Hypothetical Heart (Farewell Fairwood #2)

Chapter 20

20

Flashback: 6 months ago

M y strolls through Meet in the Margins bookstore have become a daily occurrence. It started as me coming here after school with Genevieve, to study or get homework done. However, it quickly became a group affair, where all of us would come after school every once in a while. A lot of it involved Genevieve yelling at us to get our work done while the rest of us messed around. We still considered it studying, though.

Now, I find myself coming here more often, walking back and forth through the lucrative romance section, picking out new books, reading them in one sitting, and then finding the next book to read.

Today, I walk through the doors and notice a familiar face sitting in one of the chairs near the cafe. “Logan?”

He spins around, a pen in his mouth and a coffee cup in front of him. “Hey, Win.” He smiles, pulling the chair next to him out for me.

“What are you doing here?” I try to catch a glimpse of the papers sitting in front of him.

“College applications,” he sighs. “Gen told me she finished hers the last time she was here, so I thought maybe her good luck would still be circulating through the air.”

“You still haven’t finished? They’re due in a couple days.” I submitted mine last week.

Logan rocks back in his chair, the front legs coming off the ground as he balances. “No, that’s what I’m trying to do right now.”

I set my backpack down as I stand from the chair. “Well, I’ll leave you to it.”

He pulls the pen out of his mouth. “Where are you going?”

“To find a book.”

“Want a drink?” he asks. “I’ll order you one.”

“Hot chocolate, please.” I smile before heading up the spiral staircase of the bookstore. I watch Logan from the second floor—still in his school uniform of a polo and slacks—as he walks up to the counter and orders my drink.

I browse the new releases, seeing ones I’ve read and ones I’ve been eyeing for a few weeks. I pick up a couple different ones before carrying them to the counter, where Mrs. Stevenson is sitting.

“I’ve been waiting for you all week.” She smiles, pulling different books out from under the counter. “I’ve been holding onto these for you.”

It’s the newest release in the series I’ve been reading, along with a few other cartoon-covered romance books. “Awesome!” I set my stack on top of those, letting her ring me up before heading back toward Logan.

“New books?” he asks, narrowing his eyes. “Don’t you have books you still need to read at home? ”

I shrug, feigning innocence. “I don’t know how it happened, just that I suddenly had a stack and I was walking toward the register.”

“Ahh,” he drones, like it makes complete sense.

It’s quite a while later when Logan stands from his chair, throwing his arms in the air, with a look of pure relief covering his face.

“Done?”

He nods. “Finally.”

I’m one hundred pages into my book, which is roughly the amount of time it took Logan to write two paragraphs of his college application essay.

“Is it good enough for Harvard?” I joke.

“Yeah, right.” He laughs. “The day I go to Harvard is the day pigs will be able to fly.”

In our friend group, eight out of ten of our parents went to Yale. The other two went to Columbia. That’s where all our allegiances lie in terms of Ivy Leagues. However, I know that Logan is set on NYU.

I thought Logan would be packing up his things to leave now that he finished what he came here to do, but instead, he sits back down.

“What are you doing?” I ask, biting the inside of my cheek.

“Staying with you,” he says as if it’s obvious. He opens his laptop, busying himself with something else.

“If you want to go home, you can.”

He gives me a stern look over his computer screen. “Win, if I wanted to go home, I would.”

I nod, looking back down at my book. The bookstore is perfectly quiet, the only sounds being the whirring of the coffee pots in the cafe and the clicking of Logan typing. The serene feeling the dim lighting gives is the main reason I come back here so often. Yes, maybe my empty house is quiet, but it’s not the type of cozy quiet you want to curl up with a book to. It’s more of a sterile, creepy silence.

After a while, I look back up, and Logan’s head is still buried in his computer.

“What are you working on now?” I ask.

“The paper for AP Gov.”

“Oh shit,” I gasp, dropping my book on the table. “I completely forgot about that.”

Logan easily senses my panic. “It’s not due until Monday, Win.”

“I haven’t even started it.” I pull my backpack onto the table, already grabbing my laptop.

Logan scoots his chair closer to me, turning his laptop to face me to show me the directions. I rub my hands against my face as I try to remember the details of the assignment that were explained in class.

“I guess I’m going to be here a while,” I sigh. I’m partially tempted to call it a night and avoid the task for as long as possible, but just knowing other people have already started gives me the kick I need to start it now.

“Do you want help?” Logan highlights the key parts of the directions, narrowing down all of the things I need to know. It gives me butterflies, the way he knows just what to do to help ease my anxiety.

“Um…” I lean closer, getting a better look at the topics to choose from. “I’m not sure.”

I take a deep breath, trying to realign my thoughts so I might be able to form usable ideas, but I’m too focused on the boy in front of me. The way his hands move across his keyboard as he researches the different topics, trying his best to help me, and how his hair keeps falling in his eyes to the point where all I want to do is push it back for him.

“You don’t have to do that,” I tell him when he opens yet another tab to research the third topic. “You have your own work to do.”

“It’s not a big deal,” he says, and when he looks up, our noses are practically touching.

Yet, neither of us makes an attempt to move away from the other, almost like the closeness has left us in a trance, and neither of us can look away.

I don’t want to say something in fear of breaking the spell we both seem to be under, but the longer we stare at one another, acting like something is going to happen, the more I get the feeling that nothing is going to happen.

In a split second, I make the decision to move back, but right before my body does what my brain is telling it to, Logan starts to move closer, and I can no longer obey what the rational part of my head is begging me to do.

As he gets closer, my blood gets warmer, and it takes everything in me not to break out in a smile at the mere thought of what could happen when he’s getting just close enough.

Involuntarily, I move closer too, adjusting my legs to the side so our knees don’t bump. I’m not sure if either of us has a complete grasp on what we think is about to happen, but it doesn’t matter, we’re both moving solely on instinct.

And milliseconds before our lips are close enough to touch, the bell above the door rings, not only signaling that someone has entered the store but also breaking the silence we were entranced in and forcing the two of us to break apart. I almost just kissed Logan Callaghan in the middle of my favorite bookstore.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, trying to avoid the awkwardness that is bound to plague me.

Logan only shrugs as if there’s nothing embarrassing about the situation. “I’m not.”

The moment of silence that follows sits between us like a bomb, and the pin is in my hand. I don’t know what this means for us, but I find myself thinking that so frequently it barely rattles me anymore.

I see every act of the universe that separates us as purposeful, and whatever that means, I’m not willing to take any chances.