Page 26

CHAPTER 26

LOGAN

R ose stomps ahead of me, her hands balled up at her sides. Her purse has some black leather tassels that jiggle far too happily with every step—jarring against her body language.

She’s absolutely fuming and I don’t blame her. What my parents said is despicable, just like they are.

And that’s my problem—I’m freaking exhausted. I knew they were going to muck this night up at some point, but I wish they had just shat on me and only on me.

I wish I had figured a better plan to keep Rosalina away from them, but telling them that she and I are only dating for publicity would’ve got them yapping even harder. And the next one to find out would’ve been their golden son, and then Lewis would have told the whole world.

The one who would’ve got the short end of that stick is Rose because that’s just how shitty the world is to women, whereas I’d have been labeled a team player, a business man or whatever.

I run both hands through my hair and tug, mulling over what I could’ve done differently. But the core of it is that I shouldn’t have gotten involved with Rose at all. I should’ve just let her figure out how to do her job without me. I need to learn my damn lesson and understand that the best thing I can do for other people is not get involved—to be alone—and that way no one else has to be subjected to my horrible family.

“Why are you standing all the way there?”

I lift my head. Rose watches me from the corner across the street, eyebrows tight and eyes still flashing thunder. She motions at me to follow her.

Swallowing hard, I check the street both ways and cross to join her. I squeeze my jaws tight, trying to not let her figure out that I’m freaking out, that breathing is starting to get harder and that my vision’s blurring.

The last damn thing I want is to have a panic attack in front of her.

Her angry eyes roam over my face. I use all my willpower to appear calm even as I struggle to breathe properly. “Follow me closely,” she says through gritted teeth, and I manage to jerk my face in a nod.

I focus on her hair. That’s it.

I know I should be more mindful of our surroundings because downtown at night can get dicey in areas, and I need to make sure she at least gets home physically safe. But all I can manage is to put one foot in front of another, breathe, and look at the one curl that cascades over the rest and bounces the most while she walks.

Every so often, she glances over her shoulder to make sure I’m following. I got the message, though, and I make sure the distance between us is reasonable.

Somehow that little curl is enough to keep me from the edge.

I finally snap out of it when she stops us at a red light and I have no choice but to stand beside her and take in my surroundings. We have approached the part of downtown with the most traffic, pedestrian and vehicular alike. Some guy on Rose’s other side is eying her funny and I make a point of staring at him until he realizes that she’s not alone.

After clearing my throat several times, I ask her, “Where are we going?”

“To eat,” she responds in what is basically a grunt.

“You’re angry… yet you can eat?” Every word comes out sluggish, almost like I’m drunk. If she notices it, she doesn’t remark on it.

Rather, her brow darkens even further. “Yes. Can’t you?”

“I can.” I stuff my hands in my pockets.

The light turns green and I follow her for another block until a food truck appears in the distance. I recognize the flag that decorates the signage at the top—there are plenty of Venezuelan players in the majors that I recognize it. In fact, last year’s MVP was the mega slugger Miguel Machado—Venezuelan. And so is Rose.

We approach the line and she asks, “You eat about three times what I eat, right?”

I travel back in time to the night we ate at my Korean spot and that math checks out. It’s kind of funny that she noticed. “Yeah,” I say, trailing the word off.

“Any allergies or intolerances?”

The fact that she’s asking such a polite question while her pretty face is still scrunched up in severe anger does something to my chest. Something snaps, something that had me as tightly wound as a spring, and suddenly I can breathe easier, my shoulders relax and so does my jaw.

“Well?” she presses.

I blink hard. Run my tongue across my lips. What the hell just happened?

“None. I could eat an elephant,” I respond with a voice that doesn’t sound mine.

“Great.” It almost sounds sarcastic. She points to the side. “I’ll order the food and you find us a table.”

“Rose, I—” I reach for my pocket with jerky movements. “I should get the food. It’s the least I should?—”

She stops me by just raising her palm. “Trust me, you’re getting a fair bargain. The hardest part is finding where to sit.”

“Fine.”

I leave her to queue up and head over to the oversee the expanse of plastic tables and chairs. This food truck must be really popular because the place is packed, forcing me to peek into how far along people are into their meals to guesstimate how much longer they might take.

“Logan Kim?”

My head whips to the source of the question. A guy gets up from his seat nearby, grinning up at me in that way that fans have when they spot one of their favorite players. I unfurl my arms to adopt the more friendly postures I had to learn after fans kept complaining online that I was a jerk. I still am, I just try to mask it better.

“Hey, yeah,” I say in a calm voice, hopefully denoting openness.

“Whoa. Guys, this is the best catcher in the world right now,” he says to his friends congregated around two tables that are stuck together.

I’m not the best catcher in the world, just the top All-Star catcher right now. But there’s no need to correct an enthusiastic fan who also seems a bit tipsy.

“For real?” one of the friends asks, completely surprised. Clearly not a baseball fan.

Another one, a woman, also gets up. “Wow, can we get a selfie?”

“Uh, sure,” I say.

Next thing, I’m surrounded by a bunch of strangers as one of them angles a cellphone camera to snap a few selfies. I do my best to smile but I’m completely overwhelmed. The bodies of a bunch of strangers sticking to me isn’t my idea of fun after a rollercoaster of a night.

Suddenly, like drawn by a magnet, my sight travels the distance to spot Rose as she approaches. She tilts her head at me and I don’t know how, but I can read her mind from clear across the tables—and she’s asking me if I’m okay.

I hesitate. I don’t want to put her on the spot again, but I am not okay. I am so not freaking okay. I was on the mend until these people surrounded me and now I’m regressing, my lungs constricting, my jaw tightening.

So I take a leap of faith and I answer back with a minuscule shake of my head.

Rose immediately picks up the pace. When she’s close enough, she calls out, “Babe, are there no tables?”

There’s the babe again. Instead of cringing, I fling it right back. “Sorry, babe.” To the fans surrounding me, I say, “Excuse me, I have to get back to my girlfriend.”

The woman from earlier who didn’t seem to recognize me gasps. “Wait, I have definitely seen you somewhere.”

“Oh, hi.” Rose gives a little wave. “I’m the baseballer’s girlfriend.”

I swallow hard. If only.

No, I can’t go down that path.

What the hell is happening to me?

“That’s right! I saw you on TikTok.” The woman snaps her fingers.

Slowly, with careful movements, I extricate myself from the mass of people—but right as I think I’m free, a hand stops me.

“Take our table,” the original guy says to me, and he’s the one who stops me. “We were almost done anyway.”

“I couldn’t—” He cuts me off.

“No seriously, we’re good.” The dude grins. “We’re actually running late to hit the club.”

“Then uh, thanks.”

After much shuffling, which includes them collecting all the debris on the tables and pulling them apart again, Rose and I finally take seats across from each other. She dumps her purse on her lap and scoots closer. “Thank you for your face,” she says out of the blue.

“Huh?”

“It’s what got us the table.”

I lean back on the flimsy plastic chair and somehow manage to say, “You’re welcome, babe .”

Her eyes narrow slightly but for a long moment, she doesn’t say anything. All she does is stare at me like this is how she makes a living, forcing me to be more self conscious about my facial expression than usual.

But no matter how well I mask, there’s no erasing the shitty night we’ve gone through. Or that it’s all my fault.

“I’m sorry—” I start saying, my chest deflating after releasing the apology that I had bottled up.

But she interrupts with, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I did tell you.” I scratch my head. “My parents are horrible people and I didn’t want you to?—”

“Not that.” She waves her hand. “About your birthday. Is it really today?”

I jump a little like I just got zapped by electricity. “I—Yes. It is.”

Rose leans over the table, eyes bulging. “Are you freaking…” She trails off, switching to a string of Spanish I can’t dream to comprehend. After shaking her head hard, she returns to using the one language we have in common. “Don’t you think your girlfriend should know when your birthday is?”

“Is that really what matters out of everything that was said tonight?”

“Yes!” She’s vehement about it too. “Who cares about the other crap? This is the one thing that really mattered today and I didn’t even know.” She drops her face in her hands. “I should’ve looked you up on Wikipedia.”

Speaking of, I could probably be the picture on the Wikipedia entry for confusion . “Rose, it’s not a big deal. I don’t care about my birthday.”

“Well, I do. Birthdays are a big deal to me.” She presses her lips tight.

Right then, a guy wearing a T-shirt that matches the decoration of the food truck approaches, his arms loaded up with what looks like baskets and baskets of food. He seems jittery, like he’s permanently in a hurry. Tossing a quick greeting at us, he starts placing the plastic baskets on the little table. Rose and I have to make room for him to fit everything. A moment later he returns with two plastic cups filled with an iced brown drink that I don’t recognize. It’s thicker than tea and has no gas bubbles.

I don’t know where to even start. Each basket has a different dish that I don’t recognize, and I know that different cuisines have different eating protocols. I cave and ask, “How do I eat?”

“This one you’ll need fork and knife for,” she points at the big thing that looks like a sandwich but clearly isn’t. “The rest you eat with your hands, or if you don’t want to get them greasy you can use a napkin like I do.”

She picks up a stuffed round thing and wraps it in a bunch of napkins before taking an enormous bite out of it. Her cheeks bulge like a squirrel’s as she eats and it’s…

Adorable.

I forcefully clear my throat and go for the plastic fork and knife in the basket of the sandwich-look-alike. Cutting up a piece reveals more food inside than any sandwich I’ve seen in my life, and when I put the morsel in my mouth I’m punched by way more flavors than I expected. And they’re all overwhelmingly so delicious that I am healed.

A moan tears out of my throat.

Rose pauses from munching. After a moment she smirks and speaks with her mouth full, “Good, isn’t it?”

“Amazing,” I return, also with my mouth full.

There’s no need for conversation after that. I appreciate that Rose doesn’t judge me for scarfing down food like a ravenous beast, and that she’s actually doing the same. What seemed like a lot of food dwindles down to nothing, and all I have left is to sip from the sweet, lemony brown drink to wash down all the fried food. This is way better than the overpriced steak we were going to eat back at the fancy place, and I don’t care if I pay consequences for eating fried stuff tomorrow. I’ll consider this my cheat day for the month.

Sighing, I lean back to stretch my stomach and she does the same, except she massages hers. “Do you have room for dessert?” she asks.

I almost choke. Somehow I manage not to. “Uh, not really.”

“Well, make room.”

My eyebrows rise. “Bossy.”

“Any issues with that?” she asks in a deadpan.

“None,” I answer in all honesty.

“Good, I don’t like to pretend that I’m nicer than I really am.”

That tears a grin out of me—despite the absolute garbage of a night. “That’s at least not something you have to pretend with me.”

“It’s weird,” Rose says softly, those searching eyes of hers digging into mine. “I’ve always known that. You’re a no nonsense kind of guy. Yet I couldn’t understand why every so often you shut down and hide behind a mask. Until now.”

Well, shit. That makes all the amusement I was feeling evaporate in record time.

“Are you going to let me apologize now?” I fold my arms tight enough that the muscles bulge, and they catch her attention for a second.

It doesn’t break her, though. She shakes her head. “You’re not the one who should apologize. You’re not your parents.” She has no idea how that single sentence is making my head reel. “Unfortunately I have the feeling that they never will.”

“You’re not wrong,” I say slowly, my voice choked up.

“I’m the one who’s sorry.” She huffs, her lips twisting in annoyance like they did on the walk over.

“What the hell for?” It takes a lot of effort to not scream in outrage, but that would get too many eyes on us.

“I should have defended you.”

It’s almost offensive how the people of a nearby table burst out laughing, a car honks down the road, and some dog barks on the park across the food truck. The voices of the truck workers reach over the noise of the customers as they yell food orders at each other. In the distance, someone’s blaring reggaeton from their speakers.

That’s all too ordinary of a backdrop against the wildest words I’ve ever heard in my life.

“I’m sorry, what?” I turn my head slightly to hear better.

“I can’t stop thinking about how I only stood up for myself and you ”—here she grits her teeth—“also defended me. But not yourself. What the hell, Logan?”

I am stunned. This is the second time she completely robs me of the ability of speech, and I don’t recall anyone else doing that in my life.

“Why…” She smacks a delicate fist on the plastic table, making the empty baskets jump. “Why did I only realize that after we left?”

“Wait, wait.” I run a hand down my face, wishing I could scratch myself all over because I’m so uncomfortable in my own skin. “Is this what you were stewing about this whole time?”

“Yes,” she hisses. “I’m a terrible person. All I did was think about myself and?—”

I bark a laugh.

Eyes turn to me.

“You’re shitting me, right?” I know I’ve finally lost it because I’m still laughing, and because now she’s the one who can’t speak. “You really think a terrible person would even realize that? They’d suck on purpose , just like my parents.”

“But—”

“Rose. You defended yourself because you were being wronged, and I did the same because I wasn’t the one who was getting thinly veiled racist insults thrown my way.”

“You were also being mistreated. Don’t think I didn’t notice how everything that came out of their mouths was to put you down one way or another.”

“That’s just how it is. I’m used to it.”

“But you shouldn’t be.” Rosalina leans forward. “That’s not right and you don’t deserve it. Yes, you’re more irritating than a thigh rub burn sometimes?—”

“A what ?”

She continues, “But beneath that lone wolf act of yours, you’re a good guy. You do not deserve that, do you hear me?”

“What the hell is a thigh rub burn?”

She gives me an incredulous look. “That’s what happens when your thighs are chubby and they rub against each other until the skin burns. Do you understand the main point I’m trying to make?”

“And your thighs burn?” I ask, resting my elbow on the table and my chin on my hand, my mind latching onto the dimensions of Rose’s thighs.

“Logan.” She gives me a look. I give her one right back. She sighs. “Yes, they do. I’m wearing spandex right now to prevent rub burns.”

Good thing I like some cushion.

I sigh, trying to get my mind out of the gutter it’s sunk into all by itself. “And yeah, I get what you’re saying. But you’re wrong.”

“No, I’m not,” she says stubbornly.

“You are. You don’t know me.” I shrug. “That masking you so cleverly noticed? I do it all the time. I had to be coached by my agent and our PR team on how to conduct myself in public because otherwise I act like a jerk—and that’s what I really am.” Sardonically, I add, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.”

Spreading both hands over the surface of the table, she leans as close as she physically can and murmurs in a kind of menacing tone, “Literally nothing I’ve seen since I’ve known you leads me to think apple, tree .”

“Here’s the cake,” a random voice says.

Rose and I turn to the same busy worker from before, and he’s coming in with the biggest slice of tres leches cake I’ve ever seen, a candle on top and all.

I whip my eyes toward Rose. She’s avoiding mine, or is simply busy with stacking baskets to make space. I do the same and we clear the table quickly. The guy places the cake between us, and I notice the two plastic spoons on the plate just as he reaches over with a lighter and lights up the candle. Collecting the empty baskets, he beats it back to the truck.

Slowly, I lift my eyes to Rose’s stubborn face. “Happy birthday, Logan.”

I don’t understand why the stubbornness. It’s not like I’d ever reject cake.

“Thank you.” I rub my chest, where my heart is thumping in a painful way. She signals at me to blow the candle and I do, and even though I’m not hungry at all I dig into the tres leches.

She doesn’t lecture me again after that, but I can practically feel her mind whirring as we walk back to my apartment so she can get her car.

The good news is that I don’t waste a single second thinking about my parents the rest of the night. The bad news is that now I can’t stop thinking about Rosalina Mena.