I’m laughing, and actually enjoying a moment with Logan Dempsey, and then his phone rings. He frowns as he pulls it out of his pocket, and then his face goes dark and he swears under his breath as he looks at it.
“What is it?”
“Nothing.”
He shoves the phone back into his pocket and his arm drops quickly from my shoulder. Well, whatever it is has his mood changing like the flip of a coin.
“What?”
He turns and looks at me quickly; “It’s nothing, Quinn. Look, change of plans; we need to head back to New York, now actually.”
“Um, OK?”
His limo is already waiting by the curb as we leave the Mall, and he opens the door and quickly ushers me in.
“OK, what’s with the sudden flip-flop here?” I finally demand as we speed off back towards the airport.
“It’s nothing, Quinn; just leave it.” He mutters, staring out the window with a scowl as he taps his fingers against the arm-rest in staccato beat.
“Well it really does seem like something, Logan.” I mutter out loud; “Look, stop with the stupid secret spy shit and just tell me why-”
“Just drop it, OK?!” He whirls and growls sharply at me, making me jolt upright. His mouth opens as if to say something, before he just shakes his head and turns to look out the window.
Well, hell; just when I’m ready to start figuring you out, Logan Dempsey, I grumble to myself as D.C. flies past the windows of the car.
He’s silent later, back on the plane as he just stares out the window at the evening clouds beneath us as we cruise back to New York. And there’s a bizarre sort of irony to the fact that I busted him staring at me on the trip here, and yet here I am doing the same thing back.
There’s a metaphor for this whole messed up relationship between us in there somewhere, but I’m too tired to even think about it. And really, “relationship” is definitely the wrong word for whatever is going on between Logan and me. We’re just two people - two separate people - who happened to cross paths in an unusual way. Maybe those paths got mixed up more than they should have, and maybe it’s a bit more complicated than either of us anticipated. But that doesn’t mean we can’t just get on our own paths again and just move on, right?
Logan closes his eyes and leans his forehead against the window next to him, and I catch myself wondering for the tenth time what’s gotten him this quiet and brooding and sullen, as opposed to the loud and obnoxious exuberance that usually defines him. But as I watch him, watch his brow crease as he frowns against the glass and against whatever demons are clawing through his head in that moment. I find myself wondering so much more about him. His sleeves are rolled up, showing the ink of his tattoos, and while some like the boxing gloves and the “semper fi” are obvious, there are other swirling images and effigies that have me curious about their meaning. What stories follow in Logan’s shadows that I don’t even have a clue about? What haunts him when he’s alone? And what else goes through his head?
Me?
I quickly roll my eyes at my own stupid thought and shake my head. No, that’s not a path I can let my mind wander down. Like I said, we’re just two people who found themselves on intersecting lines.
And now it’s time to move on.
I turn to stare out my own window, watching the vapor trails and cloud tails streak across the wing of the plane as we slide through the night back home; back to the confusion and unfinished conversations that will still be there when we get back.
9
Logan
I’m daydreaming and letting my thoughts wander when the muffled cheering and jeering of the crowd out by the ring jars me into the present. I blink and grimace at my surroundings. The back room of the nightclub out in Queens that’s serving as a locker room is dimly lit and grimy. The walls are streaked with rusty evidence of old pipe leaks and maybe something worse, and the whole place smells like ammonia and defeat.
What the fuck am I doing here.
I used to love this - the thrill and the rush before the fight; the feeling of burning excitement and the euphoric high of the adrenaline. I used to love the smell of sweat and gym locker-rooms; of chalk-dusted workout bags and sweat-stained gloves. The sound of the crowd used to get me higher than any drug and the sheer anticipation of the primal act of fighting used to have me bouncing off the walls with excitement.
This place is, and does, none of those things for me.
Some girl in a bikini, who I think is probably one of those sign girls or maybe just some other broken individual there trying to latch onto something is smiling at me as she saunters into the room. I frown as she straddles my lap and starts to run her hands up and down over my bare chest.