If You're Out There(16)

Mom starts to say something but stops. “Oh, who knows, Boop?”

“Sita really never talked about him?”

“Wasn’t much to talk about.”

“I still don’t get how she could know so little.” This story always bothered me. I see no shame in sowing oats, but a last name seems bare minimum.

“It . . . happens,” says Mom carefully. “I don’t think the two of them had any plans to, er . . . stay in touch after . . . that night.” Ha. Mom is getting awkward now.

“It’s so weird to me that you met him,” I say. “I don’t know how Priya didn’t just bombard you with questions all the time. That would drive me nuts.”

“Well, it was really only briefly at the bar. I told you about it, right? All MIT kids? The menu on the wall painted to look like the periodic table?” I smile. She’s told me on a number of occasions—Mom Brain, as she calls it—but I let her anyway. (P.S. Of course Priya’s existence was predicated on a nerd bar.)

“It was supposed to be our big girls’ trip to Boston, visiting our college friend Tasha at grad school.” For a moment, Mom’s expression is far away. “I still wonder whatever happened to Tasha. . . . Anyway, I was too tired to stay out very long. Everyone was giving me crap about it. Later they felt like jerks.”

“Because you were actually pregnant with me,” I say with a happy sigh. “I know. Thanks for not binge drinking, Mom.”

She laughs, blinking in thought. “I do wish I could have talked to him more, though. I remember he wore glasses. And Sita said he got cuter with beer.” Mom glares through a smirk. “If you ever do that, I will kill you.”

The doorbell rings, and Mom and I look at each other, confused.

“I’ll get it,” she says. After a moment I muster the strength to get back out of bed. I grab a few handfuls of clothes and shove them in the basket, revealing a few more long-obscured patches of floor. From downstairs I faintly make out the sounds of chatting. And right away, Mom’s shouting, “Zan, come down! There’s someone here to see you!”

I walk out to the top of the stairs, startled to see Logan by the front door.

I rush the rest of the way down as Mom’s eyes dart back and forth between us. There was a reason I didn’t invite him inside when I gave myself a ride home on his bike the other day.

“Hi,” I say.

He’s a bit less raggedy tonight, his hair clean and neatly tied up, his T-shirt free of wrinkles. “Hi,” he says back, shrugging with his hands in his pockets, like there’s no need to explain his being here.

My mother’s eyes sink into me like OMG who is the cute guy and how come I don’t know about him?? I shoot her a look and her face drops. “Right,” she says. “Well, I’ve got some work . . . to do.” She walks backward as she talks. “It was nice meeting you, um . . .”

“Logan,” he says with a wave as she bumps into the bottom step. I’ve gone full death-stare now.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m not here.”

“You really don’t get out much, do you?” says Logan when her bedroom door finally closes upstairs.

I have no comeback, so I say nothing and he follows me to the couch. I feel weird. This is definitely weird. I tug at the hem of my tie-dyed shirt, suddenly wishing I hadn’t chosen such tiny shorts to lounge in.

We haven’t talked much since Thursday. We were placed in different groups in Spanish yesterday and had to do actual work. I’ve been pretty distracted these past couple of days, but I can’t say I haven’t thought about my afternoon with Logan. And seeing him here . . . It’s like he has this way of filling up the room. It makes me oddly happy. It also makes me want to hide.

When he sits, I take the opposite end of the couch and grab a pillow for my lap.

“Do you need my Spanish notes or something?” I ask after a weird silence.

“No,” he says. “Actually, it’s about your friend. Remember how I sent her a follow request the other day? I noticed this morning that she accepted and followed me back.”

“Oh,” I say, still perplexed by the sight of him in my house. It feels like worlds colliding.

“Maybe I should have minded my own business, but it was bugging me. The whole story you told me, and how that back-and-forth at the restaurant just sort of stopped. Anyway I got curious, so I wrote a comment on her photo. To see if she’d respond.”

“Wait, what?” I snap to attention. “Why?”

“Thirst for knowledge?” he says, shrugging. “A general propensity for distracting myself with other people’s lives?”

I frown at him. Logan does this thing, I’ve noticed, that makes the task of interpreting sarcasm versus sincerity nearly impossible. But right now, I’m too curious to care. “What’d you write?”

“Uh, I think I said, like, ‘How’s it going?’”

My face falls. “That was your comment.”

“I admit, it wasn’t the most creative line,” he says with a grin. “But. Well, that’s not why I came over.” He moves next to me on the couch and gives me his phone. “Look.”

thepriyapatel514 @loganhartist Things are going great! Hope the same is true for you, Logan!!