26. Logan
26
LOGAN
It’s been a long day. After landing in Madrid, I texted Daphne good morning and picked up my rental car to go to Marisol and Pierre’s home, a lovely villa in Nueva Espana within the District of Chamartín, situated north of the city. I park my rented Mercedes and approach Marisol’s door.
Before I can knock, the door swings open, and Pierre greets me with a hug and a warm smile. “Logan! Welcome! It has been too long. Mari is changing Ariana and will be down in a moment.”
From behind Pierre, I hear, “Lolo!” A little black-haired missile rushes into my legs.
I bend to scoop him up. “Henri, I almost didn’t recognize you. When did you start shaving?” I blow a raspberry against his cheek, making him giggle.
“Lolo, stop!” When I lower him to his feet, he grabs my hand, dragging me toward the salon. “?Mira!”
He’s pointing toward a black-painted rocking horse and tells me to look. He speaks a mishmash of Spanish, French, and English, depending which word comes to mind first. He understands all three languages. It’s incredible. I can handle Spanish and French, but I’m not fluent, and Mari and Pierre have requested I speak English to Henri, partly to increase his familiarity with the language, but mostly so I don’t confuse him with my poor grammar. I don’t know what is normal for an almost three-year-old in terms of language skills, but Henri seems advanced. He climbs on the horse and starts rocking.
“What’s its name?” I ask.
“Guillermo,” he answers. All righty. I peek over at Pierre. He grins, shrugs, and shakes his head.
I hear steps approaching and turn to see a radiant Mari holding the prettiest baby I’ve ever seen.
“Ariana, meet your Lolo,” she coos to her daughter, who gives a drooly, gummy smile in response. She has wispy dark blond hair and her mother’s dark gaze and lashes. She’s in a dark blue dress/shirt thing with blue-and-white striped footed pants underneath. Is it possible for a six-month-old to be fashionable? It must be because Ariana is like a little model. Henri is in brown corduroy pants with a green long-sleeved T-shirt, looking dapper too. I feel a bit rumpled and underdressed in the jeans and pullover I’ve been wearing since yesterday afternoon.
“Hello, Ariana,” I say to the baby as I reach out to run a finger along her cheek. She grabs my finger in a powerful grip I wasn’t expecting and tries to put it in her mouth.
With a laugh, Pierre rescues me by gently loosening her grip before she can start chewing. “She’s teething, and everyone else’s fingers are tastier than her own.”
“Here, hold her.” Mari hands Ariana to me. “I’ll get her soother.”
I smile at the bundle in my arms. “Hello, merry girl. I’m so happy to meet you.” I glance at Pierre. “You’re a very lucky man, my friend.”
Smiling at his little girl, he runs a hand over her curls. “Oui, I am. How about you? Mari said you went home to visit your Daphne. Any progress?”
“Pierre, you didn’t offer him anything to drink or tell him to take a seat,” Mari says in admonishment. “I’m going to tell your mama you’re a poor host!”
With a wry expression, Pierre extends his arm in invitation to sit on the sofa. I sit with Ariana on my lap. Mari hands her daughter a chilled teething ring she promptly puts in her mouth and starts gumming, making a nom-nom sound. Henri is content riding Guillermo while watching a Spanish cartoon.
“I started coffee. Did you sleep on your flight?” Mari glances around. “Where are your bags?”
I press a kiss to Ari’s curls and breathe in her baby scent. She chooses that moment to let out a massive fart, and I am no longer smelling the sweet smell of baby soap and detergent. Instead, I’m engulfed in a cloud of something much more pungent. I think it even surprised the baby because her rosebud lips form an O shape, and then she giggles like it’s the funniest joke ever.
“Come here, princess. Let’s go check your diaper.” Pierre extracts his giggling daughter from my grasp. “Sorry, she gets away with it because she’s cute.” He presses a kiss to her cheek and leaves the room.
“How can one little girl produce a smell so rank?” I ask.
Marisol laughs as she sets the coffee service on the table in front of the sofa and takes a seat in the armchair across from me. “Wait until you have your own children, Logan. Passed gas won’t even make the top ten of the gross things you’ll encounter in a day.”
She pours coffee into the cups, its aroma wafting and helping to erase the stink bomb Ariana subjected us to.
“While we’re on the subject of your children…” she says in her velvety Spanish accent.
“We aren’t,” I interject.
Mari ignores me and continues. “How are things with Daphne? She didn’t come with you?”
I add cream and sugar to my coffee, knowing from experience that Mari’s coffee needs to be diluted if I want any hope of sleeping in the next three days.
I take a sip and sigh. “No, she didn’t come with me. She needs to renew her passport and has work. This all came up too suddenly for her to get away. She’s not very spontaneous.” I let out a huff of humorless laughter. “It’s funny. I’m so go with the flow, and she’s not, but we’re perfect for each other.”
Mari’s bark of laughter was not what I was expecting.
“My dear, sweet, delusional man, you’re one of the least go with the flow people I know. You give the impression of being a vagabond, going wherever the wind takes you, but you’ve planned everything out, and if your initial plan doesn’t work, you move on to plans B through Q. You make it seem effortless and spontaneous, but you couldn’t be as successful as you are without having things planned.”
I’m not sure how to respond. She’s not wrong. I do plan things, but that’s being responsible.
“You’re able to be…spontaneous…because you don’t have any responsibilities.” She stops me before I can react. “Logan, I love you, so I’m going to tell you the truth, even though you don’t want to hear it.” She takes a sip of coffee.
I decide to take one too, in part to brace myself, but also so I have something in my hands to anchor me. I nod for her to continue but lean forward with my forearms resting on my thighs, braced to defend myself.
She places her cup on the table and gently puts a hand on my arm, oblivious to my defensive position. Or trying to break it down.
“I’m not saying you’re a wastrel. You work, you’re responsible, but if you decided tomorrow you didn’t want to be a travel photographer, you could quit and not destroy your world. From what you’ve told me, you don’t have a car payment, you don’t pay rent—ah ah ah.” She gives me an admonishing glare when I go to interrupt her. “Yes, you pay Daphne, but it’s not the same as having a mortgage and utilities. If you weren’t living with her, you could live with your parents until you were ready to move somewhere else. Your parents carry your health insurance. You have your trust fund Pierre invests for you. You have parents and grandparents and a brother who all love you and support you. You’re very fortunate.”
The breath I was holding wooshes out. I guess I was afraid what she was going to say would hit too close to home. It did.
“Daphne doesn’t have any of that. She has you. She doesn’t have a family. She doesn’t have a safety net. She needs her job to have insurance, she has a house to support, and she needs to support herself. Even if she wanted to run away with you, and I’m sure she does, she can’t do it without planning things to make sure she’s covered her responsibilities and that if something happened, she could survive it financially and emotionally.”
I’m ashamed I didn’t consider all that. Of course, I would take care of Daphne, practically with things like health insurance, but also emotionally. If, God forbid, something happened to me, I’d make sure she was provided for. I can understand her caution. Her life was turned upside down when her parents died. Gran’s death wasn’t necessarily a surprise, but it always feels like it’s too soon when a loved one passes. My dear, sweet Daphne. All I want to do is make her happy and make sure she feels safe, secure, and loved.
“I’m such a jerk,” I moan to Marisol.
“Lolo jerk!” Sure, now Henri is paying attention to us.
Mari has become an expert at giving the mom look while saying her child’s name. It’s apparently an international skill, so my buddy goes back to rocking and watching his show.
Mari pats my shoulder. “You’re not a jerk, Logan. You’re just clueless. You can fix that. Idiocy can be overcome. Heartlessness cannot.”
The sounds of happy baby babbles reach us when Pierre returns carrying a non-smelly Ariana.
“Let’s try this again,” I say, reaching for her. I place a kiss on her curls and tell her she’s so much cuter when she doesn’t smell like a sewer. Okay, I don’t actually say she smelled like a sewer before, but it’s implied. I balance her on my lap, hold her hands, and bounce my knees in an alternate rhythm like she’s riding a horse. It makes her giggle, and I feel like I’m fulfilling my duties as an honorary uncle. Henri decides he’s done riding his rocking horse and comes over to climb on the couch next to me.
I stop bouncing Ariana, shifting her so she leans against my chest to enable me to put an arm around Henri when he cuddles into my side. I lean back on the couch and get comfortable because I assume I’ll be here a while with a pair of sleeping kids using me for a pillow.
Pierre quirks a brow in silent question—do I want to be relieved of his children? I shake my head. Having these two sturdy little bodies against me feels oddly soothing.
Picking up our previously abandoned conversation, Marisol asks, “Where are your bags? Did you leave them in the car?”
“I’m staying in a hotel this time. I’ll be talking to Daphne late in the evening, and I don’t want to disrupt your family. But thanks for always making me feel welcome and offering your home to me.”
Pierre chuckles. “What makes you think you won’t have privacy to speak with your girlfriend? Our children wouldn’t be waking you at the crack of dawn crawling into your bed or crying during the night. They only do that to us. Staying here is like staying at a hotel but without the privacy and room service.”
His dry wit and obvious adoration of his wife and children are two of the things I most appreciate about Pierre. When Ariana soon follows her brother into nap time, I spend the couple of hours the kids are sleeping on me talking with their parents about my relationship with Daphne and my hopes for the future.
“I want to have what you two have one day—a loving marriage, happy children, knowing your partner is your person, and professional success. I truly believe Daphne and I can have that. We simply need to figure out how we can be in the same place at the same time and feel like we aren’t giving up everything in order to make the other person happy.”
I’m embarrassed to be twenty-six years old and just now having to compromise in a relationship. With past girlfriends, if we didn’t want the same things, we’d part ways. Our feelings weren’t deep enough to sacrifice for each other. I’m realizing that love isn’t so much about sacrificing, but more about compromising. It shouldn’t be one person giving up so the other person is happy. Instead, both people should work together so everyone is happy.
“I know I want to be with Daphne, and I’m willing to compromise to make sure we’re together. By the same token, I’m self-aware enough to understand that, long-term, I need to still travel and experience new things. I like to be outdoors. I don’t want to be in an office doing the same thing day in, day out. It would be so easy to work for my uncle and stay home to make Daphne happy, but I’m afraid I’ll feel stifled and get frustrated.”
Knowing Daphne like I do, she’s probably having similar thoughts—traveling would be fun at first because it’s new, but she wouldn’t enjoy living out of a suitcase. She enjoys having a schedule and her own nest.
After the kids wake up from their naps, Pierre and I take them outside for some fresh air while Mari finishes up dinner. I kick a ball with Henri. Okay, I kick a ball and watch him run after it, my thoughts on what Marisol said about me and my situation.
She made me sound like I’m selfish and controlling. I’m not. Of course I plan. How do you get things done if you don’t plan? There are people who just react to what happens and never make anything happen. Reactive versus proactive. That describes me and Daphne. She deals with the things that happen to her, but she rarely makes them happen. I’m all about making things happen. I don’t want to be at the mercy of what the world throws at me. I want the world at my mercy. Let it adapt to me, not me adapt to it. Is that difference because of our basic personalities, or is it a human versus shifter thing? I’m a golden eagle shifter, the largest bird of prey in North America. Our kind is an apex predator, and we rule our skies.
In a romantic relationship, though, we can’t be predator and prey. We need to be partners. It freaks me out she doesn’t think about our future. That’s all I think about. I’m certain we can have a glorious life together. Does she not see that? Can she not see that? Is she afraid to see that?
Henri carries the ball back to me, and I kick it again, sending him off giggling to chase it. Is Daphne afraid to think about our future because she doesn’t trust it will come true? Is she afraid to plan for the future because she knows it can be taken away in an instant? That causes my heart to ache for her. I picture her like a shipwreck survivor being tossed in the ocean, clinging to a bit of debris and trying to stay afloat. Of course, she won’t let go of it and take off swimming, hoping she’ll find land. The life raft has to come to her.
I will be her life raft.
Pierre and I tidy up after we finish eating the delicious meal Mari prepared so she can enjoy a glass of wine. Henri is looking at a storybook and telling the story to Ari in French. It must be his favorite book because it sounds like he has it down pat, even making funny voices for the different animal characters like his parents must do.
Mari gives me a kiss on the cheek as I prepare to leave their home to go to my hotel. “I’m so happy to see you, Logan. It has been too long. Next time, bring Daphne.”
“I’ll do my best, Marisol. You know you can always visit us too.” I shake Pierre’s hand and pull him in for a hug. I already cuddled the kids and said my goodbyes to them. “It’s not Madrid or Paris, but New Jersey has interesting things too.”
“We’re aware of that, Logan. We were waiting for you to realize it.” Well, damn, there goes Mari dropping more truth bombs. “Yes, you’re a travel photographer, but do you realize people travel to take pictures of what’s in your own backyard? You don’t have to travel all over the world to be successful.” She shrugs. “If it’s the photography that’s important to you, there are plenty of subjects there. If it’s the travel that’s the focus and the photography is a way to support the travel, that’s a different story. I guess it depends on what is important to you.”
I hug her again and press a kiss to her cheek. “You’re an excellent friend, Mari. Pierre, you’re a lucky, lucky man.”
Leaving their home, I drive to the historic hotel where I’m staying. It isn’t as sleek and modern as many of the hotels in Madrid, but that is part of why I like it. I don’t need all the bells and whistles and fitness centers. I’d rather have a place with character, and this place has that in spades. My room is clean, and the bed is incredibly comfortable. I take a shower to wash off the travel grime and crawl naked between the sheets. This feels incredible. Not as nice as my bed at home, but that’s because Daphne isn’t in it with me. I set three alarms on my phone, five minutes apart, starting at right before one in the morning so that I’m awake in time to call Daphne. It’ll be seven in the evening for her, and she should be home from work and grocery shopping.
The five hours of sleep I’ll get before speaking with her will hopefully erase the bags forming under my eyes. I’m not vain, but Daph will worry if I appear exhausted. I also know she finds me irresistible when I’m sleep-rumpled, and I always want to give my sunshine what she wants. And give her what she needs, even if she doesn’t know she needs it.
Wait, that sounds controlling.
Now that Mari has called my attention to it, all I can think about is what a controlling ass I can be sometimes. That’s the last thing I want to be with Daphne. I love her. I don’t want to control her. I want us to work together for our goals and to find compromises for those times when our goals don’t perfectly align. I feel part of these six weeks we’re apart is going to be spent reading some self-help and relationship books. Because if I’m going to deserve Daphne and give her what she really needs, I need to learn a lot.