Page 6 of The Best Worst Thing

A Little Inkling

Nicole stumbled onto Logan Milgram’s spinning stoop, then dragged her fuzzy fingertips along the chipped green paint of his front door. For, like, a very long time. Mari—still in her work clothes and chugging tequila out of a travel mug—poked her head out from behind a shrub.

“Ring the bell, Nic!”

Nicole shushed her, then closed her eyes. She breathed in, then breathed out. She begged her brain to tell her hand to press the button, but nothing happened. Her arm just hung there, hovering and heavy, a few inches from the rusting buzzer.

“Nicole! Just do it!”

“Stop rushing me! I’m thinking!”

Back at Mari’s, this little caper had been the perfect distraction.

It had been fun, really, rifling through the pile of Nicole’s clothes that had accumulated at Mari’s over the years, searching for the skimpiest pair of cutoffs they could find, then darting out the door, dying of laughter.

But here? Now? Standing in front of Logan’s apartment?

This was batshit crazy. And sure, Nicole was wasted.

But she wasn’t drunk enough for this. This just wasn’t her.

And so, swaying, she steadied her hand onto the edge of Logan’s salt-roughened, slightly overflowing mailbox, took one last swirling glance at the wrought-iron “2” affixed to his front door, then clumsily began to turn away.

That was when it happened.

It happened so, so fast.

His keys tumbled to the concrete.

Her arms fell to her sides.

They just stood there, staring at each other.

Mouths open, bodies frozen.

Nicole’s heart, racing.

Logan’s eyes, wide.

His grip, suddenly slack against the handle of his suitcase.

“N-Nicole?”

She couldn’t say a word.

She couldn’t move a muscle.

“What are you doing here?” he said. “Are … are you okay?”

Nicole and Logan hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in over two years.

Not since her last day at Porter Sloane.

It was where she’d met Mari too. But it was different with Logan.

As chatty as he and Nicole had been, as friendly as they’d become, they had no relationship outside of work.

Two years—two years and two months had gone by—and nothing.

Nicole hadn’t so much as taken a peek at his LinkedIn profile.

They were strangers.

Except now, Nicole was standing at his door, drunk. Still not a mother, and maybe not anyone’s wife anymore.

Finally, she spoke.

“I kind of really have to pee.”

He laughed, and that was all it took. He was, in an instant, exactly as she remembered him: raising an eyebrow and shaking his head, that signature smirk of his smacked across his scruffy face.

“Nicole Speyer, have you been drinking? On a school night?”

“Uh-huh.”

“In excess?”

“It’s been a while.”

“Yeah.” He came a couple of steps closer. Nicole’s breath hitched. “I can see that.”

She gulped. If she’d been sober, she’d have already run away. But she was not. So instead, she took him in very carefully—his navy trousers, his untucked dress shirt, his forearms—and started rambling.

“How was your trip? You’re always traveling. Where’d you go? I like your plant.”

“Um, Chicago?” He cocked his head, then briefly glanced at a half-dead fern that, upon further inspection, probably belonged to the unit next door. “Hey, do you, are you—”

“Oh, I love Chicago! It’s so nice there. I don’t know why more people don’t live there. They should. It’s really cold, though. It’s the lakes, you know? And the snow is so cold. Can you believe people live north of there? There’s a whole other country above it! It’s …”

He looked at her—head still tilted, brow still raised—and scratched his neck. “Do you want to come in? Maybe have a cup of coffee?”

Nicole nodded. Made some sort of strange little yelp. Logan smirked a second time, then picked up his keys, unlocked the door, flicked on the lights, and pointed Nicole to the bathroom. By the time she wandered into his kitchen, he’d already put on a pot of coffee.

“Have a seat, you lush.”

Nicole, again with the weird noise, climbed onto a counter stool while he rinsed out a mug at the sink.

Logan’s place was nothing fancy. A town house, clean enough, but certainly not tidy.

It was lived in, but by a childless adult who traveled four or five times a month.

A bachelor pad, really. A scuffed-up coffee table, an old gray couch, a too-big TV.

Creaky wood floors, carpeted stairs, a bright orange mountain bike in the hallway. Nicole decided she kind of liked it.

“Did you get to have any pizza?” she said.

“What?”

“In Chicago. The pizza is so good. I haven’t eaten cheese in two years. Isn’t that crazy? We should go sometime, just like, to eat …” The words kept coming out. They made no sense. And yet, Nicole continued to say them. “Just for fun or something. I mean, like, for pizza.”

“All right,” he said, pulling a rolled-up paper bag out of his freezer. It was possible he’d also blinked a few extra times, but who could say for sure? Everything was a bit upside down. “I think we should get you some toast. Immediately.”

“I think I would like to die instead, please.”

“Before or after our trip to Chicago?”

Nicole dropped her face into her hands and groaned. When she finally looked up, Logan’s toaster was glowing, and he was grinning like an idiot, staring directly into his fridge.

“So.” He pulled out a Red Stripe and cracked it open. “You get separated from the group at a bachelorette party? Get lost on the way home from your tennis club?”

“Is that what you think of me?”

“Obviously not.”

Nicole—now folding a take-out menu she’d found on his cluttered countertop into a not-describable polygon—tried to figure out what he’d meant by that, but her brain wasn’t really working tonight.

By the time she’d formed half a coherent thought, Logan had already made a few minutes of small talk, poured her a cup of coffee, then slid a plate her way.

On it, the strangest-looking bagel imaginable.

“Why is this purple? Is that mold?”

“It’s blueberry! I gave you the best one!”

“No, that doesn’t make any sense. Who would put fruit in a bagel? I mean, cinnamon raisin, fine, but even then, that’s a dessert bagel! This is … how do you put lox on this? Where did you get this? Why would you ever serve this to a Jewish person?”

“Nicole,” he said, pushing himself onto the counter a few feet away.

His legs dangled as he nursed his beer. “I’ve been very sick.

My pediatrician told me the Flintstones Vitamins weren’t cutting it anymore, that I really needed to start eating better.

This is how I get my fruit in, okay? Show some respect. ”

Nicole snickered, then took a sip of her coffee. It was terrible.

“What are you, four?”

“Thirty-nine, actually.” He bit into his bagel. “Last week.”

“Disgusting.”

“Well, we can’t all age like you, Miss Missouri.”

Nicole could barely keep a straight face. God, had she missed this. Just talking about nothing. About left-handed scissors and Greek mythology and street meat.

“It was one pageant! It was the Midwest! I was seven! I didn’t even place!”

“Probably the brown hair. And the attitude.”

“I hate you,” she said. “You’re very stupid, and your coffee is bad, and I hate you.”

Logan smiled right at her. Big, bright, ridiculous.

Nicole would never admit it, but he’d always looked good to her.

Since day one. He was no Gabe, of course.

Nobody was. But there was something about Logan.

Tall, with dirty-blond hair—a few streaks almost platinum from too much sun.

A smattering of freckles. Warm brown eyes.

That easy, forgotten five o’clock shadow.

A body kept long and lean from years of distance running.

You know, summer camp hot. Eagle Scout hot.

“So,” he said, fiddling with the rim of his beer bottle. “Now that I’ve got you talking, you want to tell me what you’re doing here?”

“Nope.”

“Seriously? You’re not going to tell me anything? You’re just going to sit here and eat my food and make fun of me until I throw you out?”

“Basically, yeah. That all right?”

He laughed, nodding, but then he looked at her again. He really, really looked at her. His smiling face grew serious. “You’ve really been doing nothing? For two years? You never … ?”

Nicole stared at her bagel. Logan winced.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just assumed.”

Nicole shrugged, poking at a petrified blueberry. When she finally glanced back up, he was staring right at her ring. It had lasted only a split second. Blink, and she’d have missed it. But she had not.

“I, um …”

Her jaw was heavy. She was fighting back tears.

Usually, she was good at that. But she was so drunk.

She was so tired. She really didn’t want to fall apart in front of Logan.

Last time she’d done that—in that hallway, what, almost three years ago?

—had been one of the worst days of her life.

He didn’t need to see her like that again.

“Nicole?” he said. “What’s going on? Why are you here? Is something wrong?”

Nicole was entirely ready to make up a ridiculous story. But instead, the truth tumbled out of her.

“I think my marriage ended tonight.”

Logan’s mouth fell open. For a moment, there was silence. And then he looked at her, and—like he always had, whenever anything bad happened—he hung his head.

“I’m so sorry.”

They just sat there for a minute, doing nothing. Saying nothing. Nicole pushed her mug around. Logan peeled the label off his beer. Both of them, eyes down.

Eventually, Logan slid off the counter, asked Nicole if she was familiar with the time-honored tradition of eating her feelings, then tossed a pint of ice cream and a giant spoon her way.

She laughed, digging right in as he articulated the many vulnerabilities of the Mariners bullpen, caught her up on all the latest office drama, and went on a very specific diatribe against cantaloupe.

And by the time Nicole had stumbled back into her big empty house and crawled into her cold, lonely bed, she had a little inkling that Mari was right.

That Logan Milgram was lying to her.

And that he wasn’t sorry.

He wasn’t sorry at all.