IT WAS CLEAR FROM the start that I would be the grunt.
After Dr. Chase met with us and outlined our duties for the next couple weeks, we left his office and walked to the library. It didn’t take ten minutes for the two grad students to assign me the task of accumulating the necessary statistics for Chase’s project on Strategies of Entrepreneurship. A task that amounted to hours on the computer. Snore.
Gillian would write up my findings and actually get the pleasure of interviewing local businesses and conducting phone interviews with entrepreneurs on a national scale. Connor would be combining our data and using it to research social media commercialization tactics.
“So we’re all set for now?” Gillain looked first at Connor, then at me, pushing her bright blue glasses up the bridge of her nose.
Connor clapped his hands together. “All set.”
I nodded, not really suspecting they were interested in my input. That was the impression I had gotten so far. I was the undergrad here.
“Great.” Gillian started gathering her things and stuffing them into her bag. “I’m meeting Caroline for coffee.” She looked me squarely in the face as she uttered this. “She’s another grad student who applied to work with Dr. Chase this summer. Somehow she didn’t get picked.” She grinned a small, tight smile then.
My return smile felt brittle.
Looking very satisfied, she rose from her chair and marched away.
“Don’t mind her,” Connor said as I stared at her retreating back.
I looked at him with a shrug. “At least I know where she stands.”
He snorted. “If Caroline had been picked, then she would have been bitchy, too, trying to outdo her. You actually made her day. Right now she gets to go meet with Caroline and act all sympathetic while inside she’s just patting herself on the back that she’s better than Caroline.”
“Wow,” I murmured. “It’s going to be great working with her this summer.”
“Hey.” He spread his hands in front of him. “You have me. I’m a nice guy.”
I smiled slightly and started packing my things. “Well, I guess I better start on those stats.”
He started gathering his things, too, stuffing his laptop into his bag. He fell in beside me as we walked out of the library. “So how did you get this job anyway?”
I slid him a look. He was tall and lanky. His chestnut hair fell low across his forehead, brushing his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”
“Well, you’re an undergrad.” He tossed his hair back in a move I’d witnessed him do constantly in the last hour. It only ever fell back on his forehead. “Dr. Chase must be pretty impressed with you.”
“Dr. Chase liked my final paper—”
“That’s it? I mean you didn’t hypnotize him?” He waved a hand in a small circle, wiggling his fingers.
“You get you’re being insulting, right?” I stopped and looked at him, trying to hide a smile.
“Hey, no offense!”
“I didn’t sleep with him if that’s what you’re angling at. God, what a cliché that would be.”
He shuddered. “Oh, I wasn’t even going there. He smells like Taco Bell.”
“Right?” I laughed as we stepped outside and descended the steps.
“Butttt.” He cocked his head in mock contemplation. “You know what they say about clichés.”
I stopped at the base of the steps leading up to the library and propped a hand on my hip. “So is this what it’s going to be like all summer? You and Gillian looking at me like I’m some sort of incompetent who slept with her professor to get a job? Maybe I should go talk to Dr. Chase?”
“Shit.” Connor dragged a hand through his flopping hair, his eyes wide with horror. “I’m kidding. Sorry, I guess I really screwed this up.”
I dropped my hand and winked. “I’m just messing with you.”
He grabbed his chest. “Damn. You nearly gave me a heart attack.” He released his chest as I laughed and looked me over. “You’re all right, Undergrad.”
“Thanks.”
“Good to know I didn’t screw up.”
“Screw what up?”
“This. Small talk. Flirtation.”
“Is that what you were doing?” I teased. “It was hard to tell.”
“Ouch.” He chuckled and readjusted his grip on the strap of his backpack. “Yeah. I was trying.”
I studied him a moment. He was cute. His face was broad with brackets edging his mouth, like he smiled a whole lot. A good sign.
Sucking in a breath, I decided getting out there again might be a good thing. I couldn’t solely fixate on Logan. It wasn’t healthy. “You know you could just ask a girl out for coffee. Or a smoothie. I like those.”
“Do you want to go get a coffee right now?” His face brightened eagerly as I considered him. It was probably a bad idea. We were working together, but . . .
“Sure,” I heard myself saying. We were only working together for the summer, after all, and I needed new friends. A guy like Connor, someone in grad school . . . older, he might just possess the maturity that had been missing in the guys I had been dating recently.
Logan’s face flashed across my mind for some reason. I didn’t know why. He and I weren’t dating. And despite his age, I wouldn’t call him immature.
“So how does the Java Hut sound?” Connor asked, tugging my attention back and motioning in the direction we needed to turn.
“Sure.” I smiled. “That sounds great.” And I almost meant it.
WHEN LOGAN SHOWED UP on my doorstep again late the next night, it almost felt natural. Well. If not for the crazy way my heart thumped at the sight of him.
His mouth kicked up at the corner. He dragged a hand through his short hair, his eyes tired. “Long night?” I asked.
“Yeah.” He blew out a breath and plucked at the ripped sleeve of his shirt. “Only had to break up one fight. It was between a group of girls. I’ll take a brawl between guys any day.”
I laughed.
“Mind if I crash here tonight again?”
“Sure. It’s okay.” My voice even passed for normal as I uttered this.
He followed me upstairs and I waved him to the table where I was working.
“You’re a night owl,” he observed, eyeing my laptop. “Are you studying right now? I can go if I’m bothering—”
“No. Stay.” God. Did my voice crack a little just then? I swallowed and tried again, deliberately neglecting to mention that I had stayed up late tonight thinking—fine, hoping—he might make another appearance. “I’m not studying for summer school or anything.” I sank back down into my chair, tucking a long strand of hair behind my ear self-consciously, and pulling a knee up to my chest. “I’m working for a professor this summer. Doing research for him.”
He plopped down at the table across from me. “That’s pretty cool.”
I nodded, feeling lame and awkward all at once. “Would you like a drink?”
“Sure.”
I got up and grabbed him a can of soda from the refrigerator, feeling his eyes on my back.
“So what are you studying? For your degree?” he asked as I returned to my chair. It was a polite question—that thing people asked automatically without really caring, but he stared at me with interest.
“Business.”
“And is that what you always wanted to do?”
“Major in business?” I shrugged, thinking about it. Did anyone ever grow up saying they wanted to major in business? It wasn’t like your typical fireman-ballerina-astronaut dream. “I guess.” It had seemed like a sensible plan. The only thing I had ever really had a passion for was music, and if I had pursued that it would have been a knife in my mother’s back. “It just seemed like a smart choice. My parents liked the idea.”
He studied me carefully. “Your parents’ approval is that important to you?” It was more of a statement than a question.
“Yeah. Sure. You don’t think it should matter?” And then I felt like an ass. His mother was dead. His father didn’t give a damn about him. Parental approval wasn’t high on his list of priorities.
He looked away, staring across the room at nothing in particular. “I guess if I had the kind of upbringing you did, good parents, picket fence, and all that stuff, it would matter to me, too . . .” A decided but hung on the air.
I nudged him. “And?”
He lifted his gaze back to mine. “There comes a time when you’ve got to do what’s right for you . . . what makes you happy.” His gaze held mine, the blue of his eyes so direct that it cut through everything. I realized then that Logan would always follow his own path. Even if he had grown up with that picket fence, he was that kind of person. Confident and self-assured enough to do what he wanted to do and not give in to the expectations of others.
“What about you? What do you want to major in? Or do you only live and breathe baseball?”
He looked back at me, studying me over the laptop, and shook his head. “I do love the game. Don’t get me wrong. There’s a rhythm in it. A peace that comes over me when I’m standing on the mound.” He took a long sip from his drink. I watched his throat work, mesmerized. “It doesn’t matter if the ballpark is full of screaming fans or smack-talkers shouting at me from every direction. It’s like I’m on a boat drifting at sea, totally calm, the world fading around me. Nothing hurried. Just the sound of my breath, the pulse of my heart, the ball in my hand. Have you ever felt like that?”
I took a breath, realizing I’d been in some kind of trance, my memory searching for a moment like that. His description had triggered that need in me. I’d never met a guy who talked like him. With mere words he fired a need in me to know that kind of peace.
“Yeah,” I admitted slowly. “I have.” When I held my guitar, I felt that way. Or rather, I had.
When it became clear I wasn’t going to elaborate, he continued, “If I’m lucky enough to make it to the majors, then great. But I have other interests, too . . . other things that bring that same feeling.”
And this struck me as wholly unfair. My fingers tightened around the curve of my knee. I looked away for a moment and bit the inside of my cheek, disturbed by this. Nothing inspired me the way he described except for something I couldn’t do, and he had multiple things that spoke to him?
“I’m actually interested in teaching.”
My attention snapped back to him. “As in becoming a teacher?”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
“Like being a coach?”
He sent me a look that said I’m not just a dumb jock, you know. “No. English.”
“English?”
“What are you? A parrot? Yeah, English. Literature.” He made a flapping motion with his hands. “I’m into those things that open and have pages in the middle.”
I laughed awkwardly. “No, I didn’t know that about you. I didn’t know that you—”
“Read? Yes, I can read words and everything.”
I wadded up a napkin and tossed it at him.
He chuckled and caught it. “I actually read a lot. And write.”
I stared at him, not knowing what to do with this sudden new insight to him. He was a jock who . . . wrote? But, of course, it was believable. The way he used words. He didn’t just talk. He painted a picture with language.
He rubbed a hand up and down the back of his scalp and blew out a breath. “I’ve never told anyone that before.”
“Not even Rachel?” I blurted before I could help myself. Clearly they were close. How could she not know that he liked to write?
He shook his head, his eyebrows drawing tightly over his deep-set eyes. Like even he was confused that he had confessed this to me. “No. Actually I haven’t. When we talk it’s usually about . . . her . . .” He frowned like maybe this had just occurred to him.
I wet my lips. A fluttery feeling danced inside my too-tight chest as I stared at him. Maybe she thought she knew everything there was to know about him. Every moment I spent with him, I discovered another layer. I doubt there would ever be a time when this guy didn’t fascinate me. “I want to hear about your writing. What is it that you write?
“Fiction. Stories,” he provided.
“I’d like to read them . . . if you’d let me.”
He looked at me for a long moment and then smiled almost self-consciously. I blinked. Impossible. This guy never looked uncertain. “I’ve never let anyone read them before.”
“What?” I toyed with the tip of a pen. “You scared?”
He looked only halfway joking as he replied, “Yes.”
I grinned, continuing to play with the pen, rolling it between my fingers. His gaze followed the movement, making my skin pull tighter. “I’ll be gentle with you,” I teased. “Promise.”
He laughed, but his eyes deepened to that dark sea blue I was becoming familiar with. It was that blue that made me feel all funny inside. Like I was dipping down on a roller coaster. His gaze dropped to my mouth. The sexual tension was thick. Choking me. God. He was close. Just a small stretch of table between us. This proximity was killing me. My lungs hurt too much to even draw a full breath.
I rose suddenly, picking up our empty soda cans. “Yeah. You should email me something. Or bring it with you on your next shift.” Or on our next sleepover.
“Maybe I will.”
I glanced back at his face and grinned, shaking my head as I rinsed out the cans for the recycle bin. “No, you won’t.”
He shrugged. “We’ll see.”
“Fine. I won’t push.”
“Hey, I’ll make a deal with you. When you play your guitar for me, I’ll let you read one of my stories.”
My smile slipped and a nervous prickle swept over me. “Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh,” he echoed, nodding, his expression so knowing and smug that I had to say back to him:
“Maybe I’ll do that then.” A bluff, and from the glint in his eyes he knew it.
“Great. I’m working on a story right now about this girl that wakes up from a coma to find the world gone. Friends. Family. It’s like they disappeared. Or never even existed.” His fingers made a poofing gesture. I leaned forward, riveted by the idea of a girl waking to find her world gone. “There’s only one other survivor . . . this guy. But she won’t accept that everything has changed . . . that they only have each other in this new life.”
I leaned back against the sink, staring at him, hypnotized by his deep voice. “She’s probably scared,” I heard myself saying, sucked into the world of his story.
He angled his head. “Oh, she’s terrified,” he agreed.
I narrowed my gaze at him sitting so calmly at the table. Why was he looking at me so pointedly? Was he saying I was that girl in his story? I bristled, not liking the implication that I was terrified. Or of the analogy of me as a recently comatose girl.
“Sounds interesting. How does it end?”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
My fingers tapped agitatedly against the edge of the counter. “Hmm. You’ll have to let me know.”
“I’ll do that.”
I glanced at the clock above the microwave. “It’s late.” I walked across the loft and plucked the throw and pillow off my bed.
“You sure you don’t mind me staying here again?” He moved to the futon.
I shook my head, smiling tightly. “It’s like having a roommate again.” God. Had I just compared him to one of my former female roommates?
As his hand reached behind his neck and grabbed the back of his shirt, pulling it over his head in one move, I swallowed a squeak and hurried from the kitchen to my bed. Yeah. There was no mistaking him for Em or Pepper.
Pulling back the covers on my bed, I couldn’t stop my gaze from straying to him again as he slid his jeans down his narrow hips, leaving him in snug boxer briefs, his male glory on display. He was a feast for the eyes. My hand dove for my lamp, twisting the knob and plunging us into darkness. I exhaled in relief. Out of sight if not out of mind.
“Good night, Georgia.”
His deep voice was a feather-stroke to my skin in the dark. I hugged a pillow close to my chest, squeezing hard, welcoming numbness into my fingers. “Good night, Logan.”