Page 30 of Here We Go Again
“This isnotwhat it looked like in the photos.”
“Did you read the reviews?”
“Logan Katarina Maletis,” Hale says like she’s being choked. “I don’t stop to use a public restroom without reading the reviews! Of course I read the reviews! They said this was a modest, affordable hotel in a safe location with comfortable beds, perfect for travelers passing through Twin Falls.”
Logan points out the driver’s-side window. “That giant banner in front of the pawn shop that says ‘Get Guns Here’ is making me feelsupersafe.”
“I don’t understand! The website said nothing about the hotel being attached to a liquor store!”
“Shocked they didn’t boast about that amenity.”
“Your jokes aren’t helping!” Hale starts massaging her temples and taking her intense breaths, and Logan swallows her flippant response.
“Joking is my flawed coping mechanism,” she said. “I’m not trying to make things worse.”
“But you are. What are we going to do? We can’t stay here for the night. Can we stay here?”
Logan shifts her gaze between the guns and the booze. Her capacity to deal with this situation died around their twelfth hour in the car. Everything took so much longer than expected, and Hale refused to sing Shania, even though Logan would bet anything she still remembers all the words. And whenever it was her turn to choose the music, she put on the audiobook ofPersuasion.
The only highlight of the day was the stop at Vista House. When she’s surrounded by trees, it’s so much easier tobreathe. To stand still. To quiet the chaos of her brain. To just… exist.
“What are we going to do?” Hale squawks again.
Joe, who’s been snoring since dinner, suddenly jerks awake. “Where are we?”
“Nowhere worth mentioning. I’m finding us another hotel.” Hale’s sharp nails click clack against her iPhone screen for a few minutes before she screams. “How are there no vacancies anywhere in Twin Falls, Idaho!” Several more violent thumb jabs. “Oh. It looks like there’s a…knife and gun expoin town this weekend.”
Logan barks out a deranged laugh.
“It’s almost eleven o’clock at night, and I’m so tired, and there’s nowhere else to stay!” Hale shouts, her arms flying around likepanicked acrobats. “I fucked this up! It was my job to secure our lodging, and I booked us a murder hotel!”
Hale is about to snap. All the telltale signs are there. Teeth? Grinding. Fists? Clenched. Creepy throat tendon? Bulging creepily. Logan knows this version of Hale. She knows the way a minor inconvenience can become a catastrophe in Hale’s mind, and how a small mistake can avalanche into a spiral of panic. Every misstep is a fuckup, and every fuckup is a sign of a great moral failing.
Hale can’t just let herself be a flawed human. She never could.
Logan flashes back to their conversation on the front porch.I thought I had to be perfect to be worthy. The thing is, Hale is perfect at most things. Her brain is like ten supercomputers all going at the same time, solving problems before Logan even knows the problems exist. As kids, Hale could conjure entire stories like spells at the snap of her fingers, write books from nothing but her overactive imagination. It made Logan feel special to be allowed into that magnificent mind.
Hale is brilliant, hardworking, and hyperfocused—everything Logan is not. But sometimes, the supercomputers go a little haywire. Sometimes, Hale’s anxiety gets the best of her.
Logan used to be the only one who could help Hale in those moments. There was a time when Logan would see the twitch in her left eye and the puckering of her mouth, and she would make a silly face to break the tension. Or she’d bust out the choreography to “Bye Bye Bye” until Hale was laughing too hard to remember why she was melting down. Logan would grab her by the hand and drag her into the woods, so nature could smooth the rough edges of her mind, because Hale loved open spaces and trees as much as Logan did.
But that was twenty years ago, before the pool party and all the unforgiveable things that unfolded between them. Now, Logan is the one who makes Hale’s eye twitch. And most of the time, she enjoys it.
Except right now, in this terrifying parking lot, Logan almost reaches for Hale. She almost opens Spotify, almost presses play on “Bye Bye Bye” and does the dance they spent most of sixth grade memorizing. She feels an overwhelming need to bring Hale back from the brink of whatever mental black hole she’s about to fall into. To comfort her.
“What’s wrong with our current hotel?” Joe grumbles from under his blanket. Logan realizes she has started reaching for Hale, her hand hovering between them over the center console.
“Nothing,” she says, shoving her hands under her thighs. “Assuming you’re angling to be hate-crimed on this road trip.”
“We should’ve painted over the logo,” Hale grumbles.
“I know,” Logan admits.
Someone who moves like he’s three platypuses inside a trench coat stumbles closer to the van, but then Odysseus lunges at the window and barks like a maniac, and the trench coat platypuses stagger backward and disappear into the night. She grabs the seat beneath her. “We should just stay here. There’s nowhere else to go, and we’re all too tired to keep driving. We’ll be safe for one night. Odysseus will protect us. He loves unjustified violence.”
Hale does a slow head bob of acceptance. “Yeah, okay. Okay. You go inside and check us in.”
“You’re going to send thelesbianinside? Hell no. You go. You’re straight.”
