Chapter 13
THIRTEEN
Emmett
Logan’s house is a decent bit out of the way, tucked just outside of the city. It’s a small craftsman with slate grey siding that looks like it was recently power-washed, probably to get it ready for tonight.
I’m glad he’s getting use out of the thing; I thought he was joking when he said he wanted a power washer for his birthday, but the amount of before and after pictures he’s sent me since he got it has been kind of hilarious. Is power washing a hobby? I think it is for Logan, at least.
I park near the sidewalk in front of the building, the driveway already filled with other cars, and I stroll toward the front door with my hands in my pockets.
I let myself in because the house is almost never locked, especially when Logan’s expecting people over, and I make my way to the kitchen for a beer.
“I almost thought you were gonna no-show on us,” Logan says to me as he approaches. My free hand meets his with a slap and we curl our fists together in greeting. He looks past me, around the room. “Bring anyone with you?”
“Nah,” I tell him. “Ro can’t come out like this often. I have no idea where Mariah is tonight.”
“Logan!” Someone shouts from the door leading to the back yard. “Keg’s kicked!”
“Shit,” my friend sighs. “I have to get a new one. Find me later, I gotta talk to you.”
“Yeah, sure,” I agree with my brow furrowed.
I move through the party, sipping on my drink as I weave through the guests, and I finally land at a table set up for a game of drunk Jenga.
Three people surround the table, already wobbly on their feet.
One of them, a tall woman with short brown hair, circles the unsteady tower like a hawk circling its prey, finally deciding on the piece she wants to take.
Her fingers settle carefully on either side of it and she pulls in a breath, holding it as she slowly wiggles the piece to its freedom, finally setting it at the top of the tower and pulling both of her hands away. With a heavy exhale, she points to me.
“You! Take a drink!”
“I wasn’t playing,” I laugh with a shrug, “but sure.”
I bring the bottle to my mouth and suck down the chilled beer until there’s a little less than half of it left.
Taking the invitation to the game, I move around the tower, inspecting the blocks and deciding to stick toward the top.
The bottom is held together by several single-block levels, and looks like it could give at any time.
Reaching for a loosely-fitted block, I use my pinkie to slide it a few millimeters from its place, using my index finger and thumb to pull it the rest of the way once I can get a grip on it.
I flip the block over to read the rule written on it, Cha-Ching.
In Logan’s version of the game, the player who pulls that block is to send the player to their left five bucks.
With a laugh, I pull my phone from my pocket and open the appropriate app. “QR code?” I ask the guy to my left. He shows it to me and I scan it, sending him fifty bucks instead of the required five.
We play a few more rounds until the tower finally topples over, forcing the wobbly girl from before to down the rest of her drink, and I make a mental note to avoid her for the rest of the evening because she’s officially a puke risk.
With the game over, I move through the house and out to the spacious backyard that probably takes up at least a third of the square footage of the property.
There’s a thick layer of healthy grass, freshly cut, across the entirety of the lawn which starts just past the cement patio.
At one side of the patio there’s a fire pit, not in use tonight, but when it’s lit up, it’s pretty damn perfect.
At the other end, a group of people surround what must be the new keg that Logan brought out, with someone upside down on top of it doing a keg stand while the group around them cheers.
I finally spot Logan at the edge of the group and take up a space next to him, clapping a hand on his shoulder.
“You got next?” He asks me.
“Hell no,” I laugh. “The last time I did one of those, I laughed halfway through and it came out of my nose.”
“Oh shit, that’s right!” He throws his head back with a cackle. “I thought you were gonna bust your head open on the keg.”
I take a sip from my drink, shifting my weight on my feet. “Hey, what did you want to talk to me about?”
“Right, I almost forgot. Come with me,” he tells me, inclining his head toward the house.
I follow him off of the patio and through the back door, passing the kitchen and into the living room, where another round of drunk Jenga has begun among a new, larger group of people who are at least twice as drunk as my group was at the start of our game – at least when I joined them.
“What’s with all the cloak and dagger?” I ask as we walk through the house. “If you’re about to make me check you for crabs again, I’m out.”
Logan doubles over with a laugh, slapping his thigh, and says, “No, not this time. I have something for you.”
“I don’t think I want it,” I chuckle.
We pass the threshold into Logan’s bedroom and I drop down to take a seat at the edge of his bed while he digs through the drawers of his desk.
A knock sounds at the door before it opens, a woman stumbling into the room after. She’s a good-looking girl; blue hair, tiny shorts, and absolutely stacked.
“Logan,” she sings. I don’t think she even has any idea that I’m in here, which is only confirmed by the surprise on her face when her eyes finally land on me. “Oh, I didn’t know this was a group thing. Cool.”
“No,” I say, putting my hands up in front of me as I stand. “Definitely not a ‘group thing.’” I clap Logan on the shoulder as I head out of the room. “I’ll grab it next time. You crazy kids have fun.”
It’s hard not to channel my dad and remind him to wrap it up before I leave, but I know the reminder would just fall on deaf ears. The guy goes stupid around a pretty girl.
·
I feel like a teenager, pushing the door open as quietly as I can while I sneak back inside the house. I damn near scream when a hand clamps down on the back of my neck.
“Coming or going?” Dad asks, pulling an earbud from his ear.
He’s dressed in one of his go-to running outfits, wearing a layer of sweat to complete the look.
“You’re a little old to be going for midnight runs,” I tell him with an arched brow.
“You’re a little old to be sneaking out of the house,” he retorts. He gives the back of my neck another squeeze before moving past me and into the kitchen to make a protein shake. “Did you drink?”
“A beer.” I make a big show of sticking my arms out at my sides, bringing my left index finger to touch the tip of my nose and repeating with the right, then I put my heels to my toes and walk in a perfectly straight line with my arms out at my sides. “See? Completely sober.”
“Smartass.”
Clapping him on the shoulder, I tell him, “I’m good. It was just a quick stop-in at Logan’s.”
“Alright, go get some sleep. We have a big day tomorrow.”
I throw him a quick two-finger salute before starting out of the kitchen.
He’s right; tomorrow is huge. It will be our biggest opening since the collective, and that was more than two years ago – and my name wasn’t anywhere near it.
That was all Dad and Davis. I just got to go and enjoy the party.
I’m involved in these things now, and that’s honestly a little bit terrifying.
We’ve put so much time, so much work, and a good amount of money into this.
Not just the business itself, but the opening party, too. If it fails…
If I fail…
I stop, resting my fist against the wall that leads out of the room. “Hey— are you going to bed?”
“I don’t have to.”
Christ, this feels so stupid. “Do you think we can hang out for a sec?”
“Yeah,” he tells me, his brow creasing just enough to tell me that he’s concerned. “Yeah, bud, of course we can.”
I follow him to the living room and settle onto the couch, where he throws me a controller for the Xbox before grabbing one for himself.
I know that he’s probably dying to get upstairs and knock out for the night, but he drops onto the couch next to me and loads up a game, without prying or trying to get in my head.
What was supposed to be ‘hanging out for a sec’ quickly turns into hours of competitive simulated racing. We try to stay quiet while we play – not even because we don’t want to bother the girls, but more because we don’t want them to bother us.
I think the last time that we sat down together to play a game like this was just before I moved into my apartment.
We spent way too long in front of the screen and ate way too much pizza that night.
He’d bought me an Xbox to take with me so we could play together in the new place, too – which I could have done myself, but I think the gesture of giving me one was important to him.
We played on his N64 almost every day while I was growing up.
I didn’t think much of it when I was a kid, but as an adult, I realized that it was the one thing that he had kept for himself.
Everything else, he’d given up or sold to make sure that I had everything I could want or need.
He only kept one thing for himself, and even that, he shared with me.
It’s almost three in the morning by the time we finally shut down the game and head up to our rooms. I find myself actually glad that I asked him for some time; if I hadn’t, the spiral would have started. I probably would have wound up in the water. I would have screwed up everything for tomorrow.