Page 47 of The Best Worst Thing

Nicole nodded, then flipped through the handbook some more while Logan leaned back, nursed his beer, and watched her study.

The game carried on. Most of the guys headed downstairs to fight.

Two of Logan’s friends almost died, although José—who really was quite the healer—did everything he could to nurse them back to health.

Logan, as his buddies dealt with the monster in the dungeon, raced to the top of the castle only to discover that those shimmering, verdant beams belonged not to the Orb of Dragonkind but the Orb of Slope Finding—a notoriously useless magic item that was, for all intents and purposes, a glorified picture hanging level.

And Nicole—who had immediately researched that Golden Canary Figurine of Wondrous Power everyone kept talking about—spent her evening in the woods constructing a carriage with the remnants of an abandoned trailside pastry shop that, according to Logan, had been run by two beady-eyed orphans with nervous voices and a reputation for serving delicious, powerful pies that, one-third of the time, also killed you.

“What are you building that for?” he said, leaning into her.

She bumped his knee under the table. “I figure, if this place goes up in flames, we’d need a way through the forest. It’s very dry, you know.

Full of kindle—not a good situation, and Dave keeps reminding us, so feels like it could definitely happen.

If things go south, I thought maybe we could get Ian to use his Canary and we could all Trojan horse it the hell out of here. ”

“You fucking nerd! You’re a natural! You love it!”

“Screw you. I only like it very much.”

By the time play had wound down—Miles in a coma, J.P.

ransacking a vault, Glen bewitching that nine-eyed basement monster into a pony he could ride around the countryside until Dave told him otherwise—Nicole was a little tipsy, cozied up in Logan’s lap, and waving her arms in the air, animatedly discussing C.S.

Lewis with a few of Logan’s lingering friends.

Near midnight, once the empty beer bottles had been cleared and the leftover boxes of pizza had been claimed and Logan’s furniture was back where it belonged, the house was quiet.

Nicole was standing in the kitchen, sealing shut half-eaten bags of potato chips with a giant roll of packing tape when Logan, who’d been taking out the trash, came in through the front door.

He looked at her, and then, for a moment, his face fell.

He said nothing. He just stood there until, eventually, his frown gave way to a weak and quiet smile. He walked toward her.

“I really like having you here,” he said.

“At your Game of Thrones cosplay convention?”

Logan shook his head as Nicole settled into his arms. “Just … around. Just, I don’t know.”

She nodded, taking him in. Thirty-nine, and so charming, and so adorable, and so kind.

And still, here he was, all alone. She was about to touch his face, ask him how this could’ve happened, how he, of all people, wound up the guy cleaning up by himself at the end of the night, and how many hearts he must’ve broken over the past twenty years, and who might’ve been dumb enough to have broken his, when he kissed her.

“You want to talk about what happened today?” he said.

Nicole shrugged, still in his embrace as he lifted her onto his counter. She shook off the residual daze of that little moment— of Logan, showing his hand. Showing her something that looked a whole lot like loneliness.

“Honestly,” she said, shelving the thought. Filing the rest of it away for later. “There’s nothing to talk about. Gabe’s mom was horrible to me, that’s all. I’m used to it. And it’s over now. Really, I think I just needed to get out of my house and out of my head. So, thank you.”

He nodded. “Hey, so listen. I think I have to go straight to New York on Monday night, after I’m done in Chicago.”

“Really? I thought you were supposed to have a light month.”

“Yeah, well, not anymore. I’ll be there for at least a week. Quentin is making them run with his creative. My two-day visit to NorCal could’ve been an email that said no in giant red letters.”

Nicole tightened her swinging legs around him. “You can’t pitch this thing, though, right? It’s a death wish, I thought.”

“That’s why I’m going,” he said. “To make sure half our employees don’t quit—and to make sure whatever campaign they throw together isn’t strong enough to bring to that meeting.”

“So you’re flying all the way across the country to distract people?”

“Isn’t that all you think I do, anyway?”

She laughed as he grabbed her hands.

“Why don’t you come?” he said. “For a day or two, before you leave for Virginia? I can still do dinner—late, probably, but I’ve got to eat eventually. You can work during the day or do whatever you want. I’ve got a ton of miles.”

“Next time, for sure,” she said. “But if you’re not coming back Monday, I think I’ll just go to Val’s early. She could really use the help around the house, and we have so much to do to get ready for our recording. Also, I’d need my own room. Because you won’t fuck me. So there’s that.”

He raised an eyebrow, then pulled back the neck of her shirt to kiss her collarbone. When his mouth met her shoulder, he fingered the emerald strap of her bathing suit. His eyes went wide.

“What now?” she said.

“Put your shoes on,” he said, scooping her off the counter. “We’re going to end your bad day the best way I know how.”

Logan Milgram jumped into the Pacific Ocean like it was a kiddie pool. That first shriek, pure joy.

“Speyer! Get in here!”

“No way!” she said, laughing, standing a few feet back from the shoreline.

She dug her toes into the cool, soft sand as Logan dove under another crashing wave.

When he emerged, he was maybe twenty feet out, bobbing up and down as the moonlight glimmered off the ocean’s surface, noisy and navy and white-capped.

His hair was soaked. His shoulders, perfect.

“Come on!” he said. “Once you get used to it, it’ll feel amazing, I promise!”

“I’ve lived here for nine years, asshole! The Pacific has never been pleasant, not even once! Do not lie to me!”

He paddled halfway toward her, head above water, then stood up and pushed his sopping wet hair out of his eyes and over his forehead, which … Mari was right all along, wasn’t she? He really was summer camp hot, just on a twenty-five-year delay.

“Let me get this straight,” he said. “You’ll risk getting us caught in a blizzard in New York City for no reason, but you won’t go swimming with me? In Los Angeles? In August?”

“Sounds about right,” Nicole said as she plopped onto one of the towels Logan had grabbed from his downstairs bathroom before they darted out the door.

He’d also pulled on a pair of swim trunks that’d been hang-drying on his balcony since at least last weekend, when they picked this thing back up again.

“But I’m lonely!” he said.

“There are sharks!” she said.

Logan disappeared underwater for a bit. When he came up, he dramatically gasped for air. “Just checked!” Another ridiculous gasp. “No sharks!”

Nicole laughed, rising to her feet. She took a few tiny steps closer to him and let her toes skim the cool, silky shoreline. When a wave crashed up to her ankles, ice flew through her body, sending goose bumps across her shivering skin.

“Holy shit! It’s so cold! It’s even worse than I remembered!”

Logan scoffed, then paddled toward her, eyes wide. At once, she leaped backward, already squealing as he slunk through the ocean’s shallowest edge on his hands and knees.

“Don’t you fucking dare, Logan! Don’t even touch me. I swear to god!”

“Oh, shut up,” he said, standing now, and striding toward her. Water dripped down his body in clear, cold drops Nicole could taste from three or four feet away. “We both know you’re going in.”

And though she continued to protest, her every wail was in vain because Logan was already peeling off her shirt, yanking down her shorts, and wrapping his freezing arms around her thrashing body as she laughed and cursed and cried out his name.

And then, after a brief pause to kiss her—his cold lips on her warm tongue—he carried her into the ocean like a rolled-up carpet, his every step bringing her that much closer to the Pacific’s loud, icy surface.

“Logan! I hate it, I—”

“Then I’m sorry for what I’m about to do,” he said, twisting her body in one swift motion until she was standing waist-deep in the freezing ocean, screaming bloody murder. Her skin prickled and her veins ached.

“Logan! Fuck!” She threw her arms around her chest. “It’s horrible!”

He smiled, then pulled her under his arm and peered out at the sea. “Big one’s coming. Hold your breath, close your eyes, and dive under it.”

“Not happening.”

He splashed her. She splashed him back. Also, yelled.

“It’s not actually big,” he said. “Maybe three feet. Just try it, okay? Trust me.”

Nicole was about to protest—about to race back to the sand and steal both their towels and bundle herself up—when she decided that, at the very least, she could do this one silly thing.

That, at the very least, she could shut her mouth and close her eyes and try to care a little less about the dumb, rigid rules that had never managed to keep her safe, anyway.

And so she did. She watched and she waited and she held her breath and she closed her eyes and she heard the wave roll itself back and roar itself forward and when it came for her, rough and loud and unstoppable, she simply slipped beneath it, and the whole world warped into a quiet, soft, dizzying nothingness—an endless sea of deep, wavy echoes that swirled from miles below the surface, flooding her floating limbs and her wild lungs and her wide open wounds.

And for those ten-or-so fleeting, infinite seconds, she did not think or wonder or worry.

She did not care or plan or panic. She was—for the first time, maybe ever—weightless.

And when she came up for air, at least for a little while longer, she stayed that way.

“How do you feel?” Logan said, pushing the hair out of her eyes as she hooked her legs around his waist. Her teeth, chattering. Her heart, racing. Every screaming inch of her, alive.

“Brand-new.”

He smiled, then turned them so she was facing the shoreline.

God, it was beautiful, wasn’t it? Los Angeles and its flickering, crowded hills—dense and old and new, sloping down toward an empty shore where the sand was cool and gray and the sky stretched on forever, a deep, dusty indigo dotted with twinkling stars.

The moon, nearly full, hanging low and bright, illuminating what the city lights could not—hushed fishing piers, unmanned lifeguard stations, and this little slice of the California coast that, just for tonight, belonged only to them.

How had she missed it? How had it taken her so long to love this stupid town?

“Logan?” she said.

He looked right at her. “Yeah?”

“What are we doing?”

He traced her cheekbone, then pulled her closer.

“Exactly what you think we’re doing.”

Nicole nodded and took a deep breath.

And then—still weightless—she kissed him.