by Kris Ripper
It should have been awkward to say good night at the front door, but it wasn’t. Emery smiled and touched his head, like he was saluting, and told her he’d see her soon.
Lisa felt warmth in her gut, in her heart, in lower places she’d thought would never feel warm again. She stood there for a long time at the window after he’d driven away, thinking about this sensation, letting it travel through her. How long had it been since she let herself feel something without trying to determine if it was the right thing to feel?
“He only wants one thing from you. It’s so obvious, Lisa.”
Mother. Standing at the still-open slider. Watching her with dark intensity.
She couldn’t cry in front of Mother. Suddenly she knew that if she started to cry right now, she’d be back there, at the farm, and it would be the morning of Abigail’s death all over again.
“I don’t know what we did to make you needy like this, but you should—”
Lisa didn’t slow down on her way to her room, fumbling the key out but unlocking the door cleanly and closing it much too hard behind her.
Was she really gone? Lisa shivered, still wrapped in her towel, afraid to move, imagining Mother right outside her door. Waiting to catch her. Change her. Make her what she used to be.
She had no idea how long it took to talk herself to bed, but she was freezing cold and trembling in her bones by the time she pulled the blankets over her head and fell asleep.
35
Frankie
18 days since coming clean
Logan opened his door immediately, even though it was late, and his usual smile slipped as he stepped aside. “Beer?”
“Nah, I’ve already had more wine and hot tub than I should have been driving on, probably. Sorry, I should have called ahead, I just couldn’t go home.”
“Frankie, hey.” He didn’t move, but the loss of Logan’s perpetual cheer was enough to stop her cold. “Crash here. Don’t go home if you don’t want to.”
She swallowed and side-leaned into the wall, even though what she really wanted to do was lean into Logan. “I couldn’t be around fucking idiot men right now.”
“No offense taken.” He offered a slight smile, but she shook her head.
“I meant my roommates. You could never be an idiot man like that.” Absurdly, tears pricked at her eyes. “Oh my god, I’m a fucking mess. I should not have had all that wine.”
“Sit. Watch Black Butler. I’ve been meaning to start back at series one anyway. Let’s call out all the close-ups on Ciel’s eye.”
“Ha. You were gonna propose a drinking game.”
“I adjusted on the fly.” This time when he smiled, she smiled back. And pushed off the wall.
“Fine. We will Black Butler. But that’s it. No talking.”
“Way to make it clear you need to talk while simultaneously making it so I can’t ask questions.” Logan flopped onto the couch and reached for the remote.
She followed, taking the other side, inhaling Logan’s familiar scent, his space. By the time the credits rolled she knew crying was inevitable. Logan’s scent. His presence, as close as she wanted it to be, playful and loyal and all the things she would want in a boyfriend. Which was why it was such a mindfuck.
Better to be home than here, torturing herself.
Logan turned the volume down. “How about I play surrogate for the emotions you’re trying not to have? Am I supposed to be sad right now? Or pissy? Full of rage? Or joy?”
“You’re supposed to not ask questions,” she mumbled. Sniffling.
“That was about what was wrong. I’m not asking about that. This is totally different.” He poked her lightly with the remote. “C’mon. What am I supposed to feel right now so you don’t have to?”
“Hell. Nothing. Everything. I don’t know. I’m pissed at Singer, who’s apparently decided to detonate his entire life for fucking no reason at all, except he’s acting like maybe if he ignores it he’ll wake up and everything will be fine, which never works.”
“Okay. I can be pissed at Singer. Though for the record, he’s always been nice to me.”
She shot him a look. “You know I can’t stand you, right?”
“I know there’s more going on with you than you’re saying.” He turned completely, pulling his legs up to crisscross in front of him. The show continued in the background, but Frankie, tugged by some strange force field of Logan’s attention, faced him.
He didn’t look away. “Just FYI, I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here because you’re pissed at Singer. But if that’s what we’re pretending, I’m cool with that.”
Dammit. Everything would be so much easier if he was … a lot more like Caldecott, so she wouldn’t have to care about him. Not caring was easier than sitting across the couch from him and knowing that there was fucking nothing she could say that would change the way he saw her.
“Singer’s definitely being an idiot.”
“Uh-huh.”
So he’d let her get away with it, but she found she didn’t want to. Maybe with the cousins she wanted to pretend. With Logan she wanted … something else.
A hard lump formed in the pit of her stomach. “You remember Coach Caldecott?”
Logan blinked. “Uh, yeah. Gym teacher, right? He coached basketball or baseball or something?”
“He dated Lisa Thurman after she graduated.”
“What, like the second she wasn’t his student anymore he started banging her? That’s fucked up.”
Frankie focused on the television, which was still playing the show. Sebastian was accomplishing feats of spectacular butlering. Ciel was watching him with a distinctly unimpressed expression. “I had sex with him. Caldecott.”
“Uh. Okay. So he was kind of a bastard where, like, ethics and boundaries were concerned.”
She didn’t say anything. She knew she had to. Because whatever else Logan was, he’d been a good friend, and lying by omission wasn’t how she wanted to treat him. But it was hard. Because the second she explained he’d want to think that she was just a little broken and needed to be fixed.
“I was sixteen.”
“Shit. I’m sorry. That sucks.”
She waited. But that was it. That was all Logan said, and even without looking at him, she could tell his expression hadn’t changed. Might have gotten a little sadder, might not. But the sum total of his response was Shit. I’m sorry. That sucks. Which was so far from the outrage and overwhelm she’d expected, she didn’t know how to reply. So she didn’t. She dissolved into tears and buried her face in the back of the couch.
It was so fucking infuriating that she was crying when she wanted to be screaming.
“I’m not fucking sad right now,” she growled through tears.
“Dude, Frankie, I know the difference between rage tears and sad tears. Come on.”
She choked on a laugh. “Shut up.”
“Was it … shitty? I mean I can’t imagine how it could be anything but shitty. He was kind of a lousy gym teacher. Not that the two skills are related, but—”
She kicked him.
“Okay. I’ll stop making jokes. It’s probably not the most sensitive way to have this conversation.”
“This is not a fucking conversation.”
Logan shrugged, eyeing her from beneath the fringe of his hair, which she always wanted to push back. Mostly just for an excuse to get closer in a way that couldn’t be taken as flirtation.
“What? Why are you looking at me like that?” she asked.
“I need this to be a conversation.” He held up both hands defensively. “For a minute, okay? Five minutes. I need us to talk.”
“I’m not talking about Caldecott.”
“No, I didn’t mean about Caldecott. Though if he ever walks into the bookstore I’m going to beat him to death with a hardcover James
Patterson.”
“Not if I get to him first,” she muttered.
“Yeah, okay, you get dibs. And Izzy can have what’s left. If she ever found out—”
“How could she possibly? No one knew. Except Jake. Christ. And now Singer, Lisa, and Emery. I gotta quit drinking wine. It makes me say shit.”
“Saying shit might not be the worst possible thing, Frankie.”
She narrowed her eyes. “Okay, then. Talk.”
“All right. Because I’ve been thinking a lot about this, and I know you keep saying we can’t be serious about being together, but I kind of am already. And I tried to go out with other people, but I didn’t want to be with them the way I want to be with you.”
“You mean except for the part where they’d have sex with you?” She’d meant for her voice to sound sharp, but instead she just sounded … tired.
“Yeah, but what’s the point of being with someone who wants to have sex with me if I don’t want to have sex with them?”
She laughed triumphantly. “Exactly! That’s exactly what I’ve been telling you! What’s the point of you being with me when I don’t want to do that?”
“You know it’s not the same. I mean, I don’t want to watch Lord of the Rings fifty thousand times, but I like being with you anyway. And I still think you like having me around, even if I don’t share your love for Mordor. Or elves. Or hobbits.” He waved a hand in dismissal, then stretched his arm along the back of the couch, not all the way to her, but she could tell it was an attempt at connection. It was so obviously an attempt at connection.
Frankie swallowed the sick feeling in the back of her throat. “If you and I got together, for real, it wouldn’t work. Because I don’t— I mean I could try, but—”
His nose wrinkled. “Jeez, no.”
“Hey, are you trying to say you don’t want to fuck me? Because I think I’m offended by that.” There. Her voice was better. Less weepy.
“I want so many things that we could actually do. Can I at least tell you? I feel like we’ve been dancing around this for a year and a half and every now and then I take my life in my hands and, you know, stand slightly closer to you at work. And okay, if you don’t want me anywhere near you, I swear I can respect that, but that’s not what it feels like. Is that— I mean is that actually what you’re saying?”
But it wasn’t. Not even close. She shook her head slowly.
He watched her for a long moment, as if waiting for something. “Sometimes you sit next to me on the couch, and one time I put my arm around you. You said it was okay, but then you didn’t sit next to me again.”
“I didn’t want— It seemed like that was sort of taunting us with how we can never make this work.”
Logan sighed. “Maybe we should try before we decide it’ll never work. Just going out on a limb here.”
“You like having sex with people. You look at people and think, ‘Oh, they’re hot, I want to fuck them.’ I don’t. What part of that do you think is negotiable?” Since she couldn’t keep meeting his eyes, she stared at his hand instead, halfway along the back of the couch, well within reach. What if she could reach for him? Hold his hand? Without it being weird or taboo or off-limits? Without feeling like a tease?
“I do like having sex, yeah, but I’m not a horny nineteen-year-old, Frankie. And I have a hand. You know? I’m not going to die from lack of orgasm. You act like ‘I enjoy sex’ means ‘I have sex with anything that moves with no regard to if I actually like the person inside the body,’ which is kind of insulting.”
“That’s how it seems. I mean, I know that’s not actually how most people are, but from the outside it seems like allosexuals are into it all the time, with everyone.”
“We aren’t.” His hand opened, palm up. “I’m not saying I’ll never think about sex again, or that I want to live the rest of my life without it. But I don’t think that’s what we’re talking about. Right now I just want to hold hands. And cuddle. And for you to maybe admit you like me a little.”
She loved his hands. Light brown skin, long fingers, with a black ring on his right pinky that she’d always wanted to ask about but never had. Sometimes she got distracted at the store watching Logan rearrange displays, because his hands were so effortlessly competent. An extension of himself.
“It’s only that you could be with anyone in the whole world. And there’s pretty much no one for me. So it’s easy for you to say ‘let’s try this’ because if it doesn’t work out—which it won’t—then you just move on to the next girl. And I—” She bit down hard on her tongue until the tears receded. “It’s not the same for me. It feels like a bigger risk.”
“I hear that. And I guess I even kind of agree with it. There’s a risk. And maybe it’s not equal between us. But there’s always a risk. Every relationship is a risk, a gamble. You put up your stakes and you roll the dice, you know? Except it’s not random, because we aren’t inanimate objects, we’re people, and we can work things out. You can watch Lord of the Rings and I’ll jerk off in the other room and all will be right with the world.”
“It’s not that easy.”
“You know what’s easy?” He reached out. “Hold my hand while we watch Black Butler. And if you want to sit closer, you should. But definitely don’t go back to your apartment tonight.”
“Wow. That progressed from ‘hold my hand’ to ‘sleep with me’ fast.” She held her breath and took his stupid hand anyway.
Logan’s fingers closed around hers, firm and confident. “I’m a good bed partner. I don’t steal sheets, and I don’t kick.”
“Is this— Are you giving me your resume or something right now?”
“No. And you can take the couch, which was actually what I meant, though I would personally love it if you wanted to share the bed.” He paused. “Queen-sized. Plenty of room.”
Her hands were more pale, and her fingers thicker, shorter, but somehow their hands together didn’t look as foolish as it seemed like they should. “At some point you’re going to want to go from cuddling to kissing to sex. And I won’t.”
“I know. So that’ll probably be hard. But I think a good portion of sex is really just a way for people to be close to each other, and I don’t think it’s the only way. And kissing’s not all one thing, either.” He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed it. “Does that gross you out?”
A split second of his lips, dry, on her skin. “No. That was— It didn’t gross me out.”
“So I could do it again, or no thanks?”
Such a small thing for it to be so monumental. She almost didn’t say the thing she was thinking, because it was ridiculous. It was a risk. He might not get it.
“That was the first time anyone ever kissed me and like … knew. Knew to not be all over me.”
His fingers tightened, but he didn’t speak.
She looked up. “You could do it again. Mostly I think you’re cracked and this is gonna end badly, but you can hold my hand. And you can—you can kiss me like that.”
“Yeah, okay. And if I ever do anything you don’t want, knee me in the balls.”
“Like I need your permission for that. Looking forward to it.”
Logan reached for the remote again. “We’re totally dating now. I’m telling everyone.”
“You’ve been telling everyone we’re dating for months.”
“Yeah, but now it’s for real.”
She sighed. “Oh god. This is the worst decision I’ve ever made. Plus, most people don’t know I’m ace so they’re gonna think we’re all— Ew.”
Logan laughed, then clasped his remote hand to his mouth. “Am I allowed to laugh at that? Because it feels super subversive to date in public and not have sex in private. We are subverting the dominant paradigm, Frankie!”
She punched him in the arm. “Can it. And turn the volume up, I like this episode.”
> “You know you’re kind of my girlfriend now.”
“I know you’re really obnoxious.”
“You don’t have to tell me how excited you are to be my boo. I can sense it.”
“You did not just call me that.”
He laughed again and turned the volume up.
She took the couch, eventually, when they’d marathoned most of series one. But it wasn’t beyond the realm of possibility that she could sleep beside him in a bed without worrying that he’d take it wrong. Maybe next time.
The fact that there would be a next time made Frankie feel terribly happy, the sort of happy that she tried to fight except her entire body felt lighter with it, more buoyant, even on Logan’s lumpy couch. He’d left his bedroom door open, and every now and then she could hear a snore, or a sigh, or a shift in the blankets.
And that made her happy, too.
36
Singer
69 days with Miles
Singer had only ever been to Midnight Mass on Christmas with the Derries. It had in no way prepared him for Marie’s church.
They were two of a small handful of white people (they weren’t the only ones, though being so dramatically outnumbered was certainly novel; it would be good to do this frequently, Singer thought, because Miles would so much more frequently be the only dark-skinned person in the room). But where he felt even more dwarfed than that was the voices. Marie’s fellow parishioners could sing, and sing loudly.
Obviously that there was singing at a black church really wasn’t a surprise. Maybe this time he should have relied on the stereotype. He’d have to ask Kara about what church she and Victor took the kids to.
Miles loved every second of it, after an initial few moments of looking around, eyes bulging, mouth agape, over Jake’s shoulder. He probably remembered it from when he was younger, the singing, the energy.
And oh, god, Jake looked brilliant. Jake, in his Sunday best, handsome as anything, standing tall beside him, holding Miles in a brand new outfit he kept picking at. Singer felt a surge of pride and straightened his own back to meet it. They might be white, okay, but they were trying to be good parents for him. If they tried this hard to be good partners, they ought to be able to—but no, think about that later.