Page 40 of Here We Go Again
Demi fucking Lovato, she’s so, so pretty.
Hale steps out of the bathroom in a cloud of vanilla-scented steam, and Logan feels fourteen again, on uneven ground as her feelings for her best friend began dangerously shifting. Holdingher breath while Hale changed into pajamas at sleepovers; the way something as innocent as brushing Hale’s hair—an act she’d done a hundred times—suddenly felt wrong. Watching the way her blond tendrils pooled in the delicate dip between her shoulder blades when they went swimming at the lake.
The way a simple touch that had always meant nothing suddenly meant everything. Confusion and shame and an inexplicable flutter in her rib cage every time she made Hale laugh. You weren’t supposed to feel that way about your best friend. You weren’t supposed to fall asleep counting the pale lashes against her cheeks.
You weren’t supposed to kiss your friend at a pool party and screw up the only perfect thing you’d ever had.
AndJanelle fucking Monáe, after all these years, it turns out Hale is gay too. What is she supposed to do with that information?
“Why are you staring at me like that?” Hale asks in a quiet voice.
The innocent confusion in her voice ends Logan’s nudity-induced stupor. “I’m not.”
“Could you please just get the dog?”
Logan pivots, and with one sharp command, Odie lays down on the floor with his head bowed shamefully. She grabs an extra towel from the bathroom and starts drying him off, a peace offering for Hale.
But when she looks over at Hale again, she isn’t appeased. She’s sobbing.
“Oh shit.” She scrambles away from Odie. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.” Hale snivels. “And also,everything. All I want is to repay Joe for everything he’s done for me, but I haveyouhere. And you mock me relentlessly, and you conspire with Joe behind my back to take us five hundred miles in the wrong direction, and you make me shower with a dog, and you don’t respect the binder.”
“I mean, it’s a three-ring binder from Target….”
Hale cries harder, and her pale face reddens like the Southwest rocks. Logan stands awkwardly close, once again paralyzed by her need to reach out for this person.
“I’m already so tired! I can’t make spontaneous detours and impulsive changes in the plans! I need a schedule! I need a routine! Or else I… I spiral into what-ifs and the uncertainty just…”
Hale doesn’t have to finish that sentence. Logan knows what happens when Hale’s anxiety doesn’t have routine and consistency and control. Deep down, Hale is still that scared little girl who lost her dad and abruptly moved across the country and always needed to know what was coming next. Hale’s done a good job hiding that girl behind pencil skirts and high-collared shirts—behind her perfect work ethic and her perfect Pinterest classroom and her perfect face—all of which give off the illusion of a woman who is always in control.
But in this moment, Hale is stripped of the illusion. No braid and no heels and nothing to hide behind. Just… vulnerability.
And Logan can’t help but reach out for her this time. Just the gentle pressure of fingers on forearm.
“I know you need routine,” Logan says. “But I want the same thing you do. To give back to Joe what he’s given to me. I’m nottryingto piss you off.”
Hale chokes on a sob.
“Okay, I’m not trying to piss you off most of the time. I’m just trying to make Joe happy.”
Hale glances up at her through tearstained lashes, and then cuts her gaze over to Joe, sleeping soundly in his bed. She looks back at Logan, down at those fingers resting against Hale’s pale white skin. Logan feels rammed through with unexpected guilt. It’s her fault Hale is crying half-naked in this hotel room. Sheknowshow Hale’s anxiety works, yet she’s done nothing to accommodate it and everything to make it worse. She drove them five hundred miles in the wrong direction, for Shay Mitchell’s sake. Logan let herself get fooled by the perfect veneer, assuming the little girl was gone.
“I know you are,” Hale finally says, “I think maybe we’re just too different.”
Logan isn’t sure why those words hurt so damn badly, but theydo. Hale reaches for a hotel tissue and wipes her face. Logan lets her fingers fall away. “Do you mind… turning around? I need to change.”
Logan turns around and she tries not to hold her breath while Hale slips into her sleep dress.
ROSEMARY
“Moondance” is playing, and when Rosemary opens her eyes, she sees the moon is still shining through the window in the pitch-black of the room.
She sits up in bed and tries to orient herself. She’s in an unfamiliar hotel room, and there’s a dog curled up at her feet and a person curled up against her side. She has no idea where Van Morrison is coming from.
“Hale, I swear on Shay Mitchell’s legs, if you don’t turn off that alarm right now—” rasps a voice across the room.
“Rise and shine, girlies!” says the voice in bed next to her, and she remembers now, climbing into Joe’s bed and sleeping on the edge of the mattress all night because it seemed safer than sleeping beside Logan.
