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It had felt like old times, Ella alternatively funny and insightful, serious and self-deprecating. After years of dragging his anger around like an anchor, it had been a relief to let it go, and he’d been a little stunned to realize how quickly his affection for her rushed in to the fill the spot where the bitterness had been.
Maybe that’s why he’d carried it around so long. Maybe it had been easier than carrying the weight of his love for her.
He pushed the thought aside before it had time to take hold. He couldn’t afford to love Ella Perez.
Not that way.
She wasn’t his, hadn’t been his in a long, long time. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends, and he was surprised to admit that he wanted to be her friend. That as much as he’d missed her body under his hands and mouth, he’d missed her face and conversation and perspective too.
It wasn’t what they’d once had, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth having.
His phone dinged from the console and he picked it up to find a text from Ella.
Still like sausage and mushroom?
He smiled and texted back.Yes. Because I’m not an animal.
Three dots appeared at the bottom of the screen. He hated that his heart beat so fast while he waited for her reply.
There are three pieces here with your name on them. But only if you promise to stay in the guest bedroom so I don’t have to think of you sleeping in your car.
He stared at the words, his brain jumping through a million hoops and screaming a warning while his heart told him to get his ass out of the car.
The dots reappeared on his screen as she typed.
You’re thinking about this too hard. Just come in, Logan. The guest room is yours as long as you want it.
She knew him too well.
Still.
He opened the door and got out, then jogged through the drizzle to the house.
* * *
The credits rolled on the animated movie Onward and Logan looked down at a sleeping Leo, snuggled against his side. He glanced at Ella, on the other side of Leo, who mouthed the words,Every time.
Logan smiled. Their pizza plates were still on the coffee table, along with a plate of Bea’s cookies, Logan’s empty beer bottle, and Ella’s mostly empty wine glass.
She’d given him another towel when he’d come in from the rain, and he’d dried off, kicked off his shoes, and settled onto the couch with Ella and Leo for the movie.
He’d wanted to pay attention, but it was difficult with Leo and Ella so close. The intimacy of it overwhelmed him in a way he hadn’t expected: the mundanity of pizza and a movie, Leo laughing at the funny parts, then nodding off, a pleasant weight against Logan’s body.
It was what he would have imagined back when he and Ella were teenagers in love, if he’d had the capacity to imagine something so simple, so perfect. That this was Ella’s house, Ella’s son with another man, didn’t matter at all. It was as real as any of Logan’s dreams of his lost future with Ella.
She eased off the couch, trying not to wake Leo, and Logan did the same, scooping Leo into his arms as he went, then lifting him into the air.
“You sure?” Ella asked him. She was wearing baggy lounge pants and a white T-shirt under a soft pink cardigan. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, her face free of makeup she must have washed off when she’d gotten home from work.
She’d never looked more beautiful.
He nodded. “I got this,” he murmured, not wanting to wake Leo.
She followed him up the stairs and he carried Leo down the hall to the room next to Ella’s. It was a perfect room for a child, the walls lined with books and dinosaurs, the bed piled high with a dinosaur comforter and matching pillows.
Ella entered the dark room behind him and reached behind the nightstand. A moment later, light spun over the walls, a kaleidoscope of fish swimming across Leo’s walls.
“In case he wakes up,” Ella explained.
