In the background I hear male voices calling his name.
“Look, the guys and I are going to Central Park before rehearsal since we get no days off.”
“What’s New York like?”
“Busy, just like they say it is. You go outside and there are a million people passing you, some speaking different languages, all in a hurry. Horns and sirens never stop, but you get used to that. We’ve only been here a week. I still have a lot to see.” Keeping it to myself that it doesn’t sound good to me, I listen as he continues, “Galloway has been working us so hard we haven’t time to explore. We’re beat up every night. I go to the local coffee shop, get food from bodegas, and pass out. Stuart has lofts for the performers. There are five guys staying with me.”
Wondering if Stuart told his wife, I try to smile as I say, “Five! That sounds like a lot of fun.”
“It is. I’m having a pretty good time when I’m not missing you.” My heart thuds and I bite my lip on a frown as he goes silent. We stay like this, knowing we have to hang up soon, but neither of us wanting to. Finally his friends shout at him again. “I’ll give you a call sometime.”
“No!” I bolt upright. “Logan Clark, you have to call me once a week! We have to make it a thing.”
“Sam…”
I wipe away a tear as I insist, “We have to make it a thing or you’re going to be swept up, and I’m never going to see you again.”
“The production isn’t going for long.”
“But then there will be another one. And another. You’ll fly to a different country. Then maybe five more. And you’ll forget about me, your best friend living all the way over here in boring Georgia. So we have to make it a thing. Once a week. Promise me!”
His voice is hoarse with emotion. “What day?”
“Monday. Mondays are terrible, but they won’t be if I know I’ll be talking to you.”
Logan sniffs, clears his throat, says a low, “Mondays. Promise,” and hangs up.
I stuff the pillow over my head and sob.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
LOGAN
“P laces!”
Backstage wakes up, everyone hurrying to where they’re supposed to be. Asher is smoothing his shirt, dark hair falling over his eyes as he looks down.
I’m to his right, as usual.
Curiosity gets the best of me tonight, though. I sidle up to him. He glances to me and holds my look before straightening and asking, “I was wondering when this was coming.”
“What happened with you and Sam?”
“She didn’t tell you.” It was a statement, not a question, like I just answered the one he’d been asking himself this whole time. “Huh. Seems like she doesn’t tell you much.”
Fire shoots into my blood. “You want to go there right now, Asher? Because we can take this onstage in front of hundreds of people. I don’t mind.”
“Don’t fucking blow it just because of a girl, Logan,” he hisses, eyes cutting to me. “You’d take you down with me.”
“Tell me what you said! You crush her? Make her want to stay in Atlanta while you moved up in the world? Is that what you do with your co-leads?”
He chuckles, shaking his head. “You don’t know anything.”
“Fill me in.”
“Nah. I’m good.”
“What did I miss?”
There’s so much going on behind his eyes. “Nothing. She chose to stay back.”
My blood is pounding. “You make a move on her?”
“Whoa!” He throws a hand between us, glancing to the curtain that’s about to open. “Calm down.”
“Tell me you didn’t!”
“I swear I never did.”
“You better not have.”
He clocks me, hears the announcement for people to turn off their cell phones as house lights dim. “Sam said she didn’t love me. I was the one who got crushed. Ever thought of that? You and I have something in common.”
Someone grabs my arm, and I get tugged backward. Galloway is inches from my face. “Is there a problem?”
“No, Ma’am.”
She releases me with a warning in her sharp eyes. “Good.”
The curtain opens and we walk out. I remember nothing from the entire performance. Not one thing. Thank God for practice, because auto-pilot saved my life tonight.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
LOGAN
T errence is standing beside the stove while I cook scrambled eggs. “Let me get this right. You’re flying back for a BBQ that’s not for your family, but for the family of the girl you’ve been moping around after ever since I met you?”
Sprinkling salt, I remind him, “Which has only been a couple months.”
“Exactly!” He drops his leg and smacks the counter, rattling the stack of plates. “You need more time before you put yourself in that close of a proximity! When I left Michael I could not see that man for a year. Then and only then. You think I could trust myself not to act a fool? Think again. Know thyself, Logan. Know thyself!”
He’s voicing my fears, and not making this easier. “Her brother is coming home from Chicago. He’s like my brother, too. Her parents are my second parents, I was at their house all the time ever since I was a kid.”
Johan walks in with a towel wrapped around his narrow waist. “My body is loving these nightly performances that all the pansy singers can’t stop fucking griping about. They need to hush their ungrateful asses up.”
Elliot calls over from where he’s reading a magazine on a couch stained by parties before our time. “This is what I was meant to be doing!”
Terrence and I glance over, then he returns to his mission. “Logan, do not for one second think that you will come back to New York after this trip and be floating on puffy clouds of happiness. You will be a sloppy mess we’ll have to clean up!”
Johan jumps onto the counter and picks at a bowl of figs, interest piqued. “What’s this I hear? Our Georgia peach is flying south for some nookie?”
I chuckle, “I wish.”
“No,
