Page 39 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-TWO

She didn’t bother to put any makeup on, and went outside, looking down the sidewalk, to see him standing outside his room door also.

She waved, and immediately felt stupid. He did not wave back.

But his lips did curve into a smile that she could see twenty doors down.

He walked out toward the car, and when they got to it, he tossed her the keys.

She smiled and turned the key, noticing that the engine sounded different than the Ferrari. She was picking up all kinds of things about the cars.

“You do all of this by hand?” she asked.

“Yep,” he said. He put some directions into his phone, and they started off down the road toward Izzy’s Burger Spa.

“You must feel like they’re art projects,” she said, moving her fingertips over the steering wheel. All the cars had been great, but the Rolls was particularly ornate and glorious.

He looked at her like she was strange. “I wouldn’t say I think of them that way.”

“Well, there must be some emotion in it,” she said.

“You put pieces of yourself in work like this. It’s like writing.

Even my articles, it comes from me. That doesn’t necessarily make it emotional or anything, but it is a little bit of myself on the page every time.

This is physical work. You got the blood, sweat and tears thing. ”

“I guarantee you I have never shed a tear about a car.”

“You know what I mean.” She moved her hands idly up and down the steering wheel, stroking the glossy black. “It’s basically you.”

He looked at her, their eyes clashed, and suddenly the sexual nature of both the comment and the way she was touching the car hit her. She swallowed and looked away.

Thankfully, they were saved by their arrival at the restaurant. The seating was outside, ordering taking place at a little window in front of a small shack-looking building.

The smell of charcoal barbecue was strong, and it made her stomach growl.

She ordered a hamburger with extra avocado, and Logan got one with mushrooms. They sat down across from each other, and she dug ferociously into her fries as a distraction.

She really needed the distraction. Because she was just looking at him.

Her stomach was all tight. As she had acknowledged, it wasn’t actually embarrassment.

It was that she wanted him. Was it wrong that she wanted him and also didn’t necessarily want to concede to what he’d asked for?

It wasn’t like she wanted to test him out to see.

She just didn’t want being with him to be about that.

She wanted what they were to stand separate from the past, the baggage, their other stuff , and maybe that wasn’t fair.

Maybe it wasn’t a realistic expectation.

But she didn’t see why she should have to be the one to give everything.

She wasn’t using him. She was not using him to have an experience. In that she was confident.

What she felt for him had nothing to do with Will. And that felt like something big.

“Why classic cars?” She genuinely wanted to know.

Because it was something she didn’t know about him.

Really, there was a lot she didn’t know about him.

It was the funny thing about living in a small town and having a lot of connections to a person.

You could put together a picture of their life, but it was through the lens of a collective group of other people.

It made you feel like you didn’t have to ask them everything about themselves.

In many ways, she knew Logan’s biography.

But she didn’t know his story. She wondered if the same was true of him and her.

Less so now. He knew quite a bit about her now.

“My uncle,” he said. “It was his dream. It wasn’t what he was doing.

But it was his dream. He exposed me to cars like this.

I got the bug. It felt like something that connected me to a part of my family I otherwise wasn’t very connected to.

Now I have my own interest. It’s like a connection to history. ”

Of course it was something deeper than just thinking they were cool. Not that there was anything wrong with that. But every time she went down a layer with him, she found out there were more. It just seemed to be how he was.

“What about you? Why writing?”

“Do you want the answer that I’ve given everybody for the last twenty-two years?”

“No. I want the truth.”

So she wouldn’t be telling him she did it so she could stay home with the kids. Because it complemented Will’s work, and brought in a little extra. All of that made it not about her. She wasn’t that big of a martyr.

“Well, I’ve always wanted to get along with everybody, and yet wanted fiercely to be understood.

Writing is a way to do that. To take my feelings and put them somewhere neutral.

Give me a way to unravel them. Unpack them.

I think that’s part of it. Well, and I could do it while the kids were little.

So there is some truth to the convenience part of the story.

But I’ve always gotten something out of it.

When I was staying home with the boys, it was a way to connect with other people.

Even if it wasn’t totally interactive, I was able to share pieces of myself and my life. It felt satisfying.”

“You know, keeping your house clean when you have kids is an uphill battle. I only had one kid. But I always felt like I wasn’t making progress in general.

With being organized. With being emotionally what she needed.

Every day I felt like I did a little something, and then I would slide right back.

You don’t do that when you’re restoring cars.

You plan, you order everything, you get the project outlines, you make progress every day.

In the end, you have something perfect and finished.

Then you ship it off, and you start something else. ”

He picked up a french fry and looked away, at the highway next to the restaurant, his blue gaze faraway.

“Nothing in my life felt like that when Chloe was little. When Becca was sick, and then after she died… It all just felt like no matter how hard I tried, I was falling short in some way. That I wasn’t as far through my grief as I thought, and it would all hit me at unexpected times.

That I wasn’t as good at supporting Chloe emotionally as I thought.

That I couldn’t get her lunches packed right, you name it.

I always felt like it was one step forward, two steps back.

But then I could go to work and do something concrete. It was like therapy in that way.”

She nodded. “I get that. I do. Kids are rewarding, but you’re right. It’s a lot of endless work. For little thanks.”

“I didn’t need her thank me. I know that isn’t what you meant.

But you know, she was going through her stuff.

She was a kid who lost her mother. I was always very aware of that.

Of the fact that I was inherently not what she needed sometimes.

That was hard. But that was where it was good that we had you. ”

We had you.

She was swamped suddenly with an ache in her chest. She had taken care of Chloe, but maybe in that way, she had taken care of Logan too. She wished she could have been there for him more. She could have comforted him. Physically.

Conflicted heat rioted through her.

That was the wrong way to imagine comforting someone who had lost a wife.

Yet she found the regret was real. The need.

But it made her feel good to know that at least by extension, she had been there for him.

They finished their food and went back to the car.

It was getting dark, the air blue and heavy.

They parked and got out of the car, and she moved toward him, extending her arm and handing him the keys.

He took them, and she turned to walk away.

She made it half a step when he gripped her arm and pulled her back to him, up against his body, his blue eyes burning into hers.

She had a moment to move away. A moment to take in a breath. But she didn’t move away.

Then, his mouth was on hers. Fierce and hard and knowing, there was so much knowing.

That she wanted him, that he wanted her. That things were not settled between them, and this was something driven by desire, and not really a concession, or a decision.

She was okay with that. Well. That was putting it mildly.

She was a slave to it. This was pure need.

Desire, want. This was everything. He was so strong, his hands knowing as they roamed over her body.

They were still standing outside where anybody could see them.

But she was having trouble caring about that.

She didn’t want to think. She didn’t want to care about anything.

Anything other than his hands, on her waist, her hips.

Anything other than the insistent move of his mouth over hers. Other than anything at all.

Just him. The taste of him. The feel of him. They had kissed that one other time. But this time, she knew they wouldn’t stop.

His arm still wrapped tightly around her waist, he held her against his body as he worked to open the door to his motel room.

When he closed it behind him and locked it, drawing the chain slowly all the way to the right in its golden cradle, she nearly wept with relief.

She wasn’t alone. He was right there with her. He couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to.

As soon as that chain clicked, they might as well have been the only two people in the world. This might as well have been the only moment in time.