“You weren’t allowed to eat food on the couch?” I asked.
“Definitely not. And no greasy food, either,” Logan said. “I felt like I was getting away with something, when we did that. It was thrilling.”
I snorted. “Well, I’m glad I’m helping you live out your rebellious dreams, in the form of Chinese takeout.”
“I’m truly a badass,” Logan joked. “Drinking a beer tonight, eating Chinese on the couch last week.”
“Man,” I said, shaking my head. “My parents weren’t even around to care if Roman and I ate on the couch. Hell, we ate in our beds, whenever we felt like it. We started little fires in the kitchen, trying to make grilled cheese ourselves. We had to teach ourselves everything.”
Thankfully, Logan was looking at me like I was some sort of fascinating creature instead of with pity, like I expected.
I didn’t usually talk about my childhood. At all. I didn’t like thinking about it, and even though Mom was a great person, everything had just been shitty for me until college. But for some reason I wanted to share with Logan. I wanted to make sure he knew that he wasn’t alone in feeling different. My situation was nothing like his, but I still knew how it felt to be uncomfortable in my own skin.
I was confident as hell these days, but it hadn’t always been that way. Not at all.
“Did your dad just work a lot?” Logan asked gently, like he was already afraid he was prying. “You said he wasn’t in the picture?”
I shook my head. “He split with my mom when I was young. He lived nearby, but we only saw him a few times a year once we were teenagers. And once he realized I was gay… he pretty much stopped contacting me altogether.”
“Shit,” Logan whispered.
I shrugged one shoulder. “It’s for the better. Wasn’t a great guy, anyway. I just try to do my best, these days.”
Logan’s eyes were like saucers. Beautiful, kind, and earnest. “I think you’re doing a pretty fucking amazing job,” he said softly.
“Pitchers, pitchers!” Sam declared as he came up to the side of the table, dropping our beers onto the table.
Christ. I’d been sitting next to Logan for all of five minutes, and he’d already gotten me to pour my heart out to him. How did he have that effect on me? I was usually content to just stay happy-go-lucky, letting most of my past stay buried underneath the thicket of layers I’d put between me and my rocky childhood.
But Logan seemed to understand, even though his early years had been so different from mine. In my mind, his high school years must have been picture-perfect, acing every class and breezing through. But there was clearly a lot more under the surface.
And I really, really wanted to get to know him more.
I tuned back into the conversation as Vance poured beers for everybody at the table.
“Bro, when you made that pass, I swear to God I had tears in my eyes,” Mike was saying to Vance now, complimenting the killer throw he’d made in the third quarter earlier tonight.
“That was pretty cool,” Logan said, chiming in.
“You saw?” Vance said, his eyes lighting up.
“Apparently Logan was watching our game right here from the bar,” I said, a little bit of pride bubbling up inside me all over again. It felt just as good to have Logan in a conversation with my friends as it did to talk to him one-on-one.
“It was a damn good game,” Vance said.
“I don’t know how you guys do it,” Logan said. He reached down to fiddle with a straw wrapper on the table, folding it into a little triangle. His eyes landed on me. “The crowd was wild for you tonight, too.”
“You should come watch in person next time,” I told Logan.
“Yeah, then you can make fun of Brody’s little victory dances in real life,” Mike said with a laugh.
“I’d come to a game sometime,” Logan said, shifting a little in his seat to face me. “Looking at you in person is even nicer than looking at you on TV.”
I almost choked on my swig of beer.
I was stunned. For the first time in recent memory, I was actually speechless.
Apparently, shy boy wasn’t always so shy all of the time, after all.
Sure, he was blushing like hell now, and the look in his eyes made me think he couldn’t quite believe what he’d said, either.
But now I didn’t just want to talk with him. I also no longer had any desire to prowl around the tavern, looking for some random dude to take home.
I wanted to take him home. And show him exactly how much I wanted him.
5
Logan
Holy shit.
Holy shit, holy shit, holy shit.
I was frozen in place for a moment, some mixture of panic and adrenaline and sheer disbelief washing over every bone in my body.