Chapter 12: Home Sweet Home

Veronica glances over at Logan for the dozenth time in the last half hour. Every single time, he has been in the exact same position, his long body folded awkwardly into her too small passenger seat. She is starting to get a crick in her neck from both empathy with his position and from constantly craning to look back at him.

Ten miles.

Veronica sighs, taking her eyes off the road long enough to check on her passenger.

Ten miles to Neptune and still he sleeps. So much for that little ‘what-the-hell-are-we-doing’ chat I was so looking forward to.

Veronica stretches her neck side-to-side, hoping to release some of the tension building there. She tries to imagine what exactly her part of that chat would be. As every mile brings them closer and closer to Neptune, she can feel the tightness moving down her spine.

The two of them even talking to each other in a relatively civil manner is news. The two of them getting in car together, also news. The two of them spending the night alone in an expensive hotel room, half-naked and kissing? That’s the lead off at 11.

Or the front page of the Instigator.

Veronica cringes inwardly. The scrutiny inherent in dating the son of a movie star makes her palms sweat just thinking about it.

And why am I thinking about dating Logan Echolls, of all people? For all I know, that whole night could turn into more fodder for him to use against me Monday at school.

She thinks it, but for once in a very long while, she has a hard time believing it.

Veronica hums to herself, fingers tapping the wheel. The breeze blowing in off the ocean is crisp and fresh, the moisture of the early morning burning away under a spring sun. It’s helping to clear her mind, but is doing nothing for the tangle of emotions evoked every time she glances to her right.

She rubs her eyes, catches her reflection in the rearview mirror.

Nice look, Veronica. She tries to wipe away the smeared mascara below her eyes. At least my hair looks like crap. Distracts a little from the wrinkled, slept-in dress.

She fumbles behind her seat for her bag while she tries to stay in her lane. Somewhere along the way, it has gotten wedged behind her seat. Suddenly she feels something unexpected and her eyes jerk away from the road momentarily. Logan’s hand brushes hers as he pulls her bag from behind the seat and holds it out.

“You’re awake.” Veronica pulls her eyes away from him and back to her driving.

“Nothing gets past you does it, Mars?” Logan’s voice is scratchy and Veronica is instantly back in the moment when he woke up on top of her a few hours ago. And she’s not sorry to remember it.

She shakes her head almost imperceptibly. Every mile of highway between the back of her car and that hotel room is doing nothing to diminish these thoughts, as she thought they might. “You always this pleasant in the morning?”

“No, sometimes I’m even less so.”

Veronica nods. “I’ll make a note of that for future reference.”

Open mouth, insert flirting. Seriously, Veronica. She keeps her eyes on the road ahead to avoid Logan’s reaction to her little comment.

“What do you need?”

Veronica glances at him sharply, and sees that he is gesturing at her with the bag.

Oh, Logan. The million dollar, fully loaded question. But for now... “Hairbrush. Outside pocket.”

Logan pulls the bag into his lap and slides his hand into the pocket, producing a small hairbrush. Veronica takes it from him without looking, more unnerved by the helpful Logan than the cranky one. She yanks the brush through her hair a few times, flinching as it detangles.

From the corner of her eye, Veronica sees Logan’s hand lift towards her, hesitate and drop back to his lap. Her mind races, causing her to pull a bit too hard on a knot in her hair.

“Ow!”

“Issues?”

“At the risk of stating the obvious, my hair is tangled.”

“Right.” Distracted, Logan runs his hand through his own hair, eyes wandering to the view zipping by them at 65 miles per hour. “We’re almost to Neptune.”

Veronica frowns slightly. He sounds disappointed. “Yeah, just about there. Should I drop you at your house?” She drops the hairbrush back into the bag and Logan sets it on the floor again. He takes off his sunglasses and tosses them on the dashboard.

“Yeah.” His answer is barely audible and Veronica is unsure what to say. She certainly can’t take him to her house. Her Dad’s suspicions may already be raised. Showing up with Logan Echolls in tow would set off the warning bells and possibly some kind of large siren.

Veronica slows, exiting for Neptune. She heads up into the hills and to a neighborhood she makes a point of avoiding nowadays. That tension in her neck returns as she remembers how she used to drive these streets in happier times, traveling to the Kanes’ and the Echolls’ with regularity. Logan falls further into silence, and even stops fidgeting as they turn into his neighborhood.

She can make it to the Echolls estate on auto-pilot and within minutes, she pulls up at the gate, gliding to a stop. Logan keeps staring out his window, eyes focused on the house across the street. Veronica looks his direction as he continues to not react to the car stopping.

She trains her eyes on the place he seems desperate to avoid. The imposing iron gate restricts access, but not the view. Veronica looks over the lush landscape and massive house sprawled out beyond in a nearly indecent manner. When they were friends, she wondered what it was like to live in such a big, expensive house. She might have envied him more than a few times. And yet, since they stopped being friends, Veronica has started to see how very much she is happy not to live in that house. The house filled with an abusive father and a social climbing stepsister. The house now empty of a mother. Veronica knows from experience that your home can be built around the love of one parent. She has a terrible feeling that Logan lost that love and that parent over the Coronado Bridge a few weeks ago, leaving him in cruel hands. No, she most certainly does not envy his place in that house now. As her eyes shift back to Logan, she can feel the waves of reluctance and something she can only describe as despair rolling off him.

Veronica puts the car in park, sets the emergency brake and turns her attention back to Logan.

“We’re here.”

“What was the first clue? The stink of money or the sound of camera shutters clicking?” Logan snaps at her half-heartedly and Veronica frowns, the tiniest crease appearing between her eyebrows.

His words make her look around, expecting to see a member of the paparazzi leap out of the bushes, camera lens trained on her.

Logan turns to Veronica and sighs as he takes in her expression. “Sorry, Veronica. I’m just...yeah. I should go.”

She forces her face into a small smile and gives him a short nod.

“So...thanks for the ride and...” He trails off and Veronica jumps in before he can find an end to his sentence.

“You’re welcome.” Veronica smiles again. “It was, well, unexpected is a word that springs to mind.” She laughs a little and is relieved to see his mouth slip into a grin, his eyes dropping to his lap as he chuckles quietly.

“That’s one word which does.” Before Veronica can ask for a selection of other words that are springing to Logan’s mind, he looks full at her, brown eyes intense.

Swallowing hard, Veronica doesn’t look away as she struggles for small talk. All of a sudden the notion of having their little chat is making her panic like a cornered rabbit. And Logan is looking like quite the wolf. “So, I guess, I’ll see you? Around, I mean?”

Weak, Veronica.

“Right. Around.” Logan’s eyes flick from her eyes to her mouth and back again in a heartbeat.

Does his ‘around’ mean something different than mine? Zero to 60 in 3.2 seconds. That’s Logan for you.

Veronica realizes she has not answered Logan or taken her eyes off him in the space of ten seconds. The layers of tension in the car are getting thick.

“My Dad’s waiting for me.” Veronica panics, clever words failing her.

“He is.”

“I should go.”

“You should go.” Logan still doesn’t look away.

“I should.” Snapping the connection suddenly, Veronica looks down. She hears Logan open the door.

“Right.” Logan puts one leg out and looks back over his shoulder at Veronica with a most unreadable expression. He stands up and closes the door behind him.

Veronica quietly lets out the breath she had been holding and watches him walk around the front of the car, fingertips dragging across the hood as he goes. His eyes move to her, and then he turns toward the gate. Before Logan gets five steps away, Veronica hears her own voice, startling herself.

“Logan, wait.”

He stops, facing away from her for a second before turning on his heel. “Yeah?”

Great. Now what? Veronica looks around the car quickly, hoping for inspiration. Her eyes light on the sunglasses Logan left on the dashboard. She smiles and reaches over to grab them.

She holds them out the window. “You left your sunglasses.”

The side of Logan’s mouth tugs up into a smile as he returns to the car. Leaning over, he braces his hands along the open doorframe, fingers curled inside the car. Veronica looks up at him, instantly calculating the approximate number of inches between her mouth and his. She sets her mouth in a line and throws out her calculations in favor of acting sensible. For the moment.

Veronica holds the sunglasses up again.

“Not mine, Veronica. You gave them to me, remember?”

“But you paid for them.” Veronica tilts her head to the side slightly, squinting up at him. “Well, your Dad did, anyway.”

“Run that one by me again?”

“And the shirt, too. So you can keep that.”

“And I was going to offer it back to you before I went inside.” He smirks at her, kick starting her pulse into a slightly higher paced rhythm. “Mind explaining that, Veronica?”

“I charged it to the room.”

“Even though you are not Aaron Echolls or an Echolls of any kind.”

“I am surprisingly convincing when I need to be, Logan.”

“Of that I have no doubt. Of course, you had a bit of an advantage.”

Veronica frowns at him, straightening her head. “How’s that exactly?”

“I’m not trying to cast aspersions on your ‘convincing’ skills, Veronica. But convincing the staff of a hotel anywhere in a 200 mile radius that you are the hot little blonde with Aaron Echolls? Not hard.”

Veronica’s eyes widen on the word ‘hot’ and Logan pauses, listening to the replay of what he just said in his head. His reaction to his admission is a lopsided smirk at Veronica.

“Convincing them you are dumb enough to be with him? That was probably the real challenge.”

Veronica feels her cheeks grow warm at his second sideways compliment of the last two minutes.

I’ve told my Dad time and again. I’m just not like other girls. Being called smart is what revs this motor.

“Careful, Logan. You are treading dangerously close to paying me a compliment.”

“What can I say, Mars? I live for danger.”

“And cheesy comeback lines, apparently.”

“Those, too.” Logan’s fingers tap on the edge of the window and then he pushes himself off the door, standing up straight. Taking the sunglasses from Veronica’s still outstretched hand, he smacks his uninjured hand on the top of the car and steps back. “Your father is waiting,”

His eyes cut to the gate once and back to hers. The thought that his father may be waiting too hangs unsaid between them. Veronica nods, reaching over to release the parking brake and put the car back into gear. She throws a glance back to Logan, but he has already turned his back and is walking up to the gate.

Eyes on the road ahead, Veronica resists the urge to rest her forehead on the steering wheel. And pound it a few times in hopes of some clarity.

I’m not claiming my life was simple when I woke up yesterday morning, but it was a third grade word problem compared to what I woke up to this morning. That’s me, Veronica Mars: magnet for trouble. And troubled boys, it would seem.

Veronica turns the corner right as she hears a familiar noise from her bag. Stretching over to grab her phone, she smiles when she sees the caller ID. “Hi, Dad. Yeah, I’m on my way...”

If she had looked back again as she drove away, Veronica would have seen Logan pause at the gate and turn in her direction. He watched her car head down the street and disappear around the corner. His eyes stayed locked on the spot where he last saw her for a handful of heartbeats before he dropped his eyes.

Hands jammed in his pockets, Logan waited for the gate to open. And again, if Veronica had been looking, she would have seen him trudging up the driveway, head down. The thing she would have missed was the small smile Logan wore all the way to the front door.



On to Chapter 13: A Nice Normal Day