Chapter 24 - Olivia
A iden: Excited to see you. I hope you are ready to eat all the soup dumplings! (dumpling and chopstick emojis)
Olivia: I’m impressed by how well you speak “Olivia.” How did you know soup dumplings are the things I’ve been missing most?
Aiden: Because you’re human. How could you not?
Olivia: Good point. I’m looking forward to seeing you too.
Olivia spent the drive to Aiden's Saint Paul apartment oscillating between thrilled and anxious. Things with Aiden had been good. Really, really scary good. And despite her conversation with Jessa, it was hard not to contemplate all the possibilities and contingency plans for her and Aiden.
Olivia looked out her window at the lush green fields interspersed with blue ponds and reedy green sloughs. As she entered the suburbs, the fields were replaced by car lots, outlet malls, and box stores, and the distance between highway exit ramps got shorter and shorter .
She had to rely on GPS since she hadn’t spent much time in either Minneapolis or Saint Paul beyond the airport. Her family had made the trip once or twice a year when she was a kid, often because she or her sister had a 4-H project to show at the Minnesota State Fair. If they were lucky, their parents would also take them to a Twins baseball game and the local amusement park to ride water slides and roller coasters unceasingly until after dark.
Without a doubt, those were some of her fondest family memories, even though at the time she had been hot and sticky with a sore belly filled with sugary fried foods, not to mention totally sleep deprived from late nights watching movies in their hotel room. They’d shed a lot of overtired tears, but her mom had kept them going, usually with more sugar.
Olivia’s busy brain made quick work of the drive from the city limits to downtown Saint Paul. Aiden’s eight-story complex was all sleek lines and modernity. Ah city life. She sighed wistfully before pulling out her phone to text Aiden.