CHAPTER 3
675 Words
Logan left her house unseen and was at his favorite bar in less than 10 minutes. He wound his car window up and got out, swinging his keychain behind him as he slammed the door shut and locked the car. He made it to the pub just before the supper crowd hit, looked about the room and then saw a friend. Hell, he knew these old walls better than his own living room. A smiling Thomas waved him over from the far corner.
“Hey Logan! C’mon over. Have a seat. Hey, what’s wrong? Having girl problems again?” Thomas asked his friend.
“Yeah… just Pamela, she’s crying about her dad again.”
“Man, I feel sorry for girls like that.” Thomas agreed, his black hair groomed neatly. “Guys like her father… they should just be locked up for life.”
Logan countered, “I get that it’s horrible for her, you know. But she’s just always at my place… and always complaining. I’m so tired of it, you know. Sometimes though, I just wish she would make her problems somebody else’s. I don’t want to be her therapist. Plus, she gets clingy.”
“Clingy?” Thomas said, confused and a bit surprised. “She doesn’t seem like the clingy type to me?”
“Trust me, she is.” Logan said in his typical, confident manner… arrogant and pretty quick to judge too. “You don’t know her that well,”
“And you do?” Thomas asked his friend, his dark eyes watching him closely.
Logan looked at Thomas confused, but his friend changed the topic, and soon it was forgotten amidst the talk of sports teams, jobs, friends and girls. Later when he got home, the house was empty, and he felt relieved.
He opened the fridge, looking for something to snack on, and just as he punched the buttons to warm up a microwave meal, the doorbell rang. A short while later his mother came into the kitchen with a pale faced Pamela shuffling along right behind her. Logan groaned inwardly. Not again, he thought to himself, I’ve already saw her once today.
“Pamela,” he said to her, sounding a lot more cheerful than he felt.
When she started instantly crying he saw the overnight bag on the floor next to her and he fought the urge to roll his eyes. Not again?!
They went upstairs and sat in his room, with her curled up on the couch by the window, him lying stretched out on his bed. Pamela ran away from home because things got worse for her than usual. She told him how her father had been drunker than he usually was by the time he’d gotten home today and how he started yelling at her for not having supper ready even though it had been way too early.
Through tears she explained that even though he’d never hit her before, the way he did her mom, she was still scared of how aggressive he could be, and shock and fear had racked her body when he’d backhanded her today. Now the thing she had feared for all these years had come true.
Pam was unsure what to do, scared of what would happen to her but not wanting to go back home to her father either. Logan didn’t think that it would happen, but here she was now, asking him if she could stay just for a night or two, until she’d figured out what to do next. She had money, she said, and a few changes of clothes, she just needed to be with someone else for a bit.
“Of course you can stay here, my parents won’t mind,” he said, wishing he felt as sincere as he sounded, but he just couldn’t shake his annoyance with her presence.
The next morning she was already in the kitchen when he walked in, and remnants of his frustration from the night before tugged at his good mood almost immediately. He refused to let it upset him though. It wouldn’t be for too long he told himself. She’ll be gone in a few days.
- Writer
