Logan doesn’t even look away. He just sits there, calm as ever, waiting for me, the same annoyingly charming interest in his eyes. “So about you?” he asks.
“Right,” I say. I’m not really in the mood to argue, although I do make a mental note to scream at my parents for their poor choice in dates as soon as I get out of here. “What do you want to know?”
“I don’t know. Family. Love life. Interests outside of poetry. Career dreams. Anything.”
I sigh. This sounds like an entirely pointless conversation to me, but I guess I need something to pass the time. “Okay,” I say. “Well, to start, my love life is about as nonexistent as the number of college boys who love poetry.” I shoot him a vengeful look. “I mean, I hook up with guys often,” I lie, because admitting to Logan how incredibly lonely I am is the last thing on my agenda, “but I don’t really do anything with any of them after that. Outside of poetry I love writing vignettes about myself in third person, sort of to take my mind off of things. I also enjoy harassing this personality-less Logan Waters kid I’m supposed to hate, reading books, and interning at a small publisher, which I do on a weekly basis. I hope to become a professional poet, but my parents want me to work at their engineering company in Silicon Valley, which I hate with all of my heart. And as for family, well, you know the story...” I trail off, not wanting to talk about it.
Logan nods sadly but doesn’t speak right away. He doesn’t know what to say, and I guess neither do I. Nothing makes sense anymore when it comes to Ben. Everything feels so sad and distant, so painfully out of reach. I wish I could find a way to make everything okay again, to bring us back to the good old times that I never used to realize were the good old times. I wish I could feel safe. I wish I could I feel happy.
I think Logan notices my sadness, or maybe he’s just feeling the same way, because he touches his hand to mine to keep me grounded, his warm fingers on my skin. He looks at me like he’s asking if I’m okay, and I nod slowly, closing my eyes and gathering myself, and then all I feel is the pounding of my heart.
But as soon as he lets go of me, I already miss his touch.
“You said you’re supposed to hate me?” Logan points out after a while, forcing a smile.
I roll my eyes, relieved to sink back into conversation. It’s exactly like Logan to concentrate on that little detail out of everything else I said. “Don’t even get me started today. I’m not in a good mood.”
“Oh, Cali, I’ve gotten you started a long time ago.” He beams at me.
I know he’s flirting but I legitimately have no idea what that’s supposed to mean, so I dismiss it as quirky nerdy speak and ignore it altogether. “Your turn,” I say, taking another bite out of my sandwich and wiping away the wetness in my eyes. “What do you do besides like poetry and study from weird advanced math textbooks?” I don’t really want to care about his response, but I can’t help but feel curious. I mean, besides Logan being a total geek, I kind of want to know what his life has been like--after everything.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were interested in me,” Logan says proudly.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d think you were desperate enough to flirt with your self-proclaimed ‘least favorite person,’” I say.
“Fair enough,” he says and leans back in his chair. “And as for me, I’m also an only child, but I think you already know that. My parents are nice and let me do basically whatever I want, which is cool, but I’ve always wanted… someone else in the family, I guess. A sibling. A dog. I don’t know. It’s just that sometimes I feel lonely, you know? Like, really lonely.” He sighs, and I wince, because I do know. I feel like that all the damn time. There’s something comforting in the fact that someone as confident as Logan feels it too, and I kind of hate him all over again for it. “I used to think that I found like a long lost brother in… him… four years ago, but maybe not. And now that he’s gone, I feel more empty than ever. My love life is going fine I guess, although I was kind of thinking things would improve after my mysterious date today. I love poetry, but I’m also a total fan of ‘weird advanced math,’ as you so eloquently put, and I take way too much pleasure in insulting crepes. But really, they suck. I mean, they’re just spoiled pancake wannabes and are given that fancy French name just to sound good. I don’t even get the appeal.”
“That’s a wonderful observation. Please, continue,” I say dryly. I pretend not to notice that in the rest of the answer, he opened up to me--actually opened up to me.
He rolls his eyes. “Anyway, I haven’t really thought about my future, to the dismay of my parents. I’m a math major so I guess I’d like to be a math teacher one day, but the idea of pursuing a career path in poetry is equally appealing. So I don’t know.”
I watch him, frowning. “You really aren’t sure what you want to do as a profession?” He might as well have told me that he’s secretly a drug dealer.
“I am really not. Why is that so hard to believe?”
“I don’t know,” I say, glancing back down at my food. “I guess I just assumed all nerds had their whole lives mapped out, minute by minute.”
Logan bites back a laugh. “Well, I hate to break it to you, but I am way more than just a nerd.”
I stare at him, hands on my hips. Him, with his obnoxious geek glasses. Him, with his tons of textbooks. Him, sitting here, with me.
Yeah. Right. Not just a nerd my ass.
“There is no way you’re ever getting me to believe that.”
He leans in closer to me so that I can see his lightly shaven chin, his way-too-defined dimples, and his piercing blue eyes. I feel myself tense up, just a little, with him this close to me. “Your boy Robert Frost would be disappointed.”
“I really don’t think he would be.”
Frost was not known for his people skills, so it seems unlikely he would be upset with me. In fact, Frost and I are kind of alike in that way. We both prefer poems to human beings, and a big part of it is due to losing people. He lost several of his children, and I lost Ben.
Logan shrugs, and I start to ask him about how he’s been these last four years, whether he cries as much as I cry, if he thinks about Ben as much as I do, if he’s okay--if he’ll ever be okay--after what happened, but then I remember him, all happy and smiley with his friends, and I bite back my words. He is fine, I remind myself. He’s gotten over it, just like any normal human being would. I’m just the exception. I’m the idiot who is letting that one night control her own life.
The waiter comes by a few seconds later, takes our food, and says goodbye. I’m sure he’s happy to get rid of us, as we have probably weirded him out enough for one day. “Wait,” I say as he starts to leave.
He turns around, looking impatient. “Yes?”
“Aren’t you going to give us the check?” I ask.
“It’s already been paid,” he says simply and motions to Logan. “By this young man.” Then, before I can ask anything else, he hurries off.
I turn to Logan, who stares right back at me, looking bored. “How did you…” I start to say. He cocks his head to the side. “When did you--?”
“I have my ways,” he says without missing a beat, and that is that.
I open my mouth to protest, but I don’t have the energy. The scary thing is that I was here with him the whole time, so he would have had no way of paying without my noticing.
Finally, I shake my head and stand up, and Logan reciprocates.
“This was unusual,” I say. We both stand in front of the table, looking awkwardly between our empty plates and each other.
“Yeah. It, um… it was,” Logan says. Then he does the most painful thing possible: he reaches out to shake my hand.
Like, my rival. Shaking my hand. After a lunch that was so not a date for the simple reason that I hate him.
I just look at his outstretched fingers, hanging there in front of me, but I don’t take them. There is no way I’m ever shaking Logan Waters’ hand.
“Well, it was nice to reacquaint myself with the girl behind the mean girl act,” he says.
“And it’s wasn’t nice to reacquaint myself with the boy behind the nerd act.” This really could not be more awkward.
The truth is, it was kind of nice to talk to Logan again--really talk to him. He is just like I remember him, the him from before that night. He is fun and cocky and strange, and he listens to me, he cares about what I have to say. He treats me like I matter, and that’s something no one else besides Ben has ever done for me before.
Plus, Logan is kind of… cool. (It pains me to even think that.) Yeah, he’s totally obnoxious but in almost an endearing way. And he’s one of the first boys I’ve met who seems genuinely interested in me for me. Talking to him almost reminds me why I had that stupid, secret crush on him freshman year. Of course, all that is long gone now, but it was nice to break down the walls for a bit--to remember.
“I hope we get to talk poetry again soon,” I say, meaning it. “I mean, you still suck, but maybe we could call a temporary truce some other time.”
Logan smiles. “Yeah, let’s do it.”
He leads me away from our table and out of the restaurant, stopping me at the steps by the parking lot.
We stand there for a long time. Logan is only inches from me and I can feel his breath on my lips, can almost picturing him touching my hand again like he did earlier. Logan’s hand is shoved into his pocket and I’m trying to distract myself by fidgeting with my jeans, which really does not help the situation.
“So,” I say.
“So.”
Another pause.
“So are you going to kiss me or…?” Logan jokes, showing off those dimples again. A pair of wiry glasses watches me carefully.
I give him a murderous stare and shove him a little. Goddammit his arms are hard. “I would rather die,” I say, still kind of stunned that a geek like Logan can have that much muscle.
“I’d like that.”
“Not if I kill you first, you won’t, dickhead.” It takes a lot of effort for me not to smile.
“So I take it we’re back to being enemies?”
“We were always enemies,” I say.
Loan shrugs. Then he glances down at my pocket, where I’d shoved the National Poet’s Convention pamphlet Ruby gave me. “What’s that?” he asks.
Frowning, I pull it out of my pocket, glance at it, and hand it to him. “Oh, it’s nothing. Just some poetry convention pamphlet my roommate gave to me.”
Logan turns it over in his hand. His eyebrows furrow. “This is not ‘just some poetry convention pamphlet,’ Cali Monroe. This is the poetry convention pamphlet. It takes place this weekend, too. I’ve wanted to go to this thing forever but my mom would never let me and it was never anywhere nearby, and then I got too busy studying and doing non-poetry things and it kept getting farther and farther out of reach and then I thought it was never possible but now I see the pamphlet here with you and I--”
I raise my eyebrow, and he seems to take the hint that he’s rambling again, because he snaps his mouth close almost immediately. I can’t help but smile.
“Anyway,” he says, sighing wistfully. “Are you going?”
I shake my head. “Don’t have the money. Or anyone to go with,” I add. I don’t tell him the real reason I won’t go is because it’s going to remind me of Ben and make me feel like I’m somehow betraying him.
“Well, now you have me.”
I wince as soon as he says it. Turning him down should feel easier than turning Ruby down, but it doesn’t. “What do you mean?” I ask, already knowing the answer.
“You want to go to the convention,” he says. “And so do I. But I’m guessing we’ve never had anyone to go with until now. So, why not go together? Let’s call another truce.”
I shake my head, dismissing the thought as quickly as it comes. “I told you,” I say. “I don’t have the money.”
Logan watches me carefully. I think he can tell something is up. “I do.”
“No, Logan, I can’t--”
“Why not?”
“I don’t know, I just--”
“You just what?” His gaze is locked on mine, hard and firm, and I close my eyes, willing myself to admit the truth.
“I just don’t want to, okay?”
I take a step down the stairs. Logan raises me a step of his own.
“Don’t want to go at all or don’t want to go with me?” he persists.
“Is there a difference?”
“There is.”
I sigh. Apparently, he does not give up easily. Add that to my list of reasons to hate him. “Fine,” I say, exasperated. “I don’t want to go at all. Happy?”
Logan’s face remains blank as he studies me like he’s freaking Yoda or something. But god, he’s good. “I don’t believe you.”
“You should.”
He pauses. “You sure?”
“I’m sure, you insufferable asshole,” I say, trying not to smile.
He looks at me, shaking his head, but seems to submit, at least. “Well if you change your mind, I’m always here, bitch. I guess I won’t be going either then.” At that, he turns around and starts heading back to his car. “I’ll see you around, Cali.” I hate how defeated he sounds, how the smile he was just wearing like it was some sort of secret treasure he just had to show off is now completely gone, and more than that, I hate that it’s me who did that to him.
“You too, Logan,” I say, standing there, watching him pull open his car door.
Before he steps inside, he nods at the old t-shirt I am wearing and my complete mess of bedhead. “It was nice of you to dress up, by the way,” he says.
“I had a feeling the date would suck,” I say. “And I was right.” I smile as sweetly as possible at him.
He laughs as he gets inside and then fastens his seatbelt. “I hate you,” he says to me.
“I hate you too.” Then he closes the car door and drives off.
I stand there for the longest, watching him go.
~
The boy was supposed to be different.
He wasn’t supposed to be smart, funny, nice to talk to,
wasn’t supposed to listen to her,
wasn’t supposed to laugh at her jokes,
to care about what she had to say.
He wasn’t supposed to be any of it,
and more than that, he wasn’t supposed to care about her.
But maybe she wasn’t supposed to care about him, either
and look where they are now.
~
I CALL my mom the instant Logan drives away. I’m not angry at her. At least, not as much as I should be. But if she seriously has the nerve to set me up with Logan even when she’s well aware that he reminds me of what happened to Ben almost as much as she does, there is no way I’m letting her off the hook.
So I stand there, on the stairs in front of the sandwich shop, calling my mom after my non-date with my worst enemy.
Welcome to my screwed up life.
The phone rings a few times before I hear a click.
“What the hell?” I say as soon as she picks up.
“Cali?” a voice says.
“Yes, it’s Cali.”
“What’s wrong?” Mom’s voice is quiet and innocent, and I already know she’s going to act like she had absolutely no idea that what was going to happen, happened. Like she didn’t realize that Logan is the last person in the world I’d want to be set up with, and more than that, like she didn’t realize her betraying me like that would hurt me.
Because it did.
Because it does.
Because even after everything, my parents can still make me more hurt than I already am.
Maybe if she just gave me some goddamn closure about that night and every day af
ter that for the last four years where she’s tried to get me to turn out like him, I wouldn’t feel so epically pissed at her. Maybe if she took the first step, I’d take the second.
“Are you kidding me?” I might as well let it all out while I can. “You set me up with fucking Logan Waters. You know I hate him. You know he makes me think of Be--” I stop myself from completing the sentence at the last second. I haven’t spoken Ben’s name aloud in the last four years, and I’m sure as hell not about to start now.
But the insane thing is that I’m not actually angry at Mom for how the date turned out. I should be, god I should be, but I’m not. This may have been the best date of my life and it wasn’t even a freaking date, and that’s the worst part. That’s the scary part.
“Never set me up on a date, okay?” I say into the phone, defeated. I hate fighting with her. It just makes me sick and sad. I don’t like hurting my parents, even when they hurt me.
There’s a pause. “What are you talking about, honey? I thought you liked him!”
“I haven’t liked him for four years, Mom, and you know that. Stop trying to fix my life. Stop trying to fix me--”
“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Mom says on the other end in a voice that feigns caring so well it makes me want to scream and stomp on my phone. She has mastered the art of pretending. Pretending to care about my birthday. Pretending that she thinks I look beautiful in my prom dress. Pretending that I matter to her. “Would you like me to set you up with someone else? I’m sure we can find another sweet boy for you--”
“No, Mom. Your dates make me miserable, just like you do.” I sigh. “You know, if I’m being honest here, it feels like neither of us are even trying anymore. And sometimes I think… everything you do and say, it’s all for yourself. Sometimes I think you don’t even care about me, just like you never cared about him,” I say sadly. “I don’t know, Mom. I just don’t know.”
There’s a long pause on the other end of the line. “I do care about you, Cali,” she says so quietly I have to check to make sure I’m not imagining it. “I do--”
“No you don’t,” I say. I’m not dealing with this now. She’s obviously lying. She’s always lying.
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