“Holy shit, the art,” Logan says.
He’s gawking at the massive mural I painted along the far wall of the living room. Two of the walls are red brick, but on one of the inner walls, I painted a giant raven perched on the edge of a cherry tree, with a sweeping view of hills below it.
“Oh. Right. I forget that’s there,” I tell him. “That’sanother reason I’m lucky my landlord is a comic book nerd. He loves shit like this. He told me I have to paint it white again whenever we move out, but he appreciated the art.”
“It’s incredible.”
Logan’s looking everywhere now, and through his eyes, I see our apartment in a completely different light.
It couldn’t be more different from Logan’s pristine, organized hotel room. It occurs to me that I’ve never seen what Logan’s actual house in LA looks like, and something rattles in my heart, like I’m behind that glass in my mind again.
He looks at the tall bookshelves on the other wall, which are full of art books and my roommates’ huge collection of fantasy novels.
He stares at the couch, which my friend and I made a colorful slipcover for last year, and then gazes for a while at the massive collection of Polaroids that we’ve tacked up onto the wall for the past few years.
“Don’t look too closely at any of those pictures,” I tell him. “They’re from my past life, to say the least.”
He points to one where I’m wearing a lacy pink dress with combat boots. “Explain?”
“Halloween,” I tell him. “I looked pretty, didn’t I?”
The corner of his mouth comes up in a smile, and he points at another, where I’m on the balcony with a cigarette in my hand, opening my mouth to show a tiny green pill and blue pill on my tongue. “And this one?”
I take a slow breath. “I don’t remember that night. One of my roommates took that picture, I think.”
Logan’s expression drops. “Why do you keep it up, then?”
“I don’t spend a lot of time looking at those pictures, to be honest.”
I reach over and unpin it from the wall, tossing that one into the trash.
“I do like this one, though,” Logan says, looking at a picture of me laughing while pulling my shirt up to exposemy chest, where I wrote ‘I bite’with my friend’s lipstick. “I didn’t know you used to have your nipples pierced.”
“I did. Took them out once and I lost one of the barbells, so I just never bothered finding new ones.”
“God, sometimes I feel like you’ve done more in the last few years than I’ve done in my whole life,” Logan murmurs.
“But I’ve done a lot more stupid things. I promise you. The kitchen’s over there, by the way. You want anything to drink? I don’t keep alcohol anymore, but I’m sure one of my roommates has some.”
“I don’t need anything,” he says. “Can I see your room?”
I stare at him, suddenly feeling something crest inside me that I can’t hold back.
“Why did you do that earlier tonight, Logan? Kissing me. In public.”
Splinter.
Fracture.
Crack.
Logan’s eyes meet mine immediately. Suddenly he doesn’t seem to care about the apartment at all anymore, only looking over at me.
“You want to talk about it now, rather than ignoring it like you’ve done all night?” He asks the question gently. “Thought you were going to give me an exhaustive tour before I ever got a word out of you about that.”
“Why did you do it so easily?” I ask again, firmly this time.
“You know why. You’ve been different ever since we did that photoshoot yesterday, and I wanted you to feel better.”
