Page 17 of Cruel Summer

TEN

Now

The roadside motel in Flagstaff had indeed proved to be tacky in all the best ways. A rounded adobe building with “Southwestern Flare!” (their words) festooning every room. Meaning extraordinarily loud geometric shapes in purple, yellow and teal.

How is the trip? Whitney asked.

Good so far.

Is Logan behaving? Elysia asked.

He never doesn’t behave.

You don’t like him, though , Elysia pointed out.

I didn’t say I didn’t like him. I like him. I said he’s Will’s friend and not mine.

That felt so disingenuous after the last couple of days, but there was no untangling all that over text.

Anyway, she’d never untangled Logan within herself. She wasn’t about to do it this way, to two other people.

She and Logan had gotten two singles that were at opposite ends of the building from each other, and while Logan had gone to the room to take a nap, she’d opted to head out and explore the town.

She’d wandered around the historic part of town, enjoying the red brick and cheerful bunting draped over the railings of the old buildings. She’d gotten some very good chips and salsa, a mediocre burrito and a kitschy knitted burro she most certainly didn’t need.

Then she’d gone back to the motel room and had chosen a dress for the evening, and had considered texting Logan and asking if he wanted dinner.

Then she’d walked down the walkway between their rooms and knocked on his door, to no answer. She’d decided against figuring out his whereabouts since he’d just mentioned the occasional debauchery.

The car was gone.

It occurred to her, for the very first time, that Logan might…he might have appetites that were such he would be hooking up on this trip.

Now that she’d considered that as a possibility, she couldn’t get it out of her head.

For God’s sake. Was she doomed to be beset by men and their base urges?

She didn’t have the patience for it. Was he like…in some other woman’s hotel room? Or out at a bar? Was she going to have to concern herself with traffic control when approaching his motel rooms?

These were questions which annoyed her.

She walked back into the part of town she’d already been to and found a restaurant with a big outdoor seating area with lights overhead, and pink flowers growing over the trellis. There was a live band playing mariachi, and she was moved to a small outdoor table with two chairs near the music.

She ordered a margarita—which she never did—and watched people dancing and laughing, totally absorbed in the atmosphere until a man’s voice broke through her thoughtless haze.

At first she thought it was the waiter and looked up, surprised instead by a man with blond hair and a blue button-up shirt.

“I’m sorry, I noticed you were alone.”

“Yes,” she said, nodding and wondering if this was the stranger danger she’d been warned about for most of her life.

Cover your drink.

Tell him your husband is in the bathroom.

Tell him you have a concealed carry permit.

She looked at her drink, and kept her eyes fixed on it for a long moment before looking back at him.

“I was wondering if you might like some company. I’m alone too.”

She had no idea what to do. She’d never been in this situation before.

She’d been with Will since she was sixteen. Not single from the moment things like this might have actually started happening to her. She never traveled alone. She was always with her husband, a group of friends or her kids.

“I’m not alone , alone. Just so you know,” she said. “If I don’t go back to the motel tonight, my friend will send out a search party.” She held her arms out. “He’s very big.”

He laughed. “Okay, point taken. You can’t be too careful, I guess.”

“No.” She wasn’t sure she wanted him to leave, though. “You can sit. For a bit. I just wanted to lay out expectations.”

He smiled. “I’m Jonathan.”

“Samantha.”

Then she reached into her purse and grabbed her phone, sending Logan a very quick text. I’m at Casa De Flores, no need to come by just wanted to give you my location. She tucked the phone quickly away again.

“Nice to meet you, Samantha.”

“You too.”

He didn’t know people usually called her Sam. He didn’t know her.

He was a nice-enough-looking man. He had a pleasing symmetry about him. But that’s all it was. Pleasing. It didn’t make her feel like she was struggling to breathe, or like her skin was too tight or…

She cleared her throat. “Are you…from here?”

“Uh, no. I’m here on business.”

She wondered if he had a wife at home. But that didn’t matter. Because she had a husband at home. Nothing was going to happen.

This was just a novelty. A wild, out of her every experience novelty. Wasn’t that the point of all this?

“What kind of business?” she asked.

“It’s a real estate agent convention,” he said.

She laughed because she really couldn’t help herself. “A real estate agent? Wow.”

“What?”

“I have a type,” she said, taking a sip of her margarita and grimacing. “Or a type has me. I don’t know.”

“What do you mean by that?”

Well, she’d walked herself into this one. “My uh…my husband is a real estate agent.”

He looked down at her hand, which she knew was bare. “You’re married?”

Well, this was the moment. She could say yes, and he’d probably leave, and she wouldn’t know what it was like to spend the evening being flirted with by a random man, or he’d stay and prove he was maybe a little more of a creep than she could enjoy even just for a conversation.

But why flirt with him at all?

You’re Penelope to his Odysseus, remember?

Flirting wasn’t sexing it up with sirens, so her inner voice could calm the hell down.

“Separated,” she said.

“Sorry. Been there. Not fun.”

She laughed. “No.”

“What brings you here?”

“Oh, I’m traveling with a friend who restores classic cars. I’m the secondary driver on the trip.”

“Wow. What kind of car?”

“A 1957 Bel Air.”

“I have no idea what that is,” he said, smiling. “I guess that makes me uncultured.”

She shook her head. “I wouldn’t have known until recently, but I’m now intimately acquainted.” She regretted her choice of words slightly. Except he looked like he was genuinely enjoying talking with her.

What a novelty.

A man who hadn’t known her since high school. Who didn’t just think he knew everything about her, but had to actually ask.

She had to ask about him too.

So they just chatted. Over one drink, then two, then a plate of nachos.

Maybe dating apps were a horror, but this wasn’t. This made her feel…attractive. Interesting. More like a woman, and not a wife, a mom, a volunteer. All the things people in her immediate community considered her first and foremost.

He had two kids, and had been married fifteen years before it had dissolved. She didn’t ask for his messy details and he didn’t ask for hers.

“Want to dance?” he asked.

“I don’t think I know how to dance,” she said.

She wasn’t going to tell this stranger she’d gotten married at a church that hadn’t allowed alcohol or dancing at weddings (or anything else for that matter, and that even though they’d shifted their stances on things over the years, they hadn’t suddenly become big fans of going out dancing).

“I’m bad at it, so that’s just fine.”

“Yeah. Okay.”

He extended his hand and she accepted it, and she felt that same sort of giddiness she had when she’d realized she was in the hotel room alone.

Freedom.

This was her decision.

Her evening.

He led her to the dance floor, holding the one hand still, his other arm wrapped around her waist. It didn’t electrify her, though it was strange to let a man she didn’t know hold on to her like this.

But there was no one here who knew them to judge her, and there was a kind of freedom in that too.

She was ashamed to admit—in the glorious music-filled moment—that a lot of her issue with what Will wanted was knowing how people in their town would react.

Even worse, if they didn’t get back together.

That’s Samantha Parker. She’s divorced.

The visceral image of any one of the town’s church ladies whispering behind their hands to someone else in the grocery store…

She pushed all that away, and let the rhythm move her, even if she wasn’t moving very well.

Jonathan didn’t seem to mind. He seemed to be having as good of a time as she was.

It made her feel lighter. Less cynical. She could only hope he didn’t transform into a creep at the end of the evening, because if he just wanted the same thing she did—a minute to feel like maybe she was interesting, desirable even, to a random person—a little while to have some fun… well, that was nice.

“I think it’s my turn.”

The low, masculine voice that cut through the music and the sound of the crowd, without even needing to be raised, stopped both her and Jonathan.

“Logan…”

Jonathan looked at him, and then at her. “I thought you said you were separated?”

“I did,” she said. “This is…my friend.”

“And her friend would like this dance,” Logan said.

Logan was a good five inches taller than Jonathan, and a lot more muscular, and even if he weren’t, she had just met the guy. He was hardly going to get into an altercation over her—a woman who had made it pretty clear she wasn’t sleeping with him, that he’d just met.

“Sure thing. Hey, your drinks and nachos were on me,” Jonathan said, touching her arm. “Thank you for the evening.”

Before she could say anything more, Logan had taken her hand, wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her against him.

She felt like a cat being forced into a scalding tub of water. She wanted to scratch and scramble against him, her heart beating in a way that was like panic. And why? She’d been in the arms of that stranger and it hadn’t been anything like…

You know why.

She didn’t struggle. She did push back against that thought, though.

She professionally pushed back at these thoughts.

The song changed, and the way Logan held her shifted subtly, and the way he danced…

It was different.