“I used somebody’s hairbrush,” she said.
“Veeti’s,” I said. He and I shared one of the bathrooms, and his hair products could rival any girl on campus.
“And somebody’s toothpaste. Though on my finger. I’m not that desperate.”
“Me too,” I said.
“Oh, was that your bathroom? Sorry. Kind of an odd setup,” she said, motioning to the hallway of evenly spaced doors.
“I think it was originally a five-bedroom house. Years ago. They made one of the bedrooms a second bathroom. Thank God. But yeah, they’re both right in the middle, across from each other.”
We were at the top of the stairs, and I gave her a kiss that was going to be quick, but didn’t turn out that way.
“Ready?” I asked. She nodded.
When we got downstairs, the surprise on Gabe’s and Veeti’s faces was evident. Philly was not surprised. She had a “told ya!” look on her face that I replied to with a middle finger when I’d turned Megan away from her and toward the kitchen.
I could hear Philly’s laugh as we walked through the swinging door to the kitchen. My parents and Dex were gathered in front of the stove, and it seemed my mom was giving some kind of tutorial.
The spatula dropped from her hand as I said, “You guys remember Megan, right?”
Chapter23
Logan
“Oh,honey, I’m so sorry if we made things awkward. It didn’t occur to me that she would be here this morning. It seemed like the end of the night when you left us,” my mom said to me quietly in the kitchen once Megan got situated on a stool at the counter with my dad, who was pouring her a glass of orange juice. Dex had gone back to the living room and Veeti had come in and taken a seat at the small table with a cup of coffee that he was clutching like maybe he’d had a late night.
“I thought it was too, but she texted on her way back to her dorm, and…”
“Enough said. And if I hadn’t already started cooking breakfast, we’d be out of here. But none of the boys mentioned anything.”
“They didn’t know Megan was here,” I said. Dex probably suspected, given Philly’s look just now. But I’d never had a girl spend the night in the house before.
“Did we make it worse, then, by having you come down? Did we, I don’t know,outher or something?”
I laughed at my mom’s summation, but maybe she wasn’t that far off. Would Megan be pissed that she was being pulled into another “girlfriend” activity? I hoped not.
“Nah, it’s all good. Thanks for all this,” I said, motioning not only to the nearly done French toast but also to what seemed to be a hefty batch of groceries that sat on the counter in various stages of being put away.
“It’s nothing. I woke up so energized this morning that I made your dad take me on a Costco run. I unbagged the things that needed to be refrigerated, but I’ll let you boys do the rest, since you know where everything goes.”
We were over a month into classes and our kitchen would have still looked like the third day, when we’d done a huge grocery run, if it hadn’t been for Gabe. Seemed he enjoyed being in the kitchen, letting us know what we needed, even cooking for us all a few nights a week. That, coupled with team meals that we had a few nights while watching film and having meetings, meant I was barely acquainted with where things were in our kitchen.
Then the words my mom had said hit me. “Why were you so energized this morning?”
She looked over her shoulder to see that my dad held Megan in conversation. “I’m not really sure. I think it was meeting Megan. Knowing that she’s—”
“Okay, okay. Simmer down. Like I said at the hotel, it’s very early stages. She doesn’t want anything serious. We’re not using labels. And I don’t want to—”
“Yes, yes, you said all that last night. I’m not saying anything different. I just…” She switched the burner off and turned to face me, her hip against the counter like mine was. “I just liked seeing you with her. What she brought out in you.”
I knew I was crazy about Megan. And my mom knew the backstory. But I didn’t think I’d blatantly given anything away. Not when I was trying so hard to play it cool for Megan’s benefit. “What does she bring out in me?” I asked.
Mom tipped her head while she parsed her words. J had had that same mannerism. I felt the familiar gut punch that I got when a memory was stirred from out of the blue. But instead of stuffing it back down like I’d done since July (really since last fall, when we realized J’s cancer had returned), I let it roll over me for a second, taking it in. Wondering if I had that same mannerism too. It dulled the pain a bit, enough for me to notice the difference. Maybe that was the effects of the grief study.
Or maybe it was just Megan.
“I want to say she brings out the old you, but that doesn’t feel right. None of us are the old us, are we?”
