35. Logan
logan
Perhaps camping in September wasn’t my brightest idea, but it was our first time we could get out here for this summer break.
Even though it wasn’t technically summer anymore, and Lue was fully in high school right now, I needed to find the time to take my girls away and just have some time as a family.
Thea was being quiet, and I wanted to figure out what was going on with her. Lue was her normal bubbly self, even after she had called us out last week.
We’d been getting up from watching a movie when Thea announced she was going to bed. Normally, I’d get up, give her a polite kiss, and let her go to her room where she’s been staying since the “mice infested her apartment.”
When I’d pulled away, my daughter had been standing there, her brows furrowed in confusion.
“What’s wrong?” I asked, wondering if this was going to be the moment that she told us she wasn’t happy with Thea being here, that it made her feel weird or uncomfortable .
I should’ve known that wasn’t it.
“You guys are together, right?”
Thea glanced quickly at me, then back to my inquisitive daughter. “Yeah, we are.”
“So, if you’re together, and we’re all living together, then why are you staying in the guest room?”
Relief flooded me, knowing now that her thoughts were about practicality and not about getting rid of the woman who had entered our lives.
“Well, we didn’t want to make you uncomfortable, Lue,” I tell her, rubbing her head with my hand, which she promptly swatted away.
“Why would that make me uncomfortable?”
“Well…just because we’re not married.”
Lue gives her a look, and then, like something dawns on her, she nods her head seriously. “Oh. You guys don’t want to have sex yet?”
I nearly puked.
Right then, right there.
Puke everywhere.
“Where the hell did you learn about that?”
At that question, both Thea and Lue gave me strange, questioning looks. “What?”
“Grandma gave me the talk, for one. I read Shakespeare for two, and I’m fifteen and in high school. I know what sex is.”
Her matter-of-fact speech did nothing for my pounding heartbeat.
Thea looks like she was on the verge of laughter, and Lue, knowing she just shocked her father into an early grave, was grinning at me.
“Okay, one, I’m talking to your grandmother, and two…hell, I don’t know. Go to bed or something.” I needed a minute to get my bearings about me. I had no idea what to do with the information she just dropped on me.
Thea covered her mouth with her hand, and Lue stepped around us to head to her room. “Still,” she starts, and I brace myself for whatever she was about to say. “You should share a room. Being in separate rooms is so weird.”
With that, my daughter skipped down the hallway to her room when something else occurred to me.
“And no more Shakespeare! That guy is bad news.”
“Whatever you say, Dad!” Lue replies, sounding so mature that I want to weep with the thought that in just three short years, she was going to be in college.
But one good thing had come from that night. Ever since Lue had basically okayed it, Thea had been in my bed, in my arms, every night since.
Everything had been going well, great even, but there was still something there, some little wall—or maybe a fence—that I had to climb to get Thea to open up to me about what was going on with her.
She wasn’t necessarily hiding something, but she acted like the shoe was about to drop.
Given her history, I know it’s important for her to be reassured.
After a long day of canoeing, hiking, and enjoying food and marshmallows under the stars, Lue had headed to her tent to read while Thea and I sat out by the fire a little longer.
She was quiet, her gaze stuck on the fire in front of us, and I almost don’t want to disrupt her when I can tell her thoughts are not really here with me.
“What’s going on in that pretty head of yours?” I ask, nudging her on the shoulder.
She sat with a blanket wrapped around her shoulders and turns abruptly, startled out of her thoughts, and gives me a small smile. “Nothing, just thinking about how happy I am. ”
I eye her warily. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” Her smile grows, and she shrugs.
“I don’t know. Things have been so…chaotic.
Not just in my life but in my brain. Coming out here.
” She pauses to give our surroundings a glance.
“Seeing everything, smelling nature, and breathing in the fresh air gives you perspective. Reminds me of what’s important. ”
I take my own moment to look around, my gaze catching on the moon. “Yeah, it’s pretty great. I can’t wait to bring out more kids, to let Lue have some siblings someday and just go camping as a family. Maybe bring a few horses along for trail riding.”
I hope, pray, and plead that my words didn’t go too far, that Thea answers back with some sort of reassurance and some sort of reciprocation.
Finally, she smiles and nods her head, but that’s all I get.
“What’s going on?” I finally blurt out, my mouth unable to hold in the words I’ve been dying to say.
“Nothing,” she answers again, this time quieter. “I swear, everything is fine.”
“You don’t seem fine.” My words are gruff and important. Important because I need her to know that I’m here, that she can tell me anything, and that I will happily help her through whatever it is that’s bothering her.
Because I know something is.
“Logan, I love you, you know that, right?”
The words meant to bring comfort seem to have the opposite effect on me. “I love you too, more than I can say.”
“Good, good,” she says quietly, her eyes finding the fire once more. “Just…that’s all we need right now, okay?”
I can feel myself grow frustrated, can feel her slipping away from me, and I don’t even know why or what reason she has for doing it. But something isn’t right.
I think about what she’s been through.
“You’re not in any trouble, are you?” More than usual, I should clarify, but I don’t.
“Not any more than usual,” she replies with a sarcastic laugh, but she doesn’t continue.
I turn her face to mine, desperation starting to seep into the edges of my mind…but when I look at her and see her sadness, all I want to do is take it away.
“I love you.” I press my lips to hers, and her arms open for me, pulling me into the warmth of her, of her blanket, of her heart. “I love you,” I repeat again against her mouth, taking my lips down her jaw and onto her neck.
We’re quiet as we make our way to our tent. As I lay her back, and she opens herself up to me in the sleeping bag, we hold each other as we make love quietly under the stars, and I tell her I love her.
Again and again, until I know it’s ingrained in her heart.