Page 15 of My Ex-Best Friends

“Shit, little bunny!” He rubbed his leg and then rolled his window back up. “You’re a violent little thing, aren’t you?”

“If you make my mom come over with our high school principal, who I witnessed her screwing yesterday, I will be.” I gagged. “I can’t believe she’s banging the guy who once called us the four assholes of the apocalypse.”

“The coast is clear. Come on up.”

I popped up just to come face to face with my mom through his window. I froze as he rolled his window down again.

“Well, well, well. If I had a dollar for every day I caught my daughter getting off her knees in a pickup truck…” Mom smirked and leaned against the truck to reach in and ruffle Logan’s hair. “Karlene and her crazy predictions might be right for a change. She swears that Brooke is going to marry-”

I slammed my hand on the horn and struggled out of the floor. Crawling half over Logan I smiled through gritted teeth at Mom. “We have to go now, Mother. Goodbye.”

Logan rested his hand on the back of my thigh and grunted when my knee bumped his crotch. “Careful.”

Mom clapped her hands and smacked them down on either side of my face to squeeze it. “I’m so glad you’re back, baby. Now you can tie one of these boys down and keep some other bitch from taking them.”

“Mom! First of all, you don’t need to call other women bitches. Second of all, I’m not tying anyone down. I just ran away from my wedding yesterday.”

“How long are you going to use that as an excuse? You’ve got a perfectly virile and able man under you right now, Brooklyn, and you’re still crying about that gross ex of yours? Wake up, child. I raised you better than this.”

I dropped my head and turned my face to cast a pleading look at Logan. “Help me out here.”

He smirked. “Are you kidding? I’m a virile, able man. Why aren’t you taking advantage of that, Brooklyn?”

I growled. “Drive away right now or I’m going to sink my knee through your dick and straight into the truck frame under you.”

“She wouldn’t. From what I remember, she really loved your goods.” Mom giggled. “You should’ve read the way she waxed on about your goods in her diary. It was so graphic that I can still quote it, line by line.” Mom raised her voice as I rolled the window up. “She loved the way your penis curved up just slightly. Apparently, it did things that made her eyes roll.”

I screamed and grabbed Logan’s face. “Drive. Drive away from that psycho woman right now or I’m going to play in traffic and blame it on you.”

He waved at my mom and pulled away. “I love that woman.”

I sank back into my seat and pulled my seatbelt on. Then I scoffed and yanked it off. “If you crash, I’m fully welcoming my death after that.”

“I feel like you weren’t always so dramatic.” He turned down a side road and stopped next to the house he’d grown up in. He put the truck in park and rested his arm along the seat behind me. “When I came back to town I fixed this place up and sold it. I needed a place to stay but Colt had me stay with him until I bought the house we’re in now. We both knew I couldn’t live here. I made sure it went to a nice couple who didn’t want kids.”

All of the things I’d been feeling faded away as I looked at the house I’d spent so much of my youth circling. Logan hadn’t been allowed to invite us inside while his dad was still around and after, he still hadn’t wanted to have us come in to see his mom passed out drunk on the living room floor. One of the only times I’d gone inside had been after I’d seen the bruises covering Logan’s body. I’d never felt so angry before or after that night. Knowing my best friend had been acting as his dad’s punching bag for who knew how long was sickening.

“No kids?”

He met my curious gaze and took a deep breath. “They seemed like really nice people but I wasn’t going to chance this place having some kind of curse. They’re older and openly talked about adopting dogs and raising them instead of children because children bite more than dogs. Their words, not mine.”

I scooted across the bench seat and rested my head on his shoulder. “Is the treehouse still standing?”

“No.” He didn’t say anything more about it and instead put the truck back in drive and pulled away. “I’ll show you where Noah and Colt lived before the hurricane.”

I started to move back to my side but he wrapped his arm around my shoulders and held me in place. It felt too good to lean into his side. He was so big and warm and he smelled so good it should’ve been illegal. I watched his hand on the steering wheel, noticing the way the veins in his forearm stood out as he turned. He had big hands, strong hands. With Mom’s reminder of my diary, I had all kinds of thoughts about Logan in my head that had no business being there.

“Noah bought his place after his divorce was finalized. Kelly moved out of the house they’d bought together but Noah wasn’t interested in staying in it. It was the Bloomburg house on Cavern Lane. Remember that little yellow house?” Turning onto Gulf Road, Logan pointed at the third house on the right. The roof was covered in tarps and the windows were boarded up. “We’re going to start working on it eventually but the insurance was fucking him around so he still hasn’t gotten paid for the damage.”

I tried to imagine a grown-up Noah living in the little blue house. “What happened with Kelly? Mom fed me little bits of information every so often but she was purposefully stingy.”

“You mean you weren’t stalking us online this whole time?” Logan parked in the cracked concrete driveway and rolled the windows down. The smell of the ocean wafted inside.

“I couldn’t.” That was all I could say. I couldn’t tell him that the idea of seeing them living their lives so happily without me would’ve gutted me.

“Well, Kelly cheated on him with the woman she’s married to now. Lily seems nice enough and she’s always been respectful of Noah’s relationship with Sinclaire.”

I scowled. “I never liked Kelly.”

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