I threw myself down on the couch and ran my fingers through my hair, thanking God that Logan had been with me when Ellis decided to pull his whole asshole thing off. Well, that said - none of that would have happened if I hadn’t been with Logan in the first place.

And, if I was being brutally honest, Ellis wasn’t too far off when he claimed that I was attracted to Logan and that what we’d done today might not have been a date, but it certainly was date-adjacent.

No wonder Ellis was feeling insecure - he had every right to be. He didn’t have every right to lurk outside my apartment to confront me about it, but he had every right to be suspicious about my feelings towards Logan.

And now I was single again. Well, I had never been anything but single, if I was being truthful about my feelings towards Ellis.

I had never considered him my boyfriend, never considered him much more than a warm body to wake up next to while I tried to grapple with the fact that my father was soon going to be gone.

He was just the closest thing I had to a person who wouldn’t leave once the booze and smokes were gone - and just thinking about it in those terms was so utterly, crushingly depressing that it made my head spin for a moment.

I lay down on the couch and closed my eyes, letting my legs dangle over the edge of the arm. It was cool inside my apartment, the air conditioning whirring to counteract the heat outside the windows, but I still had to fan myself as my face flushed red with worry.

I didn’t know why Logan was doing such a good job of getting under my skin.

It certainly wasn’t just because I was attracted to him - no, he’d be far from the first man that I found myself going all fluttery for, and I knew the difference between what I was feeling and simple lust.

It was something more than that, and I was struggling to put my finger on why it was bothering me so much.

Maybe it was just the heightened emotion of my encounter with Ellis, but Logan seemed to represent one of the paths my life could take.

With Dad gone, I was at a turning point, no doubt about it - I could choose to dive into my partying, to focus in on drinking and taking drugs and smoking and basically making a career out of disappointing my mother as much as humanly possible.

Yeah, that was fun - there would be a place for that kind of antics no matter what kind of life I chose to lead. But did I want to carry that kind of stuff on here?

Ellis had all but warned me away from the rest of our little group, and I wasn’t going to take the chance of reaching out to them.

We weren’t friends in the way that my best friends in high school had been - instead of revealing all those tiny little details that made us who we were, instead, we stayed focused in on the gossip - who’d been fucking who, who was dealing and who was drinking harder than they could handle.

They were party friends, and while I knew there was a place for them, they shouldn’t take precedence over the real friends I had in my life. Well, the ones who hadn’t abandoned me after I’ve so intently turned in on myself.

I thought back to the girls I’ve hung out with in high school - Michelle, Isla, Sam. It had been at least a couple of years since I’ve last spoken to any of them, but I knew that if I reached out to them, they would be there for me.

If I told them what was happening, they would rush to my side, as I would go to theirs. We might have grown distant, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t be there for me.

And I needed people like them in my life - good people, kind people. People like Logan.

Logan had turned his life around after his father passed away. There was no doubt about it - that was when things had taken a left turn for him, off the path that he’s been stuck on since midway through high school.

It threw everything into focus for him, planted him firmly in the ground and allowed him to sprout. And yeah, he was stuck with the knowledge that he hadn’t been there for his father or his family through his illness, but I didn’t have that guilt to carry with me.

I didn’t have to fight to be absolved. I just had to change. I had to move on. I was ready to.

I opened my eyes and stared at the ceiling of the apartment. First things first, this place needed a deep clean. I had the rest of the evening off and nothing else to do, and nothing would help put my head in its place more than getting this place looking spic and span.

I got to my feet, reached for the crappy clock radio that sat on my windowsill gathering dust, and danced around the place to the cheesy old hits of the nineties as they leaped out of the tinny speakers and into my home.

I scrubbed the place from top to bottom, every room sparkling by the time I was done, and threw open the windows to let the heavy scent of cigarette smoke and spilled booze waft out.

I lit candles, blasted the place with air freshener, and, for the first time in a long time, my apartment didn’t feel like it was just waiting for the next party. It felt like my home again.

I propped up a picture of Dad and I on the mantelpiece, a shot that had been gathering dust down in my memories box - the photo was taken four years previously, when Dad was able to get out of work and make it down to my cheerleading recital.

He was beaming, his arm around my shoulder, and I was smiling slightly awkwardly back.

I remember how proud I felt when Mom snapped that picture of us, how proud he was, and wanted to crystallize that moment and be reminded of it every time I walked through the living room.

I hopped in a shower and scrubbed the day off me. I closed my eyes as the hot water slid over my body, reaching for the tiny bottles of expensive shampoo that one of my aunts sent me every Christmas - I always told myself I was saving them for a special occasion, but that occasion never seemed to present itself and they stayed untouched.

They smelled sweet and musky, a thick jasmine scent that settled over my locks. I scrubbed and shaved and exfoliated and felt pretty fucking good by the time I was done with everything.

Afterwards, I sat on the bed with a towel wrapped around my chest and painted my nails, trying to remember the last time I’ve done something this…good for myself.

I had considered drinking and smoking and screwing the equivalent of having a good time, but I would wake up the next morning and feel as though someone had punched me in the head and fed me magical nausea pills.

This - this was simple and quiet and lonesome, but it was entirely mine. I didn’t have to share it with someone, didn’t have to answer to somebody else for it.

There was something deeply satisfying about doing all of this for myself, not because I was trying to impress someone else.

I dressed in my comfortable jeans and a simple t-shirt and flopped back down on the couch. I felt sated, peaceful, for the first time in a while - and, glancing at the time, I realized that it was only eight in the evening. And I was feeling…something.

As I had been cleaning, the piece of paper that Logan had given me with his number on it had fallen out of my pocket and drifted onto the floor beneath my coffee table.

I stared at it for a moment before leaning down to pick it up. His scrawl was as messy as mine, and I smiled when I laid my eyes upon it.

I thought back to the afternoon we’d spent together, the times our skin had come briefly into contact and I had felt a little shock of a spark dance across my spine.

He made me feel…fuck, I didn’t want to say a natural-born woman, but it was pretty fucking close.

I reached for my phone, tapped in his number, and held it to my ear, tapping my fingers nervously on my leg as I waited for him to pick up.

“Hello?” His voice came down the line.