Two Roads

by L. M. Augustine

  We stand there for a while, awkwardly waiting for our dates to show, and instead of picturing who mine is, I find myself trying to imagine the type of girl Logan dates. She probably has glasses, too many freckles, mousy brown hair and a horrible ponytail and she sniffles way more than her daily quota, I tell myself. I bet she’s a science wiz, or an English nerd, or some language geek who is fluent in five languages. She is, certainly, nothing like me.

  I can’t even tell if that’s a good or bad thing.

  After a few more minutes of tapping my foot and staring at the parking lot for a car that isn’t showing up, I glance at Logan. “So where is this hot date of yours?” I say, smirking at him.

  “I could ask you the exact same question.”

  “And I could punch you right now, but I’m not going to. Now answer my question.”

  He shrugs. “I mean, the truth is, I don’t really know who she is.”

  I stop, turn to him. “Huh?” I say and I frown, but something in my stomach twists. Something deep inside me starts freaking out. What if Logan is--

  “My parents set me up on a blind date,” he says simply. My muscles stiffen up as soon as the words leave his mouth, and now it’s his turn to frown. “What? Where’s your date?”

  I open and close my mouth, trying to process this, telling myself that it can’t possibly be what I think it is. My heart starts pounding, and I have to force myself to speak. “I don’t know,” I say after a while, watching him intently and feeling totally awkward and useless. “My parents set me up on a blind date.”

  I feel Logan’s gaze on me, and now his body tightens up beside mine, too. “Oh,” is all he says, but I think he gets the hint.

  Desperately, I look around the restaurant, my heart sinking with each passing second, but there is nobody. Nobody. The only people here are that elderly couple and a few waiters washing the dishes, and it doesn’t seem like anyone else is coming. I look back up at Logan, and my stomach constricts.

  Oh no.

  Oh shit.

  It is what I thought.

  My parents really did this.

  My. freaking. idiot. parents.

  Only they could set me up on a date with the one guy they know I hate more than anything in the world.

  Logan towers over me, six feet to my five and three inches. We stare at each other for a long time, his annoyingly perfect blue eyes on mine, his lashes moving slowly up and down. I open my mouth and try to say something, but I just don’t know what to do.

  Finally, after the painfully awkward silence has dragged on long enough, something totally unexpected happens: Logan bursts out laughing. Like, a full-on, deep, masculine laugh. He doubles over and lets more laughter escape him, his face all red and amused and genuinely happy. I stand over him, at first looking at him with horror, but eventually a smile cracks across my lips and the next thing I know, I join him in laughing.

  All of it bubbles from deep inside me, and we just laugh and laugh until everyone in the restaurant starts staring at us--two college student enemies, broken after Ben’s suicide, whose idiot parents set them up on a blind date together. I laugh away all of the other night, all of the pain my parents have caused, and everything that happened with Ben. I laugh until it hurts to laugh, until my stomach cramps up and I have to struggle to breathe.

  “Our parents seriously set us up on a date,” Logan says, his face all red, as he gasps in a deep breath.

  “I know. Holy shit. I mean, I knew my parents were idiots and had no taste, but they picked a date as awful as you? That’s a new low even for them!” I say, laughing, even though I don’t really find it funny.

  “Yeah,” Logan says, “I would rather die than go on a date with you.”

  “That option is always on the table, you know.” I wink at him. He just sighs at me like I’m boring him, and I have to contain my smile.

  After a minute, a waiter comes up to us, probably wondering why we’re just randomly standing there, and asks, “may I get you two a seat?”

  Now my smile really grows. If only he knew…

  I open my mouth to say hell no, to tell him we are the farthest thing from “together” and laugh like a complete bitch, but then my stomach--my freaking goddamn idiot of a stomach--growls. Loudly.

  I swear my hunger comes at the worst possible time.

  Logan bites his lip to keep from laughing at me, and I elbow him in the stomach. I’ll get back at him later, I promise myself. But right now, I’m starving, and as bad as these sandwiches may be, I need to eat something.

  “I guess I’ll take my own table,” I say to the waiter, and he nods, grabs a menu, and leads me over to the nearest table. I find myself thinking that, between his overly round head and elongated front teeth, his face looks kind of like a beaver’s.

  Then I turn back to Logan, who is still standing by the door. I sigh, feeling guilty about last night all over again. I know I should do something, say something, but I don’t know how. So I say instead, as a temporary truce, “You’re welcome to join me, if you’d like to be insulted.” I don’t sound especially enthusiastic, but it’s not like he is going to say yes, anyway.

  Logan raises an eyebrow, and a small smile creeps across his lips. “If I didn’t know you better, Cali Monroe, I’d think you’re asking me on a date.”

  “Then it’s a good thing you know me better,” I mutter. “So what will it be?”

  Logan still doesn’t take his gaze off of me. “This is a serious offer?”

  “Yes…” I start to sit down, knowing he’s going to laugh and say no thanks and leave--as I hope he will--because Logan can’t stand me almost as much as I can’t stand him. Plus, this whole being nice thing and “inviting” him to join me is just too strange. I’m about to sit down and order a huge lunch to shut up my stomach when two words knock me off guard:

  “Then sure,” Logan says.

  I spin around almost immediately. “Sure what?” I snap, but my heart continues to sink because I already know what he’s going to say.

  Logan rolls his eyes. “Sure, I’ll have lunch with you.”

  And now my jaw drops open. I keep my hand on my chair, my eyes on his, and I don’t even know what to say. Why would he want to--

  “I’m hungry,” he adds, as if he’s reading my thoughts. “And these sandwiches look badass. So that’s why I’m joining you.”

  I’m still not convinced. “Okay,” I finally manage, taking a breath and silently cursing moral codes for not letting me take back my offer. But really, this is so weird. This is so, so weird. I should make Logan sit elsewhere or flat-out leave or doing anything to stop this from happening, but I can’t bring myself to right now. I mean, I hate Logan with all of my heart and there is no way in hell I want to have lunch with him, but I’m starving and we’re already here and I feel too guilty about what I did to take back the offer, so it’s not like I have a choice.

  Logan still looks kind of dubious as if he’s expecting me to yell “just kidding!” and rip up another one of his pictures of Ben as he sits down beside me.

  But not this time.

  As soon as we’re settled in, the waiter comes and takes our orders--Logan orders a hot chocolate again and I have to restrain myself from laughing at him--and glances between us suspiciously. When he leaves, I turn back to Logan, who is watching me with interest and smiling for a reason that can only be so he can blackmail me later on.

  “Staring me up again?” I say.

  “Something like that,” he says, then runs a hand through his dark, wavy hair. Ugh. Sometimes he just annoys me to death.

  “So Logan,” I say.

  “So Cali...”

  It occurs to me then that technically, I’m on a date with Logan Waters right now. Which is hilarious. Because, I tell myself, he is the last man in the world I would ever go out with.

  I don’t think it’s a lie.

  “This is… weird,” I manage to say after a while.

  He forces a laugh. “Yeah. It is.”
>
  “It’s way easier to insult you than to actually talk to you. You dick,” I add, which makes him smile.

  “So asshole,” he says, and now it’s my turn to smile, “my parents told me my date… you… like poetry? Because I do too.”

  I watch him closely, narrowing my eyes. I have a gut feeling this is some sort of prank I’m about to fall into, maybe a retaliation from the other night, so I wait a long time before answering.

  But Logan?

  Liking poetry?

  Even when he was Ben’s best friend and I thought he was kind of cool, he didn’t know much about me, and I didn’t know much about him. I kept my love of poetry between Ben and I, and if he’s telling the truth, I guess he kept it to himself too.

  So I just wait. Just watch him. I’ve never talked much to anyone but Ben, Ruby, and my parents about my passion for poetry before, so it seems like bad form to tell my arch rival about it, especially considering three of those four people are now either dead or hate me for it. “Yeah,” I say, my eyes not leaving his, feeling inexplicably daring today. I keep waiting for him to jump up and laugh at me and say “gotcha!” and then run off and tell as many people as he can find about what a freak I am. “Yeah… I guess so.”

  “Really? Who’s your favorite?” His expression is totally unreadable. Dammit. This guy is good.

  “Robert Frost,” I say. It isn’t a lie. “I love his The Road Not Taken.’”

  “Oh yeah? I’m more of the badass E.E. Cummings type. ‘I Carry Your Heart With Me’ is a favorite of mine.”

  “And why is that?” I ask suspiciously. It’s more of a challenge to make sure he isn’t lying about liking poetry than it is actual interest.

  “Well, I love it because of its theme. Most people say that it’s a poem about deep, profound love, and while that might be true, I think it’s more than that. I think it’s about love on a universal level, and it argues that love trumps all else, that true love cannot be broken--the narrator carries the love wherever he goes--and when it says, ‘here is the deepest secret nobody knows… and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart,’ to me, it’s saying that true love is the secret to the universe. It says that true love is strong enough to break all bonds, to keep the stars apart, to build life and follow each and every person wherever they go. I for one have no idea if that is true, but whether or not it is, it’s a nice thought.” He stops then. Looks at me. Waits for my response. I wait for mine too, because I have no idea how one goes about replying to her enemy when he just said something super heartfelt.

  So being the naturally smooth person I am, I cock my head to the side, not believing what I’m hearing, and mutter out, “You…you really like poetry?” I’ve never met anyone in real life who loved poetry like I do, so this is definitely unusual. Especially because Logan--the uber nerd and boring Logan, the one who I blame for Ben’s suicide--is the one I’m talking about.

  “I love it. Write it too,” he says simply.

  “Then how come I’ve never seen any poems in your room?” I’m still convinced he’s lying. Maybe this really is a retaliation prank of his.

  “First off,” he says, leaning back in his chair. “The real question here is: why were you in my room? But I’ll ignore it and say that I tend to keep my poems to myself, in my own head. I like it that way. I like when they’re mine.”

  I start to nod, believing him now, and I feel myself smile. I’m seriously talking about poetry with my arch nemesis. And it feels… good. Really good. And I kind of hate him even more for it.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Yeah. I… I know what you mean. I’ve written a few poems myself, and I’ve never had the heart to share them with anyone.” I don’t add that it’s because I’m too scared of what someone might think.

  “I get that. Do you write them on paper?”

  “Sort of. I usually put them in my notebook, but I don’t really keep them. I throw them away or hide them in random bushes or something. I don’t like holding onto things.” I also don’t add that most of my poems are scraps of paper about myself--all written in third person. I have this insane theory that if I write things about myself in third person, especially when they’re in the form of poems or vignettes, then everything bad that happens will magically be transferred to this made-up someone who is not me, leaving me normal, happy, and not so alone.

  Logan nods. “Interesting. I usually type mine. And now that I’ve told you my thoughts on my favorite poem,” he says, “I get to ask you why you love ‘The Road Not Taken’ and then we’ll move on to the matter of swapping poems later.”

  I start to protest, to tell him how I really do not want to do this, but then I look into his eyes. I find myself dumbfounded by the genuine interest he holds, like he seriously wants to hear what I have to say. No one’s been interested in me in the last four years. Hell, my parents have only ever been interested in whether I’ve decided to skip this “poetry nonsense” and get an “adult job” like being an engineer, but never actually me. Never what I want. Never what I have to say.

  So this feeling, this little soar of the heart because someone wants to hear my opinion on something is totally foreign to me. I open my mouth, feeling the smile spread. I have to remind myself that I hate Logan, that Ben is dead because he never saw the signs, but even as I say it, I find myself blaming myself more than anything. I was Ben’s sister and I never helped, never knew to help. I failed him.

  I failed him.

  “I--I guess I love ‘The Road Not Taken’ because it’s saying that no matter what, you always get a choice in life,” I say, pushing away all other thoughts. I’m just here to eat, so the hell if it includes having some strange conversation with my rival. I’ll get back at him for it later. “It doesn’t matter who you are, who you love, what you look like or how you act; you always get a choice. You get to decide your own fate, and you have the power to make things right for yourself. Because,” I continue, feeling myself blush a little under the strength of his gaze, “because life sucks sometimes. It really, really sucks. And it’s nice… to know that on the other side of all this, there are always two roads ahead of me, of us as people. There is always a choice to make things better. But the poem also says that once you make a choice, you have to live with it. It says you can’t have it both ways, because you have to choose if you want to make it anywhere in the yellow wood of life, and sometimes, Frost argues, the road not taken, the tough choice, the one that society pushes you not to take, is the right one. You just have to follow your heart.” The words tumble out of me in a flurry, and I can’t really believe I’m finally able to share my thoughts on my favorite poem, the thoughts I’ve been holding in all these years because I never had anyone to tell, and now, just from one stupid fail of a date, I do. And this someone cares.

  I look up at Logan, holding my breath. The second I meet his gaze, my throat tightens some more and I await his judgment, expecting him to laugh at me and tell me my opinions are dumb or stupid or that I am the waste my parents think of me as.

  But he doesn’t.

  Genuine awe and surprise fills Logan’s eyes as soon as I finish speaking, and his whole face lights up like a Christmas tree on steroids. My heart soars a little--just a little. (Okay, a lot, but I still hate him.)

  This better not be a prank Logan is pulling, because if it is I will literally kill him in his sleep.

  “Cali Monroe,” Logan says, his eyes soft and full of admiration. “You would make one hell of a nerd. You should consider joining our ranks.” When he starts slow clapping, I reach into my water cup and hurl an ice cube at his arm, which doesn’t in the least suspend his effort. He only quirks his glasses at me and beams further, an act that shouldn’t make me want to smile as badly as it does.

  Fuck. Nerds are supposed to be boring, not cool and quick-witted, and somehow the fact that Logan is breaking the stereotype right in front of my eyes irritates the hell out of me.

  “I take it that’s a no to becoming a nerd?” he says, blata
ntly flirting. I should be bothered by this. I should be pissed off. But I’m not. Traitor self.

  God, I must be really hungry if I’m actually letting this happen… because I am enjoying it.

  “It’s more of a ‘no way in hell’ kind of thing, not just a no,” I say.

  “I’ll turn you,” he says all too confidently. “I’ll get you to the dark side. We serve incredibly wonderful cookies, after all.”

  “You totally stole that off of those t-shirts.”

  “And it totally amused you regardless.”

  I glare at him, unblinking. “You have a serious attitude problem.”

  “Then that makes two of us,” he deadpans.

  I work hard to keep myself from laughing.

  Logan pauses as the waiter comes back with our food. I start eating immediately, trying to find a way to hide the damn smile that keeps surfacing, and also because I am starving.

  “So tell me about yourself, Cali… from the last four years,” he says when I’m halfway through my sandwich. “You know, besides your love of poetry.”

  I stop eating and shoot him an annoyed look. “Are we really going to do this?”

  “Do what?” he says innocently, but we both know he’s well aware of what I’m referring to.

  “This. Be like weird date-y people.”

  He frowns. “I thought we were just having lunch. I always like to ask my least favorite people questions about themselves while I eat.” He says it so simply, like he’s been on thousands of dates with his rivals in the past, like talking to him--really talking to him--for the first time since the night of Ben’s death is the most normal thing in the world.

  “I usually like to eat in silence and then bludgeon them to death on the way out, but I guess we can do it your way,” I say before I take another bite, giving him my best fake-sweet look.

  He smiles. “Plotting to kill me, I see, Cali Monroe.”

  “Something like that, Logan Waters,” I mumble into my sandwich. “Something like that.”