Page 51 of Wild Catch
A smile is threatening to spill on his face. I know it. “And then how do you get to work tomorrow?”
“Uber?” I ask, rolling the r the Spanish way. “Or I could take one now.”
“Hell no. I’m not trusting you to a stranger when you’re like this.”
“But Logan.” I say with extra emphasis. “You’re also a stranger.”
“No, I’m not.” He looks for something in his pants and produces it—his wallet? No. His phone. He’s dialing someone while keeping his eyes on me. “Hey, Hope. FYI that I’m driving your drunk as shit roommate over to your place—not that one, the tall one with the sharp tongue.”
“I don’t have a sharp tongue!” I complain, bringing a hand up to my mouth. “It would cut myself, you know?”
“Yes, I did tell her not to drink so much,” he deadpans to the phone. “And tell your boyfriend to stop being a jealous prick. Yeah, I’ll text you when she’s home and you can call her. ‘Kay, bye.” He ends the call and puts his phone back in his pocket. “Let’s go.”
Sighing, I force my legs to follow him. His bike is idling just a few steps from us, in the middle of the parking lot. For some reason it looks way bigger than ever.
“How do I even get on this thing?” I mumble, trying to lift a leg over the massively tall seat.
“Hold.” Logan leaves my side to easily swing a leg over the bike and settle on his seat. He kicks something and then leans over to point at a small protrusion on the back. “See this peg? Grab my shoulders and put your right foot on it to hoist yourself up.”
“Ohh, okay. I can do that, I think.” I approach from the side and after a minor hesitation, I splay my hands on his shoulders and pause.
He turns over his shoulder. “What?”
“Hold,” I repeat, frowning. “Processing.”
That’s exactly what I’m doing. His shoulders feel like no other shoulders I’ve ever touched in my life. They’re way harder than I expected, and also larger. In fact, my hands look small on them. I squeeze harder and there’s no give. All that accomplishes is searing his contour in my mind forever.
“Foot?” He prompts. “On peg?”
“Right.” I’m clumsier than usual but somehow manage to rise on the foot peg, swing my left leg and find the other peg. But now I’m standing awkwardly behind him, bent forward as I grab his shoulders. I speak to the top of his head. “Now what?”
Logan leans his head back and even in my tipsy state, I can tell he’s holding back laughter. “Now you sit down, you clown.”
“But then it’s gonna be awkward.”
“What do you mean?” Is it just me, or are his eyes shining?
“Like.” I blow an exasperated breath. “My thighs are going to be around your waist. At least buy me dinner first, man.”
“Uh.” He coughs. “I, in fact, did pay for dinner tonight.”
“Oh, true.” I lower myself and— “Oof.”
This is not my fault. I’m in my cups but not this bad. It’s the seat and gravity’s fault. This thing is tilted forward and I slide all the way down to crash against Logan’s back.
“Oh my gosh, I didn’t?—”
“Hold tight,” he says like I’m not glued to him already. But then he finds my hands, awkwardly smushed against his lower back, and pulls at them. My arms circle his waist and he slides them under his backpack, which he’s wearing against his chest. He joins my hands at his stomach and I grab fistfuls of his shirt.
And then we’re off.
A squeal tears out of me because at first, it feels like the wind will topple me back and off the bike. But somehow I stay on. Maybe it’s because my arms are a barnacle around Logan’s unfairly tiny waist. Or because my thighs cinch as tight as they can around him. My head falls against the dip between his shoulder blades and the heat of his back is positively searing. But I know that if I let go of this man for a second, I’ll be in serious trouble.
My arms start shaking after a while and he must feel it, because suddenly one of those big hands of his closes around my arm and slides it lower so I’m not fighting so hard against gravity. Except my hands reach the waist of his joggers and that jolts me—there’s no way I can relax more than this before making us both crash.
I’m on my best behavior after that, for someone who is drunk and also wrapped up around someone who is a step up from a stranger. I even stay wrapped around him when he finally turns off his bike, deathly afraid of falling.
“And here we are,” Logan declares with a raspy voice.
