Logan

 

I crawl out from under the truck and the first thing I see is Brad’s scuffed up cowboy boots. I look up and see him smirking down at me with a beer in his hand. It’s nine a.m. On a Sunday.

“How you fixin’ to afford to drive this thing anyways?” he asks before he spits onto the pavement near my head, the scent of tobacco wafting up from the pool of brown tinged saliva.

I sit up on the creeper and stand, wiping my hands on an old towel. “That’s my business,” I grunt.

“You think you’re better than me, boy?”

God I’m sick of this prick. I want nothing more than to shove my fist into his face and watch him drop. But before I can even reply, Brenda hangs her head out of the kitchen window.

“Game’s on!” she shouts.

He spits again and slowly turns for the door, mumbling something under his breath about today’s youth. I wipe the oil from my hands and look at the rusted Chev in front of me. It’s not much but Gary sold it to me last week for five hundred bucks. It doesn’t run yet and I had to get it towed here, but I’m determined to fix it up. I didn’t want to take that much out of my stash but I hate walking everywhere. I took Prairie’s advice and applied for a job at his garage, luckily he was hiring and I’ve been working a few days a week after school and some hours on the weekend. He’s a decent boss and I get a discount at the diner.  

It’s been three weeks since the first day of school. Classes are okay and now with a job to go to, I feel like time isn’t moving so slow. For the most part, my mom and Brad stay out of my way and I stay out of theirs. Whenever he gives me shit or I feel like I might snap, I just think of Prairie and for some reason it calms me down. She reached for my hand twice that one day and hasn’t done it again since, probably because I didn’t tell her how much it meant to me. I wanted to, but I didn’t want to freak her out. We barely knew each other.

When that jerk came and sat down at our table as if he owned it, I could see her shoulders tense up and the minute he opened his mouth I wanted to knock him on his ass. I was surprised when Prairie told him off and the only reason I didn’t hit him when he called her a bitch was because of the way she was looking at me. Like he didn’t matter and what he said didn’t matter. She seemed relieved when he left us alone so it could be just me and her. The second time she reached for me was when she witnessed the extent of Brenda’s mothering skills. All I seemed to be able to manage after that was a nod and a mumbled goodbye.

We’ve been riding to school together every day and walking home together afterwards when I’m not working and those are my favourite times of the day. Sometimes we eat lunch together when she’s not busy helping out the teachers for extra credit.

“Logan?”

I shake my head and turn to see her standing on the other side of the truck.

“Didn’t you hear me?”

“Sorry, I was…” I shrug it off like I wasn’t just thinking about her.

“No worries,” she grins. “My mom’s off today. She said I could take the car and I was thinking about going down to The Hole since it’s so warm out already. You wanna come?”

“Uh, sure,” I say.

“Okay. Grab your bathing suit and I’ll meet you back at my place,” she smiles, turning back the way she came. She’s wearing a light yellow dress and her hair is pulled back in a messy braid thing. I try not to be a pervert and look at her legs when she walks away and how the dress swishes around her thighs but I can’t help it. She’s beautiful.

There were plenty of pretty girls in Drayton and it’s not like I’ve never fooled around or had sex before, but something about Prairie is different.

I run inside and wash up quick before I throw my swimming trunks on under my jeans. I put on a clean T-shirt and grab my hat. I leave again without saying a word, not that anyone bothers to ask where I’m going anyways.

I reach the car just as Prairie’s tossing a beach bag and some towels into the backseat. She takes the sunglasses off the top of her head and puts them on.

“Ready?”

“Yup.”

As we drive down the bumpy dirt road, she switches the cassette player on and some old country song starts playing.

“Sorry,” she winces. “It’s all I got.”

“It’s fine,” I say. “Let me guess, this one is about a guy whose wife left him and then his dog died?”

“Make all the jokes you want Logan, but did you or did you not admit to me last week that the new Tim McGraw song is catchy?”

“I told you it was catchy,” I admit.

“Exactly, so shush,” she says with a wink.

Twenty minutes later we’re pulling up to a man-made parking lot in front of a creek surrounded by drooping willow trees and large rocks. It looks like it doesn’t belong anywhere near Redemption.

“I know, it seems so out of place, doesn’t it?” she says, reading my mind. “Only the locals know about it, and it’ll probably be packed by lunchtime, so we should enjoy it while we can.”

I lean back and grab the bag and towels before she can get to it and follow her as she takes the narrow trail down to the water. She leads me to a sandy bank where the sun shines down.

“Let’s set up here,” she suggests.

We spread out the towels she brought and she kicks off her sneakers. I watch as she pulls her dress over her head and tosses it onto the ground. She’s wearing a plain dark blue bikini and I swear I’ve never seen anything sexier. She’s small but not too skinny, she has slight curves and her skin is already lightly tanned and freckled in some spots. I keep watching as she walks down to the water and dips her toes in.

I hesitate for a minute and try to talk down my raging hard on before I kick off my boots and socks and strip down to my swim trunks. I walk across the sand and when I’m not more than a foot behind her she turns.

“You com- Oh shit,” she gasps with a laugh. “I didn’t realize you were behind me.”

She glances down my chest and then back up. Her eyes might be hidden behind her sunglasses but I can see the blush spread across her cheeks. It makes me feel good to know that she’s looking at me the same way I’m looking at her. I’m not conceited but I know that I’m bigger than most guys my age. Turning wrenches and hard work have given me decent muscles and back in Drayton I went to the gym whenever I needed to burn off whatever was pissing me off at the time.

“So,” I begin. “This is The Hole everyone is always talking about, huh?”

“Uh, yeah, this is it,” she says. “It’s so pretty down here. I suppose it makes up for the rest of Redemption.”

We wade into the water, it isn’t very deep and we can both still touch. We float around and talk about nothing really, but every word she says feels important to me and I don’t wanna forget any of it. We decide to take a break and lie in the sun for a bit. When we sit down she unzips her bag and tosses me an apple and takes one for herself. Eventually she lays back and I do the same, my hat resting on my eyes to shield the sun. I sneak a glance at her and watch her chest rise and fall, the sun drying up the tiny drops of water on her skin. Without overthinking it, I reach my hand out for hers and our fingers lace together without hesitation. She squeezes my hand gently.

“I’m glad you moved back here, Logan,” she says.

“Me too.”

She slides closer to me until our sides are touching and she rests our hands on top of her stomach.

“Logan?”

“Yeah?”

She pulls off her sunglasses and lifts my hat so that it’s shielding both of our eyes from the sun beaming down on us. She looks up at me but doesn’t say anything. I lean my head down and press my lips to hers firmly, half expecting her to pull away but she doesn’t. She presses up and kisses me back, her breath catching when I reach my other hand around her back and pull her closer. I might not have a lot of nice things and I might come from trash, but right now Prairie’s kissing me back and it’s everything.

I take my hand from hers and roll her onto her back, she opens her legs and pulls me between them. Her fingertips trace up and down my back. I’m so hard it almost hurts and I feel like an asshole for it, but she doesn’t seem to mind that I’m rubbing up against her. She moans quietly and brings her hands up to my face. Pulling back, she looks up at me and smiles. Her cheeks are pink and her eyes are brighter than usual.

“That was my first kiss,” she confesses. “I knew I was waiting for a reason.”

I feel so damn happy when she tells me that but all I can do is stare right back at her and wish that I had waited too.

“Say something,” she whispers, her breath touching my lips.

I kiss her once more, gently, and lean back. “I don’t want anyone else to kiss you,” I say.

“Me either,” she agrees. “And I don’t want anyone else to kiss you either.”

The sound of tires crunching on the gravel and a little kid shouting for his mom to hurry up makes us both laugh as I roll off of her and try to hide just how hard I am. We pack up our stuff and head back to the car, passing the family of four along the way as they make their way down to the same sandy bank. Prairie stands on her toes and gives me one more kiss before she slides behind the wheel. She lets me hold her hand the entire way back to town.

I know without a doubt that this is the best day of my entire life so far, and it scares the shit out of me. Because nothing good lasts forever, everyone knows that. Especially me.

 

 

*

 

“Fuck you, you piece of shit asshole!”

“Woman, I fucking told you to bite your damn tongue!”

“I hate you!”

I roll out of bed and reach for my jeans on the floor just as something shatters onto the kitchen floor. Probably a beer bottle. Part of me still feels like I should get in the middle of it but I learned my first night here when I tried to pull Brad away from my mom that it was pointless. She turned to me and called me everything she was calling him and told me to mind my own damn business. So that’s what I do now. I pull my T-shirt over my head and slide on my boots, ignoring the yelling and cussing as I pop the screen and crawl out through the window. I shut it behind me and head down the row, to the same place I’ve been coming to for the last two months every time I get woken up in the middle of the night by another drunken brawl.

I tap lightly on Prairie’s window and soon her lamp comes on and she opens her curtains, looking down at me with a sleepy smile. She opens the window and I step up on the cinder block laying on the pavement and hoist myself up. I close it behind me and follow her to the bed where she lies back down and scoots towards the wall, making room for me. I kick off my boots but keep my clothes on, turning onto my side so that she can nestle herself against me like she always does.

I wrap my arms around her and kiss her head. “Go back to sleep, babe.”

“You’ll always have me, Logan,” she promises quietly. “Always.”