Page 64 of The Best Worst Thing

Through the Fog

Minutes later, Nicole was banging on Logan’s front door.

A few lights were on upstairs, and through the screen of his cracked-open kitchen window, the murmur of some retro video game clawed at her quaking heart. Clearly, he was home. But for the first time she could ever remember, he’d closed the door—and locked it.

“Logan! It’s me! Please, can we talk?”

No answer. She tried again and again and again.

“Logan, please? I’m so sorry! I—”

Finally, the door opened. But staring back at her wasn’t Logan. It was Dave, arms crossed and lips tight. A video game controller, clutched in his hand.

“Logan’s in the shower,” he said, pulling the door closed. “I’ll tell him you stopped by.”

“Wait!” Nicole threw her fingers onto the splintering frame. “I just want to talk to him, okay? I made a mistake. He won’t pick up my calls. Please, you don’t understand.”

Dave glanced over his shoulder down Logan’s hallway, then stepped outside and shut the door behind him. His hand, still on the knob.

“I think you should go,” he said.

Nicole folded her arms across her elbows and frowned. “Why do you hate me so much?”

Dave exhaled slowly, then dropped his grip.

“I don’t hate you, Nicole,” he said. “It’s just, Logan’s the closest thing I’ve ever had to a brother.

Since we were kids, we’ve looked out for each other—you know that.

And you know he’s got this giant heart, and that he sees the best in everybody.

But with you, it’s so much more than that.

With you, he doesn’t think. He never has.

So it’s nothing personal, okay? I’m just tired of watching him get crushed.

Put yourself in my shoes for a minute. Would you sign off on that?

Would you want someone like that to keep coming in and out of your best friend’s life? Your sister’s life?”

Nicole winced. “I didn’t … I don’t …” She sat down on the top of the stoop and stared into the crisp noon sky, then craned her neck to face him. “How much do you know?”

“Everything,” he said.

“About this summer? About my life? Or about … about before?”

He tilted his head. Nicole nodded—barely, slowly—then closed her eyes.

“I’m crazy about him,” she said. “You have to know that. I’m not doing this for nothing. I’m not going to hurt him, ever again.”

“Listen,” he said, taking a seat beside her, then setting down the video game controller.

“I know you’ve been given kind of a raw deal.

And I feel for you, I really do. But I just don’t see how you guys are going to do this.

I know you guys are happy—I’ve never seen him this happy.

I’ll give you that. But you know what else I see?

Two people who never got the timing right.

Two people whose lives are headed in completely different directions, who both know, deep down, exactly how this is going to end. ”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But I can’t just walk away. You can understand that, right?”

Dave shook his head. “He’s going to be forty next summer.

He’s forty, and you’re still married, and you’re having a baby in, what, four months?

Don’t you see where I’m coming from? He had this whole life before you showed up.

Plans and goals and things that mattered to him—all of it, in motion.

Then, out of nowhere, you appear and poof, gone.

What happens to all that now? When are you guys going to talk about that?

Where does he fit into this world of yours?

Where do you fit into his? How are you guys going to do this? How are you going to raise this kid?”

“I don’t know,” she said. Hands trembling, she rose to her feet. “But I have to try.”

Nicole knocked softly on the closed door to Logan’s upstairs bathroom, then stepped inside without bothering to wait for the reply that never came.

Steam—hot, thick, and tired—filled the room, cloaking every surface: the sweating walls, the clouded mirrors, the rickety panes of fogged-up glass that kept Nicole from laying eyes on the only thing in this world she wanted to see.

The shower kept running. The steam kept swirling. Nicole’s aching heart kept racing.

“Logan, I’m so sorry.”

Silence.

“Please, can we just talk?”

More quiet. She took a step closer, her whole body shaking. Her heart, finally, breaking. Not quite sure what it might do next, if he didn’t say something. If he didn’t let her make this right.

“You can’t do this to me anymore,” he said after a minute.

His voice was stripped, but still so, so him.

Logan, but joyless. “You can’t let me in, then throw me out.

You can’t look at me the way you do, then just run away when things get hard.

I don’t deserve it. It doesn’t work for me. Not anymore.”

“I know.” Nicole shriveled onto the tile floor and ran her finger along a cracking grout line. She pushed her head against the wall and tried not to cry. “I’m sorry.”

He exhaled. “All this stuff between you and Gabe, it’s none of my business.

I can live with that. I know what I signed up for.

But have you really not filed for divorce?

Because one minute, everything’s perfect, and the next thing I know, your husband’s telling me that you’re still a family, and you’re saying you can’t do this.

And I trust you, I really do, but you have to reassure me on this one.

You have to tell me that your marriage is over. ”

“I can’t get a divorce,” she said.

“What?”

“I have to wait. It could be years. I could lose custody of the baby. The surrogacy laws in Virginia, they’re really complicated.

If I leave him now, then my name might not be on my child’s birth certificate, and there’s nothing I can do about it.

Because I can’t even get pregnant right.

Because my husband owns me. Because my life is so small, doctors and attorneys and judges and other people’s mothers get to tell me how to live it.

And for way too long, I’ve just listened.

And I never told you any of this because … ”

Nicole had untied her shoes, peeled off her socks. Slid off her jeans, her underwear, everything. She stepped into the shower, shivering. Logan’s arms were crossed and his shoulders, drooped.

“… because it’s humiliating. Because I wanted you to give me a chance. Because I didn’t need to give you a hundred more reasons why I wasn’t worth the trouble. And because you’ve always looked at me like I was perfect, and the truth is, I’m not even close.”

He shut his eyes. Water, still falling. Steam, still swirling.

She stood there, a foot from him, in pieces.

Waiting for him to do something, to say something.

To reach out and hold her. Kiss her. Forgive her.

Tell her everything was okay. Instead, he took a long, strained inhale, then placed two fingers on her wrist. Nicole held her breath as he opened his eyes.

“What is happening to you is beyond fucked-up,” he said. “I can’t imagine how trapped you feel. But this is the kind of stuff I need to know. This is the kind of stuff we really need to start talking about.”

“I wanted to, I swear. But I’m pathetic, okay? I’m terrified and I’m ashamed and I’m angry. And I’m scared that when you really get to know me, when we finally talk about the future, you’re going to realize that I’m nothing special. That I’m just damaged goods.”

He flinched. “What have I ever done,” he said, “to make you think I needed you to be anything other than exactly who you are?”

“I … I don’t know.”

“You are pushing me away. It has to stop.”

She nodded, taking a step closer. And then, through the fog, she began to trace him.

Like muscle memory, her fingers were back on his chest, charting him, studying him, slipping across his skin, over and over again, until finally, he exhaled.

Until finally, he relaxed. He softened his shoulders, leaned toward her, and dropped his hands around the small of her back.

She buried her head into his chest and counted the beats of his heart as he pushed his nose into her neck.

She counted them like she had in the parking lot of that diner—like she wasn’t sure how many more of them she had left.

“Listen to me,” he said. “Whatever story you’ve got in your head, you have it upside down.

All those years, I just wanted to buy you a drink.

Take you to dinner, make you laugh, talk to you for as long as I possibly could, then do it again and again until I knew every annoying, horrible, deal-breaking thing about you.

All I wanted was a chance to do this. And I’d rather fight with you ten times a day than go back to the way things were.

I wanted you off that pedestal more than anything.

So stop clinging to it, okay? We don’t need it anymore. ”

“But that first night, in your room … You told me I was perfect a million times. You—”

“Because I’m crazy about you! Because you are perfect for me! Because you are everything I have ever wanted!” He pulled her closer; his eyes, stressed and strained.

Nicole’s whole body ached. This was exactly where she wanted to be. This was exactly what she wanted to hear. Why was it so hard to just stand there and believe him? To take him for his word? To spit out the big, scary thing that had become clearer and clearer to her with every passing day?

“Tell me you know that,” he said. “Tell me you know how good this is.”

“I know. I really do know.”

“I don’t have a time machine, Nicole. I can’t give you the do-over you want.

Can’t give you back your twenties, or make it so you never left New York, never married Gabe, never left your job.

Can’t fix the hell that you went through, or the doctors or lawyers or people you loved who let you down.

But I can be here with you now. And I can tell you with every bone in my body that I am absolutely, one hundred percent all in.

That I am not scared. That I would pick whatever absurd thing we’ve got over anything else, every single time. ” He cupped her face. “Can you?”

Nicole hesitated. She’d tried to hide it, but she’d paused, and she’d taken a step back, and Logan had seen it. He’d seen it all.

“Nic?” he said again. “Can you?”

She closed her eyes. She was shuddering. She gulped the lump in her throat away.

“I don’t think I want more children,” she said.

“I can’t do it again—fight my body. Spend three, four, five more years like that.

I’m finally happy. I’m finally almost okay.

Almost myself again, and …” Another swallow.

She opened her eyes. “If you want that, I would understand. I wouldn’t be hurt.

But we shouldn’t do this anymore. If you want something else for your life, we have to stop this now. ”

“I know,” he said. “This isn’t a surprise to me, Nicole. I saw you then, and I see you now. And it’s okay. I’m okay. I want this. I want you.”

She breathed. “Are you sure?”

“I’m so sure. Besides, kids hate me. It’s just this energy I give off—I’m too serious.”

She laughed through a frown. “It’s not a joke, Logan. I really am done. If you’re not sure, we shouldn’t be together.”

He dropped his forehead against hers. “You,” he said, “are the one thing I’m sure about.”

Her lips curled into a smile. A stupid, giant, painfully reflexive smile. She stepped into him, and he pulled her completely into his arms.

“Come to Seattle,” he said. “After you go home for Thanksgiving. Come for the weekend—come meet my family. And then we can figure the rest of this out. We can make a plan for you and what you want for the baby. For me and my work stuff. For everything, okay?”

Nicole nodded. Their bodies were pressed against each other’s, and water was falling everywhere.

“Are there any more secrets we need to get out in the open before I kiss you?” he said.

Nicole smirked. “Only that I’ve kind of always wanted to meet your mom.”

“I know,” he said, laughing, kissing her, twisting his hands into her hair, sliding them down her soap-slicked spine, then lifting her hips until she was tangled around him, lips parted, nodding.

Her inner thighs, coaxing him into her, begging for him.

Begging for contact. He turned off the water, then carried her into his room and laid her down on his unmade bed, dripping wet.

When he finally slid inside of her, hard and soft and all hers, Nicole began to cry.

“I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “I can’t lose you again.”

He pulled her closer. She could taste her tears on his lips.

“You won’t.”