Page 42 of Fall From Grace
The guy sitting against a headstone? Freaking Logan. God, I can’t avoid this guy no matter where I go, huh?
The moment his green eyes lift to my face and he recognizes me, he scowls and hugs his guitar a bit closer to his chest, like he’s trying to hide it. The guitar’s case lays before his feet, and it makes me wonder if he’s afraid to go for it, like in doing so he’d draw more attention to the fact that he was playing the instrument.
“The fuck are you doing here?” he asks with a frown on his face.
“I was—” I can’t seem to find the words. My thoughts are all jumbled, and I can only blame the fact that I heard him sing. Logan has an amazing, unique voice. Sexy, even. I can easily imagine that voice being sung into a microphone, singing a twisted lullaby. Something hard. Something borderline metal. Hard rock. The kind of stuff you bang your head to.
Logan, on the other hand, is still more than capable of speaking, unlike me, because he hisses out, “Stalking me now, nerd?”
I reach for the strap over my shoulder and absentmindedly tug on it with my pop-free hand, as if touching that strap will help keep me grounded. “I wasn’t… I had no idea you would be here.” My eyes fall to the guitar on his lap. “Why are you here? I mean, don’t you have a full room dedicated to this stuff at your place?”
The sound that comes out of him is one of annoyance, a hard breath through his nostrils. He leans forward and sets the guitar in its case, then zips it up, all without looking at me. I don’t know if he wants to avoid answering the question, or if he’s simply trying to avoid me. He gets up, swings the case’s strap over his head and shoulder, and starts to walk away.
I should let him go. I should. Nothing good could possibly come out of me chasing after him. I might not know the guy well, but I should know that much. For some ungodly reason though, I can’t let him go.
I hurry after him, saying, “Wait!”
He doesn’t stop. I have to pick up the pace so that I can out-speed walk him and get in front of him. Only when I stand in his direct path does he stop, and when he turns that glower to me, I can’t help but want to shrink and hide.
What am I doing? If he wants to go, I should let him go. Now that I got him stopped, what am I going to say? What is there to be said? He clearly doesn’t want to talk about it; his avoidance for this is about as massive as how badly I never want to see my ex or my ex-best friend.
“You have a really good voice” is what I end up saying, and I say it quite lamely, too.
A muscle in his jaw ticks. He doesn’t respond to that, instead growling out, “Get out of my way, Wren.” I can’t say he’s ever spoken my name like that before, and I can’t lie, either—now that I’ve heard him sing, I can recognize that scratchy timbre in his voice.
He has such a deep, attractive voice. How have I never really noticed before?
“Why do you get so… upset about this? You have an amazing voice, and it sounds like you can play the guitar really well. There’s nothing to be—”
Logan takes a step toward me, and even though there’s nothing but air behind me, I still feel boxed in. “You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about, so why don’t you just forget you heard me sing.” Though one might mistake that for a question, it comes out sounding like an order, like he’s attempting to force me to forget all about his voice.
“But why? I don’t get—”
Again, he interrupts me, “It would be better for us both if you fucking dropped this, so drop it.”
I’m not someone who doesn’t listen. I like to think I make good choices—prior to having my heart broken, that is. My decisions as of late might not be what most people would call smart, but I’m not the sort who goes after something when it seems like a stupid idea.
Right here, right now, pushing Logan definitely seems like a stupid thing to do, but I can’t pull myself away, either. I can’t stop from wondering why it matters so much to him, why he’s so avoidant.
Maybe something happened to him. Maybe he had his heart broken like I did.
I don’t know what to say to him, so I settle for whispering his name, “Logan…”
But he doesn’t want to hear it. He shakes his head once before he steps to the side to get around me. As he storms away, I turn around and watch him go, wondering what he’s running from, why this is such a sore subject for him.
My voice is nice, yeah, but there’s nothing too special about it. I can hit notes and I have great control, but it’s not what I’d call unique. Logan’s, on the other hand, is the very definition of the word. A voice like that could dominate the charts with the right lyrics and band behind it.
I watch Logan go, stand there until I can’t see his retreating figure any longer, and then I force myself to turn away. It’s sillyhow a part of me wants to chase after him, even now. I end up sitting against the same old headstone he’d been sitting at, and as I pull out my food, I can’t stop my thoughts from racing.
And his voice… I can’t get it out of my head. Even though he wasn’t singing at me, even though that voice wasn’t at its full power, it’s like it found itself a spot inside of me, between my bones, in my very blood.
Ugh, so much for trying to get stuff done here. If I would have known that Logan would be here the exact same time I planned on coming, I wouldn’t have come at all. Things would be so much easier if I didn’t run into the guy everywhere I go, if I didn’t see him every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday during psych. For a guy who was supposed to be nothing but a hookup, I’m seeing him an awful lot.
I lean my head back on the stone. My salad is in my lap, my plastic fork at the ready. I’m hungry, yes, but I just can’t seem to pull my mind off Logan and that wicked voice of his.
And that song… that song he was singing, I recognized it, but I just can’t place it. That’s going to bother me for the rest of the day, I just know it. I think back to the lyrics I heard him singing, and I pull out my phone, ready to type those lyrics into a search engine and see what pops up.
Wait a second. What am I doing? Why do I care so much? Ugh. What the heck is Logan doing to me?
