Chapter 58
I take my diary out of my purse but change my mind about reading it. Instead, I lie down on my back on the picnic table and look up at the stars. Another perfectly dark night here in Hill Country, and the Big Dipper and Orion shine clearly.
Just me and the night. It feels good. It feels simple. It feels so unlike my life right now. I miss the days when Logan and I would camp out together. I miss Logan.
The door creaks open and Logan appears beside me. Lying down next to me and incorrectly pointing out the Little Dipper. You always were the worst star-gazer, I tell him. He tells me to shut up, but he smiles.
“I thought you were in the liquor room. Your desk light is on.”
“Long story involving my mother,” I say. “Don’t ask.”
I reach over to move my purse out from under his legs and onto the bench. Logan watches the movement of my hand carefully.
“What’d you do with your ring?” he says.
“Another long story.”
“Want to talk about it? What happened with him?”
“What do you think?” I ask him.
“I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking. I know it wasn’t something shocking.”
“How do you know?” I say. “It could be shocking. I could have gotten knocked up just like my mama did.”
“You could have,” he says. “Except you didn’t. Did you?”
“What if I had? What if I were about to have some other man’s baby right now? How would that go?”
Logan props himself up on his elbow and stares down at me. “You’re on the pill. You’ve always been on the pill.” He pauses. “Well, except for the first time. But we were always so careful, and I know you always are in general.”
“I’m not on the pill anymore.”
Now Logan’s really staring at me.
“But you’re correct,” I add. “I’m not pregnant. We didn’t even have sex. Not once.”
He lets his breath out like he hasn’t breathed this whole time. “Mace…”
I wave my hand in the air. “Your fiancée is obviously a lot more secure in her relationship with you than my—whatever Jamie was—was with me. You two seem to have worked everything out even after Blake said all that crap.”
“Yeah.” His voice sounds strained. “Blake’s an ass.”
“He means well.”
“I know.”
We lapse into silence as we keep looking up at the stars. Finally, I can’t stand it anymore. I can’t stand not knowing, and even though I’m scared of the answer, I have to know.
“So, is it the sex?”
Logan doesn’t answer me. The night makes for a good cover.
“The conversations?” I press.
Still nothing.
“The boobs?” I joke. “Seriously, what is it?”
Long pause. And then…
“She saw me painting in the desert, and she stopped and asked me what I was painting. I told her it was life. And she was hooked. She said the rich boys she’s dated are all the same—boring and spoiled. She said I was interesting, and she and her father asked me out to dinner. So I went.”
My breath catches in my throat.
“So there I was,” he says. “Sweaty, needing a shave, angry at my father, trying to paint my way out of a bad mood. I was standing there in the middle of the loneliness of the hot afternoon desert sun, and Gigi appeared out of nowhere. She said…” He pauses, and for a second I think he’s going to say something different, before he finishes with, “She said she thought we’d be good for each other. ”
My heart comes into my throat.
Logan stops abruptly, and I reach over to touch his hand.
He grabs mine and holds on before letting it go. “Does it bother you a lot?” he asks me.
I shrug.
“‘Cause it would bother me,” he says.
“I don’t know what you mean.”
Even though I do. I know exactly what he means.
“It would bother me if you got engaged out of the blue like this,” he says. “It would hurt. Honest, if you got engaged at all, it would wreck me.”
I don’t answer him. But I feel better knowing that he feels it, too. The separation from something that never was. Because despite all our unspoken moments together, Logan and I never went on a proper date.
But never dating doesn’t make this any easier for me. If anything, it hurts more. To know that we never tried and failed; we just never tried at all.
“I thought about us,” I say into the night air.
“What do you mean?”
“When you were away in West Texas, I thought about what it would be like if we…”
“If we what?” he prompts me.
“If we tried dating. I was going to ask you, but…”
There. I’ve said it. My secret is out.
“Are you serious?” He curses under his breath. “I’m sorry—of course you’re serious.”
“But obviously our timing was off,” I say in a bright tone. “You’re happily engaged, and that’s that. I shouldn’t have told you.”
“No.” Logan reaches for my hand again and squeezes it once before letting it go. “You should have. I’m glad you did.”
The back door opens with a bang. I jump and sit up, certain it’s going to be Gigi thinking I’m hitting on her fiancé.
But it’s Ben, whose eyes widen when he sees who I’m with. “Hey, Small Woman.”
“Small Woman?” Logan says, still on his back.
“Mace here is Small Woman in the Queen Austen play.”
“For one night only,” I say. “Just opening night.”
“You’re Small Woman?” Logan laughs. “But you can’t act.”
Ben laughs with him.
“Yes, I still remember my one acting experience as Catherine in Northanger Abbey.” I glare at Logan. “You laughed so hard I could actually hear you from the stage.”
“I could hear you and I was ten rows away,” Ben says to him.
“You’re a writer, not an actress,” Logan says. “Nothing to be ashamed of. So why are you in the play? My mom never mentioned it.”
“It was a last-minute thing,” I say vaguely. “Mama thought I could learn to emote.”
“Oh, Jesus.” Logan puts his hands over his eyes.
Ben coughs. “So George left, and I’m on my way out. Do ya’ll want me to lock this door too?”
I nod. “Yeah. I’ll walk to my car from outside. Thanks, Benny. Actually, can you turn on the back light so we can see?”
Ben gives me an amused grin and does as I ask then shuts the door with a wave.
Logan sits up next to me and taps my diary between us on the table. “I thought you’d finished it.”
“I have. But Ginny…” God, this sounds stupid. “She’s insisting that I read through the old entries. Like a cleanse.”
His expression shifts. “A cleanse?”
“Mm-hmm.” I pick up the diary and make a show of flipping through it. “This is filled with old stories. She thought I should read them.”
Logan takes a closer look at my face. “That must be hard.”
I try to wave it off. “It’s fine.”
But he keeps looking at me steadily until I say, “Okay, fine. It sucks. But the thing is—it’s having a secondary benefit of helping with my writer’s block.”
“Sounds like it’s important then.” He gestures to the diary. “Would it help to have a friend there when you read them?”
I startle. “I don’t know.”
“I know everything already,” he says. “You can’t surprise me.”
“You’re such a guy.” I roll my eyes. “You don’t know everything. You don’t know what was going on in my head during those events.”
“Do you want to tell me?” he asks seriously. “I’m a good listener.”
“I don’t know. It feels weird.” I scratch at a peeled section of the wooden table. “In other Macey Henwood news, since my writer’s block has lifted, I finally began my novel.”
Logan sits up straighter. “No fucking way.”
I smile. “Yes way. I’m nearly sixty pages into it, actually. I had seventy-five, and then I scratched the entire thing and had to start over, but…”
Logan grabs my hand and swings me off the table into an impromptu dance.
I close my eyes and resist wrapping my arms around his back and burying my face in his neck until all the pain of what’s actually happening between us disappears.
Logan makes sure he maintains an appropriate body-length between us as he moves us in a slow two-step around the table. “I’m so proud of you.” He grins at me. “My kick-ass writer friend.”
I’m going to kiss him if he keeps sweet talking me like this. I’m going to run my hands over his chest and down his back and over his perfect ass. I’m going to stick my tongue in his mouth and never want to stop.