Two Roads (15 page)

~

All she wants is for things to be smooth

perfect

sensible

like poetry.

Why is it so hard to ask for her life

all wrapped up

in a pretty box and bow?

~

Logan
and I don’t talk at all on the rest of our way to the convention. Two long hours of silence, highway, and memories of Ben drag by before we finally pull into the parking lot for the hotel where the convention takes place.

It’s nighttime now, and the darkness stretches above us, stars peeking out through the blanket of black. The moon shines in the distance, and a cool breeze ruffles my hair as I step out of the car, slam the door shut, and lead Logan into the hotel lobby. He doesn’t talk to me, doesn’t meet my gaze; he just puts his head down and keeps walking. In that instant, all I want to do is ask him more about Ben, about the last time he saw him, about why he thought Ben did it. Deep down, I know that until I know for sure Ben’s suicide wasn’t my fault, there is no way I can trust anyone else with my heart.

I look out in front of me. The hotel is a massive slab of at least twenty stories of rooms, with a pale stucco exterior that curves into a triangle at the top. Logan holds the front door wide open for me and ushers me inside with a sweep of his hands like a perfect goddamn gentleman.

Bastard
.

As soon as I step inside the lobby, warm air and the raucous laughter of guests bombard me. The whole room is huge and magnificent, complete with four leather couches, two of which are positioned by a fire in the corner, and a fancy chandelier hanging overhead. An old rug stretches across the entryway to the front desk, where a girl who can’t be more than three years older than I am talks on the phone to a guest. I look at her, sighing to myself. This is exactly how my parents think I’m going to end up--stuck working the night shift at some weird hotel when my poetry career “inevitably fails,” and I’ll be miserable and friendless and eventually, I’ll turn nocturnal. But the thing they don’t understand is that I’d rather do something like this, like working at a front desk while I wait for my career to take off, than I would sentencing myself to an eternity of doing a job that makes me miserable. Like Ben did.

The woman smiles as I approach and gives me the standard “hi, how may I help you?” spiel. Logan comes up behind me, close enough to show that we’re together but far enough so I can’t feel the heat of his body, the thrill of being beside him--I already miss it, too. He’s pouting, I tell myself, but really it’s me pouting and I think we both know that. But I don’t know how to stop it.

As I stand there, I find myself longing for him to move closer to me, to touch my arm and tell me it’s all going to be okay again, that he isn’t angry at me, that he has a solution to help me stop feeling so responsible for what happened, but he doesn’t--he can’t--because maybe, just maybe, I
am
responsible.

“Hi,” I say to the woman as I lean against the counter. “I’d like a room for two please. Two separate queen beds.” I motion to Logan to show he’s the second person, and he gives the lady a small, forced smile.

“Reservation?” the woman says.

“No ma’am.”

She nods, types away at her computer for a second, and then looks back up at me, her smile falling effortlessly back into that same fake, perfectly-polite look.

“You’re in luck,” she says. “We have one room available.” She hands me a key. “You’re room number 837. Two separate queens, as requested.”

“Thank you,” I say and turn back to Logan, who is carrying both of our suitcases. I can’t help but notice how taut and hard his muscles look as he holds them. My breath catches. Seriously, geeks should
not
have that kind of muscle.

“We going up?” he asks, not really looking at me. It takes all my strength to tear my gaze from his bicep.

“Yeah,” I say and hold open the elevator for him. He steps inside, and I press the button for the eighth floor. The elevator begins rising almost immediately, and I try and fail to focus on the ceiling, the mirror behind me--anything but him. The tightness of the space brings us so close together, and I can’t help but feel heat creep up my arm. He is so close that it wouldn’t take any effort to reach out and touch him, to put my hand in his hand and to let him melt the whole world away for me.

“You’re an asshole,” I finally say. My voice is so feeble that it takes me a while to realize I was the one who said it. Logan turns around to face me, and he smiles and I smile and holy shit did I miss his smile.

“I know, freak,” he says. “Believe me, I know.”

As soon as the elevator stops at our floor, we head straight to our room and Logan places the suitcases neatly by the door. I step inside, looking around. The room is small and cramped, but it still smells like candles and has a flat screen TV and a flower-patterned couch positioned in front of it.

Next I walk toward the bedroom, getting ready to perhaps collapse on the bed and go to sleep immediately. Logan follows me in, probably trying to scope out what the room looks like. The first thing I notice is the bathroom. “The” as in only one. Which is going to suck, but I try to stay open-minded about it as I turn to face the beds, hoping like hell they’re well separated.

And just like that, my heart seriously stops.

Sitting in front of me is a bed.
One
bed. Singular.

One king-sized bed.

For me and Logan to share.

Oh my god.

I have to share a bed with Logan.
My stomach drops so quickly I think it might literally fall out of my body, which would be a complete intestinal mess and not something I really have time for at the moment.

I turn back to Logan, who is equally wide-eyed but also, somehow, amused.

“Wow,” I say, because all other words are quite stubbornly refusing to come at the moment. I keep staring in horror. One bed.

One. freaking. bed.

For us both.

It’s a nice bed, too, with four pillows, a warm blanket, a plush surface, and a nightstand beside it, but it’s still only one, and I would rather die than share it with Logan.

“This is an… interesting turn of events,” I force out after a while, debating whether I should look amused or horrified, so I go with a mixture of both.

Logan doesn’t respond immediately. He just stares at me, then the bed, then back at me, and then, all of a sudden, for the second time this week, he bursts into laughter. Like, thick, deep, masculine laughter. Right here. Right now.

Talk about weirdest day ever.

He doubles over and the laughter just bubbles out of him, like a flood of feelings that have been waiting to be released. After a second of staring at him with alarm, my knees feel weak and I join him. It feels good to laugh again, to see him laugh, so I let it all burst out of me. I missed his laugh, too.

We keep on laughing and laughing, staring at the bed and then each other and then bursting into laughter some more. My face is red and I have to gasp for breath and so does he, but right now I don’t even care because the laughter is just pouring out of me. We carry on like this for some time, two half-insane twenty-year-olds who were arch nemeses only a couple days ago, now staying in a hotel room with only one bed, until we finally catch our breaths.

“In the immortal words of Edgar Allan Poe,” he says once the laughter subsides, “we’re fucked.”

I glare at him.

“And no,” Logan adds, winking at me, “I don’t mean ‘fucked’ in the sense that we are hopeless.”

~

We
stare at the bed for a long time before common sense finally returns to us and we decide to go down to the lobby to ask for another room. Logan is still laughing by the time we head down there, and I guess, by the occasional giggle that slips out of me, I am too.

I follow Logan down the seven flights of stairs, hating that I’m actually starting to feel close to him again. So I go over the list of reasons why I hate him in my head, to remind myself of why I hate him so goddamn much:

1) His lashes.

2) His annoying sense of humor.

3) The fact that he always seems so perfectly happy.

4) His personality.

5) He abandoned me four years ago.

6) He was never there to help Ben.

7) I feel like he betrayed me--betrayed us.

8) Hating him is getting increasingly difficult, and I hate him for that all the more.

and the list goes on.

When we reach the front desk, I’m relieved that this time Logan does the talking. “We have a slight… issue,” he says to the same woman, putting his hands on the counter.

“Oh?”

“Yeah. We asked for a room with two separate queen beds, but instead we just got one king.”

She glances at him, then back at me, frowning. “I see…”

I stifle a laugh. This may be the first time in history a single guy ever complained about having to share a bed with a--let’s be honest--attractive single girl.

“We aren’t together,” I blurt out, and Logan shoots me a look that reads, ‘Smooth.’ I pretend not to notice it.

“Ah, I see,” the woman says as she checks something on her computer. A few keystrokes later, she looks back up at Logan. “Unfortunately,” she says, “that’s the last room we have. But there is supposed to be a pullout couch in there. Will one of you be able to sleep on that? We’re very sorry for the inconvenience.”

Logan looks back at me, and I just shrug. He turns back to the woman but keeps his gaze on me, that seriously obnoxious smirk on his face, as he says, “we’d
love
to take the room.”

I roll my eyes at his enunciation of
love
, and he quirks his glasses at me in response.

The woman at the front desk apologizes to Logan once again but he waves her off saying it’s fine, and then he walks back over to me, nudges my shoulder and smiles his dimpled smile, which legit kills me all over again. When we return to our hotel room several flights up, Logan grabs his bag and says to me, “Well, it looks like I’ll be hitting the couch tonight.” I try to find the sexual innuendo in this, but I can’t really place one so instead I just nod uncertainly.

Ignoring me, Logan walks over to the couch on the other side of the room and fidgets with it for a second until, without warning, the bed springs out at him. He stumbles back, nearly getting hit by the edge of the mattress, and I can’t help but giggle at him. He whirls around, glaring at me, says, “no judging, asshole,” and I respond, “that was pathetic, nerd,” and it feels good to be arguing again.

Next he lifts up the mattress, pulls it out until it clicks into place, and hops on the bed. A hard, springy surface greets him and he curses and I giggle some more.

“Smooooooth, Logan.”

“You really are a bitch,” he says.

“And you really are an asshole, so let’s call it even.”

“Whatever,” Logan says, checking his phone. “Anyway, it’s 11:30. We should probably go to bed.”

“Aww. Nerd boy is tired?”

“Nerd boy is exhausted.”

I pretend to look as annoyed as possible. “Okay,” I say, turning back to my bed on the other end of the room, and add, “wimp.”

Logan shrugs as he sits down on the edge of his pullout mattress, takes off his socks, and runs a hand through his hair. I’m at my bed, about to get under the covers, when I see him reach his fingers for the hem of his shirt. I freeze almost instinctually, feeling my heart start skittering in my chest.

And then the fingers pull up.

My stomach tightens.
He’s taking off of his shirt in front of me
, I realize, half horrified and half… well… fascinated.

He pulls the shirt off in an instant, but it feels like the longest moment of my life. I try to focus on anything else but him, to go back to getting in the covers, but I can’t look away, can’t stop staring at the growing sliver of tan skin by his stomach. Next I try to turn away, but my fucking traitorous eyes refuse. They’re stuck, fixated on Logan and his state of undress.

Shit
.

Finally, he pulls his shirt all the way over his head and drops it at his side, revealing a hard chest, a lightly tanned stomach, and the kind of lean abs geeky kids are really not supposed to have.

And then I realize: nerd boy is
hot
.

Thank god Logan doesn’t catch me looking at him as he slips into his bed, wearing nothing but his basketball shorts because as hard as I try not to, I just. keep. staring. If this were a romance novel, the sexual tension I feel right now would surely kill me.

“Night, Cali,” Logan says when I’m finally able to look away, which, admittedly, takes a while. His eyes are bright, as always. I turn off the light, shaking my head.

Idiot idiot idiot. He is not attractive. Not by a long shot.

Then:
You can’t find your dead brother’s best friend attractive.

“Night, Logan,” I say quietly.

I expect to fall asleep right away after all of the emotions from today, but I don’t. In fact, the exact opposite occurs. I lie awake for the longest time, not able to sleep, not even able to close my eyes. My gaze stays trained on the blank white ceiling above me, but the only thing I see when I look at it is Logan. His eyes. His smile. As much as I hate him, I’ve never connected with anyone like I connect with him. Maybe I always liked him, maybe that’s why insulting him, why
he
, used to make me feel better; because even though we hate each other, we still mesh. Like Frost and his poems. Like fire and wood.

As hard as I try, I really can’t sleep. The heat is on and I’m covered in thousands of blankets, and yet, I feel so cold.

I shift my gaze back over to him, lying on his bed, eyes closed, slivers of his perfect chest peeking out from the top of the sheets. And I can’t help but think… I close my eyes, trying not to finish the thought.

I just, I need him, and I don’t care if we’re enemies or friends or whatever the hell we are, but I need him here. By my side. With me.

“Logan,” I finally croak out, knowing this is a mistake even before I say it. He sits up in bed, rubbing his eyes, and there is that gorgeous body again. I meet his gaze. “You…” I start to say, then I close my eyes. “You aren’t sleeping on the couch tonight.”

He stops, frowns at me. Then, when my meaning gets across, a huge grin spreads across his face. “What are you saying, Cali?”

“I’m
saying
that tonight, you’re sleeping with me.”

“Oh my god. I think I need to take my glasses off for this.” He pauses, then rips off his glasses in a completely unnecessarily dramatic fashion. “Okay,” he says. “Please repeat that.”