Page 21 of Cruel Summer

THIRTEEN

She spent the day hunting around Santa Fe, and found some beautiful jewelry and more clothes she didn’t need, but she was sightseeing. So.

They’d packed the car up that morning, and Logan had gone off to do whatever he found enjoyable while he’d dropped her off in a central, walkable locale at her request.

He’d offered to leave her the car, but she liked walking.

She went to two different art museums that she never would have been able to go to if she was traveling with her family.

It was mostly very enjoyable, though she decided she still didn’t get modern art. But she’d come to that conclusion without her kids shrieking about it looking like a sneeze or a penis, while she tried not to laugh and Will “rested his eyes” over on a bench by the water fountain.

Always nice to confirm those things for yourself.

Around two, Logan texted her.

Time to head to Amarillo.

She gave him her location, and he came by to pick her up fifteen minutes later. She was wearing her new earrings and necklace, all made from rough-cut gems.

“Those are nice,” he said.

“Thanks,” she said. “I got the necklace at the last art museum I went to.”

“I wish I would have known you were doing museums.”

“You…like museums?”

They started down the highway, and he put the top down on the car, the wind whipping hot and dry around them.

She took her hair band off her wrist and quickly tied her hair up—she’d learned that was a must in a convertible, at least for her sanity—and took the top-down wind tunnel sound as her cue to enjoy the scenery rather than the conversation.

But to her surprise, he answered her question over the sound of the wind. “Yes, I do.”

“Really?” She turned to look at him.

He shrugged. “Life is weird. Museums are often a nicely displayed collection of that weirdness.”

“I never thought of it that way.”

“Yep. Bagged and tagged strangeness in display cases.”

She thought about the time she’d been to a museum display up in Portland that’d had mummies, and how distinctly it’d hit her that it was such a messed-up, wrong thing to have displays of.

It was grave robbery. If it taught her anything about human beings, it was more that they were considered acceptable displays.

“That is true,” she said. “These were art museums, though.”

“Even better. What people decide to paint or sculpt is very telling. Not just about them, but about humanity.”

“I guess the same is true for what articles a person writes,” she said, circling back to their earlier conversation about her writing.

It said a lot about what her life centered around, that was for sure.

“And the cars they choose to collect,” he said. “What we spend time and money on is who we are.”

“I guess today I’m art and overpriced jewelry?”

“Or just yourself.”

They spent most of the rest of the drive to Amarillo not talking, the soundtrack the noise of the road and the breeze as they went down the highway.

They checked into the multicolored Big Texan Motel. The facade was painted to look like an Old West main street, each section a different color and shape to look like they were all different buildings. The rooms had wood paneling and wooden-framed beds, horses racing across the bedspreads.

I’m taking you to a honky tonk tonight.

Logan sent a text from wherever his room was. He was far enough way that she hadn’t even seen.

I feel like that might be a Big & Rich song I’m not ready to jump into yet?

You’re in Texas.

That was a good point. She was in Texas, and like…when in Texas you had to honky-tonk? Or something. She knew it was a huge state and the amount of experiences to be had were likely vast, but standing in this particularly cowboy-looking motel room, this seemed like the next logical experience.

Okay. What time?

Be ready by nine.

She noticed Logan didn’t actually ask. Not for anything. He told her how it was going to be and when to get ready, and there was absolutely no softening to make things more palatable.

She was bemused by that.

The way that he just…was himself. Sometimes abrasive, and totally okay with it. That was a man thing, she was pretty sure.

She always cared what people thought. Her mom had drilled that into her.

A woman’s job is to make her home comfortable.

Making other people feel good is a strength.

Being able to put your own needs aside isn’t a weakness. Look at all the people who can’t manage to do that.

Was that a woman thing or a her thing? She had no idea, but what she did know was that she’d never issued demands for anyone to join her at a honky-tonk.

Though apparently now she was going to one.

What did one wear to such a thing? She’d packed limited options, but she had bought a few dresses at the store in Santa Clara, so she decided to pick between the new ones. And did so without outsourcing opinions. She did it with her own opinions.

Which was not easy, and she had to actually just stop looking at herself after a minute because she was picking her body apart like it was carrion for her vulturish issues.

She wasn’t usually quite so insecure. But there were circumstances.

That thought projected an image of Logan into her head. Tall and muscular, grinning at her at the gas pump.

A hard pang hit her square in the stomach.

It had nothing to do with him.

She was going out with him, she wasn’t going out with him. They were on a trip together, and it was incidental that he was her tour guide.

They were getting along, but they often got along. It wasn’t a total inability to get along with him that made him difficult. It was…

She frowned.

He was difficult, that was all. She was unsure of what to wear because she was unsure about herself, and she’d lost the way she would normally screen an outfit for going out.

Yet you had no issues in Flagstaff when you went to dinner alone.

She needed a less pushy internal narrator.

What’s your point?

There. She had no rejoinder for that. She finished getting ready and then walked outside the motel room, looking down at her phone.

Okay , she texted. Ready to honky tonk.

He pulled up less than ten seconds later. “I don’t think honky-tonk is a verb.”

“I disagree.”

The only light was from the parking lot lamps that poured harsh blue light straight down from above, and no one looked good in that light.

Except Logan managed to look like the bad boy date she’d never had come to get her for an evening out.

She felt like the good girl. The lamb being led to the wolf’s den. Not a forty-year-old woman who knew well the ways of the world, and men, even if just in the abstract sense.

It was not a line of thought she wanted to be having about him. She didn’t want to be pondering his adjacency to the big bad wolf in any regard, thank you.

“I’ve picked out a true dive bar to give you the full experience.” He looked her over in a way that made her feel touched. “You might be overdressed.”

Great, so she’d made the wrong call after all that. “I didn’t know, and I liked the color, so…”

“You look beautiful.”

The way he said it, rough and low and like time had suddenly gone slow, made her stop. Made her take a hard breath in.

He shouldn’t be saying that to her. They were friends, if they were even that, and they didn’t go commenting on each other’s looks. She didn’t want to be validated by a man, anyway. She was supposed to be validating herself.

Those words weren’t supposed to make her hot, and restless, and happy all at once, but they did.

The fact was, Logan was a man who dabbled in debauchery (his words), and so didn’t his opinion on her beauty mean something?

Will had always said she was beautiful.

But until this week (she wasn’t thinking about that), he hadn’t had practical experience of other women. Logan did.

He thought she was beautiful, even if she was overdressed.

She realized she’d been standing there saying nothing for too long. “Thank you.”

She should have scolded him. Or something. But she didn’t. Or maybe she should say it back? He was beautiful. But it felt too weird to say, so she just didn’t.

Instead she got into the car and tried not to project any of the flustered feelings rolling around inside of her onto Logan, because while she might appreciate the compliment, she really didn’t need him to know how much.

“So, where is this place?”

“Up the road apiece.” He looked at her. “There’s a mechanical bull.”

“I’m not having a midlife crisis. You must have me confused with my husband.”

“Is a midlife crisis necessary to ride a mechanical bull?”

“You don’t have to have a midlife crisis to act a fool in a bar, but it helps. You can also be twenty-one. But I’m not twenty-one, either.”

He laughed. “I wouldn’t want to be twenty-one again.”

“Really?”

“Yeah.”

“I don’t know. I feel like I kind of got dumped back into my twenties…though a twenties I never actually lived since I had three kids and a house by then.”

He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t want to go back because of what I would have up ahead.”

The comment felt electrified in the moment. She knew why. She just tried not to think about it.

“I didn’t mean it in that way,” she said. “But in the way that things are shiny and new and you have possibilities. Not that that was the case for me back then. My choices were already made. They still are.”

She visualized next September. Meeting at their house, in their driveway, the hot summer air all around them.

I missed you , Will would say. You were right. I went looking out there, and there was nothing better than us.

“They don’t have to be,” he said.

“No, Logan, they do. They are. I made my choice when I was eighteen. I made my choice. I had kids with the man. I built a life with him.”