If it were any other Friday, I would be getting ready for work, but instead … there’s another job to be done, and it’s not the one I had in mind.
WHAT IS HAPPENING? WHAT? I will my eyelids apart, trying to get a better scope of my situation, but I can’t figure out what’s happening. I can’t breathe. Or move. It’s still kind of dark, but I see sunlight.
Last night.
Oh shit.
That was nice.
I twist my heavy head to the right, finding Logan asleep with his arm draped over my naked chest and his hand cupped around my left breast. Maybe that’s why I slept so well all night. Is having warm breasts the answer to a good night sleep? If so, I’ve been doing it wrong my whole life.
I move my legs around to get the blood circulating, and my bare toes run along the coarse material of his jeans. He’s still wearing his freaking pants. Why?
I have to pee.
With an attempt to roll off the bed, Logan’s fingertips seem to stick to my nipple, and he isn’t any more aware than he was a minute ago. Yup, I’m pretty sure it’s going to rip right off if I don’t lift his hand. I wrap my fingers around his wrist and lift slowly so I can adorably tuck and roll like a sea lion—that’s what I imagine I look like at the moment. Thank God he’s asleep, and I can put clothes on before the daylight reveals the truth.
I tiptoe to the bathroom, grabbing a pair of yoga pants and a t-shirt from the pile that’s still resting on top of my hamper from when Logan folded them the other day.
My feet hit the cold tiles of my bathroom, and I softly close the door while flipping the light switch. As I face place my clothes down on the counter and look into the mirror, I can only think that I look like a scene from a horror movie when the innocent character looks at their reflection to find a zombie in its place. I need to figure out how to deal with this situation before he wakes up.
A shower—that’s the answer to all of life’s problems. Hopefully, it doesn’t wake him up. I slip in behind the glass door and crank the water up. The warmth erases some of my humility from last night, but as memories float through me, one by one, I realize I don’t have much to be embarrassed about, except for the whole post-child body in comparison to his iron stealth.
I lean my back against the shower wall, drowning in the cascading water. How did I get myself into this situation? I have to see this man every day now, and he knows what this disaster looks like. As if I need extra reminders, I look down at the tattoo I got when I was eighteen. It was a small tribal circle with the symbol of life inside. Now, it looks like a child finger painted on my right hip with black ink. This is why marriage is supposed to last. “Through thick and thin.” Well, Rick got the goddamn thin, and now he’s left me with the thick part I was sure no one would want—but now there’s a man who won’t take his pants off, and I’m not sure whether to call it a win.
With exhaustion draping me, along with the steam, I close my eyes to clear my mind. Blindly, I grab the shampoo bottle and pour the liquid over the top of my head. I let it sit there for a minute before I weakly lather it through my hair that has grown longer than I’ve ever let it before. I’ve never been a short hair kind of person, but lately, I haven’t had the time to blow dry and flat iron the kinky waves I have. Maybe it’s time for a change. Maybe I need to make myself look twenty-something again. Brielle has been whining about me doing something with myself for the past year now, but I’ve been diligently tuning her out. She doesn’t get it. Though, in all fairness, she is the one who gets laid several times a week.
Onto my next thought of why I’m up so early on a free day when I don’t have a child to take care of. I’m busy burning out my thought engine already, I guess that’s the reason. Does anyone else talk to themselves as much as I do? Does anyone just have a clear head for extended periods of time? Am I like, broken? That must be what this is. Maybe I need drugs. The head doctor did suggest it when I first started going to her after Rick double dipped. Oy.
I rinse the soap out of my hair and push the strands away from my face, feeling a freshness take over the gross layer I couldn’t seem to shake yesterday. Everything will be okay. I just have to go with the flow.
A thundering bang scares the shit out of me just as I’m getting the last of the shampoo out of my hair, and some of the suds seep into my eyes. I turn in every direction, reaching for the handle on the door so I can grab my towel, but I stop when I hear a thud.
What the hell was that?
The shower floor is vibrating against the loud thuds following the crash. “Hello?” Then, the sound of porcelain hitting porcelain pierces my ears. “Logan?”
I poke my head out of the fogged-up shower door and peek with my one non-soap-burning eye, seeing the half-naked, stealth-clad man on his knees, vomiting. Oh shit.
For some reason, I can’t move. I’m frozen, watching this all happen like an asshole. It’s not like I can do much, but watching isn’t nice, so I close myself back into the shower and bite down on the tip of my fingernail. What should I do? “Can I get you anything?” I shout out.
He answers with a gag, and the slop-hitting-water sound effect informs me he isn’t done yet. I reach my arm out of the shower and grab the towel hanging from the rack. My lip is already curled into a snarl because I hate vomit more than I hate boogers and poop. I know parents are supposed to be used to all that, but my stomach reflexes don’t agree. There hasn’t been a time when Cora has gotten sick that I haven’t felt the need to mirror her expelling situation.
I turn the water off and wrap the towel around my body, close my eyes, and pull in a sharp breath. I can do this. Man vomit is so much worse than child vomit, but he was there for me the other day. I can’t be a total ass. He’ll take the assumption of my divorce to another level if I don’t do the right thing. I am a caring person.
I step out onto the plush bath mat and slowly approach him from behind. He’s hugging the toilet with his head hanging over the bowl, and I place my wet hand on his back while kneeling beside him. I do my best to ignore the sight in front of us. That needs to be flushed, or we’re both going to be vomiting. I reach over and flush, forgetting to move back in time to avoid the recoiling splash. Uh, no. It’s just a couple of drops, but I just got out of the shower. Come on, really?
“I think I’m sick,” he says with a groan.
“I’m so sorry, Logan. This is all my fault.”
“It’s not your fault,” he says, looking over at me. His eyes are glassy and bloodshot, and his nose is running a little, yet the green hue of his cheeks brings out the blue in his eyes. Bastard. That’s not fair. No one looks good while puking. No one!
He begins to shiver, so I get up and run to the bedroom for a blanket to wrap around him.
I return quickly and place it around his shoulders. “Here, is that better?”
“Thanks,” he mutters while sliding back on his knees to push himself away from the toilet. I guess that position isn’t comfortable, since he immediately lies down on the tiled floor.
“I know how awful this feels,” I tell him. He looks up at me with puppy dog eyes, and I quickly assume he had his mother wrapped around his little finger with that look. “I’m sorry, Logan.” I run my fingers through his silky hair that somehow still looks perfect after a night’s sleep and vomiting. “Can I do anything?”
“Just sit here with me,” he says in a whisper.
I look down at my wet towel. “Okay, sure.” I sit down, leaning my back against the wall beside the toilet paper roll, and Logan scoots forward a couple of inches, placing his head on my lap.
I’m not sure why, but I’m looking around the bathroom, sort of wondering if anyone is watching this happen. While it wasn’t evident last night when he was making me moan louder than I’ve ever moaned, right now with his head on my lap, I’m realizing how little we know about each other.
With his back in view, I notice a tattoo—two lines of text written in what looks to be Greek.
“What’s this mean?” I ask, running my finger along the puckered skin.
Logan sucks in a short breath of air, and his hands tighten around my thighs. “It—” he swallows and pauses. “It means, ‘We cannot learn without pain.’ It’s about something I lost, and it’s a quote from Aristotle.”
“Wow, how philosophical of you,” I tell him, smiling a touch at the thought. I’ve had my assumptions about this man, but I may have had him all wrong. “So, what pain have you learned?” I know he was injured in baseball, but I think there’s more.
Logan curls his legs into his stomach, and I watch the waistband of his jeans dig into his stomach. That can’t feel good, but before I can suggest something else, he’s pressing against me, reaching for the toilet.
It smells like the devil’s feet in here, and I’m trying my hardest to breathe through my mouth rather than my nose.
“I think I’m dying,” Logan grumbles.
“It’s just the flu,” I remind him gently, while running my hand up and down his bare back, which is burning up. “Come on, let me help you to bed.”
I grab a face cloth and run it under the faucet before he stands up. “Here.” I dab it over his face and flush the toilet. “It’ll be okay.”
He’s staring up at me as if he just figured something out, but I can’t imagine what could be going through his head right now. “Cora is a lucky girl,” he utters.
I toss the washcloth into the sink and loop my arm under his. “Come on.” He uses the toilet as leverage to get up to his feet but leans a lot of his weight on me too. Logan is not a small man—lean, yes, but those muscles weigh a ton. I manage to get him to the bed and help him under the covers. “I’ll get you some water.”
Logan grabs my wrist with a weak grip. “Thank you, Hannah.” The bridge between superior and employee has been broken. We’ve taken a completely different path, and we’ll need to figure out how to navigate through this one, but I’m willing to go that way because something feels different right now. Something feels good, despite the situation at hand.
I slip into a pair of leggings and a baggy t-shirt and jog down the steps toward the kitchen, just as the doorbell rings. It’s way too early in the goddamn morning for company. Come on.
“Coming,” I shout to whoever is rude enough to ring the bell before nine on a holiday or weekend.
I open the door, finding Rick, Tiana, and Cora standing on the front step. What the hell? “What’s the matter?”
“I need you to take them,” Tiana says. “I—I have plans today, and I can’t deal with him when he’s sick. Plus, I can’t afford to get sick right now. I’ll come back for him tomorrow night. Okay?”
My mouth falls open. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on just a minute. You don’t really think this is how things are going to work, do you? He’s your problem now. You take care of him. I’ll keep my daughter, though.”
“No, no, no, I can’t.” She opens the screen door between us and shoves Rick inside.
“Titi, come on, babe. Why are you doing this?”
“Yeah, Titi, why are you doing this? Oh, that’s right, you’re not doing this,” I tell her.
The sudden movement makes Rick fall to his knees, and of course, vomit. Cora is shrieking, holding her nose, and jumping around, making a scene. By the time I return my attention to the doorway, I see that Tiana is gone.