If You're Out There(17)

“It’s weird, right? It almost seems like . . .”

Our eyes meet. “She’s acting like she knows you.”

We sit there quietly for a moment, staring down at the phone. My brain has hit a wall. It does not compute. None of this is right. Is she flirting with a stranger? And what’s with all those cutesy exclamation points? Although, I don’t know. I sigh. “Maybe she thinks you’re . . . cute?”

“I mean.” Logan stretches his long legs onto the coffee table, gesturing to himself.

“I take it back,” I say, rolling my eyes.

“Can’t,” he says seriously. “Can’t take it back.”

“I bet she has you confused with someone else,” I say, moving on. “But hey, you’ve got her talking. Maybe you should write back.”

“Okay,” he says. “How about this . . .”

loganhartist @thepriyapatel514 A lot of people miss you, you know.

“It’s good,” I say. “That could get us somewhere.”

Logan scans the room. “I like your house, by the way. It’s so . . . quiet.”

“Quiet, huh? What, is your aunt keeping you up with ragers all night?”

He grins. “Hey. Bonnie can get down when she wants.”

I relax into the cushions. “Well, it’s usually more hectic here. My little brother’s out.”

“How old?” asks Logan.

“Seven.”

“Huh. My sister’s six.” He pulls up a picture on his phone. The girl’s hair is even blonder than his, curled into ringlets around a beaming, tiny-toothed face. “Brittany.” Our heads almost knock together as I take the phone in my hands, and I get a waft of clean boy smell. Priya loved that smell. #255, was it? The best ones always smell like soap. “We call her Bee.”

“Cute,” I say, feeling suddenly jumpy. I straighten up. “And uh . . . She’s in Chicago with you? At your aunt’s house?”

“She is.” He collapses back into the couch. “She’s not too happy about it. New house. New friends . . .”

I nod, all business again. “You should bring her over sometime. Let her meet my brother. Although I should warn you. He’s something of a serial monogamist. The kid’s had more dating experience than I have.”

“Really,” says Logan, an eyebrow raised. “Care to elaborate on that?”

“Nope,” I say coolly, though I mentally smack my own forehead—really walked into that one, didn’t I? The numbers paint a sad picture. Guys kissed? Just one (unless you count Eddy, which—NEVER). Brian Poulos from my coed weeklong soccer camp two summers ago was cute and nice, and from our talks on the phone, Priya thought he sounded deserving of a romantic gesture. It was his last year, so in an effort to get the experience over with, I hit him with a cowardly I’ll-never-see-you-again-anyway kiss on the day we were going home. It was a significant upgrade from Eddy’s cold-dead-fish lips. The kiss was kind of funny, actually, both of us smiling and self-conscious as we pulled back. But it was also kind of . . . wet.

Afterward I felt no need to gush and cry and call everyone I knew. I didn’t start relating to every love song on the radio. Not surprisingly, when it comes to actual boyfriends, the number is a big, fat zero.

Logan checks his phone. “Huh.”

“What?” I say.

“Priya again. That was fast.”

“Seriously?” My pulse quickens. “Read it.”

He clears his throat, appearing suddenly dubious. “Sad face. Heart emoji. ‘Miss you guys.’” He blinks. “Okay, she definitely thinks I’m someone else.”

“Who?” I throw my hands up. “Who could she possibly be mistaking you for? We don’t know another Logan at Prewitt. And who is you guys? She didn’t have like . . . a big cohesive group or anything. Maybe she thinks you’re one of her boyfriend’s friends at Northwestern?”

“Older man, huh?”

“Yeah. He’s British too, so that makes it extra sophisticated.”

Logan thinks a moment as I pout into my throw pillow. “Have you tried talking to him? Maybe he could explain some of this.”

“We never met. Wanted to, but it never happened. It’s a hike up to Evanston and they’d only been dating a few months when she moved.”

“How’d they meet?”

“In a class at Northwestern. Our school ran out of them.”

Logan frowns. “Ran out of what?”

“Of classes. Priya is ridiculously smart. In most subjects, but languages especially. The girl speaks like a billion of them.”

“A billion, huh?”

“Beyond English and Hindi, she’s got Spanish pretty much down. She kept up great with the guys at the restaurant, even the jokes, which are the hardest. She taught herself some French online. And I think she and Nick met learning Arabic at Northwestern. Mandarin and German were on deck. Oh! And she can sign. I think she has it in her head that one day she’ll be this, like, master communicator. She told me once that in a perfect world, she would travel all over and speak to every person she met in their own words—no barriers between them. I thought that was so cool.” Logan’s smile is soft and easy as he watches me talk. It makes me sort of squirmy. “Anyway. By the start of sophomore year she was too smart for the majority of the teaching staff at Prewitt. They didn’t even try to deny it.”