Bleeding Color

24. Scars

Logan and I spend nearly every day together for two weeks, and somehow I still don't feel like I'm around her enough. Currently, she's convincing me to paint with her, but I'm more than hesitant to say yes. The thought of painting stick figures and square houses while Logan is sitting beside me painting a Michelangelo masterpiece seems more embarrassing than fun. Still, she convinces me, and next thing I know we're sitting side by side, a canvas in front of each of us in Logan's loft.

I roll up the sleeves of the sweatshirt Logan lends me, and smile once I glance at her. She's wearing her button up she always wears to paint, but it's unbuttoned and revealing her dark bra, and she sends me a teasing wink as she catches me staring at her. My eyes spend more time on Logan than my brush spends on canvas. I can't help the smirk that appears as I gawk at her, and chuckle once her tongue starts to stick out. Her tongue always sticks out of her mouth just slightly when she's focused. I doubt she even realizes that she's doing so. It's one of my favorite things about her, and it's not even intentional on her behalf. 

My eyes travel from her laser focused expression, down to the tattoo on the left side of her ribs. I can barely see it peeking out from her shirt, and my curiosity takes control of me. "Logan?" Logan twists her head to look at me. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Yes." Logan pauses a moment, but speaks before I can ask anything. "That was an easy question."

"Logan." I attempt to sound stern, but a chuckle escapes me. She apologizes and tells me I'm welcome to ask her anything. "What's the writing on your ribs?"

Logan glances down at her tattoo a moment and then continues painting while answering me. "It says 'love is patient.'" I assume it's another tattoo for Emily, but Logan proves my assumptions wrong, as always. "My mom has 'love is kind' on her right ribs. We got them together for my grandfather once I turned 16," she explains. "My grandfather never considered himself religious, but always considered himself spiritual. The one passage he always connected to in the bible was Corinthians. 'Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud.'" Logan stops herself from reciting the entire verse, but I ask her to continue her story. "My grandpa, he wasn't a huge fan of the bible, but he figured that if people can pick and choose that being gay will send someone to hell, but they're still going to heaven regardless of the fact they're cheating on their spouse, then he could practice the one verse that he actually liked. 'Love never fails' was his motto. He believed no matter if it's romantic, platonic, or anything in between, if it's genuine, then love will always beat adversity."

I relax the brush and paint palette in my hands, enthralled by every word leaving Logan's lips. My curiosity still has control and asking about one of Logan's tattoos turns into asking about all of them. I know that the rose on the back of Logan's right hand has something to do with Emily, but I don't know any reason beyond that. Apparently Emily often told Logan that she planed on getting a rose tattoo somewhere obnoxiously visible so people were forced to acknowledge it. Emily planned that she would get the tattoo on her 18th birthday, but she passed away before she ever turned 17. Since it was always a dream of Emily's, Logan got the tattoo in her honor.

Logan moves on to explain the broken infinity symbol on the inside of her left wrist. Laurel, Lukas, and Logan all got tattoos together last summer before Lukas started traveling the world. Logan says it was meant to be a reminder that nothing lasts forever. It's bleak, in my opinion, but always inspiring to Logan Spencer. The arrow on the outside of Logan's right forearm is intended to remind her to keep moving forward when life pulls her back. Logan tells me she's a sucker for cliché and overused tattoos as long as they hold a special meaning to her. She likes the idea of seeing two people pass one another on the street and both of them have nearly identical tattoos, but the meanings behind them are completely different.