“That smells good. Maybe I should have gotten a Whopper,” Connor said as he joined us with his pizza and the three of us made our way to the table we’d staked out.
Connor and Logan sat across from each other, and I tried to do some quick math on what side I should sit on—face Logan, but be next to Connor, or next to Logan like in class—and decided I’d had enough of smelling Logan for one night.
And Connor was delightfully scent-free. Or maybe the food masked all aromas?
We ate quickly, scarfing down the food. Connor went back and got a Whopper for dessert.
“Can we go somewhere after here? To talk about it?” Logan asked while Connor was away from the table.
“Is there any point?”
“Yes. I think so,” he said.
“I suppose you’re thinking of going back to your house?” I said.
The tone of my voice had him answering quickly, “Or your room, if you’d rather.”
“Here you go. Just so you have to stay while I wipe out this Whopper,” Connor said as he tossed two apple pies on the table between Logan and me.
“We would’ve stayed. You didn’t have to bribe us,” I said as Logan tore into the carton of one of the pies and handed me the other.
“Insurance,” Connor said. He took a bite of his burger, made an appreciative rumble in his throat as he swallowed, then asked, “You two friends or something? Seemed like you knew each other at the first session.”
“Not friends,” I said at the same time Logan said, “Something like that.”
Connor looked from Logan to me and back again. A smile curved up his lips before he took his next bite. “Uh-huh. Totally.” Not believing either of us.
“We met a few days before our first group session,” I said. Logan looked away from me when I said the words, almost as if he disagreed, but he didn’t say anything. “So, there was a moment of recognition; that’s what you probably sensed.”
Connor nodded. “Yeah, that’s what I sensed. Right.” More disbelief in his voice.
Was my attraction to Logan that noticeable? Did the rest of the group know that while we talked about the loss of loved ones, I was thinking about how good Logan smelled?
And more importantly (to me), was Logan sending out the same pheromones?
Connor had his Whopper gone long before I finished the apple pie, and he sat back in his chair, taking the front legs off the floor with the deep lean backward. “So, Straw, mind if I ask what date exactly Mrs. died?”
Logan had finished his pie and was draining his pop, and it made an almost record-scratching sound as the question was asked. But he nodded, wiped his mouth, and said, “July twenty-fifth.”
“And I assume it wasn’t a pleasant last month or two?” Connor asked.
I wasn’t sure where he was going with these questions, and Logan looked puzzled too, but answered, “The last two weeks he was pretty out of it. He’d been on at-home hospice for the month before that. For pain management.”
He took a hard swallow. I watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
“Even more impressive, then,” Connor said.
“What is?”
“He reached out after the accident, which was Fourth of July weekend. Texted me with condolences. Asked if I wanted him to call. I was getting a bunch of those texts, and wasn’t in any shape, in a lot of ways, to talk to anyone. And he and I weren’t even all that close. Same class. Both athletes. Same parties many weekends. Small school, so we knew of each other more than actuallykneweach other, you know?”
Logan and I both nodded.
“And had I really thought about it, I mean, I knew he’d left school last fall. Knew what he was going through. But it didn’t occur to me what he was dealing with when he would have texted me. I was too deep in my own shit to even call and see how he was doing.”
“Totally understandable,” Logan said. I nodded, like I knew anything about the situation. And in a way, I did. I knew how isolating your own grief could be. To the point of not seeing what other people might be going through.
“Yeah. I guess. Anyway, after I heard about Mrs.—and I didn’t until I was back here on campus—I felt really bad that I hadn’t reached out to him more.”
