Page 42 of Cruel Summer

TWENTY-THREE

She woke up pressed against an unfamiliar masculine body.

It all came back to her. Quickly and in stunningly vivid Technicolor.

Logan. She didn’t know quite what to do.

She needed to go back to her room. She didn’t know what time it was.

She hadn’t texted anybody who was expecting a text from her, and they would probably think that she was dead on the highway somewhere.

She needed to get back to her things. To her space so that she could…

breathe. So that she could text her kids and her friends.

She slipped away from the warmth of his hold and out of bed, collecting her clothes.

She didn’t want to call Elysia and Whitney.

It was a weird thing to think, except when she’d first had sex, she’d been ashamed and horrified at herself…and desperate to talk to her friends.

She wasn’t horrified or ashamed, not this time.

But she didn’t want to share it either.

Which was inconvenient in some ways because she was also confused.

She didn’t know what to do next. She didn’t know anything.

It would have been helpful to talk to her friends, to share the moment.

But the moment felt like hers and Logan’s.

Like it didn’t belong to anyone else. It was wound around too many other personal things.

Becca, her death, his tattoo. His feelings for her in high school.

Her fears about her own wickedness. Her shortcomings as a wife. Her cowardice. Her audacity.

She didn’t know how she managed to find herself a wicked coward who also had audacity, but she did.

In the middle of all that, though, was satisfaction. And the knowledge she wouldn’t take last night back even if she could.

There was a lesson in all this, she supposed.

The same lesson that had been there from the beginning.

This lesson about uncertainty and discomfort.

About being okay with being messy and wrong and not having any idea what she was doing.

But while she was accepting that it was her lesson, she still wasn’t entirely comfortable with it.

That was its own lesson.

She stepped outside, and realized that the sun hadn’t come up yet. She hadn’t even bothered to check the time. She took her phone out of her purse and saw that it was four in the morning.

She clutched her chest as she walked down the sidewalk toward her room. She was doing a very short little walk of shame. This was a new experience.

She wasn’t ashamed though. Not really. At least, that wasn’t the dominant feeling.

It was, as ever, more complex than that.

She growled quietly as she let herself into her room.

She was a little bit tired of complexity, honestly.

She took a shower, and as the warm water washed over her skin, she tried not to imagine what it had been like when he touched her.

Her head was full of him. She felt like she was failing her assignment, only recently given to her. To see about this new life on her terms.

That was on your terms. You wanted him.

It was true. She had. She was taking points from herself for involving another person, but the truth was, she and Logan were involved. They had been.

They were just being honest now.

She found some pajamas and put them on, climbed into bed. She lay there with her eyes closed for two hours. She didn’t sleep. Not at all.

Then she got up and grabbed her phone, texting the kids to let them know that she had arrived in South Lake Tahoe, and then texting Elysia and Whitney the same.

It was Elysia who was awake and responded immediately.

Good. I was worried.

No need to worry. Just got distracted.

It felt disingenuous. But she couldn’t talk about what had happened.

She waited in her room. And paced. Waited for him to come and knock. But he didn’t.

Finally she gathered all of her things and walked down toward where the car was parked. She could text him. He could text her. Finally, in a fit of frustration, she knocked on his door.

It only took a second for him to open it. Shirtless. He was only wearing his jeans, and she knew they were the same jeans that she had taken off of him last night, and there was something extremely intimate about this morning after she had tried not to have.

So this was what it was like. To be intimate with somebody when you weren’t in a relationship. When you hadn’t professed to love each other or made any promises about the future, and in fact actively couldn’t make promises about the future.

“I thought maybe you’d taken a bus back to Oregon,” he said.

“No. I just went to take a shower.”

“At about four o’clock.”

“You were awake?”

“I was a single dad. Everything wakes me up. Hypervigilance.”

“Well, then, don’t go calling me a coward if you didn’t try to stop me from going.” She didn’t know why it irritated her. That he’d done that. That he hadn’t tried to have the conversation then. Maybe if he’d done that, she just would have let him talk her back into bed.

The thought made her warm.

“I wasn’t going to tell you what to do.”

“You had no trouble with that just a few hours before.”

“Different contexts,” he said.

“I wasn’t running away. I needed a shower, and I needed to text everyone and let them know I wasn’t dead.”

“I see.”

“I forgot. I text Elysia and Whitney and the kids every time we get to a new location. I was distracted. They might have thought I was…serial killed or something.”

They stared at each other for a long moment.

She could tell that he wanted to have a fight with her.

She sort of wanted to have a fight with him.

She wasn’t entirely sure why. But she felt something intense burning in her chest, and she needed to let it out.

She just didn’t know exactly what it was. What it meant.

The easiest way seemed to be yelling. Or maybe sex.

But neither one seemed like an easy thing to reach for while they were standing in that motel doorway, her on the outside, him on the inside.

She could feel them both trying to manufacture reasons.

So instead she took a step toward him and wrapped her fingers around the back of his neck, stretched up and kissed him.

Just light. More of a friendly kind of thing really.

She slid her hand down his bare chest, and he growled. She liked that. It was a little feral and ridiculous, but it was really hot. Suddenly the kiss felt deeper than it had when she’d given it.

“See,” she whispered. “I didn’t run away.”

He looked at her, and she could see the question there. If she wanted to go right back into that hotel room and do more of what had happened last night.

“Yes,” she said softly. “But I suspect that we should talk.”

“I was afraid you would say that.”

“Me too. But maybe let’s get coffee. I hate morning sex anyway.”

The look he gave her spoke volumes. He had taken that as a challenge. She thrilled at that. Great. She was doing such a good job with the rational adult thing.

“ Coffee ,” she restated.

“Let me get my things.”

They drove through a coffee place. They didn’t stop.

She figured that was for the best anyway.

Better to have the conversation in the confines of the car than to actually talk about what had happened surrounded by a bunch of men who fancied themselves entrepreneurs, shouting into their phones, and college students and parents who had just completed school drop-off.

She was certain that was who would be in the coffee shop on a weekday morning. Coffee shops were the same all over the country. Probably all over the world.

“Why did that happen?”

“You don’t know?”

“I mean, I know from the standpoint of failures and self-control and human nature. But after what happened when we kissed, I don’t know.

I don’t know how to do this. I’m not you, Logan.

I haven’t had years’ worth of one-night stands bolstering me.

I haven’t had time to explore the idea of sex without a relationship.

Anyway, you were pretty dead set against doing anything like that with me. ”

“No, I was dead-set against being something you wanted to do to get back at Will. But it turns out I wanted to have sex with you more than I wanted to make sure that wasn’t happening. Apparently I can be bought. I didn’t realize my self-respect was for sale, but there you go.”

She felt bad about that. She didn’t want him thinking that. And at the same time, she found it flattering that he had abandoned his principles for a chance to have her. That was a new feeling. She felt so specifically wanted by him, and it did things to her.

“I didn’t think of him at all. I just want you to know that. Not what he would think, and not how it was different. You know he’s the only man I’ve been with. Other than you. I’m still not comparing. I can’t.”

“Because you’re in love with him?”