Chapter 9
I looked to Jane and Stick, heavy in conversation with his friends, and knew I wouldn’t be rescued anytime soon. And what was more, I didn’t really want to be. I might not be on sure footing, but I found I wanted to have more alone time with Logan.
“Okay. Talk. Though it seems pretty cut and dried to me,” I said.
“It does? How’s that, exactly?” he said before taking a bite of his burger and motioning for me to go on. Damn. I’d wanted him to do the talking. Take his temperature. Because mine, after being so close to him all night long, was definitely spiking.
“Well,” I started, trying to sound as matter-of-fact as possible, not drenched with thoughts of how nicely shaped his mouth was while I watched him chew, “my girls and I went to a hockey party, looking for maybe hookups, and met some hockey players. One was really cute and I wanted to… you know.” I faltered in my cadence, and he picked up on it immediately.
“Say it,” he said. “What did you want to do? And let’s be really clear, since we just came from a place where it’s all about being truthful with ourselves.” His grin was teasing, but I felt the truth in his words. “Say it, Megan. What did you want to do when you saw me?”
Oh, this boy was much too full of himself.
And damn if it wasn’t earned.
“Who’s to say it was you? You’d just walked in. I had already made my move with another guy, and he passed. You were the consolation prize, Straw.”
He had a fry halfway to his mouth and there was a complete freeze in motion. The fry dropped from his grasp and landed back in the basket (nice catch!), and he laughed, deep and throaty (nice laugh!).
“The bullshit in that one sentence alone? Record level.”
I shrugged. “How would you know for sure?” I took a long drink of my beer, liking the coldness as it slid through my increasingly warm body. I wanted to press the glass against my cheek, but knew that would just feed his narrative.
“First of all, not one of those guys would turn you down if you made the play you made on me.”
“Because you’re all whores?” I said.
He laughed again. “No. Well, yes, actually. But no, because nobody—whore or no—would turn you down.”
Now it was my turn to laugh. “Oh, you’re good,” I said.
I expected the devilish grin again, but it wasn’t there. Instead, his gaze was serious as he leaned closer to me and said, “I am good. But that was no bullshit.”
Another sip of beer. Another wish that I could just pour the thing over my head and douse myself. “You said ‘first of all,’ like there was more.”
He sat back, took a drink of his Coke, and studied me. “Second, if you had just been shot down, you wouldn’t have taken another shot so soon.”
He was right. I would have gone slinking back to my dorm room. Which was kind of what happened in the end, anyway.
“And I say that because, smooth and direct as you were with me—and believe me, I appreciated it—I could tell it wasn’t a play you regularly make.”
Busted. Respond with bravado or bravery? “That’s true. I had a boyfriend through high school, and I—”
“One? All the way through?”
“Not entirely. The last year and a half, but—”
“And you’re done? Not trying the long-distance thing?”
What was the tone in his voice? It was beyond mere curiosity, but I couldn’t quite place it. Surely not hope. These guys weren’t looking to be boyfriend replacements. Philly had said it, and Ches had proven it.
“No. We actually broke up—mutually—before we started freshman year last fall. Didn’t want to have something heavy around us when we were both about to have new… adventures.” New people. New partners. We hadn’t said it like that, though we both were thinking it.
“And then something heavy happened anyway. Or at least to you,” he said.
The reason why we were sitting here together, that we were in a grief study because we’d both lost someone very dear to us, came rushing back.
“And not a lot of time to explore new-to-you hookup culture last year, I’m guessing,” he said softly. His hands, currently food-free, were on the table between us, and—though it could have been my imagination—looked like they were moving toward mine.
I didn’t want sympathy from Logan Fields. Not him. Not when he, as well as anyone, would know how suffocating someone meaning well could be.
As if he’d read my mind, he shifted his hands, grabbed a fresh napkin from the dispenser, and dabbed at nonexistent food on his face.
“No. None. No opportunity. No…”
“Desire,” he said.
A loaded word. It was an all-encompassing blanket that had rested heavily on my shoulders all last year.
Was still wrapped around me, although not as tightly.
There was some wiggle room now. And the longer I sat and ate a burger with Logan Fields and playfully rehashed the night that wasn’t, I felt the shifting of the blanket even more. It felt like more of a shawl now.
“Right. No desire to explore that avenue. Or opportunity.”
He nodded. “Yeah, hard to be horny when everybody’s in black and bringing casseroles.”
I almost did a spit take with my beer, but managed to swallow before saying, “Oh God, the casseroles. I’d forgotten about them. Though I shouldn’t have—there’s a bunch in Tupperware in our chest freezer in the garage.”
“That’s what everybody kept saying to my mom—‘Freeze this, Tricia, for when you need something later.’”
“Right? We had to go out and buy more storage containers.” I had portioned out the casseroles into family-size servings (though for a smaller family now) before I labeled them and put them in the deep chest freezer in the garage, usually reserved for gallons of ice cream and Costco finds.
“Yeah, divvying up cheddar turkey broccoli kind of kills the ‘I’m free to have sex whenever I want, with whomever I want’ vibe,” he said.
There actually had been a cheddar turkey broccoli one. “It definitely does,” I said.
“So what luck—wait, let’s call it fate—that one of your first nights back in the hookup saddle, you ended up in my house. In my bed.”
The grin was back, and I was relieved that casserole and mourning talk hadn’t sucked all the play out of us.
“But not for long,” I reminded him.
He waved away our being interrupted Friday night. By Ches. Waved away the thought of the poor girl, or the fact that I’d left his house?
Either one reminded me that Logan Fields waved away a lot.
And that was fine with me. I had set out to be a waver too. Looked forward to it. Desperately needed it.
But that couldn’t be with Logan now.
“And that was a one-time shot. And we missed it,” I said.
“Why? Who’s to say? Why make up rules to a no-rules year? We could definitely take a do-over.”
A do-over. A mulligan. My freshman year, which was supposed to be about fun, boys, classes, friends, and more fun.
“Not a good idea to have a hookup and then see each other every Wednesday night. I mean, this campus is small enough, and you—you—can run into past hookups all the time, but to have to sit in a small circle talking about your feelings?”
A flash of a smile. “I’m not sure what to unpack first. That you think this small campus is crawling with past hookups of mine, or—” He stopped when I gave him an “oh, come on” look.
“I’m only a sophomore, Megan. And only a week into it.
I mean, sure, I’m devastatingly handsome and all, but I think you give me too much credit. ”
I thought of poor Ches bursting into Logan’s room and knew I had not overestimated. Probably rounded down, in fact.
“Or that you think I’m not capable of talking about my feelings. What? ’Cause I’m just a jock?”
“No. Because you’re a twenty-year-old man,” I said. He started his comeback, but words seemed to fail him, which of course made my point.
“Okay, point to Megan. But talking about feelings of grief is okay in the man-code universe. Not the same thing at all as relationship stuff.”
“I’m glad to hear you make the distinction. And I agree. But it just kind of brings it all home, right? A hookup now—now that we know what our Wednesday nights will be together—just doesn’t seem worth it.”
He flinched, like I’d dealt a physical blow.
I continued, “I know, I know. You’ve got numerous comebacks floating around about how ‘worth it’ it could be, and ‘wanna bet,’ and stuff like that.” His grin confirmed it. “And yeah, I wanted to jump your bones Friday night. And it seemed like it was mutual, but—”
“It was most definitely mutual. And it’s more that I—”
“But that was Friday night. My first party at Bribury. Getting my feet wet, so to speak.”
He sat back in his seat, against the wooden back of the booth. “And are your feet so wet five days later? Met the love of your life on Saturday, is that it?”
I scoffed and took a sip of my beer. “What if I did?”
He leaned forward, placing his forearms, hoodie sleeves pushed up enough to expose the dark, coarse hair and the corded muscle, on the table. (Muscled forearms did it for me? Who knew?)
“Did you?” The teasing was gone, and I felt like it would be a mistake to play it light now. The whole thing felt uncharted to me. Me, who had been swimming alone for a year, wondering which way the tide would turn next.
“No,” I said. “But I’m not dumb enough to think I found him at a hockey party full of… whatever you call girls who chase hockey players.”
“There are several terms these days,” he said. He took a large bite of his burger and studied me while he chewed. “And I feel that I’d be hurting my chances with you to name a few.”
“Charming,” I said. “I’m sure they’re all very flattering. And lots of puns, no doubt.”
He shrugged while wiping his mouth with a napkin. “Don’t forget about ‘rhymes with puck.’”
“Double charming.”
“Yeah, it’s stupid. And childish, I’ll give you that,” he said.
“And misogynistic,” I added.
“Yep. Which is why I don’t use any of those terms for the girls who come to the house.”
“Girls like Ches. What term do you use?”