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“What the fuck is this?”
Louise greets him at the door, furiously waving a piece of paper at him.
“Honestly, babe, it was a challenging day today, thank you so much for asking. Oh wait, you didn’t? I must have heard you wrong.” Logan drawls sarcastically, shrugging his jacket off and bending to unlace his boots.
Louise scoffs. “Poor baby has to go to an adult job and do adult things. How will he survive?”
“Well honestly, the novelty of coming home to you hasn’t worn off yet. So that helps.”
Logan straightens back up and takes her face in his hands, bending to kiss her gently. He pulls back with a quick peck to her forehead and stretches. “I’m starving. Let’s order in.”
Louise shakes her head slightly and stabs him in the chest with the hand still holding the crumpled paper. “You can’t distract me with affection and food, I’m not a cat!”
“You are very much cat coded though. Affection and food is usually enough.”
“Well, not today, Berry Bear Snack! I want to talk about this.”
He sighs. “I wasn’t trying to distract you, I am genuinely starving. Can we talk about it while we order food?”
“No!”
“Nope, didn’t think so. Alright.”
He stretches his neck back and forth dramatically and drops into a fighting crouch. “I’m ready.”
Louise rolls her eyes again, but her nose is wrinkled in the way it gets when she’s trying not to laugh. “Stop being fucking ridiculous.”
“I already told you, the novelty of coming home to you is still going strong. I feel sort of giddy every time I open my door and hear your voice. You can’t blame a guy for being in love with you. You’re just so easy to fall in love with.”
He straightens up and reaches for her face again, but she sidesteps his grasp, albeit half-laughing while she asks. “What the fuck is this list of things your family might talk about that I should have fake answers prepared for just in case?”
His nose wrinkles. “Sounds to me like you understand what it is just fine.”
“Right. Let me rephrase: since when do you care what your family thinks of me?”
“Oh, I don’t!” Logan shakes his head. “I’d be honestly fine with whatever chaos you cooked up in your devious little brain pipes-”
“What the fuck.”
“- but you asked me to give you a list of things to avoid.” He shrugs. “Occasionally, I can do what I’m told. Not often. But occasionally.”
She snorts. “I’m a very lucky girl.”
He grins, wriggling his eyebrows at her goofily. “ Yeah you are!”
He tries to reach for her again and this time she catches his wrist and shoves it against the wall. He licks his lips, his gaze fixed on hers. “I like where this is going.”
She shakes the paper at him again. “I want to talk about this!”
He grimaces. “Not where I thought this was going.”
“A list of things to lie about is not the same as a list of things to avoid!”
He sighs, wriggling his wrist out of her loose grasp and walking over to an armchair. “Since when are you so opposed to lying?”
She makes a face at him. “It’s not about the lying. It’s the presumption of it!”
He flops sideways into the chair, dangling his feet over one end and tipping his head back over the other. “The thing with my family is they are hard to deter once they are focused on something. I felt like as a backup plan to avoidance, you could have fake stories in case. Especially because I would not put it past my parents to try and discredit you in Gammy’s eyes so she doesn’t leave us money when she pops off this mortal plain.”
“I hated that.”
“It’s not presumption. I just know my family well enough to think that it’s better to prepare and not need it than need it and not be prepared. I was a scout, you know?”
“You were not!”
“I was… for like a year. How do you think I got so good at starting fires?”
“I don’t know? Arson for dummies?”
He lifts his head back up and scowls lightly at her. “It was never arson. It was… mild property damage at most.”
She snorts. “Why only a year? You get kicked out?”
He drops his head back down without answering and she starts to laugh.
“Oh my god, you did! Why? For starting too many fires?”
He doesn’t answer again and her laughter increases. He launches out blindly with one of his feet to where she’s perched on the arm of the couch, poking at her with his toe.
“Shush you.”
“As you wish, John Leonard Bore. That’s a famous arsonist, if you didn’t know.”
He pokes at her again. “It was never arson, I told you!”
“Is that on your list of things to lie to your judgy family about?”
He sits up and makes a face at her. “It actually is. Not because I was an arsonist, but because it’s not polite dinner conversation.”
She laughs again and his sulky facade cracks at the sound. He shifts to sit on the chair properly and reaches to pull her on top of him.
She leans away from his hands though. “We’re getting distracted-”
“We?”
“My annoyance is with your presumption of me ! Why would you assume that I need lies for these things?”
He raises his eyebrows and snatches the paper from her. With an exaggerated clear of his throat and shake of the paper, he begins to read: “1. Anything to do with strip clubs or sex in general; 2. Anything to do with being in trouble with the police; 3. Anything against my parents; 4. Anything-”
She yanks the paper away from him. “Is there a point to this?”
“My point is, I’m not assuming you need lies for these things! I know you need lies for these things!”
“Not all the things!”
“Name one thing you won’t need a lie for!”
“14. Anything criminal. I’ve played jump rope with the line of criminality, but I’ve never actually done anything literally criminal. Unlike you, Peter Dimsdale. That’s another arsonist. Well, the arsonist is Peter Dinsdale… you’re just also a dim bulb.”
He rolls his eyes. “I know for a fact you’ve engaged in criminal activity, because all the carnies at the wharf are criminals.”
“So? The fact that I hang out with criminals means that I myself-”
“No, I didn’t say that. Let me finish. When you were younger, Caleb saw you make some sort of illicit exchange with the fried dough guy- and he’s killed people, I’m pretty sure. Caleb told me you went up to him and exchanged some words and then you guys moved off out of sight. Also, you were obviously carrying some sort of illicit package on your back and you looked demented.”
She gapes at him. “Did you set spies on me?!”
“No! Caleb was already at the wharf- and I wasn’t even in Seymour’s Bay! We were on our yearly hellscape family vacation. He told me in case I needed to use it the next time we got into a scrap. They used to get annoyed with me for how long and all-consuming I could be when… it doesn’t matter! That’s not the point! The point is… what was that if not criminal activity?”
She flushes, dropping her gaze as she begins to studiously fold the crumpled paper into a square. “It wasn’t actually illegal,” she mutters.
He smiles softly, standing up and nudging her legs apart to step between them. “Four Ears, I literally don’t care. You were a kid. I lit a fire in the school basement when I was a kid.”
She leans away from him and raises her eyebrows. “Holy shit, John Edward Sore…ly in need of psychological analysis. On purpose? That’s a literal crime, what the fuck.”
“School sucked,” he says dismissively.
“Yet we all managed to not deliberately set it ablaze?”
Logan rolls his eyes. “It’s not news that I didn’t process emotions healthily as a kid. That’s the reason for the therapy and intensive work on myself as a person. The point I am trying to make is that I don’t actually care. You’re my Four Ears and being a criminal just makes you hotter.”
“Right,” she says dryly. “Prepare for me to get less hot, then. Because I didn’t actually do anything illegal.”
“So you were hanging out with-”
“Let me finish! God! I didn’t actually do anything illegal… but I meant to. And I probably would have if it wasn’t for Tina being such a do-gooder.”
Logan laughs, flopping onto the couch cushion beside her and pulling her legs with him to rest in his lap.
He looks up at her and holds out his hand. “Pen?”
She rolls her eyes. “I hate it when you do this,” she scoffs, even as she pulls a pen out of her jacket pocket and shoves it at him.
He bends to her calf, pen poised over her skin. “Ready,” he says and he can feel her answering sigh through her leg as she starts to speak.
“So… Gene found this blob of stuff under the pier one day and it turned out to be ambergris. Which is… basically whale poo, I don’t remember. Something about wax to ease the poo or something.”
Logan’s pen leaves her skin and he leans back to look at her with raised eyebrows. “Ummm okay? What did it look like?”
She shrugs. “I don’t know. A blob. A golden, waxy, misshapen blob. And it had a weird smell: it was kind of awful, but also kind of nice. Intoxicating. It’s used in perfume. Which is how we found out that it can sell for a lot of money, like tens of thousands of dollars money.”
Logan purses his lips and whistles as he resumes tracing her skin with his pen.
“Yeah. So… I wanted that money. It was apparently illegal to sell it because whales are endangered or something, but I figured it was fine. It wasn’t like I had forced the whale to give me this- the universe had provided and who was I to say no?”
“Mmm,” Logan nods, intent on his work.
“So I thought we could try and fence it to someone who would pay us the money and not ask questions. We looped in Mickey, who runs the… I want to say, bumper cars now? Anyway, we knew him from the time my dad was involved in a bank robbery.”
Logan’s pen lifts and he leans to look at her again. She waves him off. “One story at a time, stay focused. Mickey found us a guy but by then, I had become… kind of… preoccupied with thoughts about this thing and the money it was going to make me. So I cut him out and went directly to the fence myself.”
“Kinda crazy about money stuff right,” Logan nods. She flicks him in the side of the head.
“Shush. That’s not the point of the story. The point is Tina was mad and worried I was becoming kind of… unwell. So she pretended to tape the ambergris onto me, but it was actually a cantaloupe wrapped in socks.”
“You guys really liked your cantaloupe, huh,” Logan mutters, bending closer to her calf.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, cantaloupe here, cantaloupe….,” he trails off, flicking his eyes to hers for a second before focusing back on his work. “You know what, nevermind. If you don’t remember, that seems for the best.”
“Ohhhhhh,” she says in recognition. “The cantaloupe I smashed on your head. That was funny. You looked so stupid.”
“I’m glad that’s what you remember about it,” Logan mutters. “And not what happened after. You know, when I was a shitty-”
She wiggles her leg and he lifts his pen quickly. “Four Ears! You’re gonna ruin the drawing!”
“Don’t make this about you. It’s about me. It’s my story- wait your turn.” She reaches a hand out and tangles it into his hair, scratching lightly at his scalp. “Don’t go all maudlin on me. That will ruin the drawing.”
He flashes her a smile and gestures for her to continue. “So where was the ambergris then? With Tina?”
“Yeah, with Tina. I think her plan was to give it to Mickey originally, but he planned to use it for more robberies and not… whatever thing he had told us he was going to use it for. So she decided none of us could have it and threw it into the fryer. And I’m… fine with that. I’m fine with that. I mean, it was $30, 000 FREAKING DOLLARS! But… I’m fine. It’s fine.”
Logan looks up at her, lips twitching. “I can tell.”
“$30, 000 dollars, Bushel Bear Snack! Maybe that’s not much to your rich blood, but it is to me. $30 goddamn thousand freaking dollars!!”
“Wait,” Logan says suddenly. “I thought the fence guy paid you for it?”
“He stiffed me. Cause I was a kid. Gave me like ten bucks.”
“Right… did you get to keep it?”
“I think so. I can’t remember giving it back.”
“So,” Logan says with a quick addition to his drawing. “At least, you got something. Everybody else got nothing- you got ten bucks.”
A small smile stretches across Louise’s face. “That makes me feel a bit better.”
“I thought it might. Now hold still a sec.” Logan digs his phone out of his back pocket and snaps a picture of his completed work, adding it to their shared album of drawings he does of Louise’s stories. She can tell them better when he’s not looking at her and, though she’ll never admit it to him, he’s also pretty sure the drawings make her happy too.
“Let me see,” she pulls her leg out of his lap and leans over to look at his phone screen.
He tilts it to her so she can look at the finished project. A tiny cartoon Louise with bunny ears and a mad expression holds a lump wrapped in socks. Inside her pocket, Logan had added the end of a 10 dollar bill. Off to the left, Tina creeps away, clutching a misshapen lump with smell lines coming off it.
Her lips twitch in that addictive way they have and he tilts up to capture them with his. “I concede,” he says as he pulls back.
She hums questioningly.
“I concede that this particular incident was not criminal. But… I raise you… hiring a gang to cut off Gammy’s beloved Logey’s ears. That is not only criminal, but quite likely to garner her intense disapproval.”
Louise rolls her eyes and flicks his nearest ear. “Oh boo hoo. They look fine to me!”
“I’m just saying that Gammy will likely not be pleased,” Logan says with a conciliatory raise of his hands. “I thought you would care about possibly losing my inheritance from her.”
Louise grimaces. “Even if I wanted to lie about that, I can’t. Your parents know that one.”
“Oh. Right.”
She huffs and slips off the couch arm, heading down the hall to the kitchen. “Sayonara inheritance.”
“Ehhh,” Logan says dismissively as he catches up with her. “It’s fine. If we lose it, we just start patrolling the beach under the pier until we find more whale shit.”
“See, you’re joking, but I might actually make you do that.”
“Who said I was joking? I know who I’m living with. And like I said, the novelty hasn’t worn off yet. So this is the perfect time to hoodwink me into patrolling the beach.”
“Hmmm,” Louise turns in the doorway of the kitchen and leans against him, scrutinizing his face. “If we find some, I get 75% of the profits.”
“75?! Nuh uh. 50/50- partners in life, partners in whale shit.”
She shakes her head. “One of us is benching way above their weight, though. So… at least a 70% share.”
He makes a face at her. “55, and I’ll tell a bad story about myself if necessary to distract Gammy from you.”
“65, but you have to tell everyone you wanted me to threaten to cut off your ears. You asked me to do it. You have, like, a fear kink or something.”
He considers. “It’s definitely believable. I mean, I’m dating you.”
She rolls her eyes. “So it’s a deal?”
“Yeah, alright. Deal. Any whale shit we find, you can have 65% of the profits.”
He extends his hand for her to shake and she uses it to pull him against her, tilting her head up and slotting her lips against his.
“Call that Thai place,” she murmurs as she pulls back.
He blinks dazed eyes at her, shaking his head slightly as he pulls his phone out of his pocket and thumbs it open.
“Oh, and by the way, Berry Floozie. I would have settled for 60.”
He flicks his eyes up from his phone and grins at her. “And I would have lied about the ear incident to make you look good for free.”
“We make a great team,” she snorts.
“I would never steal a lump of expensive whale poop from you,” he says with a dramatic cross over his heart with his pointer finger.
“ I would definitely cut you out and go to the fence by myself. You should probably keep one eye open at night.”
“Who says I don’t already? I know who I’m living with,” he retorts. “Speaking of which, just rip up the sheet Four Ears. I genuinely don’t care what they think, and you shouldn’t either.”
Louise grins- one of those rare sincere ones that sneaks onto her face- and he resists the urge to pump his fist in celebration as he pulls the phone up to his ear.
“If we need to, we’ll just come up with a lie together. It’ll be fun,” he whispers, hand covering the phone while he waits for the Thai place to answer his call.
“Like I said,” Louise grins, “we make a damn good team.”