Chapter 9 Hazel #2
“No, we’re not supposed to be calling it that,” he clarifies. “But fine. How about… cheers to other nice things. Like this.”
“This?”
“Tonight. Being here, with you, after a whirlwind of a week.” He’s still holding up his root beer. “You’re not gonna leave me hanging now, are you?”
Logan’s bathed in golden light, the diffused rays highlighting his eye crinkles and a subtle dimple in his left cheek, just outside his smile lines, that I hadn’t noticed before. He’s looking at me like I’m the one who concocted this entire magical evening. Like I’m the one who won us a fortune.
Leave him hanging? How could I possibly?
I hold my drink up to his. “Okay. I’ll cheers to that.”
I want to relax into this night. Enjoy the view and Logan’s company. But I can’t help but feel on edge. Nothing ever goes this well.
The sunset becomes more vibrant as the minutes tick on. I grab my phone and take a quick picture. It reminds me of the sunsets on the lake.
Then Logan says, “From your grandparents’ house,” and I realize I’ve said this out loud.
I’m not used to talking about my grandparents’ house with anyone as much as I have with Logan.
I nod.
“Tell me about it?” he asks.
I’ve never been asked this before. Where to even start.
“It looks like a mix between a cabin and a cottage. It has gingerbread decorative trim,” I start, recalling every detail so easily.
I tell him about the wraparound porch. The dining room set in a bay.
Windows everywhere so you can see the lake from each room.
When I’m done, Logan has a faraway look, like he could actually imagine it. He finishes off his egg roll. “My mom lives in Maine now, so I’m just used to the sunsets on the bay, but I think I get what you’re saying. There’s nothing like a sunset on the water.”
“Is that where you grew up? Maine?” I ask between bites.
Logan moves a few noodles around on his plate. “No. I’m from Washington state. No one in my family lives there anymore, so I have no reason to go back.”
“What brought you to the city then?”
“What I do now. I wanted to get away from home after… I just needed to get away,” Logan says. He doesn’t elaborate. “I got lucky and found carpentry. I loved it, and that brought me here.”
I swallow a bite of broccoli. “What is it you love about carpentry?”
Logan stretches out against his seat. “A lot of people stick with things because they love them. Me? I hated it at first. It was the hardest thing I had ever done. I was not good at it. Like, really awful. Someone should’ve taken the saw away from me.
” He pushes a piece of shrimp around on his plate.
“It wasn’t something I was naturally good at, but I got a little better each day.
Eventually, I was good at it without fully realizing how I got there.
I think I fell in love with it because it challenged me. ”
“You had to work for it.”
“I did,” he says, punctuating this with a single nod. “Once I got the hang of it, I started to love the little things about it. The history in it. The smell of the wood. The feeling of a cut board before it’s sanded and smoothed. The feeling afterward.”
“So you could make something out of”—I point down to a tree lining the street—“that.”
“Sure, what would you like?”
“Surprise me. But if you get caught chopping it down, I don’t know you.”
Logan grins. “I’ll have to get my disguise back on before I do it.”
“No way. There’s photographic evidence that ties you to me in that thing,” I say.
“Right, right,” he says, rubbing his chin. “In fact, that version of me was your husband.”
“Maybe that’s better. Spousal immunity.”
“Did we just begin our life of crime together?” Logan asks.
I gesture toward the rooftop. “We’re up here on a bribe. I’d say that’s a good start.”
Logan laughs hard, his whole heart showing.
“That’s really great, though. Sounds like carpentry brings you a lot of joy,” I say. Despite recent events, it really seems to. Logan looks peaceful as he shares all this. It guts me that something he loves so much is challenging him all over again. “I’m sorry things aren’t getting better at work.”
I can’t properly analyze his expression, but based on his long silence, I imagine he’s working through something.
“Our set designer left,” he updates as I bite a string bean in half. “She took a job Off Broadway. We have a new guy, but he wants to move some of the sets around. Which, of course, complicates how everything was meant to be arranged, and we need to make adjustments. So that’s the latest.”
The hourglass from his tea leaf reading comes to mind. Something’s coming up for you, and you’re racing against the clock.
“That’s frustrating,” I say.
The look of concern Logan wears is new to me. But as quickly as it comes, it vanishes. “The show will be better for it,” he says. “New vision, new energy. And I do my best work under pressure.”
It’s a classic Logan move, I’ve noticed. Whenever anything bad, or even mildly annoying happens, he spins it. Makes the situation positive, but in a forced way. It’s like he doesn’t want to talk about—no, feel—the negative.
In perfect universal timing, the distant roar of a plane’s engine draws our attention. Our eyes meet, both of us probably thinking the same thing.
Avoid planes.
“I figured out Phase Two,” I say suddenly to fill the silence that follows as the plane flies farther into the distance.
Logan offers a weak smile. “More charms?”
“We’re past the trinket stage. But remember to keep an eye out for the clover,” I remind him. “If you find one, let me know, and I’ll add it to my tracker.”
He arches an eyebrow. “Your tracker?”
“I’m tracking all the unusual activities that happen in your life. And our efforts. You should probably let me know anything else that’s happened. I’ve made a mental note to add the set design change-up.”
“You’re cataloging the bad things that happen to me?” Logan asks, somewhat amused.
“I’ve got data all the way back to the day we met,” I explain. “I’ll make sense of the numbers and give you a nice visual report. I have a particular data visualization style that I was kind of known for at work. Why are you looking at me like that?”
He smirks. “You’re trying to control the chaos.”
I set my chopsticks down. “I’m trying to track your luck,” I correct. “Then we can do more of what works. I’m hoping we’ll have enough to forecast when your bad fortune might go away.”
He laughs to himself. “Sure. As much as I appreciate you tracking everything that goes wrong in my life, and as grateful as I am that you’re even helping me at all, let’s forget about it for now. We’re celeb—No, sorry. We’re acknowledging that the money came in.”
“Do you commemorate everything?”
Logan takes a bite of his egg roll, swallowing as he nods. “I try. When something’s good—big or small—I think it’s worth celebrating. Or at least recognizing it.”
“So tonight’s an acknowledgment. Is tonight also supposed to be… a date?” I feel bold asking this, but I want to know how he views me. And part of me wants… something else. Something other than what my life looks like. I think subconsciously I’ve wanted that since we kissed.
A warm glow from the battery-powered candlelight illuminates his face as his eyes search mine. “I would never trick you into a date. I really did want us to have fun,” he says.
“Oh. Yeah.” I wave my hand. “No, of course—”
“But I would love nothing more than to take you on a date,” he adds, his gaze filled with heat. It’s directed right at me, and I feel the warmth of it all the way down to my toes.
I’m on the verge of melting into this moment when my mind pulls me back to reality.
“I…”
Logan leans forward in anticipation, resting his arms on the table. There’s a beat of silence until the air shrieks with the whoop of a firetruck siren. He jolts, his knees knocking into the table. He manages to catch it, but we lose the last of the sesame chicken and rice.
We both kneel to clean up the mess with the extra napkins. “Are you going to add that to the tracker?” he asks, our faces inches apart.
I grin. Instead of answering his probably rhetorical question, to which the answer is a definitive yes, I surprise myself by saying, “I would love nothing more than for you to take me on a date.”
Logan’s smile brackets deepen, his blue-green eyes a shade darker.
“But we need to go slow,” I quickly add as the siren fades down the avenue. “I used to be married. Which you already know because you saw the divorce papers.”
And that’s a classic me move. When things are going well, I have to self-sabotage. Not that there’s anything wrong with being a bad dater or being divorced, but really? I had to bring that up now?
His head tilt turns into a slow nod.
We’re still on the ground, huddled together under the table. “I’m not very good at dating,” I admit.
Logan’s probably being polite when he says, “Who is?”
“I still can’t believe I even had to get divorced.” I worry this topic is a mood killer. Even so, I lean into it. “I only knew him—my ex… husband, technically—for seventy-two hours. Our marriage lasted six months, which was mostly because we wanted a no-fault divorce.”
Good ol’ impulsivity. The exact kind of thing I try to not do. It reminds me too much of Dad.
“Seventy-two hours, huh?” Logan asks.
“It was around the time my dad had won big in Atlantic City,” I share, fidgeting with one of the splintered chopsticks.
I don’t know why any of this comes out. It must be because Logan opened up to me, and, I don’t know, I feel like I owe him something in return. He’s given me reason to trust him, so I do.