The Science of ***ing Up

Logan wasn’t sure what brought him to the sprawling contemporary mansion nestled in the Hollywood Hills, but he knew he was there for all the wrong reasons. But his brain was working overtime, trying to rationalize this seemingly simple decision that ran layers deep, deeper than he’d ever care to acknowledge.

I’m just here for a friend. I’m only here because she asked me to stop by, he thought to himself as he stood in the doorway, eyes the color of Hershey syrup scanning the crowd of Hollywood stereotypes for that one face he was so desperate to see.

In reality, it was all just torture, and he knew it. Masochism was no foreign concept to Logan Mitchell, but it was difficult for him to recognize that need, to match his urges to any term in a glossary. It was an odd feeling of helplessness, of losing his sense of control because for once, Logan Mitchell was leading with his heart instead of his brain.

The mansion, filled with all of its budding starlets, wannabe Brad Pitts, and furniture torn straight from the latest interior design magazine, belonged to none other than Dak Zevon, star of the Varsity Vampires series and number seven on this year’s People magazine’s fifty most beautiful people. Dak Zevon also happened to be dating his Varsity Vampires 3 co-star, up-and-coming actress Kandi Jenkins, who just happened to be Logan’s best friend.

Who he just happened to be hopelessly in love with.

And Logan didn’t stand a chance.

Even more mindboggling to the boy was why he’d agreed to bring his on-again, off-again girlfriend Camille along. He wanted to shake it off as a moment of weakness. Though he didn’t really care for her in the romantic sense of the word, there had been a flicker of frailness in her usually strong deep brown eyes at the mention of Kandi’s name and the party, and Logan felt as if he had to cave in, he had to prove that he wasn’t a bad boyfriend, even if he was still harboring ill intentions.

Logan felt as if he was trapped in a life-sized game of Jenga and every move that he made was like removing another block, the same way his breathing would hitch in his throat as his fingers pried that skinny wooden block from the pile, silently praying that it wouldn’t all collapse around him.

Camille’s grip felt like a tourniquet around his arm, and he felt trapped, eyes still searching the crowd for his life preserver.

As his vision focused in on each makeup-coated face, stared into each pair of mascara-curtained eyes, with Camille still clutching his arm, he couldn’t help but recall a line from a book Kandi had read aloud to him on the rooftop of their apartment building one night.

“The one you love and the one who loves you are never, ever the same person.”

Her southern drawl had tugged at the words, the city lights around them the perfect reading lamp as the cars roared and honked on the streets beneath them, a fire truck’s siren punctuating the statement as it rushed off into the night.

She told him she read Palahniuk as a means of escape, because by immersing herself in that world of angst-ridden young professionals and mutilated beauty queens, all of her own problems became trivial in comparison. Kandi had hope that in this life, there were survivors, that even in the most thoroughly fucked circumstances, there was always a chance that a phoenix would emerge from the rubble.

Logan Mitchell was no phoenix, just a boy built from flesh and bone, so easily destructible.

And rejection was the easiest way to tear him apart.

Maybe that’s why he brought Camille, maybe she was nothing more than a barrier to protect him from himself. With her at his side, trailing each of his movements, he’d never have the opportunity to put himself on the line, to wear his heart on his sleeve for Kandi to rip from the seams.

As he wove through the throngs of beautiful people sipping champagne from glass flutes and tropical liquor elixirs from hollowed out pineapples, losing Camille in the process, Logan spotted Kandi. Surrounded by stick-thin, bleached blonde wannabe model types, the one head of brunette locks leaned forward, her face sinking into the comforter for a moment before reemerging, her widened eyes a more vibrant mahogany. Her hands gently pushed the mirror over to one of her sidekicks, who sculpted the pile of crystalline snowflakes with a platinum credit card in brief, choppy motions.

Surprisingly, the cocaine didn’t frighten Logan. He’d been on tour, had seen some of the crew members and backup band snorting the substance in the back of the tour bus at night after the younger boys had fallen asleep. It was the look imprinted on her face that hurt and struck like a punch to the gut, the way her fair skin lacked its glow, cold and powerful like electricity.

Though the features were the same, the girl whose gaze locked onto his in that instant wasn’t the girl that he’d fallen in love with. This wasn’t who she was.

Logan was a little boy lost in the intoxicating whirlwind that was young Hollywood.

Her hair was pulled up into some sort of elaborately braided updo, her eyelids weighed down by layers of smoky violet eyeshadow and heavy fake lashes, too-nude lips pursed as cocaine moths fluttered around in her thoughts. As she carefully climbed off the bed, he noticed that her short frame was cloaked in a dark purple one-shoulder dress, too red carpet for her usually effortless appearance.

But as she approached him, her bare feet taking each stride boldly, he couldn’t muster up the anger or disgust to be appalled. Instead, his own voice was screaming in his head, “Take me, break me, tear me limb from limb. Mold me into anything you want, just love me. Just want me, desire me, need me like you need the oxygen you breathe.”

She didn’t offer him any words or any sort of greeting, just pressed her lips forcefully against his, stunning him like a taser to the chest. The back of her palms grazed his temples as her fingers threaded through tufts of espresso locks, and though he knew he should break away, he couldn’t. It was a hungry kiss, seeped with desperation, and Logan felt like he’d been struck by lightning, like a fulgurite: gritty on the outside with his insides hollowed out in one brief strike.

And though this was everything he had ever wanted, he was still left feeling somewhat unsatisfied.

And all the blocks were falling down around him.

It was a complete and utter train wreck. His ear was almost instantaneously filled with a chorus of shouts and a string of high-pitched swears, the soft skin that covered his cheekbone met with the sharp sting of Camille’s palm, and this time, she wasn’t being melodramatic. This slap was real, no theatrics required.

The room seemed to spin around him, a dark blur of laughter and the burning stench of alcohol. When Dak’s fifty most beautiful people fist collided against the side of Logan’s face, he felt no pain, just shocking numbness. Camille had already left the party in a flurried frenzy. Tears black and violet like the wings of a butterfly trickled down Kandi’s porcelain skin as her voice formed wavering pleas, and the next thing he knew, Logan was dragging her behind him, that instinct to save her taking over. He just needed to escape, and he was taking her with him.

She was shouting at him as the car sped through the hills and out onto the freeway, screaming his name repeatedly, begging him to slow down, but her voice quickly became nothing but white noise as he grew accustomed to the throbbing of his head in his skull.

All of the boys, aside from Kendall, of course, had sort of a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy with their temporary mother Ms. Knight. She gave them all of the guidance and support that their own mothers were too far away to give them, but she was in no place to truly discipline them because they weren’t her own, and for the most part, they gave her no reason to need to punish them beyond the typical no television, no Xbox, or taking away their cell phone for a week. So when Logan marched in with a devastated girl in tow, heading straight for the bedroom he shared with James, all the middle-aged woman cold muster up was a quizzical flicker in her soft green eyes.

James was out for the evening, no doubt on a date somewhere in the city, probably trying to snag another girl’s v-card to add to his collection, so the bedroom was empty. Logan headed straight for his dresser, tossing Kandi one of his old t-shirts from JV hockey and the most tasteful and least worn of his boxers he could find. His eyes traced the wood grain as she changed behind him. Though he could’ve easily watched her reflection in the mirror of James’s vanity, he didn’t. That wasn’t him. Plus, he didn’t want to take the chance of catching a glimpse of his own battered face in the process.

“You’re staying here tonight,” his voice sliced through the empty air between them, an unlikely edge of assertiveness seeping into his tone.

She didn’t protest, she just stared at the stretch of navy comforter in front of her, though he could tell by her expression that she wasn’t really focusing on anything.

Logan took a seat beside her on the edge of his bed, his own stare trained on the toes of his leather loafers. He’d never been that guy, the guy that took risks, the one that stepped out of his comfort zone, and now that he’d done the one thing he was the most fearful of, he wasn’t sure what to think of himself or what to think of his relationship with Kandi. He’d never been one to let his impulses and emotions drive him; Logan relied on rationality, on his ability to reason through everything in his life. Now that he’d abandoned that way of thinking, he didn’t know where to go from here.

The soft sound of her voice startled him from his thoughts. “Thanks.”

“No problem,” he flashed her a halfhearted smile despite how his jaw ached. “What are friends for?”

She forced out a laugh before allowing her head to rest on his shoulder, her hair brushing against the skin along the crook of his neck.

And it was that night that he realized that things would never be the same between them, that they could never be just the best friends that they’d both tried so desperately to be. There was something more there, something in the way that he had to rescue her and in the way that she kissed him, and all of those somethings housed feelings that neither of them could ignore any longer.