Page 71 of Two Kinds of Stranger

His heart was beating way too fast, the pulse loud in his ears along with a single thought–God, we are so alike. She understands me. I understand her. We feel the same way. The connection with Grace made him feel like he was a puzzle piece that never quite fitted together with the rest, and it wasn’t until he’d met her that he realized she didn’t fit in either, but together everything made sense–together they fitted.

It was a joyous moment for Logan. But also terrifying.

‘I’m sorry. I have to leave,’ he said.

He watched the surprise register on her face.

‘Oh, you have to be somewhere now?’

‘It’s not that,’ said Logan, getting up and moving to the kitchen. He poured his coffee into the sink and rinsed his mug, then placed it on the drainer.

‘It’s just, if I stay here, I don’t know what might happen between us,’ he said.

Grace said, ‘Wait, you don’t have to go. We can just talk if—’

‘No, I’m sorry. I don’t. . .I don’t really date. Things are moving fast. I’m going to be busy for a few days with work. Maybe I can call you at the weekend?’

She got up from the couch and followed him to the hallway.

‘Look, I’m sorry if I said something to offend you or—’

‘No, Grace,’ Logan said firmly. A trickle of sweat ran down his left temple, onto his cheek. He was breathing hard now, fighting the urge to take her head in his hands. For what reason he didn’t yet know. Either to gently draw her into a passionate kiss, or violently twist her head, snapping her vertebrae.

‘You are just. . .perfect, Grace. And Iwillcall you. The truth is I like you. I like you so much that I don’t want to do anything tonight that might mess this up.’

Her confusion and slight irritation seemed to disappear with those last words, as if she understood. She smiled.

Logan didn’t want to kill Grace. He knew that. The images of her death were simply his subconscious warning him. He could not remember having had such a special evening before. Even though he had just met this woman, he had watched her from afar for a long time. His feelings for her were somehow supercharged. It was more than a crush, or any base desire.

If he were not a sociopath, he might simply surmise that he was experiencing the first flush of love.

And it frightened him.

The memory of his hasty exit from her apartment brought heat to his neck, and he found himself clenching his jaw. Logan stared at his phone, at the picture of bills and final demands on her fridge and decided then to help Grace with her problems.

Logan loved solving all kinds of problems.

When he was a child, he never really understood toys. He once caught his mother looking at him strangely. He was in kindergarten, surrounded by other boys and girls who wereinvolved in roleplaying games–making up their own stories as they ran around with plastic unicorns, soldiers, fluffy animals or wearing cowboy hats or long scarves, which doubled as the veils of a princess on her wedding day.

Logan had sat in the middle of the floor, bewildered by the goings-on around him, unable to see the attraction of inventing stories or living in a fantasy world. He couldn’t understand why anyone would want to do that when the real world was so fascinating. While the other children played, Logan sat with his puzzle books.

He could read and complete simple math problems from the age of three. The problems came from a book that had a shiny red apple on the cover, one which Logan thought was particularly juvenile. One day, when he was much older, he found his father’s sudoku book. It was only half completed, and he finished the rest of the book in a single afternoon.

When his father came home from work that night, he grabbed the book from the coffee table and showed it to him. Logan expected his father to be pleased. He wanted him to be proud. Something that Logan had not yet experienced.

Logan had completed twelve puzzles to finish the book.

That night, his father lashed him with his belt twelve times. One for every puzzle. That was his father’s way. No emotion. No love. Nothing but pain. His father wanted Logan to know that he shouldn’t take things that didn’t belong to him. The twelve bloody welts on his back were a reminder for a month or two.

So Logan did his own puzzles. Crossword puzzles were a new challenge, but he found, as he grew older and read more, and his vocabulary expanded at an exponential rate, he could decipher the clues more easily.

Logan was perhaps fourteen years old when he realized that there was a greater mystery out there in the world. Something that had baffled the world’s greatest minds for centuries. Theproblem was understanding the human mind. Why do people do the things that they do?

Why did his father beat him so much?

And why didn’t his mother care?

His father was a banker, and his mother held parties in the house that he wasn’t allowed to attend. He understood their so-called social roles, but he couldn’t figure out why they didn’t love him.