By the time morning comes, I have decided on the date. I text Wren just after my ten o’clock class with my plan for the night, and I wait with bated breath for her response. She very well could say no. After Logan’s sudden appearance at her door last night, she might be too lost in her head to want to go out with me tonight.
It’s winter, so options are limited. There’s no romantic walk in the park when the wind chill is in the single-digits and it gets dark outside before five. I decided on a dinner date, no movie. Keep it simple and short, if she wants, but if she wants the date to continue after dinner, well, I am more than happy to oblige.
Her response comes swiftly:Sounds fun. Let’s do it.
I respond when I can and say,I’ll pick you up at six.
I am riding cloud nine the rest of the day. Of course, I spend the early afternoon getting ready for said date, but I also make sure that there’s no possible way Wren can stumble upon the maze I’d built in the basement. The camera footage on my computer in my office is hidden behind a passcode, so unlessshe’s a master hacker, I don’t anticipate her stumbling upon that. Still, better safe than sorry.
By five in the afternoon, I’m showered, dressed, and ready for the date, but I can’t leave too early, so I stroll to my office and pull up the cameras I’d hidden in Logan’s place. I find him sitting in his studio, where he’s amassed quite the collection of instruments, mostly guitars. Electric, acoustic; I’m fairly sure there are multiple kinds of each, but I’m no musician.
He sits shirtless on a bean bag chair, an acoustic guitar on his lap. He strums along absentmindedly, but based on the look on his face, he’s somewhere else. I don’t need to be a mind-reader to know where his thoughts are.
Wren, obviously.
Logan lets out the world’s largest sigh as he sets the guitar down and leans forward, muttering a hard, “Fuck.” That single word holds such dejection, I almost feel bad for him. He probably thought he’d be able to sweep all his wrongdoings under the rug by that declaration and apology at Wren’s yesterday, but real life isn’t as easy as it is in the movies. Grand gestures aren’t enough.
He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his phone, and I wonder if he’s going to try calling Wren or something. He stares at his phone for a long time before his thumb taps its screen a few times, and he brings that phone up to his ear. Though I’m not there, from where I sit, I’ll be able to tell whether it’s Wren he’s calling or someone else.
I get my answer from the first words he says, “Hey, bro. Yeah, sorry. Been MIA. How was Christmas with Mom and Dad?”
His brother, then, who he apparently hasn’t spoken to since before Christmas. I knew he didn’t go home for the holidays, so it shouldn’t surprise me. He’s done nothing but wallow. Losing someone like Wren tends to do that to you—unless you’re the guy who cheated on her and broke her heart.
Oh, I haven’t forgotten about Mike. I’m planning on getting to him later. Right now, Wren and Logan are my first priorities.
Logan listens to what I assume is a story about Christmas and their family. It’s a while before he says, “Yeah, I wish I could’ve come home, but I had some things I needed to take care of here.” His brother must say something that’s semi-insulting, because he scowls. “What? No, that’s not it. I didn’t even go out New Year’s Eve, I swear.”
It’s true. He didn’t. I thought, maybe, he would’ve been over Wren by then, but he wasn’t, so instead of going out and partying, instead of hooking up with whoever he could get his hands on—or put his dick in—he kept to his house and was miserable by himself.
“No, I mean it,” he says in a huff. “I didn’t go out.” Another pause. “Yeah, well trust me, I know that sounds insane, but it’s true. I can’t remember the last time I went out and had fun.”
I don’t know what his brother says, but it’s a long moment before Logan mutters, “Remember that girl I told you about last fall? I, um, I fucked up. I fucked up so bad I don’t think there’s a way to un-fuck it.”
Well, at least he recognizes that fact. Maybe he will surprise me in the maze after all.
He uses his free hand to tap his stomach as he stares at the ceiling and speaks to his brother, “Something happened to her because of me. I tried to see her after, but… her roomie convinced me she’s better off without me, and I thought she was right. She probably is.”
Either his brother tells him some comforting platitudes, or he says something Logan doesn’t want to hear, because Logan frowns as he adds, “I tried, man, I fucking tried, and I felt like I was losing my goddamned mind. I saw her yesterday. I thought… fuck, I guess I thought I could apologize and everything would go back to the way it was.”
He sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose. “I’m losing my mind, man, I really am. I thought I was fucked after getting booted from the band, but this feels so much worse than that.”
You know, the longer I sit there and listen to him, the more my mind changes. Maybe Logan isn’t a lost cause after all. Maybe he can survive my maze, and if he does, well, maybe he and I can start off on a new foot, begin again.
Maybe there’s hope for this boy yet.
And then, Logan says something that stuns me: “I think I love her.”
He thinks he loves her. That declaration must have been tough for someone like him to say, even to his own brother. Given his history and his penchant for girls, booze, and drugs—the lifestyle of the rich and famous—being faced with the fact that he might just be in love is probably enough to end his entire world.
Someone like Logan Crew can’t love a girl like Wren Lyons. It just doesn’t compute, or it shouldn’t.
Now that the words are out there, he repeats them more firmly, “I think I love her, and I don’t know what to do about it.” It’s only a second or two before he says, “Look, man, I have to go. I’ll talk to you later, okay?” I doubt his brother has the chance to say anything else before he ends the call, and once the call is done, he tosses his phone out of his hand and lands it on the floor a few feet away.
“Fuck,” he says to himself, and then he buries his face in his hands. From the angle the camera views him, he appears utterly dejected, so forlorn it’s quite sad. I sit there a while and stare at the screen, at Logan, waiting for him to dust himself off, so to speak.
But he doesn’t. He continues to sit there, with his shoulders slumped, like he really is experiencing a crisis of identity.
If anything can make a man change, I suppose it’s love. In my family, love always borders obsession, but to the average, everyday person, love is different. It’s consuming. Once it has you, it doesn’t let you go without a fight.
