Chapter Twelve
Logan
“Must be a bit of an adjustment, huh?” Scott asked as he slid a cold beer into my hands. It was Friday night at the beach, only two weeks since I’d first seen Dawn, but somehow like a whole different world. I wasn’t alone, staring out at the water and brooding, not anymore. I had Dawn, I had friends, I had beer—things had gotten radically better in a very short period of time.
That didn’t mean I was super patient with Scott’s enigmatic questions, though. And it was just him and Oliver with me at the fire, so I didn’t need to be too polite. Dawn and I had spent enough time hanging out with them that we were past that kind of barrier. “What the fuck are you talking about?”
“Not having your own place. Having to sneak around to find a little privacy.” Scott shook his head. “I have tried to get it on in a Jeep, my friend, so I know from experience—it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”
He was obnoxious, but not wrong. I’d only had my own apartment for a few months before I got injured, but it was amazing how quickly I’d gotten used to the privacy. Amazing how frustrating it was, in Corrigan Falls, to want to be alone with Dawn somewhere and have so few options. Open air was fine for making out, but we were both interested in taking things a little further, and it wasn’t that easy to find somewhere for that to happen.
“I don’t think this is a conversation I want to be having with you,” I said. Dawn had mentioned that she and Scott had, briefly and disastrously and secretly, gotten together a few times, but that didn’t mean her current sex life was any of his damn business.
“You don’t think so?” he asked and leaned back with the level of smugness that I’d come to expect from him. “You don’t think it might be nice to get some information from a local about this sort of thing?”
“Dawn’s a local, asshole.”
“Dawn’s a chick local. Totally different knowledge set.”
“You think chicks don’t want to find places to fool around?”
“They’re used to being the passive ones in these situations.”
The idea of Dawn being passive about anything kind of made me laugh, but I figured it wouldn’t hurt to hear Scott’s ideas anyway. Even after only a couple weeks, I was getting frustrated by the limitations of open spaces.
“Okay, fine. What have you got?”
He rhymed off a few remote places that were still open air, just private, and then I guess he read my expression and saw how unimpressed I was. He added, “Tim Sullivan’s apartment is good—he’s out of town for the off-season but he left keys with some of his hockey buddies. You could ask one of them.”
“Yeah, maybe I’ll ask Toby if I could use his friend’s apartment to go mess around with his ex. That sounds like a great idea.”
“It is a great idea, and I’ll give you a hundred dollars if you do it somewhere I can watch. And Nat has to be there, too, so Toby will have to give you the key. Damn, that would be perfect. Please, man, do this for me.”
But Dawn had warned me about Scott’s twisted relationship with his cousin. “Luckily, I don’t need your money.”
Scott huffed in frustration.
Oliver smiled sweetly and said, “My house is going to be empty this weekend. And we have a guest room—change the sheets, and it’s barely gross at all.”
“Oliver!” Scott bellowed. “I was going to get him! He was going to be totally desperate, and he was going to go crawling to Toby! It was going to be fucking perfect!”
But his noise had drawn attention from other quarters and now Dawn wandered over, Chris Winslow and Claudia with her. “Do I want to know what Scott’s upset about?” Dawn asked.
“No,” Oliver and I said in unison.
She didn’t even argue, just sank down onto the sand next to me and leaned over so we were nestled together. I wrapped my arm around her and pulled her in a little closer. Yeah, somewhere private would be really, really nice. Oliver’s family guest room, though? I wasn’t sure about that.
“So what’d you learn at work today?” I asked, and I could feel Dawn’s smile against my shoulder.
“Bird calls. We went out in the backyard and listened to a bunch, and she knew them all. Like, even the ones that aren’t the same, but are from the same bird? She knows those. And then we read for our book club— Claudia, I asked, and she says if you guys want to join you can, but you’ve got to catch up fast, ’cause we’re not messing around. And then she said I made a perfect martini, so that’s a good life skill.”
“I can’t believe you’re getting paid for this,” Oliver said.
“Me neither. Pushing to do awesome stuff is awesome.”
“Worked out pretty well for you this time,” Scott said grudgingly. He wasn’t a member of the sisterhood—hadn’t been asked—and wasn’t a huge fan of the movement in general. But even he couldn’t deny the happiness on Dawn’s face. I’d have kicked his ass if he’d tried.
We spent the rest of the night around the fire, sipping drinks and talking, and at some point toward the end of the evening Oliver caught me on my own and said, “Dawn knows where my house is. And the code for the door is 9111. Like an emergency and you got a little carried away. We’re leaving tomorrow morning, won’t be back until Sunday night. If you’re interested.”
“Thanks,” I said. And, yeah, damn right I was interested. But I wondered how Dawn would feel about it.
…
Dawn
I could tell something was on Logan’s mind as he drove me home that Friday night, but he didn’t seem to want to come out and tell me what it was.
“You’re working tomorrow day and night, right?” he asked.
I wasn’t sure that was the real question, but it was the only one I had to work with. “Last shift at the golf course starting at nine, then right over to the Grill at four. And you’re with the kids until after dinner?”
“Yeah.”
“And I’m working brunch at the Grill on Sunday. So if we went out after my work on Saturday, I wouldn’t want to stay out too late.”
“But we could find some time,” he said, and it sounded like he was trying to figure something out for himself.
“Or Sunday night, after you’ve got the kids settled.”
For some reason he didn’t seem too interested in Sunday night. Then he sighed and said, “Oliver’s house is empty Saturday night and Sunday daytime. He said we could use it if we wanted. But—I don’t think I want to.”
“What?” It sounded—well, that sounded bad. There was only one reason we’d ever want to use Oliver’s house, and if Logan wasn’t in to that… “What are you saying?”
He glanced over at me, then swerved the Jeep to the curb and knocked it into neutral. “No,” he said quickly. “Not that. I just—I figured I should tell you about it, about Oliver’s offer, just to be open and honest or whatever, but…I don’t want to sound like a little girl, and God knows I want you. Like, all of you. Over and over and over again.”
Well, that sounded better, and I let myself relax.
“But—okay, I’m just going to sound like a little girl and get it over with. I want our first time to be—I mean, ‘special’ would be nice, but even ‘not sleazy’ seems worth shooting for.”
“What the hell kind of little girls are you hanging out with? Little girls who are planning their first time having sex with a new person? Seriously?”
“Okay, sorry, yeah, that was weird. I mean, like…just a general girl? Of regular age for sex? But then it sounds like I’m saying I don’t want to sound like you, and that seems kind of insulting.”
“I’ll tell you what. I’m willing to overlook the entire figure of speech. That’s a gift, from me to you.”
“That’s a really generous present. Thank you.”
“For the rest of it—wanting to not be sleazy? I mean, first time or not, I think that’s a good goal. I’m down with that.”
“Even if it means no sex for—for an indeterminate period?”
“We’re going to Montreal in a week and a half. Unless you’re saying that Montreal is sleazy, too, I think we’re okay.”
“A week and a half is a long time.” But he didn’t seem too concerned as he put the Jeep back into gear and drove on.
“You freaked me out there,” I admitted after taking a moment to catch up to it all. “I thought you were going to dump me, and—you know what? The worst part of it wasn’t that I wouldn’t get to fly to Montreal with you. I was actually more upset about just not getting to see you. Not getting to hang out anymore.”
“Yeah?” He looked over at me, suddenly almost shy.
I knew how he felt. We’d spent a lot of time together, but we really hadn’t known each other for very long. The feelings were coming fast and strong, but I think we both had enough practicality, enough common sense, to not completely trust anything that seemed so easy. Well, maybe that’s pessimism or cynicism rather than common sense, but, whatever. The point was, we weren’t totally acknowledging our feelings, not out loud, and maybe not even to ourselves.
I’d kind of broken that rule, but I wasn’t going to apologize for it. And when he reached over and took my hand I figured I didn’t need to. “I’m glad you’re going to come along and distract me when I have to deal with medical crap. And I’m looking forward to showing you around the city. But that’s because of the you part, not the city part. You know?”
“Yeah,” I said and sank back into the seat cushions. I did know. And it was pretty excellent.