And, God, Logan had let him.
The night they’d almost had sex was one he’d done his damnedest to forget. He could picture it perfectly now: they’d been in Logan’s dorm room, passing a beer between them and talking about nothing. It might have been a night like any other, but something had felt different. Logan had sensed it from the moment Ellis had knocked on his door. There’d been a charge between them, something waiting, or maybe building. He’d only had a vague idea what it was until Ellis had taken the bottle from him, set it carefully on the nightstand, and then slid his fingers into the hair at the nape of Logan’s neck.
They’d kissed plenty of times before, but never like that. Logan had wanted to blame the beer for the full-body tingle that’d slithered through him, but it’d been so much more than that. Ellis had kissed him like he needed him to breathe, like he couldn’t get enough of him. To this day, it was still one of the hottest kisses of Logan’s life. Within seconds, things had gotten heated, and when clothes had started coming off, Logan had been almost too far gone to care. Almost.
He remembered the tipping point. Ellis had slid a hand between his legs, and his firm, warm fingers had startled Logan out of the moment. Not because of Ellis’s touch, but because Logan had realized he was harder than he’d ever been. Ellis had turned him on more than any girl ever had, and that thought had made Logan’s entire world shudder on its foundation.
Logan had been on his feet and grabbing his clothes before he could even process it. He didn’t remember now what excuse he’d stuttered out, but he’d run out of his own dorm room as if chased by hell hounds. No wonder Ellis was angry.
Logan took a deep breath. “I remember what happened between us.” He scrambled for words. “Well, mostly. I’m so sorry I ran away from you that one night. That must have really hurt.”
“I appreciate the sentiment, but you’re apologizing for the wrong thing.” Ellis leaned forward again, intent and serious. He was almost too intense for Logan to look at. “I didn’t expect much from this coffee date, but I was hoping to get some closure about what happened next.”
Logan shook his head. “I told you. I don’t remember ghosting you. I mean, I believe you and all, I guess, but I dunno how much closure I’m going to be able to provide.”
“Tough.” Ellis’s eyes, which were normally as soft as warm chocolate, flashed with knifelike sharpness. “Because if I have to relive this whole clusterfuck, then you do too. Think back. What happened after we almost had sex?”
“I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do. What was the next thing you did?”
Logan could tell from the determination on his face that he wasn’t going to get out of here without a fight. “All right fine.” He considered it. “I don’t—”
And, suddenly, it all slotted into place.
The next day, when he’d had a chance to cool off, he’d thought about calling Ellis. To clear the air, if nothing else. But then he’d been invited to this frat party. He didn’t even like frats, but it’d seemed like the perfect way to escape from all the confused feelings Ellis had inspired in him. He’d figured he needed some time away to figure things out. Plus, there’d been something so damn normal about going to a good ol’ fashioned frat party. He could get drunk. He could flirt with girls. It would be one of those quintessential college experiences he’d always heard about. Right then, he’d needed a dose of normal.
So Logan had gone, he’d gotten drunk, and he’d flirted with girls, mostly without incident. But one girl had flirted back. Ashley Meyers. She’d dragged him into a back bedroom, taken her top off, and that’d been the end of that. They’d dated for six months, and even when they’d broken up, Logan had been thoroughly indoctrinated into the world of dating women. He loved women. They always seemed to be a thousand times smarter than he was, and most importantly, they were much, much less confusing than the scary-hot-consuming attraction he felt for Ellis.
Logan had never looked back, except maybe to check out the occasional guy’s ass. But he’d never actually done anything with another guy again. Somewhere in the interim, Ellis had become an afterthought. Every now and then he’d think about calling him up, but he’d always been so busy. He’d had classes and he’d never been without a girlfriend, and then her friends had ended up becoming his friends . . . And with every passing month, he’d gotten further and further away from Ellis, until he’d almost forgotten about him.
Which meant Ellis was right. Logan had straight-up disappeared on him without a word of explanation. Christ, he was a jerk.
“Ellis,” Logan sputtered, “I don’t know what to say. I’m really sorry.”
Ellis looked unmoved. “You’ve been saying that a lot lately. I wonder if it’s lost all meaning yet.”
“It hasn’t, I swear. Look, what I did before, I didn’t mean it. I was just a dumb kid. I never meant to hurt you. And I definitely never meant to stop talking to you. I just had so many other things going on.”
“Seventeen.”
Logan blinked. “What?”
“Seventeen,” Ellis repeated. “I called you seventeen times after the night we almost hooked up. God only knows how many times I texted you. You never responded to me. Not even once. Are you telling me you were so busy you couldn’t take two seconds to text me back?”
Logan fell silent. He had no response to that, probably because there wasn’t one. Honestly, how could he justify that? I’m sorry I didn’t text you. I was too busy having sex with girls and avoiding thinking about you.
“I didn’t mean to ghost you,” Logan finally said. “I got busy, and we lost touch. I’m not excusing what I did, but that sort of thing happens all the time in college.”
“It happens to the people you only talked to during class when the semester ends. It doesn’t happen to your real friends. I guess now I know how much I meant to you.” He shook his head, seemingly more to himself than to Logan. “Part of me thinks this is my fault. I never should have pursued a guy as deep in the closet as you.”
That made Logan sit up straight. “Hey, I’m not closeted.”
Ellis snorted.
“I mean it. I know we did stuff, and you weren’t the only guy I kissed, but I was just testing the waters. It was a phase. We were all loaded up on hormones, and we were finally free from our parents, and we all had a lot of figuring out to do. I figured out that I like girls. It’s as simple as that.”
“So when you kissed all those guys, present company included, you didn’t like it?”
That gave Logan pause. He was tempted to lie, but that would be pointless. Ellis had felt for himself how much Logan had liked kissing him. “I wouldn’t say that.”
“So then, you’ve never looked at a guy and thought he was hot?”
“Uh, no, there are men that I, you know, from an objective standpoint, think are attractive.” Like you, for instance. Logan stared down at the table. “I don’t think that makes me gay, though.”
“Honey, it doesn’t make you straight.”
Logan’s head whipped up. “Look, I have nothing against gay people. I just—”
“Wow,” Ellis interrupted. “With a line like that, maybe you really are straight. Do they pull you people aside in high school and teach you to say that?”
Logan opened and closed his mouth several times. The hostility in Ellis’s tone had an edge to it that he couldn’t quite understand. There was something so wounded about it, so personal. Why did this matter so much to him? “I get that I did a bad thing, but aren’t you overreacting a bit? I mean, that was years ago. How can you still be upset? You make it sound like I broke your heart.”
Ellis stared at him, silent and wide-eyed, for a moment that lasted just a second too long. Then he barked out a grating laugh. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course you didn’t break my heart. As you said yourself, we weren’t even dating. But, out of curiosity, how can you call yourself straight if you admit to being attracted to men?”
“It’s kind of an inside jo
ke I tell people. I’m ninety-five percent straight.”
“Or you’re one hundred percent bisexual.”
“What?”
The bell over the door chimed. Logan nearly jumped out of his skin. A customer walked in and made his way over to the drinks menu, written in chalk on the far wall, without so much as glancing at them.
Shit. Logan had almost forgotten where they were. He checked his watch and breathed a sigh of relief. He still had plenty of time to get back to work.
Ellis seemed to be thinking the same thing. He stood up. “I have to go. It was nice seeing you again.”
“Wait.” Logan hesitated. “We weren’t finished.”
“I’ve heard all I need. This was a mistake.” Ellis’s voice was low, presumably so the customer wouldn’t overhear them, but it thundered in Logan’s ears. “I can’t describe what it felt like yesterday to see you after all these years. And when you wanted to have coffee . . . I don’t know. I guess I thought talking to you might help me move on. But I was wrong. I feel even shittier than I did before. If you’ll excuse me, I have to get back to work.” He headed for the counter.
Without thinking, Logan grabbed his arm. “Hold on. I don’t want to leave things like this. I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
“What do you care?” Ellis wasn’t looking at him, so he couldn’t gauge his expression, but his voice cracked tellingly. “You forgot about me once. You can do it again.”
Logan swallowed around his tightening throat. “Hey. Look at me.”
As soon as Ellis turned around, Logan regretted asking him to. He was expecting anger, but what he got was so much worse than that: disappointment and profound sadness. Ellis dropped his gaze to the ground, his long eyelashes lowered over his eyes, and Logan thought that if he saw a tear slide down his face, he was going to burst.
“Let me make this up to you.” Logan squeezed his arm. “Let me take you to dinner. Or drinks. Something.”
“Why?”
Because your face is hurting me, and I don’t know why. “We can finish talking. I can apologize for real this time. And . . . I dunno, maybe we can be friends again. If you think you can forgive me.”
Ellis looked from him to the counter and back again, as if he were debating vaulting over it to get away. “I don’t know.”
“Please? It’ll be my treat.” If Logan weren’t so conciliatory, he’d marvel at the U-turn this visit had taken. He’d gone from not wanting to show up at all to begging Ellis to spend more time with him. Ellis always had been good at getting him out of his comfort zones. It seemed some things never changed.
“All right.” Ellis pulled his arm from Logan’s grasp but didn’t back away. “I’ll hang out with you again, but I have some conditions.”
“Lay ’em on me.”
He pointed to Logan’s suit. “One, you can’t wear that, or anything like it.”
Logan looked down at himself. “What’s wrong with my clothing?”
“You look like a tool, for one thing. For another, where we’re going, you’d stick out like a metalhead at an Elton John concert.”
Logan furrowed his brow. “‘Where we’re going’?”
“That’s the second condition. I get to pick where we go. And I pick the Golden Flamingo.”
The rest of Logan’s workday was a blur. He remembered having brief conversations with his cubicle-mates—and taking Jennifer up on her offer of lasagna; he was starving—but otherwise he was consumed with thoughts of Ellis. The details of their upcoming date were vague, but what Logan did know kept him in a state of constant low-key anxiety. On Friday, a gay man, with whom he’d once done some very gay things, was taking him to a gay club.
What could possibly go wrong?
Logan autopiloted his way through work and left the office just as the sun was contemplating setting. He climbed into his car—beloved briefcase on the seat next to him—and broke from his reverie long enough to drive home.
Bayshore Avenue had its fair share of rush-hour traffic. He knew the area well enough by now that he could take back streets and skirt the congestion. But, to him, the view of a golden sun fizzling out over a sea colored black by the dying light was well worth the commute. Ellis had asked him why he hadn’t moved to a big city. This was part of the reason. Brigantine’s small-town charm was in no way lost on him.
Twenty minutes later, he pulled into an apartment complex, parked in his usual spot beneath a gnarled red oak, and unlocked the front door to unit 126C. The sight that greeted him when he flicked on the light was comforting in its uniformity: white walls, tasteful decorating, and everything neat, clean, and lined up.
It admittedly lacked a personal touch. He’d let the sales lady at the local furniture store pick out most of his art. His sisters said his apartment looked like a page out of an IKEA catalog: generic and devoid of personality. He didn’t mind, though. He wasn’t trying to score originality points. His dreams were that of a simple millennial: an apartment he could afford, furniture that hadn’t come from Craigslist, and a nice bottle of red wine awaiting him on the breakfast bar.
“Home sweet home,” he said to himself as he set his briefcase down by the door. He took his work shoes off and lined them up next to his other two pairs before heading for the bedroom. His evening routine was simple: he changed into sweats, made some dinner, and either read or watched Netflix until it was time for bed.
Tonight, however, he was on a mission.
Once he was out of his suit, he threw a frozen pizza in the oven, poured a glass of the aforementioned wine, and settled on his brown leather sofa with his laptop. He clicked on his internet browser and pulled up Facebook. He didn’t have the same fascination with the website that everyone else seemed to have, including his sisters, who made up the majority of his feed. He had a basic profile, however, and he kept it updated for networking purposes. It was about to come in handy, but for reconnaissance purposes.
He spent a moment scrolling through his feed—which contained a disturbing number of wedding and birth announcements; was he really at the age where all his peers were settling down?—before he clicked on the search bar. He entered Ellis Floyd and sifted through the results; it didn’t take long. Ellis was a common enough last name, but there were only a handful of people who had it as a first name.
Ellis had explained the origin of it to him once. His mother had followed the old feminist custom of giving her child her maiden name. The tradition typically applied to daughters, but Ellis’s mom had only wanted one kid, so she’d resolved to give the name to whomever she got. Ellis had always loved it, and Logan had often joked that it was the only traditional thing about him.
Logan selected Ellis’s profile and clicked on it, praying it was public. When it loaded, however, he almost didn’t realize it had, it was so blank. A message at the top urged him to send Ellis a friend request if he wanted to see more.
Shit. He really didn’t want Ellis to know he was creeping on his page. But for his plan to work, he needed to know what Ellis had been up to since college. He couldn’t think of another way to get that information, aside from calling Ellis’s parents. He could imagine how that conversation would go. Hi, I broke your kid’s heart a few years ago, and now I’m trying to slime my way back into his good graces. Be a dear and lend me a hand? How about no.
Logan debated with himself for half a minute before stabbing the “friend request” button so hard his top knuckle cracked. He let out a breath through his teeth that made a hollow whistling sound. Ellis would accept his friend request. Of that, he was certain. But knowing his luck, Ellis wouldn’t see it until morning, and his whole plan would be ruined.
As if to contradict him, his laptop pinged. He clicked on the notification that had just popped up, and sure enough, Ellis had accepted him. Damn, that was fast. Was Ellis checking out Logan’s profile too? More likely his phone had alerted him to the request. Whatever the case, Operation Lost Time was back on track.
After refreshing the page,
Ellis’s information loaded. Logan’s plan was simple: by Friday, he was going to become an Ellis expert. It wasn’t all that different from what he did when he had a new client at work. He learned everything there was to know about their company, policies, history, likes, dislikes, et cetera. Like corporate dating, almost. Logan figured he couldn’t make up for what he’d done, but he could catch up on everything he’d missed.
He started with the basics: Ellis’s birthday was in August, he was from Brigantine—which they’d covered during their disastrous coffee date—and his profile photo was him in front of the Sagrada Familia. At some point in his life, he’d been to Barcelona. So far so good.
Liked books and movies came next. He recognized a handful of the former—The Catcher in the Rye, Matilda, and troublingly, The Anarchist’s Cookbook—but he’d never even heard of most of the movies. Shock Treatment. King Cobra. Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Was that last one a Harry Potter spinoff?
Shaking his head, Logan clicked on the employment section next. His eyes nearly popped out of his skull. Ellis had done everything from bartending to playing bagpipes in an indie folk band. Logan couldn’t even fathom that. He’d been careful to build his résumé around marketing and marketing alone so he’d make for a strong candidate. Ellis, on the other hand, had gone the jack-of-all-trades route. Logan supposed there must be merits to both approaches, though for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine living in such an unstructured way.
He scanned the rest of Ellis’s About Me section before invariably landing on his relationship status. Single. That . . . Well, it was both a surprise and not a surprise. Logan was single, so he tended to assume everyone around him was as well. But, of course, that was shitty logic. Not five minutes ago, his newsfeed had demonstrated that he was approaching late-bloomer status. And with Ellis being so, well, attractive, for lack of a better term, it seemed odd that no one had snatched him up by now.
The Other Five Percent Page 5