Page 41 of A Summer Mismatch
Her heart flipped as he got close and took her hand in his. With a wide smile, he spun her around and then pulled her close. “Hi,” he said.
“Hi,” she responded, breathlessly.
The band started to play “Hey Mickey” and the crowd cheered and sang along.
Logan spun her out again, and she laughed as she crashed into his chest on the way back in, making them both stumble backward and almost fall.
“There’re more graceful moves like that coming your way,” Logan teased with a hip shake.
Cameron jumped over and took Logan’s other hand and wanted to be spun out as well. Logan took turns spinning Julia and Cameron around until Julia was out of breath and the stars above her spun.
Logan swung his hips to the beat, and they all three danced together, wild and silly. She laughed until her stomach hurt, and she couldn’t remember a time when she’d had so much fun. She clapped and whistled when the song ended. The band started to play a slow, jazzy song, and Julia signed “finished” to Cameron.
“I need something to drink,” she said.
Logan and Cameron followed her to an open table near the cafe.
Logan got their orders and went inside to place it, while Julia used her paper menu to fan herself. Logan came back holding three water bottles and a number to place on their table. She couldn’t get enough of watching him, felt like she could watch him all day.
When their gazes connected, her heart flipped in her chest. Oh boy. She was in trouble.
Had she ever felt like this with Timothy? She realized that she hadn’t thought of him in days, which wasn’t unusual, but perhaps it should be. Since she’d met Logan, she hardly went an hour without thinking about him.
She’d find herself at work, smiling into space at her desk, not realizing she’d drifted off into thinking about something Logan had said, or the way his light brown hair had the perfect ocean-like wave on top, or the feel of his lips tantalizingly close to hers. Then one of her students would interrupt her, and she’d realize she was supposed to be working, not daydreaming.
Yet, all she could think was that if even just the slightest touch of his lips to hers behind that library curtain could make her feel like she was soaring among those stars above them, then she could hardly imagine anything deeper or more intense.
But she definitely wanted to experience it.
“Waters for everyone.” Logan placed the cold bottles in front of them.
Julia placed the cool water bottle against her flushed cheeks before she drank half in one gulp. Cameron needed help with his, so she got his cap off next so he could drink. He struggled sometimes with eating and drinking, because of the low muscle tone that affected his mouth and tongue, but he managed a water bottle on his own just fine. Only the smallest amount of water dribbled out of the corners of his mouth onto his shirt, which didn’t seem to bother Cameron one bit.
“Cameron, those were some pretty amazing moves out there.” Logan gave Cameron knuckles. “Where’d you learn to dance like that?”
“Joos,” Cameron said. Logan looked at her questioningly.
“I’m ‘Joos.’ Julia is a hard name to say, so he’s been calling me Joos since he was little.”
Cameron tugged on Julia’s sleeve. “Joos.” He signed, “More, eat, please,” and said “peeeeeese” the whole time.
“It’s coming.” She pulled a package of fruit snacks from her purse that she had left over from her lunch and handed it to him. “Want this?”
He snagged it from her, and turned his back to them to watch the band as they started their next song. He pointed, then grabbed Julia’s arm and pointed again.
Julia shifted his talker toward her, and she pressed the buttons to model for him where they were. “Yes, you can dance.”
Before “dance” came fully out of the speaker, he was up again and spinning.
“You guys use sign language too?” Logan asked as he watched Cameron.
“Some sign. Some words. Some communication device. All communication is good, valid communication, and he’s found that he prefers some methods for certain things over others. Like, he normally signs when he’s hungry or wants to play. He generally uses his voice when he’s angry or is saying someone’s name. ‘No’ is his very favorite word to verbalize.” She smiled wryly. She’d been hearing that one a lot this week. He was missing their mom and dad, and the luster of staying with Julia was wearing off. “And we’re working hard on teaching him to use the talker for higher-level concepts or phrases. He used to mostly point, like you just saw, and he still does that quite a bit, but we’re hoping that being able to communicate better will help him be less frustrated since we don’t always understand why he’s pointing. That one was easy, since we were just dancing, and I knew he’d want to do it again. So I modeled for him how to say it on the talker.”
“That’s really interesting,” Logan said. “Is it just your family teaching him?”
“No. He goes to school and they work on it there, and my mom takes him to private speech therapy every week.”
“I did speech therapy when I was a kid.” Logan leaned back in his chair. Closer like this, she realized how exhausted he looked. “I had trouble with my “th“s and “l”s. And I remember them working a lot on question comprehension with me too. I loved when I got to leave class and go with the speech therapist.”
