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One More Try

Logan was sitting in a diner in Paterson, New Jersey, spoon poised over a cup of coffee, when Kitty asked him that question. He set the spoon down and just looked at her.

She was smiling. “Come on. Don’t be all whatever, Logan. You guys don’t need to hide it anymore. We all know that you’re together.”

He continued to stare.

Bobby tensed. He cast Kitty a sideways glance. Logan could tell that Bobby didn’t approve of where Kitty had just taken the conversation. Probably because he was still slightly afraid of Logan.

Logan tilted his chin downward and looked back and forth between Bobby and Kitty. “What?”

“We want the details, Logan. Spill.” Kitty sat back and flashed another smile. “It’s not nice of you to keep secrets from us. We’re a team, remember?”

Logan didn’t move. He was thinking.

“You’re about to send me in to buy weapons off of the Nasty Boys, and you won’t tell us about the big romance between you and Storm.”

He looked away. He looked for the waitress. Then he looked down at his coffee and picked up the spoon again. “Who’s ‘we’?” he said. “Who all knows?”

Kitty laughed and reached over to gently punch Bobby’s arm. “I told you,” she said to him. She glanced back and Logan. “Bobby and I made a bet. I made the bet that you are a couple and that I could get you to fess up. That’s twenty bucks, Bobby.”

Logan shook his head and took a sip. He looked at Bobby. Thought about saying something to him about the foolishness of betting against Kitty Pryde, but thought better of it. “Is this true?”

Bobby gave a small smile.

“She just took you for twenty dollars?” Logan shook his head again.

“We want details, Logan,” Kitty said, still leaning back. “Sweet.” She beamed.

Logan put his coffee down and closed his eyes. He covered his forehead with one hand.

“Don’t worry,” Bobby said, perhaps sensing that Logan’s discomfort needed to be ameliorated. “We’re the only ones who figured it out.”

“Yeah,” Kitty said. “No one else suspects. Just us. But you can tell us everything.”

Logan set his elbows on the table. How to tell a couple of idealistic, romantic eighteen-year-olds that having sex and being a couple were two different things? He didn’t want to be the one to shatter that dream.

“So when did it happen?” Kitty asked. “When did you guys get together?”

“You want details,” he said.

She nodded.

“Ask her,” he said, reaching in his shirt pocket for a cigarette. He suspected that the diner was smoke free, but he was going to try to get away with it anyway. “You two ready to go?”

They looked at each other. And then looked at him. “Yeah, we’re ready,” Bobby said.

###

Logan hated this kind of work. Of all of things he routinely did in his new life, sending Kitty Pryde into dangerous situations was the most unpleasant. It made him nervous. She could handle the work, the undercover work, but he felt in some ways that she wasn’t right for it. She was smart as hell, sure”but too nice. Something about her was just too milk-fed. He would have rather sent Rogue”who was no longer a mutant, of course”or Jubilee”who was too young. Those two had an edge. Kitty was too clean, too cared-for. But she was all they had.

They were trying to figure out whether or not the Nasty Boys were behind the recent spate of cure clinic bombings in the tri-state area. Kitty was inside of the boarded up storefront that served as a makeshift headquarters, and she was talking to these shitheads. She was posing as a disgruntled teenage punk turned homegrown terrorist. Trying to volunteer for the cause. Logan and Bobby waited, listened in on the headphones.

Logan was in the back seat, eyes closed, head down. He willed himself not to breathe as she got closer to closing the deal.

“She’ll be okay,” Bobby whispered.

Logan opened his eyes. Bobby was sitting in the captain’s seat, but he had turned around to look at Logan.

“Shh,” Logan said. He needed to hear every word that Kitty spoke.

When she emerged from the building three minutes later, she started to walk down the street as they had planned. He told Bobby to get in the driver’s side and start the car. They’d pick her up at the bicycle shop down the street.

He still didn’t feel any kind of relief.

###

Kitty had asked him when he and Storm had first gotten together. A nice way of saying “hooked up” or “got weak” or just “caved in.” The whole thing had been a long time coming. He didn’t know, looking back, how they’d held out for so long.

And the thing was, he remembered the exact date, time, and place, too. He wondered what Storm thought, what she remembered or chose to forget. He just couldn’t figure it all out. The woman was unreadable to him”except in bed. Except when they were together, just giving and taking from one another, just trying to wrestle something other than plain ordinariness out of a situation that had lasted longer than either of them had expected. At those times, he could see that she really liked it. Liked him, he thought, somewhat smugly. And then he realized that he really had no idea how she felt about him. It was possible that she just liked it, not him. And why was he so intent on proving otherwise? Oh, it drove him crazy.

They were just friends, he thought. Friends who just happened to need something from each other once in a while. But friendship in and of itself was something he didn’t just share with anybody.

When he got back from Paterson, he went straight to her office. Didn’t bother to knock.

She was sitting at the computer. “I assumed it went well,” she said, without looking up. “Because you didn’t call.”

“How long are we going to have to keep cooperating with law enforcement?” Logan said, flopping down in the chair. “What a pain. All that red tape.”

She let go of the mouse and wheeled her chair around to face him. “What did they say?”

“That what Kitty got was good enough for now.”

“Good,” Storm said, her eyes lingering on his for just a moment longer than usual. She gave him a small, knowing smile. “Leave the file and I’ll go through it. I appreciate you covering for me. Thanks, Logan.”

“Kitty asked about us,” he blurted out. Then he felt weird. He didn’t know what had possessed him to say that.

The smile dropped from her face. She took a slow, measured breath. “So you told her that there is no us, right?”

“Of course,” he said. Too easily perhaps.

“Do you know where she got that idea?”

He set his hand on his thigh. That night, he knew, she’d drag the palm of her hand along his thigh before tugging at his belt. And then his zipper. He looked up. “No. I mean, I have a feeling that it was just speculation on her part.” He paused. “Wishful thinking, maybe.” He smiled. (He couldn’t help it.)

She blinked. “Yeah.”

He got up from the chair and hooked his thumbs in his belt. “So what else do you need me to do today?”

She grinned. “Well, the kids want to go see the new Harry Potter tonight.”

Oh, anything but that. “Again? Didn’t I just take them to see that?”

“Probably. Or something similar. I know. Those movies all run together.” Her hands lingered on the desktop. “Well, I can take them if you’re not up to it.”

“No, that’s okay.” He only had to look at her to know that she was exhausted. Running the school, even in the summer, was a big task, and Storm had taken on the work of the professor and Scott and Jean. Logan did what he could, but he knew that he lacked the necessary knowledge to search for and write up grants, hire new teachers, design curriculum, and keep everything in line with state and federal guidelines. Not to mention the actual teaching thing. He had his stuff”expense reports and operations and inventory”but none of that was as onerous as her highly specialized list of things to do. So when she put him in charge of the clinic bombings, he knew it was because she really could not take on another task.

That night she would be tired, he thought. Too tired to stay up and talk or laugh afterwards, which they sometimes did together. Sometimes, after sex or between rounds, they sat there and talked about a few things, whatever came up, whatever. Ho-hum things about some student’s antics, or something that had once happened to him up in Saskatchewan, or something Bobby and Peter did when they thought no one was looking. And usually these conversations went best when they weren’t really looking at each other, or when they were lying slightly apart, looking up at the ceiling. Last time they’d talked, he’d taken the initiative to drape his arm across her abdomen”just some little gesture of closeness. She’d gone still. “You should probably get back to your room,” she whispered. He said, “Yeah,” coming back to himself, realizing that this bed, this place, her”none of it was really his.

That night she would put off sleep and stay up for him. Perhaps she’d be grateful that he’d taken the kids to a Harry Potter movie so that she could get some work done. So maybe she’d be aggressive with him. Or maybe not. Maybe she’d just want him to give it to her. He liked her either way”wrestling him into his place, or open and willing. But no matter how hard he pushed she pushed back until they were one in the same, together, all wrapped up and inside of one another. That’s what he liked about this whole arrangement. He hadn’t found that kind of give-and-take balance, sexual or otherwise, with anyone in a long time”maybe ever. Tonight, maybe she’d dig her heel into the small of his back and lift herself off the bed to meet him, or maybe she’d bite the inside of his neck, knowing full well she wouldn’t leave a bruise. Maybe she’d be on top and he’d press his hand against the underside of her breast and keep her there for longer than either of them anticipated.

He thought about all of these things. He thought about them all the time. He was glad she couldn’t read his mind.

It all started a couple of months ago. He wouldn’t say that he planned it, but he certainly hadn’t been taken by surprise, either. The first time seemed strange and inevitable”strange because it happened so quickly”and inevitable because after they did it he looked up and couldn’t believe that they had never done it before. It was spring and she’d found him in the garden working on the fence, and she’d been wearing a white shirt, something that he liked because he felt it matched her hair and fit her well, and she was beautiful, and he knew this, but they’d never gotten along. They’d spent the winter grumpy and irritated. Avoiding each other or squabbling occasionally. He didn’t like the fact that she was controlling, and she didn’t like that he did things in the order he wanted to, and she must have suspected that he’d leave eventually anyway. The few times that they joked or talked or got along felt like a Christmas truce. He knew that she found him uncouth and uncooperative. She was only partly right.

So that afternoon in the garden, when he reached over and kissed her, she must have thought he was just trying something out, just messing with her. But he’d been thinking about it.

Twenty-four hours earlier, he’d taken Bobby, Kitty, and Rogue to the post office to mail the acceptance slips and deposits to their chosen colleges. “Certified mail,” Kitty said. “Means we know it got there. So we don’t have to worry about them offering our spots to anyone else.”

He waited in the car while they dashed into the post office. Even Rogue looked happy, somewhat liberated in the warm spring afternoon. All winter she’d seemed strange and subdued, as if she was just waiting for things to end. Now she looked lighter. He sat back in the seat. The kids were moving on. In four months they’d be off somewhere else. Bobby and Kitty weren’t going that far away”Connecticut”but Rogue was going far upstate, some college near the Canadian border.

He gripped the steering wheel. He didn’t know why the realization unsettled him. Maybe because he was usually the one who did the leaving. He didn’t know what it was to be left behind. Why did Rogue have to go so far away? It was five hours; he remembered because he’d taken her to visit the school that March. He had hoped, at the time, that she would choose the school that was closer to the Institute.

So the next day when he kissed Storm, he didn’t want to think that all of this was connected. He wanted to think that these incidents were independent”floating variables, lazy determinants, accidents. And luckily, Storm kissed him back. And didn’t seem that surprised either. And that was all the encouragement he needed. Later that night, when he went to her room, he knew that he just wanted to find something out, and that she did too. He stood in the doorway and asked her something. She told he could come in, and he did, and shut the door behind him, but she didn’t move back, so he moved forward, and the space between them closed, and they were kissing each other again, and this time more forcefully, and he reached under her shirt, and she surprised him by just taking it off.

They found the bed.

She helped pull his shirt off and then went back to taking her own clothes off”bra, pants, everything else. There was something smooth and familiar about her touch”practiced but not predictable. She seemed not to hesitate or falter, and she also seemed interested. Then, once they were both naked she did hesitate a little. “Hold on,” she whispered between kisses and pulled away.

He took his hand from her left breast and looked up. “I have something,” he said, reaching for his pants, which lay crumpled at the end of the bed. Then he realized how it must have looked to her”like he’d planned the entire thing, that he’d come to her room coolly, premeditatedly, looking for sex.

She paused for a second and then nodded. “Okay.” And leaned back against the mattress.

When he rose to enter her he fumbled a little bit, slipped and ended up jamming her shoulder against the headboard. He gasped and pulled back, and she smiled and reached for him again. This time he braced himself against the headboard and entered her and covered her mouth with his. When they were locked together he tried not to think about this, tried not to think in terms of right or wrong, and that was easy because the world left him immediately and he was simply grasping for something, and coming to terms. He just felt that he was reaching. And the pleasure bloomed behind his eyes and he must have groaned or made some kind of noise because she shushed him and then tightened her legs around him, her finger on his lips. He was alert to the change in her breathing, the tell-tale signal that this was good for her too, and that she was going to come.

And she did, and he did too, and afterwards he caught her mouth with his and kissed her, more deeply than either of them had expected him to.

They passed several minutes in silence. “I should go,” he finally whispered, and then watched for her reaction.

“Okay,” she said. She didn’t seem disappointed. But she didn’t seem relieved, either. (This was why she frustrated him so much.)

That night, when he went back to his room, he couldn’t sleep. The sex had done him good”except where it hadn’t. He wondered if he should leave. He’d overstepped his boundaries here; he and Storm shouldn’t mess around like this, if only for the fact that he didn’t know how she might react, or what she might require from him. He knew she didn’t love him, and he didn’t love her either. But what if this incident made things weird? They were friends, finally; the long winter was gone and the summer was ahead of them, and he didn’t particularly care to ruin things. (He always had a feeling that he was going to ruin things anyway.)

She surprised him (again) by caring less than he thought she would, and perhaps less than he would have liked. “I’m sorry,” he said on the morning after, when he met her in the stairwell and it was early and no one else was up. “That’s okay,” she said, smiling. Which was not to be confused with “I wanted you to.” And then she said that she had fun but that they probably shouldn’t do it again.

Except that they did. Of course they did. First, weekly. Then, a few times a week. As spring stretched toward summer, they had sex frequently, and he found himself responding to the mere suggestion of it, to her presence, to her voice. And she was probably responding to him too, but she didn’t let on.

On the last day of school she went outside to greet the parents and say goodbye to the kids who had someplace to go for three months. He stayed away from the parents. He skulked around the mansion and kept things in line for the others, some of whom had started acting out”in jealousy, perhaps. (One kid, Michael, had drawn a large, purple penis on the door of a room of a girl he disliked. Logan just handed him some paint and told him to fix it.)

He was making his way through the professor’s old study and stepped out onto the balcony where he ran into Storm. She was sitting on the bench, arms wrapped around her torso, and she was crying. Sobbing quietly.

“Oh my God,” he said, and went to her. “What happened? Are you okay?”

She looked up, her eyes red. She unfolded her arms and worked hard to collect herself. Forced a smile. “I’m fine, I’m fine.” A look of embarrassment flickered over her face. “Damn,” she said.

He stopped and just stood there. “Do you want me to come back later?”

She looked down for a second, and then just chuckled. “This is going to sound so stupid.” She took a deep breath and wiped away her tears. Smiled at him. “I just”this feels so stupid but . . . every year I get sad when I see the kids leave.”

“Oh,” he said. He put his hands in his pockets and looked down at her. “I don’t think it’s stupid.” But he thought it was slightly insane. He didn’t feel that way about the kids. Not most of them. He was kind of relieved to see them go. Now the mansion would be quieter. He could get more work done. Did he feel it was his duty to protect the kids? Yes. Did he like them? Sometimes. Would he miss them? No.

“It is, it is dumb.” She sighed. “Jean and Scott used to make fun of me. They called it empty-nest syndrome and they were sort of merciless when it came to teasing. But I don’t know. Sometimes a lot can happen in a summer. Sometimes they don’t come back”their parents aren’t willing to pay the money anymore, or they just want to go back to public school and live at home. Who knows.”

He walked over and sat next to her. Put his arm behind her (not around her). Thought about what to say.

“You think I’m crazy,” she said.

“I think we should get out, darlin’.” He crossed one leg over the other and gave her a sideways glance. “Celebrate.”

“But the kids””

“We’ll put Bobby and Kitty in charge of them. But you and I are overdue for drinks.”

So they went out that night to a restaurant”nicer than the ones he usually frequented”and sat in a booth and ate and talked and drank. She ran a hand along his thigh. He didn’t flinch when she touched his crotch. “Summer’s always fun,” she whispered, and he kissed her right there in public, and she let him.

“At least you’re not crying anymore,” he said, and she laughed.

When they got back to the mansion, they barely made it to her room. Afterwards she curled up against him, her hand on his chest, and he wondered if it was the wine or if something between them had changed.

He ran a hand through her hair. “Why don’t you ever want me to call you by your real name?”

“Because you mispronounce it,” she said, sighing against him. “It’s just not how we know each other.”

He could tell she was about to drift off to sleep. He started to pull away.

She opened her eyes. “You know, you don’t have to go. You can spend the night here.”

He reached for his shirt. He couldn’t stay with her, but it was nothing personal. “I have nightmares,” he said.

Her eyes lingered over him. “How often?”

He moved to the edge of the bed and glanced back at her. “Every time I sleep.” He pulled on his shirt. Then he bent over her and kissed her one more time.

When he left her that night, he knew he’d gotten attached. He knew she probably had too. And that just made things complicated because he knew he knew he would someday have to leave, have to untangle himself from this situation and move on. It was just how it worked. He couldn’t stay. And he knew that if he left, he would upset her. She might not ever forgive him now. But no”that wasn’t true. She would be upset just for a little while, and then things would go on without him, and the kids would sustain her, and the school and team would still be hers. She would forget about how he once made her feel, how he had once offered her something unexpected but fleeting. But he had nothing but a few memories to revisit and rehash, and she”all of this”would become one of them. It would grow bigger as time passed. It would seem more important than it was, more defining. He wouldn’t be able to just let it go.





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