way, of his hockey days … the sweat, the flex and pull of his muscles, the satisfaction of a completed job. He’d realized seated on the patio afterward that the work had helped him not think about her.
    And he’d done a lot of that lately. He could, at any moment, recall her voice, the soft look in her eyes, the delicate curve of her cheek. A brief image of her with some nameless college student had bothered him more than he wanted to admit. He’d buried it beneath the spray of a long hot shower.
    The blinking light on his phone captured his eye when he