I let his words sink in.
Silence filled the space around us.
"I appreciate it, man. I really do. The past is my past, though. I'm done with it. I just want to move on. Move forward."
He nodded once, and a slow smile developed on his face. "With Amanda?"
"Yup."
"How long have you been back?"
"A few weeks."
"Did she know where you were?"
"Nope."
"So you've been back a few weeks, and you already got the girl?"
I smirked at him, the cockiness in me returning. "Well," I puffed out my chest like the dick I was feigning to be. "I'm still Logan Matthews. That shit hasn't changed."
He laughed, shaking his head. "Fuck, I've missed having you around."
***
Amanda stood up when I returned to the bonfire; she'd been sitting on an abandoned log with a bottle of water in her hand. She’d told me that her not drinking wasn't a vow of any sort, it just wasn't something she was interested in right now. I respected her decision and never questioned it, even though I disagreed with the reasoning behind it. "Did you miss me?" I asked her, taking her newly emptied spot and bringing her back down on my lap.
She nodded, the corners of her lips lifting.
"Good," I rubbed my nose along her jaw. "I missed the shit out of you."
Lucy piped up, "Alright, Nicholas Sparks. Leave the girl alone." She lifted a can of beer in the air as an offering.
"It's okay, I'll drive back," Amanda said.
I nodded at Lucy, right before she threw the can right at my head. My catcher reflexes took action. "Holy shit, girl, you got a good arm." I shook out my hand from the pain caused by catching it.
Lucy shrugged. "Jake's been coaching me."
I looked over at Jake, who shrugged. "I needed something to do while you were gone."
Micky laughed. She sat on the ground in front Jake as he rubbed her shoulders. "He kind of went a little crazy without you, Logan. Don't disappear again."
"Yeah, asshole." That was Heidi. It was the first time she'd spoken since we got here.
"Nice to see you, too," I greeted.
She had a beer in her hand, her eyes half closed. Her head tilted back against the seat.
And then it hit me. No Dylan.
"Where's Dylan?" I asked the group, but my eyes never left Heidi.
She laughed. It was bitter. Kind of like the one Amanda uses. "Afghanistan," she deadpanned.
"What?" I looked around at everyone else. "What's he doing there?"
"Marines," she stated, just as flat.
"Huh." Amanda spoke. Everyone turned to her, even Heidi.
"What do you mean 'huh'?" Heidi asked her. Her tone was cold, icy. Not at all the Heidi I know.
Amanda seemed to shrink into herself. "Just—I mean—he actually decided to go ahead with it." I wanted to ask her what she meant, how she knew this, but Heidi beat me to it. She stood now, her eyes narrowed at Amanda. My arms tightened around her. It was instinct. "You knew?" Heidi spat. "How the fuck—wait—I don't care. You knew and you didn't stop him?"
Amanda's body tensed, but her words didn't show it. "I'm sorry, Heidi, but I don't know you or Dylan all that well. I just bumped into him once, and he told me he was thinking about it. That's all."
Heidi took a step closer. "So what? You encouraged him?"
"I just listened to him. That's it."
Then Heidi exploded. "He's in fucking Afghanistan! He broke up with me, joined the marines, and is in fucking Afghanistan! And you knew!" She took another step towards us. Jake and Cameron both stood. "You knew and you just fucking let him go." She was yelling now, her face red with rage.
Amanda tried to stand, but I held her down. Whatever was going on with Heidi, she needed to leave it alone.
Amanda slowly pried my fingers and hands off her so she could get to her feet. She took a few steps forward until she was toe to toe with Heidi, her fists balled at her sides. "I didn't do shit. I told you, all I did was listen to him. You knew where he was, right?" Her voice was calm. Smooth, almost.
Heidi nodded. If she was surprised by Amanda's actions, it didn't show.
"So he told you he was leaving? He told you where he was going? He kept in touch? Told you how he was? Wrote to you?"
Heidi's eyes were huge now, but she nodded again.
"Good." Amanda said. "That's fucking great." Her voice got louder, her initial calmness all but gone. "That's a hell of a lot more than I got from Logan. You at least got to say goodbye. You get to know that he's safe." Her voice changed. She was holding back a sob. I stood up and placed a hand on her shoulder, trying to soothe her. She jerked away from my touch. "You get to write to him. Occasionally, get a phone call from him. I got nothing. NOTHING. He could've been dead and I wouldn't have even known." She wiped her face.
"Amanda." I tried to get her attention. I wanted her to turn her around so I could see her. I wanted her to stop talking. Her words weren't just hurting her, or Heidi—they were hurting me, too.
Eventually, she turned around, but she was still pissed. "No, Logan," she ground out. "She got to say goodbye. Her boyfriend—or whatever the fuck he is—is out there, serving our country, doing something he believes in. And he keeps in touch. She can write. He can call. It's so much more than I got. And I won't stand here and be blamed for that shit." She turned around and faced Heidi. "Just be fucking thankful that he loves and cares about you enough to let you know he's safe. Because it's sure as shit a lot more than I fucking got."
Heidi stepped back and wiped at her eyes. I don't know who she was crying for—Amanda or herself.
Amanda turned back to me. "I'm sorry," she said, before brushing past me and walking away. And I just stood there, not knowing what the fuck just happened.
Then I heard Lucy. "Bitch, you best go after your girl. You better fight for her, like you promised. You ain't lettin' her go again. Nuh-uh, I ain't letting that shit happen no more."
Then I felt a full can of beer smack into my stomach. "Oomph," I grunted.
"Fuck, baby," Cam whined. "Quit throwing beers around."
"Go, Logan!" Jake yelled.
It pulled me out of my daze. "Shit!"
24
Logan
I found her sitting in the bed of my truck, her knees up against her chest and her head in between them. Her soft cries filled the night air. I climbed up and sat next to her. I didn't touch her, or comfort her. Honestly, I wasn't sure if she was pissed at me or not.
"Hey, pretty girl."
She sniffed once, and then lifted her head. Her blue eyes glistened with tears. She wiped at her cheeks. "I'm sorry, Logan."
"What?" I said. "You have no reason to be sorry."
She moved in closer to me and leaned her head against my shoulder. "I shouldn't have let all that stuff come out, especially in front of your friends. I embarrassed you—"
"Babe," I cut her off. "I don't care about my friends, or what they think. I just care about you."
She looked up at me, her eyes huge.
"Will you play a game with me?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Two truths for fifteen?"
"Okay," she answered quietly.
I stretched out my legs in front of me and tugged on her hand until she got the hint. Straddling my hips, she placed her arms on my shoulders, her excessive amount of bracelets clanking against each other. "So, you hate me?" I asked her.
She rolled her eyes. "I don't hate you."
"But you're mad at me?"
She sighed loudly as her body slumped. Nodding slowly, she let her words come out in a rush. "I am. I mean—you know I love you, and I've tried not to be mad, I really have. But I can't help it. I'm glad you're back. I'm glad we've found each other, but that doesn't change the fact that you just left. And I know that you have your reasons, and that's fine. But you could've said goodbye. I was right there, that day when I came to see you. You could've told me you were leaving
.
"I spent a year worried about you, wondering if you were okay, if I was ever going to see you again. I got that one letter from you, and that's all. A whole year, Logan. Surely you would've known that I'd worry about you. What you did—leaving like that, that wasn't fair to me, and you know it."
"I know," I said quietly, looking down between us. "And I'm sorry. I guess I just thought that you'd forget about me soon enough, you know?"
She lifted my chin with her finger, the way I'd done to her so many times. "I don't know what would make you think that. We weren't just some boy and girl who fell in love. What we had—we were more than that. At least, that's how it felt to me."
I swallowed down the lump that'd formed in my throat. "It was that way for me, too, babe." I brought her in closer. "I guess I should've known better. Looks like I have a year’s worth of mistakes to make up for."
"Hm," she said, tapping her index finger against her lips. She eyed the sky. "How ever shall you start?"
I pinched her sides. She squealed and squirmed. "Show me your boobs and I'll show you where I'll start."
"You're a pig." She giggled.
Chuckling, I started to kiss up her neck, across her jaw, to her lips. "I love you," I whispered against them. "You're my heart, Amanda. And one day soon, I'll give you the world, just like I said I would in that letter."
She pulled back slightly. "I don't need the world, Logan. I just need you."
***
By the time we got back to the bonfire, Heidi was gone. She'd called a friend to pick her up, but wanted to make sure that Amanda knew how sorry she was for the way she’d acted. She’d told the others that she'd call me. I wasn't too fazed. It wasn't me she had to apologize to.
"It's fine," Amanda told them.
"It's not fine," I said. "She should apologize to you."
"Logan." She said my name like I was a kid that needed calming down. "Her heart's in the right place, she just let her emotions take over."
Cam raised a beer. I nodded. He threw it, but it landed a few feet in front of me. Amanda stood to pick it up the same time Lucy quipped, "Weak, babe. I'm so ashamed of you right now." She shook her head.
"So," Jake started. "I take it you're back for good?"
"Yup," I answered. "Or, for as long as this little lady will have me." I kissed Amanda on the cheek.
"Oh no," Micky laughed, then looked at Lucy. "He has turned into Nicholas Sparks."
"Right?" Lucy all but yelled. "I told you."
Amanda's body shook with her giggle.
"Who the fuck is Nicholas Sparks?" Jake asked.
"The Notebook?" Cam answered, his tone serious. "How do you not know The Notebook?"
Jake huffed, "What the fuck is The Notebook?"
Cam gasped like girl. "The Notebook!" he yelled, as if repeating the words would somehow make Jake understand what the fuck he was talking about. "What is wrong with you?"
We laughed.
"It's really good to have you home, man," Jake said. "But if you leave like that again, I'm getting on every plane possible and finding you, and when I do, I'm gonna beat your ass. I'm not even close to kidding."
You could always tell when Jake was angry or serious; his accent got stronger.
"If I ever do it again, I give you permission to do so. But trust me, there's no way it'll happen." I held on to Amanda tighter. "I have way too much to lose. I won't go through that again."
***
We ended up leaving before midnight. Lucy and Cameron had promised they’d take her brothers to a carnival the next day. They invited us along. I knew Amanda would want to. She couldn't say no to the food or the Ferris wheels. Jake and Micky had to leave; they were flying out early the next morning to see Micky's non-aunt's new baby—or something.
"Do you miss your old car?" she asked from the driver's seat of my truck on the way to Dad's.
I shrugged. "Not really. When I was sixteen, a Mercedes was the greatest thing in the world. Now, I just want to be able to get from one place to another. Money could be much better spent on other things."
She grabbed my hand and placed it on her leg. I loved it when she did shit like that. "Yeah?" she asked. "Like what?"
"Like . . . I dunno, for example; malaria. It's the fourth leading cause of death in third-world countries. For ten dollars you can buy a net that helps prevent it, maybe save a kid’s life, you know? Do you know what that means? That means the money spent on my first car, could've bought ten thousand nets. That's ten thousand potential lives I could've saved. I'm not saying that I'm not thankful to my dad for buying the car, or that I don't appreciate how hard he works for that monetary success. And, I mean, you know my dad as well as I do, he doesn't do it for the money. I don't know, I just don't think enough people our age know about shit like that."
She didn't respond, just continued to drive in silence. The occasional street lamp lit up her face. Her brows were drawn, her mind deep in thought.
I squeezed her leg once. "What are you thinking?"
She glanced over at me, as if she'd forgotten I was even here. "It feels like I've fallen in love with you, for the first time, all over again."
***
"This place brings back memories," she said quietly. We were lying in bed in the pool house, side by side, on our backs, holding hands.
"Yeah, it really does."
She turned on her side to face me. I did the same. "Good or bad for you?"
"A lot of good, a lot of bad. Both, I guess."
She nodded slowly. "Me, too."
I moved closer to her, and then flipped us so she was on top. She sat up, her legs folded on either side of me. Her fingers traced the dips of my abs. She had her wrists full of bracelets. I examined each one carefully. "Surely you can't sleep with eleventy-three bracelets on?"
She giggled. "Eleventy-three?"
"Lucy's brother, Lachlan, swears it's a thing."
"Is Lachlan the one that got me to go out with you?"
I laughed. "Yup."
"Good kid." She started removing the bracelets and setting them on the nightstand.
"He's my favorite." I watched her remove them one by one. The last one stood out; it was brighter and thicker than the rest. I'd seen it before. "This looks familiar."
She took it off and examined it quickly before placing it with the others. "Yeah, your dad gave it to me. It's Tina's—his high school sweetheart."
Now I remembered. I'd seen it in pictures of her.
I picked up Amanda’s hands and ran my thumbs on the inside of her wrists, right over the marks. I gazed up at her, her eyes intently fixated on where my thumbs were skimming. I lifted them and placed a kiss on each one. Her breath caught. I felt her body tense above me.
"Do you want to know about them?" she asked.
Of course I wanted to know. I’d wanted to know since the day I saw them at the bookstore. "Yes." My voice cracked. I cleared my throat.
She sucked in a breath, and then let it all out. "I got it the day of your birthday. It was meant to be a surprise. I was going to show you that night."
My heart dropped. I felt it fall to my stomach.
She placed her forearms on my chest, palm up. "See?" she said, tracing the letters of the tattoo. "LM on one side, AM on the other." She shifted her arms so the tattoos were half connected. "When I do this, the letters form a heart. Because that's what you were to me." Her voice broke. "You were my person, Logan. The other half of my heart." I pulled her down so I could hold her closer. Tighter. Her body began to shake. "Those fucking monsters stole our moment. They stole all our moments." She lifted her head; her tear soaked eyes penetrated mine. "They stole you away from me."
I held her head in my hands and kissed her hard. "No one stole me away from you. I told you that you own me. You've always owned me. I was always yours."
I lifted her wrists to my lips and kissed them again. Closing my eyes, I took a breath. I wanted savor this moment—with her in my arms and our forever in front of us.
"Did you ever think to get them removed?" I asked.
"No," she answered quickly. "Never. The year you were gone, I could look at them and remember the feelings I had when I got them, and all those feelings I had for you. The way you made me feel alive, and the way you made me feel loved. The way you made me feel like I was the only girl in the entire world. And how you'd do anything and everything for me. You took my nightmares and turned them into dreams. If ten, twenty, thirty years from now, I look down at them and can still feel all those things, still remember the way I felt—the love I felt when I was with you, then it's worth keeping."
"And you still feel that way about me?"
"No." She shook her head, but her eyes stayed on mine. "Now, I feel more."
"And what if I didn't come back? What if you'd married some other asshole?"
"Then that other asshole would always know that I belonged to you first."
I inhaled slowly, as I let her words sink in. "I love you so fucking much," I told her, right before I kissed her. I needed her to know how I felt; I wanted this kiss to represent it, but I don't think it even came close.
She smiled down at me. "I love you, too, babe."
"Ha." I swallowed down my nerves. "No, Amanda, I don't think you get it." I held her tighter and brought her head to my chest. "I don't just love you. It's like the word I want to use hasn't been invented yet. Maybe it's because no one's ever felt this type of love before. Maybe I'm the first to feel it. I don't know. I can't explain it. But those words—I love you—they just don't seem like enough. Not anymore."
I gripped the back of her shirt with my hand to try to hide the trembling. It didn't work. She felt it right away, like she was a part of me. "Your hand's shaking." She placed her hand on my heart. I'm sure she could feel it.
Thump.
Thump.
"What's going on, Logan?"
I tried to level my breathing, let my body settle down, but it wouldn't change what was happening. It wouldn't change how I felt, or what I wanted to say. So I told her the truth. "I'm trying really hard to stop myself from asking you a really, really, stupid question."