Page 16 of The Best Worst Thing

The Stoop

They sat on Nicole’s front step in silence. The night was dark, lit only by a few humming sconces, that hanging porch light, and the glimmering glass panes that framed Nicole’s front door. The rest of her street, a string of sleeping houses, illuminated just so.

“So, Atlanta?” she said.

“Atlanta,” he said.

They were maybe a foot from each other, staring at their feet, studying their hands. Apparently, Logan had just touched down a couple of hours ago, a few minutes before Nicole texted him.

“Coca-Cola, right? Quentin will never give up on them, will he?”

“If there’s one word I’d use to describe that man, it’d be relentless.”

“What if you had two?”

He smirked. “Erratic toddler-king?”

“That’s three.”

“No. I hyphenated it. It’s two.”

Nicole laughed, and then … more quiet. They just sat there, doing nothing, saying nothing. Logan’s phone buzzed. He pulled it out, ignored the call.

“Dave,” he said, shoving it back into his pocket.

Nicole nodded.

She looked around.

She considered making a joke about Dave—Logan’s best friend, whom she’d never met but who’d starred in so many of Logan’s watercooler stories that sometimes, it felt like she had.

And then she decided just to say it, to tell him the truth, to get it over with.

But when she opened her mouth to recite the words—I’m having a baby, I think.

Maybe even two—nothing came out. So instead, she went back to staring at her hands.

She didn’t even realize she was twirling her ring around her finger until she’d felt the unmistakable heat of Logan’s eyes, watching her do it.

Her whole body tensed.

“This thing,” she said, giving it another look. This time, through a lens she couldn’t quite explain. Through a filter, thick and distorted.

“Shiny as ever,” he said.

Nicole winced. “God, you too?”

“What?” Logan’s head jerked back. “Wait, I didn’t mean … You know I’m only—”

“I know you always saw my ring as this giant punch line. Guess you were right all along. Turns out my whole life’s a fucking joke.”

“That’s not true. That’s not—”

“But it is,” she said, biting back a frown. “It really is.”

“I promise you, Nicole. It’s not.”

She looked at him. She really, really looked. And what she saw—him, sitting there, trying to convince her that her life meant something, that she meant something, when it did not, when she did not—only made the truth that much harder to tell. Maybe that was why all she mustered was this:

“He fucked our dog walker.”

Logan grimaced. “Holy shit. I’m so sorry.”

“I met with a divorce attorney Monday.” She paused for a moment, carefully weighed her words, then continued. “I don’t know if there were others. But I’m pretty sure you don’t start with a twenty-three-year-old, right? In your own home?”

Logan closed his eyes, then covered his mouth with his hands. When he exhaled, Nicole—who’d been sitting there, nearly unmoving—recoiled.

“What?” she said, pulling back another inch. “Did you know too?”

“Me? How would I have known?”

“But you could’ve guessed, right?” She stood up and began to pace behind him. He rose to his feet and faced her. “That he’d do this to me? That he’d cheat?”

“I barely knew Gabe, I—”

“You should’ve said something! That night, when we were in New York! Or before I left, or … If you knew, Logan, why didn’t you say something? Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I don’t, I … You—”

“I what? I should’ve known?” she said, backing up until her shoulders were square against her front door.

Logan just stood there, mouth open and hands up.

“Is that how you see me? You think I signed up for this? That he was like this when I met him? That he was out of my league? That it was only a matter of time until a guy like him got tired of coming home to a girl like me?”

“No, Nicole! I don’t! And you know it!”

Nicole looked at him.

Logan looked right back.

And then, she crumbled. She took a seat on her stoop and she fell apart while Logan watched on.

He shuffled and stuttered and strained, and then he sat down next to her and hunched his shoulders, bowed his head, and let her cry.

When her tears had slowed and she finally looked up, his hands were fists and his jaw was tight.

“That fucking piece of …” His eyes scrunched closed. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I really shouldn’t have said that.”

Nicole cracked a smile. “What? Were you, like, going to defend my honor?”

“I mean, I could.” He was reanimating: his hands, his shoulders, his face. “I was overexposed to The Princess Bride as a kid and now I have this savior complex, but I’m working on it, because it’s very outdated and it sends a bad message, not just to—”

“Do me a favor and never finish that sentence, okay? Like, ever. It’s very dumb.”

He glowered at her. “We could be in a full-on zombie apocalypse, and you’d literally stop running for your life to remind me I was an idiot, wouldn’t you?”

“Making fun of you is my passion. You know that. It’s my art. It sustains me.”

Logan chuckled. Nicole wiped her face with the sleeve of her sweatshirt and exhaled.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said.

“It was more … adjacent to me, if anything. I’ll be all right.”

She brushed a few grains of sand off the slate. “Why are you so nice to me?”

“I’m nice to everyone,” he said. “You see, growing up, I was but a comically compliant farm boy in the always-misty, majestically verdant kingdom of Flor—”

“Logan! No!”

And then they both sat there, laughing some more, until the twelve inches between them became six and then, once Logan had no more Princess Bride jokes to deliver, he told Nicole that sometimes, when he was sad or confused or couldn’t sleep, he’d rank Pop-Tart flavors until the feelings passed, and Nicole told him there was no way that was true, but it sounded fun, and could they please do it anyway.

And so Logan pulled up the Kellogg’s website on his phone, and Nicole leaned in a little closer, and he scrolled and she scrolled until the six inches between them became two and they’d settled on a toaster pastry hierarchy of their own.

Logan lobbied hard for S’Mores, and Nicole made a solid case for Frosted Strawberry, and they both agreed nothing hit quite like a Brown Sugar Cinnamon.

And when night had dwindled into morning, when it was too late and cold and damp to continue, they said their goodbyes and Nicole walked Logan to his car and she apologized again and he told her not to worry about it, that it was okay, that he understood.

She was almost to her stoop when he called out from the street.

“Hey, Nicole?”

She turned around.

“Just so we’re clear,” he said, “you’re the one who’s out of Gabe’s league.”

Nicole just stood there, staring at him.

And then, after a minute had passed, after she realized she was never going to think of a clever comeback to try and transform what he’d said into something else—into a joke, into nothing—she bit her bottom lip and looked at him a little longer.

And then, when that became borderline ridiculous, she smiled, cracked open her front door, and slipped inside.

Three hours later, Nicole still hadn’t fallen asleep.

She drew a long, hot bath. She read two pages of All The Pretty Horses.

She stood in front of the open refrigerator until it beeped at her.

But mostly, she just lay in her bed, thinking.

Not about Gabe, and not even about the pregnancy, but about Logan.

About how strange it felt, sitting there with him, struggling to get the truth off her chest. About how good it felt—once she’d stopped lashing out at him, once she’d let him in a little—to sit there and move on.

To sit there and have some fun. To, for a moment, not take her dumpster fire of a life so seriously.

And sure, she’d only managed to tell him half the story, but it was a start, right? Now all she had to do was explain Valerie. And how hard could that be? Logan was a nice guy—and a real friend. It wasn’t like he didn’t know she’d been trying to have a kid for years.

What could she possibly have to lose?