Neat

by Kandi Steiner

  “Fine,” Chris conceded. “But, does he even need to know? I mean, it’s not like it has to be anything serious. It sounds like you like him, and from what you’ve told me, he likes you, too. Why not have a little fun?” He tipped his glass toward me before taking a sip. “From what I know of the guy, he could use it.” Chris grimaced. “Who watches space documentaries for joy?”

  I chuckled, flying through the list of reasons why entertaining any kind of feelings for Logan Becker — whether just for fun or otherwise — was a terrible idea. Still, just a centimeter of his skin on mine had sent me into this spiral, and now that I’d had a taste, I couldn’t stop wondering what it would be like to dip the whole spoon in and take a full bite.

  My phone vibrated, and Chris eyed me with a smirk. Before I could even think to reach for the phone, it was in his hands, unlocked with Logan’s newest text pulled up — since I shared everything with my best friend.

  Mistake.

  “Still need help with the shop tomorrow?” Chris read, mimicking a deep voice that I presumed was supposed to be Logan’s. He quirked a brow at me. “Help with what?”

  “He likes to organize and clean and put things in their place,” I explained with a shrug. “I told him he could help me put the shop together this weekend, if he wanted to.”

  Chris smiled triumphantly, tossing me the phone before kicking back and pushing play on the remote. “Sounds like fun to me.”

  I sighed, looking at the text with every quiet voice inside me saying I should decline. Logan Becker and I should have had a relationship that existed only within the walls of the Scooter Whiskey Distillery. He as the Lead Tour Guide, me as the guide in training. He’d show me the ropes, and I’d try not to get him into any more trouble.

  Because he was a Becker, and I was a Scooter.

  That was where all the lines should be drawn.

  But the louder voices inside me wanted more of the Logan I got that night we walked Main Street, wanted to know what other music lived on his playlist, wanted to crack his shell, loosen him up, add a little color to his life.

  Maybe it really couldn’t hurt, I thought. Maybe we could be friends, hang out, have a little fun…

  It was a stupid idea. Obtuse, really.

  But it didn’t stop me from sending the next text.

  Me: Tomorrow at noon. Wear something you can get dirty in.

  I was obsessed with the little wrinkle between Logan’s eyebrows.

  I stared at it all afternoon as he worked in my shop, opening up boxes and building furniture, hanging up signs and unpacking paint, organizing easels and brushes and sponges and cups. I loved how concentrated he was, how the same fire that fueled me when I envisioned the shop seemed to live inside him. It was like it was his, like he had something to fight for with me — something to lose.

  We’d worked tirelessly all afternoon, and made a substantial dent in what was previously complete chaos. The studio was actually beginning to look like a studio, like a business, like what I’d always dreamed it could be. I could finally see the little sections I’d imagined, the division of the wide space, the different themes of each that helped them stand out while still bringing a cohesive feel to the shop.

  My chest was light, wings fluttering against my rib cage.

  It’s happening. It’s really happening.

  The 1975 played on Logan’s speaker — which he’d brought with him at my insistence. I’d offered a suggestion from time to time, but for the most part, it’d been his music, his favorite bands and artists, and I loved getting a sneak peek inside his soul. He listened to everything from yacht rock and country to folk and classical — and he knew the words to every single song that came on. My favorite songs were the ones he couldn’t help but belt out rather than just quietly singing along.

  Right now, he was bobbing his head along to “Sincerity is Scary,” one hand holding a slice of the pizza I ordered us for dinner and the other making more notes as he looked around the room at what we’d done and what was still left to do. I sipped on the sweet tea I’d made, watching him.

  I’d told him to wear something he could get dirty in, so I guess I had myself to blame for the traveler sweat pants hanging off his hips, leaving practically nothing to the imagination when it came to how round and firm his ass was — as well as what he was packing in the front. And if those pants weren’t already a distraction, the old, ripped, slightly stained Stratford High t-shirt he wore with the sleeves ripped off in such a haphazard way that the muscles that lined his ribs were visible, would have done the trick. When he’d first taken his jacket off, I’d had to turn away, clearing my throat and commenting on something about the mess of boxes to keep from staring.

  Now, after a long day of working, his hair was disheveled, curling out from under the edge of his ball cap.

  And that little wrinkle was present, his brows furrowed in concentration.

  I bit my lip, watching him balance that slice of pizza in one hand as he made notes with the other. I swear, I tried talking myself out of what my fingers ached to do most, but instinct won out.

  I slipped off the little bar stool I was on — one that would be used in the painting corner of the studio — and crept to the back office. My camera was on the desk there, and I strapped it around my neck, fussing with the lens and settings before I made my way back into the shop.

  I stood off to his left, the setting sun casting his strong profile in an orange glow through the large shop windows. Shadows stretched out behind him, and I lifted the camera, looking through the viewfinder at my subject just as he furrowed his brows even more, jotting something down on the notepad.

  Click.

  The sound was soft and quiet, but still audible over the music, and Logan’s head popped up, searching for the source. When he saw me still looking at him through the camera lens, he grinned.

  “Did you just take a picture of me?”

  I shrugged, lowering the camera. “Just testing some of the settings,” I lied. “It’s the golden hour, great time for shooting. I wanted to see how the light came through the windows.”

  He nodded, the corner of his mouth still quirked as he watched me from across the studio. “You’re really into photography, huh?”

  “It’s one of my favorite mediums,” I said, making my way back to the bar stool across from him. I pressed the button on the back of the camera that would show me the images I’d taken, and when I saw the one I’d just snapped of Logan, my heart squeezed. “Although, I still haven’t managed how to capture the beauty of something you see with your eyes through the lens. Seems like, for some things, it’s impossible to accomplish.”

  Logan was completely oblivious to the compliment, and he started in on his notes again. “I bet you do better than you think. Why don’t you have any of your art down here yet? Your paintings, photographs…” He glanced at me before pulling his attention back to the pad. “I’m sure you have thousands.”

  “Most of them are upstairs,” I said. “And I do have thousands, but probably only a dozen that are good enough to display.”

  Logan stopped writing, meeting my gaze. “I doubt that. I’d love to see what you’ve created.”

  His eyes were intense where they watched me, the air thick and heavy in the shop. He swallowed, taking to his notes again as I fiddled with the settings on the camera to keep myself busy.

  “You’ll have to show me some of your shots sometime,” he said after a moment.

  I nodded, watching his face level out as he got back to work, wondering why my lungs were being so weird with breath all of a sudden. It was like I was under water, or like I’d completely forgotten the simple, natural body functions of inhale, exhale.

  It wasn’t just me who was feeling it. I could tell Logan was off, too — and I was determined to change that.

  Pulling the strap from around my neck, I set my camera down, circling the table we sat at and placing my hand over the notepad he was writing in.

  He quirked a bro
w up at me. “Hard to write with your hand in the way.”

  “So take a break,” I told him. “We’ve been working all day, and if I’m being honest, the stress rolling off you has been stressing me out.”

  I plucked the pen from his hands, shoving it and the notebook too far away from him for him to reach for them. He looked at them longingly for a moment before he let out a deep sigh.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, scrubbing his hands over his face. “Honestly, you giving me so much to do today has been a blessing for me. I can’t stop thinking about the box we found, about my dad…” He swallowed, the thick Adam’s apple in his throat bobbing. “Working on stuff like this helps me get out of my head for a while.”

  I frowned, crossing my arms to keep myself from reaching for him. I knew that feeling all too well, the need to escape, to move my hands in an effort to stop thinking — even if just for a while.

  “I just… I can’t figure out why that stuff was in there,” he continued. “You know? Why was that stuff saved, tucked away? How did it survive as well as it did? Why didn’t the fire department take it, or the police? Why wasn’t it given to my mom, to my family, if it wasn’t needed for evidence?”

  I blew out a sigh of my own. “I don’t know, none of it makes sense to me either.”

  Logan’s frown deepened, his eyes falling to where he folded his hands in his lap.

  I nudged his shoulder with my elbow. “Hey, you got the hard drive out, right? And you got the necessary equipment to see the files that are on it. That has to be comforting, at least.”

  “Yes,” he agreed, lifting his gaze to mine. “But the hard drive is password protected. I can’t access anything until I crack that code.”

  “And you will,” I assured him. “But, until then, there’s no sense in stressing yourself out over answers you can’t find — no matter how many times you ask the questions.”

  His brows folded together again, and I chuckled, uncrossing my arms and taking a tentative step toward him. Before I could think better of it, I reached out, smoothing my thumb over the wrinkle I’d been marveling at all day.

  “Have you ever painted before?” I asked, eyes on the skin that was smooth now that I’d run my thumb over it.

  Logan’s breath was shallow, his eyes locked on my face as I stared at where that wrinkle had been. “Not since elementary school.”

  I laughed, letting my hand drop from where I touched his face. “I think it’s time we changed that.” I held out that hand for his. “Come on, let’s have some fun.”

  He grimaced. “I don’t think I can. Not right now.”

  “Well,” I insisted, wiggling my fingers and nodding toward his hand. “We’re at least going to try.”

  Reluctantly, Logan took my hand, and I tried not to feel the warmth of his hand in mine as more than a friendly gesture as I guided him over to the corner of the room we’d started setting up for the painting workshops. A circle of easels faced the middle of that section, each station loaded with paint and brushes and palettes. I instructed him to sit, and then I moved to the corner, pulling out two large, blank canvases.

  I placed one in the easel in front of him, the other in the one next to him where I would sit. As I poured paint for us and got rinse cups ready, Logan was quiet, not even singing along to the music anymore. He was staring at the blank canvas like it was a threat rather than a release.

  “You’ll like this,” I promised him when I took the seat to his left. “Just try to relax and let go.”

  Logan nodded, another sigh leaving his lips as he picked up the first brush. “I don’t really know what to do.”

  “That’s the whole point,” I said. “You don’t have to know anything. You just… feel. Do. Whatever you want.”

  I turned my attention to my own canvas, hoping it would help release some of the pressure Logan felt to produce something. I let the music fill in the space between us, and after a few minutes of me working on my piece, Logan finally dipped his brush in the salamander orange paint and began.

  We worked in a comfortable silence for a while, and the more time stretched on, the more Logan seemed to relax. He started singing again, and I just hummed along beside him until he surprised me when he belted out every word to “Man of Constant Sorrow.”

  “He’s a bluegrass fan, too,” I mused, keeping my eyes on my canvas. “Is there any kind of music you don’t listen to?”

  “Death core,” he said easily. “And really, all metal music. Although, not because I didn’t try to love it.”

  “I’m trying to picture you head banging and screaming with the rock on sign.” I held my index and pinky finger up to illustrate, sticking out my tongue like Gene Simmons.

  Logan chuckled. “I even went to a show in Nashville once, wondering if I’d appreciate it more live. And I did, but… not enough to listen to it on my own.” He pointed the tip of his brush at me. “Did you know there are literally hundreds of sub-genres of metal music? It all depends on the vocal style, instruments used, what era or region or bands they draw inspiration from. I mean, there’s literally a genre called Celtic Metal that’s inspired by Celtic mythology.”

  It was the most enthusiastic I’d seen him all day, the excited grin on his face too contagious for me to fight.

  “You’re like a walking encyclopedia,” I commented. “Like, you know a little something about everything it seems.”

  He shrugged, turning his attention back to his canvas. “It’s all useless, except for maybe a trivia night. But like I said, I love to learn, so I usually find myself deep in the rabbit hole of the Internet reading about some subject I didn’t even know existed before I stumbled upon it.”

  “You make me feel lazy, I never do anything productive like that — not now that I’m out of school. If anything, I avoid anything that looks suspiciously educational.”

  Logan gestured to the shop around us, to the canvas in front of me. “Are you kidding? Look at what you can create, at the art you can bring to life. And you’re sharing that with your hometown, giving kids here the options that you never had to explore their creativity.” He lowered his brush, pausing to look me in the eyes. “That’s incredible, Mallory.”

  I wanted to hold his gaze forever, to lose myself in the specks of brown that dotted the gold irises of the man next to me. But I couldn’t bare it, couldn’t look at him any longer without wanting to shrink away from the parts of me he saw that no one else did.

  I cleared my throat. “You know, it means a lot to me that you see it that way,” I said, dipping my brush in the rinse water. “The studio, I mean. For a while, it’s felt like this pipe dream, and even now that I’m making it a reality…” I shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like I’m the only one who takes it seriously, who sees what it can be.” I looked at him again then. “Except for you.”

  Logan smiled, his eyes searching mine for the briefest moment before he turned back to his work. I did the same, and for a while it was just brushes over canvas, a soft rock ballad in the background.

  “Mallory,” he said after a moment, still painting. “The night we walked Main Street, you sort of mentioned that you had a deal with your dad. A deal regarding the studio.” He didn’t look at me, not even when my hand froze where I was painting a snowman in the yard of the Christmassy cabin scene on my canvas. “What does that mean?”

  I blinked. “It’s complicated, but long story short — he bought the studio in exchange for me finally working at the distillery. For at least five years, I have to be there Monday through Friday, and I’m free to use my evenings and weekends here.”

  My voice was low, tone short, my brush strokes on the canvas a little more violent.

  Logan nodded. “I guess he’s always been a little desperate for you to be a part of the family legacy, huh?”

  I scoffed. “That’s putting it lightly.”

  “What happened?” Logan asked, and this time, he stopped what he was painting to look at me. “The summer before high school, y
ou said something happened that changed everything with your family.”

  I shook my head, the blood draining from my face as I recalled the memory. I thought about avoiding it, telling a lie, saying it was nothing and I was just a dramatic teen. But even now, even twelve years later, I still felt the same way about what happened as I did that hot summer night.

  And for some reason, for the first time since I’d told my best friend Chris, I wanted to share it with someone.

  “Something not a lot of people know about me is I have a very sharp sense of what’s right and what’s wrong,” I said, continuing work on my canvas. “I’ve always had this moral compass, and a desire to be just, and to seek justice for others. I even thought about being a lawyer once,” I confessed on a sarcastic laugh. “Until I realized how corrupt our judicial system is.”

  Logan was quiet, just listening, watching me.

  “Anyway, one night that summer before high school, Dad had a big party at the house. It was catered, giant tents everywhere in our yard, a band and — of course — a casino. I’m sure you’ve heard of how he likes to offer the residents of Stratford a place to gamble since they have to drive out of state otherwise.”

  He gave me a face at that, because we both were well aware that my father’s “underground” casino was nowhere near a secret — at least, not in this town. He was protected by the local police, and no one had ever reported him to any higher authorities — mostly because nearly everyone in town had participated at one point or another.

  Logan and his family had an even more in-depth knowledge of it all, thanks to his older brother, Noah. Noah had started dating the mayor’s daughter, Ruby Grace, and the mayor was now famous for his debt owed to my father from nights at the casino — a debt made public at what was supposed to be Ruby Grace’s wedding to another man. It was the biggest scandal Stratford had seen in some time, and even now, six months later, it was whispered about.

  “The casino part of the night was in our basement, and I went down there a little after midnight to get a soda. I also wanted to sketch, since I couldn’t sleep with all the noise, and my favorite set of drawing pencils were down there with the rest of my art supplies — which I’d begged Mom to let me keep in my room, but she’d refused, saying the mess of paint brushes and pencils were eye sores.”