“That came out all wrong,” he says and walks right up to me. He sits next to me again. “I wanted to handle this thing with you with baby steps and by taking it slow…but then I didn’t.”
“We didn’t,” I correct because I won’t let him own this. It was mutual. “I mean…I don’t even know your middle name, but your parts have been inside my parts. More than once.”
I drop my eyes to my lap because I feel like I’m being ridiculous, but I’m also being honest.
“Is that, like, a requirement for you before the merging of parts?” he asks, and I can feel the teasing smile he must be wearing in his tone without even looking up. “Middle names. Color preferences. How about astrological sign? Credit checks?”
“I know you’re a Cancer because your date of birth was on the rental application. And I did a credit check, remember?” I mumble still feeling self-conscious. “It’s not a requirement either I just…I usually know a person better…longer.”
Logan smiles. “Well, here’s the truth, Chloe Hale. I may not be certain I can do better, but I know with you, I want to try, and that hasn’t happened since I got sober.”
“So…is this something you want to try at…exclusively?” I ask, and his smile deepens.
“Yes.” I shudder and gooseflesh ripples up my arms as his lips graze my earlobe and then capture it, his teeth biting down ever so gently and tugging before he lets go and presses a firm kiss to the column of my throat. My eyes flutter closed, and I sigh. He’s got on his paramedic uniform, which is starched and stiff under my fingertips as I slide my hands across his chest and around his neck.
Our lips connect, and he pulls me to my feet, wrapping his arms around my waist, one hand falling down to cup my ass. But then he pauses and pulls back, which makes my eyes flutter open. He smirks. “Hart.”
“What?”
“Logan Hart Hawkins. It’s my mother’s maiden name,” he says and smiles. “And I’m a big fan of the color green. Like the forest, the grass, a hearty Christmas tree, a four-leaf clover, whatever. It’s a good color. Although thanks to your eyes, gray is gaining momentum.”
He kisses me again, his tongue claiming my mouth, and then he nips my lower lip. “Can we go upstairs?”
“The sooner the better,” I say, his lips still against mine.
20
Logan
When I pull into the parking lot of the coffee shop in Old Orchard, I see Cookie standing by the door with two to-go cups in her hands. She’s dressed in typical Cookie style—rhinestone covered sunglasses, a pair of bright red jeans, and an oversized white t-shirt with the words Make Empathy Great Again on the front in big purple letters peeking out from under her open puffy winter coat.
If you’d told me when I entered rehab that the person who’d guide me through this sober life, who would end up meaning as much to me as my family itself, would be a fifty-five-year-old African American lesbian ex-lawyer turned dog groomer, I would have asked if you should be joining me in rehab. But Cookie, literally, is as important to my existence as air and a heartbeat. I jump out of the Pathfinder and walk over to her. She has her arms extended wide for a hug but a frown on her lips, currently coated in orange lipstick. “Where is my Chewie Baby?”
“Sorry Cookie. He’s with Terra,” I explain. “I had a late shift and then went somewhere after work so she kept him.”
Cookie sighs. “Give him my love. How’s he doing at the new place? How are you doing? And where were you last night? Out with those boys of yours? Was there a Bruins game or something?”
I smile and take the coffee she hands me as she starts to walk toward the ocean at the end of the street and motions for me to follow. “Chewie loves the new place. I love it. No, there wasn’t a Bruins game on, and I wasn’t with the guys. I was at my…girlfriend’s house.”
Cookie comes to a complete stop on the sidewalk, and I almost bump into her. Her chocolate eyes are wide and her mouth is open, but she quickly closes it and the corners pull up into a grin. “Oh Logan! You never told me you were dating let alone had a girlfriend.”
“Well, I wasn’t exactly going on dates or looking for anything,” I reply, and we start walking again. “This kind of just crept up on me. But it’s great. She’s great.”
I tell Cookie the details—everything about how Chloe is my landlord, how she fell and asked me to take care of her, and how everything evolved from there. Cookie’s face remains serene and calm. She’s still smiling but when I’m done she doesn’t say anything for a moment. She sips from her cup, which I know is filled with Earl Grey tea, no milk and a ton of sugar because as she once told me, she likes it ‘sweet and dark, like me’.
“Have you been keeping up with meetings?” she says, which wasn’t what I was expecting.
“Yes. I saw you at one just last week, remember?”
She nods and pauses as we get to the end of the boardwalk, and she steps onto the sand. There’s a bench just to the left, next to the dunes, and she parks herself on it and pats the empty spot beside her. “Yes. I remember, but I still need to ask. I didn’t know you were jumping back into the dating waters, so I haven’t given you the speech yet. Now it’s overdue.”
“What speech?” I ask and sip my coffee, closing my eyes for a moment to inhale the salty smell of the ocean breeze.
“The one about how hard it is to be authentic in a relationship for anyone but how necessary it is for us, the drunkies.” Cookie says. “And the lows of a relationship, or more particularly the ending of one, can literally drive you to drink again if you let it.”
“I know it.”
She looks skeptical. Very. Here’s the thing about Cookie I think I like the most – she has absolutely no poker face. She’s also generally as blunt as a baseball bat. That part can be harder to take. “You know the thing about my twenty-year marriage that was the hardest part, the part that drove me to drink, was the lies. The lies I had to tell every damn day.”
“You were hiding the fact that you were a lesbian,” I remind her. “That’s a big lie.”
“Yeah, yeah but the little lies were a back-breaker too, Logan,” Cookie says as the wind whips her long, curly white hair around her. “The husband and I were a bad match because of more than just my hidden sexuality. He wanted a quiet wife who kept her opinions to herself. He wanted to be the alpha and expected me to be a submissive, delicate flower. Look at me. Do I look like a delicate flower?”
I laugh. She nods emphatically.
“Sweetheart, it’s real easy to not be true to yourself when you think you love someone and you think you need them,” Cookie explains. “That’s bad news for us, drunkies. And I know you aren’t even completely honest with me yet, so how can you have an honest romantic relationship?”
“What are you talking about?” I ask, stunned. She’s never accused me of keeping anything from her before, and she’s been my sponsor for almost five years. “I tell you everything.”
“Oh sweetheart, I know in my heart that’s not true,” Cookie replies and pats my knee. “I can read people like a book, and whenever we talk about your path or you share with the group in meetings, I can see you biting something back. There’s more to what happened to you to make you sober than you let on. And there’re secrets you’re still keeping. At least from me. Are you keeping them from this Chloe too?”
I shake my head, but I can feel the tension in my neck when I do it. “She knows I’m an alcoholic.”
Cookie smiles at me and shakes her head as she sips her tea again. “Mmm hmm. So whatever you’re hiding from me you’re also hiding from her.”
For the millionth time since meeting Cookie, I feel an urge to tell her about the car crash. But then I picture my mom’s disappointed, devastated face if she found out I told anyone. So I take another gulp of coffee—a big one that burns my throat, which feels deserved—and then I say, “I wish you would just be happy for me. I’ve been single for literally almost five years, and I deserve to be happy, don’t I?”
&
nbsp; She cocks one thick eyebrow. “I don’t know Logan, do you? I think you’ve not let yourself be happy because you still feel like you don’t deserve it. Why is that?”
“Cookie…” I say and sigh in frustration. “Can we talk about your life now? How is the wife? Any fun, new dog stories from your business?”
Her smile fades and she presses her lips together in a flat line. “Okay Logan…I’ll give you more time.” She takes a deep breath and then smiles again and starts to tell me about her favorite customer, Fluffy, a Chinese Crested dog.
When we part twenty minutes later, I’m almost frozen from sitting outside, but it was nice to be by the sea. I needed the calm the sound of the ocean brings while Cookie was being her bluntly honest self. Now as we say goodbye, she hugs me hard and looks me straight in the eye when she’s done. “Day or night, Logan.”
It’s what she’s said instead of goodbye every single time I see her. She means I can reach out to her day or night. I have in the past too, when I was struggling in the beginning. But I’ve got this now. “I will take you up on that if I need to, I promise,” I reply and smile. “But honestly, Cookie, I’m good. I’m really good.”
“Okay sweetheart,” she smiles. “Hope to see you at a meeting this week. Feel free to bring me a lobster roll.”
I laugh as I watch her climb into her custom-painted teal blue Mercedes SUV and drive off. Then I jump in my own car and drive to Bethany’s to pick up my son for his first full weekend with me. I’m so excited, it’s hard not to speed. When I finally get there, I’m overjoyed to see River is just as excited as I am. As soon as I open my car door, the front door to Bethany’s tiny rental house swings open and River races out—in socks but no boots—onto the porch. “Did you bring Chewie? Can we go to the beach? Are we gonna see Grammy and Grampy?”
“Get inside, Riv. You don’t have your coat or boots on,” I say, but as soon as my feet hit the steps, he hurls himself at me. I knew he would, so I’d already started squatting and opening my arms so I could wrap him in a hug. I lift him up and look into his blue eyes. “Chewie is at Auntie Terra’s, and we’ll pick him up on the way home. It’s too cold for the beach, and yes we will see Grammy and Grampy tomorrow morning. Sound good?”
He nods so emphatically I feel like his neck might snap. I carry him in through the open front door and place him on the hardwood. I glance over to Bethany, who is in the living room with her mouth set in a hard, flat line. I turn my eyes back to my son. “Go on and get your stuff, and remember you’re staying overnight.”
“Ma already packed my bag. I’ll go get it!” He runs, full-tilt, up the stairs. I walk slowly toward the living room. “Hey, Beth.”
“Logan,” she says icily and immediately crosses her arms over her chest. I don’t remember what I said the first night I met Bethany. I’d been drinking a milkshake secretly spiked with vodka, but whatever I said, she liked it. We had sex the same night. And again the next night. She became my girlfriend without even talking about it. It felt easy and that felt good. The only thing I worked at back then was staying drunk.
“I fully expect you to have to bring him home tonight,” she says flatly. “I don’t think this will go well.”
“He’ll be fine,” I say confidently, but the fact is, I have no idea how this is going to go. “Any tips you can give me?”
Bethany is a smart girl, and I’d never say she doesn’t love our son. After she found out she was pregnant, she stopped partying immediately, focused on school, and was pushing me to get my life together too. Bethany applied for family housing at school, and I proposed to her…then drank a bottle of Jack all by myself to ‘celebrate’. After Riv was born, I once went to the store to get more diapers but stopped at a bar nearby and got blackout drunk. I woke up six hours later, at three in the morning, asleep in the parking lot of my family’s restaurant, my car parked crookedly across four spots. When I got my drunk ass home, River was wearing one of my t-shirts as a diaper, and Bethany was hysterical thinking I’d had died or something. She kicked me out that night, but I kept seeing her…trying to weasel my drunk ass back into her life by promising her everything under the sun, and she was letting me. Then the accident happened.
When I ended up in rehab, she was devastated that I would miss River’s first birthday. After rehab, we fought all the time. She couldn’t forgive me for the past, and I was drowning in guilt from being involved in the accident, which I wasn’t allowed to tell her about. I broke it off because we were both miserable. But it hardened her toward everything except River.
She frowns. “No tips but the social worker said I could give you reasonable parameters.”
“Did he explain to you what’s considered reasonable?” I ask and instantly regret it because it’s confrontational.
“You can’t leave him with strangers,” she says, ignoring my question and going straight to the rules she’s concocted. “In fact I would prefer it if you didn’t have guests. Outside of family, of course.”
“That doesn’t feel reasonable.”
She glares at me. “Are you spending time with your son, or just keeping him around while you hang with your buddies? Because if you can’t give him your full attention, I can keep him this weekend. And you can bet your ass I’m not going to let some unknown person you’re hanging out with spend time with my son unless I meet them and approve of them.”
I want to argue. I want to scream at her to relax and trust that I would never let bad people near my son, but I swallow it down like a mouth full of bitter acid. Because as much as I am excited for Chloe to meet River, I don’t want this new arrangement to start off like this. So I grit my teeth and remember I am the reason this is where we are and my actions led us here.
“Okay,” I reply, and even I can hear the strain in my voice as I work to keep it calm.
River comes running down the stairs with a backpack that’s almost as large as he is, and all the stress tightening my shoulders from talking with Bethany disintegrates instantly. He’s smiling from ear-to-ear. “Ready, Dad!”
Bethany walks over to the hooks on the wall by the door and pulls down River’s winter coat. She gets him all bundled up with a hat and mitts as well, and then squats down in front of River and pulls him into a hug. “You have a blast with your dad, okay? And call me whenever you want, no matter when. I’m here if you want to talk or come home.”
I say nothing, but fist my hands in my pockets. God, she frustrates the hell out of me. River just nods and looks up at me with eyes sparkling with excitement. “Can we go get Chewie now?”
“Let’s do it, Bub!” I say and open the front door. He darts through it and I give Bethany a reassuring smile. “It’s okay Beth. I swear he’s going to be fine.”
She nods. “I know you’d die for him.”
I nod back. I know, deep down, she has faith in my ability as a dad. She’s just still caught up in the pain I caused her. And maybe, I realize as I walk down the stairs and see River bouncing on his tiny feet with excitement, that I’ll always try and have a soft spot for the woman who gave me him.
21
Chloe
I spend the night working on the Hawkins website trying not to spy on Logan with his son. But it’s hard. They spent about an hour in the front yard just before sunset having a snowball fight and then, River just chased Chewie around for a while, and finally, they built a snowman. And then Logan sent me a photo of the snowman with the words ‘Next time you’ll build it with us.’
I could hear River’s giggles through the windows and they were infectious. The sound caused the corners of my lips to quirk up in a smile. The sound of Logan’s laugh that usually followed River’s made my insides melt.
I couldn’t see River’s face clearly the two times I peeked out the window because he was too bundled up—hooded coat, scarf, knitted hat—and I was dying to know if he looked like Logan. One day I’d know. I was disappointed when Logan called to tell me that Bethany didn’t want River meeting any new people this fir
st weekend. Logan sounded so remorseful I found myself consoling him. It really was okay. I just wanted the weekend to go smoothly for Logan.
Even though it’s after eight, I can’t find anything good to watch on TV, so I decide I might as well keep working, and I grab my iPad. I’ve never been a fan of social media, and I closed all my personal accounts after Jackson died. I couldn’t bear to keep looking at all the photos of us together and our happy times that kept popping up as memories, and also, Paul was using Facebook and those sites to stalk me and contact me. I opened up a new dummy Instagram, which I use for client situations like this. The name on it is Lelah Echo, an anagram of my name, so Paul wouldn’t find me. It takes me a minute to remember my password. When I do, I start typing in hashtags using versions of their restaurant name to see what comes up. A ton. Lots of locals have tagged the Hawkins Lobster Shack in photos taken at the restaurant for family outings and celebrations, including Mrs. Green, I see. The nosy old lady is on Instagram? I shake my head with a stupefied smile as I take a peek at her profile. It’s mostly pics of her needle point projects and her kids, Cassidy, Ronan, and Eddie. I know everything about them because Mrs. Green is as liberal with her gossip about her own family as she is with others. Cassidy is the youngest, and she’s a freelance journalist who also works at Dunkin’. Eddie works in the pharmaceutical industry and lives in Portland. Ronan works with Logan and Jake as a fireman. Jake robbed Ronan of the Captain position, according to Mrs. Green, and she’s furious because Ronan is now threatening to transfer out of Ocean Pines. She doesn’t want him to move away.
Anyway, the picture she posted is of her, Ronan, and a pretty brunette woman at Hawkins on a picnic table on the deck that’s opened only in the summer. She posted a caption ‘Trying to talk Ronan and Courtney into grandbabies over lobster rolls.’
I find another picture from that lady, Mrs. Cofax, who Logan and I ran into tobogganing. She’s standing in front of Hawkins blowing a kiss at the camera. She’s got on the brightest orange lipstick that matches her hair color. She’s in a very tight, leopard print jumper and the caption says, ‘I come for the lobster, but I stay for the eye candy. The staff is H.O.T. ladies. Rawr! #HawkinsLobster #CatchoftheDay #HottieCentral #Gilf’
The Winter We Collided: A Small Town Single Dad Romance (Ocean Pines Series Book 2) Page 19