Page 50 of In Too Long


Font Size:

It was obvious when Logan introduced us that his parents would rather not have a friend of his tagging along for a family dinner. Logan made some comment about the two of us making plans, and if he’d been told that his parents would be here, it would’ve been different.

A shot across the bow had been fired; Logan was pissed about the display, and so his parents became very accommodating toward my joining them.

I was a buffer for everyone, it would seem.

When our salads were served and we could gratefully stop with inane small talk about where I was from, how classes were going, etc., I dug in (awesome wedge salad!), as did Logan and his father. His mother picked at hers. I could see the emotion on her soft, minimally lined face and wished I’d just said no to Logan’s invitation.

“So, one thing I’ve learned all too well is to not let things go unsaid,” she said, causing the other three of us to look up from our salads.

“Maybe not unsaid. But they could bepostponed,” Logan said, his message clear.

Tricia (they’d told me to call them Tricia and James, but so far I hadn’t needed to directly) made a motion in my direction. “Megan is here now. It will be your housemates when you’re at home. If you’re determined to have some sort of buffer in place, then that person will need to be involved. Even if you’ve only known each other for a couple of weeks.”

Logan sighed the deep sigh of a child forced to deal with unreasonable (in their mind) parents. “If somebody had told me what was going on, I would have made other arrangements. But nobody did.”

“We were afraid you wouldn’t want us to come if you knew,” Tricia said.

Logan said not a word, which confirmed her hypothesis.

“Son,” James said softly, pulling Logan’s attention away from Tricia, “the athletic director called us. He had brought the idea of an announcement of some kind about James’s passing to Coach Urbanski. Coach liked it and wondered if we’d want to be here for it. That’s when the AD reached out. It was all in motion quickly. Just last week. At which point it seemed”—he took a deep breath, searching for a word that would placate Logan—“lessdisruptiveto you for us to just come in the day of the game. Nobody wanted you to spend time worrying about any logistics or taking time out of practice and classes, andotherthings.” He gave me a small smile, which I returned. It was unclear if he thought I was a disruption in Logan’s life. And if so, was that a good or bad thing?

I guessed we were all trying to figure that one out.

“It’s true, honey. It was not intended as an ambush, more of a ‘let’s not throw anything else on his plate right now’ gesture. That’s all.” Tricia’s look at me was a bit clearer. I was a disruption to her son at a vulnerable time. And not a good one.

Logan caught the look too. Looking to me, he asked, “Megan, is it okay with you if I tell my parents how we met? Became friends?”

I assumed he meant through Grief Group, not the fact that the moment he walked into his house party on the Friday before classes, I asked him to take me to his room so we could do dirty, dirty things to each other.

Ihopedhe meant Grief Group as I nodded and said, “Of course.”

“Megan is part of the grief study classes Coach has me going to. She lost her mother last fall.”

James’s face became even softer, his eyes—brown like his son’s—filling with compassion. Normally I would hate that look, but I knew that it came from a place of solidarity in the loss of their son. Understanding over pity.

Tricia, on the other hand, took that as a possible additional strike against me. Not only was Logan vulnerable, but so was I. She seemed to get the issues that I’d been pounding into Logan.

This was not the time to start anything up with someone as equally, and freshly, hurting.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Megan,” Tricia started. “But then you’re aware that—”

“Megan actually started at Bribury last fall,” Logan said, cutting of his mother and what was about to be a variation on the same argument he was getting weekly (and weakly—ha!) from me. “We were freshmen together. And then, two weeks into class, she got the word,during class, about her mother and had to leave to go home to Nebraska. She decided to stay there for the year and not come back until now.”

His cadence was slow and measured, hitting certain words, all while he held a very pointed look at his mother. Some message was being relayed, but I was not privy to it, nor was I the intended audience.

Whatever he was conveying, his mother finally got, betrayed by her eyes getting larger and her sitting back in her chair. She blinked several times, at first seeming to clear her confusion, and then tears started to form.

“No, it’s all good, Mom. I swear, it’s all good,” Logan said, reaching across the table to rest his hand on top of his mom’s, which was wrapped around the stem of her wineglass. “It’s okay.”

She nodded and clasped her son’s hand, trading one lifeline (the wine) for another (her son). “I… I’m glad.”

He squeezed her hand, then released it, sitting back in his seat, nodding. “Megan and I got to know each other—along with the others in the group—pretty quickly, as I guess you do in those kinds of things.”

“Yes, of course,” James said. He didn’t get exactly what had happened between Logan and Tricia, but he knew the difference in his wife’s demeanor was a good thing. And for him, that was enough. “So, it turned out to be a good thing Coach did, making it mandatory for you? I’m glad we didn’t jump in when you asked us to.”

So, Logan had asked his parents to override his coach on his having to attend the group.

I didn’t blame him. If I’d had more ammunition, I’d have made the same plea.