“Guess not,” I said.
He sighed as he took his forehead from mine. “Megan,” he said, “to be continued.” Lifting himself off the bed, he turned to the door where Ches still stood. “What are you doing, Ches? You okay?” There was a gentleness in his voice that surprised me. And I guess pleased me, even though it was directed at someone who had just cock-blocked me.
“I’m okay,” she said, though there was a deeper slur in her voice than had been there earlier, and one of the hands on her hips slipped off, like she didn’t have complete control of it. Either Philly hadn’t been able to completely cut Ches off or she’d found other sources. “Hey, Logan,” she said, as if she’d just run into him on campus and not crashed into his room unannounced and at a very inopportune time. For me, at least.
“Hey, Ches, you here with friends? Who’d you come with?” he asked her.Loganasked her. Logan. Of course he was the guy Ches had been talking about downstairs. The one she and Philly had called Straw. Maybe that was his last name? On some level I probably knew that it was the same guy, but I had been too swept up in lust once I’d seen him across the living room that I hadn’t stopped to put him together with the guy Ches was so desperate to see.
And honestly? I wasn’t sure that would have stopped me.
Because it was obvious that Logan was not interested in Ches.
“Katie. I came with Katie. She’s around here somewhere.” She twirled her arm like Katie was camped out somewhere here in Logan’s room. I swept my eyes over the room, not looking for Katie, but taking it in, having been Logan-focused when I’d come in. Typical college kid bedroom, about the same size as the one Emily and I shared, so Logan had more space to work with, which he’d chosen to use as some sort of shrine to a hockey player named Ryan Suter. A framed jersey was on one wall and various Minnesota Wild paraphernalia was throughout the room, including a child’s Minnesota Wild lamp on the bedside table in the shape of a wolf’s head. Didn’t seem too soothing for a kid’s room, but maybe it had been in Logan’s case.
“Why don’t we go find Katie?” Logan said as he approached Ches. She started to put her arms around his neck, but in some smooth, almost balletic move, he gently took one of her hands and spun her so she was moving out the door while he held on to her. He looked over his shoulder at me. “Um, I need to make sure someone’s got her.”
“Yeah, of course,” I said, not knowing if that meant he’d be coming back to me and I should stay, or if what hadn’t even begun was already over.
So stupid of me to not lock the door when I’d come in. Although I wasn’t sure a locked door would have slowed Ches down. The girl was on a mission.
I vowed right then that I would never be like Ches.
Not that I didn’t have compassion for her—I did. But to feel that desperate over a guy who did not feel remotely the same?Ugh.Unthinkable.
“I… I don’t know how long it’ll take. If I can’t find this Katie, I mean. I can’t just—”
I got up from the bed and walked to the doorway to join them. “Right. Yeah. Whatever you have to do. I’m good.”
He nodded and closed his bedroom door behind me once I’d joined them in the hallway. “But you’ll hang out? Stay at the party? I’d really like to…talksome more,” he said. He emphasized “talk,” and I wasn’t sure if it was because it was a euphemism for more or because he really did just want to talk after all.
He was half walking, half shuffling Ches down the hallway as I trailed behind them. I really wanted to sleep with him. At the very least have a very heavy make-out session with him. But sticking around a party, watching him try to fob off custody of a drunken Ches, to onlytalkwas not something I wanted to do.
“Yeah, let’s see how this goes,” I said, and motioned to Ches when he turned to look at me.
He sighed and nodded, acknowledging my noncommittal words. He got Ches down the stairs, and as she stumbled on the last step, he put his arm around her waist to steady her.
Yeah, that was all I wanted of this scene tonight. What was supposed to be a night of cutting loose and getting some had turned into a drunken hijack, courtesy of Ches.
But what did I know? Maybe it was me who had hijacked Ches’s night of a lovely reunion with Logan.
“Who’s Katie?” Logan bellowed loud enough to be heard over the loud music and even louder deep male voices. “Come get your girl, Katie,” he added.
Chloe and Abby were approaching us in the entranceway, and Logan started to disengage with Ches, until I said, “Not Katie. They’re who I came with.”
“Got it,” he said. Noticing someone waving across the room, he said to Ches, “Is that Katie?”
“That’s Katie!” Ches said, like she was seeing her friend for the first time in years. Logan started weaving her through the crowd of people. He looked back at me, and I only shrugged.
“Just let me get her taken care of,” he said. I nodded.
“What’s going on?” Chloe asked me when Logan and Ches had disappeared into the knot of revelers.
“Girl interrupted.Drunkgirl interrupted,” I said.
“Oh man, that sucks,” Chloe said. “Are you going to stick around and wait for him?”
At the phrase “wait for him,” I had a flash of Ches staking out a spot at the bar earlier, claiming a bird’s-eye view of the door and awaiting Logan’s entrance.
“No. I don’t think so. What are you guys doing?”