by Amy Spalding
Mom’s home at her usual time, and I’m glad that Kat and I have managed to stay focused on homework and therefore seem as responsible as possible. My parents are younger than most people’s I’ve known—they were both only twenty-four when I was born—and so I think Mom feels she’s less removed from her own time of goofing off or whatever she’s convinced we’re doing. I’ve analyzed her box of high school memorabilia, and I definitely have better grades and a more solid extracurricular, so I have no idea why she’s so judgmental.
“Hi, girls,” Mom says, while flipping through the mail. She’s wearing a simple black and purple dress instead of her usual jeans and a T-shirt or sweater (weather-dependent) and lipstick instead of Chapstick. Kat’s commented recently that my mom’s gone through a glow-up, which I don’t think Mom appreciated. “James, since your dad’s going to be at the shop awhile longer, I thought we should get dinner ordered.”
It was just last year that Dad opened Vino Mag, and even though, like everything else around here, they close fairly early, he’s often there later. On most days he’s the only employee, so every duty—from counting down the cash register to taking inventory and restocking each shelf—is his to complete. I’d love to help out, but apparently it’s frowned upon to have your seventeen-year-old daughter pulling shifts in a wine shop.
“Ooh, can we get those fancy hot dogs?” Kat asks. “If you use Postmates, they’ll just bring them over.”
It’s almost impossible to believe that only a month ago she was, for all intents and purposes, a vegan who, on a regular basis, liked to join in Matty’s lunchtime chats about factory farms.
“I’m sure your father’s looking forward to seeing you for dinner,” Mom says.
“Oh, OK.” Kat takes one more pretzel before throwing her stuff into her bag and taking off.
“All right, let’s get this over with,” Mom says with a heavy sigh.
Dad’s the one who loves food. At least half of the time, Mom and I would be happy in whatever dystopian future let us subsist on magical meal pills. So while in pre–Vino Mag days, we might be dining on homemade pasta or chicken grilled on the professional-grade barbeque in our own backyard, right now Mom is making me look over her shoulder as she scrolls through GrubHub’s options. We’re just lucky that we can pick out food online and have it delivered to our door. It’s nearly as good as the food pills of our hypothetical dystopian future.
“Just pick whatever you want,” I say. “You’re going to do that anyway.”
“You’re very funny,” she says. “Thai?”
I shrug. “That’s fine. But, see?”
Mom laughs. “Yeah, yeah.”
Logan’s name flashes on my phone. “Can I take this?”
Mom waves me off, and I scramble to get myself locked inside my bedroom before answering it. I’m not used to my phone ringing. Texting’s generally a much better option, but it turns out that I miss hearing Logan’s voice.
“Hey!”
“Roller-skating?” Logan laughs. “This is our big night to ourselves?”
“I couldn’t say no to Kat. I mean—I never can. You know this.”
“McCall, you can’t say no to skates. That is what I know.”
I grin. “We’ll do whatever you want after.”
“Hopefully whatever I want is the same whatever you want,” he says, and my face is hot. I’m sure life would be easier right now if I didn’t turn into a prude over the phone, but it’s just the way I’m programmed. If Logan asked something like what I’m wearing, I’d end up answering completely honestly about my workout clothes.
“Probably so,” I say while scanning my brain for any possible topic to steer the conversation toward. “Do you miss being home? Or is that a stupid question?”
“You couldn’t be stupid if you tried,” he says. “Well, actually, you could. You’re really determined when you put your mind to it. And, I dunno, maybe? Maybe not. I miss you being around every day. And potato balls at Porto’s. And my mom’s daal and rice.”
“In that order, I hope.”
“Definitely in that order, McCall.”
I hear his smile in his voice. “I know it’s cheesy, but maybe we could try to talk on the phone more. Or even FaceTime? Is that too much? We don’t need a strict schedule, unless that’s easier for you.”
“I’ll FaceTime whenever you want,” Logan says. “You’re probably wearing cute-as-hell pajamas right now.”
“Logan, I don’t even own cute pajamas.”
“Oh, so completely naked. That’s good, too.”
“Logan.” I laugh. “I knew this would happen.”
“I’m irresistible,” he says. “That’s what you know.”
“Your self-esteem should be studied,” I say. “Extensively.”
When we get to the skating rink on Friday night, it hits me just how long it’s been since I did anything social with anyone other than one of my usual groups. There’s nothing inherently bad about that, but when you only hang out with people who are used to you, you forget that you may have qualities you don’t even think about but are weird to others. Like owning your own professional-grade roller skates.
“They’re so nice,” Raina tells me.
Quinn crouches down to look more closely at them. The skates are polished black leather with a thick blue stripe running up the sides. “Really nice. You just have these?”
“James takes skating, like, super seriously,” Kat says. “She can skate really fast. And backward. And fast backward.”
“Fastward,” she and Quinn say at the same time, and then burst into giggles.
“She kicks everyone’s ass on the track,” Raina says. “So I’m really not surprised.”
Practically out of thin air, arms encircle my waist and pull me backward. I know that Logan thinks this’ll be a great prank, but I know what his arms feel like around me. And he’s got a specific scent, this combination of his deodorant and hair product and something organic that’s earthier and inherently him.
“Surprise!” Logan says.
“I invited you.” But I laugh and turn around to kiss him. It’s hard to believe it’s been, literally, weeks since I’ve seen him. “Thanks for coming.”
“Anything for you, McCall.” His tone is sarcastic, but I know from his smile that he means it.
“Logan!” Kat runs over, as she’s yet to lace on her skates. “I haven’t seen you in, like, a billion years!”
“It’s true, one billion years since I entered the collegiate halls of UCLA,” he says with a grin. “How’ve you been, Rydell?”
“Super good,” she says. “How’s college?”
“Also super good,” he says.
“Don’t mock me,” she says, but she’s laughing. I don’t have a word for the feeling that the two most important people that I chose to be in my life like each other this much, but I’m feeling it hard right now.
“Logan, you have to skate with me during one of the Couples’ Skates since I don’t have anyone.”
He glances at me but agrees, and I decide to let it go. Even though I haven’t seen my own boyfriend in record time, it’s easy to forget that Kat was very recently heartbroken. How could I mind?
Raina and Quinn shout something to Kat, so she runs back over to join them, and I sit down next to Logan as he changes from his Adidas to rental roller skates.
“How long do we have to stay?” he asks.
“Sounds like at least through two Couples’ Skates,” I say. “Also you love it.”
He gets up. “Introduce me to your friends.”
I wave my hand. “They’re Kat’s friends. I just got roped into it.”
“There’s no roping necessary when skating’s involved.” He takes my hand and pulls me out onto the rink. “People were giving me shit for having a high school girlfriend, but I proved them wrong about your maturity level by telling them all about our roller-skating date.”
I feel a twinge of something in my stomach. Doubt? Anxiety? I keep
skating though. “People give you shit about me?”
Logan squeezes my hand as we round a curve. I feel how my skates find the contour on their own. There’s a feeling of magic out here, much like when I run. My brain seems to take a backseat and it’s all my feet, my legs, my instinct.
“Like I care who makes fun of me?” Logan laughs his little boy laugh. “C’mon.”
“Sure,” I say, and I try to sound it. “I know.”
Logan sneaks me a sincere look. It’s not that he isn’t sincere one hundred percent of the time; I’m not sure I’ve ever met someone who’s so himself. But usually his honesty is piled high with charm. In this moment, it’s like he swept all that off. “Really.”
I smile. “Really. I know.”
We pass up Kat, Quinn, and their whole group. No one—even Raina, whose track stats are impressive—is even close to as fast as Logan and I are. “God, they’re going so slow.”
“They’re having fun,” Logan says. “And the sign outside says there’s no fast or reckless skating allowed. Not everyone’s here to kick ass, McCall.”
I glance at him and let go of his hand.
“Oh, you are on,” he says, and then we’re weaving in and out of the rest of the skaters on the rink. My long hair flies out around and behind me as I pick up speed. Running isn’t something I do; it’s something I love. But skating’s the only thing that truly makes me feel like I’m airborne.
I lock eyes with Kat as I round a curve. “Finish him!” she mouths to me, and I give her a thumbs-up and keep flying until I loop around Logan. He’s mostly perfect, but I know he has just enough dumb guy ego to be a little wounded by this. I smile plenty to rub it in as much as possible.
After two hours and exactly two Couples’ Skates—both of which, somehow, involved Kat skating with my boyfriend—Logan and I take off back to his dorm. Being on foot again feels heavy and weighted-down compared to our hours on the rink, at least until we’re alone in his room. I guess this feels a little like flying, too.
Plus it’s his room. This isn’t his parents’ house. It’s grown-up and separate and, right now, just for us.
“It’s lucky for me that you still want me after you kick my ass,” Logan murmurs as he pulls my sleeveless shirt off over my head.
“Yeah, thank god. Otherwise we’d never do it.”
We both laugh so hard we ruin the moment, except that I love this. This is the moment. Standing so close, I can feel it in his muscles, how his whole body shakes with laughter. I had no idea how far away an hour could be, or that I could miss someone I heard from every day. I know how ready Kat is for next year, but even if I have Logan closer, my best friend will be what might as well be a million miles away.
“You still with me?” Logan’s closed all distance between us, and even though we’re alone in his room his words are flowing right into my ear. We could be the only two people left in the world for all I know.
“I’m always with you,” I whisper, though he might not hear me as he’s moved on to kissing my shoulders, my clavicle, the back of my neck. Before long, his lips have touched so much of my bare skin I’ve lost the ability to make a list.
Logan is the only person I’ve had sex with, but I’d definitely gotten close before. With those guys, there was always a clear goal to be reached—even if we never actually quite got there. Then there was Logan, and we’d lose time just leaning against each other, kissing. My mouth would ache and my head would buzz and somewhere in my core it was like I was being slowly consumed by fire. The destination doesn’t matter when it’s burning down anyway.
Right now, though, I’m already afire. So I pin Logan back on the tiny dorm bed so we don’t waste a single moment.
“I’m not ready for next year,” I say afterward, when we’re lying next to each other, “but I am definitely ready for this.”
We’ve only actually spent one full night together before, after prom in May, when our curfews were both miraculously lifted completely. It’s not like we haven’t had plenty of opportunities to have sex, of course, and it’s definitely not as if we haven’t taken full advantage of those opportunities. Sleeping next to someone in bed, though, might be just as intimate. Especially in a bed this size.
“It won’t always be like this.” Logan hands me one of his T-shirts to sleep in, and I slip the familiar blue and gold of Magnolia Park High over my head. I have the same T-shirt, but mine doesn’t feel so soft against my skin and doesn’t smell like Logan. “Roommates exist.”
“I know, but . . .” I glance around the room. Logan’s half is decorated with concert posters, plus his giant calendar I’ve teased him could be seen from space. You have to see your goals to achieve your goals, he likes to say. Current goals seem to be English comp paper due, Chem lab report due, and Math 31B study group. Last year I knew all of Logan’s classes, the teachers he had, and what his general course load looked like. I worry that part of Logan is a stranger to me now, but then I immediately feel silly. I’m naked except for his T-shirt and I’m curled up in his sheets, after all.
“Where do your parents think you are, anyway?” Logan asks me. “Kat’s?”
“I tried to be vaguer than that.” I watch him put on pajama pants that look like they’re made for an old man. “Mom’s always so happy if it seems like I’m living some slumber party lifestyle where my hair is being braided while I’m wearing a sheet mask.”
“I find it weirdly hot that you’re actually a grumpy curmudgeon,” Logan says, and a burst of laughter flies out of me.
“I probably shouldn’t be flattered, but I am.” I wait until he turns out his bedside light to ask what I’ve been wondering the whole night, maybe longer. “Do you think we’re naive to think we know what we want?”
I’m saying we but of course I mean I.
“Look, you’re the one with the five-year plan,” he says gently.
“It’s actually a fifteen-year plan,” I say, which cracks him up. “What? After pre-med, there’ll be medical school, and then residency, and—”
“All I’m saying is, I’m trying not to get ahead of myself on any of it,” he says. “I’m keeping my eyes right in front of me. But I like you right here next to me.”
I hook my chin over his shoulder.
“Not literally next to me,” he says. “Though that’s good, too. I think we make a good team. And as far as I’m looking ahead of me, I can’t see that changing.”
I can’t, either.
We get up early the next morning and change into our running clothes for an easy jog through the campus and then out to Westwood beyond it. I pretend for just a moment that it’s already one year later.
“What?” Logan asks me with a grin, once we’ve cooled down into an easy walk.
“Can’t I just be happy without an explanation?”
He cracks up. “You? Never. Your happiness practically has a bibliography, McCall.”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “You’re definitely one of the cited works.”
“Hell yeah I am. Sidana, Logan. Ibid., ibid., ibid.”
“You know, when Kat and I were little and talking about our dream future boyfriends, I never described an unbelievably arrogant guy.”
“More like justifiably arrogant.” He tugs on my ponytail. “You know I love the hell out of you.”
“Oh, I know you do.” I slip my hand inside his. “You know I do, too.”
Once we’re back on campus, I pack my stuff back into my bag and plan to head out. Mom and Dad didn’t seem especially suspicious, but it’s probably safest if I’m back in Burbank so I don’t have to explain why it would take me an hour to get back if they called. That said, Logan and I end up having sex again, because, well, of course we do. By the time I’m in my car, Kat’s texted that she’s at Coral Café, so I drive there even though I’m far less into greasy diner food than she is.
I expect that she’ll be alone with a book or her homework like usual, but she’s sharing a booth with Quinn. They’re so caught up
in conversation that they don’t notice I’m here, and now that I’m standing in a gross diner in sweaty running clothes, I wish that I wasn’t.
“Hi,” I say, finally.
“James!” Kat waves and gestures to the empty spot next to her. “How was your super romantic night?”
I shrug, because I’m not going to have this conversation in front of Quinn. Even if it seems like Quinn is suddenly my best friend’s new best friend. Am I immature for how much dread that possibility fills me with? I know that a best friend isn’t the sort of relationship where you make explicit promises and set expectations, the way you do with a boyfriend. It’s like life sets up boyfriends to be the most important thing in a girl’s life, when I probably couldn’t even have navigated myself into a relationship in the first place without Kat’s advice. There are a lot of things I can’t imagine handling without her. But of course I’ve been so used to how things have been; just because Quinn’s around a lot doesn’t mean anything fundamental has shifted.
“If you guys are busy I can just—”
“We’re only busy in the sense that we’ve had a lively debate about hash browns,” Quinn says. This, somehow, causes Kat to burst into giggles.
“Sit down, James!” Kat pats the booth’s seat more emphatically. “It’s not fair how you still look super cute and all together after you’ve been running.”
I shrug and push away the giant plate of hash browns Quinn offers to me. “No, thanks. And I don’t look cute.”
“Lies!” Kat laughs so hard she snorts. “Like this plate of hash browns!”
“How dare you!” Quinn says, and Kat sort of sinks under the table, as I believe she attempts to kick at Quinn with her short legs. I think about all the places I could be right now, instead of watching two people guffaw over some private potato humor.
A waitress stops by our table, and I don’t think it’s my imagination that we share a look over the giggling going on next to me. “Anything for you, hon?”
“Just a cup of coffee,” I say. “To go, actually. I should probably get home.”
“Already?” Kat asks.
“I don’t want Mom and Dad to be suspicious,” I say, which seems to placate her. It’s also possible that she doesn’t mind too much because she’s got Quinn here. I wish I didn’t care. Jealousy feels rotten in my gut. But with Logan off across town, the one positive thing that I could see coming from Kat and Matty’s breakup was that Kat and I would have so much more time for just each other. I have nothing against Quinn, but she’s eating into a lot of that time that I thought would be for me.