“I often found myself so set on a revenge, of sorts. When a man did me wrong, I abandoned all loyalty to him. The high of Logan didn't last long. When I got back home to Missouri, I learned he wronged me before I even had a chance to see him face-to-face. His ex-girlfriend, someone he couldn’t let go of yet, had flown out to see him two weeks before I did. I silently said a prayer that I found out after my trip. The plane ticket was bought, paid for. I did not check the trip insurance box. I was going whether I wanted to or not. We didn't speak of the wrong he did after that one phone call two days after I got home. I buried it, the way I always did. A flicker of Connor flashed across my mind when the truth hit."

"Why did he come to mind?"

"He wouldn't have pulled that shit with me. Well, maybe six or seven years ago he would have. But we were long past that. His weapons had become his walls. Not deceit. Not another girl. When I landed back in Missouri, I pushed Logan from my mind for a few days. I didn't text him in the twenty-four hours after I got home. I left my phone home on purpose. When I got home from work, I found a dozen frantic texts and five missed calls from him. Wondering what was wrong. Why I was ignoring him. I thought about the tables and if they had been turned. If a guy had flown across the country to see me and then ghosted me when he got home. I wanted to feel guilty, but I had it in my gut. The knowledge that he was a temporary part of my life.

“And the saddest part of it all, was that I knew, deep in my gut, that I loved him. I loved him in a way that was completely separate from my love for Connor. From anything I felt for him. They existed in different realms of my heart. That little barren wasteland somehow had enough space for my love of two men. It had been ripping me apart for the entire year. It was only April and I knew I couldn't survive the rest of the calendar days like that. Split in two. Denying both men my wholeness. Connor’s frantic texts stopped a week after I landed, after my layover call with him, after he saw the picture I uploaded to my Instagram of Logan and me on the beach."

"That's how he learned about Logan?"

"Yes. I was a coward and a liar. He knew then, that my loneliness wasn't the only reason I left him. I wanted to drown in a black hole. My empty bedroom with no thoughts of love or longing. No thoughts of what I was turning into. I thought of Connor’s family. I could never go back. They knew who I was. The damage I had done. I imagined him telling them. Telling them it wasn't just that he drove me away. The truth was I fell for another man. I wish he hadn't let me. I wish he had held onto my whole heart." I let tears warm my cheeks, thinking of who I became three years ago. "His distance had let me turn into the one thing I hated most. The two-faced villain. The same kind of sinner my ex-lovers had been. Did I turn Avery to this kind of sin? Did he feel lonely with me?" I think of his skin under mine when he cheated on Wendy. "No. I was not him." Men cheated to feel fresh flesh. Women cheated to ease the ache of a loneliness they tried to wish away.

"But you mended things with Logan, right?"

"A Band-Aid forgiveness, the kind I was good at. After a few days, I started to warm to Logan again. But I was changed. I no longer let romance into my language. No hope of a future. Just a here and now mentality. And I felt it in him, too. He would later tell me he never wanted us to not know each other. In those words, I felt the fluttering of what I feared most. His blackout from my life. He said it because he felt it, too. That one day, we wouldn't know each other."

I look down at my hands, my shaking hands. "We savored the days. Every night at 2 a.m. I woke to his texts. Telling me about his day, calling me sometimes. I lost more weight and the bags under my eyes grew to large pools. Losing sleep for him was a drug, and I didn't care. My life was sepia and my tongue was that of a serpent. A month later, Connor called. I answered. He didn't bring Logan up. He didn't bring up the way I ruined him. He talked to me like a friend and I wondered if he was seeing someone. If someone was sleeping in the bed we bought in the house I decorated. Parking in my spot in the driveway."

"Would you have been jealous if you knew there was someone there?"

"I was filled with a mixture of emotions that moved through me fluidly. Jealousy over a phantom. Thankfulness over a phantom. I wanted his happiness but a tiny little voice inside wanted to rip it away, if he had it. I wanted to be the only one who gave it to him. He asked me out to dinner. I said no. He asked me to go for a walk with him. So I said yes. It seemed harmless. I loved our old neighborhood. I felt safe there. The old trailer park was depressing me. I would ask myself every night, as I tried to sleep after seeing Logan's name light up my phone, how I got back there. Maybe Connor knew I would want that warmth again. I loved the colors of the row houses. The shutters. My old mailbox was blue and I always felt blue when I looked at it. When I saw it again, I thought of the day Connor painted it. He said he wanted it to match the color of my eyes. I wondered if he kept the keys on the walls. All the ones I collected while we were together. I should have taken them with me but the walls of the trailer were better bare, better with boxes stacked against them. A past I didn't want to reopen."

“Why did you still talk to Logan every night?”

“He understood things Connor never could."

"What kind of things?"

"Abuse, neglect." I hesitate. Do I have a right to tell Logan's story? What was done to him? How he saw a therapist as a child. Then a psychologist. Is it my right to tell anyone about the medication he had to take, to battle the night terrors? The images of a woman entering his room, taking his heart in her red hands? "When I graduated high school, my father didn’t show. It had been three years since he and my mother had split, and his presence had been scarce when they were together as it was. Being let down by him was the norm. I was used to it, used to the pit in my stomach when waiting for him. For phone calls, for birthday presents, for any type of attention. So his absence was expected. What wasn’t expected, was the cost. A cost Logan understood."

"What was the cost?”

"My hair began to fall out in clumps over the summer. It was a strange cocktail, that year. My father was a no-show. My high school boyfriend, the guy I had lost my virginity to, cheated on me five days after I gave it up. I was living at home still, which was no surprise. I had no plan for after school. I had no interest in college and the thought of being out in the world frightened me. I developed an unhealthy dependence on the shitty boyfriend who betrayed me. Instead of kicking him to the curb, I took him back. Forgiveness is not always the answer. It's a weakness. One I own, fully.”

“That’s why you think you forgave Logan? Because you’re weak?”

"Yes. Because he was the only one I had ever been able to talk to about my family. He didn't pity me. He understood me. He knew what it felt like to want to take your life, but his thoughts hadn't been idle, like mine. When he was a teen, he tried. And I'm so thankful he failed. After living with a man for years who would show me nothing of his heart, I clung to Logan. I would take him any way I could. I would take his friendship if it was all we could share."