Chapter Eighteen
EMMA
“This is nice. We should do this more often.”
“Oh, definitely. I’m not sure why we haven’t been doing it all along.”
My eyes darted across the picnic table at my mom and Rachel as they exchanged pleasantries. When we arrived earlier, they both acted like they were best friends who hadn’t seen each other in years, when I was pretty sure I saw them talking to each other from their driveways just the day before.
Bored of their conversation, I turned my attention briefly to my dad and Mark, who were over by the grill slapping each other on the back and talking excitedly about something I couldn’t hear, but imagined was about sports.
Abby, who was sitting in Rachel’s lap, was busy shoving brightly colored plastic keys into her mouth, and looking like she was having a way better time than I was.
As for Logan, he’d had yet to make an appearance, much to my irritation. He was the one who had planned this whole thing, and now he was late for it. If he was even going to show up at all. For all I knew, he might have still gone to Matt’s pool party and was there right now, while I was stuck hanging out with two sets of parents and a baby. Maybe he was pranking me. I wouldn’t put it past him.
Not that I was in any rush to see him after what happened yesterday. He had no idea how hard it was for me to put on that bikini and show it to him, and his reaction solidified why I didn’t even want to buy one in the first place.
Apparently, I looked hideous in it.
That had to be the only explanation. First off, he told me I looked “fine”, which was bad enough, but the way he said it indicated I looked anything but fine. As soon as I asked him if it was okay enough to wear to the pool party, he suddenly had no interest in going anymore. As if I looked so terrible in that bikini that he didn’t want to be seen with me in it. Like it would embarrass him or something. Then he couldn’t get out of my house fast enough and wouldn’t even look at me on the way out.
He sure did know how to crush a girl’s confidence.
Or, more accurately, my confidence. He’d had no trouble at all staring at Riley in a bikini the other night.
And for some reason, that put me a bad mood and had me hoping this was all a prank and that he was at Matt’s party, so I wouldn’t have to spend the afternoon with him.
Unfortunately, no more than three seconds later, Logan emerged from the sliding glass door and stepped onto the deck. His eyes immediately found me, and a weird look came over his face as he gave me a small wave.
Apparently, he was as happy to see me as I was him.
“Logan. Nice of you to join us.” Rachel motioned for him to take a seat at the table next to me.
“Hey,” he greeted me as he sat down on the bench. I immediately scooted a few inches away from him.
He looked offended but quickly shrugged it off. He smiled over at my mother. “Hello, Olivia. Thank you for coming.”
I swear my mom melted a little. “Thank you for inviting us.”
“It was my pleasure.” He turned to me and poked me in the arm. “How are you, Emma?”
I had to refrain from scowling at his question. “I’m fine,” I mumbled.
My mom cast me a curious glance before turning to Rachel and saying, “Is there anything I can help with in the kitchen?”
“As a matter of fact, there is.” Rachel glanced at me and Logan as she removed herself and Abby from the bench. “Can I get either of you something to drink?”
“No, thank you,” Logan and I replied at the same time.
A small smile played at my mother’s lips. “What, no jinx?”
I rolled my eyes. “Mom, please. Jinxing is juvenile.”
“Oh, pardon me, I didn’t know.” Mom rolled her own eyes before she and Rachel shared a chuckle and headed inside.
Logan glanced sideways at me with a smirk. “Jinxing is juvenile? We just jinxed last week. What’s with the sudden maturation?”
“We all have to grow up sometime,” I mumbled.
“Are you okay?” he asked, turning to me. “Because you seem like you’re in a bad mood.”
I opened my mouth to respond, but the sudden ding of his phone interrupted me.
Taking it out of his pocket, he swiped at the screen and chuckled at whatever he saw.
“Riley keeps texting me,” he explained. “She claims we’re missing one hell of a party over there right now.”
His phone dinged again and this time, his eyebrows shot up as he let out a low whistle. “Whoa.”
Curiosity got the best of me and I leaned over to see what was on the screen. I automatically wished I hadn’t.
Riley had texted him a selfie of herself standing by the pool giving the camera a weird pouty, duck-face hybrid expression that looked simultaneously sad and sexy. The picture was taken from the ever-flattering perspective of her holding the phone high above her head, and as she looked seductively up at the camera, Logan could look down her bikini top at the plentiful cleavage displayed at the front and center of the screen.
“That’s hot,” he said with a smirk and I suddenly wanted to slap him upside the head. Hard.
That right there—that was the kind of reaction a girl wanted from a guy after modeling a bikini in front of him. Not the one he’d given me yesterday. He’d really hurt my feelings with his blatant distaste for seeing me in swimwear and now he was just rubbing salt in the wound by practically drooling on his cell phone at a stupid picture of Riley.
“Well, maybe you should go to the party instead, then,” I snapped, sliding off the bench and heading towards the pool.
He wasted no time in following me. “Okay, so I was right. You are in a bad mood. What’s up?”
I took a seat in one of the lounge chairs and folded my arms tightly over my chest, staring straight ahead at the pool water. I said nothing. What was there to say? That I was upset because he thought Riley looked amazing in a bikini but thought I looked ridiculous?
“Nothing’s ‘up’. I’m just saying if you’d rather be at the pool party, you should go to the pool party.”
“Are you trying to get rid of me?”
“I’m always trying to get rid of you, Logan.”
“Hey, not nice,” he mumbled and put on a fake pout that mimicked Riley’s. “Well, I don’t want to go to the pool party, so you’re stuck with me.”
“Oh joy,” I said, making sure to infuse as much sarcasm into those two words as I possibly could.
“Hey, kids!” my mom called over to us from the deck. “Come over here, we have something amazing to show you!” She then waved over to my dad and Mark at the grill to join them over at the picnic table as well.
Logan and I exchanged a curious glance and a shrug as we proceeded back to the table.
As we all took a seat, my mother stood at the head of the table, holding something behind her back. “You all will never guess what Rachel happened to stumble upon the other day that she couldn’t wait to show me.” She gave us only a few seconds to stare at her blankly before revealing the item she’d been hiding, holding it out straight in front of her for all of us to see. “Ta-da!”
It took me a second to realize what it was, and as soon as I did, I could feel all the color drain from my face. At first glance, it looked like a harmless but fiercely decorated three-ring binder. But upon closer inspection, it was easy to see it was a scrapbook.
And going even beyond that, it was a scrapbook that had the words Logan & Emma scrawled across the front in tall, glittery letters. On the backdrop of a large red heart. With other little hearts surrounding it.
It was a scrapbook devoted to me and Logan. What kind of special hell had I just been transported to?
Mark gasped before reaching out and grabbing the book from my mother. “Oh my God, I’d forgotten all about this!”
“All about what?” Logan asked, looking just as disturbed as I felt. “What is that?”
“This,” Mark said, opening the book, “is a scrapbook your mother put together a long time ago, back when she thought you two would someday…you know…”
Logan and I both stared at him, mouths agape.
“Fall in love,” he finished with a slight smirk.
I didn’t know whether to laugh, cry or vomit. Sure, it was no secret that our parents had always hoped one day Logan and I would wake up and realize we had a burning passion for one another, but it was something that was never discussed. Our parents knew it was a sore subject. They knew how much Logan and I had grown to detest one another over time, and I thought they had accepted it.
But apparently, the hope was still alive. Or, if nothing else, it lived on for eternity in the form of a scrapbook.
The adults all gathered around the book and started pointing and cooing at what was inside.
My mom glanced over at me with a guilty smile. “I just figured since you two seem to be becoming friends, maybe you’d get a kick out of seeing this.”
No. She was wrong. This was a nightmare. This was horrifying. I didn’t want to see any of this.
Judging from the look on Logan’s face, he felt no differently than I did.
“Oh, look at that.” Rachel pointed to the very first picture in the book. “Logan and Emma’s First Introduction,” she read aloud.
Mark swiveled the book around, so Logan and I could see what she was referring to.
In the top center of the first page was a picture of my mom and Logan’s mom, Heather, standing in the foyer. Heather was holding onto what I assumed was a baby Logan and my mom was next to her holding onto a baby me. Both young women were smiling broadly, and each held out their free hand in the form of the letter c and had connected them together to make it look like they were forming a heart.
“This was the day I brought you home from the hospital,” my mom said fondly. “I came here first before bringing you to our house. I couldn’t wait for you and Logan to meet.”
I looked closely at the picture. Logan and I were both in tears in our mothers’ arms. Apparently, neither one of us was as excited about the introduction as they were.
Logan began flipping through the pages, one-by-one. Logan and Emma’s First Halloween (I was a ladybug, he was a monkey). Logan and Emma’s First Visit with Santa (the mall Santa held me in one arm and Logan in the other; the jolly old man was smiling, but Logan and I were once again crying). Logan and Emma’s First Easter. Logan and Emma’s First 4th of July. Logan and Emma’s First Day of Pre-School…
Why had I been forced to share so many of my firsts with Logan?
“Um, what’s that?” Logan asked, pointing to a photo a few pages in. From the looks of it, it wasn’t one of our “firsts”. We looked to be around four years old.
And we were dressed like a bride and groom.
“Mom,” I squeaked, staring up at her in horror. “What is this?”
She glanced down at the photo and immediately shared an amused expression with my Dad and Mark before the three of them burst out laughing.
Logan and I, however, were not amused.
“Mom,” I scolded her.
“I’m sorry,” she said, wiping away a tear. “That picture was taken on Halloween. You two were four at the time. The office Heather worked at was throwing a family-friendly Halloween party, and they were giving away prizes for the best costumes. We really wanted to win, so we thought it would be funny if all our costumes were part of the same theme. Heather’s idea was to dress the two of you as a bride and a groom and we’d all go dressed as the wedding party. So, she threw on the most hideous dress she could find—her Prom dress—and she was the bridesmaid. I was the flower girl—”
“I was the priest,” Mark cut in.
“And I was the wedding singer,” my dad added. “The one from the Adam Sandler movie.”
Mom chuckled. “Everyone loved it.”
Not me. I didn’t love it. And I could tell from Logan’s expression he wasn’t particularly fond of the whole thing either.
I studied the picture for a moment and was taken aback by how close Logan and I looked. This time, we were smiling big, toothy grins at the camera instead of crying. We stood side-by-side, hand-in-hand, looking like the best of friends.
Or, I guess, husband and wife.
It was hard to believe there was ever a time in our lives where we got along and maybe even liked each other. But this photo was proof.
I wanted to rip it out of the scrapbook and burn it.
Beside me, Logan sighed. “Did you guys at least win?”
“Sadly, no,” my mom replied somberly. “We came in third.”
“What a shame.” I reached over and shut the book and turned to my dad. “Don’t you guys have some burgers to grill up? I’m hungry.”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “Well, the princess has spoken, people. Back to work! We don’t want her wasting away!”
I shot him a glare as he and Mark laughed, got up from the table, and went back over to the grill.
“We’ll just leave the book out here, in case you guys want to keep looking at it,” my mom said before she and Rachel took off for the kitchen.
Once everybody had dispersed, Logan and I sat in awkward silence for a moment, staring at the scrapbook.
Finally, Logan cleared his throat and said, “Well, you and I certainly have quite the history, huh? We used to be friends. We even got married.”
“I want a divorce.”
He chuckled softly as he traced a finger along the edge of the scrapbook. I had to wonder if it was hard for him to look at it, knowing his mother had made it. It had been a few years since she’d passed away, after a long battle with cancer, and I knew he’d had a hard time dealing with her death. I’d even heard my parents talking soon after about him having to go to therapy to help him deal. I remember feeling so bad for him at the time, even though I hated him. I remember wanting to run over to his house and pull him into a big hug and tell him that everything was going to be alright. To hold him and console him like a friend would.
But we weren’t friends. Not anymore.
“It’s crazy to think we used to get along. That we used to be friends.” He glanced sideways at me. “What do you think happened?”
I couldn’t tell if he was being serious or not. He wasn’t sure what had happened between us to turn us from friends to enemies? Did he have selective amnesia or something?
“You’ve got to be joking,” I muttered shaking my head. “What happened is you became a jerk, always picking on me. Teasing me. Making fun of me. Humiliating me.”
His eyes shot up to the sky as though he was trying to recall a time he was ever mean to me. When he took too long, I decided to help him out.
“For instance, do you remember in the fifth grade when I got my first pair of glasses and you not only started calling me Freaky Four Eyes, but you also got the rest of the school to start calling me that as well?”
It only took him a second to remember. With a grin, he said, “Oh, yeah. Right. But hey, in my defense, those frames were way too big for your face. You looked like a bug. It was freaky.”
“Or, how about the time in eighth grade when you spelled out the word BOOBS in numbers on your calculator and then handed it to me, declaring—in front of our entire math class, mind you—that I should take it because those would be the only boobs I would ever have.”
Logan broke out into a laugh. A good, hearty laugh that indicated he did not feel one drop of remorse. “I remember that. Classic. At least I was mostly wrong, though. I mean, you’ve got a little something going on there.” He motioned to my chest.
My face burned with anger. “And the list goes on and on. You’ve been a jerk to me for seven solid years now, Logan, always making me feel like such a loser. And you’re still doing it! Yesterday was a great example of that.”
His face fell as a look of confusion replaced his look of amusement. “What are you talking about? What did I do yesterday?”
I bit my lower lip. I hadn’t planned on throwing that out there, it just came out before I had a chance to stop it. “You know what I’m talking about,” I grumbled, staring down at the wooden surface of the picnic table.
“No, I don’t.”
“Your reaction to the whole…bikini thing. You couldn’t have acted more disgusted if you’d tried.”
His jaw dropped. “Disgusted? Emma—”
“And whatever, I get it. I don’t look like Riley. Or Grace, for that matter. But you could have at least mustered up some form of a compliment, other than just a lackluster ‘fine’. Believe it or not, that took a lot of courage for me to show myself off to you like that, and you couldn’t wait to leave so you wouldn’t have to look at me anymore. Meanwhile, when Riley’s walking around in a bikini or sending you selfies, you have a hard time keeping your eyes in their sockets—”
“Whoa, Emma, stop.” Logan held out his hands in front of him defensively. “I didn’t—”
“Burgers are ready!” Mark called out as he headed over to the table with a plate full of meat.
My mother and Rachel both returned to the deck at the exact same moment with trays of condiments and burger toppings.
“Emma, sweetie,” Mom said as she set down her tray in front of me, “would you mind helping us with the rest?”
I glanced quickly over at Logan, who was staring at me with a serious look on his face that I couldn’t quite decipher, before turning back to my mom.
“I would love to,” I replied, thankful for the opportunity to get away from Logan before I could humiliate myself any further.
I moved to get up to follow my mom, but Logan grabbed my arm and pulled me toward him.
“We’ll talk about this later,” he said, his voice low so that nobody else could hear.
Something about the way he was looking at me when he said it made my stomach flip-flop. I chalked it up to hunger, but somewhere in the back of my mind, I knew it had to do with something else.
I just wasn’t sure what that was.