Lucky Me Lucky You | Clyde Logan x Reader

Chapter 1

The Logans were gorgeous. Everyone at Valley View High School had known it. Jimmy had been the perfect all-American quarterback. Mellie had been the beauty queen with the perfect nails. Clyde had been the quiet one who'd played a year of JV basketball.

However, they were unlucky. Everyone on this side of the Little Coal River knew it. Their father, Walter, had perished in a puzzling mining incident. Three years later, Connie, their mother, had passed after a fight with cancer. Not to mention all the other unfortunate instances with the extended family.

Clyde had quit basketball by the end of that unfortunate school year. Mellie went from most popular girl in her year to insular ice queen. Jimmy had floundered as the new head of the Logan clan. His hot-headed girlfriend hadn't helped matters. Then, Jimmy had suffered that devastating knee injury during a game and lost his scholarship.

You'd had plenty of classes with Clyde in high school, since you were the same year. His intelligent answers in class had always surprised you. He was perpetually on the honor roll. So, maybe your surprise wasn't fair. Jocks could be smart. A lot of them were.

Just not at Valley View, you mentally retorted. And Clyde hadn't been a jock, per se.

The jocks there had been morons who had been more interested in The Team than actual school. They drank gross Natty Light while camping on Bald Knob. You knew those "camping trips" were more about trying to get their respective dicks wet than anything else. It had been hilarious schadenfreude when a few of them had gotten crabs and had to shave off all their body hair and use an awful-smelling lotion.

You didn't want to know how they'd collectively gotten crabs. You had ideas, but you didn't want to think too much about it.

Anyway, the Logans were gorgeous. So what? It hadn't meant much to you outside of a little fascination with the Logan clan. You had graduated with Clyde. You'd had big plans for your future. He'd had big plans, too. During senior year, you'd overheard him talking before class about joining the Army. You had thought about him in that service uniform and how handsome he would look.

Thirteen years later, Clyde was tending bar, sans uniform and missing part of his left arm. At the same time, you were working at the data-entry/call-center down the road from the house you inherited from your late grandmother. So much for big plans. Sure, you had become a homeowner before the age of thirty, but the little bungalow was only a step above a coal-camp house.

Nothing had worked out for either of you. You'd gotten a bachelor's and tried to find a job in Pittsburgh—where your accent was "cute." However, you completely failed at getting anything better than temp front-desk jobs. Probably because they loved your sweet little voice being the first anyone heard when calling the company.

Those kind of temp jobs couldn't pay the rent in a city like Pittsburgh. Your parents couldn't keep transferring money to your bank account every month, either. So, you'd come home with your tail between your legs. During the day, you worked part-time at the new local Grocery Castle. At night, you'd slept in your childhood bedroom.

Then Granny's health had taken a turn for the worse after a nasty fall. You'd moved into her cluttered second bedroom to take care of her. It had been okay with the help of senior home care. You'd gotten by. Between you and the nurses, Granny had gotten what she needed.

And then one frigid February morning, she hadn't woken up.

After the funeral, her home was bleak and silent. Lifeless. Her orange half-filled pill organizer had still been on the kitchen counter. Her Ensure shakes were in the old clanking fridge. You had sat down at the laminate table in the kitchen, coat and salt-crusted shoes still on, and wondered how you were going to keep breathing.