7 #2
He’s staring at me with those shrewd eyes, angular face, pretty-boy cheekbones nonsense. He leans against the wall, his hands in his pockets, all smirks and long eyelashes. Somehow I am also now leaning against the wall, so close to him it’s killing me. I keep finding myself staring at his mouth.
I tear my eyes away for barely a second to glance elsewhere in the store. “Who’s your friend?”
“Oh, that’s Shawn. My older brother.”
“The one that got married recently?”
“Yeah, you might have seen him at the wedding.”
For a moment I think back on that comment I made about the Hayes family being weird. If he was part of the wedding party he’s probably friends with some of them. I hope I didn’t insult his friends.
Logan looks like he wants to say something snarky but decides against it, when Shawn groans from the other side of the store, “I said I’m sorry already, what more do you want?”
He rolls his eyes and shifts his attention back to me. He notes my stack of snacks and lifts one sardonic eyebrow. “Looks like you’ve already got dinner plans.”
Shit, he doesn’t know he’s right. I don’t want him to know this is how I live my life. I shrug with my arms crossed, no, squeezed over my chest, clutching the handful of items, panicking.
I need to think of something to say instead of awkwardly staring back at him.
“Oh, yeah, my friend just asked me to pick up some . . . ” I glance desperately at the first thing I pick up off the shelf, and read, “Witch hazel? Next she’s gonna ask me for eye of newt and wolfsbane.”
He doesn’t laugh. Ugh, maybe I just cut my losses and never speak to him again in my life.
“. . . Wolfsbane is very much a real thing,” he says slowly, and I feel like such an idiot. “Don’t you work at a plant nursery?”
“Yeah, but it’s not like, something I’m really that interested in,” I admit a little sheepishly. “It pays the bills.”
He just nods.
We’re talking so quietly, between the overwhelming hum of the refrigerator, his brother doesn’t hear us. He calls out loudly from one of the other aisles, “I kept thinking about that thing you said the other day, so I asked Elise if she thought we were soulmates.”
Logan raises his eyebrows at me, a silent apology for the interruption. The corner of his mouth ticks up in a fond exasperation. “How’d that go?”
“She said, quote, ‘Baby you have attachment issues, semicolon, maybe it’s time for therapy.’ ”
Logan doesn’t take his eyes off me as he tilts his head and answers at a lower volume, “Yeah, man. It’s been super obvious.”
“Yeah, you need it.”
“No, you.”
“Your mom needs it.”
Logan’s eyes flick to me, then cast a sidelong glance toward the aisle Shawn’s squinting at something on the shelf in, then rolls them. “Real original, man.”
I bite down on an incredulous laugh. They’re quite a pair; loud and messy, quiet and contained. The contrast paints me such a clear picture of Logan I can’t help but be a little charmed.
“Look if you want me to tailor my insults, gimme your inseam measurements,” Shawn says, appearing, his attention snaps to me as soon as he sees me standing too close to his brother. “Who’s this?”
“Oh, yeah, that’s Ava,” Logan says nonchalantly to his brother, and it does sink my heart a little. “She’s one of the suppliers for the brewery.”
Shawn gives me a brief nod and moves on to the front counter.
I try not to get too in my head about it, falling in a quiet, awkward little line at the grungy checkout counter while the cashier squints at Shawn’s ID.
I mean, I have kept things pretty minimal between us, I can’t be surprised that he hasn’t been thinking about me half as much as I’ve been obsessing over him.
Maybe that’s what I need: A little time actually talking to him, and the attraction will definitely go away.
I can’t really see over Logan’s shoulder, but I glimpse him send a text to someone named Elise. I chew the inside of my cheek and will myself not to feel at all possessive over him. He can talk to other girls. We don’t have that kind of a relationship.
A moment later Shawn’s phone buzzes loudly. He checks the screen and barely spares Logan a glance as he scoops up his things. “I’m running on ahead.”
The cashier finishes counting out Shawn’s change just in time to look up at the door swinging shut behind him.
I don’t think I’m going to get closure on whatever that was about. Then Logan rolls his neck, stretching a moment before he gives me a heated look that might undo whatever damage his nonchalance did to my assessment of him. Unfair, honestly.
Logan steps up to the counter and nods to it for me, and because I don’t get paid till next Monday, I put my armful of snacks and the witch hazel tonic up there with his stuff without protest.
We step outside together, the sun has crept a little further down the sky while we weren’t looking, deeper blues and purples pulling down over the hills.
I scan the small, gravelly parking lot, and besides my truck, there isn’t another vehicle around. “Did he just . . . leave you behind?”
Logan shrugs, unperturbed. “Wouldn’t be the first time. I live nearby. He probably figured I could walk.”
A cool breeze settles against my skin as I steal a glance at him in profile, the setting sun cutting around his sharp features. I figure it couldn’t hurt to stretch out this moment with him.
I stand on tiptoe up against my truck and heft the majority of my bounty in through the window, and they all tumble onto the seat. I drop down onto my heels, and glance over my shoulder to find Logan hovering a little closer than I expected.
“Jeez, stop looming over me,” I tease, taking the opportunity to touch him, pushing a hand lightly against his chest.
“I don’t loom,” he protests, but he backs away a step, my fingers twist and snare around the edge of his shirt, pulling taut between us.
“You’re like ten feet tall. You loom over people,” I scoff dismissively, knowing he would take it as a compliment. He doesn’t preen, but he does glance to the side and almost smiles. A blink and you’ll miss it twitch at the corners of his mouth.
“Not ten feet,” he mutters, but it’s clear from his voice he didn’t mind the exaggeration.
Massage his ego a little more. “Seven, then.”
“Six-four.”
“What’s Shawn, five-eleven?”
That might have made it too obvious, because his eyes narrow. “What do you want?”
“Nothing,” I answer innocently, a little startled that he called me on it as quick as that. “I can never tell. I’m terrible at guessing people’s heights.”
“Well, sure, you’re bite-sized,” he scoffs, pausing as his eyes drag over me.
I glimpse a second of his tongue pressing against the back of his eye tooth like he’s contemplating the meaning, before he schools his expression into something a little less heated.
Logan clears his throat and shrugs. “It, uh, probably skews your perspective.”
I release my hold on his shirt. I think I’m paying a little too much attention to his mouth. “So, you, um, walk home a lot?”
“Yeah. Once you can spot the brewery, you can always figure out where you are,” Logan says, and nods to a hill just across the street.
I give him a skeptical look, not because I don’t believe him, but for the excuse of keeping him talking, I start toward it. The grass is tall enough to brush my shins over the tops of my work boots. “Oh, like a North Star.”
Logan follows a few steps behind, at my heel, just as I’d hoped.
“Or like a black hole that keeps dragging you back in,” he says, and I think that might have been an actual attempt at a joke from Sir Resting Bitch Face. He gets a pity-laugh for trying.
At the top of the small hill, I can, in fact, see the shape of the brewery in the distance. I sit down in the cool, wet grass, and Logan follows suit.
“And you never heard any spooky noises while walking around out here?”
“I mean, I’m sure there was someone with a garage band that really wanted to take advantage of not having an HOA.
I used to really enjoy listening to them play when walking around here,” Logan says with a sort of gloomy wistfulness that really, really suits him.
I like it so much I can’t help but bite my lip as I watch him.
It makes me want to just let myself stare up into his eyes and appreciate his face for a little while.
He continues telling me about sitting outside on summer nights and listening to the neighbors’ rehearsing garage band, the humid air thick with fireflies, the melody distorted by distance, trying to see if he recognized what songs they were playing.
It’s a meandering, pointless sort of story, but I’m oddly entranced by it. It makes me wonder if I ever sat outside on one of these nights he’s talking about, looking at the night sky at the same moment, mere miles apart.
He’s talking, and I’m sort of listening, but I’m mainly eyeing his jean-shorts as he sits next to me on the grass, long legs splayed out in front of him. Whenever he’s not holding my gaze, I’m staring unabashedly at the way the fabric folds of his jeans cut a shape around his package.
I should just go for it, tell him what I want. It’s not that big a deal.
Still, the words don’t come out. I strike every option I can think of; they all sound awful.
Logan looks at me, concern knitting in his brow as I fail to answer or reply to whatever he was saying. I chew the inside of my cheek and find it easier to just push up on my knees and straddle Logan’s lap.
He kisses me back without question, and for a moment, I forget what it is I’m afraid of. I try to move closer, and my knee slips on the wet grass.
It feels far more dramatic and world-turning than the ten feet or so that we tumble down the hill in the soft, damp grass.
Logan’s hands try to catch me, wrapping his arms around my back protectively, not accounting for the way I embrace the fall.
His chin knocks my shoulder a little hard on one of the dizzying rotations, before we separate, rolling apart.