But when I walk inside, I see Kat sitting backward on the back of the sofa, holding court with admirers all around her. According to my phone I’ve already been here for nearly two hours. How long has Kat?
“James!” she squeals, and I can tell from her tone and the red Solo cup she gestures with that she’s drunk. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
“Are you?” I ask. “When did you get here?”
“I dunno, awhile? Ago?” She giggles and pats the sofa next to her. “Sit with me! We’re all talking about—what do you call it?”
“Lucid dreaming,” someone says, which makes Kat nod emphatically. Someone else starts talking about being aware during a dream, which, of course, makes two guys bring up Inception because guys at parties love talking about Christopher Nolan movies. Someone squeezes around me, and I watch as Quinn hops up to take the spot on the sofa Kat just offered to me. I don’t think Quinn knows it, but Kat knows. But all she does is beam at Quinn and yell at David Levy that his dream about cats doesn’t count. I feel like the embodiment of my unanswered text to her.
I back away and make my way toward the front of the house. Matty’s crew is still stationed there, louder and drunker and higher than before.
“Hey!” Matty shouts at me. “Where’s your friend?”
“I’m not her keeper, Matty.”
He stumbles over to me. I’ve never been a huge fan of Matty Evans, but right now I feel a surge of sympathy for him. He doesn’t look fun inebriated, like Kat. He just looks sad.
“She thinks she’s hot shit, you know,” he slurs.
“I do know.”
He moves in even closer. “I made”—he holds up one finger—“one little mistake and she just gets rid of me.”
“You slept with another girl,” I say. “You didn’t forget her birthday or something.”
“April second,” he says. “See? I haven’t forgotten her birthday.”
“Good job,” I tell him.
“You were my friend then,” he says.
“On April second?”
“Before Kat dumped me,” he says.
I think about that. Were Matty and I ever really friends? We spent plenty of time together, but I’m not sure I thought about him that way.
“How’s your guy?” he asks. “Glasses guy?”
“Logan’s fine,” I say. “Not that he’s my guy anymore.”
“That sucks,” Matty says, so I shrug. “That guy’s a good guy.”
Something turns inside of me and all I want to do is cry.
“Man.” Matty’s still looking into the next room at Kat. “She fuckin’ thinks she’s something.”
I follow his sight line and take in the crowd that surrounds Kat. I watch how her eyes light up and how, even without hearing what she’s saying, her gestures tell a story.
“She is something,” I say.
I don’t bother to tell Matty good-bye. I just get out of there.
I wake up earlier than usual the next morning, since my Habitat for Humanity shift is today. After changing from pajamas into running gear, I take off down the block. Up ahead I see a familiar form, so I break into my fastest sprint.
“Whoa, fancy meeting you here,” Logan says.
“You’re home for the summer?” I ask.
“Not yet, just home for the weekend,” he says, as we match paces like we never stopped. “How are you doing, McCall?”
“This year can suck it.”
He cracks up so hard he giggles like a little boy. “Senior year’s overrated. You’ll have a way better time off in Michigan.”
We run in silence for a few minutes, just the sound of our shoes hitting the sidewalk in almost perfect unison.
“I’m not going to Michigan,” I say. “I accepted at Berkeley.”
“Hell, yeah,” Logan says. “I like this news.”
“We aren’t back together,” I say.
“I didn’t say we were. It’s merely that my plans to make that happen are a lot easier with you only a six-hour drive away.”
“Logan . . . there’s just no guarantee,” I say. “People our age think they’re in love, and they make these promises, and then twenty or thirty years later it all falls apart.”
“Sure, sometimes,” he says. “Not always.”
“I don’t want it to fall apart with you,” I admit.
“So you just threw a grenade into it and ran?” From anyone else that would sound accusatory, but he just laughs. “McCall. C’mon.”
“My parents split up,” I say. Such a little sentence for something so big.
“Shit, I’m sorry to hear that,” he says. “You doing OK?”
I find myself laughing. “Almost, maybe? No, I don’t know why I said that. Not really.”
He slows down and reaches over to touch my arm. It’s been a while since I felt his hands on me.
“Logan, I think . . . I think my world’s small right now. With you in it, without you in it. And I have to make it bigger.”
He nods. I wait for whatever he has to say next, but right now, Logan Sidana is speechless. I like how it looks on him.
“I never want to hate you.” I expect to think about my parents, but it’s Kat’s face in my head. I’m sure Kat’s still sleeping off her hangover, and I doubt once she’s awake that I’ll be on her mind at all. Technically there’s no reason I couldn’t just text her, but right now it feels as fantastical as learning to fly.
“I’m pretty unhateable,” Logan says as we resume our run. “E.L.L.”
“Everyone Loves Logan?” I ask. “Seriously?”
He cracks up even more. I miss his arms around me, our early morning runs, the way he could still surprise me with a kiss after being together for so long. But his laugh, it turns out, is what I missed most.
“Always and forever.” He stops running again and turns to face me, with his arms folded across his chest. “I could never hate you, McCall. Even if you wanted me to.”
I step back into a run, and grin when he catches up with me.
“This is horrible,” Hannah mutters as we walk over to the Habitat for Humanity construction site from my car.
“It’s not that early,” I say. “I’ve already been up getting my miles in. When do you train?”
“Certainly not in the middle of the night like you,” she says. “Some people don’t mind running during daylight hours.”
“When exactly do you think the sun comes up?” I laugh and help myself to a cup of coffee. “We’re building a house for someone who needs it. I feel like the least we can do is get up early.”
Hannah sighs but pours herself a cup of coffee as well. “Thanks for letting me crash your big volunteer project, by the way. If I haven’t already thanked you. I’m sure you wanted to be some lone wolf doing good in the world.”
I don’t know what to say because, while I’d never thought of myself as a wolf, lone or otherwise, I get what she’s saying. It probably shouldn’t feel so great to hang out with a friend who seems to inherently understand you; it’s something I used to take for granted. But I guess there’s also something nice about someone new. I’d worry it makes me a hypocrite, if not for the fact that I was the one shoved aside in the first place.