“Hey, how was it?” He asked as I got to the car. He had refused to come to the funeral - he said he didn’t know my Dad well enough and besides, the old man hated him. He wasn’t wrong.

“It’s done, that’s all that matters,” I sighed. “Come on, let’s get a drink.”

“You want to crash at mine tonight?” Ellis reached over and placed a suggestive hand on my knee - we’d been seeing each other for a few months, but we never seemed to make it much past hooking up.

Probably why Dad hated him so much.

“I don’t think so,” I shook him off, closing my legs and pulling down my skirt.

He pouted like a kid, put his foot down on the accelerator, and tore down the street, the sound of engine booming off the surrounding houses.

I closed my eyes and let the speed wash over me, ready to be somewhere, anywhere, other than here. 

The night sped by in a blur of shots and shrieks and kisses, everyone invited around to my apartment to chill in my tiny living room - basically, how I always spent my nights in the town.

Yeah, it wasn’t the most constructive way to deal with everything that had happened in the last week or so, but I had kept the news of Dad’s death to myself so everyone was just treating me as they normally would.

And that was kind of nice - not to be looked at through that lens of sadness and sympathy, not to be observed so people could watch and judge on my reactions.

It was a relief, in all honesty, and I appreciated the chance to just…let myself go for a while.

As the night drew to a close, I made my way back up to my bedroom and found that Ellis was already waiting for me. 

“Hey babe,” he flashed me a smile, sitting up and holding out his arms to me. “Fun night, huh?”

I shot him a look - had he forgotten what had happened today? Ellis and I had been seeing each other for a couple of months - hooking up, mainly, not that I was interested in more - and I was starting to have my doubts about him. He was just so freaking dumb.

I knew it was unfair to put someone down for how smart they were or weren’t, but his obliviousness seemed like a cover for callousness more times than I would care to count.

And now, here he was, with that look on his face that said he wanted to get down and dirty like we usually did after we partied together. But all I wanted was to peel off my clothes and go to bed.

“Yeah,” I sighed, turning away from him and beginning to get undressed. “I think I just need to sleep now, though.”

“Aw,” he made a disappointed noise. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure, Ellis,” I snapped, my voice sounding harsher than I intended it to.

He held his hands up as I slipped into bed with him, but I ignored his attempt at an apology. I didn’t need it.

Hell, I didn’t need him at that moment in time - I would have been happier having the bed to myself and not having to deal with him getting up in the night to piss out all the beer he consumed, but I was tired and couldn’t be bothered arguing with him about getting out.

I could feel him watching me for a minute more before he laid down, flipped onto his side, and almost immediately started snoring. 

I laid and stared at the ceiling for a little longer, the day weighing heavy on me as I tried to will myself to sleep.

Dad’s memory was fresh at the front of my brain, but I was almost exhausted with missing him, mourning him - thinking about him would just keep me up the rest of the night, and he had always been the first to lecture me about not getting enough sleep.

No, I needed something to distract myself - and, at once, Logan jumped into my head.

I wondered how long it had been since I’ve last clapped eyes on him - years, probably. I could still remember that little uptick of excitement in my chest when we would pass in a school corridor, and he would look at me, and his eyes would flicker with a hint of recognition and I would spend the whole afternoon thinking about it.

I mean, that was long before I discovered the fact that getting the guy you wanted (or getting over him) was as easy as marching up to him and asking if you could hook up or not, but still.

Seeing him again today…that guy, the guy I had known of in high school, he didn’t seem like the type who would care for a sick neighbor out of the goodness of his heart.

He had never read to me as the sort of man who was a bad boy with the heart of gold - no, he just seemed bad. But there was something going on under the surface there - something that, even after all these years without seeing him, that intrigued me.

I drifted off into a fitful sleep, and when I woke up, Ellis was gone - much to my relief. I went out to my living room and started collecting the beer bottles and empty plastic glasses and cramming them into a garbage bag.

It was weirdly therapeutic, just doing what I always did, and I found myself zoning out as the early morning light trickled through the window opposite me.

I peered up at the sun as it bled through the clouds, and enjoyed the comfortable moment of peace that passed over me. 

But of course, the moment passed way too quickly as I remembered with a jolt that I had a shift to start down at the store in half an hour.

I had worked at the tacky boutique clothes place across the street from my apartment for two years, almost directly since I came out of high school and left home - Mom was always pushing me to find something that challenged me more, or do what I’ve wanted when I was a kid and get my college degree, but I never wanted to be that far from her or Dad.

Turned out to be the right decision, as he got sick soon after I moved out.

I tried to push the negative thoughts from my head as I quickly jumped in a shower and pulled on some clean clothes.