Chapter 17 #2
I nod at my hot cocoa, because I can’t look him in the eye.
“I have a ticket for you for tonight’s game,” he says. “And one for Lulabelle, if she wants it.”
“She’s in school,” I say, and my voice comes out normal, which deserves a hallelujah.
“I’m coming back, Georgie. After the season. We’ll have months together, and we can keep arguing about every Robert Frost poem and stupid kid’s book and everything in between.”
I look up now. “I’ve never argued with you.”
He smiles. “That sounds suspiciously like you disagreeing.”
I chuckle, some of the heaviness in my heart lifting. “It was an important clarification.”
“Funny how your clarification sounded like an argument.”
I purse my lips and wrinkle my nose at him.
He raises an eyebrow. “What was that?”
“Nothing.”
“That was something.”
“Do you mean me scrunching my nose?”
“It wasn’t a scrunch. It was practically a sneer.”
I gasp. “It was nowhere near a sneer. I would never sneer. I would never even stick my tongue out.”
“Whoa, there. Things are escalating quickly if you’re talking about sticking your tongue out at someone.”
I laugh into my hot cocoa.
“I think you should stick your tongue out at me when I deserve it,” he says. “It’s allowed.”
“I don’t do that.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s—” I think of what my grandmother would say. “Nasty.”
“Nasty? No way. It’s barely sassy.” He’s half smiling now. “Try it.”
“I’m not going to—”
“I dare you.”
Logan says I dare you with total calm, like he already knows I’m going to chicken out, because it’s so out of character.
Except … I kind of want to.
And before I know it, I’m making a face at him—squinting, wrinkling my nose, my tongue out in all its rudeness.
I hate it.
I retract my tongue faster than a vacuum cord and throw one hand over my face.
And Logan laughs way too hard. “Wow. That was legitimately hard for you, wasn’t it?” He’s still laughing, his smile so big, I could melt. “If you think that’s nasty,” he says when he recovers, “wait until you meet my siblings.”
The image arrives before I can stop it. The three of them—Logan, Lucas, and Liesel—around a table somewhere, all loud and impossibly close, their teasing the easy, comfortable kind of people who were a we before the word even had meaning.
And suddenly, I’m imagining being there with them, and I feel a foreign ache at how much I want it.
I feel a pang in my stomach at the realization.
I don’t dream. I don’t let myself want things. I don’t let myself miss anyone but my own mother.
And I definitely don’t let myself pine for a belonging that’s never been mine.
I look outside, frustrated by the sight of the little library that usually makes me so happy. Why have my only efforts to grow and do something new come from a place of total anonymity?
“Georgie,” he says, pulling my attention, but not my eyes. I can’t look at him right now. I can’t let myself want him. “I’m sorry, but I have to go pack. Will you come to the game tonight?”
I blink, scooping up my emotions and shoving them back into a box inside. I look at him and smile. “I have three friends who would love to go to the game with me,” I say. “They usually sit in the outfield, by the bullpen.”
“I can get more tickets.”
I meet his eye, nodding and cupping my mug. “Okay. Then I’ll see you tonight.”
He looks relieved, more settled, even as he’s shifting forward in his seat, getting ready to leave. “What are you going to do this afternoon? Apart from rest?”
“Homework,” I admit. “I missed an assignment last night.”
His lips stretch into a grimace, and he holds my hands between his. “I’m sorry. Burnout has a way of burning other things along with it. It’s not your fault. You can’t hold all of this alone.”
I always have, but after last night, he has a point. “Thanks, Logan.”
He frowns, his brow knitting together like he doesn’t like my answer.
“I wish I could help you carry it all. But I will. When I’m back,” he says, sitting on the edge of the coffee table so we’re only six inches apart, our knees overlapping space, but not quite touching.
He’s not hiding anything in his strong, steady gaze, and he isn’t taking his eyes off of me. “As long as you want me to.”
I almost choke on my last sip of hot cocoa.
As long as I want him to?
The feeling of the room spinning returns.
When I was little, I had a terrible case of separation anxiety.
Being away from my mama caused so much stress and worry for young me, she joked I wasn’t glued to her side, I was stitched.
As I grew, I managed the anxiety, but I could never shake the feeling of homesickness if I so much as spent the night at my grandparents’ house.
I would cry quietly in my bed until my grandmother would either drive me home or sit at the edge of the bed and tickle my face to help me fall asleep.
I missed my dad, too, but I was used to him being gone.
When she died, my homesickness died with her.
I could go anywhere, be anywhere, and I didn’t care. I barely thought about my dad when he left town. After he married Marlowe, it makes me sad to admit I turned my attention to her, became so desperate for her to love me, approve of me, acknowledge me, that I stopped needing him completely.
Logan’s being so open about his interest in me, but I can’t give him the same thing. I’m not the girl things work out for, and that’s okay. I don’t need to have all my wants met to be happy.
Besides, resignation is so much easier than hope.
So I give him one word—one small word—because it’s all I can spare.
“Okay.”
He takes my hands and pulls me up into a tender hug, his arms cradling me like he’s afraid I’ll break. Then he slowly presses his lips to my cheek—so warm and certain, my eyes close with want.
“Are you going to be here all afternoon?” he asks in my ear before letting me go.
“Yeah, why?” I ask.
“Around one, specifically?”
“Yes. Why?”
“You’ll know it when you see it.”
He grabs my hands and kisses them, and then he’s walking out the door, leaving me to sit in the quiet of my apartment and ache and breathe.
After a moment I pull my laptop toward me and send my professor the most dignified apology I can write. Then I grab a textbook from the stack, and a slip of paper slides out from underneath it.
I pick it up.
On it, there’s a sketch of a wall. My wall—the long one opposite me that leads from the main room into the bedroom, and it’s been drawn in precise, almost obsessive detail.
He’s measured the distance from the floor to the ceiling and noted it in the margin.
He’s measured the width of the wall, the doorframe, and the space above the baseboard.
There are dimensions to the side, but I don’t get the point of them. I look from the paper to the wall.
When and why did he take everything off this wall? Was he cleaning it?
Planning to paint it?
I’ll have to ask him tonight after the game.
For now, I have homework.
***
At one o’clock, there’s a knock at my door.
I open it to find two men in matching shirts with a clipboard.
“Ashman?” one of them says.
“Yes?”
“Bookshelf delivery and assembly. Where do you want it?”
I look at them, speechless. “Um.” I look at the clipboard. I look back at them.
And then I think of Logan’s paper. I laugh to myself. “Against that wall, right there,” I say, pointing to the wall Logan was measuring. I escort them inside and hand them Logan’s careful sketch, which makes sense now.
The taller one looks at it and nods. “Got it. We’ll get to work.”
For the next hour I sit at my table with my laptop, textbooks, and mug and watch two strangers build the shelves that Logan mocked up while I slept—floor to ceiling, around the door to my bedroom, with a rolling ladder on a track and recessed lighting that definitely shouldn’t make me teary.
When they’re done, the wall looks like something out of a dream I’d sketch in the back of my notebook but never admit to.
I stand in the middle of my apartment and look at it for a long time.
Then I take a picture and send it to Logan.
Logan
What do you think?
Georgie
I love it.
I love it so much.
I can’t thank you enough.
Logan
If you want to thank me, let me help you put the books on the shelves tomorrow morning. Alma told me you have the day off again.
Georgie
I don’t know how I feel about you and Alma colluding.
Logan
Yeah, you’re going to have to get used to it.
Think there’s going to be room on those shelves for my hat?
I look around the apartment and find his hat in my bedroom, where I left it on the bed yesterday after my shower.
I take the selfie before I can think too hard about it, making sure the bookshelves are clear behind me. The bookshelves he meticulously measured and searched for last night before rush ordering them to my house only hours after realizing I needed them at all.
Being thought of like this … being seen …
I’m at risk of believing him.
Georgie
Nope, sorry. The hat stays with me.
Logan
<))
Georgie
<3