Page 94 of Fraternizing with the Enemy
“But why?” His fingers traced the knuckles on the hand he held, resting them on his chest. “Whydid you become friends? Were you deskmates? Bonded over the same backpack? What drew you to her?”
Drew me to her. It was the perfect way to put it. Ever since the second grade even, it was as if Jade was a magnet, drawing everyone in. Or, in some rare cases, repelling others away—like Maisie. “She came up to me,” I said, using the tip of my finger to flick a lock of golden hair off his forehead. “On the playground. Asked if we could be best friends.”
“Out of the blue?”
“She said it was because we both had blonde hair,” I said, and then frowned a little as the memory clearedfurther. “No, she said we were bothprettyand had blonde hair.”
“No one else had blonde hair?”
Jade’s small, childish voice had been confident even then.No one else is pretty like us with blonde hair.“I don’t remember.”
Logan hummed a little, and I combed my fingers through his hair further. It was silky soft, sifting through my fingers like I was passing my hand through water. His lashes swept down along the tops of his cheekbones, the touch lulling him. “So you agreed?” he asked, still not letting go of the topic. “To be two blonde besties?”
“No,” I said again. This time, I laughed. “I told her I already had a best friend.”
“Did you?”
“Yep.” I hesitated at first, because talking about Maisie wasn’t ever something I did willingly—couldn’tdo willingly, really. But with Logan, I could open that forbidden box just a little. “Her name was Maisie. She lived right next door to me. She went to a different school at the time, though.”
“What did Jade say? When you said you already had a best friend?”
“She said, ‘I’ll be your school best friend,’” I told him, the memory surfacing like an air bubble through the water. “‘She can be your home best friend.’”
“And that worked?”
“Yeah.” That’d been justifiable for my eight-year-old brain. Besides, Jade had lived out in Addison at the time, and Mom would’ve said that was too far for playdates, anyway. Maisie got all my attention at home and Jade got all my attention at school. And life worked well, just like that.
“What happened after that?” Logan squeezed my hand, drawing my faraway gaze back down to him. “Something did.”
The problem with Logan Castle was that I wanted to tell him everything. I wanted to undo the padlock that secured all my secrets and spill them out to him.
I could tell him a little, though. “Maisie switched to Brentwood her freshman year, and things were… rocky.”
Maisie and Jade had met before freshman year, of course. They’d both attended every one of my birthday parties. Maisie had always been quiet around Jade, and Jade… well, she didn’t pay Maisie much attention on those days, of course. It’d beenmybirthday, after all. I hadn’t thought much about how different they were, not until Maisie announced she was switching to Brentwood.
I’d been thrilled. My home best friend was finally switching to my school, where I’d get to see her all day, every day. By freshman year, I’d been mature enough to realize I could totally have two best friends—I didn’t have to separate them into different categories like I’d had to when I was a kid.
“Maisie found a new friend group when she started at Brentwood,” I said, feeling my heart race in my chest. It was beating far too fast, making me feel sick to my stomach. My hand was clammy in Logan’s grip. “We just grew apart.”
Jade had brought up joining the cheer squad to us one day before the school year started. I could still remember Maisie’s response, looking solely at me.I want to do it if you want to do it, she’d said.I’ll do it if you do it.
She doesn’t really want to, does she?Jade had asked me later, after Maisie had gone home for dinner.What ifshe makes the squad and we don’t, and she doesn’t really want to be on it? What if she beats us out of a spot?
“And you and Jade got closer.” It wasn’t a question.
I looked down at him, at his head propped perfectly in my lap. His blue eyes matched the sky’s color almost perfectly, gazing up at me as if I were his sun. “Mm.”
Logan’s eyes slipped shut, and this time, they didn’t blink open. His dark lashes cast long shadows on his cheeks, and I let myself study him quietly in the silence. His nose was sharp, sloping delicately, and I fought the urge to drag the tip of my finger along it. One of his eyebrows naturally rested slightly higher than the other, both thick and several shades darker than his hair.
“Noah and I have been best friends since the little grades, too,” Logan told me, still not opening his eyes. “He’s more like a brother than a friend.”
I tried to picture what a little Logan might’ve looked like, befriending a little Noah. “He seems so different from you. So much more… into the school rivalry stuff.”
His eyes slowly opened, but he didn’t look at me. He stared straight up at the sky. “Yeah. He is.”
I watched him, continuing to comb my fingers through the front pieces of his hair. I thought about asking him more about it, but there was clearly something about the topic that bothered him.
“Noah, he—” Logan cut himself off with a breathy chuckle. “He’s opinionated. Sees things in black and white. Danielle tries to introduce him to gray more often.”
