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The swinging door to the kitchen opens suddenly with an almost impressive fanfare considering it is, in fact, a swinging door.
“You.”
Her voice drips with irritation and disdain and Logan squares his shoulders for a fight. He glances up as Bob pokes his head out the window with a frown and a “Louise”. Then he turns to Louise and peers at her in confusion.
“Sorry, do I know you?”
“Oh my god.” Bob mutters, pulling his head back in.
“Real mature,” she sneers, dropping her elbows onto the counter and glaring at him. “What are you doing here?”
Logan looks around in a bewildered fashion. “Oh my god, is this not a restaurant? What the hell am I doing eating in it, then?”
Her glare intensifies. “I’d very much like to know that, yeah. This is the seventh week in a row that I’ve had to see your travesty of a face here and I want to know why.”
Logan pops the final bite of his burger in his mouth. “Stealing your Cranky Patty recipe, obviously,” he responds, mouth still full. It’s the seventh different answer he’s given her and he reminds himself to think of more. He’s running low on ideas.
Her nose wrinkles at him. “I wouldn’t be surprised. You know, we don’t cater to the likes of you .”
“And yet, here I am. Seventh week in a row. Eating a burger.”
“Ass.”
“Shrew.”
“Shrew?”
“Yeah. It’s an olden days word. It means massive bitch.”
“I know what it means! It’s what I call Cynthia.”
He grins. “Yeah. My mom’s a real shrew.”
As always happens when he agrees with her on something, it takes Louise a minute to find her words again. “Stop eating here.”
“Yeah… not gonna do that.”
“Why? What are you planning?”
“Because the food is good. I like the burgers here.”
He hears a distinctly pleased sound from the kitchen and he smirks. “Your dad likes it when I eat here,” he adds with a smug wink at Louise.
Louise whips her head around to the kitchen in betrayal and Logan can hear the scuffle of footsteps moving hurriedly away from the window. She turns back to face Logan, stalking over to the counter space in front of his stool and slamming her hands down.
“What is your scheme?”
“Great interrogation technique,” he says, popping fries into his mouth and speaking around them. “Funny conclusion, though. Considering one of us sits here quietly and eats a burger and the other one has pulled a variety of childish pranks.”
“I’m not a child!”
“I didn’t say you were!” He looks up, surprised. “I said your pranks were childish.”
“I don’t think you’re a child,” he feels compelled to add.
“Good,” she mutters, the fury in her eyes abating at whatever she must see reflected in his own.
He sighs. “How about we stop-”
“Hold that thought, Bushels.” Louise interrupts him, extracting her phone from her pocket and peering at the cracked screen intently.
“No. Fucking. Way.” she mutters under her breath. She stuffs the phone back in her pocket but, instead of turning back to him, she wheels around and pokes her head through the window into the kitchen.
“Father! I need the car! ASAP! Where are the keys? FATHER!!!”
Bob shuffles back into sight, an apprehensive look on his face. “Uh. It’s not… here.”
There’s a silence, broken only by the sound of Logan’s own chewing.
Then: “What do you mean it’s not here?!!” Louise fairly screeches.
Bob winces. “Your mother has it. She’s at her new book club thing.”
“Mom doesn’t read! Nobody in this family reads!!”
“She actually does now. It’s for… Book Clock or something. They’re, you know….”
Bob trails off, glancing over at Logan. He busies himself wiping up ketchup with the last of his fries, trying to look entirely unconcerned.
“They’re what?!” Louise presses, still obviously furious.
“NSFW,” Bob whispers so that Logan has to crane his ears to catch it.
There’s another silence.
“Let me get this straight,” Louise finally says, voice heavy with that tone of hers which Logan secretly finds terrifying in a thrilling way. “I can’t have the car because Mom now goes to a SMUTTY BOOK CLUB?!”
Bob whips his head to look at Logan frantically and he shrugs apologetically. He can’t pretend not to have heard that.
“You could take the bus,” Bob suggests weakly in the face of what Logan imagines is a furious glare.
Louise yanks her phone out of her pocket again and glances at it. She looks back up, shaking her head. “I don’t have time. I need to get there fast- I need a car!”
“Maybe a friend?” Bob says, even weaker.
He can literally clock the moment the thought enters her brain. Her shoulders stiffen and her head cocks to the side slightly. She turns slowly to face him, a too-wide smile pasted on her features.
“Logan,” she simpers.
He wipes his mouth with a napkin, drops it on the plate, and shoves it across the counter. “Thanks as always for a great burger, Bob. See you.”
“Ohhh god.”
“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Louise’s voice follows him to the door. “Logan, wait, I’m sure we can come to some sort of arrangement!”
He steps out, looking pointedly over Louise’s head to wave a friendly goodbye at Bob, (who has disappeared again, but that’s not the point).
“What do you want for it?” Louise asks, following him out the door.
“What a lovely day,” he says with an exaggerated stretch, strolling toward his parked car down the block.
“I’ll stop pulling pranks for a week.”
“The sun is shining.”
“Two.”
“The birds are singing.”
“Three.”
“There’s a nice little breeze.”
“A full month!”
“Spring has really and truly sprung.”
“Two months!”
“I mean, just look at those flowers.”
“I will stop pulling pranks!”
He stops walking.
Turning to face her slowly, he raises his eyebrows. “You will stop permanently?”
She glares at him but her voice is steady. “Yes.”
He cocks his head. “How can I trust you? I still have multiple sores in my mouth from that salty patty you made last week.”
“Nobody made you eat the whole thing.” She rolls her eyes. “Dad offered to make you a new one.”
“That seemed unfair to your father. Having to waste a whole patty,” he says with a mournful shake of his head. “It’s odd that you didn’t think of that, honestly.”
The glare she levels at him with these words is the most ferocious one he has yet been on the receiving end of, and he fights the urge to take a step back.
“I still haven’t received any collateral. I need a reason to trust you, Smellcher.”
She tips her head back with a groan, glancing back down at her phone. “What would make you trust me?”
He makes a big show of thinking about it. “Hmm… you should have to do something if you slip up. Gives you more of a reason to stay true to your word. And then I win either way.”
She huffs. “Oh my god, fine. What do you want me to have to do?”
He “thinks” about it intently for a few more minutes. “I’m not sure, yet. I’ll decide later.”
It’s a big risk for her and he can tell she realizes it. But whatever she needs must be more important because with a furious sigh, she agrees. “Fine. Asshat. Now give me the keys.”
His face scrunches in genuine confusion. “I’m not letting you drive my car.”
She gapes. “That’s what this whole thing has been about!”
“ I will drive you. Where are we going?”
She obviously wants to argue with him but the urgency of whatever her task is wins out again. She sighs and kicks a nearby pole aggressively, but she stomps over to the passenger door of his car. “Bog Harbor. Fuckhead.”
“Always a pleasure to hang out with-” he starts, but a new voice breaks into their conversation.
“Mr. Bush! I was hoping I’d catch you leaving that burger place. You forgot your sunglasses!”
Hanna bustles over to him, waving his sunglasses before her like a standard.
He inhales sharply, turning to face her with a frozen smile. “Thank you so much, Hanna.”
“No problemo!” she says cheerily as he slips the sunglasses on. “I see now why you always pop next door for a burger," she chortles, winking and digging her surprisingly sharp elbow into his side.
At his inquiring glance, she slides her eyes back and forth suggestively from him to Louise. His next inhale goes down the wrong tube. He bends over, hacking up a lung, while Hanna titters to herself.
“Well, I’ll let you be on your way. Don’t have to tell me when I’m not wanted,” she says with another suggestive glance between them. And before Logan can find the air to clear up any misconceptions, she trundles back into the building she’d come out of.
He straightens up again, pulling in lungfuls of air and watching Louise out of the corner of his eye. Her gaze follows Hanna into the building, strays upward to the Girl, Uninterrupted: Mental Health Counselling Services sign above the door, and then shifts to rest on him.
“So that’s where you go every week,” she says. “What for?”
He sets his jaw and gazes at her defiantly. “It’s a therapist’s office. I go for therapy.”
She nods, gaze unreadable. “Willingly?”
He snorts. “As opposed to court ordered, you mean?”
“Something like that.”
“Yeah. Willingly.”
A short silence falls and he clears his throat awkwardly. “It’s a play off a movie. The name, I mean. The movie is called Girl- ”
“Girl, Uninterested,” she says with a yank at the passenger door handle of his car.
“What? No. Its Girl -”
“Interrupted. I know. I’m saying to you: girl, I’m uninterested. Let’s get the fuck out of Dodge already!”
He sucks his bottom lip between his teeth. “Really? You have no jokes to make? Not one?”
She yanks on the handle again. “I mean, I would also be at therapy weekly if Cynthia was my mother, so….”
He grins. “You know, you don’t have to open the car doors. The fob does it for you.”
She makes a face at him, coupled with a realistic gag.
He makes a face right back, pressing the door key on the fob and sliding in through the opening door. “You could always find another ride.”
“Oh, I wish I could,” she says sincerely, clambering inside with a pointed drag of each of her boots along his floor mat. “But I don’t have time.”
He grimaces at her as she glances down at her phone again, typing something aggressively. Without glancing up, she says. “So let’s go! Step on it, old man!”
“I’m not an old man,” he answers as they drive away. “I’m not that much older than you.”
She puts her phone back down and reaches out to fiddle with his stereo. “I know. It felt like it when we were kids, but in reality it isn’t much.”
He unlocks and hands her his phone. “It’s Bluetooth connected. Use the music app on my phone. And don’t make me regret giving you it.”
She grins wickedly. “Why, Bush Ranger? What might I discover on it?”
He pulls his hand back before she can grab the phone and she raises her hands conciliatorily. “Okay, okay. God. I won’t snoop through your phone.”
He slows to a stop at a light and turns to meet her eyes, scanning her face for any signs of mischief. Finding none, he relents and lets her take the phone from his hand this time.
“To be clear though,” she says as she scrolls through his Spotify. “I would find nudes?”
He rolls his eyes, face flushing. “You might.”
“Lame.” She says shortly.
“What can I say, Four Ears… it’s called a photo gallery- it’s meant for masterpieces.”
He winks at her out of the corner of his eye and she rolls hers. “You are a loser. And all your music sucks.”
As she says it, the opening synth notes of Yaz’s Only You trickle through his speakers.
“This is Yaz. It’s a classic! You can’t say Yaz sucks.” He protests.
“First of all, I can say what I want. And second of all, I wasn’t. This one’s alright. Your entire stupid 'classics hang loose emoji' playlist seems alright.”
“Then not all my music sucks.”
“Nah. It all sucks.”
“You literally just said-”
“ And all I ever knew: only you!” she sings loudly over him.
They drive in silence for a few minutes, Louise stopping singing immediately when he doesn’t continue the conversation.
“It was a big difference when we were kids,” Logan says for some reason as the song fades away. “The age gap between us, I mean. But you know… we’re not kids anymore.”
“Yes thank you, I understand the progression of time,” Louise says dryly.
Blue Swede’s Hooked on a Feeling starts and she leans forward to turn the volume up. “I love this one! Always makes me think of Shrek 2!”
He quirks an eyebrow. “Admittedly I haven’t seen Shrek 2 in a while, but I don’t think this song was on it.”
“No, it wasn’t. But it was in that Far Far Away Idol thing with Simon Cowell.”
He blinks. “That cannot be a real sentence you just said.”
“On the DVD? There was like a special features thing? No?”
He laughs. “I literally have no idea what you are talking about. What is special features?”
“They’re like games! Special games that come with DVD versions of movies!”
“But why? Like why wouldn’t you just stick with a gaming system?”
“I didn’t have a gaming system.”
Her voice is tight and a glance over to her side of the car shows her turned toward the window, shoulders stiff.
“Right,” he says awkwardly as the music transitions to They Might Be Giants’ Istanbul (Not Constantinople) . “Sorry.”
“For what? Having gaming systems? Or assuming your experiences are universal?”
He shrugs. “Making things awkward, mostly.”
She scoffs. “Right.”
A tense silence settles over the car. Logan is loath to be the one to break it. But the Bog Harbor sign looms suddenly on the horizon.
“Where are we going, anyway? We’re here.”
Louise scrolls upward on her phone, one corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. “1714 Carpenter Ave.”
“Okay. Put that into Maps on my phone?”
She types the address into his phone, maintaining her stony silence as Siri chirps directions at them. As the song blares to an end, Siri tells them they’ve arrived at their destination and Louise throws her seatbelt off.
She scans the interior of the door, huffing in annoyance. “Would you mind clarifying for those of us who are poor how the fuck I get out of this thing?”
He pops the doors with his fob again. “To be clear, I don’t think-”
But as they open, she flings herself out and away from him and he doesn’t get a chance to finish the sentence.
He sighs heavily. What was it about this girl that always managed to piss him off? And why did he care so much? She obviously had a money complex- that wasn’t his problem. Why did he want to make her feel better about it?
He steps out of the car, locking the doors behind him and scanning his surroundings. She appears to have brought him to some type of yard sale. Her older sister (Tina he thinks her name is?), is hovering anxiously in front of one of the tables and waving frantically at Louise. He watches the two of them confer privately as the older one hands Louise some sort of furry creature thing wearing an apron.
His brow furrows and unwilling steps take him closer to the two girls. “What the fuck is that?”
Tina(?) turns to look at him, surprised. “Logan?” she says to Louise, a faint question in it.
Louise grimaces. “Needed a ride. Mom’s at some smut club thing. Beggars can’t be choosers and all.”
“Right.” Tina gazes steadily at him in silence as Logan’s discomfort steadily builds.
“Hi? Tina?” he says. “How are you?”
“Fine,” she answers, stare not wavering.
“You’ve decided if you’re interested at last?” a dry voice cuts into this and Tina’s (it must be Tina- she hadn't corrected him) stare finally shifts away from him. She turns to the middle-aged man who had spoken and is obviously in charge of the sale.
“Oh. Yes. Sorry. I-”
Lousie interrupts. “ I’m interested. How much?”
His gaze turns calculating, assessing Louise. “30 bucks.”
She laughs. “Okay. I was being serious.”
“Me too,” the man says smoothly. “These are priceless family heirlooms.”
“It’s a furry squirrel in an apron and chef’s hat,” Louise says flatly.
“Can you really put a price on family memories?” he answers and she snorts.
“I can. 5 bucks.”
“Now, you’re the one not being serious! 5 dollars?! These are one of a kind! They’re at least worth 20!”
“7.”
“18.”
“8.”
“15.”
“9”
“12”
“9.”
“10.”
“9.”
The man peers at Louise in frustration. “It’s the difference of a dollar.”
“Yeah… but I don’t like you. You seem like a real fucking piece of work. 9 dollars.”
The man glares at her and steps closer. “I’m not selling it for less than 10 dollars.”
Louise cranes her neck to meet his gaze. “I’m not paying more than 9.”
Logan smirks at the standoff between the two of them, remembering suddenly that it was exactly nine dollars Louise had offered him to return her hat. He wonders if she remembers that.
The man glares at her. “I could just not sell it to you.”
“You could,” Louise agrees calmly. “I guess you have to weigh your priorities here. What do you want more? Nine bucks or to save your pride? Because I’m not paying any more than nine. Actually, you know what? You’re even more of an asshole than I thought. It’s eight now.”
A bolt of heat ricochets through Logan suddenly and he takes an involuntary step backward, startled. His eyes flicker away from Louise’s figure in confusion and meet the unsettling gaze of Tina. What the fuck is happening right now?
He doesn’t have any time to consider it, however. The man snarls and moves closer to Louise and, without processing the decision to do so, Logan steps close behind her to face him. As he does so, his gaze lands on another furry figure on the table in front of them.
“I’ll bring it back up to nine dollars,” he says pleasantly (ignoring the hiss of fury from Louise). “If you throw in that one too.”
The man turns to look at the figure he’d gestured to. “This squirrel with the rabbit ears?”
“That’s the one!” Logan says cheerfully, all too aware of Tina’s ever-present gaze.
“That would mean I’d be selling you two squirrel figurines for $4.50 each!” The man protests.
“I’ll take your word for it. My math skills are not great,” Logan chuckles.
The man gapes from one to the other of them. Finding no lenience in either gaze, he caves in however. “Nine fucking dollars for two goddamn figurines,” he snaps.
“Awesome,” Logan says, digging his wallet out from his pocket. He opens the billfold, catching Tina’s eye again as he does so. There is something warning in the gaze this time and he glances down quickly. Louise is waiting for him, her eyes hard and expectant.
Logan swallows. This suddenly feels like a test… and he had never been very good at tests. The glance he gives Tina is appealing and she appears to have been waiting for it. Almost too quickly for him to catch, she raises a single pointer finger at him.
Of course. He should have known. This girl and her stupid money complex.
He pulls out a one dollar bill and places it in the man’s hand. “That’s one for me and eight from her.”
The man raises his eyebrows in disdain and Logan flushes in embarrassment. But it fades almost instantly, because Louise’s eyes flicker over to his for a moment as she pulls out a mass of crumpled bills herself and, almost too quickly for him to catch, she smiles at him.
His face creases into a goofy grin without his permission- a fact not unnoticed by Tina. She hands him the other figurine, gaze solemn and uncomfortably knowing. “The squirrel with the rabbit ears.”
He takes it from her, mouth suddenly dry. “Uh. Thanks.”
“Pleasure doing business,” Louise drawls to the man as she picks up her own figurine.
She turns to face Tina as he stalks away, mumbling menacing words under his breath. “Thanks for the heads-up T. You’re the best.”
“Do you think they’re the same ones?”
“What else could they be? I don’t think anyone else has ever done this.”
Tina shudders. “Hopefully not. I really do not like them.”
“I do,” Louise says with a little grin. “So thanks.”
“I have to get back to my date now,” Tina frowns. “I left him in an ice cream shop. I hope he won’t be mad.”
Louise frowns. “If he is, I can talk to him?” she offers.
“No,” Tina says simply. “That would be worse. Bye.”
“Bye T!” Louise calls after her departing figure, turning to head back to Logan’s car. She seems to be unoffended, focused entirely on her squirrel. She adjusts the hat carefully and smooths the apron.
“What are these, anyway?” Logan asks.
“We met an old lady once who made them from real squirrel bodies. I assume these are the same because literally who else is doing that. I love them honestly. What should I call him?”
Logan wrinkles his nose. “That’s kind of gross.”
“Yeah, it’s not for everyone,” she says absentmindedly as he pops the doors on his car open once more. “What are you gonna do with yours, then? Why’d you buy it anyway?”
“I bought it because I wanted it. I’m obviously gonna keep it. Maybe I’ll leave it in the car and see if it starts a conversation with my therapist- she did say I should find more friends.”
“You don’t have to!” Louise insists, cradling her own figurine in her lap as she climbs back into his car. “I can take it if you don’t want it.”
“I do want it. So back off. Stop trying to steal my little Four Ears.”
“Four Ears?”
He meets her eyes in the rearview mirror. “Four Ears.”
He thinks a flicker of a smile might dart across her face again, but it’s gone too fast for him to be certain.
“Give me your phone, dumbass. Let’s see if you have any other Shrek 2 Far Far Away Idol songs I can educate you about.”