Page 46 of What It Means To Be Found

Me: Yes.

Logan: Can I come up?

My frown smoothed into a line.

Me: Are you here?

Logan: Yes. I threw a pebble at your window since you weren’t responding.

I blinked at my phone before I set my bookmark in the paperback I was reading and slid out of bed to shuffle over to my window, pulling the curtains to the side to see Logan on the side of the house, staring up at me. He had a backpack slung on his shoulder as he stood by one of the trees scattered around this building of townhomes. He had a nervous smirk on his face that was barely lit up by a string of lights Susan had hung around the house. He even lifted his hand and gave me a tentative wave.

I grabbed my phone and typed a text while glaring down at him.

Me: Courtney and Josh are home and will hear the front door open.

The message was clear. I wasn’t letting him in. I set my phone down on the desk and reached towards my dresser to pull my sleep shorts on since I was just in a tank and undies. The likelihood of Courtney and Josh being asleep already was low, and I didn’t want to alert them to who was currently outside right now, so I curiously glanced out the window.

Logan was already standing in the tree, reaching up and wrapping his hands around the branches as he lifted his massive body higher and higher to reach my window.

“What the fuck are you doing?” I whisper-screeched after shoving my window open, shivering a little from the cool humid air I was letting into the room. Logan gave me a playful smirk as he lifted himself up on another branch, making him high enough to palm the screen over my window. With one gentle push, the screen popped out of my window. I made a startled noise as I struggled to catch it before it clanked on the floor.

I’m sorry, Logan signed immediately, his lips twitching a little as he stepped onto the small patch of roof underneath my window. This thirty-year-old man gripped the edge of the windowsill with both of his hands, his eyes meeting mine with question and apology. I set the screen down and gave him a disgruntled look of my own, letting the silence between us linger as I let him support himself on the roof.

I felt my face, which was pinched in irritation, start to loosen at the immediate apology. However, I wasn’t wearing a bra (something the cool air made very apparent), and I didn’t want to keep having this conversation with the window open and all the bugs flying inside.

“Come in,” I nodded my head towards him, my voice a whisper as I stepped to the side for him to enter. He hung his head low, his body language clearly one of insecurity and nervousness as he lifted his leg and squeezed through the window. I tried not to focus on his firm grip on the windowsill, or how his shoulders and leg muscles flexed as he maneuvered, something I had only ever seen in the movies.

After Logan made it inside, he stood tall and stared at me nervously. I walked over to my bedroom door to double-check that it was locked. I wanted to clear my head after getting a fill of his body when I was still annoyed with him. I turned around to see Logan raising an eyebrow at me, his eyes glancing at the doorknob pointedly.

“Courtney is known to let herself in without warning,” I explained, keeping my voice quiet so she couldn’t hear us. Logan nodded in understanding, his eyes doing a quick scan around my tidy room before he found my desk chair and plopped himself down.

“Please, make yourself at home,” I mumbled sarcastically, sitting down on the edge of my bed, and crossing my arms over my body. Logan smirked at me before pulling his backpack around so that he could unzip it, and he pulled out a shiny silver laptop. His eyes lifted to mine for a moment as he set the laptop on my desk.

His hands lifted to sign, but then he stopped and frowned, realizing no one was here to interpret for him.

“I’ll never learn ASL if you don’t keep signing to me,” I grumbled, irritated that the language barrier was so difficult for us. Well, for me. Logan at least had his hearing, which made it easy for me to communicate my side of things. I hated that I was so far behind in the language compared to the others in our group, though.

Logan’s dark eyes bore into mine, and I felt my heart flutter from the intensity of his dark gaze. After just a moment or two, Logan swallowed and nodded, but continued to sign.

I only caught a single word from his sentence, watch.

“Watch what?” I asked. Logan nodded, a nervous smile on his lips from my little understanding, and he lifted his laptop off the desk to flip it open and turn it on. He then stood up from his seat at the desk, walked around my side of the bed, and kicked off his shoes. I lifted an eyebrow, and my lips parted in surprise when Logan pulled the covers back to slide into where I was just lying as I read my book.

“What are you doing?” I asked, standing from my bed because his feet hit my butt underneath the covers. Logan bit his bottom lip and tapped on his laptop, before flipping it around so that I could see the screen.

He had pulled up the romantic comedy we were discussing earlier at Beck and Adam’s condo.

I kept my arms crossed and leaned my weight onto one hip, a look of disbelief on my face at how presumptuous he was being.

“Suddenly you’re interested in the movie?”

Logan shook his head, so I rolled my eyes at him. He then snapped his fingers at me to regain my attention when I glanced away, and he started signing. He signed slower, mouthing his words for me clearly.

I want to watch with you, he said.

“Why?”

Logan frowned at me, then he turned the laptop back around and started typing away on it, a determined pinch in his brow as he studied the screen.

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