Page 98 of The Fall Classic
I don’t want things.
And I definitely don’t claim them.
My breath catches as I lean back, trying to smile away the awkwardness. It’s understandable that I’m backing away, though. This isn’t exactly the time or place for a first kiss.
Besides, he hasn’t left or come back yet.
Until that happens, I don’t get to let myself so much as hope, let alone dream. And I definitely don’t get to want more.
***
Sometime during the lunch rush at the factory, we let Logan help again, in spite of my jealous streak. Olivia and I take turns between taking orders and making the drinks, and Logan hands them to customers and takes payment. The space is cramped with three people, yet I get the feeling Logan likes it that way. He finds a way to brush my arm, my hip, my hand every time he passes.
It’s a miracle I don’t burst into flames with each touch.
It’s also a miracle that I ever survived breakfast and lunch rushes without help. Everything is so much simpler and smoother, yet it’s still so busy we’re moving nonstop.
Maybe one of the side effects to burnout is being totally numb to how hard everything really is.
“How’s our girl?” I hear a familiar, gruff voice ask.
“Chick!” I say. “What are you three doing here?”
“There’s a game today,” Chick Parkinson says. “Your boyfriend bought us tickets. Didn’t he tell you?”
Logan grabs my upper arms and pops over one shoulder into view. “Not yet.” His lips are dangerously close to my ear, their proximity making my legs weak. The way he squeezes my arms is so reassuring, so new yet familiar.
Someday, this could be our normal.
When he quits baseball and moves to Mullet Ridge to work on a coffee truck with you? Silly, silly Georgie.
Logan is joking around with each of the dear older men when I hear a woman call out to them from outside the truck.
“Uh oh,” Chick Parkinson says, chuckling, “Here comes Ashty.”
“It’s Rash,” Chick Allen says.
“You mean Rasty,” Chick Hanks says with a snort.
“That’s quite enough from the peanut gallery,” the woman says, coming into view. She’s wearing a big smile and has stunning long brown curls with a single lavender strip framing her face the same color as her lavender glasses. “You know very well the town decided Rusty and Ash makes Rush. Y’all are pot stirrers.”
The moment she says Rusty’s name, I look farther out of the window and see Rusty holding her hand on her other side, and I smile at the way he’s watching her—his eyes glued to her every move, roving over her face like everything she says and does is magic. But in the way she holds him and smiles so proudly, the way her eyes sparkle right before she turns back to him, I can tell the feeling is totally mutual.
“Wow,” Olivia says from a couple of steps behind me. I look back at her and see her watching the couple, too.
“I know.”
“Must be nice having someone look at you like that,” Olivia mutters.
“I know,” I repeat.
Olivia tilts her head. “Girl, that’s exactly how Logan looks at you. Like you hang the stars.”
I feel my nose scrunch in confusion, but before I can ask if she’s serious, Rusty’s introducing me to his wife, Ash.
“Oh, you two are adorable,” Ash gushes, pointing back and forth between Logan and me, making my chest, face, and the rest of me burn hot. She puts a hand on Rusty’s chest. “Remember when that was us?”
Rusty breathes a laugh and kisses his wife’s cheek, and she turns all the way to face him. Her arms wrap around his neck as he kisses her cheek again and again, her wedding ring catching the sun and scattering it into a million pinpoints of light. These two are no strangers to PDA, and with Logan right over my shoulder it makes me flush from my head under his baseball cap down to my toes crammed in my too-small Converse.
