Wild(68)

            “Good-bye.” It’s all I could find to say. The only thing safe.

            With a short, dry laugh, he said, “Right. Good-bye, Georgia.”

            He vanished down the steps. I listened to the thud of his steps on the stairs and the door opening and shutting. Then there was nothing. Silence.

            THE DAYS PASSED IN a monotonous blur sliced with regret whenever I thought about Logan and our night together—which pretty much happened with every other breath I took.

            I jogged in the morning, hoping to make myself so tired I couldn’t feel anything. I buried myself in Dr. Chase’s research. Grabbed lunch with Emerson, where she grilled me about Logan and looked skeptical at my repeated assurances that it was just a onetime thing.

            “So there’s nothing going on between you two?” She twirled her straw in her soda.

            I shook my head and stared out at the sun-splashed sidewalk in front of the café where we ate. “Nope . . . just a moment’s weakness.”

            “Well, he is insanely hot. I can’t blame you.”

            I turned my attention back on her. “It’s not worth telling Pepper and Reece. It will make things awkward. You know that, right?”

            She nodded. “Okay.” Her blue eyes sharpened. “As long as it really was a onetime thing.”

            I stabbed a fry into ketchup. “Why do you sound so doubtful?”

            “Uh, ’cause he’s Logan Mulvaney. Girls line up for this guy. He’s a kink club regular. You know that.”

            I nibbled on my fry. “Yeah.” Except he hadn’t been with a girl in more than a month. Well. Except for me.

            I believed him. He’d been telling the truth. Just like I knew he got himself tested and was clean. I’d lived my entire life with a mother who taught me to be suspicious of men, to look hard at a person for the truth. To rarely trust. My father had made promises and broken every one of them. That made a person—my mother and me both—a bit of a cynic. I wasn’t easy to dupe. And I knew Logan hadn’t been lying. We’d already had sex at that point . . . multiple times. There was no reason for him to lie to me.

            “Just watch out for yourself.” Em twisted a short, spiky strand of her hair around her finger. “I saw what splitting up with Harris did to you. This guy . . . Logan could wreck you in a way Harris never could.”

            Her words rang with a truth I couldn’t deny. I clung to them, letting them fortify me over the next week, memorizing Logan’s work schedule and avoiding him to the best of my ability. I never came and went through Mulvaney’s during peak hours so that I didn’t have to come face-to-face with Logan.

            Friday arrived and I knew from Pepper that Logan was graduating.

            I told myself this should make me feel better. Less guilty for sleeping with him. At least he wasn’t in high school anymore. Not that he had ever seemed like a guy in high school. In some ways, he felt more mature, more experienced than I was. He was real. He owned his emotions in a way that I didn’t. I worked through the weekend, trying not to think about Logan graduating. Hard to do. According to his schedule, he wasn’t working all weekend and I imagined him partying it up with teenagers who were out of high school and suddenly curfew-free.

            I was grateful when Monday rolled around and I was able to resume working. Connor, Gillian, and I had a meeting on Tuesday with Dr. Chase, and I spent the rest of the week in the library. Dr. Chase revised our assignments and I actually had to spend Wednesday and Thursday working with sourpuss Gillian.

            I was ready for some happy time that night, so when Pepper texted me and Emerson about a girls’ night, I was in.