A More Deserving Blackness (10 page)

             
We stay just like that, watching for shooting stars in the grass of the front yard but not finding any until, just before eight in the morning, the sun comes up.  It’s soft at first, a small yellow yoke breaking over the tree line, and I wish I could reach a hand out and push it back.

             
I feel Logan press his cheek against my head and I close my eyes.  “Better?” he whispers, and I nod.

             
Then, expectantly, “Bree?”

             
I push up off him, self-conscious when he sits up and stretches and shakes his arm, and I belatedly realize it had probably been totally numb for the past hour at least. 

             
“It’s fine,” he says simply when he catches me looking. 

             
I’m still sitting in the grass, only just then feeling the wet that had seeped into the backs of my jeans from the dew.  Logan’s jaw is darkened with a sandpaper-like shadow, his hair messy, his burgundy shirt wrinkled from where I’d pressed against it all morning long.  He’s looking at me closely and I should probably care that I’m wearing yesterday’s clothes and I haven’t brushed my hair or my teeth in at least eight hours, but I don’t.

             
I feel empty without touching him, like the very last of a dying echo, and he reaches across, twisting just one of his fingers with mine.

             
“Can you sleep now?”

             
Yes, probably.  The memory of the nightmare had bled away through the morning, rinsed by the feel of his touch, the sound of his voice.  But I just shrug.  I don’t want him to leave.

             
He’s considering me.  “I keep telling myself I should walk away, let you sleep, but I don’t want to.  Do you want to have breakfast with me?”

              It’s only a few minutes later when I walk back outside, having found Trish just coming out of her bathroom, simultaneously brushing her teeth and talking to someone on the phone.  I’d held up a note, telling her where I’d be, and though I saw a flash of concern in her eyes she’d just nodded and mouthed, “Be careful.”

             
When I return outside, I gather my phone from where it is now clearly visible in the grass and slip my hand into his. Logan walks with me down the drive and across the road, looking sideways at me as we climb the front steps, hesitating before he opens the door.

             
“I don’t have tea,” he says evenly, and then pushes open the door and leads me inside, flicking on the lights.

             
His house is even emptier, barer than Trish’s.  Just inside the door is a small table with a single drawer underneath and nothing to clutter its face, not a single piece of mail or paper or any other odds and ends.  On the wall is a long wooden plaque of silver hooks, only one of which holds a battered black leather coat, similar to the one I am wearing except obviously older, the leather slightly weathered and grayed.  The rest of the hooks stand empty.

             
We pass the living room and I get a glimpse of a large dark wood bookshelf and two brown suede couches centered around a low coffee table.  There’s a modest-sized flat-screen TV mounted on the wall with a shelf to either side that each hold nothing, completely bare.  No pictures or mirrors or blankets or dirty socks anywhere.

             
Logan pulls me toward the kitchen and there, finally, on the wall between the two rooms is a series of photographs in wooden frames stained such a dark brown they’re almost black.  Like his eyes.  A few of the pictures are of him and a woman I assume is his mother.  A thin, pretty face, same eyes, same dark hair.  Her arms are hugged around the shoulders of a younger version of him and they’re both laughing, their heads together.  Others are just her.  Her face mostly hidden behind a huge, grey furry hood but her eyes crinkled with a smile.  Smirking over a book lying flat over her knees, sitting sideways on a wooden porch swing.  Another is of her in a wedding dress holding hands with the father Logan had never known.  I stare at them greedily, searching for answers in faces as silent as my own.

             
Patiently Logan waits, just watching me as I drink in this small sliver of his past, and when I’m done he guides me by our linked hands to the kitchen.  It’s more of the same.  Square table with only two chairs shoved in the corner by the window, the surface bare but for a few dents and scratches from years of use.  Other than a small black four-cup coffee maker, a knife block, and a wooden salad bowl holding exactly one red apple, there’s nothing else to clutter the slate colored countertops.  A simple black and white clock on the wall but nothing else, no magnets on the fridge, no other tidbits to give me any more clues to his past or about him in general.

             
Logan releases my hand to lean back against the counter in front of the sink, bending his elbows and resting the heels of his hands to either side of his hips on the edge.  “I have a confession.  I intentionally misled you.”  He doesn’t look apologetic, just stating a fact.  “I don’t cook.”

             
I give him a look that says it doesn’t matter.  I’d actually forgotten why he’d invited me over in the first place.  The reason hadn’t really mattered that much to me.

             
“Not hungry?”

             
I shrug.

             
“When’s the last time you ate something?”

             
Last night?  I look at him, thinking.  I had to have eaten dinner before I went to bed.  Didn’t I?

             
He sighs.  “Look, I’m an eighteen year old guy and I haven’t eaten since the slice of pizza at lunch yesterday, but my Momma raised me so I’d never be able to eat with you just standing there looking all sad and hungry.” 

             
I try to screw up my face into something happy and sated, but I have no idea what that even looks like and I have a pretty good feeling he’d see through it, even if I nailed it.  For never having heard me speak to him, Logan’s ability to read me, to know me, is uncanny.

             
Reaching behind him, Logan grabs the single apple out of the bowl and offers it to me.  I don’t really feel hungry but I accept it from him, taking a small bite and chewing slowly as I hand it back.  The fruit is juicy and sweet and I find myself almost enjoying it.  There’s a loud crunch as he sinks his teeth through the crisp red skin, ripping off a large chunk and pocketing in it his cheek, watching me overtop of it as he chews.  We swallow at the same time and he places it back in my hands, not really asking, so I obediently take another bite.

             
When nothing is left but the core Logan tosses it into the trash under the sink and turns back, reaching for my left hand.  I give it to him without pause, but instead of merely holding it he flips it over, studying the red welt on the underside of my wrist.

             
“Do you have any more?” 

             
I stare down at it, trying to see it from his eyes.  The pink skin puckered and angry from having been broken open so many times, the scab in the center raised and uneven and ugly.  My thumb nail is dull and short; it doesn’t make a clean wound.

             
I blink up at him, trying to understand his meaning.

             
“Do you have anything like this,” he asks, bending my hand back gently to expose my wrist to the light, “anywhere else?”

             
And I get it.  Of course.  He thought I was a cutter, that I had scabs like this all over my body, hidden under my clothes.  The truth was the idea didn’t disgust me, didn’t shock me.  The pain I felt when I hurt myself was a welcome pain, driving back the sights and sounds of that night, but it wasn’t something I planned.  It just happened.  Taking a razor blade to my forearms would take forethought, and I just didn’t care that much.  Not until the screams started.

             
“Bree?” he presses me, and I wonder why.  Why does he want to know so badly?  What difference does it make?  He’d already seen me at my worst.

             
At my worst. 

             
And just like that, I know.  He’d seen all of it.  After everything, the refusal to speak and the panic attacks and the slash on my wrist, he’d seen enough that any sane person would back away.  Enough to make a difficult decision in my best interest.  To save me, or some such bullshit.

             
I slip my hand from his, covering my wrist with my opposite palm, hiding it from his all too perceptive eyes. 

             
“Wait.” 

             
He sees me close off and reaches for me but I flinch back, slamming into the edge of the table behind me.  His hands hover in the air between us, waiting to be sure I’m not going to crash down onto the middle of his kitchen floor.  Then he slowly pulls them back, chest level, palms out, fingers splayed, holding my gaze.

             
Lightening fast, he reaches over his shoulder and tears his shirt over his head in one fluid motion, tossing it onto the counter behind him.

             
Then he’s just watching me, bare-chested, gauging my reaction.

             
To say I’m shocked is a gross understatement.

             
“Look,” he commands, which is obtuse, because that’s all I am doing.  Logically I suppose I should be afraid of him, in this house alone with him and him wearing only those dark jeans, so I can see the width of his shoulders, the strength in his chest, the lines of his arms; visual proof that he could easily overpower me should he choose.

             
But then I notice something else.  High on either side of his chest are three pale, raised lines beneath the fine, dark hair.  Each is about three inches in length, clean but thick.  Each set is perfectly parallel; the scars had obviously been carved with something much sharper than a thumbnail, cutting much deeper.

             
“I wasn’t trying to insult you,” he says softly, just letting me look.  “And I’m not going to tell anyone.  Not unless you’re putting your own life in danger.  More than maybe it already is.”

             
He’s wrong, of course.  My life isn’t in danger.  It had already been taken from me.

             
“You can touch them.  It doesn’t hurt anymore.”

             
I doubt that last part very much, but I reach out tremulously to touch him nonetheless.  Beneath my fingers, the ropes of flesh are soft and smooth.  I can feel his heartbeat below, faster than normal.

             
When my fingers float off his skin he captures them in his.  “Bree.”

             
I shake my head.  He waits, hunkering and ducking his head, raising his brows at me, and I point to the welt on my wrist, shaking my head again.

             
Logan lets out a long breath, like he’d been holding it.  “Okay.”

             
And because I’m starting to notice how low those pants hang on his hips, exposing a black band of elastic that is none of my business, I reach around him and stuff the ball of his t-shirt into his hands.

             
“I wish I could ask you what you’re thinking,” he tells me as his head pops through the other side.  He tugs it down over his chest just in time to see me slipping my phone back into my coat pocket and then a smile lights his eyes and he’s gone, striding purposefully out of the kitchen and down the dark hall off the living room.

             
I imagine him scooping his phone from the top of a desk or dresser in a utilitarian bedroom, reading my text.

             
Do you live here by yourself?

             
After a minute, my pocket beeps. 
That’s what you ask? 
Then,
Yes.  Among the many things my mother did for me was set up a decent life-insurance policy.

             
I look up at the sound of footsteps and see him returning, phone clasped in a hand by his side, his expression watchful and expectant.  He’s waiting for some sort of reaction from me, and all I can think is how miserable it is, that he’s so alone in the world.

             
“Don’t,” he says, misinterpreting my sadness for doubt.  “Don’t be afraid of me.”

             
A soft exhale of mirthless laughter through my nose and I’m typing again.
You wouldn’t say that if you knew how I felt about you.

             
“What do you mean?”

             
The weight of his eyes on me as I hunch over my phone, debating on how much to tell him, is unnerving. 
I feel safe with you.

             
There’s such a long stretch of silence after I hear the buzz of his phone, after I know he must’ve read it, that I look up, self-consciousness a mask of heat on my skin.