Chapter 24 #2
“It actually helped your case. I thought you were just being a possessive asshole, but I understand now there’s some lingering shit up there.”
She reached over and tapped his temple. Logan laughed, a sound she had not heard in far too long. It released a cord in her chest, unfurling a parachute behind them.
Logan glanced over as he switched lanes. “So, what’s stopping you from hopping on a plane right now?”
“He’s seeing someone else,” she deflected.
Logan, despite a good portion of her inner monologue’s accusations, was not stupid. He knew that was yet another trauma he’d contributed to.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s my own fault. He was willing, I think, to actually give it a shot, but I’m a fucking mess. He deserves someone more available.”
She paused to stabilize her breathing. The Milo of it all was the one thing she still hadn’t unraveled. He’d texted her a few times when she’d first gotten home, but it only made things harder. They could both sense it.
“I know I said nothing was off limits, but maybe we could circle back on Milo after we settle some of our shit?”
“Fair enough,” he conceded. “Where do you want to start there?“
She laughed, just enough that it gave him permission to join her.
What a fucking mess they’d made.
“I guess we could start with Sloane. I know we’ve covered what you think happened, but I feel like we’ve only ever scratched the surface.”
“Ah. I don’t know,” Logan sighed. “I think if I’m being really honest with myself, that I had been unhappy with us for a while and was just too much of a pussy to admit it. And then I met Sloane, and she was just so different, and not just from you, Hanna. From me, too.”
Hanna was surprised by that.
“You were unhappy?”
Logan shrugged. “Maybe that’s the wrong word. I was… content. But… neither of us was misting up at the airport when I left for New York, you know? I’d seen you cry harder saying goodbye to Sara after the holidays.”
Hanna’s chest cracked with the memory. She’d dropped him off and hadn’t even gone inside.
And he hadn’t asked her to.
Her own tear-stained face staring back at her in an SFO bathroom flashed to her mind, the thought of leaving Milo shredding her from the inside out.
Maybe they were unhappy. If she stepped back and looked at it objectively, they were comfortable at best.
“I guess things weren’t, like, amazing. I actually wasn’t that shocked when you found someone else, you know that? I was mostly just shocked that you told me.”
“I’m a dick in a lot of ways, but not that one,” Logan muttered.
“I know! I know. But you just don’t expect a call from your boyfriend to ask if it’s cool if he’s in love with someone else.”
Logan barked a laugh, “That’s not how that happened.”
“It’s not far off!”
The tension between them simmered under the laughter, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Hanna didn’t feel the need to hang up or run away or ignore it. She could sit with it. She had a passing thought that Olivia would be proud of her.
“But I think that’s why it hurt so much. I couldn’t even be mad at you. You did everything right, so it felt like I wasn’t allowed to be crushed the way I was.”
Logan chewed on his lip. “I hated hurting you. I still hate hurting you. You know it kills me that I fucked so much up for you, right?”
She believed him then, but a month before, she wouldn't have been able to. Another thing she couldn't have done was apologize back.
“I know. I hurt you too, and I know that I wasn’t fair to you.”
“I really miss your friendship, Hanna. More than any of the other stuff. I mean that.”
Despite her best efforts at exhausting every tear she’d ever produced in the month she’d been home, more still prickled at the back of her eyes.
“Maybe that’s why it was so hard to talk to you about Mom.
You were my best friend, and then you were gone, and she went right along with you.
” She took a breath, grasping for the thoughts before they dissolved into the hot tears stinging her cheeks.
“It was like I lost everyone all at once, and I needed you to be dead to me too.”
Logan reached over and placed a hand on her knee.
“I’m so sorry, Hanna. I never got to tell you that. Lisa deserved so much more, but so did you.”
“Thanks.” A silence fell between them, laden with all the things she didn’t know how to say, but waited patiently for the disparate pieces to fall into a sentence.
“I just felt so abandoned by you both that I started assuming everyone would leave me. It’s why I was so mad that you tried to come back into my life after so many miserable months, and why I keep fucking things up with Milo.
I’m trying to unpack those things and relearn them, but it really sucks. ”
“I have to ask one more thing about him.”
“Fine,” she steeled herself, though the more they talked, the better it felt to hear his name. It meant she hadn’t imagined it all.
Logan braced himself on the steering wheel.
“Let’s just be really, brutally honest, I guess. Obviously, I got the full show, even if I’ve done my best to repress it… you never sounded like that with me.”
She had to laugh at that, mostly because he was right, but also because it was just like him to be worried about that when her mom’s literal ashes were rolling around in the back seat.
“Don’t take it personally,” she said, waving a hand as he groaned. “I don’t know how to say this to you, Logan, so I’m just going to rip the band-aid off. What Milo and I had in that department was just on another level. I can’t even describe it—”
“And I would prefer you didn’t.”
“Fair. It had nothing to do with you. I always enjoyed things with us, I promise.”
“So I’m not terrible at sex?” Logan laughed, but he was serious. “I’ve had a bit of a complex since that night.”
Hanna patted his arm. “You are not terrible at sex. And I’m really, really sorry you had to see that. We thought you guys were gone for the night and never would have imagined one of you would walk in. I actually never even found out what Matty wanted.”
“Oh god,” Logan sighed. “He was actually coming to invite Milo out with us. Ironically, he wanted to test the waters between the three of us before Vegas. It’s been a long time since Milo and I had to be in the same room together.
The last time I really spent that much time with him, we were kids and he was a fucking disaster, understandably, but I never gave him a chance after all the shit with Michaela happened. ”
“Oof,” she groaned. “Well, I can confirm that of the three of us, he’s the mature and well-adjusted one. Painfully well-adjusted.”
Logan snorted. “So well-adjusted that he fumbled you?”
“He didn’t fumble me,” Hanna insisted. “I fumbled myself.”
“Regardless, I’m sorry. I hope you guys can work it out and I mean that, sincerely.”
She waited for the shift in his tone, or even a sneer, but his lips held steady. He really did mean it.
“Thanks, Lo.”
He released her knee and turned the volume up.
“Now let’s take Lisa on one last road trip.”
* * *
When she’d brought her mother to the Grand Canyon once she’d stopped treatment, Hanna had been acutely aware it would be the last thing they’d ever do together.
She’d felt it in her bones, the same way she’d felt that something was wrong when her phone rang in the middle of her workday.
The same way she’d felt her mom whispering through golden petals as she chased sunflowers across San Francisco.
There were some truths about death that couldn’t be explained, only survived.
When she sat beside Logan on a bench on the South Rim, a black box tucked between them, that familiar knowing crept over her—this would be the last thing they’d ever do as the versions of themselves they clung to.
On the drive up, they'd worked through just about every argument they'd ever had, peeling back the layers of where they'd gone wrong, and what they'd each leave as an offering in the canyon's red dust.
She shuffled the box between them. It was heavier than she’d expected, but also didn’t seem as heavy as it should be.
“Are you ready?”
She chuckled. “No.”
“I think you are,” Logan said gently, and that was enough to spur her on. She stood, leaning against the safety rail, and pulled the top of the box back. A small bag sat at the top, at her mother’s request, which she’d denied long enough.
Logan stood beside her as she unwound the metal closure.
She handed him the box with the rest of Lisa’s ashes and tried to think of something profound to say, but she’d learned over that last year that death was never as poetic as she wanted it to be.
The meaning was there all the same, whether it was carried in stanzas or early fall breezes.
“To Lisa,” Logan said, the wind scattering the particles over the cliffs below.
“To Lisa,” she repeated, her lips wobbling on the soft sound of her mother’s name.
Logan’s arms wrapped around her shoulders. She leaned into the touch, like driving by a childhood home, searching the yard for new blooms in the planters, the windows for different curtains.
This was finally releasing her. Releasing the version of her she’d been when her mother was only a call away. Releasing the pain, and the anger, and the pleading for all of it to have been a bizarre nightmare.
All of it floated out into the ether, no longer Hanna’s to carry.
The sun caught the ashes as they drifted downward into the canyon, glittering as they went. Lisa would have accepted nothing less.
Sweet as hell, bites when necessary.
* * *
They made it back to Phoenix in time for a late dinner at one of their favorite pho restaurants before taking a walk around their favorite park.
When Logan pulled her into a long hug on the front porch, it settled into her skin. Neither he or the house were home any longer.
She searched for her keys. “Want a nightcap?”
“No, actually, but maybe some coffee? I, uh, I gave up drinking for a bit,” he admitted.
“Wow, look at us, growing,” Hanna joked as he followed her inside and into the kitchen. She pulled a Sun Devils mug from her cabinet for him, the one he used to take onto their patio in the morning before work while he scrolled through the news.
“I really needed today,” Logan said. He leaned against the kitchen counter, his arms crossed, but not to keep her out.
"I told you it would be good for both of us," she said and popped a pod into the coffeemaker.
“It was. Thank you.”
“Thank you,” she said, settling beside him with her own mug.
She rested her head on his shoulder the way she always had, but the gesture between them felt entirely new. They sat like that in a comfortable silence until the time difference eventually dragged him down.
Hanna walked him to the door and leaned against the frame.
As he passed her, she realized just how much his face had changed.
He stopped in the doorway and looked confused when he caught Hanna staring.
Shifting toward her and sinking his shoulders inward, he dropped his face closer to hers and focused his bright blue eyes on her lips.
Despite having kissed him a thousand times in her life, the brush of Logan’s mouth against hers felt so foreign. She jumped backward, pushing at his chest.
He laughed awkwardly, hanging his head back against the doorframe, his neck turning bright red.
“That was so dumb,” he gasped. “I’m so sorry!”
“Why, why, why?” she asked, her face hidden behind her hands. “We were having such a nice day!”
“I’m an idiot!”
“You’re an idiot,” she agreed, the panic dissolving into a fit of giggles. “Oh my god!”
“Did we ever have chemistry?” he asked, his face still flushed with embarrassment.
“I think we’ve officially closed the loop on Logan and Hanna.”
“They’re so over,” he agreed.
Hanna snorted. “May they rest in peace with Lisa.”
“Oh god,” Logan groaned, pulling her into a warm embrace, any underlying doubt gone for good.
Milo would have laughed at her joke.
The next morning, when Logan was halfway across the country and she was alone once again, her phone lit up.
Hanna didn’t even have to look to know it was him—yet another infinite truth. She opened the message, her stomach tightening into a knot as a photo loaded. Someone had painted an entire field of sunflowers down by the wharf, spraying the Bay with bright yellows and oranges.
Her fingers reflexively touched the ink running along her sternum, the black petals finally healed over.
She didn’t know how Milo knew she was down to her last stop on the apology tour, but she wasn’t surprised that Lisa had something to do with it.