Before You Go (YA Romance) (19 page)

 
“This should be enough—for both of us. I got what I wanted. So did you. It can’t continue. I shouldn’t have followed you tonight.”

She smiled. “Oh, shut up.”

“Margo, you don’t know what you’re asking for. I’m not your age. I’m not your boyfriend.”

“I don’t care.” She was surprised to find she really didn’t.

The air got heavier, seemed to press on her heart. His mouth curved down, one pliant moment when his eyes burned, and she could see how much he wanted her. He raised his hand, leaning forward, though his feet stayed locked in place.

He smiled, small and tight and maybe not a smile at all. “We should go.”

She stood there, stupidly, and he opened the door. He stepped out first and held it for her. “Coming?”

She nodded, feeling dizzy...off-kilter, but stronger somehow. He followed her out the door and they started up the pebbly hill, walking silently most of the way as she assessed his posture, breathing…as she caught his eyes sliding over her. When they neared the house, she grabbed his hand and squeezed.

“Look, Logan, just sleep on it, okay? Think about how it would be if we were something real.”

He squeezed her hand back, leaned down to kiss her softly on the cheek. “Goodnight, Margo.”

18

 
Twenty-one hours later and twenty-two kilometers northwest of The Zhu Observatory, in a crystalline cove off the island’s northwest shore, Logan stacked the last keg on top of an icy steel pyramid. He was in the back of a thatch hut where, tonight, he would spend several hours serving drinks.

He rubbed his cold, achy hands on his silky black slacks; they fit a little closer than he liked, but they were nothing compared to his stiff, white linen shirt. It had “Z”-embossed onyx cufflinks, and a little black bowtie like the one he’d worn to his MIT scholarship dinner.

He felt like an ass in the dressy clothes, and it didn’t help that when she’d seen him earlier, Cindy had told him he looked “dapper.” Of course, he wasn’t the only one tricked out like this. Most of the casa staff had been shipped to Castillo de Zhu, Cindy’s fifteen-story resort, to work the Fourth of July celebration/Equirria Enterprises banquet—where, at midnight, the company’s manned Mars program would be officially announced. Logan had volunteered for the gig; he’d get paid for the work, just like any day down at the barn, but this way, he’d avoid all the dull, pre-announcement chit-chat.

The guests had been trickling in for half an hour, socialites wearing sequins and tuxes, their miserable-looking kids dressed in tiny suits and puffy dresses. Most were still mingling in the hotel. Logan’s hut and dozens of others like it were on the resort’s municipality-sized deck, mixed in with a handful of large tents and several sparkling blue pools.

The party was there, too: swing bands, a woman making leis, stone-framed pits where other folks in little black bowties roasted hogs and grilled steaks. He scanned the crowd for a flash of red—Cindy. She’d been around for several hours, but she’d only recently slipped into her gown, a strapless, skin-tight thing that looked like it cost more than a house.

Restless, with half an hour to spare, Logan pushed through the door on the side of his booth and dove into the crowd, working his way toward the rows of glass doors and the lobby behind them. He’d decided, after a night and day of conflicted self doubt, that he wanted to see Margo. It was insane, and he still felt sleazy about keeping it a secret, but he wanted what he wanted. And the decision made him feel, for the first time in a long time, lighter. The check-up call he made on a lobby pay phone to his sister back in Georgia didn’t make him feel as crappy as he usually did. He hung up the phone thinking about Margo.

When he pushed past several staff members wrestling with hundreds of balloons, and a red one escaped from the pack and sailed four stories up, Logan decided to go after it. He watched it get caught in a palm tree hanging over the open-air lobby, and, feeling slightly crazy, climbed all four flights of stairs to get it. He pressed himself against the rail, reaching out till his straining fingers closed around the string. He took the balloon downstairs, feeling strangely exuberant, like a question was answered, like the world was okay.

He smiled, walking out the doors with the bobbing thing wrapped around his wrist. Maybe he would give it to Margo.

Strange that her face was in his head, because the second he stepped out, her mother was right in front of him.

“Logan. I had wondered where you were.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, unraveling the balloon from his wrist as he spoke. “I had to make a call on one of the phones.
Family thing.
Left my cell back at the O.”

She waved her tiny hand. “Don’t give up the balloon.”

He smiled, feeling foolish.

“I hope it was nothing serious.”

“The phone call?
No,” he said, as she beckoned him away from the doorway and over toward a gold-fish pond.

“Have a seat,” she urged, and he sat down on some rocks, feeling nervous and odd. She remained standing over him, holding a glass he hadn’t noticed before. He had a sixth-sense-
ish
feeling that this was a bad thing, that her schoolteacher stance, lording over him while he sat there with his balloon, meant she was going to scold him. She brought her wine glass to her lips and cast her eyes up, where palm leaves crisscrossed a black sky.

Finally, she asked, “How do you like it here, Logan?” 

Did she mean the hotel? He nodded. “It’s beautiful.”

“Castillo Zhu. Well, of course. It’s a resort. How do you like the casa?”

“Um, it’s good, too. I’ve enjoyed my time there.”

“Is that all?”

Confused, Logan expounded: “It’s been very important to my career, like you said it would be. And I feel very lucky that you invited me.”

“Lucky.” Her nose scrunched. “It’s a funny word. In Chinese culture, they say luck is determined in the first breath. You inhale—” She did it herself, her sequins casting specs of red over the water and the rocks. “You breathe in and…it’s like destiny.”

“You mean qi?”

“You know.” She smiled. “I should have known that you would know.” He wondered if that was a compliment, relaxed a little bit. “So, there is qi, and there is man luck. You know about man luck?”

He shook his head, wishing that he did.

“‘Man luck’ is the golden rule. You’ve heard of that.”

“Treat others the way you want to be treated.”

She nodded, angling her body toward him, so her crystal glass splashed light into his face. When she spoke, her voice was soft. “Tell me this: do you want children?”

He gulped. The question was somehow intimate, and also charged. Why was she asking? What should he say? “I’m not sure, to be honest. I guess I wouldn’t rule it out.”

“And if you had a daughter…” Her brows arched. He had no idea what he was supposed to say, but she waited, silent, forcing him to throw the ball back.

“If I did…”

She winked, her pale face pulling in a smile that wasn’t a smile.

“If you did,” she said, dragging out the words. “Would you want someone who worked for you to admire your daughter?”

Oh, shit.
A fist clutched the back of his throat, and, slowly, he shook his head.

“Why not?”

What could he say?
Because I wouldn’t want the dickhead trying to fuck her
.
That thought brought a hundred others, of himself and Margo, there in the dirt of the greenhouse, her hand on him.

Pull it together, Tripp
.

“It…um, well, there are a lot of reasons that’s bad. You uh, shouldn’t mix business and personal, for one.”

She was nodding, shrewd, subtly yet firmly egging him on.

“Honestly, if I had a daughter, I probably wouldn’t be happy to see her with anyone. I’d be protective.” He’d be surprised if Cindy felt that way, too, uninvolved as she’d been in Margo’s life.

And yet she said, “You got it. You are smart.” She whirled her beverage around, making little bubbles that smashed against the glass. “Logan Tripp, how old
are
you?”

“Eighteen,” he mumbled, sweating now.

“You know how old is Margo?”

He nodded. He expected her to say more, to flay him with fifteen, but for a long time she just stood there.

Then: “In six years, you will be twenty-four. What about that?”

Logan was lost. He shrugged.
 

“In five years, we start our training.
For Mars trip.”

The words hung between them, more accented than usual, thicker than ocean air. He couldn’t swallow, waiting for her to speak.

“Logan,” she said at last, a good witch twist upon his name, “you want to go to Mars?”

“Yes.”

Cindy reached down, grabbed his hand. She lifted it up, her pencil-thin brows scrutinizing his fingers. “You broke,” she said, and for a second, he thought she was reading the lines of his hand. “When you were ten?”

He nodded, breath held. How the hell did she know? She released his hand, and Logan had to fight the urge to tuck it under his arm. The break, like all his other childhood “scuffs,” was a secret. It shouldn’t have been anywhere in his file.

“You know, astronauts, they should not have scars or breaks,” she said.

He nodded, numb now. Was she saying he couldn’t go to Mars? What was the point, then, of scolding him for seeing Margo? Just as he opened his mouth to ask, her red lips smiled. In a jubilant voice, Cindy said—she almost shouted: “For you, I will make an exception!” She nodded once, briskly. “Man luck.”