CHAPTER 19
L ogan made drink after drink, poured beer after beer, and even changed out a few kegs. She was busy, which normally made time pass by quickly, but tonight, no matter how many drinks she made, how many times she cleaned the bar or the glasses after they’d been used, time seemed to slowly roll by as if her shift would be never-ending. Watching Rory sit at two tables that had been pushed together and not being able to talk to her was now Logan’s purgatory.
“I told her,” she said into the phone.
“Told who what?” Ava asked.
Logan was taking out the overflowing trash bag and had a few minutes where she could call Ava to tell her what she’d done and to try to get advice.
“I told Rory about what you and I did the other day.”
“You what? We just talked about this.”
“I know…” she replied, tossing the bag into the dumpster they shared with the gumbo place next door. “But she admitted to being jealous, and I told her that we were just friends. She then asked if we were doing the casual sex thing because that’s what I do, and I told her no, but it felt really wrong to leave out that, technically, we had just done that. I didn’t want to lie to her.”
Ava sighed and replied, “She’s not your girlfriend, Logan. You don’t owe her an explanation.”
“I know, but… There’s just something about her that makes me always want to tell the truth. It’s like her eyes are reading into me, begging me to explain everything and leave out nothing, and there’s also the fact that I don’t want to lie to her. Other women, the ones I just fuck behind a bar, I can lie to them and tell them I’ll be back for more when I know I won’t, and it’s fine. With Rory… I don’t know. I just don’t want to start something that’s based on lies, and this felt important to share. I told her we stopped it before it went any further.”
“Any further than what ? Were you descriptive or something?”
“Just that I went down on you, and we stopped.”
“Fuck, Logan.” Ava took a deep breath. “Let me guess: she wasn’t very happy about that.”
“She says she’s fine but that she was right to tell me we should just be friends.”
“Well, yeah! She likes you, and you just told her you had your head between my legs not that long ago. Correct me if I’m wrong here, idiot, but she told you that the main reason she doesn’t want to date you is that you do shit like that.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Logan replied as she pulled open the back door. “A lot of her friends are here tonight, and she’s sitting with them, but every so often, she looks over at me, and, Ava, I swear, there’s, like, pain in her eyes. I know I put it there.”
“Do I think it’s good to be honest? Yes. But I would be lying if I said it wouldn’t make me pull away, too. If I wanted a relationship with you, and you told me that, just days ago, you did that with your best friend whom you also used to go out with and were in love with, I’d be worried I was going to get my heart broken, and I’d want to protect it.”
“I messed up.”
“I don’t know. It’s hard to say, really. Honesty matters, Logan. Given your experience, I know you know that. I also think it’s important because if you really want to be with her, she needs to know all of you. That’s the only way to know if she truly wants you for you.”
“No one would want me for me. I’m a massive screw-up with thousands of dollars of debt, a shitty apartment, and a–”
“Stop it,” Ava interrupted her. “Stop that. You deserve happiness like the rest of us, Logan. Stop trying to sabotage that and just talk to her.”
Logan found Candace in the kitchen when she got back, so she told Ava, “I’ve got to get back to work.”
“Okay. Good luck. Talk to her. I mean it,” Ava replied.
“Hey, can you take those plates out to tables ten and four? Ten gets the skins. Four gets the burger,” Candace said.
“No problem,” Logan replied.
She carried the plates out, dropped them off at their respective tables, and passed by Rory and her friends on her way back to the bar. When she arrived, a customer at the bar asked for another beer, so Logan pulled the bottle out and gave it to them before she went to put it into the computer. Turning back after that, she saw Jill sitting there on the barstool.
“Oh, hi. Can I get you something?” she asked her.
“No, I’m okay,” Jill said. “Got a minute?”
“I’m working,” she replied. “I was late, so I can’t take a break yet.”
“Okay. Well, I just wanted to make sure you knew that there’s nothing going on with Rory and me.”
“Oh,” she said.
“I was giving you a hard time earlier.”
“Why?”
“I guess I wanted to see what might come out of it. You seemed to be incapable of looking away from Rory, which usually means one thing.”
“So, you decided to fuck with me?”
Jill shrugged a shoulder and replied, “A little. Anyway, we’re not going to be here much longer, so I thought I’d see if you wanted to come over and join us for a bit, if you can. Sit down with us. Give everyone a chance to get to know you a little.”
“Me? Why?”
“Because Rory keeps looking over here, and everyone’s wondering what’s going on.”
Logan nodded and told her, “I can’t yet. I don’t have a break coming for at least another hour. I let Candace down earlier by showing up late, so I don’t want to mess up again.”
“Well, I tried.” Jill stood up and added, “She seems different.”
“Who?”
“Rory. She was happy when I left her. She’d texted you something that, I’m sure, was difficult for her to send, so she seemed nervous but good. Now, she seems sad, and I’m just wondering what might have happened between then and now to make her that way.”
When Logan didn’t say anything in response to that, Jill didn’t add anything else, either, before she turned and walked back over to the table where Logan could now see Rory looking over at them, probably wondering what they could possibly have to say to one another that didn’t involve Jill ordering drinks. Logan wished she could be entirely honest with Rory, knowing Rory deserved that, but she wasn’t ready yet. Ava was the only person in her life who knew the entire story, with a few strangers knowing some fragments of it now, but telling a new person everything and letting Rory in like that was scary.
Logan hadn’t actually taken a nap earlier. She’d texted with Rory a little, and yes, she’d gone home, but only to change into her work clothes. Then, she had found a meeting. After that one, she had gone to another one. Logan had felt like she needed to be there. She had needed to talk to someone who didn’t know her about what she was going through now. The rule for these meetings was that the phones were off, though, or at least, on silent, so when she’d been deep in conversation with a woman who had been on the wagon, so to speak, for fifteen years, Logan had failed to pay attention to the time and had no reason to check any messages. She had been talking to this stranger about Rory, explaining to her that Rory was the first person she’d wanted to go out with since she had stopped gambling.
“It’s hard, putting yourself back out there,” the woman had replied. “The first one is especially difficult. About a year after I stopped, I dated this guy, and it was hard. His friends wanted to go to Atlantic City for the weekend. We lived in New York at the time. Anyway, he felt guilty about going. I told him it was fine. He could do whatever he wanted to do with his friends. When he got back, it became this thing. He didn’t know how to talk to me about the weekend and said he felt strange about having a good time. It didn’t last long after that.”
“She and I aren’t dating, but it’s also not because of my gambling. She doesn’t know about that yet. She thinks I only want something casual.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. I’ve had my fair share of casual.”
“When you say casual…”
“Sex,” Logan had explained.
“Ah, yeah,” the woman had said, nodding knowingly. “Supplementing?”
“Huh?”
“I did that as well. Once I lost one high, I started drinking a lot, but that only made me throw up all the time, so I switched to sex. I had a lot of that for about a year before that guy I mentioned, and after him, I had more. It took me some time to calm down and find someone. My husband and I have been together for eleven years now, though.”
“I didn’t really want it,” Logan had shared. “The sex. I just needed a distraction.”
“Yeah, I’ve been there,” the woman from the meeting had replied. “It’s fairly common. But let me ask you this… With this woman, you don’t want casual with her?”
“I hardly know her.” Logan had sighed then.
“But you know enough to know that it’s not just sex that you want?”
Logan had nodded.
“And she thinks you still only want sex?”
“I don’t know… She admitted to being jealous earlier when my friend was with me and I ran into her. My friend and I used to date, and she knows that.”
“Well, it sounds like that might be a first step. Maybe you should talk to her more about that.”
“We agreed we wouldn’t make a big thing out of it.”
The woman had laughed and said, “That seems a little impossible if you like her, and she’s basically telling you that she’s jealous of your ex. I’m not saying you should tell her that you’re a gambling addict tonight , but maybe just let her in a little. In my experience, the only way forward was for me to be honest about as much as I could as things went along with the men I dated. The ones who handled it poorly weren’t the guys for me. My husband made a few mistakes, but so did I, and he was the only one who never made me feel guilty for being an addict. He tried to understand. He wanted to know how he could help, but not in that way that made my addiction about him. That, to me, is worth everything.”
Logan had lost track of time, and only when the meeting had gotten back from the short break and her conversation had she thought to check her phone. She’d left the meeting halfway through to get to the bar as quickly as possible, lying to both her boss and Rory about what had happened in the process. Now, she was watching Rory with her friends, wishing she could just tell her everything and that telling her everything wouldn’t pull her further away.
When Logan saw Rory’s friends start to leave – generally two by two, with the exception of Jill, who left by herself, and another woman who left by herself after sticking around for another few minutes – she expected Rory to leave right after. It was late, and Logan was now closing because she’d shown up late. Instead, Rory had pulled the two tables apart and put them back where they went, making Logan smile because, of course, she would remember to do that. Logan got busy with a customer at the bar, and when she turned back around and didn’t see Rory by the tables, she assumed she’d left.
“Can I get a Shirley Temple?”
Logan turned to her right and saw Rory sitting on her now-usual stool. She was giving Logan a small smile.
“Extra grenadine?”
“Can you make it fancy and add two cherries?” Rory held up two fingers.
“Yeah, I can do that.”
Logan made the drink and placed it in front of her.
“Did you have a good time with your friends?”
“I did,” Rory replied. “They’re really new friends, so I’m still getting to know them.”
“New like Jill?”
Rory lifted an eyebrow and asked, “What did you two talk about when she came over here?”
“Oh. She just asked where the bathroom was,” Logan said, winking at Rory.
“Really? That’s strange. I remember Jill helping Sophie paint the walls in that bathroom not all that long ago. You’d think she’d remember where it was after that.”
“Short memory, I guess,” Logan continued the lie they both knew she was telling.
“So… Are you two okay, or should I worry about you giving her the side-eye all the time?”
“How often do you two hang out?” Logan asked back as she leaned over the bar.
“Well, we’ll be working together, so maybe a lot.”
Logan sighed exaggeratedly and said, “I will attempt to retract my claws, then.”
“I’m surprised you have claws with all that sex you have,” Rory teased.
Logan laughed and held up her hands.
“Metaphorical claws, not real ones.” Then, she sobered a bit and asked, “Are we okay?”
“Yeah,” Rory replied, leaning forward. “I told you that we’re good.”
“The words you said out loud didn’t really match the face you were giving me or your overall body language, which suggested that you might be mad at me or, at least, upset that I’d done that with Ava.”
“I was taken aback, yes,” Rory admitted. “But it’s true, what I said before: you can sleep with whomever you want, Logan. I can’t control my reaction to hearing about it, apparently, but it doesn’t mean that I’m judging you or that I think I can–”
“Will you stay?” Logan asked.
“Stay?”
“I have to close now,” Logan replied. “I’m sure you’re tired, but it’s last call. Can you maybe hang out with me until after close? We can keep talking.”
“You just want my help doing dishes,” Rory teased.
Logan laughed a little and said, “Well, I wouldn’t mind it, but I just want to keep talking.”
Rory nodded, and Logan heard the unmistakable throat clearing of a customer who either wanted a check or a refill.