18. Chase
CHASE
I sit on the couch with Logan after I shower and reach for Logan’s laptop on the coffee table. “Mind if I use this?” I ask him.
“Sure.”
I pry it open and the first thing that flashes up on the screen is my own Instagram page. It’s open to one of the videos where I was painting while shirtless, and the video is paused as I’m reaching up to the corner of a tall canvas, highlighting the muscles on my back.
I suppress a grin, turning to lift an eyebrow at him.
“I’ve gotten even better at my workout routine since last year, you know,” I murmur. “If you need some tips and tricks, just ask—”
“Fuck off,” he mumbles, and I can’t help but smile completely. His cheeks are turning pink as he reaches over to the laptop, closing that tab. “I should have shut this thing down last time. And I have two personal trainers, Chase. I play a football pro on TV. I’ve got it handled.”
“Sure, sure. I guess you paused on my back to check out my tattoo, then?”
“You know that your tattoos aren’t the only interesting thing about you, right, Chase? I usually don’t even care about tattoos—”
“You like mine. You fucking love them.”
He leans back on the couch, sighing as his eyes fall on mine. “That’s completely true. Yours are beautiful. But I can’t tell you that without making your ego even bigger than it already is.”
I wave my hand through the air, turning back to the laptop and hiding my quiet satisfaction. I bring up a few new tabs, typing various locations into Google Maps.
“Okay,” I tell him, putting the laptop in the center of the table so he can see it, too.
“I’ve done a couple of portrait shoots for my friends in this park, and it’s a great location.
We couldn’t exactly have you naked in public, though, so this would only be if we did some more clothed, fashion-editorial type of photoshoots. ”
I tab over to the next one, bringing it up.
“This is another location where I’ve worked.
It’s an abandoned factory, and no one is around for at least a mile.
We could do it here. Bring in a chair, have you sit on it looking pretty.
Or we can drive out into the forest and do a sort of rugged, camping style of photoshoot.
I’m sure your fans would fucking love seeing you nude in a forest getting all pumped up while you set up a tent. ”
Logan cocks his head to one side, looking at me. “I want to do it in your art studio.”
I sit back on the couch. “What? My studio is tiny, Logan. It’s about the size of a big closet. I can’t afford much more.”
“But it has windows. Natural light. And every wall has cool art on it, some of it finished, and some of it in-progress.”
I lift an eyebrow. “You want to release naked pictures of yourself with my art in the background?”
“Yeah,” he says. “I thought you would like that.”
I lean further back on the couch, scrubbing my palms over my face and then through my hair.
Oh God.
Just act normal.
Yes, he just sat there and said the nicest thing you’ve ever had someone say to you.
But you don’t need to make a big thing out of it.
“That could work,” I tell him, sitting back up and nodding.
He stares at me and I hate how good his grey eyes look as they reflect the light from the fire.
“You sure?” he asks. “You seemed like you were about to tell me no.”
I shake my head, closing the laptop lid and scooting back on the couch. My phone buzzes in my pocket and I ignore it, but when it keeps buzzing again and again I realize someone’s calling me.
I slide out my phone.
“Shit. It’s my mom,” I tell Logan.
“She’s up at this time of night?”
I nod. “Mom’s a night owl like me. God, I never should have taught her how to video call. I have to answer. I won’t show you, okay? My mom really likes Yard Line, so…”
Logan nods. “It’s fine. Go ahead and answer. I have fresh mangoes in the kitchen, I’ll cut some up for us.”
I press the button to answer the call. “Hi, Mom.”
“Chase, this thing was manufactured in the depths of hell,” she says immediately, pointing her phone toward the new thermostat I set up in her house last week.
“Hello to you, too, my sweet, loving mother.”
She laughs. “Sorry. Hello, Chasey. Could you pretty please help your dear old mother with trying to program the schedule on this technological instrument designed to make me frickin’ lose my mind?”
“Yes, yes, I can,” I tell her. “Okay. What’s the problem? You want to change the schedule on it, or have no schedule?”
“It’s frigid as the Arctic from six ‘til ten, then it suddenly turns into a sauna in here.”
I tell her to show me the different settings, and for the next fifteen minutes, I walk her through deleting the old schedule and making her own.
By the end of the call, she’s praising me like I’m some sort of thermostat whisperer, and she settles down onto her couch and looks at me through the video.
“Wait, you’re not in your apartment,” she says, peering at the background. “No brick wall.”
“Oh. No,” I tell her. “I’m at a friend’s place.”
“Fancy friend, huh?”
I see that the background of my video shows part of the white couch as well as the lower wood paneling on the walls of the suite. There’s a framed piece of art on the upper part of the wall.
I nod back at the painting. “It’s a replica of a Matisse painting. You like his stuff, right?”
My mom doesn’t paint, but she does like hearing me talk about it, so it’s a welcome distraction.
“I think I love most of his stuff. You know, your father hated that type of painting. Said it just looked like colors on a canvas. I don’t know where you got your creativity, but it certainly wasn’t from him.”
Mom chuckles as she talks about my father.
But my chest tightens every time she brings him up.
My mom never knew the worst of it. Dad never hurt me when she was around, somehow carefully making sure that she was always out at work or at the store anytime he hit me. She was aware that Dad wished I played sports, but around her, he never said it with as much acid in his voice.
And she also wasn’t around whenever he called my art “worthless.”
I never had the heart to admit it to her.
To her, Dad was just a serious, hard worker who always brought home a good income to take care of the family. She was devastated when he died, and every time she brings him up now, I hold back from describing just how horrific my relationship with my father became.
It’s always been the only secret that Julian and I keep from our mom.
Well, until the secret of Logan, I guess.
But at least when Mom started watching Yard Line a few months ago, it was a more pleasant secret to have rattling around in my heart.
“I’m glad we fixed the thermostat,” I tell her.
“Hah. No we about it. You’re a godsend, Chasey. I’m going to go finish this crossword puzzle. Have a good night with this friend. Whoever they are.”
She winks at me and I can’t help but smile a little. “Night, Mom.”
When I hang up, Logan strides back into the room with a plate in his hand. There are slices of fresh mango, some raspberries and strawberries, and a bowl of whipped cream next to them.
“I know it’s not much compared to the desserts you make in the restaurant now, but they’re ripe and fucking delicious,” Logan says.
“This is perfect.” I dip a slice of mango into the cream and take a bite. “Our head pastry chef works for hours to make cakes and pies, and I swear fresh fruit in cream is just as good. Damn.”
We devour most of the plate, and Logan relaxes a little afterward.
“I’m jealous of how you talk to your mom,” he finally says.
“What? Really?”
He nods. “She talks to you like you guys are friends. My parents are so formal. Even my siblings are. When they call me, every Saturday morning, I swear it’s almost like a business call. Always the same questions, and never anything too personal or too real.”
“I assume there aren’t many emotions on display?”
Logan grimaces. “Zero. Sometimes it feels like my parents are just trying to play the role of perfect parents, and in the end there’s not really any room for pesky things like feelings.”
I shake my head. “I can’t imagine. My mom is just as blunt as I am, and before my dad died, there sure as fuck wasn’t any question what he thought.”
“I remember you mentioned you had a hard time with your dad,” Logan says gently.
“I told you that?”
He nods. His eyes start to search my face, and I can’t tell if there’s pity beneath his curiosity or if I’m just afraid of that.
“You said that you struggled against authority figures in school, and your father.”
It strikes me that Logan’s remembering something specific about me that I must have told him last year, and there is a silver lining to the cloud.
He remembers things about me.
That shouldn’t make me feel as special as it does.
I chew on the inside of my cheek for a bit, considering the option of glossing over things with Logan. But I have nothing to lose.
“My father was abusive,” I tell him plainly. “He hated my art. He hit me. Told me I was a shitty son, and he wished I played sports. Football, actually, most of all.”
Logan’s face suddenly goes dark, like a cloud passed over us. “Chase,” he says softly.
“I’m fine. Really,” I tell him as I look over at the fire. “He died many years ago now, and I’m clearly my own person. But, uh, yeah. My mom doesn’t know about how he treated me. She thought we were different, and she knew we didn’t always get along, but that’s it.”
“You’re keeping this from your family?” he asks.
“My brother knows, and some of the kids in my high school knew, because they saw it happen a couple of times when Dad dropped me off. Other than that…”
I trail off and when I finally look over at Logan again he practically looks like he’s about to cry, which makes me a little uncomfortable.
I don’t want to make people sad. It’s why I don’t talk about things like this.
“I’m so sorry,” Logan says finally, sliding over on the couch to grip me in a tight hug.
My chest feels strange, and I hate the sensation.
Usually when Logan touches me it’s purely good, but right now I feel something different.