‘My delivery guy just fucking bailed on me, and I was hoping you could drop something off at the auto part store on your way back to the restaurant. I will pay you.’
And hell, it wasn’t like he could turn down extra cash. It was why he’d picked up delivery shifts in the first damn place. So, they exchanged numbers in case he got lost, he took the box, a wad of cash, and then—for whatever reason—didn’t say no when the guy who called himself Smokey texted him the next week offering him another job.
Two years before, Logan had settled into River Crest with a handful of friends and an okay job, but he never anticipated anything would be easy. At first glance, he blended right in with his heart-shaped face and lithe body. And he was a hipster—or at least, that’s what his friends called him, relentlessly mocking his torn jeans and flannel shirts that showed all of his twenty-one years he’d been living on earth.
But in reality, Logan Brunet wasn’t much of anything. A ramen cook, delivery driver who lived on the outskirts of town because he didn’t have enough zeroes in his bank account to justify paying rent inside River Crest city limits. But that was nothing new. He’d grown up that way, and there were small comforts in living on the fringes.
Apart from work, he spent all of his free time at the community dance center because feeling the vibrations of music coursing through his body was one of the only things in the world that ever brought him peace. He’d been dancing since he was a kid, since the woman with the big nose and pinched face laughed at his father when he showed up with a skinny Deaf boy who wanted to join her ballet troupe.
Osse hadn’t always taken well to Logan’s ‘differences’, but he was the kind of man who would be damned if his son didn’t have the same opportunities. So, they found another place, with a woman named Camille whose box braids were woven with bright oranges and sharp reds, who took his face between her hands and said she could feel rhythm in his bones. His dad her accent was more French than Kouri-vini, though he wasn’t ever sure what that meant except that her lips and tongue moved the same way as his dad’s, and he always liked that about her.
She learned enough ASL to tell him he’d make something of himself in the world of dance, even if the words tripping off the tips of her fingers were mostly a lie even an eight-year-old could see through. But Logan didn’t want to fight or argue with her.
Existing from day to day and pasting on smiles for people who were wary because of his hair, or his brown skin, or the hearing aids he hated, othered him in ways he couldn’t begin to explain. But he didn’t give up on chasing after what he wanted. Or at the very least, the things that made him feel good.
He settled into his new life when he moved away from his parents. He took three semesters of culinary classes at the community college because, just like dance, cooking came naturally to him. It was like a language only he spoke, creation at the tips of his fingers.
And he liked the restaurant he worked in. It was the only one in town who had actually given him a chance when he strolled in with his resume and a little sticky note that read, I’m Deaf, but I’m really good at what I do.
He’d lost count of how many awkward stammers and blushing faces he’d had to endure with polite kiss-offs that he could read from their lips. But Ito Sota—a sixty-year-old man at least half a foot shorter with bent, arthritic hands—had offered him the job, a handshake, and a pissant salary that made Logan’s hunger impossible to ignore when the owner of the mechanic shop offered him a delivery job.
It also helped that Smokey didn’t mind him showing up for work from dance class in a sweaty t-shirt and sandals because Logan could do whatever he wanted as long as he got the job done. Smokey always had a smile for him and always stuffed his pockets with tips, which made his life a little bit more comfortable. He knew he’d never rise to the heights of mini mansions in gated communities, but it was nice not choosing between his electric bill and food.
He’d never be New Money. He’d never be Old Money. And frankly, he hadn’t grown up believing he needed any of those things.
His mother, Malia, had moved from her family’s farm on Kauai to work in Lafayette where she met his dad—a man from an old Creole family with not much more to his name but the deed to a dilapidated old home that was half-sunk into the Lafayette swamps, and a barber shop on the corner of Bertrand and Congress. His mother taught art part time at two of the elementary schools, his dad cut hair, and Logan had grown up with simplicity and kindness.
But Logan had also grown up Deaf and fighting for his own identity within their small community for most of his life. His parents had loved him, had done everything in their power to imbue him with pieces of their culture. But they were also hearing. Before he was born, they’d never met a single person with any amount of measurable hearing loss.
They took bad advice from hospital counselors about speech therapy over signing, and they forced him to wear hearing aids no matter how often he swore they didn’t do anything except make the sound of the neighbor’s dogs more annoying.
They loved him, but they also liked the idea of him being their version of normal. They wanted to prioritize his Creole culture over anything else, and he didn’t know how to make them understand that just like he couldn’t separate from his brown skin and tight curls, he couldn’t separate himself from the fact that he understood the world differently. That there was no real concept of noise except through the vibration in his fingertips and under his feet and deep in his sternum. That speech was lips flapping and throats moving, and he became an expert in reading expression over phonetics.
It wasn’t long before Logan realized he couldn’t live like that. By nine, he convinced his parents to let him go to the Deaf school, even though it wasn’t convenient or close. He begged them to start using ASL at home more, because no matter how fucking hard he tried, he couldn’t wrap his head around making sounds with his lips and tongue.
And they fought him every step of the way. It was only later, when his counselor told him that hearing parents would love him for his entire life, but they would never know what it was like to exist as Deaf, and that moment allowed him to become a little more patient and forgiving.
With the fact that he was both inside and outside of so many cultures, he was the epitome of melting pot. Sometimes that was beautiful. And sometimes he felt like a fucking island in the middle of the Atlantic without a single ship around.
And always, it was lonely.
His parents tried, but he was reminded every day they would never totally understand. His Deaf friends didn’t live nearby, and his hearing friends who grew up on the same street never tried hard enough to move past the handful of identity they all shared. As a teen, he dated people of every gender in hopes he’d find that one connection that made him feel like all of his fight to be accepted was worth something. But no one ever really had the strength or the drive to love every single piece of him as a whole, and Logan had decided long ago he would accept all or nothing.
And he was willing to accept nothing.
So, he moved. He became a chef, he bought a scooter, and he started making deliveries for a biker-run mechanic shop. Things were as they should be.
Except maybe today. He’d been standing at the counter at the auto part store for almost twenty minutes trying to convince the man at the register to just read his damn phone screen. Smokey needed whatever was in those boxes and had told him that morning there was a tight timeline, and he wasn’t about to lose his job because some hearing asshole refused even the smallest accommodation.