Hey guys. So I'm currently obsessed with challengers and after reading every fiction that's out there, I've decided to write some on my own. It's important to say that English is not my first language, and I really am trying. It's going to have multiple chapters, and we're just getting to know the characters at the first one. Hope you'll enjoy it. Know that Tashi will be there but not as much as the boys (sorry). All the warnings are for future chapters basicly.
The time of our lives || Art Donaldson x Original Female Character, Patrick Zweig x Original Female Character
Summary: This is the journey of Liana, Art, and Patrick. The happiest moments and the hardest ones. How they managed to be each other's anchor and how fate bound them together forever, even when they couldn't see it.
Warnings: 18+ MDNI, cursing, cheating, manipulative characters, alchohol abuse, future Smut.
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 |
Blurbs:
Liana and Patrick's anniversary
Patrick & Art are jealous
Other stories:
His favorite toy (Art Donaldson x reader)
His favorite toy: part 2 (Art Donaldson x reader)
His favorite toy: part 3 (Art Donaldson x reader)
His favorite toy: part 4 (Art Donaldson x reader)
Waiting room (Patrick Zweig x reader)
I told you things (Art Donaldson x reader)
Wreck my plans (Art Donaldson x reader)
So sweet (Patrick Zweig x reader, Art Donaldson x reader)
So sweet: part 2 (Patrick Zweig x reader, Art Donaldson x reader)
So sweet: part 3 (Patrick Zweig x reader, Art Donaldson x reader)
Warnings: childhood trauma, parental addiction, lots of yearning, basically angst, angst, and more angst.
Word Count: 2.9K
Note: English isn't my first language, but unfortunately angst is. Please be KIND.
Picture Me in the Trees
When you grow up in a trailer, you learn pretty damn fast what kind of person you don't want to be.
In your case, the list is short:
Don't be an alcoholic.
Don't be poor.
Don't treat service workers like shit.
Don't yell at your kids' teachers.
You spend a lot of time thinking about how not to be like them. Like the rest of the people in the trailer park who blame the entire world for their problems. Their violence. Their addictions. The way they treat the world and the way the world treats them. Ever since you can remember, your mantra has been simple: don't be white trash. Don't remind people you're white trash. That your mom is mentally ill and spends most of her time refusing to take her medication, and your dad is addicted to gambling or drugs or both, depending on the time of year. You learn how to be the responsible adult at six, you learn how to be the main breadwinner at sixteen. And most importantly, you learn how to be disappointed in people long before you learn how to read.
You know kids your age who are just like you, and you can't stand them.
It's too much like looking in a mirror. Seeing the kid from class who hasn't showered in three days and whose mom never said a word because she didn't care enough. Or the girl who shows up with gum stuck in her hair. Or the kid whose sneakers are more worn out than any kid's sneakers should be. You don't want to get close to them. It feels contagious.
So at school, you eat alone, you let people mess with you until they get bored, you act like they're beneath you and you're beneath them, and nobody is important enough to distract you from not becoming one of them. Even though you already are, and they already are you.
Then, when you're thirteen, John Logan moves close enough to end up at your school.
He doesn't live in a trailer, but it doesn't take long for everyone to know who he is. Him and his brother. Their alcoholic mother. The garage he has to work at. People say he plays hockey. That he's got potential.
He's the first person in this godforsaken place anyone's ever said that about.
No one's ever said you have potential.
You kind of hate him for it.
"You don't like me." That's the first thing John Logan ever says to you.
"You have the kind of name people pick when they can't be bothered to come up with a real one," you say without looking up from your book during lunch.
It's been two months since he transferred into your class, and everyone loves him and his stupid potential. You hope he breaks a leg. Or an arm. Or some other body part he might need.
You hear him laugh as he sits down.
"You need something?" Your voice comes out sharp, like you're waiting for the punchline. Waiting for the reminder that you're somehow less than him. You always prepare yourself for it.
"Lunch." He shrugs like it's the most obvious answer in the world.
"Your friends don't want you sitting with them?" You raise an eyebrow and nod toward the loudest table in the cafeteria.
"You're my friend," he says, like it's common knowledge.
"We'll see about that." Because nobody's ever shown much interest in being around you before, so you've never really had to practice telling people you're not interested.
He eats beside you in silence while you keep reading your book.
You decide that maybe you don't hate him and his stupid potential quite as much as you thought.
.
.
.
By the time you're sixteen, you and John Logan are inseparable.
You know everything there is to know about hockey, and he knows all the characters from your favorite books. When nobody else is around, you talk about your dreams. Sometimes, hearing him talk about the NHL and Briar U makes you worry yours are too small. Most days, you're lucky if you can think as far ahead as next week.
When things get too hard at home, you sneak over to Logan's house without his mom knowing.
Most of the time, your parents don't even notice you're gone.
You lie on the floor together in silence. At first, it used to make you uncomfortable. Eventually, you learn that being quiet with Logan is almost as nice as talking to him.
"I wish they were dead," you whisper. It's something you've never said out loud before.
"Don't say that," he says, but there's no judgment in his voice. No pity, either.
"Sorry," you blurt out, like you'd wished him dead instead.
He just lays his hand over yours, and you feel his fingers moving in slow circles over your pulse.
You hate crying in front of people.
With Logan, it's okay.
.
.
.
At seventeen, Logan is hooking up with half your grade.
It feels like there isn't a girl who hasn't been with him or wants to be with him. Your lunch breaks in the cafeteria have become crowded with girls popping bubble gum and reapplying lipstick. Talking about hockey games to impress him and describing, in far more detail than your ears would ever like, all the things they'd love to do to him.
Sometimes you eat in the bathroom, like you used to before he started going here.
You spend your days juggling school and three jobs.
Logan spends his days juggling school, hockey practice, and girls.
It's like he discovered a whole new world and can't get enough of it.
He drags you to parties where you don't drink, begs you to come to his games even though he barely pays attention to you once you're there, and acts like the biggest douchebag you've ever met.
"What are you mad about this time?" The question has been a joke between the two of you for as long as you've known each other. He asks, you roll your eyes, and tell him about whatever stupid thing happened that day.
"I found out my best friend is an asshole and forgot my birthday," you say with a forced smile, and the smile immediately falls from his face.
"Shit, (Y/N), I'm so sorry," he mumbles. You recognize the panic instantly and almost feel sorry for him.
"It's okay, Log. It's not like there's anything to celebrate anyway. I start work in twenty minutes," you say with a shrug. No big deal.
He doesn't like that answer. You can tell by the way his brows pull together.
"It really is okay," you say, trying to make your smile look more genuine, because you've learned that making Logan worry makes you feel bad about yourself.
"Can you give me a ride?" you ask, because Logan already has his license and his mom's old pickup truck.
"Sure," he mumbles.
When you get home exhausted from your shift at the grocery store in town, you find a box sitting on your bed with a small beaded bracelet inside.
Saw this and thought of you. Happy birthday, Rosie.
He's using the nickname he gave you a few years ago when he decided you were prickly.
The bracelet reminds you of the ocean because of the tiny seashells.
You decide it's the prettiest gift you've ever received.
.
.
.
At eighteen, your life goes to hell.
Which is saying something, because it wasn't exactly great to begin with.
"I've been looking everywhere for you. I thought something happened when you didn't show up today," you hear Logan call from beneath the tree you're sitting in.
You don't answer. Fuck. You were hoping he wouldn't find you. You don't want to say it out loud.
You hear him climbing up. You've done this dozens, maybe hundreds of times. Part of you wants him to fall. Even though you don't want him to fall. You never want him to fall.
"What happened?" he asks as he settles beside you on the familiar branch you're still surprised can hold both of you so easily.
You still don't answer.
"(Y/N), I need you to tell me what happened so I can fix it," he says with complete seriousness, as if your life is something that can be fixed. As if any of it matters anymore.
"He found my money, Log. The money I saved. He found the box." Your voice sounds weaker than you're used to. You fight back another wave of tears, even though you're pretty sure there aren't enough tears in the world for the kind of sadness you're feeling.
"What?" he murmurs, and you watch understanding dawn across his face. "Fuck, (Y/N), I can come with you and make him gi-"
He starts a speech you don't want to hear.
"What are you talking about, John?" you cut him off. "He gambled it away or drank it away. Who knows where that money is now? It's gone."
You hate how broken you are.
Years of work. Most of it went toward keeping the trailer running, but a small part of it went into a little box meant for college. For the dream of going to Briar U together.
"That's not okay," he mutters.
"Call social services," you nearly roll your eyes.
"I'm serious, (Y/N). You can't just keep eating this shit," he says, sounding frustrated, which only makes you angrier.
"Okay, I'll remember that next time he steals my entire savings. Seriously, Log, what exactly do you want me to do?" You look him in the eye for the first time since he climbed onto your branch. You have a sudden urge to shove him off it, and an equally strong urge to hug him because you know he's worried about you.
You don't want him to worry.
You never want him to worry.
He always worries.
"I can't go to Briar U." It's barely above a whisper.
"Of course you can. We'll figure it out," he says like it's the most obvious thing in the world.
"Logan, the scholarship doesn't mean anything without the money I saved. I can't. You know I can't. The numbers don't work." You can feel the tears coming again.
He climbs down from the tree, and you follow after him.
"I wish they were dead," you say, voicing that horrible thought to him for the second time.
He doesn't correct you this time.
.
.
.
At twenty, you start your first year at Briar U.
Logan starts his second.
You didn't have a choice but to wait. To save up all over again. To work even harder that year.
What you didn't account for was John Logan's new life. This new version of him you don't quite recognize anymore.
He's always been popular. Always been surrounded by people. But he used to be yours first and theirs second.
Now he's found his people. The ones he doesn't look at and see the life he could have. The ones who help him dream.
You were never a part of his dreams. You could only ever smile when he told you about them.
"I wish you weren't so afraid all the time." He says it at the end of a party he dragged you to, half drunk, half sober, while the two of you sit out on the porch of the hockey house.
"Afraid of what, exactly?" You try to smile, but he's too serious. Too deliberate. You haven't had a casual conversation in months. Maybe years.
"Life, Rosie," he sighs.
You stay quiet.
"I'm not afraid of life," you say after a few seconds, trying to convince him. Maybe yourself.
"You're afraid to drink. You're afraid of parties. You're afraid of people," he says. "You're afraid to dream because you're scared it won't come true, and you're scared you'll end up like them." He means your parents and for what feels like the first time, he's saying what he really thinks of you.
"Wow, John. Tell me what you really think." You feel your jaw tighten as you glance down at your watch.
"See? You can't even hear it. And I'm scared to tell you because I'm scared you'll fall apart." His voice is almost desperate.
"And who died and made you my therapist?" you ask, furious that he thinks he gets to talk to you like that.
"You never listen. It's impossible to talk to you." He drops down into one of the porch chairs.
"One year at college, surrounded by people who wouldn't look at you twice if you weren't carrying a hockey stick, and now you think you're better than me? Wow." You can feel the tears coming, but you hold them back.
"Better than you? What the hell are you talking about, (Y/N)?" His voice rises.
"You clearly don't think my lifestyle is up to your standards anymore."
"You're fucking crazy," he mutters.
And both of you freeze the second the words leave his mouth. Because you can see the immediate regret on his face. He knows that's a sensitive spot.
Because of your mom.
Because he knows how terrified you are of ending up like her.
"I didn't mean-"
"Yes you did. I'll see you around, John." Your voice is firm enough to keep him rooted in place instead of following after you as you walk away.
People have said a lot of cruel things to you in your life.
You never expected to cry over something John Logan said.
.
.
.
You miss him.
All the fucking time.
Cutting John Logan out of your life sometimes feels like losing a limb. Not something minor, like an appendix. More like waking up one day with only one arm after spending your whole life with two. The truth is, life goes on. You study and work and even become friends with your roommate. You smile and laugh and sometimes think about all the things you would've told Logan. Because even now, when something happens, he's still the first person you want to tell.
It's been two months.
Two months without a word, without a joke, without a sarcastic comment.
Even during the year you weren't at Briar U, Logan made sure to text every day and call at least once a week. He made sure to remind you that the year would pass and you'd be in the same place again and everything would go back to normal.
But nothing is normal.
Because Logan is finally in a good place.
And you're probably crazy.
You see him in the hallway sometimes, and he nods at you the way people nod at an acquaintance they don't really want to talk to.
John Logan, the guy who used to climb trees after you and try to convince you to go to parties. Now he's just another guy you used to know.
The bracelet he gave you years ago is still on your wrist, worn down but better taken care of than most of your belongings. You play with it sometimes. Turn it back and forth between your fingers, carefully, because you're afraid it'll break.
You try to remember if you've ever given Logan a gift.
If he has something that reminds him of you enough to make him want to cry.
The next time you talk, he's pacing back and forth outside your dorm building, not noticing you're there.
You can't help smiling.
"Need something?" you ask, and the amusement in your voice disappears when he stops and looks at you like he's been caught doing something he shouldn't.
"Oh, (Y/N)," he mutters. "I didn't think you'd be here."
"I live here," you say with a shrug.
"So does Grace," he says quietly.
You realize he isn't pacing because he's trying to work up the nerve to talk to you.
He's pacing because he's trying to work up the nerve to talk to someone else.
You nod once and start walking away.
"What do you want from me?" he asks, sounding lost as he reaches out to stop you.
"Nothing, John. I was on my way to the library," you say, looking him in the eye and trying not to let him see how much this hurts.
"She's my girlfriend. Grace." His voice is quiet. His eyes aren't on you anymore.
You can spend your whole life waiting for heartbreak and still be blindsided when it comes. John Logan manages to catch you by surprise.
"Congratulations," you hear yourself say, but your voice sounds strange, and the smile you're wearing is really just there to ease his guilt.
"She's really nice. You'd like her," he mumbles.
"I'm sure I would. I'm late for a study group," you mumble back, glancing at your watch.
You're never late. The two of you both know that.
You're always early because you're terrified of being rude.
You're always early because the people who raised you were always late.
"I'll see you around?" he asks, sounding almost desperate.
"Sure, Logan," you say with a nod and keep walking.
.
.
.
By the time tears start running down your face on the way to the goddamn library,
you know you're late.
Hey guys,
Thank you so much for reading!
I honestly didn't expect to get this attached to these two, but somewhere along the way they completely took over my brain. I'm already thinking about a part 2, which is probably a terrible sign for my productivity but a great sign for Logan and (Y/N) đI'd love to hear what you thought đ
Rating: Explicit (18+)
Warnings: SMUT (oral sex- F receiving), fake dating, reader is kinda sad all the time :(
Word Count: 6.9k
Note: Itâs been a really long time since I wrote anything, especially outside the Challengers fandom. English isnât my first language. Please be KIND.
To the edge of the earth
Someone spilled their drink on you and didnât apologize, just chuckled and kept walking. Who acts like that?
You decided you were more pissed at Becca than at that complete stranger. Becca was the one who dragged you to a party at the Briar University hockey playersâ house, Becca was the one who threw a mini skirt at you along with the white shirt that had turned see-through because of the orange stain that was starting to look more like puke than the drink that random idiot had been drinking.
For the next fifteen minutes, you wander around looking for an empty bathroom in this maze, it honestly makes no sense that anyone even lives here. Fucking college athletes. A bunch of privileged assholes.
Unlike them, you live in the dorms, sharing a room with two other girls, and your floor has one microwave and one mini fridge for twenty people. Thanks a lot for the bare minimum.
On the top floor, you walk into a room that for a second you thought was the bathroom because of the line next to it, which apparently was for the room across from it, but instead you find yourself in someoneâs bedroom. In any other situation, you wouldâve walked out as fast as you walked in, but your head had started hurting from the whole situation and the silence pulled you in more than the chaos outside. Maybe it wasnât okay, but no one was here, and ten minutes on some athleteâs carpet wouldnât kill him.
You sat down on the floor and decided to use the base of his bed as a wall, just so you could lean your head against something. The silence made you close your eyes and not notice the exact second the door opened and the light turned on, causing both you and the guy standing in front of you to jump.
âFuck,â he muttered and you found yourself jumping to your feet.
âOh,â you mumbled, trying to think of an excuse for your presence in someoneâs bedroom while dressed in clothes that suggested the complete opposite of your intentions.
âThis is a really shitty hiding spot, sweetheart,â he says a second after calming down.
âIâm not hiding.â You feel your defensiveness rising and creating a dam between the two of you, nothing he says can hurt you once that imaginary dam goes up, kind of a decision you made when you were little and realized people could be more cruel than kind way too often. âI was looking for the bathroom,â you added.
âPlease tell me you didnât decide my carpet was the bathroom,â he looks more amused than angry as he closes the door behind him.
You just roll your eyes in response.
âDonât worry, Iâm leaving, sorry about that.â You shrug, because you did walk into the room of a guy you donât know, and if the roles were reversed it would piss you off way more than it was clearly pissing him off right now.
âDo you need a shirt?â he asks before you can reach the door. âI donât mean to interfere but it looks like you need a shirt,â he adds too quickly and his hand runs over the back of his neck fast enough to make you suspect he didnât fully think through the words that just came out of his mouth.
âI didnât throw up,â you say faster than expected. And there it is, the uncontrollable rambling you spit out without thinking twice whenever you realize youâre standing in front of a hot guy.
âI didnât think you threw up.â His hand drops back to his side, just like his amused smirk does. God, heâs gorgeous. Heâs not even hot as much as heâs just beautiful. What a frustrating thought.
âSomeone spilled their drink on me and I think he was drinking vodka with Red Bull but itâs not puke,â you explain, and the sentence comes out clumsy and too fast, did you just swallow half your words? Why would you swallow your words? Get it together. Heâs just a guy and youâre just in his room.
âI donât really care,â he snapped his fingers like he was trying to remember something.
â(Y/N?),â you found yourself saying with a question mark.
â(Y/N),â he repeated after you with a smile, like he was testing how it sounded when he said it. God, it sounded way too good. âSo, do you want a shirt?â he added, already walking to his closet without waiting for an answer.
âIâm okay,â you mumbled, not knowing what to say.
âYouâre soaked in something that looks like puke.â He turned to you from his closet for a second and raised an eyebrow.
âI told you itâs not puke-â you started a speech you had no idea how to get out of, and saw his smug smile return a second before he turned back to the closet to find you something to wear.
âHere,â he walked over to hand it to you, the smile still there, like he thought this whole situation was cute while you were suffering through it. Heâs so fucking beautiful. The thought of how beautiful he is wonât leave you alone. Thereâs one curl falling over the front of his face, like itâs begging for someone to move it away, but you avoid touching a guy you donât know on the face, no matter how every part of him practically pulls you in like a magnet.
âThanks.â You bite your lip and hate the fact that you sound shy because of the intimate situation you somehow ended up in. âIâll wash it and give it back to you, John,â You mumble and take the shirt. He looks pretty surprised.
âThatâs refreshing.â The surprise is replaced by a smile as he takes a few steps back and turns around. You look at him through the mirror with a raised eyebrow of your own, waiting for him to close his eyes because turning around changes absolutely nothing with this giant mirror. He closes them the second your gazes meet through it.
âWhatâs refreshing?â you ask while pulling the soaked shirt off yourself.
âPeople donât call me John.â You can picture him shrugging.
âIsnât that your given name?â you ask, pulling on the t-shirt he gave you. Itâs huge and smells masculine. Something mixed with citrus and oak. A distinct scent that for a second makes you scared of getting addicted to it.
âEveryone calls me Logan,â he mumbles.
âDo you hate your name or something?â you keep asking.
âNo, itâs just been like that since I was little. My family calls me John, friends call me Logan,â he explains.
âAnd what do people who break into your room in the middle of a party call you?â You both hear the amusement in your voice, and youâre almost willing to admit youâve relaxed a little. Maybe itâs the shirt thatâs way too soft. Maybe itâs the smell. Maybe John Logan looks harmless when he closes his eyes like a little kid just so youâll feel safe enough to change your shirt in his room. âYou can look now,â you add, because this was bordering on cruelty.
âYou can call me John if you want,â he says nonchalantly, like his name carries no meaning at all.
âI donât see a reason to call you anything at all,â you answer, and he rolls his eyes.
âAre you always this mean?â he asks, again without any bite to it, while walking past you and sitting down on his bed.
âIâm not mean, just practical. We have four classes together and you didnât know my name. I donât think weâll see each other again after I give your shirt back.â You smile politely, but also kind of feel like you won the debate.
âWe have four classes together?â he looks confused.
âIf we start counting from freshman year, then even more.â Your smile widens, feeling victory more than the humiliation that comes with being invisible. âThanks for the shirt, Iâll wash it,â you repeat what you said a few minutes ago. Not finding anything else to add before you head back out into the chaos of the party.
Only when you get back to your room and look at yourself in the mirror do you realize it covers your skirt too, and every corner of the shirt has the number 22 printed on it.
.
.
.
To say Logan is frustrated would be understating the severity of the situation.
He spends his days at hockey practice, doing handyman jobs worth way more than what he gets paid for them, and avoiding Garrett and Hannah.
That whole list demands way too much energy from him. He finds himself fucking too many puck bunnies, spending too much money on alcohol, being afraid of what too much alcohol means, ending nights alone in his room while having to listen to Garrett and Hannah fucking in the room next door.
And then thereâs you.
A week has passed since he found you in his room, and you went from someone he hadnât noticed at all for three years to someone he sees everywhere. Youâre the first person he sees in the cafeteria, he saw you in the hallways, he saw you in every one of the four classes you share. He saw you sitting on the grass with a girl heâs pretty sure Dean fucked once, but with Dean thereâs really no way to know.
How could someone so noticeable disappear under his radar? It occupies his mind almost more than anything else that occupied him this week.
He didnât appreciate the fact that one of the days he wasnât at the apartment, you stopped by and dropped off a bag with his shirt folded inside and a note that said âThanks, Johnâ in the prettiest handwriting he had ever seen in his life. Logan writes like a caveman who learned how to write two days ago.
The shirt smelled sweet, like you soaked it in cherry syrup. He wondered if he pressed his nose against you, if thatâs what he would smell. There are so many details heâs missing.
âThat was a horrible practice,â Garrett says in the locker room, pulling him out of the mental fog he got stuck in.
âAll our practices are horrible, G, the teamâs not connecting,â Logan answers in frustration. Thereâs no doubt the team is missing key players, and when Loganâs or Garrettâs head isnât in the game, the team doesnât stand much of a chance in the league.
âWhatâs going on with you, Logan?â Garrett sighs. If thereâs one conversation Logan has no interest in having right now, itâs this one. The conversation with Garrett. The conversation about what sits between them so blatantly that sometimes Logan wants to slam his head into a wall.
The thing is, Logan would never make a move on Hannah.
She and Garrett are perfect together. She and Garrett look at each other like each of them is saving the other from themselves. He hates it. The feeling that by the time a girl interests him like that, she belongs with Garrett. He canât even try because itâs fucking Garrett, and he knows how good-hearted Garrett is and that he would never hurt Hannah.
Logan needs a drink, and fast.
âWanna go out for a beer tonight?â he changes the subject and looks at Garrett with tired eyes but a smile. Hoping Garrett gets the hint and drops it.
âSure, Iâll text everyone,â Garrett answers. âHannah will be happy, her new internship is killing her,â he adds.
Logan is Godâs personal joke, heâs sure of it.
And tonight too, the first person he sees when he walks into Malone's is you.
There are dozens of people sitting there but out of all of them, his eyes land on you. Wearing a simple t-shirt and surrounded by the two friends he saw you with earlier. You donât notice him staring and he takes advantage of the moment to study your face. Youâre not the prettiest girl heâs ever seen, or the sexiest girl heâs ever seen. Nothing about you should be catching his attention the way you are. So why canât he look away from you?
Even after he and the guys -and Hannah- sat down, he chose a seat that overlooked your table in the least suspicious way possible.
âWho are you staring at?â Hannah asks quietly, making him turn toward her.
âHuh? Iâm not staring,â he responds quickly. Hoping sheâll stop talking to him. He canât have interactions with Hannah, especially not quiet ones that feel like they share a secret. Not when heâs fucked up enough to want her.
âTell me, I wonât tell Garrett.â She sounds amused.
âItâs nothing, just some girl I study with,â he hopes thatâs enough to end this conversation.
âYou want a girl? Show me.â She looks happy. Fuck, heâs an asshole. Of course she knows about his crush. Of course she knows he wants her and is happy because she thinks he found someone else to be interested in.
âYeah, her nameâs (Y/N), itâs really new, sheâs sitting over there with her friends, weâre taking things slow. I didnât want to bother them,â he mumbles. Hating himself for how easily the lie slips out of his mouth.
âWhy are we talking about the girl who returned your shirt on Monday?â Dean asks quietly, like thereâs some conspiracy going on.
âYour shirt?â Hannah asks, clapping excitedly.
âShe returned his shirt folded in a bag with a note, âThanks, John,ââ Dean says like itâs any of his business. Asshole.
âJohn? She calls you John?â Hannah asks.
âWho calls him John?â Garrett asks, joining the conversation.
âHis girlfriend,â Hannah answers, the excitement still clear in her voice. Fuck, what kind of mess did Logan just get himself into here exactly, and why isnât he rushing to correct them? Maybe because he can see the relief in Garrettâs expression.
âDUDE, how are you hiding the fact that you have a girl from me?â Garrett asks.
âSheâs sitting at that table,â Hannah cuts into his words.
âOkay, I donât have a girl. Itâs new. Weâve met a couple times. Weâre figuring it out. She studies marketing with me,â he mumbles. Embarrassed by this entire situation.
âSo thatâs why you wanted to go out? Because you knew sheâd be here too?â Garrett asks.
âNo- you know what? Yeah, whatever. Sue me.â Logan gives in to the conspiracy he feels building around him.
âWell, why are you sitting here then, dude? Go say hi to her, donât be a douche. Doesnât matter if itâs just the beginning.â Hannah decides, basically pushing him off the couch that suddenly feels way too comfortable.
Loganâs steps are awkward and small, he doesnât want to reach your table. Especially not when all his friends are watching him, convinced heâs about to go talk to his girlfriend. God, heâs pathetic.
âHey,â he mumbles, looking at you with a gaze trying to hide the distress filling him.
âHey, John.â You smile at him.
âSo you decided to stick with John after all.â Your voice grounds him for some unclear reason and he almost doesnât regret coming to your table anymore.
âI still donât know if you prefer Logan,â you answer, and he canât figure out at what point he thought you werenât beautiful or special. You have so many freckles, he wonders if anyoneâs ever tried counting them.
âCan I talk to you for a second?â he asks, not missing your surprised expression. One of your friends at the table is sitting there with her mouth hanging open while the other looks completely unimpressed. âIâm Logan,â He introduces himself to the table.
âWe know who you are,â the unimpressed friend answers. âBecca,â she introduces herself, âand thatâs Kylie,â she adds about the friend who temporarily lost the ability to speak.
âSo, Becca and Kylie, can I steal her for a few minutes? Iâll bring her back fast, promise.â He smiles at them with the kind of charm he knows he still has.
âYou can steal her for as long as you want,â Kylie, slowly recovering, says. âWeâre not doing anything important anyway,â she adds.
âK, he could be a really bad guy,â Logan vaguely hears Becca scolding her friend and chuckles to himself when the other girl answers her:
âMaybe thatâs exactly what (Y/N) needs,â like itâs the most obvious thing in the world.
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.
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âSo you want me to do⌠what now?â Your face is operating on its own at this point. You canât tell if youâre blushing or surprised or embarrassed or if all the answers are correct.
âGo on like one or two dates with me that wonât be real in any way whatsoever just so my friends get off my back,â he speaks quickly, like he realizes while saying it how ridiculous this plan sounds.
âIâm gonna need more words than that, John,â you say.
Youâre sitting on a bench outside Malone's and he pulls out a cigarette while breathing heavily, like he understands he walked into a battle he already lost.
âI accidentally have a crush on someone I absolutely should not have a crush on and now she thinks you and I are a thing,â he says while lighting the cigarette.
âCan you not smoke around me, please?â you ask. âI did two plus two and somehow got five from that sentence you just said. How is your crush on someone connected to me?â you add another question when he blows the smoke to the side. God, heâs still so beautiful. You canât stop thinking about it. You canât stop seeing it. You canât stop remembering the dream you had-
âSheâs Garrettâs girlfriend,â he suddenly says.
âHoly shit,â you mumble. Everyone knows Garrett. Youâd have to live under a rock, or not go to Briar-U, not to know Garrett.
John Loganâs best friend.
John has a crush on his best friendâs girlfriend.
âHoly shit pretty much sums it up right,â he answers you. âI just need like two dates or for us to sit next to each other in a lecture and then in a week Iâll say things didnât really work out between us, but theyâll already think I moved on from Hannah.â He sighs. Running a hand over the back of his neck, youâre already almost sure thatâs his stress tic. âLook, I know how pathetic this sounds, but they both know Iâm into her, I realized that just now. I hide it about as subtly as an elephant in a china shop. They looked relieved when they thought I was interested in someone else. Iâm sorry it ended up being you-â he rambles.
âOh.â Of course heâs sorry itâs specifically you. The girl no oneâs really interested in, Beccaâs best friend. Becca, whoâs always surrounded by people. People who donât see her as âcuteâ or âsweetâ or âa good friend.â People who actually want her.
âI didnât mean it like that,â he probably notices your expression and you hate the fact that your emotions are always so obvious to everyone. âI meant I didnât want to complicate your life, you seem like a great girl and-â he tries to dig himself out of the hole but every word sounds more platonic than the last, like the way people talk about a little sister or a childhood friend you met when she still had braces.
âObviously, two dates. Fuck it, why not, Logan?â your voice sounds foreign as you smile. Building another floor onto the dam you reminded yourself you built when you met him in his room a week ago. John Logan is just another guy you study with, no matter how beautiful he is.
Youâll do him this favor the same way he did you a favor with his shirt and then each of you will go your separate ways and youâll never have to interact again.
At least thatâs what you thought would happen.
.
.
.
Logan came to the conclusion that you hate him.
Or at least donât actually want to be around him. Which is kind of driving him insane. Every time he sits next to you in a shared lecture, your entire body language stiffens, your smile doesnât come close to the smile you threw his way when you first met in his room, you do everything you can not to make eye contact with him and the cherry on top? You call him Logan.
He noticed it the first time it happened, and he also noticed that he didnât like it.
Itâs weird how much of a stranger you are in his life and yet in three days you managed to dig deep enough into him that he wants to crawl under your skin and understand every nuance you have to offer.
âSo where are we going?â you ask quietly.
âYouâll see,â he smiles at you with one of his familiar smiles. Trying to soften the silence filling the car with music from the radio, but every station plays a sadder song than the last until he decides to turn it off completely, which pulls a chuckle out of you. What an addictive sound. Thatâs the only thought running through his head from the second he hears it. He feels like itâs a new goal he has in life.
To play professional hockey, not work in a garage forever, make you laugh.
When and how did this happen?
He stops near a small empty cliffside, pulling a few things out of the trunk while you stay inside the car.
âAre you planning on getting out at some point?â he asks.
âAre you planning to murder me or something? Because this would be a really good place to do it,â you answer and he smiles, shaking his head side to side. Itâs cute. Everything about you is cuter than he planned on thinking.
âToo many people know Iâm with you, I donât have an alibi, sweetheart,â he says, way too amused while opening the door for you and watching you climb out of his car.
He canât stop himself from staring at your ass for one second longer than socially acceptable. The jeans youâre wearing shouldnât be legal with curves like yours. Tiny hearts are stitched into the green sweater youâre wearing and he hates the warmth everything about you makes him feel. Especially when heâs still convinced you hate him.
You walk side by side in silence, not saying anything. He doesnât let you carry a thing, but heâs secretly glad you offer. Something about you calms him down. He knows he chose the right partner in crime. He knows you wonât tell anyone how pathetic he is.
âWeâre here,â Logan mumbles, looking at you instead of the view.
Everything around you is green in every direction, overlooking a small lake that from this angle looks endless.
âWow, John. This is so beautiful,â you say with unmistakable wonder.
âSo beautiful,â he agrees in a murmur, but what you donât see is the fact that he isnât looking at the scenery heâs seen dozens of times. Heâs only looking at you right now, at your sparkling gaze and slightly parted lips. You look around so quickly like youâre scared the view will slip away from you.
âHow do you know about this place? How are there no other people here?â you ask while he pulls a blanket out of the basket he carried. He planned a picnic. He told everyone he was planning a romantic picnic and that it would be your second date, even though youâve never actually been on a date until now.
He did sit next to you in lectures and walk you from class to class. Sit with your friends in the cafeteria. Do everything a fake boyfriend is supposed to do. He shouldâve signed up for theater classes, if you ask him. And the amazing thing about this whole plan was that it kept him busy enough not to think about Hannah at all. She didnât interest him even when she was standing right in front of him. John Logan was busy. He had schemes to plan. He had charm to practice and puck bunnies to avoid making out with, not that he was interested in any of them no matter how much they threw themselves at him over the past few days.
âMy mom used to take Jules and me here when we were kids. We didnât have money for too many outings so weâd sit here and sheâd tell us to imagine everything we wanted to come true, like the lake would somehow make our dreams happen.â He hates how melancholic he sounds at this moment.
âThat sounds nice of her,â your voice isnât filled with pity but it also doesnât dismiss the bitterness definitely slipping out of him.
âIt wouldâve been a lot nicer if sheâd bought me new skates instead of making me imagine them,â he says sarcastically, shaking his head like heâs trying to disconnect from the moment.
Your hand lands on his. Which surprises him and makes him scared to move. He wonders if you even realize your hand is there. But you squeeze twice and look at him. Not letting the moment dissolve.
âShe gave you this place, I think thatâs a beautiful gift.â Your voice still isnât filled with pity. Just warmth. It makes him smile and makes you pull your hand away quickly like you suddenly realized how intimate the touch was. âDid you make food or are we gonna spend half an hour starving out here?â you change the subject quickly and your cheeks turn pink.
Logan just smiles.
The food Tucker helped him make did an amazing job.
You werenât there for half an hour, you spent four hours together. You donât seem to notice it, but Logan learned so many new things about you.
Youâre from New York. Your parents are disgustingly in love, according to you. You have a little brother named Michael, you donât celebrate Christmas, you celebrate Hanukkah. So much information and at the same time not enough.
âSo, howâs your plan going? Do Garrett and Hannah believe youâre not interested in her anymore?â you ask when he drops you off at your dorm and stands in front of you, fighting the urge to move the bangs out of your eyes.
âYeah,â he smiles, feeling like you just dumped ice water over him with that reminder.
This is just a means to an end. Youâre doing him a favor.
But the truth heâs almost ready to admit is that for more than four hours, all he could think about was you.
.
.
.
Youâre so fucked.
Royally fucked.
Because a month has passed. You and Logan have been pretending to date for a month. He remembers how you drink your coffee. He called your mom to wish her a happy birthday. He walks you to your classes and calls after practices. He texts you in the morning and before bed. Everything is genuinely excessive and stupid and youâre completely fucked.
I mean not physically, because John Logan did everything possible to trap you in his web except actually fucking you.
You constantly remind yourself that he isnât really interested in you, that any second now heâll tell you everyoneâs seen enough to believe heâs moved on and doesnât desperately want Hannah anymore, desperately enough for this embarrassing act.
What John Logan doesnât know is that all you think about during the day is him.
Pathetic on a level youâd laugh at in romantic comedies. Pathetic on the level of a girl who forgot her place in this world. A girl he didnât even notice for three years. A girl the only reason he talks to at all is to show everyone he isnât in love with someone else.
Youâre supposed to sleep over tonight.
You know perfectly well he wonât do anything because heâs made it clear more than once how unattracted he is to you. Every time you were around people and stood too close, his head moved and you ended up kissing his cheek. Every time his hand slipped into the back pocket of your jeans to pull you closer, he made sure to pull it away within seconds so it wouldnât linger too much.
The guy did everything he could to show you he isnât attracted to you. Just like everyone always shows you they arenât attracted to you. And itâs pathetic to think John Logan -the John Logan- would be any different from anyone else you ever wanted in your life.
The dam was supposed to be stronger but you can feel the cracks. You hate all the information he gathered about you like some skilled spy. You hate the calm he brings you. The security you feel when his gaze meets yours. The moments after he finishes a game and searches the crowd until he lands on you and smiles. You hate the fact thereâs no escaping the feeling that youâre fucked. That you feel things for John Logan you have no right to feel.
âThatâs the same shirt I gave you the first time we met,â he mumbles while you lie beside each other in his huge bed, not touching you inappropriately and keeping a respectful distance. Respectful, AKA, Annoying.
âI recognize it,â you mumble. Hating your voice right now.
âHey, itâs just me.â His hand shakes your shoulder lightly, a forced laugh slipping out of both of you. You notice the worried crease between his confused eyes. He doesnât understand why youâre so tense.
âHannah told me today sheâs happy you have me,â you say, your voice quiet, thoughtful.
âHannahâs smart,â he answers with that same characteristic cheerfulness while moving the hair off your forehead.
âIf only she knew we havenât even kissed,â you chuckle, but it sounds bitter. You hope John doesnât hear the bitterness.
âYou want us to kiss, Peaches?â He started calling you that because he claims your scent reminds him of peaches. You hate how amused he sounds when he says it.
âLogan,â you mumble and his face changes instantly. It turns serious in a second.
âI hate when you call me that. Itâs such bullshit,â he mutters. âWhy do you have to make everything like this?â he asks.
âHow do I make everything?â You sound shocked by where the conversation is going.
âHeavy, Peaches. That was a question we both know the answer to. So why do you make it sound like you donât want to be here?â he sighs. Running a hand over his nose for a second, another tic you learned to recognize over the past month.
âWhatâs the answer to it?â you ask. Wondering if youâre angry or if your voice is shaking. It feels like someone else is asking it.
âYou want me to kiss you, exactly the way I want to kiss you.â You donât know when he got so close to you, but your breaths are heavy and tangled together. The air starts with you and ends with him. Maybe the opposite.
âYou donât mean that,â you manage to mumble.
âDonât tell me what I mean.â You feel him scolding you a second before his lips press against yours, determined. Almost punishing. Proving a point. Like you offended him by even wondering if he wanted you.
The kiss deepens within seconds. Thereâs nothing gentle about it. Itâs hungry and full of restrained sexual tension. Of feelings you definitely feel and donât want to know what he feels. Heâs above you faster than you expected him to be there. His hand slips under your shirt while his gaze never leaves you, checking that itâs okay.
âYou need to tell me if I should stop.â His voice is rough, like restraining himself right now would be the hardest thing heâs ever done in his life.
âYouâre okay,â you whisper and his lips are on yours again, his fingers playing with one of your nipples under the shirt that quickly ends up on the floor.
Youâre far more naked than you ever thought youâd be around him, but his head is between your legs like youâre the best thing heâs ever tasted. The sounds coming out of both of you should honestly be illegal.
âJohn, fuck, Iâm close,â you manage to say, which makes him let out a groan that sends vibrations through your clit like that was the only thing missing.
And after way too many minutes of that torture, of John holding you on the edge and not fully letting you come, just waiting a little before going back to eating you out again, you felt the orgasm flood through you. Straight onto his face. And it was sudden and surprising and John acted like it was his birthday and this was the prettiest gift you could give him. The soft words he whispered against your trembling thigh - âI got you, sweetheart,â he mumbled, and it was incoherent and sweet and unbearably sexy.
All the feelings you have for this guy came loose with that orgasm.
The dam broke and you donât think youâll manage to stay afloat without drowning.
The only thing you want is for John Logan to look at you forever the way heâs looking at you right now.
Itâs also the one thing you know is impossible to have.
.
.
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Logan is pissed.
So fucking pissed he could burn the world down.
Youâve been avoiding him for three days.
Not only did you leave in the middle of the night while he was asleep, now youâre avoiding him too. Your texts are evasive. Today in your shared lecture you sat between two people heâs pretty sure you donât even know just so you wouldnât have to sit next to him. You donât look for his gaze during the day and the highlight was when you didnât show up to tonightâs game. His hair is still half wet when he bangs on the door of your dorm, he doesnât care at this point if he wakes up your roommates or people from the floor. Youâre going to talk to him. Even if you donât want to talk to him.
God, you never want to talk. Not about the things that matter.
âDo you know what time it is?â Becca crosses her arms under her chest when she opens the door.
âNice seeing you too, Becs, is (Y/N) here?â He walks past her like the room belongs to him just as much as it belongs to her and you.
âYou canât just barge in here-â she starts a speech when you walk into the room with a bowl of popcorn he assumes you heated up in the floor microwave.
âOh,â you mumble.
âWe need to talk.â Logan leaves no room for argument and grabs your upper arm, not hard in any way, but enough for you to follow him outside the building because he might raise his voice and he doesnât want to make a scene in front of people you need to see on a daily basis.
âWhatâs going on, Logan?â you ask quietly and he wants to shake you hard enough for that whole bowl of popcorn to end up on the floor.
âLogan,â he repeats his own name, almost to himself. Adding a bitter chuckle. It sounds so foreign when you say it. When you call him what everyone else calls him. He likes being John for you. He likes that you specifically see John in him. He feels lucky when he gets to be Johnny. He hates Logan when Logan comes from you.
âYouâre avoiding me,â he states, seeing no reason to go around it. He looks at you and your gaze almost flickers. He pities you for a second, you look like an animal being hunted. Does he make you feel like an animal being hunted? No. He knows he doesnât. He knows thatâs not true.
âIâm not avoiding you,â you try to sound believable but he hears right through it.
âBullshit, (Y/N), you know itâs bullshit so just say it already. Say whatever it is you want to say so we can be done with this.â He hates the anger in his voice, but youâve been driving him crazy for three days.
âI donât have anything to say, Iâve just been busy.â You shrug like itâs not a big deal. Like he doesnât know you. Like he didnât spend the last month following you like a puppy looking for approval from its owner.
Sometimes he looked at you and hoped so badly that you saw what he saw. He knows you donât. He knows you arenât kind to yourself. That you belittle yourself far more than heâs willing to let happen. Far more than heâs going to allow you to belittle yourself in the future. Because if thereâs one thing John Logan is sure of, itâs that his future is completely tied to yours.
âTry again,â he says, the sharpness still in his voice. Just like the piercing stare. The kind that wonât let you go.
âI donât know what you want me to say,â you mumble.
âOkay, letâs start with why the hell you left while I was asleep?â He hates how hurt he sounds asking that, but itâs the truth. You left and he got hurt and itâs about time you talked about it already.
âI didnât want it to be awkward in the morning,â you say quietly and for once lift your gaze to him.
âWhy would it be awkward in the morning, (Y/N)?â he asks, stopping himself from rolling his eyes. How could a night that physically made him finish in his pants from seeing you come on his tongue be awkward in the morning? How did they take part in the same experience and come out of it with such different conclusions?
âYou know why.â You try not to look at him again but he moves into the direction your eyes drift toward, over his dead body is he letting you avoid him now.
âI went down on my girlfriend for the first time, what the fuck is so awkward about that, Iâm begging you to enlighten me here.â He hates the sarcasm dripping out of him.
âDonât do that,â you say, and he feels you starting to get angry too. Good, finally.
âDonât do what?â he asks.
âDonât call me your girlfriend when nobodyâs around, itâs not fair,â you say and he feels his jaw tighten.
âWhat the fuck do you think you are to me, (Y/N)?â he asks. âBecause thereâs no fucking way you believe Iâve been spending every free second with you around campus for a month so someone who knows me like the back of his hand would think Iâm interested in you while I actually want his girlfriend,â he adds, hoping you hear how absurd that sounds.
âThatâs exactly what you said you needed from me.â You shrug.
âBut life is dynamic, for fuckâs sake, (Y/N). You see the way I look at you. You see the texts. You see me. I know you see me because you look at me like that too and I also know it has nothing to do with me, I know itâs some fucked up belief you have that thereâs no way anyone could want you, but I want you. Me. From the second I saw you I wanted you. From the very first fucking moment I saw you wearing my shirt, standing in my room, looking at me with that tortured look in your eyes, I wanted you. Youâre all I want. I want you more than I want anything else. That night was the best thing that happened to me in a long time. I fucking came in my pants like Iâd never had sex before, fuck, I donât know how to prove it to you. I really donât know.â He sounds desperate and he doesnât care. If you need him on his knees, heâll do it.
âJohn,â you mumble and your voice is broken, he notices the tears in your eyes and immediately hates himself for putting them there.
âI need you the way I need air to breathe. Donât do this to me, (Y/N). I need you to believe me right now and Iâll prove to you every day that youâre the only thing I want. I know youâre scared, but give me a chance here. You know you want to trust me,â he says while pulling you into a hug. The popcorn bowl has been on the ground for a while now.
âI love you,â you say into his chest and he takes a step back. âI love you and I donât know what to do with it.â You sound so broken but he just smiles because itâs more than he hoped to hear.
âYouâre everything, Peaches. Youâre everything and youâre mine and when it gets too much and overwhelms you, let it overwhelm me too, okay? Iâm not going anywhere.â He says it and his arms are around you again. Steady, warm.
âI love you,â he mumbles above your head, like an insurance policy. âWeâre gonna be okay,â he adds.
.
.
.
For once, you believed it.
-----------------------------------
Hey guys, how are we all feeling?
Itâs honestly been such a long time since I wrote anything, but I had to get this out of my system. I know there isnât too much happening in the story and I really hope you didnât suffer through it. Iâd obviously love to hear what you thought đ
I said "I love you". You say nothing back | John Logan
summary: the arrangement was simple: keep it casual, don't catch feelings, don't ask for more than what's on the table. 338 days later, you're starting to think simple was never really an option with john logan.
notes: hii, i'm back!! i was genuinely so overwhelmed by the response to my first one shot. you guys are so kind and it inspired me to keep writing. so here we are, back with more yearning, more angst, and more logan being an idiot about his feelings. my requests are open if you have any ideas or characters you want to see i'd love to hear from you. thank you so much for reading and enjoy â¤ď¸â¤ď¸
warnings: swearing, alcohol, light angst, situationships, a puck bunny accusation and a confession in the rain.
word count: 8k
The thing with Logan had started exactly 338 days ago. Almost one year. One full lap around the sun. You knew because you had been counting, the days and the hours and even the minutes since this situationship from hell, as your dear friends had taken to calling it, had installed itself in your life like an antivirus app you hadn't downloaded and couldn't figure out how to delete.
It had started on Halloween, and at the time it hadn't seemed like a bad idea. It was just past eleven and the house off campus that your friends had dragged you to smelled like dry ice and weed, and you were tired and ready to leave, which was an anomaly. You were usually the last one standing, your friends had given you the nickname ending antagonist for a reason. In hindsight, that probably should have been a warning sign. The one night you wanted to go home early was the night everything started.
Though to be fair, things with Logan are not bad. That's the thing people don't understand when they hear situationship from hell. On the contrary, things with Logan are very good. Too good. Too good to look at directly without feeling something inconvenient shift behind your ribs, which is precisely why it's bad. Because he had been so genuinely, almost aggressively nice about the whole thing. He had found you at the edge of that party and sat next to you and talked to you for hours like you were the most interesting thing in the room, and he had made a real effort not to look at your boobs while you were talking, which in that particular environment was either extremely respectful or a sign that he was raised correctly, and either way it had done something to you.
And then you had woken up on his chest the next morning. His warm skin and steady heartbeat, the sort of light that meant it was too early to be awake, and done the awkward post-hookup shuffle of words, and heard: I'm not really looking for anything serious.
A bucket of cold water dropped directly on your head would have been less effective. More merciful, probably.
What else could you have done except agree? For god's sake, he was sitting there in black boxers holding a cup of coffee, extending it toward you like a peace offering, brown eyes looking at you with an expression that was genuinely, unfairly soft for seven in the morning. You took the cup. He readjusted against the headboard and looked at you with those eyes and said, simply: "So?"
So. So what? What were you supposed to say?
"Sure," you heard yourself say. "I'm interested in that too."
Sure. I'm interested in that too. Your internal voice repeated it back to you with the tone of a younger sibling trying to get a rise out of you. That was, objectively, the least true thing you had ever said out loud. You had been raised on Bridget Jones and every famous rom-com ever committed to film. You believed in love, in its inconvenience and its necessity and its complete refusal to be reasoned with. Casual did not cut it for you. It never had.
But god. If Bridget could have seen John Logan in that particular light, with that particular bed head, she would have understood completely.
So you agreed. And after that came the encounters.
At first they were private, almost secretive, you telling your friends you were going for a run and then actually running, just in the wrong direction entirely. Logan telling his that he was going to study somewhere, which was technically true, depending on your definition of anatomy. It gave everything a specific kind of thrill, the pleasant urgency of something that existed slightly outside the normal rules, and for a while that was enough.
But time has a way of dissolving things like that. Gradually, without either of you deciding to, you stopped hiding. And that was when the real problem arrived.
You and Logan became friends.
Not the convenient, surface-level kind, the real kind, the kind that builds without you noticing until one day you look around and realize that this person has become load-bearing in your life. You were always at the house. You knew the full taxonomy of Dean's recent romantic encounters, the specificity of Garrett's current problems, the ongoing narrative of Tucker's various endeavors. You didn't just know about them, you helped. You were involved. You had opinions and history and context, and they knew it, and they came to you with things.
And it went the other way too. Logan had gotten so close to your friends that he would voluntarily drive Marissa to her therapy appointments in Boston without being asked, would send Benny reels about topics they'd talked about the week before, remembered details that even you sometimes forgot. He had threaded himself into the fabric of your life so completely and so quietly that you could no longer locate the seam.
And finally, finally, things had started to feel like they were moving in the right direction. The direction they probably should have been heading since the morning after Halloween. Maybe the casual arrangement had just been a detour â a scenic route to the same destination. All's well that ends well.
And then you and Logan would go to Malone's, and a waitress would glance between you with a smile and say what a nice couple you made, and Logan would laugh in that easy, noncommittal way of his and say: we're just friends.
And there it was. Bucket of cold water. Every time, without fail, like a reset button neither of you had agreed to keep pressing.
Every single time.
Which brings you to now.
You are sitting on Logan's couch, draped over him, legs intertwined, peppering kisses down his neck while he makes a valiant and increasingly unsuccessful effort to tell you about the new episode of some reality show he has gotten inexplicably invested in. Something about traitors in a castle. Who cares. Not you. Not when Logan smelled like that and the house was quiet and his hands were doing that thing where they moved without him seeming to notice.
You sank further into him. The kisses started to linger. His words got sparse.
"Are you even listening to me?" Logan murmured, his voice coming out considerably less steady than he had probably intended.
You hummed against his pulse point by way of answer.
The front door opened.
You both startled, pulling apart with the practiced efficiency of people who had been interrupted before, but the moment you registered it was Dean you settled back into exactly the position you'd been in. Dean didn't care about PDA. He actively encouraged it.
He dropped onto the opposite couch, looked at the ceiling briefly, then at you.
"Okay, I have a question," he said. "Logan, dude, this is for science, please don't be weird about it."
At this point you were sitting upright, Logan's arms still looped around you, his chin finding your shoulder, using you as a very comfortable shield against whatever Dean was about to say.
"Shoot," you said.
Dean took a breath with the energy of someone preparing to say something they had already decided to say regardless of the response. "Do you think I should buy a vibrator for a friend of mine?"
Logan laughed against your neck. You shivered slightly at the warmth of his breath.
"Are you the friend?" you asked. "Are you buying a vibrator for yourself?"
"What? No. I'm a man."
"That doesn't mean anything. Men are allowed to have vibrators."
"I know that. It's not for me."
"I really think you should get one though. For yourself. If you want to be the Samantha of the group you have to commit to the bit."
"I am the Samantha," Dean said, with genuine offense. "And it's not for me."
"Have you even watched Sex and the City?"
"Yes. I'm from New York, for god's sake and you're being such a Carrie right now."
You settled back against Logan's chest, his arms tightening around you automatically, like a reflex, like something he did without thinking about it anymore.
Yes, you thought. And my own Mr. Big is currently holding me on this couch.
Garrett and Hannah came down the stairs in what you assumed were their stay-at-home outfits: sweatpants, hockey jersey, the specific comfort of two people who had stopped performing around each other. The moment they came into view you felt Logan's hand still. Not move away just still. And then he shifted from behind you to sitting beside you, technically still touching but the warmth of it had changed completely. It was less person you are tangled up with and more person you happen to be sitting next to on public transport.
You knew that shift. You had felt it before.
The first time, you had told yourself you were imagining things.
It was a Tuesday, nothing special about it, the kind of evening that had become completely ordinary, you at the house, Logan beside you on the couch, his thumb making absent circles on your knee while Dean argued with Tucker about something that didn't matter. Hannah had stopped by to pick up something she'd left there the week before, and the moment the door opened Logan's hand had stilled. Not moved away. Just stilled. Like an animal that had heard something.
You hadn't said anything. You'd filed it away in the part of your brain reserved for things you weren't ready to look at yet.
The second time was at one of Garrett's games. You had been standing with Logan at the edge of the rink afterward, his jacket half around your shoulders the way it always ended up, and Hannah had appeared through the crowd. Logan had straightened. Subtly, almost imperceptibly, but you felt it the slight shift in his posture, the way his jacket had slipped back off your shoulders without him seeming to notice he'd let it go.
You'd picked it up off the floor and handed it back to him without a word.
The third time you stopped counting.
Malone's on a Friday night had a particular energy loud enough to feel festive, familiar enough to feel like home. Your usual table was in the corner, the big one that fit all of you without anyone having to pull up an extra chair, and the evening had been good. Genuinely good, the kind that reminded you why you had agreed to this arrangement in the first place, Logan's knee against yours under the table, his arm finding the back of your chair sometime around the second round of drinks, the easy warmth of being somewhere you belonged.
You were mid-story , a good one, the kind that had the whole table leaning in and you could feel it landing, the timing was right, and Garrett was already laughing before you got to the punchline and Dean had that look on his face that meant he was going to steal this story and tell it as his own later, and Tucker wasâ
You glanced at Logan.
He wasn't laughing.
He was looking across the table at Hannah with an expression you recognized because you had spent the better part of a year learning every single detail of his face, and what was on it right now was something soft and slightly helpless the expression of someone watching something they had decided they couldn't have.
The story finished without you. Somewhere far away, the table laughed.
You picked up your drink. Set it down. Picked it up again.
"I'm going to step outside," you said. "Just â smoke a bit."
"You don't even smoke, (Y/N)!" Tucker replied, laughing, and it killed you because all of Logan's friends had come to know you so well.
"You okay?" Garrett asked.
"Fine. Just air."
You were already standing. Already reaching for your jacket. Logan was on his feet before you made it two steps.
"I'll come with you," he said.
The parking lot outside Malone's was cold and poorly lit. You got about twenty feet from the door before you stopped walking. The noise from inside filtered out muffled and distant, everyone still laughing, completely unaware.
Logan stopped beside you. Waited. He had always been good at waiting, which was one of the things you had loved about him and one of the things that had slowly, quietly driven you insane.
"Don't," you said.
"Don't what?"
"Don't do the thing where you stand there and wait for me to calm down." You turned to face him. The cold air hit your face and you were glad for it. "I'm not going to calm down. So just talk to me. Tell me the truth. Please. Don't bullshit me right now, Logan, I am asking you to not bullshit me right now."
"Babyâ"
"Don't baby me, Logan. Not right now"
He looked at you with that steady, unhurried patience of his, which tonight felt less like a quality and more like a weapon.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked.
"I want you to tell me if you have a crush on Hannah." The word crush felt absurdly small for the moment but you couldn't bear the weight of the more accurate alternatives.
Something shifted in his face. Not guilt exactly, something deeper than that. The specific expression of someone who had been quietly hoping a question wouldn't arrive and had known, somewhere underneath the hoping, that it always was going to.
"It's notâ" he started.
"Logan."
He exhaled. Looked at the ground briefly. Looked back at you.
"It's not serious," he said. "It's nothing. She's with Garrett. It's not like I would everâ"
"Oh my god." The laugh that came out of you had nothing to do with anything being funny. "Oh my god, you actually do. You actually have a crush on her."
"It's not a big dealâ"
"You have a crush on your best friend's girlfriend and it's not a big deal." You repeated it back to him slowly. "I have been right here, Logan. For almost a year I have been right here, and you have a crush on Hannah."
"It's just a feeling. It doesn't mean anything." His voice had an edge to it now, something defensive sharpening underneath the calm. "And you don't get to be mad at me for it."
"Excuse me?"
"You don't get to be mad at me for having feelings." The words were coming faster now, the composure cracking in a way you almost never saw from him. "We said casual. That was the agreement. I can't be accountable to you for things I feel when you are not my girlfriend."
The word landed like a slap.
Girlfriend.
"Right," you said. Your voice had gone very quiet. "I'm not your girlfriend."
"That's not what Iâ"
"No, you're right. I'm not." You looked at him. Really looked at him â this person whose coffee order you knew by heart, whose nightmares you had talked him through at two in the morning, whose hand had reached for yours in his sleep so many times you had stopped counting. "Can I ask you something? And I need you to actually answer me. Not just wait until I stop talking."
He said nothing, which you took as a yes.
"What did you think this was?" Your voice was still quiet. Controlled. "Not what we agreed on in the beginning. What did you think it was last week? Last month? What did you think it was tonight when you had your arm around me at that table? When you picked me up from my house and kissed me in your truck?" You took a breath. "Because I need to understand how you look at what we have been doing and see something casual. I genuinely need you to explain that to me."
"It's complicatedâ"
"It's not complicated. It's actually very simple. I just need you to say it out loud."
"You knew what this was when we startedâ"
"I know what it was when we started. I'm asking what it is now." You crossed your arms against the cold. "Because from where I'm standing it looks a lot like a relationship. It looks like you drive my friends places and remember things about them they never told you twice, and I know every single thing about your life, and we spend more nights together than apart, and you reach for me when you're asleep like I'm something you don't want to lose." Your voice cracked slightly and you pushed past it. "So you'll have to forgive me for being confused about the casual part."
"I can'tâ" He stopped. Started again. "It's not about not wanting to. It's about what I can actually give right now. Hockey takes everything. My family, my mother, I don't have money, I don't have stability, I don't have any of the things thatâ"
"I'm not asking you for stability. I'm not asking you for money." Something in your chest had cracked open and you were past the point of closing it. "I'm asking you to admit what this already is. That's all."
"I am being honestâ"
"Then be more honest." Your voice broke on the last word and you kept going anyway. "Because I'm in love with you."
The parking lot went completely silent.
Logan stared at you. The words sat between you in the cold air like something that had changed the temperature.
"What?" His voice came out barely above a breath.
"I'm in love with you." Steadier the second time. "I have been for a long time. And I know that's not what we agreed on. But I can't stand here and pretend I don't while you tell me it's not a big deal that you have feelings for someone else." You looked at him. "We are already a couple, Logan. In every single way that actually matters, we already are. The only thing missing is you admitting it."
Something moved across his face â something large and unguarded and almost frightened.
"It's not that simple," he said, quieter now, the defensiveness gone out of it.
"I know it's not simple. I know about hockey. I know about your mom. I know all of it, Logan, because you told me, because that's what we do. But none of that changes what I just said." You took a breath. "So just tell me. Do you have feelings for me? Yes or no. That's all I'm asking."
Logan looked at you.
And said nothing.
The silence stretched between you, long and terrible. His jaw was tight. His eyes moved across your face like he was looking for something he either couldn't find or couldn't say, and the longer the silence went on the more clearly you understood that the silence was itself an answer.
"Wow," you said finally. Very quietly. "Okay."
You picked up your bag. Straightened your jacket. Looked at him one more time this person you had spent 338 days loving in whatever form he would accept.
"Don't follow me," you said.
He didn't.
You walked back toward the warm light spilling out of Malone's windows, past your friends still laughing, past the table that an hour ago had felt like home, and you kept walking. Past the door, past the window, down the street, into the cold.
Too angry to cry. Too tired to pretend. Too done to look back.
Behind you, in the parking lot, Logan stood very still and said nothing which was the thing he was best at, and the thing that had finally cost him everything.
It had been a hard couple of days. But the upside of a not-breakup in college was that you didn't get to wallow, no watching rom-coms until the wee hours, no doing the Bella, watching the months pass from your bedroom window. Life was as it had always been, minus the space Logan had occupied in your weekly schedule. Not a metaphysical space, a literal one. When you opened your Google Calendar you found his game days still blocked out in blue, his training days still marked, everything still there like a calendar that hadn't gotten the news yet.
Pathetic, you thought, and deleted them.
Your days now belonged entirely to yourself, which should have felt like freedom and mostly felt like a lot of unscheduled Tuesday afternoons. No more disappearing in the middle of the day, no more make-out sessions in the library during lunch break. Just you and your own company and the slow, unglamorous work of being fine.
You weren't fine. You were something adjacent to fine that required daily maintenance and the careful avoidance of certain songs.
Marissa had noticed, she called it being under the weather, which was such a specific and old-fashioned way of putting it that in the beginning you had found it strange and now found it completely endearing. Your own personal nanna, showing up with iced coffee and terrible ideas at exactly the right moments.
The terrible idea this time was an underground bar in Boston she had found, which was a surprise since Marissa was fundamentally a sports bar person. You had a strong suspicion the entire excursion was engineered entirely for your benefit and the benefit of your appetite for expensive, colorful drinks, and you loved her for it and didn't say so.
The drive took exactly long enough to hype yourself up.
I'm pretty. I'm smart. I'm a catch.
The bar was dimly lit in a way that felt intentional rather than neglected, all low ceilings and good music and the general atmosphere of a place that didn't need to try. You, Marissa and Benny settled into a corner booth and approximately ninety seconds later Benny's elbow was in your ribs.
"Cute guy. Nine o'clock," he said, in what he apparently believed was a whisper.
You glanced toward the bar. Tall, white jacket, the kind of easy posture that meant he wasn't thinking about his posture at all.
"I'm not really looking for anything," you said.
"You're single. He's cute. The bar has drinks. What exactly is the problem?" Benny tilted his head. "Go order our drinks and make some poor decisions. You've earned it."
"I didn't bring my ID."
Benny stared at you. "You came to a bar without your ID?"
"I forgot." You shrugged.
"(Y/N)." His voice had the specific tone of someone choosing their words carefully. "What is wrong with you. Go. Drinks. Now. The ID thing is a you problem, figure it out."
You slid out of the booth before he could say anything else.
The guy at the bar was, up close, even more irritatingly attractive than he had been from across the room. He glanced over when you appeared beside him, and then glanced again in a way that was not subtle and didn't try to be.
"You look like you're deciding something," he said.
"Whether to admit I forgot my ID at a bar."
He looked at you for a moment. Then he smiled easy and genuine. "Hunter," he said, and held out his hand.
"((Y/N))."
"I'll vouch for you," he said. "If you tell me what you're drinking."
You told him. He ordered both without being asked, which was either presumptuous or exactly right, and you decided it was exactly right.
By the time you made it back to the booth with four drinks and Hunter's number in your phone, Benny was looking at you with the expression of someone who had orchestrated something and was very pleased about it.
You didn't tell him he was right. But you didn't have to.
The thing about Hunter Davenport was that he was genuinely, irritatingly likeable.
You had not been thinking about Logan when you said yes to Hunter's suggestion of getting coffee. You had not been thinking about Logan when the coffee turned into a walk, and the walk turned into two hours of easy conversation that asked nothing from you and gave something back.
That was the point.
You had gotten very good at not thinking about Logan in the weeks since Malone's. It was a skill, like any other, it required practice and the occasional forcible redirection of your own brain, but you were nothing if not disciplined when the situation called for it. You had been showing up to things. Laughing at the right moments. Sleeping through the night, mostly.
You were fine. You were getting finer by the day, which was either progress or a very convincing impression of it, and right now you weren't examining the difference too closely.
Hunter was easy. That was the thing about him. He was warm and uncomplicated and he looked at you like you were worth looking at, which was something you had apparently needed more than you realized.
It was nothing serious. You had been very clear about that with yourself. You were not ready for serious. But his hand was warm when it found yours walking back from the coffee place, and you let it stay there.
You were almost believing it.
The team was at the rink for an open practice, one of the informal ones that sometimes drew a small crowd of friends and the generally affiliated. You had come with Marissa, which gave you plausible deniability about why you were there, and you had sat in the third row and watched without watching, which was a skill you had also been practicing.
Hunter had waved at you from the ice. You had waved back.
You had not looked at Logan. You had been extremely disciplined about not looking at Logan, which meant you were also extremely aware of exactly where he was at every moment without technically looking at him, which was its own kind of exhausting.
After practice, Hunter had come off the ice still in half his gear and found you immediately, easy and unhurried, and said something that made you laugh. Your hand had gone to his arm the way hands do when you're laughing at something someone said, and it had stayed there for approximately four seconds.
Four seconds.
You knew it was four seconds because you had counted them, which meant some part of you had been paying attention to something you were pretending not to pay attention to.
The locker room door swung shut behind Logan without him looking back.
You found a quiet corner of the rink lobby while Hunter went to get his bag. You were looking at your phone, not reading anything on it, when you heard footsteps and looked up.
Logan.
He had changed out of his gear. His jaw was doing the thing: the tight, controlled thing that meant something was happening underneath the composure that the composure was working very hard to contain. His eyes moved from your face to the door Hunter had gone through and back.
"Hey," you said carefully.
"You and Hunter," he said. Not a question.
"That's not really your business."
"You're spending a lot of time with him."
"Loganâ"
"I'm just making an observation." His voice was very even. The voice he used when he was the least controlled.
"Make it somewhere else."
He laughed short and humorless. "Right. Okay." He looked at the floor. Looked back at you. "I just didn't think you were the type."
You went very still. "The type to?"
"To go after a guy because of who he plays for." Quiet. Measured. Like he had chosen this version of the sentence carefully. "I didn't think that was your thing."
The lobby was very quiet.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to make sure you had heard what you thought you'd heard. Long enough to see something flicker in his expression, the immediate, unmistakable recognition that he had gone too far.
"Say that again," you said softly.
"I didn't meanâ"
"No." Your voice was calm in a way that had nothing to do with being calm. "Say it again. I want to make sure I understood you. Are you calling me a puck bunny?"
Logan said nothing. The flicker had become something closer to horror.
"Because that's what you just said." You tilted your head slightly. "After everything. That's what you went with."
"I didn't â that's not what I meantâ"
"Then what did you mean?" You took a step toward him. "Because I have been patient, Logan. I have been so patient with you. I said the most honest thing I have ever said to anyone in that parking lot and you said nothing back, which I am trying. I am actively trying to make my peace with. But you do not get to say that to me. You don't get to do that."
"I know." His voice had lost all its evenness. "I shouldn't haveâ"
"Why did you say it?"
He looked at you.
"Tell me why." Your voice cracked slightly and you kept going. "Because it wasn't an observation. So tell me why."
Something moved across his face the composure fracturing in a way you had only seen once or twice in all the time you had known him.
"Because I can'tâ" He stopped.
"Can't what?"
"Because I can't watch you with him and notâ" He stopped again. Pressed his mouth shut. Looked at the ceiling briefly.
"Not what?" Your voice was barely above a whisper.
He looked at you. Right at you. And for one unguarded, terrible second you could see everything, all of it, the whole enormous weight of everything he hadn't said in the parking lot outside Malone's, sitting right there on his face with nowhere left to hide.
And then he looked away.
"I'm sorry," he said. "It was wrong."
You looked at him for a long moment.
"Yeah," you said. "It was."
You picked up your bag. Hunter had reappeared at the far end of the lobby, jacket on, easy smile, completely unaware of the wreckage he had wandered back into. You walked toward him and did not look back at Logan.
But you heard him the sharp exhale of someone who had just watched something leave that they weren't sure was coming back.
Good, you thought.
And hated that you thought it.
Here was the thing about being called a puck bunny: it wasn't the word itself that got to you.
Puck bunnies weren't the worst thing a person could be.
Men were allowed their types, allowed to prefer blondes or brunettes or redheads, to have spent their teenage years watching anime and grown up to exclusively pursue Asian women, to want someone tall or short or with a specific laugh, or say things like "I have never been with a Brazilian before". They were allowed to say these things out loud, to Tinder-filter by height, and if it was possible they would do by weight too, to have opinions about bodies that they shared freely and without apology.
But god forbid a woman had a type. God forbid a woman found hockey players attractive or musicians, or academics, or anyone with a specific quality she was drawn to. Then she was something to be named and categorized and looked down upon. Then she was a bunny.
You were not offended by the word.
You were offended that Logan, who had been silent while you poured your heart out in a cold parking lot, who had said nothing when you asked him the most direct question you had ever asked another human being , had found his voice again specifically to say that. That of all the things he could have finally said to you, after all the silence, this was the one he chose.
That was what got to you.
Not the word. The timing. The source. The specific, devastating irony of a man who couldn't say I have feelings for you finding it very easy to say something that small.
You didn't tell anyone what he said.
That was the first decision you made, walking out of that rink lobby with Hunter's hand in yours and Logan's exhale still somewhere in your chest. You were not going to tell Dean, who would say something devastatingly accurate about it. You were not going to tell Marissa, who would want to talk about it for three hours. You were not going to tell anyone, because telling someone meant turning it over, examining it, and you were not ready to examine the specific shape of what Logan had said to you and what it meant that he had said it.
You knew what it meant. That was the problem.
You had known the moment you saw his face, that flicker of something before the composure reassembled itself, the way his eyes had moved to Hunter and back to you with an expression that had nothing casual about it. You had spent 338 days learning the map of Logan's face and you knew exactly what that look was. You had just also heard what came out of his mouth immediately afterward, which meant that what Logan felt and what Logan was willing to do about it were, as always, two completely different countries.
You were done trying to travel between them.
The week that followed was quiet and it felt different from the other times you had gone quiet. Before, the silence had always been temporary, a held breath. This felt more like an exhale. Like something had finally, after a very long time, finished.
You went to class. You had coffee with Hunter on Tuesday, which was easy and warm and asked nothing from you. You went to Marissa's on Thursday and watched something forgettable on her laptop and fell asleep on her couch, and she put a blanket over you without waking you up, which was the kindest thing anyone had done for you in recent memory.
You did not go to the house off campus. You did not text Logan. You did not check if he had texted you, which required leaving your phone face-down on your desk for approximately four days straight, which was its own kind of discipline.
You were fine. You were getting finer.
You were also absolutely not fine.
Dean found you on a Wednesday.
Not dramatically, he just appeared at the coffee shop near your building where you went on Wednesday mornings, which you had mentioned to him exactly once four months ago, which meant he had remembered it and filed it away and was now using it, which was such a Dean thing to do that you almost smiled.
He sat down across from you without asking if it was okay and stole a sip of your coffee before saying anything.
"He told me what he said," Dean said, without preamble.
You looked at your coffee. "Okay."
"He feels terrible."
"Good."
"I mean genuinely terrible. Like, I've known Logan for three years and I've never seen himâ" Dean stopped. Seemed to decide something. "He's not sleeping. He's barely eating. He showed up to practice yesterday and coach pulled him aside after because his head wasn't in it, which has never happened, not once in three years."
"Dean." You looked up at him. "Why are you telling me this?"
"Because you deserve to know that it cost him something." His voice was straightforward, without manipulation. "I'm not asking you to forgive him. What he said was awful and he knows it. I'm just, you spent a long time showing up for him and I don't want you to think that none of it landed. It all landed. It's landing right now. It's just landing a little late."
You were quiet for a moment.
"A little late," you repeated.
"Okay, very late."
"Dean." You wrapped your hands around your cup. "He called me a puck bunny."
"I know." Dean had the grace to look genuinely pained. "He said it because he was jealous and scared and he handled it in the worst possible way and there is no defense for it. I'm not here to defend it."
"Then what are you here for?"
Dean looked at you across the table, this person who had been in your corner since before you had any idea how much you would need someone in your corner, and his expression was very honest.
"I'm here because he's my best friend and he's falling apart," he said. "And you're also my friend. And I hate watching both of you be miserable when I know exactly why you're miserable." He paused. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just wanted you to know."
You looked out the window. The street outside was grey and unremarkable, the specific flatness of a Wednesday in November.
"How long has he known?" you asked quietly. "That he has feelings for me. How long has he actually known?"
Dean was quiet for a moment.
"A while," he said carefully.
"How long is a while, Dean."
Another pause. Longer this time.
"Since pretty much the beginning," he said.
You closed your eyes briefly. Opened them.
"Okay," you said.
"(Y/N)â"
"I'm not angry." And you weren't, which was almost surprising. You were something quieter and more tired than angry. "I just needed to know." You picked up your coffee. "Tell him I said he needs to sleep."
Dean looked at you. "That's it?"
"That's it." You met his eyes. "I'm not ready for anything else right now. But tell him to sleep."
Dean nodded slowly. He finished stealing your coffee and stood up and put his jacket on, and then he stopped with his hand on the back of the chair.
"For what it's worth," he said. "The Hannah thing. It was never real. He told me that too. He said he thinks he latched onto it because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening."
You didn't say anything.
"Okay," Dean said. "I'll see you around."
He left. You sat there with your cold coffee and the grey Wednesday street outside and the specific, exhausting weight of loving someone who had known the whole time and chosen, over and over, to say nothing.
Since pretty much the beginning.
338 days. And he had known since pretty much the beginning.
You sat with that for a long time.
It had been raining since noon.
Not the dramatic, cinematic kind of rain that arrived with thunder and purpose, just the steady, grey, unrelenting kind that soaked through your jacket in the first thirty seconds and didn't apologize for it.
You were on your way back from the library, hood up, head down, thinking about nothing in particular, which you had gotten very good at recently. The art of thinking about nothing. Occupying your own brain with the immediate and the logistical the paper due Thursday, the coffee you were going to make when you got home, the question of whether you had remembered to charge your phone.
You had not been thinking about Logan.
You were almost at your building when you heard him.
"(Y/N)."
You stopped walking.
He was standing at the bottom of your building's front steps, which meant he had been waiting in the rain for some amount of time, which was evident from the state of him soaked through, hair flat, jacket dark with water. He looked like someone who had arrived with a plan and abandoned it somewhere on the walk over and was now operating on something more basic and less manageable.
He looked, for the first time in all the time you had known him, completely unguarded.
"Logan." Your voice came out carefully. "What are you doing here?"
"I need to talk to you."
"It's raining."
"I know."
"You're soaked."
"I know." He took a step toward you. "I've been standing here for forty minutes trying to figure out what to say and I still don't know, so I'm just going to say it badly and hope that counts for something."
You looked at him. The rain came down steadily between you.
"You have two minutes," you said.
He exhaled. Ran a hand through his wet hair. Looked at you with the expression of someone stepping off a ledge they had been standing on for a very long time.
"I have been in love with you," he said, "since pretty much the beginning."
The rain was very loud suddenly.
"I knew it when we agreed to casual. I knew it when we stopped hiding. I knew it every time I reached for you in my sleep and every time a stranger called us a couple and I laughed it off, and I knew it in that parking lot outside Malone's when you told me the truth and I stood there and said nothing back." His voice was steady but only barely, the steadiness of someone gripping something very hard. "I said nothing because I was terrified. Not of you. Never of you. Of what it meant. Of what I would owe you if I said it out loud. Hockey takes everything I have and my family situation is a disaster and I don't have money or stability or any of the things that a person is supposed to have before they ask someone toâ" He stopped. "But Dean said something to me last week. He said that I was losing you anyway. That all my careful management of the situation had achieved was losing you slowly instead of all at once, and somehow I had convinced myself that was the better outcome."
You said nothing. The rain soaked through your hood and you didn't move.
"And then I said what I said to you at the rink." His jaw tightened. "I have replayed that moment every day since it happened. There is no version of it that I can make okay. I said it because I saw you with Hunter and something in me just broke. Not a good break. Not the kind that leads anywhere useful. Just â I broke, and I said the cruelest thing I could think of, and I aimed it at you, and I have hated myself for it every single day since." He looked at you. "I'm not telling you that to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you because you deserve to know that it was never about you. It was never about who you are. It was about me being terrified and handling it in the worst possible way, and I'm sorry. I am so sorry."
The rain fell between you, steady and indifferent.
"You knew since the beginning," you said finally. Your voice came out quieter than you intended.
"Yes."
"A year."
"Yes."
"And you said nothing."
"Yes." He didn't flinch from it. "I said nothing, and I let you carry it alone, and I told myself I was protecting you from the complications of my life, but I think I was just protecting myself. From having to be as brave as you were in that parking lot." Something moved across his face. "You were so brave. You said the true thing and I just stood there. And I have thought about that every day since. About what it cost you to say it and what it cost me to say nothing back."
You looked at him. This person. Soaked through and unguarded and finally, finally saying the thing he had been not saying for 338 days.
"The Hannah thing," you said.
"Wasn't real." Immediate. Certain. "I think I needed it to be real because it was safer than admitting what was actually happening. She has what you and I have, what you and I were and I think I confused wanting that with wanting her. It was never her." He held your gaze. "It was always you. It has only ever been you."
The rain had soaked through your jacket completely now. You were cold in a way that had stopped being uncomfortable and become simply the condition of the moment.
"I'm not asking you to forgive me tonight," Logan said. "I'm not asking you to do anything. I just needed you to know that I heard you in that parking lot. I heard every word. And I should have said this then, and I'm sorry that I didn't, and I'm saying it now because Dean was right, I am losing you anyway, and I would rather lose you having finally told the truth than keep you at a distance by staying silent." He paused. "I love you. I have loved you for a long time. And I'm sorry it took me this long to be brave enough to say it."
The street was very quiet under the rain.
You looked at him for a long moment. Long enough to turn it over. Long enough to feel the full weight of 338 days, of every almost-conversation and loaded silence and reset button and bucket of cold water. Long enough to remember his hand going still when Hannah walked in, and the parking lot, and the rink lobby, and the specific sound of his exhale when you walked away.
Long enough to remember, underneath all of it, a Halloween party and a wall and two people waiting out the night from the edges of it, talking like they had nothing to prove to each other.
The beginning, before it got complicated. Before it got careful.
"You're an idiot," you said.
Something shifted in his expression. Not quite hope. Something more tentative than hope.
"I know," he said.
"You made everything so much harder than it needed to be."
"I know."
"I carried that alone for a very long time, Logan."
"I know." His voice broke slightly on it. "I know you did. I'm sorry."
The rain came down. You looked at him this soaked, unguarded, finally honest person standing at the bottom of your steps and felt something in your chest that had been braced for a very long time slowly, carefully release.
"You should have just said it," you said. "In the beginning. You should have just said it."
"I know." He took a step closer. Close enough that you could see the rain on his face, the wet dark of his hair, the expression underneath all the composure that had finally run out of places to hide. "I know. I'm saying it now."
You looked at him.
"Say it again," you said quietly.
"I love you." No hesitation. No composure. Just Logan, standing in the rain, finally saying the true thing. "I love you. I have loved you since pretty much the beginning and I am done pretending I don't."
The rain fell between you and neither of you moved and the street was quiet and everything was very still.
Then you closed the distance.
You kissed him in the rain, which was cold and slightly impractical and nothing like the careful, managed version of Logan you had spent 338 days trying to navigate. This was different. This was him kissing you back with both hands and no hesitation and none of the holding back, and it felt finally, finally like the true thing. Like the version of this that had been waiting underneath all the other versions the whole time.
When you pulled back you were both soaked and breathing slightly unsteadily and his forehead dropped to yours in the rain.
"I'm still mad at you," you said.
"I know." His arms tightened around you. "I know you are."
"The puck bunny thing is going to take a while."
"I know. Whatever it takes."
"And you have to tell me things." Your voice was muffled against his jacket. "When you're scared, when it gets complicated, when your brain does the thing where it decides silence is the safe option. You have to tell me instead."
"I will." He said it simply, without qualification, which was how you knew he meant it. "I will."
You stood there in the rain outside your building, soaked through and slightly ridiculous, and you thought about Halloween and 338 days and parking lots and rink lobbies and all the long, complicated distance between the beginning and right now.
hi do you think you could do art donaldson for 'let me down easy' please? (â ââ á´ââ )
ăâ let me down easy â 彥
summary: after months of pain and failed efforts between art and you, everything comes crashing down when he returns from his latest press tour (this is a part of a series of fics inspired by the album aurora from daisy jones and the six.)
pairing: art donaldson x f reader
word count: 2k
warnings: there is no happiness, only angst :)
ao3 link series masterlist previous work playlist
Things had been different between you and Art ever since the two of you had graduated from Stanford. Which didnât feel right simply because of how close you both had gotten in such a short period of your lives. That kind of relationship doesnât feel like itâs ever supposed to unravel.
Issues had started to arise after he had begun to pursue tennis further, meanwhile you were stuck at a crossroads on where exactly to go. You didnât want to just follow him around like a lost puppy for the rest of your days. But outside of the internship you had lined up right out of college you hadnât thought much on where you intended to go. So while he was always in and out of your shared apartment, you ended up stuck always waiting for him to return.
You knew he was destined for greater things. But you thought that you would be included in that vision. Instead of being left behind. When you had planned your lives it was always supposed to be together. You were going to become a successful journalist, and he would be one of the best tennis players to ever do it. But since your dreams had been stalling as of late, you didnât expect for him to just wait for you to catch up.
No, he had kept going. And kept fighting his way towards the top. And you were left behind in his shadow. Which was funny to think about because thatâs exactly what Tashi had told you would happen all those years ago.
That had quickly caused tension that had yet to ease between the two of you. It didnât seem like it intended to stop either. So you just sat in your despair that you would amalgamate to nothing compared to your partner. It wasnât jealousy. It was longing. To be a part of this next chapter in his life, and not off to the side. Happy and ready for him to return to you.
But as weeks and months passed it became clearer and clearer to you that there was no escaping this fate. The spark was dimming, and it felt like you couldnât even begin to put up a fight for it to keep burning.
-
âWhen do you think youâll be back?â
Art had already been gone on his press tour for what felt like forever. Taking interviews all across the country to celebrate his most recent win at Wimbledon. Of course you were incredibly happy for him, but still you yearned to be by his side again.
Art paused on the other end of the line. It was times like these where you wished you could read him better. It hurt not knowing exactly where his head was at.
âUh, could be a while. Two weeks, maybe.â
You frowned, sinking further into the couch that sat in your lonely living room. âTwo weeks? Artââ He had been gone for so long. And now you would have to wait even longer. It made you sick to the stomach.
âYeah⌠I know itâs not ideal for us.â
âI mean that isâ one way to put it.â
âIâm sorry.â He didnât sound the part. And in the background you could hear someone you couldnât even begin to name yelling at him to wrap it up. It made you think of how excluded you were from his life at this point. The two of you had barely been talking for five minutes. And already he would have to leave you.
âUh-huh.â You felt like throwing your phone halfway across the room and screaming into the nearest pillow.
âLook, I really am sorry. I hate doing these interviews.â Whenever you got the chance to catch them on TV it didnât feel like that. Sometimes he looked happier, then he had been with you for months. You wished he would smile that much when he saw you.
You reserved not to fight his comment though. And just went along with what he was telling you.âItâs fine, Art. Iâm used to it at this point.â
âI have to go now.â
âCan we at least talk more later tonight?â There was a kind of desperate plea behind your voice.
And then there was a deafening silence on the other end of the line. âI would, but Iâm getting dinner with an old friend.â
Your mind immediately went to the worst. Tashi. It was a gut feeling. One you couldnât even begin to explain or express out loud. But you refused to believe that could be true. Sheâd caught off contact, right before you and Art had officially started dating. Which was unintentionally your fault.
âIâll call you when I can though. Goodbye.â
âBye.â
And then he hung up on you. No final âI love youâ or âgood night.â Just the click of his phone cutting out. You wanted to cry, scream, and throw a fit. But it wasnât worth it. You had been dealing with this for the past month, and now it felt like he was already moving on. While you two were still together. Lining up his options in preparation for the imminent end.
And he wasnât even trying to hide it from you anymore. The beginning of the end had already been accepted.
-
When Art finally did come back home after his nearly two month long victory lap, he barely spoke with you. That first night he crawled into your shared bed and wrapped his arms around you. And the only thought you had was how forced it felt. Between the both of you. There was no meaning anymore. You were holding each other just so you could be holding someone. It wouldnât change the way it felt if it was some stranger you found on the side of the road laying next to you.
This level of distance wouldâve never seemed real to you, not even a year ago. But you were so checked out of this relationship. And so was he. It didnât seem to matter who the warmth at the end of the night came from.
The second night didn't seem like it was going to be much different. But then, Art seemed much more introspective. Like he was ready to unleash a secret he had kept buried in his chest.
He froze in the doorway, leaning against the frame as he watched you prepare to sleep. âWhy didnât you just come with me?â
âIs that what this is about?â The distance. The silence. The lack of emotions.
âSomewhat.â Art was waiting for your response before attempting to continue.
âIf I had come with you would that really have fixed anything.â
âWe couldâve at least tried.â
âNo, Art. You know thatâs not true,â A thousand more unspoken words ran through your head. Ways to phrase things and truly express how you had been feeling. But that required more effort than you were capable of giving anymore. A fog had begun to cloud your mind, making it impossible to speak any of your racing thoughts out loud.
âI donât think I love you anymore. I donât think I have for a while. And I think youâve known this too for a while. Two weeks ago I had dinner with Tashi. It was nice, we caught up with each other. Then we went back to my hotel room andâ â There was the admission you had been waiting to hear. But instead of anger or disappointment the only thing you felt was a bitter acceptance.
âI get the point. But what exactly do you want me to say to that?â
âI want you to just listen. Look, I'm trying to be honest with you right now. Iâm done with fucking lying about how I feel.â he moved closer to you, kneeling in front of where you were sitting on the bed. He reached up and tried placing a hand onto your cheek. It was an act meant to pull you in closer and reassure you. But it only twisted the knife he had dug into your heart even further.
You moved backwards, leaning away from him. âStop it. This is pointless and mean.â
âThis is only hurting the both of us. Iâm finally trying to get us to actually talk about this. Because itâs been actively killing me inside and out for a while now. And it doesnât feel like you care at all.â
It was true. You didnât. The words he spoke werenât even registering to you anymore. But you still managed to get the point. Art wanted to move on, he had gotten sick of you. Just like Tashi said he would. She could never be wrong. No matter what. Maybe thatâs why he had slept with her.
âJust tell me you hate me. Tell me you want to break up. Slap me across the face. Just do something. Anythingâ
âI think it would be best if you left now.â It hurt to say it out loud. But it was true.
Looking at him, he looked tired. His heart wasnât even in it now. He couldnât even give you the courtesy of pretending to care, as he practically blew up your life. âThatâs it?â
âThatâs it,â it was taking everything in you to look away. And not meet his sad puppylike gaze.
Art silently got up and moved towards the door. âYou know I thought you would try and fight it. I thought some part of you would fight to keep this. We meant something, even if we havenât in a while.â
Bullshit.
âYouâre a fucking dick.â
âI did love you.â That was the telling word. Did. Past tense. Like he hadnât loved you in months. And he had been dragging this out for as long as he could. To spare your feelings. Like you would break the second he left you. And thatâs what hurt the most. He didnât have to admit it out loud. But he chose to get one last dig at you in before leaving.
âJust go already. Leave. Do what youâre good atâ Somehow there was no anger in your voice when you spoke. Only withdrawal. The emotion would come back to you once he actually got himself out the door. Itâs not even like you were pretending to be strong, to get this over with. You didnât even know if you cared anymore.
Art looked as though he had more he had to say. More that had been weighing on his mind. Words that threatened to escape. But his silence spoke numbers. Much more than anything he couldâve ever actually mustered up the courage to say.
So he left without another word. Silently packing up what little of his stuff remained in your once shared apartment. Fulfilling your one and only wish.Â
And that was it.Â
A two-year long relationship ended in less than a half-hour. Without much of a fight, and done in the blink of an eye.Â
When he finally managed to get out the door, your facade broke. And you cried for what felt like hours, alone in your room. You wanted him back. You wanted to apologize for not fighting it. You wanted him to apologize for having sex with Tashi. You wanted things to go back to the way they had been at Stanford. When you still had the whole in front of you, and life in your eyes. When you felt immediate joy hearing his voice, and love in his presence.
But it would never be like that again. You doubted you would ever even see him again. Because God knows youâd never volunteer yourself up for a tennis match. So you would just have to accept that it was over. And a love once so special to you was gone.
You thought it would be easy to end things. And you thought it wouldnât hurt this much. But losing love hurts. So as the tears kept flooding from your eyes, you accepted your fate. And you accepted that that was it.
author's note: whats up guys :p i have been gone quite a while. so what better way to make my comeback then with an ancient ask. my apologies to anon. i don't if i'm gonna continue with the series this request was from if i'm being honest. but i felt a little inspired so. what are you gonna do about. make sure to like, reblog, comment, and follow. it would be appreciated.
as a current college girlie, i would die for art to be my slightly toxic bf <3 he just fits the vibe, like shitty enough that id complain while drunk but not so shitty that id feel bad about crawling back into his bed ya know
omg yeah this.
half the time it feels like he only really knows how to want you physically. the chemistry between you is great, but he's terrible at clarity, and you're worried he only wants you when it's convenient. during late nights, to fuck out post-win adrenaline, when he's lonely or needs reassurance. and you clock it, you do, but then he smiles at you like that with that sweet lopsided smile and your critical thinking skills just evaporate. he flirts like it's second nature too, not even maliciously, just enough with other girls that you're always slightly on edge and wondering if you're overreacting or he enjoys the attention.
but he's oddly good at dodging accountability (or maybe you're just a pushover). you've learned not to point fingers too often, because he treats affection like a reward you get when you're being easy and fun and not asking questions.
you can feel when his attention drifts away from you, especially when tashi is anywhere in the vicinity. you're safe and you're easy (because when aren't you spreading your legs for that pretty face?) but she's the ideal he measures himself against. yet the second you act like you're not waiting around for him, he's visibly bothered.
and god if he isn't the biggest hypocrite in the world. he hates when you're a little too friendly with someone else. he reacts (childishly) by going quiet or being short with you, withdrawing suddenly if he sees you laugh too much with someone at a party or plan a study date with anyone that isn't him. meanwhile, he'll ditch your plans without a second thought if tashi texts or needs himâpractice runs late, dinner gets pushed, "i'll make it up to you" on repeat.
you end up excusing things you absolutely would not excuse in an uglier man. you complain about him endlessly to your friends, but you keep going back because the highs are just convincing enough to outweigh the lows. so you're sort of left perpetually unsatisfied and wondering if you're still filling a gap he won't admit is still shaped by someone else.
for whatever reason, you just can't let him go. maybe it's because the sex is great. art's attentive, and he's a quick learner, so his mouth alone makes you miss him every time you try to go through with ghosting him for a few days. sometimes it feels like he knows your body than he knows his own feelings. and occasionally (just enough to matter) he's a sweet boyfriend. he shows up with coffee when you're exhausted after a long day of classes, or invites you over to just cuddle and watch a movie without expecting anything in return. those flashes of tenderness make you think maybe you're not crazy, maybe there is something here worth holding onto.
at the end of the day, he loves you. probably not as much as he should, or as much as you deserve, but it's enough to cling onto. your friends all think you're delusional <3
Warnings: mention of a drunk driver (DON'T do that!!!), also it's kinda sad so be aware of the angst.
Word Count: 2.7k
I told you things
This is a foolish event.
You look at yourself in the mirror and tell yourself that all you need to do is smile, shake hands, stand beside your grandmother, and eat an oyster. Sip champagne. Get drunk on the champagne. Ignore Art Donaldson. Piece of cake.
You take a deep breath and enter the hall, seeing the fancy dresses of people who were once your friends and their parents. People who are almost strangers but also so familiar.
"You made it, good. Please don't slouch," your grandmother reminds you to straighten up every three minutes when she's beside you. "Itâll help you project presence," she always says.
She's a powerful woman; the way she speaks and carries herself is filled with a regal and noble quality that you lack. Youâre your father's daughter, and he's been denying the fact he's her son since the day he learned the meaning of the word "deny."
You feel out of place, but you're standing tall, and that's all that matters to her right now.
By the tenth handshake, you've lost count. By the third glass of champagne, you've lost meaning. Because Art only looks at you when he thinks you're not looking at him. He stands in the corner with Patrick, who greeted you with his dad, but Art looked at everything in the room except you. You find yourself making small talk with Art's mom, who was always like a second mom, maybe even the first if you consider your relationship with your own mother. And she tells you how well he's doing. How successful he is at Stanford. That heâs never been this happy.
So you say you're happy for him because you really are happy for him.
Everyone wants to see the people they love happy. Everyone wants to hear that they're doing well, that they've found their purpose. That theyâre not wandering lost in the world. That they live in a universe full of meaning.
Art Donaldson is the best you know at meaning. He decided he'd be that figure, that player everyone knows. A name mentioned at family dinners when people talk about what's new in American sports.
Heâll be the one who makes dreams come true.
"(Y/N), itâs been a while since we've seen you here," one of your grandfather's friends approaches you and pulls you into a hug for no apparent reason. Itâs always the same middle-aged people. Always men. Always letting themselves hold on four seconds longer than appropriate. More than socially acceptable. The only thing it made you think of is that every other time you'd encountered behavior like this, Art was beside you, pulling you away with a pretext no one could resist.
You almost started crying in the middle of the hall. In the middle of a charity event. In the middle of life. Just like that, crying. Like when you were younger. When you didnât need an excuse, when it was okay because someone would already be your advocate and say, "She's tired."
Now you're tired too, but no one finds it necessary to be your advocate.
.
.
.
Between forced smiles and small talks, you found yourself sneaking outside to smoke a cigarette, nearly ignoring everyone you once considered friends who now live in a parallel world. A world where choosing between you and Art is simple because you're far away. Because you come once a year, and Art is an inseparable part of their lives. Their smiles are apologetic when they glance at you, quickly returning to their conversations, to the laughter you used to be part of.
"It's not sexy, you know?" Patrick's voice came from behind you, laced with a hint of arrogance. He didn't see, but you definitely rolled your eyes.
"I thought everything was sexy in your opinion," you shot back, not looking at him as he came close enough to light his cigarette with yours.
"Except for self-pity. That's pathetic," he said, taking a deep drag.
"I'm not pitying myself," you replied, too quickly for it to sound convincing.
"Why didn't you say hello to anyone?" he asked, not taking his gaze off you.
"I said hello to everyone." Another eye roll, this time one he could see.
"Bullshit, sugar, you did a round with your grandpa and hugged old folks. You said hi to your friends' parentsâthat doesnât count," he didn't let anything slip by. It was infuriating.
"It's just one night, Patrick. I won't have to see anyone here again." You said with determination, as if trying to convince yourself it was true. Both of you knew it wasnât just one night.
"And what will you do all summer? Sit in their house and cry about how awful your life is? Unbeliâ"
"That's enough, Patrick." Art's voice made your heart skip a beat. You hadnât seen his face, or his curls, or his crossed arms, but you already felt panic wrapping around you. "Give us a moment," he added, still not coming closer. He didnât stand beside you or in front of you. He stayed in his position of power. He could see you, but you couldnât see him.
You looked at Patrick as if he was the only one who could save you at that moment. You let the tightness in your throat show, and the plea in your eyes was unmistakable. You werenât too proud to beg if it would make him stay and not leave you two alone.
Patrick looked at you for another moment, showing not an ounce of mercy as he shrugged and started to walk away. Bastard. Absolute bastard.
"Dickhead," you muttered, watching his clumsy steps until he disappeared from view.
Art's chuckle was faint but just loud enough to make you regret the cigarette you stepped outside to smoke. What was so urgent that you had to edge closer to death? Why couldnât you hold back before giving in to this stupid addiction?
"Want one?" Anyone else wouldnât have noticed the slight tremor in your voice as you offered Art a cigarette. Anyone else wouldâve interpreted it as confidence. He saw it for what it was, a defense. It was all you had to place between the two of youâa stretched-out hand and a pack of Winston Lights.
Patrick was right. It really was all pathetic.
"I donât smoke anymore," he sighed, leaning against the makeshift railing next to you, not looking at you but straight ahead, the same way you weren't looking at him.
"That's a nice dress," he broke the silence.
"Thanks, my grandma chose it," you mumbled, trying to find meaning in this conversation. A conversation with a stranger who knows all your secrets. A stranger who knows what makes you laugh and what makes you cry. A stranger who holds half of your heart in his hands.
"I'm not surprised, she has good taste. She always picked the best movies and took us to the best restau-" he began, slipping into nostalgia.
"Iâll suggest she divorce my grandpa because she might have a suitor," you interrupted, glancing at him just for a second to see his face fall slightly and to hear his bitter chuckle.
You turned your gaze the other way, ashamed of what you'd done. That you'd knocked the wind out of him in an instant.
"How are you?" he asked. "We haven't spoken in a while." You could sense the tension in his voice. It should've made you feel better, realizing that you werenât the only one who was anxious, that he felt bad too. But it only made you shift uncomfortably. He was supposed to be okay. Heâd moved on. He wasn't there anymore. You were the only one stuck a year back. The only one who couldnât move forward with her life. Everyone else was at a different stage. Everyone knew what they wanted, and Art was no different. More than that, Art could be the leader of those who know what they want.
"Everythingâs fine, you know, routine," you found yourself mumbling.
"What's the routine?" he asked, this time looking at you, his voice desperate for information. For details.
"You donât want to know," you gave him a forced smile. "But Iâm fine, really," you quickly added. "They covered it all up as if nothing happened, so you don't have to worry."
And again, he let out a bitter laugh, and if it made sense, he wouldâve stomped his right foot and shaken you. Because you have to talk to him. Because he's to blame. You know he's to blame. He knows he's to blame. Patrick knows he's to blame. But youâre not willing to talk to him anymore. And how is it fair? That he continues as if nothing happened. As if he once dreamed of you and youâre just a character he invented to pull him out of any quicksand he stumbled into.
"I'm really sorry, Shug," he said, not knowing how much longer he could hold back the tears. Not knowing how long he could keep his composure. He hadnât expected to see you here today, but here you are, looking so beautiful and good and distant. Keeping your distance, keeping it safe. As if you were born to protect him from the world. As if you'd always be there but would disappear the second he didn't need you anymore. And how is that fair? He asks himself over and over- how is that fucking fair?!
"Art, I chose to do this." Your voice didnât waver as you looked at him this time. Because you truly believed it. You chose. No one forced you. You decided. "I told you to leave. I told you not to be there. I chose." You repeated it.
Your gaze was piercing. His blue eyes glowed as if he were listening to a prayer. As if God were speaking to him.
Last summer, you both went to a party, and Art drove drunk. He didnât hurt anyone, but he sped and crashed into a bridge. You told him to leave before the police arrived. No one got hurt. There was no reason his entire future should be ruined. He was supposed to start at Stanford. You both were supposed to start at Stanford.
He went on to college, and you started community service.
And thatâs fine; you convinced yourself it was completely fine because you chose it.
"Shug, whatâs your routine?" he asked again, desperate for a piece of information. You hadnât answered calls, and your grandparents had wiped you off the map. Theyâd cut you off from everything you knew to get their beloved granddaughter (who theyâd once seen as an angel until that moment) back on track.
Whatever, so you had to collect a little plastic and paper in Kentucky. So there were more racists there than you'd expected in any place. So someone once called you a "filthy Jew" for asking him not to throw his can on the ground. So what? Your grandparents had been through far worse. And theyâre fine. You helped a friend, and heâs fine.
Youâre fine, too.
Everyone knows youâre fine.
"I'm working, and this year I'll start college, so itâs like I took a gap year- no big deal." You shrugged.
"Are you starting Stanford this year?" Art straightened up for a moment, the spark in his eyes rekindling. He couldnât believe everything could just be left behind. That everything was working out like this. That he only had to wait a year, and it would all be behind you.
"Oh, I gave up on Stanford. I donât really vibe with California," you said, as if it wasnât a big deal, as if your grandfather hadnât tried to convince the university administration to take you back despite the criminal record.
"Fuck, (Y/N)," he started pacing back and forth, unable to believe the nonchalant tone coming out of your mouth.
"Art, itâs not a big deal." You put the second cigarette in your mouth, unable to stand this conversation any longer.
"How is it not a big deal? Your life was ruined," he wanted to shake you, wanted you to get mad at him. To hate him, even if just for a moment. "I lov-"
"Donât say that," you cut him off, taking a step back.
"Why not, Shug? You know itâs true. You know that I-" he tried again, more determined this time.
"You donât love me. you feel guilty, but thereâs no reason, Artie. Really, there isnât," you tried to convince him. "I told you to leave. You didnât ask. I wanted it to be exactly like this. I wanted you to go to Stanford. You dreamed of Stanford," you nodded toward him as you spoke, trying to project confidence instead of the fragility you felt inside.
"We dreamed of Stanford," he stopped pacing and stood in front of you, pressing his forehead against yours.
"Tell me about Stanford," you said softly, feeling your tears well up, almost betraying you and the resolve you tried to uphold.
"So many people. Most of the time, I donât know where I fit. But Tashiâs there, Patrickâs girlfriend." He paused, taking a breath, and you could see he was fighting his own tears.
"Tell me more," you asked.
"The courses are hard. Iâm not good at most of the subjects, not like you. Iâve never played tennis at this level." He continued, "Youâd love the library. Iâm lost there. No one is kind enough to help me find a book." You both chuckled, too afraid to move.
"What else?" you asked, almost desperate for more details.
"I ranked first at Stanford by the end of the season. Maybe next season theyâll want me to start a campaign, go pro. Nike reached out." He said, watching you, seeing your smile grow.
"Thatâs amazing, Art. Itâs everything we wanted." And it really was everything you wanted for him. He was exceptional. You always knew he was exceptional. Heâd walk into a room, and the room would skip a beat. Almost fall silent. Sometimes you wondered if it was the room or just you.
"Itâs not all I wanted," he returned. And you both knew what he meant.
"Youâre going to leave a mark on America, Donaldson. Youâre going to be the biggest thing to come out of here. Youâre going to change American tennis. Ten years from now, little kids will have your poster on their walls." You smiled at him, as he brushed a rough but gentle hand against your cheek, wiping away the tear that managed to escape.
"And you? Where will you be in ten years?" he asked, and in response, you pulled him into a hug. Because maybe you lost a lot over the past year, but it was worth it. You didnât know what your dreams were, the ones you had felt so trivial and small. Like eating pineapple for dinner, learning all the lyrics to Linkin Park songs by heart, managing to read three books a week, loving Art Donaldson.
While your small dreams sometimes flickered to life, Art Donaldson's dreams would change the world, and that was such a clearly humbling thought that no one would ever understand.
The sad truth is that everything you once told him about your dreams and hopes doesnât matter anymore. Everything you shared about who you wanted to be flipped over to help him become who he wanted to be. And thatâs okay. Really okay. Soon Art Donaldson would be everyoneâs and no oneâs at the same time, and in ten years, he would be where he was meant to be, and you would be someone he once knew, someone who told him secrets he wouldnât remember.
.
.
.
As you walked back into the hall, leaving him behind and wondering how smudged your mascara was, you remembered to stand tall.
maybe it will help a little.
Hey there, so here we are with the saddest thing I could possibly write. It's lacking any smut, so sorry for that. I guess it's the only mood I could deliver to the table LOL
I'd like to hear your thoughts as always â¤ď¸
