Chapter 14
I let Logan walk me back to Creyts after Connor left us. He didn’t hold my hand or ask if I wanted to hang out longer, either at his house or my dorm room. He was drained and so was I, so we said goodbye at the corner of Sturgess.
He didn’t text me at all the next week. I got it. There wasn’t a lot to follow up his brother’s dying words being a recent trigger. He had to deal with that in whatever way worked for him. I almost reached out over the weekend, but ultimately didn’t.
We were in different stages. And they weren’t all grief based.
Over the weekend, Emily showed me on her iPad that the Bribury hockey team was having an inter-squad scrimmage (whatever that was?) on Saturday night. She asked if I was going, but before I could answer that I knew nothing about it, and probably wouldn’t go anyway, Chloe interjected.
“To a scrimmage? Talk about desperate to be seen. You need to play a little harder to get than that, Megan.”
“I don’t want to be got,” I said. “And I’m not playing any game.”
She rolled her eyes and flounced to her room. Emily told me to ignore her, but her words set me on edge.
* * *
Logan was already seated when I got to Grief Group on Wednesday. Marlo had us make a list of the things we missed about the person we’d lost. And the things we didn’t miss.
“It’s important to not canonize the dead. They were human and fallible, and it’s easy to forget how much they could piss you off sometimes just because you miss them terribly. Those are all okay feelings to have.”
Logan grunted at that. I was sure he and his brother had gotten into it a lot over the years.
Just as I had with my mom over regular family “pick up your room” bullshit. Which all seemed so petty now.
Then the conversation took a turn that had everyone on edge, and I wondered if Logan would want to even walk home with me afterward. But he did, waiting at the door for me.
We took our time leaving the Union, and we’d only walked together a block in silence when Jane and Stick pulled up and asked if we wanted to join them again.
We both quickly nodded and got in the car. We needed a buffer, and this mismatched couple was perfect for the job.
When Logan asked how they’d originally hooked up, Jane gave a quick summation of their relationship that involved Lily and her boyfriend, Jane’s father, and odd timing.
“I’m just keeping him around until the election. It drives my father nuts that we’re dating and yet he wanted me on the campaign trail. The day after the election, when you can’t irk him anymore, you’re toast, Stick,” she said.
“Oh, I can irk him well past election day,” Stick countered. He gave Jane a heated look. “And I will. Well past election day.”
Jane met his gaze and gave a small nod, then looked away before she could see Stick’s smug grin. “Wipe that smile off your face,” she said while facing out her window, and Stick laughed.
We grabbed food from the drive-thru at McDonald’s. Logan treated, saying he was covered with a food allowance. Which prompted all of us to add shakes to our orders. Living large off the Bribury hockey program.
Stick drove us a few miles out of Schoolport on a nearly deserted two-lane road. Jane held our bags of food in her lap, and I could hear the rustle of paper as she surreptitiously stole some fries.
“Baby, I love you, but if all the fries are gone before we get to the lake, we are going to have a serious problem,” Stick said.
“Ugh. Fine. Megan, Logan, take these. I don’t trust myself. And obviously Stick doesn’t trust me either.”
“Only when it comes to fries,” he said.
Logan and I took the bags and held on to them. Heat and the smell of grease washed over me. The temptation to snitch was strong, but it was like we were each other’s consciences, and we left the bags sealed.
We arrived at a small boat launch area for a lake I didn’t know existed. The launch area wasn’t very large, but it had a few picnic tables nearby, where we took our food.
The late September air was cool, but not cold. Logan held out his hoodie, silently asking if I needed it, but I shook my head. My lightweight cardigan over my long-sleeve tee was warmth enough. At least for now.
We unpacked the bags of food, drinks, shakes, and napkins on one of the tables.
Logan and Stick chose to sit on the top of the table with their feet resting on the bench where I sat.
Jane, as if riding in the car had caged her in long enough, stood while she ate, turning this way and that, checking out the scenery.
“So, would around the bend in the lake, toward Chesney be…?” She pointed and looked at Stick.
“Yeah. You can’t see the house from here, it’s way on the other side of the lake area, which is kind of an L anyway.”
“Who lives there? Your family?” I asked Stick, who snorted loudly.
“Hardly. That’s money area. And you have to go farther out of Schoolport to get to that side of the lake.”
“I’ll say,” Jane said. “No. My… Let me see, how do I… My father’s wife and their children have a house on this lake, but she doesn’t live there any longer.”
“Why would you move if you had a house on this lake? It’s gorgeous here,” I said. We could see some beautiful homes across the lake, and if this was not the money area, I could only imagine what the houses there looked like.
“She didn’t move. She died,” Jane said.
There was silence for a few seconds, then Logan asked, “So, your stepmom? I’m sorry for your loss.
” The words were ones he and I both had heard over and over in the past year (for me) and months (for him) and were rote for us now, both in giving and receiving, but there was genuine feeling in Logan’s voice and I knew he meant it.
“Thanks. But it’s okay. And she wasn’t my stepmom. I mean…” She looked at Stick. “Was she? Not really. I only met her a few months before she died. This was last year.”
It felt really complicated, even to Jane, who was living it, so I let my myriad questions die on my tongue.
“Still. Loss is loss and can be complicated by… complicated feelings for those who have passed, or have survived,” Logan said.
All three of us turned to him, stunned by the profundity coming from this huge, manly hockey guy who finished his words of wisdom with a shrug and a giant bite of his Quarter Pounder.
“Wow. That grief class is sure working,” Jane said.
She slurped on her shake and turned away from the direction of her non-stepmother’s home.
She leaned a hip against the edge of the table near Stick’s butt, and he wrapped an arm around her waist. I envied the squeeze he gave her and the way she let her body rest against his chest.
We all ate in silence for a few minutes, then Jane asked, “Do they teach you that? What to say to people about death?”
She was addressing Logan, but he had a mouthful of fries (I very much wanted to lick the salty goodness off his lips—fries or not—if I was being honest), so I answered for him.
“Kind of. For part of one class we talked about some of the stuff that people said to us that was helpful, and what wasn’t.
You take from that when you come up with what you want to say to others. ”
Logan nodded, then swallowed. “You wouldn’t believe some of the batshit stuff people told our friend Paige, who lost her twin sister.”
Hearing him call Paige our friend sent a warmth through me that was hard to dissect. Was it the “our”? The “friend”? That he was getting more out of group than I’d probably given him credit for? It all felt eye-opening, but I wasn’t sure in what way.
Because he’s more than you thought.
“Fuck, that’s rough,” Stick said.
“Yep,” Logan agreed.
“What other kinds of things do you talk about?” Jane asked.
“Baby, maybe they don’t want to talk about it. Or maybe it’s like AA or something and they can’t.”
Logan and I looked at each other. He wiped his face off with a napkin (my eyes still stayed on his mouth—it wasn’t just the salty fry lure after all) and shrugged. “It’s okay to talk about, I guess. I probably shouldn’t have used Paige’s name, but yeah, we can talk about it.”
“In fact, Marlo would probably say it’s a good thing that we talk about these things outside of our sessions,” I said, and Logan murmured his agreement.
“Like tonight,” I added, then saw Logan tense.
It was gone in a second and he reached for his shake, transferring the straw from his drained pop cup to the chocolatey goodness. “Should I not?” I asked.
“No, it’s fine.” At Stick and Jane’s shared glance, he went on, “It got a little… I don’t know if heated is the right word, but there was a…”
“Spirited debate?” I offered, trying to cut the tension. During class, the unease between us all was palpable, with each group trying not to offend the other but also wanting their views acknowledged.
“Yeah, that works. Spirited debate. Huh.” His eyes met mine, and the tension that had been in our classroom only an hour ago disappeared as his gaze softened. “It was dumb, really.”
“It wasn’t dumb. It was true. All of it was true,” I said.
I turned to Jane and Stick, who both had “well, now you have to tell us” looks on their faces.
“Part of the group lost their… person in an accident or, like, a heart attack. Suddenly. They weren’t there.
No chance to say goodbye or anything.” I tried to keep emotion out of my voice.
Logan and I hadn’t even been the most vocal during the discussion, but we were very much on different tracks.
“And the other half of the group had someone they loved die of some illness. A couple of them prolonged illnesses, where you watched the other person fade, or be in pain or whatever,” Logan said.
He rushed through it, as if the words said at a greater speed would not have a chance to land.
To hurt.
“So, it kind of went from ‘at least you got to say goodbye’ to ‘but you didn’t see them suffer’ for about a half hour until Marlo tried to get us to see all sides of it.”
“Jesus,” Jane whispered.
“Yeah,” Logan and I both said.
“Like some kind of Loss Olympics,” Stick said. “That’s fucked up.”
“Yeah,” Logan and I both said.
We finished our food and drove back to Schoolport in silence. About a block before we got to Logan’s house, he reached over and took my hand, placing it with his on the seat between us.
“We leave for our first series tomorrow after classes,” he said. “We’re at Boston U Friday and Saturday nights.”
“Yeah? Good luck, bro,” Stick said. Jane nodded in agreement.
“Right. Good luck,” I said. “Or do you say break a leg in sports? Or is that just the theater?”
“You definitely don’t say it in hockey,” he said. We all chuckled, and I felt any tension of the night that was still hovering completely melt away.
When he got out of the car, he didn’t ask if I wanted to come in with him, but he did squeeze my hand before he released it. “See ya next week,” he said, and I gave a single nod.
As we drove away, I told myself I wouldn’t have gone in to his house with him even if he had asked me. The night had been too fraught with emotion to bring lust into it as well. Or curious housemates.
I knew I was lying to myself. I would have gone if he’d asked.
But he didn’t.