“Ha!” Logan rocked back on his heels. Okay, so we were doing this. Out here in the parking lot, with the faint tang of gasoline in the air and a beautiful robin’s-egg blue sky stretched above us. “You’re right. I work in politics. I should immediately suspect every person I meet is trying to pull some con on me. So what was your plan if the fire alarm hadn’t gone off? Spend the night with me, then take off in the morning, secure in the knowledge that I could never track you down because I didn’t have your real name?”
My cheeks were flaming. “So I told a few white lies.” I spun and beelined away. Unfortunately, Logan’s legs were long, so he had no trouble keeping up. “You’re the one who dumped me in an ambulance and took off without another word. But I guess that’s your MO, seeing as how you’re a playboy and all.” I finally reached my car door and started to yank it open—then thought better and turned back around. “Is that how you end it with all your women, or am I especially not worth the goodbye?”
“Mywomen?” Turning around to face him had been a bad idea. Logan stepped closer, shaking his head. Despite his tone, I could feel myself drawing nearer to him, pulled by the hard planes of his chest in that fitted white dress shirt, the dark line of his jaw, shadowed with stubble, the long column of his throat, Adam’s apple bobbing above the knot of his tie as he swallowed. I reversed course, backing up until my shoulders hit the car. He only leaned in closer. I was caged.
“What I don’t understand,” he said, in a low voice, “is why you’re so bothered. Admit it. You were going to drop me at the end of the night and disappear without a trace.”
“Like youliterallydid?”
“There were photographers! I was trying to avoid this exact—” He stopped and scrubbed his hands through his hair, unleashing his curls. Then he looked up at the sky. He was silent for several beats, like he was counting in his head. “Okay,” he said finally, his voice tightly leashed. “For the sake of a truce, let’s just say neither of us was planning to see each other again and leave it at that. I get that publicly dating me is the last thing you want to do, since you went to such elaborate lengths to ensure I knew nothing about you. But—look. Winning this race means everything to me. And my team wants it as badly as I do. I don’t always agree with Nora’s methods, but I trust her. And she thinks doing this is the only way to keep this story from being the meal my opponents feast on from now until November.”
My car door was warm from the September sun. I leaned harder against it. Witnessing Logan prostrate himself felt unnatural. “You really don’t have to...”
He sighed. “I didn’t come out here to argue, or close the deal. I came to say I know we’re giving you the full court press. But you don’t have to do this.”
This man was more confusing than an illustrated cover on a romance novel. What the hell was going on inside his head? “I don’t?”
“Of course not. If you don’t want to, I’ll figure out a way to keep your name out of the press. I’ll make sure no blowback falls on you, I promise. But—” He blew out a breath, and caught my eyes. The look on his face was intense as usual, but this time, intensely sincere, like he was gearing up to make a speech. This must be the Logan Arthur politician face. I swallowed, unable to look away. Damn, he was good.
“If you’re evenconsideringit,” he said, “I want to assure you the last thing you need to worry about is whether I have feelings for you. I have zero interest in being in a real relationship with anyone. So if you’re concerned that agreeing to date me would be awkward because we already kissed: I promise it won’t be. You don’t have to worry about me thinking it means anything, or, God forbid, making overtures. We both had a lot to drink Saturday, and clearly acted out of character. Probably for the best it got cut short—”
I practically tripped—standing still—in my haste to say, “Obviouslyfor the best. Well done, lightning, is what I’ve been saying.”
He gave me a quizzical look, but mercifully moved on. “The point is, if you’re even consideringsaying yes, please know I intend for this to be entirely professional. I’ll—I mean, the whole campaign—we’ll treat you with the utmost respect. No funny business.”
How in the world was I supposed to get a handle onmythoughts when Logan’s were so illegible? Did he want me to say yes or did he want me to say no? I knew I should be thinking this through logically, considering all the angles, but what my brain kept returning to wasI want to assure you the last thing you need to worry about is whether I have feelings for you.And every time it went there, it felt like poking a bruise. A tender, sore feeling.
“Thanks for the, uh...reassurance. I’ll take it under advisement.” I popped the car door and sank into the driver’s seat. “And I’ll get back to you.Soon,” I added, at the look on his face. I shut the door, wrenched my eyes from the window, and pressed the ignition to escape.
7
A Sip of Euphoria
No one in the history of the world had ever googled anyone as furiously as I was googling Logan Arthur. I’d assembled all the essentials for a deep dive: my favorite matching pajama set and fuzzy socks, a chenille blanket, and one of those fancy chocolate bars from the grocery store I told myself I would eat slowly, one square at a time, until the next thing I knew the whole thing had mysteriously vanished. I’d already spent a full hour down the Logan rabbit hole and showed no signs of stopping. In my defense, he was everywhere: there were endless articles, Twitter threads, and YouTube videos mentioning him. (Begging the question, once again, of how I’d failed to register his existence.) That, plus my formidable librarian research skills, meant I had plenty to chew on.
The termmixed bagwas invented to describe Logan’s press coverage. No doubt, there were some great profiles, particularly among the more left-leaning outlets, with headlines like “Logan Arthur Speaks Truth to Power” and “Meet Mane’s Bold Challenger, Guaranteed to Give Him a Run for His Money.” He’d even gotten a few lifestyle media hits, articles like “Rounding Up the 10 Hottest Politicians” and “Meet this Texas Political Dreamboat,” which had in turn spawned some enthusiastic Twitter threads full of eggplant and peach emojis. But the vast majority of pundits didn’t seem to know what to do with him. “Young, Brash and Ballsy: Is Logan Arthur a Nightmare or a Godsend?” was the most obvious, but the confusion was also plain in competing headlines like: “Out of His League: Young Arthur Can’t Play the Game” followed a few days later by “Refreshing: Logan Arthur Refuses to Play Politics as Usual.” Then there was the half admiring “Logan Arthur: So Young But So Angry.”
YouTube was its own treasure trove. I watched “Logan Arthur Caught Yelling at Heckler,” which was a thirty-second clip of Logan walking out of some restaurant at night, doggedly followed by a man in a baseball cap. The guy kept saying something the camera didn’t catch, until Logan finally snapped, turning to him with a loud “Fuck off—you got nothing better to do than chase me around?” The heckler ran off, which, good call, because the way Logan had raised his shoulders reminded me of a cat hunching up to pounce. That video naturally fed into watching “Dem Candidate Caught Dropping Impressive 12 F-bombs in 10 Seconds,” which was exactly what it promised. And then my attention was snagged by “Logan Arthur and NBA Rockets Cheerleader.” That video was the oldest I’d found, dated over a year ago. In it, a bearded Logan—my heart skipped a beat—stumbled out of what looked like a bar or a club with his arm around a gorgeous, leggy blonde. He helped her into a waiting car and rolled his eyes at whoever was filming before running to the other side and hopping in. As the car sped off, I thought,Well, that sheds light on those playboy rumors.
The most recent video was fromTheWatcher on the Hill’s channel, and it was titled, “Arthur Buttons Up.” The text accompanying the video read: “This latest town hall marks a clear turnaround for the once-brash candidate. Obviously, someone has started listening to his PR team. Good for his career, I suppose, but this pundit for one will miss the old Arthur. Calling out corporate sponsors. Gut-punching his own party. The memorable time he called Mendax Oil CEO Sam Slittery a cockroach who would sadly survive the destruction of the planet he helped engineer. Never a dull moment.” The still image was of Logan standing behind a podium, wearing a smile that was passable—unless, like me, you’d seen the real thing. The dazzling, full-toothed grin of Logan Arthur cracking up across the table because, miraculously, you’d said something funny.
I looked up and caught my reflection in the hall mirror. If I agreed to pretend I was Logan’s girlfriend, it would bemein those videos. As in, the girl in the mirror. My brown hair was currently hanging limply over my forehead, since I hadn’t bothered to brush it before settling in, and I’d stuck on my nerdy blue-light glasses to stare at the laptop screen. Even my pajama set, originally the height of glamor (the pieces matched! Unheard of.), looked dowdy next to the sleek minidress on the leggy cheerleader. I’d gotten so caught up in the Logan of it all, I’d forgotten to consider what else saying yes would mean: namely, heaps of attention. After a lifetime of being invisible, I’d come full circle and now tried to avoid attention at all costs. Reporters, Twitter followers, all the people Logan hobnobbed with—not only would they know my name, which was bad enough, but I’d have to persuade them I was his girlfriend. Would anyone buymeafter the women he’d been with?
I was tilting my head to check if I had any sleeker angles when a knock sounded at the door. I lived on a sleepy street in a neighborhood full of older houses split into duplexes and triplexes. It was popular with teachers, single-parent families, and grad students, basically all of us who needed peace and quiet for a steal. No one ever knocked except at Halloween.
It’s Logan, my brain shouted, though that made zero sense. Still, I fluffed my hair as I ran to the door. And wrenched it open to find...Zoey Carmichael?
“Lexy!” She raised a six-pack of what I assumed was beer, though the cans were tie-dyed. “Can I call you that? It’s what I call you in my head.” She grinned disarmingly, which wasn’t surprising, given disarming charm was her whole vibe. Even though she was my age, maybe a year older, Zoey was one of my sister’s friends, engaged to Lee’s grad school bestie, Annie Park. Annie’s proposal to Zoey at a lovely Italian restaurant was one of the top five most romantic experiences of my life. (And yes, all of my top romantic experiences were, strictly speaking, other people’s.) Zoey was a talented painter who seemed to be doing well for herself. I’d always thought she was nice, but given she hung with the art crowd and I hung with the...over fifty and under thirteen crowd, there wasn’t much overlap between us.
“Hi,” I said. “Um...what are you doing here?”
Zoey’s smile grew wider. She was super pretty—kind of a hipster mermaid—and rotated hair colors according to her mood. Today her long, wavy hair was a faded green, like she’d spent all summer in the pool. “Your sister said it was the anniversary of when your ex-boyfriend cheated on you, and you might need emotional support. Or, technically, she told Annie, because Annie’s a licensed therapist and all. She was hoping Annie would swing by and talk to you since Lee’s been so swamped. But I overheard and volunteered.”
Ouch, Lee. I hadn’t realized we’d reached the outsourcing-sisterly-duties phase of our relationship. I understood Lee had new responsibilities now: she’d just gotten elected, and was working hard to staff up and set her policy agenda. But Lee no longer having time for me reminded me of the period a few years ago after our dad died, when she retreated and it felt like I’d lost both my father and my sister in one fell swoop. That was an achingly lonely time I hoped to never repeat.
“Can I come in?” Without waiting for an answer, Zoey nudged her foot in the doorway and peeked inside. “Oh, it’s cute.”
“Right. Of course.” Remembering my manners, I ushered Zoey inside. “You can put your beer in the fridge.”
