Logan opened the truck door for me and, with his hand on my elbow, helped me inside. He put my purse on my lap and a shopping bag filled with anabsurdamount of sugar at my feet. With the tiniest hint of a smile, he broke open the bottle of pills, checked the label, and handed me two, our eyes clashing for a moment before I looked away. He leaned forward, rummaged through the plastic sack, his elbow resting lightly on my knee, until he found a water bottle, twisted the cap, and handed it to me.
Every part of me wanted to resist. I didn’t want to have to take pills to make the throbbing in my back go away—the root cause of my humiliation tonight—but my dignity had already been shattered. By the time Logan had closed the door and made it around to the other side, the pills had been swallowed, and my face was sufficiently hidden behind my hands.
The truck burst to life at the turn of Logan’s key, but we didn’t move. He turned down the radio.
“You doing alright?”
I made no attempt to answer.
“Come on, Tess. It wasn’t that bad.”
I peeked out from behind my hands and scowled at him.
He let out a low chuckle. “Okay, it was pretty bad, but you survived it. You did good.”
I slunk back into the seat, my head on the headrest. “I have never been so humiliated in my life.”
Logan nodded, and we sat there in silence, my mind replaying the entire grocery-store scene a thousand different ways.
“I don’t know who you ticked off upstairs for the timing involved in something like that—ow.” He flinched away from my whack to his arm.
I moaned as I leaned forward and rested my head on the dashboard, my arms hugging my face.
Logan sighed. “Did I ever tell you my most embarrassing moment?”
“No.”
“It was my freshman year. We were coming back from a field trip, and I fell off the bus.”
My head lifted from its spot on the dash. “Youfelloff the bus?”
“Right off. Tripped on the first stair. All I remember is my head slamming into the railing while my legs got twisted somewhere behind me. I landed in a heap on the sidewalk.”
I tried to hide the smile behind my hand.
“Are you enjoying at my pain, Jailbait?”
“Is that all you’ve got? I could run circles around your embarrassing moment.”
“I’m not done.”
“Do tell.”
“I stood up, laughed about it like a man to everybody who saw, and just as I was turning to walk away, I ran smack into a pole.”
A smile burst across my face. My night hadn’t been forgotten, but it felt nice to have a reason to smile and commiserate with someone. With Logan.
He continued, “I had this massive purple bruise on my forehead for a week. To add insult to injury, my ninth-grade love, Samantha Benson, saw the whole thing and laughed.”
My smile began to fade at that. Warm fingers found my neck and began to rub gently.
“It was an accident, Tess.” His low voice swept over me like that feeling you get when you're cold and you step into a hot shower. “You can be sorry for running into her. But that’s it. That’s all you have to be sorry for. And her pain will fade a lot quicker than what they did to you.”
His fingers moved to my hair where I felt a light tug. I moved my head to look at him.
“Alright?”
“Alright.”
