Page 65 of Chase
“I know he’ll show up,” I tell Julian the next day as we’re walking into the back entrance of the Bellwood. “Just tell me if he comes to the lounge, okay?”
Julian is going in for his shift at the bar, but I work in the restaurant now.
After I got sober, there was an opening for an assistant pastry cook in the kitchen, and moving to that position was much better for me in every way.
I love making desserts now.
I like it a whole lot more than I liked making cocktails, actually. The bar also serves a lot of the finger foods and desserts from the hotel restaurant, so I still get to see Julian a few times a shift when he comes over to grab batches of food from us.
“Keep dreaming,” Julian says. “Isn’t Logan just as likely to visit the restaurant?”
“No. He liked the lounge because it was members-only, but any hotel guests can visit the restaurant. I don’t think he’ll be showing up. Logan is very private.”
Julian hates it when I talk about Logan. He thinks Logan was bad for me, but I still think the opposite.
“If he shows up, I’ll tell you,” Julian says.
“He will. And I’m going to give him my business card, congratulate him on all his Emmys, and nothing about it has to be weird.”
The hotel restaurant and the bar are in the same hallway, but the restaurant is prominent, front and center as soon as the hall splits off from the main lobby. The lounge is tucked at the end of the hall, away from the commotion.
As Julian stops to say goodbye before we split off, I glance down toward the bar entrance.
“You think he’s going to be waiting there before it’s even open?” Jules asks.
“Give me a break.”
“Don’t do this to yourself, Chase.”
“I’m completelyfine.”
“Don’t hurt yourself for no reason, thinking that Logan fucking Stone is going to risk any more drama in his life. Have you seen the headlines about him recently?”
“Fuck no. I don’t Google him. Ever.”
“Well, the rest of the world does. The whole world is speculating?—”
I hold up a hand. “I don’t want to hear it. Everything the media writes about him is bullshit. They didn’t know the Logan I knew.”
It sounds a little delusional, but it’s also kind of true.
For the past year, I’ve refused to watch his interviews on YouTube. I don’t scroll through the memes and Cosmopolitan jokey videos with his costars, or “57 Questions” videos with Vogue magazine. I have no desire to know Logan like the rest of them.
Yard Linehas won multiple Emmys now, two of which were for Logan himself. That’s one thing I did see.
But a darker part of my mind still always nudges at me, reminding me he wasn’t fully mine. Sometimes my dreams are about that, too. Dreams where I’m following Logan down dark hallways, trying to get him to turn around and look at me, but he never does. “I never even got toknowyou,” I call after him. But he still never turns.
And it’s true. I don’t know him.
I don't know what his childhood or family is like. I don't know his friends or his favorite color or anything personal about him at all. I don’t even have his number.
“Chase,” Julian says in a warning tone. “I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
“I can’t get hurt again if I already know I’ll never have him,” I tell him. “Our lives are completely different. But that doesn’t mean I can’t give him my card and show him the art I’ve been working on.”
“He’s not going to come here,” he says, a bitter anger rising in his tone. “And you know what? I kind of hope he doesn’tever.”
I don’t respond.
