Covalent

They’d spent the entire weekend together, and yet Logan still couldn’t get enough of her.

Logan had known Kandi for almost a year, but Friday night was their first real date. It hadn’t been anything out of the ordinary, just dinner and a movie, but it was that crucial first step to finding out whether or not they could tow the line between friendship and something more.

So far, they were doing just fine.

On Saturday, they drove out to the beach and spent the day lounging in the sun and listening to the constant churn of the waves. Meanwhile, Logan was learning things about her that he never could’ve known as her friend, like how the scent of coconut and cocoa butter clung to her skin or the way her fingers threaded through his hair as they kissed.

Sunday was spent running lines with her in her bedroom, and though they tried on countless different skins and played a lifetime full of roles, none of them quite measured up to the movie that was their lives in that moment. It was cheesy, it was infatuating, it was teen love.

Now that the two of them were finally “officially” together, he was becoming more and more aware of all these subconscious tendencies he had around her, like the way he seemed to gravitate to her in a crowded room or how, whenever they were hanging out in his apartment with his roommates, he always found a way to steal the seat beside her or keep the conversation confined to just the two of them. Even when they were just friends, he’d done these things, but he was just coming to realize it. While he had never been particularly confident or outspoken, it was like some weird male ego thing that he couldn’t quite explain, the subtle way that he had to let all of his friends know that she was his.

But being around the three guys he’d grown up with was much different than being exposed to the outside world. For the past three days, he’d remained blissfully ignorant, too wrapped up in the giddy feeling of a new relationship to be bothered by the stares and whispers that followed them every time they passed through the lobby of their apartment building hand-in-hand. Even in Los Angeles, news traveled fast, and their high school was no exception when it came to the good ol’ rumor mill.

Logan’s heart was pounding in his chest as he walked into their morning chemistry class with Kandi. On her way from her apartment, the strap to her tote bag had broken, so he helped her carry some of her books to class. Though he kept his coffee-colored eyes glued to the cover of her film theory textbook, he could feel everyone’s eyes on him, their stares heavy with questions as he slunk into his usual seat at the front of the classroom. It was even worse than he’d expected.

Stealing a glance at Kandi, he noticed she was completely unfazed. A soft smile adorned her lips as she listened to one of her friends recount her weekend, and he had to admit that he was a little envious that she didn’t seem nervous at all, that she was totally oblivious to the hushed whispers and gazes pointed in their direction. The more he dwelled on it, the warmer his cheeks grew as he struggled to keep his eyes focused on the whiteboard ahead of him.

It wasn’t that he was embarrassed to be seen with her, he was actually oddly proud to have her on his arm, if only because he felt this strange sense of accomplishment that after all this time, they were finally boyfriend and girlfriend. His discomfort was more a result of how he felt that they were being judged by everyone around them. He didn’t want his relationship with Kandi to be the buzz topic of the day. He didn’t need to hear anyone making bets as to how long they would last or speculating on whether or not Kandi had cheated on her ex with him. It was none of their business.

“Are you okay?” she whispered while the teacher’s back was turned. “You’re acting kind of strange.”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” he replied as he forced a smile.

“Are you sure?” she asked again. Kandi paused, pretending to jot something down in her notebook as soon as Mr. Connor glanced her way. Her southern drawl wasn’t difficult to pick out in the crowd. “’Cause you haven’t taken your eyes off the board since class started, and Connor’s not that interesting. Plus, you’re kind of not blinking right now.”

He couldn’t help but sputter out a chuckle, earning him a noticeable glare from the teacher. “It’s okay.”

She smiled at his muffled laughter, her honey brown eyes softening as she turned her attention back to the lecture.

Class seemed to drag on forever, and although Logan was generally studious, he had to admit that his thoughts had been too scattered to pick up a damn thing about chemical bonds. When he wasn’t worrying about what people were saying about him and Kandi, his thoughts kept drifting back to his weekend with her, back to way the salty air made her chestnut locks curl and the gentle way her lips brushed against his when they were all alone.

He was so caught up in his own frantic thought-loops that he almost didn’t notice that the bell had rung until Kandi was grasping his hand and tugging him along behind her towards the door.

“You’re going to have to fill me in on what we went over in class today,” he confessed as he leaned against the wall just outside the classroom. His gaze followed the groups of teenagers streaming down the hallway, branching off in every direction as they hurried to make it to their next class. “I just couldn’t focus.”

“Are you serious?” Kandi laughed, smiling to herself as she turned to watch a group of friends pass them. “You stared at the board for the entire period. How do you not know what’s going on? Need to step up your game, Mitchell.”

He grinned back at her, but he didn’t know quite how to respond, so he said nothing.

Fortunately, Kandi was quick to pick up the conversation. “Anyways, I think the gist of it was that ionic bonds are when one atom steals electrons from another atom and covalent bonds are when two atoms share electrons. Connor went on and on about some experience he had while working at that big chemical corporation, but ya know, that’s nothing new.” She toyed with the end of her braid as she spoke, her brown eyes only glancing up to meet his once she had finished her attempt at an explaination.

“Oh, okay,” he replied as his hands clutched the straps of his backpack. “Well, I guess I’d better be heading off to Calc. I’ll see you at lunch?”

“Mhm.” She smiled as her eyes stayed focused on her feet, and Logan couldn’t help but think to himself that he’d never seen her this nervous before, but before he got a chance to say anything, Kandi leaned over and planted a quick kiss on his cheek.

Logan didn’t need a mirror to know that his cheeks were bright red, and all he could offer her was a sheepish grin and an awkward wave as he watched her walk away. A faint smile clung to his lips as he turned towards his math class. She was always catching him off-guard like that. Whenever he felt like he had her all figured out, she turned around and did something he never would’ve expected, like kissing him in front of practically everyone they knew. Kandi was unpredictable, a trait that would’ve normally stressed Logan out beyond his means, but he enjoyed the way she always kept him guessing.

The temporary high she’d left him with seemed to dissipate as soon as he entered the classroom.

Jett Stetson was another person that Logan had never been able to quite wrap his mind around, but instead of being some endearing quality as it was in Kandi, it was just downright annoying. As usual, Jett was sitting in his desk, the collar of his navy blue polo shirt starched to the point that it stood upright on his neck as he struggled to dissect his own features in the tiny mirror embedded in his binder. It was one of those colorful padded binders that little girls in elementary school would typically go for, with an airbrushed leopard that displayed every color of the rainbow on its coat, but Logan had a sneaking suspicion that Jett had only bought it for the mirror.

Jett didn’t seem to be embarrassed by his choice in school supplies, and it was a puzzle that Logan didn’t have time to try to sort out now. Truthfully, Logan was still mind-boggled as to how the self-absorbed teenager had gotten into an AP calculus course.

But one thing Logan did admire about his desk neighbor was Jett’s inability to beat around the bush. As soon as Logan was settled into his desk, Jett’s blue-eyed gaze strayed from his reflection, briefly flickering down Logan’s lean frame before he met the other boy’s stare.

“Are you dating Kandi Jenkins?” he asked, and though they had sat beside each other for the course of the semester, those were the first words Jett had ever said to Logan.

Logan found himself fighting the urge to roll his eyes, his lips mashed into a firm line as he nodded.

For a moment, Jett narrowed his eyes at him before he returned to styling his overly-gelled blonde locks.

If chemistry had been bad, that hour spent in calculus was some form of cruel and unusual punishment, and Logan constantly caught himself glancing up at the clock, counting down the minutes until lunchtime. He copied the equations and solutions from the board, but none of it was sinking in. All he could think about was that first real kiss in the hallway outside her apartment, the perfect close to a perfect first date. She had tasted like blueberries from the pancakes she’d had for dinner, and her shimmery peach lip gloss was sticky and had clung to his lips as he pulled away.

He’d wanted to tell her that he loved her right then and there, because he did, but his lips couldn’t seem to form the words. A part of him knew it was too soon, and this was so new to both of them, and he didn’t want to scare her away.

“Mr. Mitchell,” Coach Gentry’s voice broke through his thoughts. “What’s the average value of this function?”

Logan’s pencil fell from his grip, his skin was growing hot again, and all he could muster was a slight twitch of his lip.

“Please pay attention.”

A quick nod was his only response as his syrupy eyes drifted back to the notebook on his desk, but of course, his attempt at concentration didn’t last long.

Logan tried to think back to when he’d first realized that he was hopelessly in love with his best friend, but he couldn’t pinpoint a specific moment in time. His feelings for her had been slow burning, sparked by an initial attraction that only smoldered the more he came to know her. He’d loved her all those nights on the rooftop after she’d have an argument with her then boyfriend, he’d loved her the night he’d asked her to prom, and he’d loved her that night at the beach party when he got up on stage and sang for her, a gesture so unlike himself but she made him want to test those boundaries, to do the things that scared him the most.

Picking out that one night that had caused that shift in his feelings for her was an impossible feat because he felt like it was something that had been there between them, lingering and unspoken, all along.

When lunchtime finally came, all of his friends had elected to have lunch inside the cafeteria, but the weather outside was so gorgeous and sunny that Logan decided to have lunch in the courtyard with Kandi. He bought the two of them frozen lemonades from one of the vendors that set up their carts around the perimeter of the park, and with their bag lunches from home, they set up a makeshift picnic beneath one of the looming oak trees.

He watched her tuck a strand of loose hair behind her ear as she sipped her lemonade. “So how was class today?”

“It was okay,” he lied, running his fingers through his espresso-colored hair. “You wouldn’t happen to be friends with Jett Stetson, would you?”

“Um, I met him while I was working on New Town High, but that’s pretty much it,” she replied, laughter seeping through her tone. “Why?”

“He asked me earlier if we were dating.”

“What did you tell him?” Her tone remained casual, but Logan could sense just how pivotal the answer was to her. Something in her needed the reassurance that what they had between them was real, that Logan wasn’t too timid to let the world know he cared about her, that he wasn’t ashamed of being with her.

“I told him yes.” The boyish dimples dug into his cheeks as he grinned at her. “Why, what did you expect me to say?”

Her lips curved into a smile from behind the bright red straw, her eyes lighting up with the expression. “I was just wondering.”

They continued to eat their lunches in silence, with the birds chirping in the trees and the sound of their fellow students conversing and laughing in the courtyard around them. Spring was definitely in the air, and while the climate in L.A. rarely ever shifted with the seasons, there was that barely perceptible feeling that summer was right around the corner, and with summer came changes.

“So…” Logan let his voice trail off as he reached for his drink. “Are you doing anything after class?”

She pushed her sideswept bangs from her face, her eyes trailing the cars that passed by as she spoke. “I have an audition at four, but I could definitely use some moral support.”

“I’ll come with.” He laughed to ease the unfamiliar awkwardness that was beginning to slip between them.

“Why thank you,” she teased him, upping the Southern belle charm in her voice in an attempt to lighten the mood. “I guess you’re not such a bad boyfriend after all.”

“That’s always nice to know.”

“So anyway, I can totally top your awkward encounter with Jett when it comes to strangeness,” she said with a laugh. “You know we’re doing our presentations this week in Film Theory, right?”

“Yeah, James kept me out of our room all day yesterday so he could finish his.”

“Omigosh,” she barely managed to choke out through her own laughter, and he couldn’t help but think that she was so pretty like that: laughing so hard she could barely breathe, her eyes creased at the corners because she was smiling so hard. “Do you know what he did his project on?”

A faint smile lingered on his lips as he shook his head. “He wouldn’t tell any of us.”

“Well, just to give you a hint, it was titled Fifty Reasons Why Fifty Shades of Grey Should Be Made Into a Film, by James Diamond.”

“You’re not serious…”

“I’m completely serious,” she replied matter-of-factly. “I’m not sure what grade he’ll get, but I gotta admit, it was entertaining.”

Logan just shook his head; he could see his roommate getting into something totally ridiculous like that. There were very few things that James Diamond was passionate about, but when he found something he was interested in, he had a tendency to get immersed in it and take it to the extreme.

“Why’s James in Film Theory anyway? I didn’t know he was interested in acting.”

He rolled his big brown eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “He wants to be a triple threat: singer, actor, dancer.” By the way she nodded, he could tell she wasn’t very surprised. “But what about you? What did you do your presentation on?”

“Oh, I don’t have to present until Thursday,” she explained. “But I did my on the portrayal of mental illness in Silver Linings Playbook.”

“That sounds cool.”

“Thanks,” she replied gratefully with that hopeless expression on her face: her eyes widened, the corner of her lip curved up in a faltering smile. “Hopefully I won’t totally bomb it. You know how I am when it comes to public speaking.”

He offered her a smile and a shrug. Logan couldn’t understand how someone like Kandi, a girl that seemed so approachable, so sure of herself, and could strike up a conversation with just about anybody, could be so terrible at oral presentations, but she was. He’d only witnessed her lackluster public speaking skills once in chemistry, and it was a disaster. “I’m sure you’ll do fine, just don’t stress yourself out over it.”

“Ha ha,” she shot back dryly. “That’s easy for you to say.”

Kandi reached for her books, cradling them in her arms as she stood up. “Oh well, guess I’d better be heading off to English. Shakespeare’s not gonna read himself. Thanks for the slushie.” She tilted the almost empty cup in his direction.

“Don’t mention it.” He smiled back at her, thrusting his hands into the pocket of his sweater. “Do you want me to walk you to class?”

“Nah, I’ll be fine,” she answered, brushing the notion away with a flick of her wrist. “But thanks for the offer.”

He watched the head of brunette locks disappear in the crowd before he stopped to grab his own backpack off the green turf and slung it over his shoulders. His next class was chorus, which normally wasn’t that fun, but at least he had his three best buds in there to help pass the time.

The conversation amongst his three friends came to a halt as soon as Logan approached them, the tell-tale sign that they had just been talking about him. While Logan trusted enough in them that their gossip wasn’t too bad, it was still unsettling, infuriating, that even his closest friends had something to say about his new relationship.

As much as he tried to play it cool as he took a seat between Carlos and James, Logan had never been stellar when it came to masking his emotions.

Hershey syrup eyes scanned the room in search for their teacher, but she was nowhere to be found.

“Where’s Miss Cohn?” he asked the caramel skinned boy at his side.

“I don’t know, she must be sick,” Carlos replied as he tried to spin his pencil around on his binder. “We’ve got a sub today.”

“Yeah,” James tacked on. “She said we could do anything as long as we don’t get too loud.”

“Oh, okay…” Logan wasn’t quite sure how he should react. Any other time, he’d be grateful for the chance to just bullshit with the guys or maybe get some of his homework done earlier, but something about the expressions etched across their faces told him that there was really only one topic up for discussion that afternoon.

James was the first to bring it up, swiping his shaggy brown hair from his eyes as the words pushed effortlessly past his lips. “So how did your night end up? You and Kandi were looking pretty darn cozy on the couch last night.”

He couldn’t help but roll his eyes because, really, guys were no better than girls when it came to gossip.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he replied with a nervous chuckle. “We rented a movie. We watched it. She went back to her apartment. That’s it.”

“Did you kiss her?” Kendall perked up.

“Is she a good kisser?” Carlos continued.

“Did you get to second base?” James was the next to bombard him with embarrassing questions. “You know, get a little bit of boob action?” He followed the interrogation up with an obscene hand gesture, his hazel eyes ablaze, and Logan just wanted to die.

“Okay, first off, yes, we did kiss-“

“Did you slip her some tongue?” James again.

“I’m not going there,” Logan replied, holding out his hand as if he could shield himself from the guys’ prying questions with a simple gesture. “But I will admit, she’s a pretty good kisser.”

It was just enough information to send the three hormone-ridden boys into a fit of howls and laughter.

Just as the commotion between them began to die down, Logan met Kendall’s green-eyed gaze from across the small space. “I expected more from you.”

And it was true. Out of the three of them, Logan would’ve never expected Kendall to join in on the chaos, especially since he’d had to deal with the same sort of pestering when he first started dating his long-time girlfriend Jo.

All his friend could offer him was a helpless shrug and a slight raise of his eyebrows.

The remainder of the period passed by in a similar fashion, except instead of asking him questions about his first weekend with Kandi, the guys felt the need to give him advice on how to take things further. It was advice Logan could’ve went his entire life without hearing, and while he was normally okay listening to his more sexually-experienced friends recount their various escapades, he felt much differently when all of that attention was aimed at him. Maybe he was a little old-fashioned or maybe it was because he’d never had anything to tell, but a part of him felt like those things should be kept private.

It was lab day in AP Biology, and for that afternoon, they were supposed to dissect a sheep’s eyeball. Though Logan prided himself in his medical knowledge, he was completely useless when it came to dissections. He constantly found the need to reassure himself that he would never need this for his career, that he planned on becoming a family physician, not a surgeon.

Luckily, he had an awesome lab partner.

Her lab goggles were fogged up by her own breath, and the strap was so tight that it made her hair stick out in every different direction around her ears, but Logan still felt that erratic pitter-patter of his pulse in his chest whenever he glanced her way. While it took Kandi a few minutes to get over her initial squeamishness, once she grew used to the idea, she dove in headfirst with those instruments.

With the sheep eye cautiously balanced in her latex-covered palm, Kandi’s eyes shifted towards him.

“I think we have to cut off the eyelid first,” she said, still looking to him for any form of reassurance. A part of her clung to that hope that maybe one day, Logan would get over his weak stomach and save her from being forced to do the majority of their dissection work, but the grimace imprinted on his face let her know that today just wasn’t that day.

A sigh forced its way past her lips. “Can you hand me the little scissors?”

Logan did as he was told and tried not to vomit as he watched her snip the delicate, formaldehyde-soaked skin away as if it were nothing.

Her thumb brushed along the surface of the eye. “So I guess this would be the cornea…”

“Yeah. This sheet says we’re supposed to identify the sclera, cornea, and optic nerve before you start getting psycho with the scalpel.”

“Because we both know how much I love just chopping up some poor, helpless sheep’s eyeball.” There was that mixture of sarcasm and disgust in her tone, but the corner of her lip curved upward into a half-smile as she inspected the object in her hand. “Cornea, sclera…” Her fingers tugged at the remnants of a stalk at the back of the organ. “Optic nerve.”

“Now we have to make a slit halfway between the cornea and sclera.”

The rest of the dissection carried on in a similar manner, with Logan reading the directions off of their lab sheet and Kandi doing the majority of the slicing and dicing. As always, the lab partners finished earlier than everyone else, and after they’d cleaned up their area, they had nothing but time to kill.

“So what’s the audition for this afternoon?” Logan asked as he absentmindedly traced patterns across the black countertop with his finger.

“It’s for a sitcom pilot,” she replied, her eyebrows rising slightly in the expression as her lips pursed. “Personally, I’m not a big fan of sitcoms…or at least anything after Seinfeld and Friends, but I’ve done the whole teen melodrama thing twice now, plus I tried something more intense and mature, so I just thought to myself, ‘Maybe it’s time to do a comedy?’”

Even though he knew that there was always that uncertainty lurking at the back of her mind when it came to her career, Logan thought that acting was a good fit for her, and he admired the way that she viewed her work, always looking for a challenge or something new to become involved in. If anything, he could understand why she was so unsure about acting because he was going through the same struggles concerning his own future.

“Well I hope you go in there and break a leg.”

“Thanks.” Kandi smiled over at him, but her smile faded as her shoulders began to quiver.

Her hands ran up and down over her bare arms, the goosebumps apparent on her flesh. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m fine.” She forced a smile. “It’s just freezing in here.”

Growing up in Minnesota with its harsh winters, Logan Mitchell felt immune to the constant blast of A/C that flooded each of the classrooms, but Kandi was from South Carolina. She was accustomed to stifling humidity, balmy summers, and half-hearted winters. Any temperature below seventy degrees was the equivalent of being in a frozen tundra.

“Here,” he offered immediately, pushing the cardigan sleeve down his arm. “Take my sweater.”

As her fingers curved around the woven cream-colored cotton, there was a new look of clarity swirled in those molasses brown irises. “Thank you.”

It was as if there was this new understanding between them, that even though their relationship was changing and all of this was new to them, they were still the same people. He was still her best friend, and he’d be there for her, no matter what.

The sweater hung from her shoulders, much too baggy around her arms and much too tight around her chest as she wrapped it around her, eager to become enveloped in the comforting fabric and the scent of his skin. And it was then that he realized he no longer cared what everyone else had to say about them. He didn’t care about who did and who didn’t believe they would last. None of that really mattered.

The only two people that mattered were the ones sitting there at that lab table on that Monday afternoon.

Logan fished his iPhone from the pocket of his jeans, and while he had always been a little lost for words when it came to Kandi, he was able to fit his feelings into a simple text message and hit send.

I know it’s too soon, but I love you.

He heard the soft buzz as her phone vibrated in her back pocket, but he kept his gaze focused on the damp spirals he’d doodled. It was the warmth of her hand, the soft pressure of her fingers, that let him know she felt the same way.