Page 38 of Cruel Summer

She was trying so hard not to be embarrassed. She was not a kid. She was a grown woman. She had needs. She accepted that. But telling a man that when she got a restless feeling between her legs, he was the one she thought of, well, that was really outside of her scope of experience.

“Yes,” she said quickly. “Once or twice.”

“Once or twice.” He laughed, but it was flat and bitter-sounding. “You’ve got better self-control than I do.”

She squeezed her thighs together, now decidedly physically uncomfortable.

“Well. What’s the problem?” she asked, because was there even a problem? They wanted each other. Why was he being like this?

“I’m not having sex with another man’s wife. As long as you feel like you’re his wife, I’m not having sex with you.”

Shame rushed through her. Along with that, anger.

“What a convenient set of morals. You were fine with everything that happened three years ago. You wanted me to acknowledge it. But now, now you have morality about it.”

“I’m older. Less interested in bullshit.”

“Right. Great.” It wasn’t bullshit, not to her. It was her life. She hadn’t asked for any of this.

She didn’t know how to tell him she definitively felt like Will wasn’t her husband.

He was her husband. She couldn’t just erase of all those years.

Maybe it was dead on the vine, but her issues with Will needed to be worked out with Will.

She couldn’t do that right now because they were not talking to each other.

She just wanted to make this not about him.

She wanted to separate it. She was frustrated Logan wouldn’t let her do that.

This was more sitting in bad decisions and mistakes.

And the fact that there wasn’t going to be an easy resolution with him.

This was a problem, because she liked him.

Because it meant she was in a place with someone that she quite liked, where she couldn’t make him happy with her.

She couldn’t seem to get what she wanted.

She was stuck with him in a car for the next three weeks.

What a trip.

You have a crush on him.

Oh good God. She did. She had a crush on him. She was with him in this car, and he didn’t like her back.

She was really trying to stay away from the high school parallels, but they kept on finding her.

She hadn’t experienced this in high school, of course, because she had liked Will, and Will had liked her back. Then they had dated. And that was that.

She hadn’t experienced a hell of an unrequited crush. It sucked. She didn’t like it.

She realized that the unrequited crush, at this point, should really feel like it was on her husband, whose activities she was just profoundly disinterested in. Maybe she could just tell Logan she was done with Will.

But what if she was wrong? What if she was motivated entirely by her desire to make Logan happy? To smooth this over? To not sit in this weird middle ground?

She owed it to herself to sit in the discomfort.

To not just try to tell him what he wanted to hear. What would get her what she wanted.

Wow. Emotional maturity really was just the worst. She had to fill the silence. She couldn’t sit in that anymore.

“Are we stopping in Tahoe?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said.

“Cool. I haven’t been there for a while. You’re taking me to a casino, right?”

“No. You’ll have to make those kinds of bad decisions on your own.”

“You seem to be leaving me to make all the bad decisions on my own. It’s not really fair. You were advertised as being kind of a good time. Turns out that was a lie.”

“Right.”

“Right. Okay, so you’re just going to talk to me in as few words as possible then?”

He was being a dick, because he was mad at her.

But she recognized the truth to that. It was adjacent to parental guilt.

It didn’t have to make sense. You could even know that it wasn’t true, but it didn’t just take it away.

She couldn’t imagine how often he must’ve felt not just lost in his own grief, but what his daughter was missing. By not having her mother.

Constantly not feeling enough, because he was only one person.

“Do you need more words?”

“How was your visit with Chloe?” she asked. “Didn’t you drive down to Santa Clara for a minute?”

“Yes. It was good. She was busy, but the time I got with her was…worth it.”

“I really meant what I said about you and Chloe. I have always admired the way that you were with her. I have always thought that you were an amazing father. My issues with you were about me.”

“Yeah. Well, thank you.”

“It’s just true. I’m sorry that you have to deal with that. I’m sorry that it haunts you like that.”

“How long?” He didn’t look at her when he asked the question.

“How long what?”

“You said you had difficult feelings about me. How long did you have them?”

She felt stunned by the question. Like she was being pinned to the passenger seat of the car. It was a difficult question, and one she wasn’t sure she wanted to answer.

“Come on. We’re in a pretty morally shaky situation as it is,” he said. “Why not dig in?”

She wondered if he was punishing her. Maybe he was. Maybe she deserved it. She hadn’t decided. She was mad at him, but that didn’t mean that she was entirely in the right. It might just mean that she was defensive.

“I don’t really know,” she said. She swallowed hard.

“I… I want to say the time we nearly kissed. But I think that’s a lie.

Sometimes I wonder if it’s just been there.

The whole time. But I didn’t look at it because I couldn’t.

When my defenses were down, I couldn’t not be drawn to you.

I didn’t sit there and envy your wife. Not consciously.

But I noticed the way that you were with her.

Maybe thought about it more than I did with anyone else. ”

“Good.”

That anger was like acid now, eating away at her.

Good. That was all she got. His satisfaction over her admitting something that difficult.

That she been kind of in lust with him for a long time.

But she hadn’t done anything. She would never have done something to compromise his marriage, or hers.

She had proven that. So he didn’t really win anything.

“You’re mad at me,” he said.

“I don’t understand why you want to embarrass me.”

“I don’t want to embarrass you. I just want you to be honest.”

“You be honest, then. How long have you wanted me?”

“I wanted you in high school. I couldn’t have you. Because he always had you. When I found out you were having his baby, I was sick to my stomach. Does that make you happy?”

“Logan, I…”

“I let it go. Like you do when the girl that you liked in high school ends up with someone else. That’s all it is.

You let it go. You find somebody else. You move on.

I did that. I fell in love, I got married, and I had a child.

That was real. But attraction , wanting someone, that doesn’t just go away, and that has been the single biggest source of guilt and regret in my life.

That no matter what, I always wanted you. To touch you, kiss you. Have you.”

She didn’t know what to say to that. It was shocking. She took in a breath, short and shaky, and then tried to take a longer one. It was almost impossible. Logan had feelings for her. Logan had had feelings for her for a while. Well, maybe not feelings, but attraction.

“Oh.”

That response was not really as articulate as she would’ve liked it to be. But she didn’t feel articulate. She didn’t feel anything but blindsided. Wholly and completely.

“Yeah. Well,” he said. “You shouldn’t ask questions you don’t want the answers to.”

“I am not saying I don’t like the answer. It’s just a lot.”

“I’ve waited for a long time. I can keep waiting.” She watched as he adjusted his hands on the steering wheel. He had such nice hands. “I figured it might never happen.”

She had to wonder if he was sort of comfortable with the never . There was something about that that resonated inside of her.

That when there was something complicated, it was easiest if you just didn’t have to ever face it.

This was so complicated. Not just by her marriage to Will, but by the fact that his feelings had been a preexisting condition to even his marriage.

“You loved Becca,” she said, not questioning it, affirming it.

“Yes,” he said without hesitation. “I chose her. I love her still. She was the mother of my daughter. My wife. I was never in danger of straying in our marriage. I was committed. My feelings were real.”

She nodded, thankful for the clarification, but not fully certain it was a clarification.

“I loved her. With everything I had. That didn’t mean I ever stopped thinking that you were beautiful.”

Because they were two separate things. Feelings and desire. But Logan was the only person she’d ever experienced that with. Still, she knew in the moment she’d nearly kissed him in Hawaii, she’d wanted him.

Had been tempted to break her moral code and her vows with him.

And had loved Will at the same time. Had loved their life and not wanted to lose it, and those feelings combined had been stronger than her attraction.

But it didn’t make her desire for Logan less real.

Though she had feelings for him. But they were different. Different than her feelings for Will had ever been. Not love like that, but also the attraction was sharper. More intense.

Maybe it was age. Experience. A knowledge of what you wanted, and what you hadn’t had, and might like to try.

She couldn’t say for sure. She could understand complicated. So, there was that.

She was beginning to understand that feelings for someone else, different, complex feelings, didn’t erase other feelings.

She knew that this admission didn’t take away from his love for Becca. Or his grief at her loss.

In the same way that just wanting to kiss him three years ago hadn’t made her want to leave her husband.

Now it was out there. This truth. It felt glorious and hideous all at once.

Because she was consumed with it. Her desire for him, but she also understood that…

there were just things he wasn’t willing to do.

She wasn’t willing to lie. Or to shortchange anybody. Least of all him. Well, and herself.

She was trying to be okay with sitting in difficulty so that she didn’t go shortchanging herself.

He turned up the music then, and she didn’t even object to it being Springsteen.

She endured classic rock as her penance for hurting him. Had she hurt him? She wasn’t really sure. She didn’t know how to classify this whole thing. She felt a little bit hurt. Bruised. Preoccupied by these new revelations, and building certainties about old truths.

The motel they rolled up to was rustic, on the Nevada border, boasting coin-operated beds.

She wasn’t even sure what to do with that. It might have made her feel embarrassed, but she was basically filled up to the top with embarrassment. Or maybe it wasn’t even embarrassment. It was something else. Something less juvenile. It was just a sort of unsettled feeling.

It’s thwarted desire is what it is.

They checked into their separate rooms at opposite ends of the long, narrow building. Said vibrating bed had a woodsy vibe, and while she wouldn’t be making full use of its capabilities, she liked the look well enough.

She sat down on the edge of the bed, her heart thundering hard.

She tried to push everything away except for the feeling.

This feeling of wanting a man and not knowing if she could have him.

This feeling of uncertainty. It was a new experience.

It just cut deep. She lay back and looked up at the ceiling.

Logan Martin had liked her in high school. She wondered what past her would’ve thought of it.

The answer was quick and definitive. Past Samantha would have been afraid of him. She would have been afraid of what she might do with that handsome, dangerous-seeming boy. Ironic, considering Will had gotten her pregnant at eighteen. Logan would’ve probably gotten her pregnant at sixteen.

That made her laugh. Uncontrollably. Maybe she was hysterical. It was entirely possible. There was a lot to be hysterical about in this present moment. It was so strange, and she would’ve said it wasn’t her. Except it seemed to be.

She took a shower, even though she didn’t really need one, and changed into jeans and a T-shirt. She looked at her phone and saw that Logan had texted her.

Burgers?

Yes.

So maybe things were normal again.

But she didn’t think she wanted them to be.

She was tired of normal.

She wanted something extraordinary. Even if it was a mistake.

God help her, she was willing to make as big of a mistake as it took with him.