It wasn't until he lowered the can again that I managed to come to my senses. Mortified that he'd seen me staring at him, I lowered my gaze, instead peaking at him from my peripheral.
He didn't seem to mind. He didn't stop staring at me, either.
The almost cynical gleam in his eyes softened as he looked me over.
"You're lovely when you blush," he said, crumpling the can and tossing it into the trashcan. "I like it."
"I… um…" I had no idea how to respond. Instead of trying, I grabbed my bowl and darted around him to the sink to dump it, unable to look at him. "Goodnight," I mumbled, already turning to make my way around him and to the safety of my bedroom.
My foot slipped on the rug, tripping me. A soft cry of alarm burst from my lips as I ran smack dab into his hard chest.
He reached out to catch me, holding me steady.
A jolt of electricity shot through me, liquefying me from the inside out.
My gaze flew to his, only to find him staring at me with a similarly shocked expression. That same inexplicable twist and flip started up in my stomach again, like a rope pulling tighter as professional tug-o-war teams tried to drag us together over the line.
My mouth parted slightly.
The shock in his eyes faded to something else. Something wicked and delicious.
One of his hands crept up my arm and onto my neck, sending my heart into overdrive again. Rough, cold fingers brushed softly across my jaw, his gaze focusing on my mouth. "That blush," he whispered beneath his breath, stroking the tips of his fingers across my cheekbone. "So beautiful."
My body swayed closer to his without command. "Logan…"
I'd never been kissed before, and I made up my mind right then that I wanted him to be the first to put his lips to mine and sweep his tongue inside. I licked my bottom lip in anticipation.
Logan groaned, his fingers tracing over my cheeks. "How old are you, Hope?"
"Sixteen."
Had I been able to think in that moment, I probably would have expected my answer to send him fleeing for his life. He was in college, and my mom worked for the Constable. Logan might have been a little wild, but he didn't strike me as stupid, and only an idiot would even consider coming anywhere close to that combination.
He didn't flee though.
He leaned forward, his lips following the path his hand had just taken across my cheek. His mouth hovered near my ear. With a soft exhale he said, "Go to bed, Hope," and then he released me, stepping back as if burned.
I went without question.
I tossed and turned all night, twisting the sheets around my legs like snakes. I felt strange, as if I'd stepped into a dream world or someone else's life. I'd desperately wanted Logan to kiss me, but the feel of his lips against my cheek, and the regretful look in his eye eased the sting of rejection, soothing it to nothing.
When morning came, I stayed in my room, unwilling to face my family with Logan right there, or maybe it was the other way around. Either way, I knew my mom would take one look at me, and instantly divine what had unfolded in the kitchen last night. I didn't want Logan getting into trouble for something he hadn't done, and I worried that my mom would see the three and a half year age difference between us as more significant than they were, the same way Logan did.
Soon enough though, Jon's truck rumbled down the driveway, carrying Logan out of my life and back to his. I thought about him and his almost-kiss often over the next days and weeks. He'd caught my thoughts like a netted butterfly and I couldn't shake him loose again.
Truthfully, I didn't make much of an effort to try. In that brief encounter, he'd made me feel beautiful, desired…cherished. No other boy had ever made me feel that way. And when my girlfriends whispered of crushes, and secret desires, I liked knowing I could finally whisper too. I never did, of course, wanting to keep that fairy-tale moment in the kitchen all to myself. But at least now I knew what my friends meant when they talked of desire and stolen moments.
As time wore on, my brief encounter with Logan began to seem more and more like a fairy-tale, something I'd dreamed and nothing more, but I never forgot him.
When Alex Marrow gave me my first kiss at Homecoming shortly after my seventeenth birthday, I remembered that moment between Logan and myself, and wished once again that he'd been my first kiss instead. Alex was sloppy, and the press of his lips to mine left me unfulfilled. I wanted the hand on my nape to be Logan's, and the heavy breath blowing across my face to instead be Logan's soft sigh.
I managed to fob Alex off on the new foreign exchange student not long later, unable to pretend I felt anything for him. I happily relegated myself once more to the ranks of single and virginal. I was waiting, wanting…hoping.
I think maybe I had been all along.
Three short weeks later, Logan made his second appearance in my life. We were out on winter break again, and unlike the previous winter, this one was unseasonably warm and dry. I'd managed to stay out of trouble, and when Jon and Amy invited me to join them at a bonfire on the beach, I willingly accepted the invitation. Their public displays of affection had mellowed over the course of the year to more private acts, thanks in part to Jon being away for college the last several months, and I was eager to get out of the house and enjoy the last few nights of freedom before I began my final semester of high school.
The night wasn't the carefree gathering I'd hoped for, however. At least not for me. As the bonfire roared, my friends wandered off with their boyfriends, leaving me to fend for myself. Even Alex and Mariah were cuddled together, sharing kisses between sips of beer. Sitting alone, I couldn't help but think of Logan, and things I had no real right to yearn for.
I doubted he remembered me at all.
He was twenty, a senior at Harvard, and exactly the kind of guy who caused more than his fair share of trouble. Amy was happy to regale me with tales of his exploits over the lunch table when I worked up the nerve to ask about him. She found amusement in the fact that someone as intelligent as her cousin could be so stupid.
And admittedly, some of the things she relayed to me were stupid. His exploits seemed to get more and more outrageous as the year wore on. I should have been glad he'd sent me to bed without kissing me that night, but I wasn't. Not even when she informed me three weeks before winter break began that he'd been expelled and nearly jailed for giving a professor a black eye in the middle of a lecture could I find it in myself to be grateful he hadn't kissed me. I couldn't explain my unflagging crush to myself, and after a while, I stopped trying to find a reason for it. It just was.
I'd never been much for drinking, but at the bonfire that night I let loose, too frustrated to deal with sobriety. By the time Jon and Amy snuck off to God only knew where, I was toeing the line between really tipsy and flat-out drunk.
Alex and Mariah were making goo-goo eyes at one another across the bonfire.
I felt pathetic.
Seventeen, and only ever kissed once.
I leaned back against a log and closed my eyes, lifting my head skyward and concentrating on the music coming from the truck parked on the sand a few feet away. The music was a mix of gangsta-rap and heavy hip-hop, but as total inebriation grew closer and closer with every beer I downed, the thumping bass and flurry of words sounded better and better.
When a body stepped in front of me, blocking the heat of the fire from my face, I frowned. A spark swept through me and something familiar niggled at the back of my mind, but I couldn't seem to place it.
"Stop hogging the fire," I grumbled without opening my eyes, not wanting to lose the feel of the bass pumping through me. Notorious B.I.G. blared all around me, and I kind of liked the song, despite the fact that he was rapping about his penis and all the women who wanted to sleep with him. Or maybe I liked the song because it was about his penis and all the women that wanted it. His references were clever, and listening to those was better than tuning back in to the self-pity party going on in my head.
"Stop hogging the
log," a familiar voice retorted, full of laughter.
I forgot Notorious B.I.G. in an instant.
My eyes flew open and landed on Logan.
He crouched down in front of me, his hair the same riotous mess I remembered from a year ago, and his eyes just as green. He hadn't really changed any, and yet he had. His eyes were more cynical, more jaded, but somehow softer too. His lips appeared fuller as he smirked at me around the unlit cigarette stuck in his mouth.
I felt like I'd stepped backward in time a year.
The rush of tingles through my body, the way my cheeks flushed, and that warm twist and flip sending butterflies into flight in my stomach was so familiar. My reaction to him was exactly as it had been a year ago. The only difference was that I’d been a little too free with the alcohol to guard my tongue.
"It's still there," I said, surprised and relieved at once.
"What's still there, Hope?" he asked.
"The tingles." I sighed, unable to stop myself from beaming over at him.
"The tingles?" He quirked a brow at me, a question in his eyes.
I smiled brighter, happy for the first time all night. "Mmhmm," I said. "Tingles everywhere."
He's here!
Wait, why is he here?
I frowned. "Why are you here?"
Logan's expression flickered between amusement and something else before settling on amusement again. Unlike when I'd opened my eyes, however, his laughter didn't reflect in his gaze this time. "I was invited. Why are you here?"
"Invited," I mumbled and sat up a little straighter. I managed to smack my beer in the process and the pale muddy colored drink spilled across the sand. "Shit!" I yelped, snatching the bottle up. Sand glistened around the rim. "I was gonna drink that."
"Beer?" he asked.
What, he could drink beer, but I couldn't?
Pfft.
"So?" I challenged.
"Mom's not going to be happy."
"About what?" I blinked up at him, confused.
"Hope." Logan dropped to his knees in front of me. "Are you drunk?"
I thought about it a minute. "Do your lips get numb when you're drunk?"
"Uh, yeah?" He sounded uncertain.
"And do your eyes feel squinty and red?" Mine felt that way, but I couldn't be sure if it was because I'd been sitting so close to the fire for so long or because I was, in fact, drunk.
"They do," he confirmed, trying to stifle a laugh.
"Crap," I sighed and frowned at him. "Mom's gonna kill me when I get home."
He gave up trying not to laugh and threw his head back. His laughter was a soft, warm rumble stealing across my senses. "Where's your brother?"
"Fooling around with Amy in the nearest set of bushes, probably. They do that. A lot." I frowned again. "He even got poison ivy once."
Logan laughed again before standing up and holding his hand out to me. "Come on."
I eyed him for a minute, wondering if he'd taken my explanation of Jon's whereabouts as an invitation to do some fooling around of his own. Not that I was going to object if he had. Not at all. I just wanted to be prepared.
"Up," he demanded and leaned down to lift me to my feet before I could ask any questions.
I swayed.
He caught me, twining his arms around my waist to hold me steady.
When I groaned, my body coming alive at the feel of his arms wrapped around me, he assumed the response was simply the alcohol speaking. "No arguing, we're going for a walk. It'll sober you up." He reached down and snagged a blanket, quickly wrapping it around me before leading me away from the bonfire.
For a long while, neither of us said anything, too caught up in trying to keep me on my feet in the darkness to have much concentration left for conversation. Eventually though, the strains of Biggie's gangsta-rap faded behind us, leaving nothing but the sounds of our breathing and the soft ebb and flow of water against the shoreline.
"Can we be done with walking now?" I didn't wait for an answer, choosing instead to toss the blanket off and plop myself down on the nearest bit of sand. We'd walked far enough. If he wanted me to go any further, he was going to have to work for it.
The moon hid behind clouds in the distance, making it far too dark to see much of anything, but that was fine with me. I flopped back with a groan and closed my eyes, the world spinning a little bit.
After a minute, Logan tossed the blanket over me and settled down beside me. "You're too drunk to fall asleep right now, Hope."
"Umph." I cracked my eyes open. "I'm too happy to fall asleep right now."
"Happy?"
He shifted toward me, but I couldn't make out more than a faint shadow in the dark.
"So you're a happy drunk?"
"No," I sighed. "I'm a new drunk. And I wasn't happy earlier. All in all, I'd rather not be drunk again in the future, okay?"
Another soft laugh rumbled from Logan, and then I felt him ease down until he was lying beside me. "Why weren't you happy earlier?"
"First kisses are supposed to be great, right? Mine wasn't." I sighed again, staring up at the stars twinkling far above.
"You had your first kiss tonight?" he asked, his voice quiet and intense.
"No. I had my first kiss at Homecoming. And then everyone was all couply tonight, and I thought about how it was supposed to feel to be with someone like that. And I only ever felt that way with…I only ever wanted my first kiss to be…" My mind finally caught up with the too-much-information sirens going off somewhere in the dim haze and I cleared my throat. "Nevermind."
Logan didn't say anything for a long time.
"Why'd you hit your professor?" I blurted out when I could no longer stand the silence.
He tensed beside me before relaxing again. "He tried to coerce a friend into sleeping with him, and then failed her when she said no."
"Oh." I rolled over to face him, his explanation setting off a flurry inside. I felt bad for his friend, but glad his reason for ruining his life was something so noble. "I'm going to college next fall," I said.
"Are you?"
My eyes finally began to adjust to the darkness, allowing me to make out the shape of his face. He'd turned toward me, eyes open and staring.
"Mmhmm. Logan?"
"Yeah?"
"I don't think any of my professors will try to sleep with me."
He laughed again and then his hand found my cheek in the dark, cupping it gently. "You tell me if they do." He sounded like he meant that.
"They won't," I answered. "Not even boys my age want to sleep with a virgin like me. Or maybe I'm just not normal because I don't want any of them. I only ever wanted…ah, crap." I squeezed my eyes closed, realizing too late what I'd just confessed. "I really don't want to drink ever again."
"I think that's a good plan," he said.
"Yeah. God, I can't believe I said that."
"I bet you're blushing right now, aren't you?" he asked, his fingertips brushing gently over my cheek as they had so long ago.
I bobbed my head in response, little fires kicking up beneath his fingertips to wind through me.
"How old are you now, Hope?" he whispered.
"Seventeen," I answered reluctantly. Even drunk, I knew he wouldn't try to kiss me once I said it, if there'd ever been hope of him kissing me at all. I was still just a girl with a hopeless crush. Still younger than him. Still a kid in his eyes.
He didn't say anything.
"I want to go back to the bonfire now," I whispered, tears prickling at my eyes. I didn't want to cry, but I knew I was probably going to do so anyway. I didn't want him to see it. He made me ache and it wasn't fair. Out of everyone, why did I have to be attracted to him?
"I'm sorry," he murmured, and then rolled away from me before climbing to his feet and reaching down to lift me to mine.
We walked back to the bonfire in silence, my lip between my teeth to keep the sniffles at bay. Logan halted at the edge of the fire and looked over at me, his expression torn. He lifted his
hand to my cheek and brushed again, his fingertips feather-light across my flushed skin. His lips followed the same path they had the year before, across my cheek and to my ear. "Go get some sleep, sweet Hope," he said.
I didn't look back at him as I walked away, tears dripping down my chin.
I curled up in Jon's truck and cried myself to sleep. When I woke up hours later, a massive hangover raged, and Logan had slipped out of town as quietly as he'd appeared.
I curled up in my bed when Jon deposited me at home, and cried again.
I was utterly, foolishly, devastated.
Logan was twenty. I was seventeen. He'd ruined his entire academic career over the sexual impropriety of another. There was no way he would ever kiss me. But I couldn't help wishing and wanting anyway. Just like I had for the last year.
Sometimes, time didn't really change things at all.
A handful of days later, I received a letter from Logan.
My hands shook when I saw his name written across the upper corner of the envelope. I raced up to my room, tore the envelope open, and then poured over his elegant scrawl. He asked if I'd recovered from my first bout of drunkenness, and teased me about avoiding drinking in the future. He wrote of his first experience with alcohol, and of his life.
I spent hours penning my response, trying to interject just the right combination of humor and seriousness. When I dropped it in the mailbox the next afternoon, I sent up a prayer for a response.
I received one a week later, and another every week after that.
Our friendship grew. We never mentioned my drunken confessions or the pull between us, but with every letter and then every phone call, I liked him a little more. Through words on paper and over phone screens, everything we'd never learned about one another came to light. He was the same flirtatious bad-boy I'd first met. The same wild and mischievous man Amy had spoken of so fondly. The same gentleman who fought for his friend's honor at the expense of his own education.
By March, I no longer had a crush―if that's ever what it'd been. I was hopelessly in love with him. Foolishly, I started to believe that maybe one day I would finally get that long awaited kiss from him. My eighteenth birthday wasn't far off, and the barrier that had sat so large between us would then be gone.
What the Heart Wants: An Opposites Attract Anthology Page 23
