Page 50 of Wild Catch
“Of meat,” he explains. “And I’m glad—if you have a second bottle we might end up in the hospital. Are you eating that?”
“Go for it, you animal.” I slide my half eaten bowl of rice toward him. I’m not even going to ask him where he puts all that food away when his forearm muscles are taunting me like that. Besides, I’ve seem him sweat. He’ll burn all of this at the gym tomorrow before even playing a game.
I switch to water after that and eat more of the veggies and the meat, but by the time we’re leaving the restaurant I’m definitely swaying a little. I stumble on a crack on the sidewalk and Logan grabs me by the elbow.
“That’s it, you’re not driving,” he announces.
“But…” I motion toward my car parked at the back. “My car! I can’t leave it here.”
“Yeah, you will. There’s no way in hell I’m letting you drive.”
“But—”
“Rose.” My name coming out like a growl from his throat paralyzes me. “I’m taking you home and that’s final.”
I scrunch up my face in a grumpy expression. “Fine.”
I don’t know what I was expecting, but he steers me to stand under a lamplight. “Wait here.”
“Okay.” I hold tight to my purse like that alone can stop me from swaying.
Logan disappears into the darkness and I struggle with making out much of the parking lot with the bright white light above me. Crickets sing all around me, competing with the leaves twinkling in the wind. It’s starting to sound like summer, and summer is prime baseball season.
I can’t believe that Logan Kim will be gone by that point.
A different sound comes on then, like a roar. Something slightly familiar but jarring against the crickets. And then he appears under the light again, and he’s offering me something black and kind of shiny.
“Put this on.”
“Hmm?” I squint down at it.
“It’s my jacket.”
Slowly, I glance up. “Why would I need your jacket?”
“Just put it on.” He pushes the bundled up fabric against my belly.
I make a big operation of him holding my purse while I put on his blasted jacket—and it takes me two tries to get my left arm in the correct hole. Then Logan takes one step closer and I watch, almost like an out of body experience, as he fits the bottom tabs together and zips the jacket up all the way to my throat.
A waft of some kind of cologne hits my nose. It’s pine and man, enough to get me twice as drunk.
My body leans forward as he turns to disappear in the dark again, like I’m trying to follow him. He’s back as I’m struggling to keep steady.
“Whoa, there.” His hand’s on my elbow again. “You’re looking slightly worse by the second.”
“That’s not very kind to say to a girl,” I slur, now fully incapable of using my normal voice.
Sighing, he mutters, “Told you to drink more water.”
I repeat his words in a mocking way, but then he’s pressing something against my head. “What the—” He pushes the thing all the way down and gives it a hearty bump at the top. I blink fast at him through the open visor of the helmet he just put on my head. “Don’t tell me…”
“Yeah, I’m on my bike,” he says.
“But you can take my car,” I whine.
“And then how do I get home?”
I think about this. “My car?”
