Logan smoothed out the last of the cement he’d mixed that day and stood upright. His lower back muscles strained from being in a crouched position for too long. Sweat dripped into the corner of his left eye. He squinted, causing the stinging to get worse. As he pushed his helmet up to repeatedly wipe at his burning eye, effectively smearing dirt from his arm across his cheek, he was blasted by the blazing summer sun.

4:58 PM, he guessed. When it was five o’clock, the bottom of the sun perfectly lined up with the large tree next to the worksite. 

It was time to go home.

Where there should have been relief to the tension in his body, he could only find a stiffness that hardened with each passing day. If it weren’t for the steady work that came with the weather change, he wouldn’t know what day of the week it was or if a week had past.

He grabbed his water bottle from the ground, almost ripping the lid off to chug warmed water that had been frozen a couple hours before. Tasting of dust and sun, the water stung just as much as the sweat in his eyes. Still, his parched throat gulped the ass water lest he become another crisped old-fuck who still hadn’t retired.

There were a couple of those guys hanging around. They didn’t work in the sun like the rest of the guys, choosing to hang around the trucks with the doors propped open and the AC running. Would it have been smarter to just sit in the truck instead of wasting the air? Maybe. But then they wouldn’t look like they were working. 

Logan was only curious when he glanced around. As he took another long drink, he spotted just the kind of guy he was looking for. Leaning against the white company truck, the man was on the pudgy side. His arms were dark and wrinkled to the point of looking like beef jerky. 

“Yo, Manager Harris! Are we in the clear?”

A group of roofers stepped between Logan and freedom. He stayed back, drinking the last of his water even though he wanted to spit it out. He didn’t get enough water as it was and he knew he wasn’t going to drink any when he got home.

Harris scratched his head with the butt-end of a pen on the verge of melting in this May heat. His helmet moved up and down with the movement. “Eh…so the thing is, Josh called out for tomorrow. His wife gave birth today and it’s gonna rain the day after tomorrow. Anyone willing to stay behind today?”

In unison, the roofers shook their heads.

“My wife would kill me.”

“Son’s got a game.”

“I did overtime last Tuesday. I’ve got too many hours as is.”

As if they could smell blood in water, the group turned to look straight at Logan.

“Hey, Logan! Stay and help, will yeah?” “He’s all by his lonesome. He’s barely got anything going on. Isn’t that right, Logang?”

Logan cringed at the reference. His refusal was balling in his mouth. There really must have been dust in his water because his mouth was dry again.

Someone threw their arm around his shoulder and shoved him as a sacrifice toward Harris.

Summer heat was grueling long after the sun had set. Logan wished he could strip from his shirt without worrying about being charged for public indecency. That shirt clung to his skin, his sweat a persistent adhesive, and made him feel more uncomfortable than he already was.

If his back had ached before, it was screaming now. 

But work was done. He closed his mind off, reminding himself that he should focus on the present. 

As he walked back to his apartment from the job site, he gazed upward.

“A full moon,” he said to himself. 

Like ice in the sky, the chilling light from the moon sent a shiver down Logan’s back. Goosebumps bloomed over his arms, causing another shiver to go through him. He welcomed the reprieve from the heat though it would last only a couple of seconds. 

Those seconds were gone in a blink of an eye. Just like these fast pace days, time slipped through Logan’s hands. Minutes were grains of sand. As much as he tried to latch onto them, clenching them between strained exhausted fingers, there was no actual way to stop the passing of time.

Logan snorted at himself for feeling some kind of way.

“It’s just the moon.”

That moon lighted the way down Broadway Street. It was still busy for a random Thursday night. Friday would come soon, bringing in more students from the City’s local University. While the semester had ended, and the school year at that, some students spilled over into the summer months for summer classes.

Logan looked around with a bored look, not surprised to see the bars full. He might have been inclined to frequent them more often if he didn’t feel out of place next to all the young twenty-year-olds. He was in a strange age himself—twenty-eight was too old to be hanging with college students and he still couldn’t quite relate to the thirty-year-olds with a complete family.

His gaze lingered on the laughing groups of strangers. He analyzed their faces for no reason. Curiosity didn’t feel like the right word for it. Envy? He felt so empty most days that he couldn’t differentiate anymore.

For a moment, he thought he felt something other than complete numbness when he passed a the loud group. His shoulders tensed as he drew closer to the front of the bar that saw more people coming out than in.

“—you said that fucking shit! Haha! I know it!”

The annoying conversation went over Logan’s head. He didn’t have the energy to listen in or retain any of the stupid shit these drunks were blabbing on about.

His fingers twitched in his pocket, feeling more uncomfortable than he should have been. Even so, when he walked by, he thought he might combust. The loud music combined with the awful smell trickling out into the street made him sick to his stomach. A headache formed—or it was growing stronger. He’d gotten to the age where Ibuprofen became his daily vitamins.

“Dude, watch out!”

Logan had blocked out the loud people  making his long day even longer. His reaction time was fractured, leading to him not noticing the tripping man who slammed into his left side.

“Shit! Sorry—wait. Logan? Logan Caughnery?”

Logan wasn’t something fragile that could be knocked over by a drunk man, however, he was basically dead on his feet. His ankles weren’t as flexible as they used to be and he stumbled, losing his balance more embarrassingly than he probably should have.

He squinted at the unknown man who’d just soured his evening, ready to just shrug off the whole thing. That was, until he saw a face he hadn’t seen in almost a decade.

“Nate?”

The average height white guy with a shabby beard and thin brown hair vaguely looked like one of the guys Logan used to hang with when he was in high school. Memories, that had been locked away in Pandora’s box, came flooding out. 

Logan winced as if he were pierced by an icepick. Those memories…he’d avoided them for a reason.

Nate latched onto Logan’s arm, pulling him toward the ground. “What the hell? You missed the whole night, man!”

Logan’s brow furrowed. “What are you talking about?”

“Huh?” Nate used Logan as leverage to pull himself up. “The reunion? I figured you blew us off. But why are you covered in dirt?”

Logan ignored Nate’s flood of questions. He looked around at the bar, only then realizing that there were a lot more faces that he recognized. In an instant, the dark street that lead to his small apartment melted into a small classroom of students. 

A chill went through him, encircling his throat and plunging into the bottom of his stomach. 

“—Logan!”

“Huh?”

His eyes refocused. It took an embarrassingly long moment for him to clear his fuzzy thoughts. 

“Oh.” This is a reunion. 

Nate picked up that something was wrong, but he couldn’t possibly read the thoughts zipping around in Logan’s head. While Logan had been avoiding thinking about high school, Nate had been getting drunk on the memories.

“Shit, did no one tell you? I figured Matthew or…someone…”

Logan turned away. He didn’t have any reason to stick around. 

“Wait!” 

Nate lunged at him. He lost his balance and collided into Logan’s back. Nate shook his head as if he were trying to shake off the dizziness. 

“Don’t be like this! We haven’t seen each other—” hiccup “—in fucking ten years! How’ve you been? You’re not going to run off like this, right? Come in and have a couple drinks.”

Logan’s skin crawled. It wasn’t even just seeing Nate in a drunken state. He wasn’t quite sure what it was, but he knew he didn’t want any part in this. 

High school had been the last thing on his mind these last few years. In fact, he hadn’t thought about high school or any of his so called friends since the day he left. 

“Not interested,” Logan monotonously said. Though he thought he made it blunt, Nate didn’t back away from him. 

“I didn’t get to say goodbye. Wasn’t even until graduation that we learned you left town.”

Logan looked up, trying to find help in the dark cloudy sky. Or some patience. His right fist ached like it was craving something to hit. 

Guess some habits never truly die. This was exactly why he didn’t want to see Nate or anyone from high school again. Memories were easy to forget. All you had to do was override them with another. But reflexes? 

Those were the kind of parasites that couldn’t be easily eradicated.

But he didn’t leave. Why? He guessed it was because he thought he needed to resemble somewhat like a human. 

“I just had to leave. That town was sucking the life out of me,” he said, the words like pulling teeth. His body was aching in places he didn’t know could ache. He just wanted to face-plant on a solid surface and call it a night. 

Nate nodded as if he understood. That irked Logan more. 

“It’s not like you missed anything,” Nate slurred. He backed up, suddenly looking more sober than a second ago. “All anyone talked about was how good their lives were going. I guess now that we’re almost thirty, all we have is to be proud of what we’re doing.”

The serious look on Nate’s face was interrupted by a sloppy smile. His eyes were barely open. “Ehhhhh. Who care about that though?”

Logan didn’t say anything. 

“Give me your number! I’ll buy you a drink!”