Thanks guys! You all are so great about reveiwing. It took so long for the update because I was away on vacation but I'm back now so...I hope you like this next part!

Later that night Ruthie walked into the apartment, completely tired and ready for nothing but to fall into bed. Ian had more energy than any kid had any right to. Not that he was unruly, on the contrary he was extremely well-behaved. But Ruthie had spent the whole afternoon playing with him, mainly just trying to keep up with him.

That mixed with the lack of sleep she had gotten the night before because of her slight anxiety about actually starting college and her new job made for one exhausted Ruthie.

Kicking her shoes off at the door she made her way to her bedroom, wondering why it was so quiet and where Martin was.

"Hey Ruth." He called from his room, causing her to jump as she walked into her room.

"Don't do that." She yelled crossly, while getting her pajamas out of her drawer.

"What did I do?" Martin called, his eyes narrowing as he attempted to figure out why he had irritated her.

"Scare me." Ruthie answered, appearing suddenly in the bathroom doorway before she slid the door shut closing him out.

"I wasn't trying to." He muttered, deciding that she must have just had a long day to snap at him for something so little since usually Ruthie wasn't that moody.

About 10 minutes later he heard the door slide open and he watched as Ruthie made her way over to sit on the end of his bed, already ready for bed. He had been writing an email to his dad, who was once again in the states but stationed at the moment in Texas.

"Sorry for being mean. It's been a long day and you just scared me. I didn't know whether you were home." Ruthie said quietly, before asking, "Emailing your dad?"

"Yeah. He said he's pretty happy with how things are going. He even said he's been out on a few dates with some woman." Martin responded, his expression unreadable as he closed his laptop and put it back on his desk.

"Are you okay with that?" Ruthie asked gently, wishing that it wasn't so hard to get Martin to open up sometimes.

"Fine." He responded shortly, not meeting her eyes, which only convinced her that he wasn't telling the truth.

"Well if it did bother you a little…" Ruthie began before she was cut off by Martin shaking his head.

"Don't Ruthie. Let's talk about something else." Martin said, his voice deceptively calm but his eyes giving him away.

Ruthie deciding that she should back off for now changed the subject as he had asked, "Ian has absolutely way too much energy. He's constantly up to something. It's like watching Sam and David all over again."

Martin smiled slightly, glad that Ruthie hadn't pushed the topic, "That sounds interesting. I wanna hear all about it."

So they continued talking for quite a while, first about Ian, then about their classes. And later Ruthie told Martin about Gretchen and he told her about baseball practice. Finally realizing that it was getting pretty late, Ruthie got up and told Martin goodnight as she headed to bed.