Well, steamy as Cody imagined saunas to be, at any rate. He’d never actually been in one.
The brisk walk from home had kept him warm, despite the ice-cold wind and his insufficient jackets. All but his hands, at least. They were frozen stiff, and he rubbed them together, not wanting to plunge them into the hot water quite yet.
Maybe he’d ask Logan for a ride to Rock Springs. He had a feeling Logan would do it. He might not even laugh at him. Granted, he probably wouldn’t buy Cody a Big Mac and hassle him about his Wyoming twang as they both dipped their french fries into their chocolate shakes, but a ride would be enough, even if it made Cody’s heart hurt, thinking about it.
“How was your morning?” Logan asked, his arms elbow-deep in dishwater, his eyes uncharacteristically bright and expectant as he waited for Cody’s answer. “Anything interesting happen?”
“Not really.” It seemed like an odd question, even from Logan. “You wanna switch and let me wash?”
“Hell, yes.”
Logan had to stoop to reach the sink, and Cody couldn’t reach half the shelves to put stuff away. With them both there, it didn’t make much sense to do it any other way. The water was already pretty foul though, so Cody flipped the lever under the sink to let it drain.
“So, nothing happened this morning?” Logan asked, watching Cody carefully.
Cody wrinkled his brow, trying to figure out what Logan was getting at. “The phone woke me up at ten, but nobody was there. We’re out of milk, so I ate my cereal dry, and my mom was still asleep when I left. She’s working evenings now, so she gets up after I’m gone for the day and doesn’t get home until I’m asleep.” He shrugged. “That’s the sum total of my morning so far.” He watched the last bit of water twirl down the drain. “How’d the game go?”
“We won.”
“Good.”
“I threw for one hundred ninety-eight yards, and had three touchdowns.” He wasn’t bragging. It was said in the same matter-of-fact tone he used for just about everything. “Coach says there might be scouts from the University of Wyoming at the homecoming game next week.”
If scouts were coming to Warren, it could only be to see Logan. Cody heard enough talk at school to know Logan was the star of the team. “You think they’ll offer you a scholarship?”
“My parents think so, but what do they know?” Logan was rinsing the dishes he’d already washed, sorting them into neat rows on the drying rack. “That reminds me though—I wanted to ask you something.”
Cody flipped the lever back in place to plug the drain and turned on the water, testing the temperature as it began to fill the enormous sink. “Okay.”
“You want to go to homecoming with me?”
Cody blinked, sure he’d misheard. “What?”
Logan laughed awkwardly, looking uncomfortable for the first time ever. “I didn’t mean it like that. Not, you know, together.”
Thank goodness. As nice as Logan was, the thought of dating him was horrifying. “Aren’t you going with Jamie Simpson?”
Logan scowled, tossing a handful of clean forks into the utensil bin with a bit more force than the occasion demanded. “She’s going with Tom Phillips.”
“Tom Phillips?” Cody added a generous squirt of Dawn to the sink, thinking. “Didn’t he graduate three years ago?”
“Yes.”
It wasn’t uncommon in Warren for teenage girls to date guys in their twenties. High school girls bringing guys in their thirties to prom wasn’t unheard of.
“So?” Logan prodded. “What do you say?”
“You want me to go to a high school dance with you?”
“You don’t have to say it like that.”
“Like what?”
“You make it sound weird. But it’s no big deal, you know. Lots of people go stag. And Frank’s giving us both the night off.”
Cody would have preferred to work. He felt like he was in a race against Mother Nature to see whether or not he’d manage to buy a coat before the snow started to fly. He waited while Logan took the clean silverware to the front to be wrapped in napkins by the hostesses.
“So, what’ll we do there?” he asked, once Logan was back. “Stand against the wall looking like idiots while everybody else makes out?”
Logan laughed. “Have you ever even been to a school dance?”
“Whatta you think?”
“First of all, they won’t let anybody make out at the dance. There are chaperones to make sure nothing kinky goes down.”
“Yeah, ’cause that’ll stop everybody from having sex.”