“Well, whatever,” Chloe said. “You should have told me you’d set off some numbers. I wouldn’t have wasted you on just pizza. Although I should probably reach out to Bonetti’s with these numbers for some possible collab.” She took the phone back and continued to talk to herself as she walked out the door—leaving it wide open in her self-absorption.
I started to rise to close the door, but Logan was moving with me. He held my hips in place and jackknifed up behind me and off the bed. “That’s okay. I should probably get going anyway. Chloe might have done us a favor.”
“I said it was okay. That I felt okay about it,” I said.
He’d pulled his sweatshirt on and headed to his backpack by the door where he’d dropped it. “I know. I believe you. But…”
“But what?” I said. I still sat on the bed, as if maybe he’d come back if I didn’t move.
He motioned to the flowers he’d sent, to the picture of my family, and then to my closet, where my mom’s Bribury shirt was sticking out after I’d hurriedly hung it when I changed. He’d noticed that.
Logan Fields was very observant for a college jock. But then, I was beginning to realize there was much more to him than just that.
Even beyond his Greek god body and crazy-cute dimple.
“I’m not saying you were right last week. That we shouldn’t complicate things because of Grief Inc. But it feels wrong to break the seal on this day.”
I started to argue, but it felt hollow. He was right.
“I’ll see you Wednesday night,” he said. “Don’t make plans for after, okay?”
Was it a hint of promise or a hint of hopefulness in his voice at the end? Or both?
“Okay. Wednesday night. And after.”
He nodded, smiled, and was gone. I went out into the common room to microwave the leftover pizza.
And think about the range of emotions that had blasted through me today. It was a lot.
Thank God the pizza was so good.
Chapter12
“That was a lot,”I said as I caught up with Logan after using the restroom once Grief Inc. had concluded.
He nodded, looking as wrung out as I felt. And he’d had a couple hours of intense skating while I’d been sitting at the library studying before our group met.
“We don’t have to hang out, if you’re tired,” I said, giving him an out.
“I’m tired, but… do you just want to go to my house and order some food?”
That sounded great, and I said so. We started walking toward the side of campus where we both lived, digesting the emotions we’d just gone through in group.
I’d half expected Jane and Stick to come roaring up in his Charger (on his white charger? ha!), but there was no sign of them, or any distraction they might bring from the heavy subject at hand.
“I’ve heard of the stages of grief before. I could probably have come up with most of them if I had to. I just never had to, I don’t know, apply them to myself before,” Logan said.
“Right. Obviously I heard a lot about the Kübler-Ross stages in the past year. But talking about them with others who are maybe in different stages and what that looks like?”
I didn’t finish. We both sighed and nodded.
“And Marlo’s point about not always having a linear route through the stages?” I continued. “And that there will be overlapping and regression? Like, I know I’m still in denial, but there’s sure a shit-ton of anger in there too.”
I thought back to a year ago and how I’d kept waiting for my mom to walk in the door of our house once I came home from school.
For her funeral.
“I think denial to anger is an easy one to recognize because, at least for me, it was coming out of denial thatcausedthe anger. Like, ‘Oh, I have to actuallydealwith this now?’”
