10
Ava
I made it perfectly clear to Logan this isn’t a date. But I haven’t missed a Trivia Night at the Thirsty Turtle in two years, and I’m not about to start.
I love every bit of it: the sticky wooden tables, the narrow booths with cracked vinyl seats, how overpoweringly loud it gets. The night buzzes with anticipation and chatter.
This one isn’t as overpoweringly sweaty as the last, thankfully. The hot, smothering grip of summertime finally slipped in the last couple days, the temperature taking a plunge into chilly autumn. T-shirts and flip-flops were traded for sweaters and galoshes almost overnight.
“I thought you didn’t like the Aconite brews,” Sophie says, pointing at the label as she passes me two of the long-necked bottles.
I grimace, unsure how to explain in as few words as possible about my interlude with Logan.
I don’t have to, apparently, because a grin spreads across her face as she assesses me.
I shrug and roll my eyes semi-sheepishly.
She’s seen me go home with a number of different guys after I close out my tabs.
Sophie leans over the bar almost conspiratorially, except for the part where her volume turns a couple heads our way, “So, did you ever find out if they’re vampires?”
“What?”
“The Hayes boys. I saw you leave with tall, dark, and grimacing,” she says, wiping down the counter. She adds then, “I thought that one was the one that just got married.”
I shake my head, “No, that was his brother.”
Sophie enunciates clearly as she can around her disbelief, pressing on like she’s trying to hint to me.
“Coulda swore it was Logan. Me and him chatted about it just before the wedding when I went to pick up an extra case of ale from the brewery. Though, I heard from one of the brewers that he left his bride at the altar.”
My cheeks color a little. The need to defend Logan rises in me, unbidden.
I swallow back the urge to tell her I know he has an ex-fiancée.
I’m sure Sophie just means to look out for me, but I want to explain to her that even though he seems a little intimidating at first, he’s really just a shy dork who takes his mom to church.
(I’ve decided that’s cute and not Norman Bates-y of him at all.)
“His brother did just get married,” I tell her, pretty sure I had it the right way around. The wedding I delivered flowers to was Shawn’s wedding, wasn’t it? If that was Logan’s wedding, then that fresh break with his ex is . . . really, really fresh, actually.
I wince hard at myself. Of course, I yelled at him for being a dick to me that day. I didn’t know what he was going through.
Sophie hums sympathetically, misinterpreting the reason for my discomfort. “Maybe it was a double feature. You can ask him about it.”
She jerks her chin toward the doors to the Thirsty Turtle, and I look over my shoulder. I recognize the slant of his shoulders through the chunky-cozy denim jacket before he even turns around.
I see Logan scan the crowd, looking for me with his stern brow set in scrutiny.
There’s a muscle actively working in his cheek as another raucous cheer makes the noise level swell.
I lean away from the bar and wave to catch his attention.
The grim, mysterious cloud he carries around him seems to melt away when he catches my eye, and the tension in his jaw slips.
I am doing a disrespectful amount of staring at his jeans as Logan crosses the room to me, even when he reaches me I forget to bring my eyes north of his belt for a solid five seconds.
“Hey,” Logan says, and I bite my lip, trying to remember that we’re in a public place, I can’t just climb him. Not yet.
“Hi,” I almost whisper, my cheeks warming. It’s not because of how much I like him, I try to convince myself. It’s the amount of bodies crammed into the Thirsty Turtle, raising the room temperature.
He must have come from work, I think to myself as he sheds his jacket, revealing the dark blue button-down beneath. He unbuttons and untucks the dress shirt, revealing a white tank underneath. It clings to his body just enough to make me worry my teeth into my lower lip.
Logan nods a hello to someone who claps a hand on his shoulder passing by and begins the work of rolling up his sleeves.
Who knew a rolled-up sleeve on a button-down shirt is some kind of magic, because I lose track of every thought I’ve ever had except that I don’t think I’ve paid his forearms enough attention.
“So, what was the answer, Ava?” Sophie prompts me, voice deadpan.
I look back at her, tearing my attention away for barely a second. “Hm?”
Sophie rolls her eyes and tosses the rag down on the counter, giving me a look like “I warned you, girl,” before she heads into the back.
Logan spares her retreating ponytail a glance. “What was that about?”
“Uh, if there were enough score cards,” I lie quickly, pivoting the subject. “Is this your first Trivia Night?”
“Yeah, I’ve never been. I didn’t realize this was even a thing,” Logan says, his eyes drifting over the crowded bar.
The Thirsty Turtle rarely gets this kind of stuffed. Friday nights see a little rowdiness, football Sundays during the season too. But the trivia crowd pulls in the irregulars as well as the barflies.
“I never miss one. It’s my favorite thing ever,” I tell him, finding one of his hands and threading my fingers through his.
I have so many happy memories around Trivia Night, I want him to experience some of it and love it just as much as I do.
All the times Laura and I almost won, the one time we actually did,
Maybe that’s a tall order. Maybe he’s too withdrawn and rigid to enjoy an atmosphere this busy and loud.
“Noted,” Logan replies with a short nod, but the little half-smile that’s there for a second, he might as well have told me he’d tattoo it across his heart.
I can’t help the way my expression softens. His gaze is warm and fond as he leans against the bar, his attention fully lavished on me, and his barely-there smile means more than any goofy, over-the-top grin could. It’s hard-won, and it’s mine.
I find myself searching his face, suddenly wondering if he misses his ex at all. Why is the worst-case scenario that none of this is for me, and he’s just pining over her, that I’m holding her spot until she comes back?
As much as I’ve been trying to avoid thinking about what could have happened between his fiancée and him, it underscores too many of my thoughts, a cloud of worry on the horizon. I’m trying, desperately, not to wonder whose fault the break was, what happened.
It’s fine. It doesn’t matter that he might have just had his heart broken and maybe he’s still in love with his ex. I don’t need him to have deep feelings for me. I don’t want him to. I don’t, I really don’t.
I just need his attention.
Logan’s chin lifts, and I follow his gaze to a small booth that just emptied out. He tugs my hand and stands up from the barstool, gaining a few inches where I lose a few hopping down.
With ulterior motives, I scoop up his jacket when he grabs our drinks, and as he’s leading me toward the table I hug the denim to my chest and take in a deep inhale. I don’t know what magic they put in soaps marketed to guys, but that cedar mystery nonsense is seriously persuasive.
We wade through the crowd to the table, and I slide into the booth first, scooting across the aged and cracked vinyl bench cushion.
“Hey, so you’re not still seeing your ex, right?” I ask before I can think too hard about it, and then quickly tack on to sound more casual, “Or, uh, like anyone else?”
Logan’s brows rise a degree or two, and he answers with a little shake of his head. “No . . . ”
“Me neither.”
He slides into the booth next to me, the long lines of his legs somehow fitting into the cramped space. “Did you change your mind about something?”
I shake my head. I just know I want all his attention to myself, and so I can’t help but lean into what usually gets me what I want—upping the ante.
“I was going to make a case for us to like, rawdog it.”
I am so utterly enamored with that look he has every time something I say to him stops him in his tracks. Logan never looks surprised, but like he’s forbidding himself to react at all. It gives his features a pinched look of shrewd panic, and it’s utterly delicious.
“Run that by me, one more time,” he says diplomatically after a moment. A smile creeps up on me, and I can’t fully hold it back.
“You heard me.”
“No, I think I just briefly hallucinated,” he says, reaching for one of the bottles of Aconite Ale. He takes a long pull from it, like he’s fortifying himself for this conversation.
I press on. “Like if we’re not sleeping with other people currently and if you know you don’t have any STIs, I’m on birth control, so I think we could have some fun with that. But we could like, make a day of it and—”
“—Not a date,” he interrupts, a clarification dressed as a statement.
“—Definitely not a date. But we could get maybe lunch after,” I suggest, and he raises an eyebrow at me, paired with a coy smile. He doesn’t comment on my hypocrisy.
“Yeah, that sounds fun,” he agrees, his gaze dipping to the table then back out to the crowd. He presses a hand to the side of his neck, long fingers splayed out. “Is it warm in here?”
I can’t help but bite my lower lip as I watch him gather his hair up off the back of his neck. I love seeing his bashful side.
It’s hard to imagine him as a guy with some kind of terrible secret.
Then again, I’d thought I had a pretty good read on him before he told me had an ex-fiancée.
How much else about him am I overlooking?
Do I need to ask him if he’s got kids hidden away somewhere, terrible gambling debts, a secret torture dungeon in his basement?
Yeah, and then that’s the reason for all the screams in the woods, I think sarcastically. Get real.