awkward conversation Five hot air balloons hung low on the horizon as I drove west in the morning after work. I had no idea why they were there, but it was a nice change of scenery on a familiar drive. I was on my way to see my sister Hope who was coming back home from Texas. She would be at my parents' house for a few days then head off to a different base in Missouri. It sounded like a good plan until I found out that she wasn't there yet. She was supposed to come home last Thursday, but due to some trouble she didn't fly out until today. My parents were going to pick her up in Chicago later in the afternoon. After my parents left for Chicago to get Hope, I went out for a swim in the pool. The water temperature was so warm that it almost matched the air temperature. Diving in wasn't a shock to the system. It was more like passing through a slightly more dense version of the air. So there I floated without a care until my brother's old girlfriend showed up at the pool and I got to play host. I think that in the entire time my brother had been seeing her, it was probably the longest conversation that I ever had with her. My best guess is that they were together somewhere between five or six years, but I really don't know her at all. Maybe I should have made more of an effort to know her, but I can't ever remember a time when it was just the two of us. Either she was with him or someone else was around. It was odd. Here was this person that was close to someone in my family, but most of what I know about her I know secondhand. I imagine that she probably feels the same way about me.
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