Max enters her apartment first thing in the morning, like nothing
is up. “Where have you been Miss Thang? A brown out should not be spent
alone,” Original Cindy pipes from the living room. Kendra and Cindy had
been in the apartment during the brown out and were curious to know
their friend’s whereabouts from the previous evening. They had been
hoping for a girl’s night.
     “I was at Logan’s. No worries,” Max stated in a matter-of-fact
tone, totally dismissing her friends’ looks. She walked out of the room
and headed for a long hot shower. She changed her clothes and began to
stuff clothes and food into her backpack back in the living room.
     “Are you going to make us beg? We know something happened,” Kendra
pleaded. Max just looked at her like she was nuts. “Alright then why
the
clothes for the next few days.” They were actually just some
comfortable
clothes she had been planning to bring over to Logan’s anyway.
     Saved by the phone, Max went over and picked it up. Logan had
given
Max a cell phone a few weeks earlier. Kendra and Cindy were unaware of
the phone’s existence so this only furthered their suspicions something
had gone down the night before with Max and Logan. They were right but
Max was not going to tell them that. Max answered the phone pretending
not to see the looks on her friends’ faces, “Hello.”
     “Hi,” it was Logan on the line. She knew it would be. “I just
wanted to make sure you got home OK.” Max smiled to herself, “I know
pretty dumb from a guy in a wheel chair to ask if his genetically
enhanced girlfriend, …friend, … person he cares about, got home
safely.”
Max could feel her heart race and she was getting warm. Logan was so
amazing. Intelligent, witty, strong willed, handsome, always told her
what he thought, and could argue with her and win. He knew when to try
to stop her and when to let her go. He even understood that she could
not deal with giving a name right now to what they were to each other.
All Max needed was to know was she was to him and him only and vice
versa.
    “You’re sweet,” Max said with a huge smile until she regained the
awareness she was not alone in the room. Kendra and Cindy were staring
her down from across the room. Max dropped the enthusiasm for the man
on
the other end of the phone to get some composure in front of her
friends. “I will call you later OK.” She turned away from the girls to
say quietly, “I enjoyed our talk last night. Now you need to go to bed.
I can go without sleep but you can’t.”
     “Yes, Ma’am,” Logan said as his physical therapist, Bling, came
in.
In his most playful voice he said, “Come check on me later?”
     “Count on it,” Max said with a smirk.

     “Girlfriend, you cannot tell me there is nothing going on between
you and the Bruce Wayne impersonator. That was something!” Original
Cindy said in her usually fashion.
     “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Max answered. She had
gotten used to lying after leaving Manticore. It was the way the world
worked.
     “Oh, come on Max. ‘I enjoyed our talk last night. Now you need to
go to bed.’ Something happened … Why weren’t you sleeping? Did you two
kick it last night?” Cindy demanded.
     “Hello, the man is in a wheelchair. Paralyzed from the waist
down.”
Max’s eyes dropped at the recognition that she may not be able to make
love to Logan at some point. “I don’t even know if… That is to say I
never asked. Besides we are friends. He goes to bat for me; I go to bat
for him,” Max said, dispelling the women’s delusions of hot, sweaty
activities.
     “If nothing happened, then tell us what did happen?” Kendra chimed
in.
     “I went over for dinner. The lights went out. We ate. We talked.
End of Story,” Max said bluntly.
     “All night?” asked Kendra
     “Yes.”
     “No physical contact?” Original Cindy asked. In a few seconds she
had her answer as Max floated off into her own thoughts for a while.
     Max began to remember Logan’s lips on her lips & on her neck. She
remembered the electricity she felt. She began to smile unknowingly.
She
thought about the way Logan held her in his arms on his big sofa as
they
talked until the sun came up. Max was far away with Logan in her mind.
“MAX!” Kendra said directly in her ear before finally snapping her out
of the memory. “Please … I need to live vicariously through you. Just
give me the PG version.”
     “I promise, all there was PG content,” Max smiled and finished
tying her bag.
     “So, something did happen!” Cindy stated.
 Max was finally at a place where she could admit something had
changed.
“Yes.”
     “So do we get to hang over at the rich man’s house, or will he be
slumming it with us?” Original Cindy said thinking of the rich ladies
she might discover and corrupt.
     “Lets not go nuts. Slow it down a little, K,” Max said a little
uncomfortable by the idea that her safe haven might become her friends’
new hang out.
     “Fast? You two have been slower then snails.” This comment by
Cindy
was bewildering to Max. “It is obvious he is all about you. And girly
you ain’t foolin anybody with your pouty looks. You dig him too &
you’ve
dug him for a while.”
     Max said nothing as Cindy finished. Kendra started to try to make
Max understand. “Max you have known us longer then him but he knows way
more about you. He knew about your seizures. We didn’t; I’m your
roommate for God sake,” Kendra sighed. “I’m not jealous of the
closeness
you share; its just he gets you. And you let him get you. We get you
too
just not the way he does.”
     “He gets me,” Max thought, the words bouncing around her head. “I
guess that’s true. I do let him in more. He does know who I am; what I
am…”
     “One last question?” Kendra asked timidly. Max made the ‘what now’
face. “Does he close his eyes when you kiss? I love it when guys do
that,” seeing if she would admit to having kissed Logan.
     Max gathered her things, pushed her bike, and started out the
door.
“I don’t know. I had my eyes shut… LATER.”