Page 35 of Cruel Summer

But here she was, a woman with a tattoo wandering the streets of Boston, and she just wasn’t sure if she needed it anymore.

With that out of the way, she was left looking for the want to.

God help her, she wasn’t sure it was there.

She cared about Will. But what surprised her the most was how little she was thinking of him these days.

How little the inclination to text him hit her, and how much she enjoyed talking to Logan about her revelations and problems and fears.

How she hadn’t been able to talk to Will about them. How nothing about their relationship had been a place where she could identify those needs and seize them.

It was quite simply the strangest thing.

But it didn’t scare her. Not anymore. It was just something she was considering. Just something she was opening herself up to.

She regretted that she hadn’t been able to do it that first day they had gotten on the road.

Really embrace this moment for what it was. She had been so lost in her stubbornness. In being right for the sake of it.

Proving to him that he was wrong and she was right.

Her own stubbornness was often her very worst enemy. Something that hilariously would not surprise Will at all.

By the time she got back to the hotel, she was exhausted. She was also laden with shopping bags, and ready to collapse.

She got up to her room on the sixth floor and dropped all her bags onto the ground, then laid herself flat on the smooth white bedspread in the minimalist room. It was a stark contrast to the roadside motels. But she kind of loved it. Her phone buzzed, and she looked at it. It was Logan.

Dinner?

Sure. But you might have to carry me there.

Not a problem.

Her heart thumped a little harder than was necessary.

Just let me change.

She was sweaty from all the walking, and she put on something comfortable, and also a bit stretchy, so that when they ate she wasn’t conscious of the waistband biting into her stomach.

She had enough uncomfortable thoughts today.

She didn’t need to be physically uncomfortable on top of it.

They met down in the lobby, and she paused to really look at him.

His dark blond hair pushed back off of his forehead, that black leather jacket that called to teenage dreams she hadn’t even had back then, because bad boys had been a shade too scary for her.

Hell, bad boys were a shade too scary for her now. So obsessed she was with being a good girl.

Here she was, at a hotel in Boston with a man she wasn’t married to, looking at his broad shoulders, his muscular thighs. His butt. It seemed fair for her to ponder his ass, since he had commented on hers a few days ago.

“Let’s go get pizza. You’ll like it.”

“Of course I like it,” she said. “It’s pizza.”

“No. When I say you’ll like it, I mean it’s special.”

They walked across the street and into the North End, all red brick and glorious buildings.

The charm of it made her ache. For lives she hadn’t lived, and never would.

For the vastness of life. It was a feeling she was getting used to.

A feeling she was coming to love. Because as much as it was uncomfortable, it reminded her that she was alive. It reminded her that there was more.

It made her feel like the loss of that small, safe life that she had wasn’t quite as devastating as she had originally thought.

Because there were so many lives that she could live.

So many places to go. So many layers to who she could be.

If she had stayed on that street, in that house, with Will for the rest of her life…

she would have been a kind of happy. But she was beginning to think that the changes, the thoughts, the moments that she had since the separation were transforming her into a person who might not be able to find her way back to that sort of happiness.

It was a cliché. A goldfish in a bowl that had been dumped into the ocean. Now knew how big it all was.

But it was the dominant thing that she kept thinking.

She wasn’t sure she would be able to fit back into that life.

Hell. She had a tattoo.

Regina Pizza was on a corner packed full of people, and Logan went and put their name on the list. It was a decently long wait, but she didn’t mind meandering around, looking at the buildings, the brick and the metal detail that had aged into a green patina with time.

It was more frenetic here than at Beacon Hill, not like the stately, well-appointed town houses on utterly silent streets, but rather apartments above these bustling buildings, bags of trash brought out to the curb, waiting to be collected the next day, and people everywhere.

Even this life made her smile to imagine living it. What kind of person would you be? Living in the middle of all this activity, all this history. The energy would be inspiring.

When they got called for their table, they were ushered into a noisy, crowded restaurant with no pretense or conceit.

It somehow felt nostalgic, even though she’d never been there.

Maybe because it was in many ways the image of what a pizza place should be.

It must’ve been in a movie, or maybe she had just absorbed it somehow into her consciousness.

The booths, the pictures on the wall, celebrities that had been there, local police officers.

It was somehow brand-new and familiar all at once, and she was delighted by it, and of course by the food.

But it wasn’t just this place.

It was Logan. That stark separation that had happened inside of her today. That realization. That her endgame might not be Will. Then suddenly, the driving need to know… To know what it would be like to kiss Logan. If it would change something else.

Zip-lining had. The tattoo had. Just wandering around the city by herself in her absolute freedom had.

She hadn’t kissed him all those years ago. Because of fear, yes. Also because she had said vows to Will, and whatever she had felt at the time, whatever he had failed to do for her in her grief, she had never taken those vows lightly, and she never would.

But the rules weren’t the same now.

She wanted different things now. She wanted some kind of clarity on exactly what that meant.

Logan was beautiful.

And she had crossed that line, that barrier, from admitting that he was attractive to the fact that she was attracted to him. Now she felt not simply preoccupied with it but compelled by it. By the lines on his face, and blue of his eyes. The sharp awareness of his jaw, and his mouth.

Everything about his mouth.

She could remember feeling compelled by it then. When he had looked at her with all that care and tenderness and intensity at the same time.

She could remember feeling overwhelmed.

But there had also been a barrier. A barrier that simply didn’t exist now.

The pizzeria was amazing, but it was hardly romantic. Her judgment wasn’t being clouded by candlelight.

It was just the natural conclusion to everything.

All of it had brought her here. To this moment. To the opportunity to have what she hadn’t been able to then.

She was suddenly distracted by it, barely able to finish the last piece of pizza, and having difficulty carrying on a conversation. Her limbs were infused with anxiety that took root in her stomach and spread out from there. Her hands tingled. Her fingertips felt numb.

She was suddenly in a hurry, when she had been enjoying herself and happy to sit here endlessly.

“I think they want to turn the table over,” she said.

That was true. She could tell that the line outside had only gotten longer, and there was a definite need to clear space.

But she had ulterior motives. She hadn’t felt this kind of excitement in…

a very long time. The sense that she was about to do something potentially wrong, but that was exciting enough she didn’t care.

It was in her head now, and she couldn’t get it out.

You want to kiss him, and then what?

You two are staying in the same hotel, and you have another night here.

That made her mouth dry. She wasn’t quite ready to contemplate that. But maybe that was the key. No thought. Just action. She’d had had her fill of thinking, after all. It had been good. It had brought her to a good space.

Now she was ready to do something . A little less conversation, a little more action.

Maybe living her life via lyrical content from Elvis wasn’t any better than Michael Jackson, all things considered, but she had to start somewhere.

It felt like it took an eternity for him to pay. Felt like the moment had extended into its own era.

Finally, they were back out on the street.

It was still teeming with people. But that added to the excitement, to the rush of the moment.

To the feeling that maybe she was someone else, or herself for the very first time.

They were in a city, where no one knew them.

Where they weren’t accountable to anyone.

It was a rush. A thrill. Unmatched. It was him.

He had been the object of so many hard feelings. She could recognize them for what they were now. They weren’t hard feelings. They were forbidden feelings. Feelings that she hadn’t been allowed to have. Feelings that she hadn’t been brave enough to admit.

How could she admit them? It was so important to her to be good.

To be perfect. To be beyond reproach. Then it had been so important to her to live in her self-righteousness when Will had made that proclamation.

She didn’t want to have sex with a stranger.

She didn’t want the touch of any random man that she might find in a bar.

But she could relate to wanting the touch of someone else.

She did. She had wanted Logan then for far longer than she was comfortable admitting. She wanted him now.

Beyond reason, with no endgame in sight, with no plan. She wanted him with everything she was. Whether it made sense or not. Whether it was reasonable or not.