Chapter 15: Old Dance, New Partners

Veronica sits with her hand on the keys, keys in the ignition, and no idea where she is heading. She glances to her right as Logan slides into the car a bit clumsily and closes the door. When he turns to look at her, she is staring out the front windshield. He can see the faintest flush in her cheeks and wonders if he put it there with his actions in the parking lot. Suddenly, Veronica speaks without looking at him. Logan turns his full attention to her tense profile.

“Where to?”

Way to think this through, Veronica. You’ve got Logan Echolls in your car and no idea what to do with him. Aside from the obvious.

The flush deepens and Veronica resists the urge to touch her lips, the feel of his still lingering there.

“Anywhere, Veronica.”

She sighs a little despite herself. “Anywhere? Could you be more...” Veronica finally turns her head and catches the full weight of his look like a solid thump to her chest. ...heartbreaking? Intense? “...specific?”

Veronica finishes her question in a voice she hardly recognizes as her own. She then tries and fails to look away.

Careful, Veronica. Another few seconds and it will be tears and kissing all over again.

With the distinct impression she might have been leaning closer to Logan, Veronica turns, eyes front, and cranks the ignition.

“Somewhere...else.” Logan’s voice is unnaturally soft and his eyes are cast down when she peeks at him from the corner of hers.

It’s the kind of answer Veronica would usually pick apart with a snide remark, but her heart’s not in it. Logan wants to escape and he’s picked her as his accomplice, for a list of reasons both new and for the moment, unsettling.

Veronica nibbles on her lip in thought. Aiding and abetting it is. She imagines Logan is keeping the bulk of his grief at arm’s length through a combination of drink, denial and for as long as she allows it, her.

“I know a place.” Veronica’s remark is left unexplained and as vague as can be but Logan accepts it with a nod. If she had any doubt he is on shaky ground, it disappears with that smallest of movements.

Licking newly dry lips, Veronica puts the car in reverse and backs out of the parking space. With one more look at Logan, she throws the car into gear and leaves the high school behind. The ride through the streets of Neptune is quiet. It is broken only by the drumming of Logan’s fingers on his thigh and Veronica’s two minutes of fiddling with the radio before turning it off in favor of silence. After ten minutes, the streetlights pass at longer intervals and the volume of traffic drops to almost zero. The road she finally turns on is nearly deserted and only lit by her headlights and the light of a three-quarters moon overhead. If Logan realizes where they are heading, he doesn’t let on.

Veronica pulls off to the side of the road and comes to a stop on the sand. Turning off the car, Veronica glances at Logan. Without looking back at her, he unlatches the car door and stands up and out, stumbling slightly.

Veronica follows quickly, catching his arm as he nearly falls down in the sand.

“So, did you devote the entire day to getting wasted or just the last six or seven hours?” Veronica’s voice takes on its normal snap and Logan’s eyes jerk to hers in surprise.

And then he grins. “Never question my work ethic when it comes to getting blasted, Veronica. I put in a solid eight hour day on this buzz.” He holds up both hands, eight fingers up.

There’s the Logan I know and have completely mixed feelings about.

She tugs Logan back towards the car and nearly wipes out into the sand herself. Logan’s left hand comes out to steady her.

“Easy, slugger. I thought you were the designated driver.”

“It’s the boots, Logan. Not exactly beachwear.”

His eyes drop to her feet, eyebrows arching in surprise. “My bad last night. Those are clearly your Miss Veronica Mistress of Pain boots. Damn.”

Though she knows what they look like, Veronica glances down too and shakes her head, biting back a laugh as she remembers the conversation from the hotel. Meanwhile, the stiletto-heeled black boots are gradually sinking into the sand, making her less and less agile.

He’s not wrong.

“They’re not even mine, Logan.”

“Oh, so Meg is the Mistress of Pain?”

“No! I mean, well, they are her boots. Or maybe she got them from Lizzie. Either way, not mine. And for the record, absolutely killing me.”

Without asking, Veronica puts a hand on Logan’s shoulder and leans down to start unlacing one of the boots. She teeters to one side as their difference in height throws her off. Logan catches her for the second time in a minute, though his own balance is not at all perfect.

“Are you sure I’m the one who’s been drinking all day?”

“Are you?”

Logan pauses, cocks his head to the side in thought. After a moment, he nods once. “It was definitely me. Yes, yes. Definitely. There was that super fun thing with my Dad and then, yes. Drinks ahoy.”

Veronica looks up sharply at Logan, her half-laced boot forgotten. “What thing with your Dad?”

Logan tries and fails to look nonchalant. His tendency to speak without thinking is never more of a problem than with Veronica. She doesn’t miss a thing. “We had a man-to-man. Asshole-to-son. Whatever.” He waves his hand dismissively.

Veronica’s forehead wrinkles. “Did he...?” Her words are loaded with meaning, her eyes cut to his back and then to his face, searching.

Logan flinches slightly at the naked concern on her face. It’s a shade too close to pity for his comfort. He sighs deeply before answering, realizing he is now going to have to live with the fact that Veronica knows one of his darkest secrets. He reminds himself to hate Trina a little bit more the next time he sees her for good measure. “No, it was a non-contact chat. He wanted to have a little heart-to-heart about my poor dead mother. How she would really like it if the two of us could get along.”

He shoves his hands deep in his jacket pockets before continuing, eyes on the sand at his feet. The lack of inflection in his voice upsets Veronica almost as much as his words. He plunges forward, deciding if she knows some of it, she might as well know the whole truth. “I told him I had the perfect plan. He could stop beating the shit out of me and I would promise not to kill him. Cross my heart, hope to die, etcetera.” He pauses, looks up. “Things got less friendly after that.”

“Hence, the drinking. I’m...sorry, Logan.”

“Yeah. I know. Speaking of drinking...” Logan pulls his flask out and takes another swig. When Veronica realizes she is watching his neck muscles work as he swallows, she shakes herself. Her building attraction to Logan requires her to make a distinct effort to remember who she’s dealing with and what he’s currently dealing with. Not the stuff of solid decisions. Veronica kneels down to undo her boots, mind working furiously.

My options as I see them: One. Quiz him more about his Dad. Two. Quiz him about all this random kissing we’ve been doing. Three. Run back to the car and speed away, forgetting all this ever happened.

Both boots undone, moment effectively stalled, Veronica stands up and faces Logan.

Four: What were the first three again?

He’s no longer looking her direction, but has turned to face the water, so she is greeted with his profile. His eyes scan the horizon, and are blinking slightly more rapidly than normal. Veronica’s gaze turns to follow his across the dark expanse of water gleaming with reflected moonlight and she nearly smacks herself right in the forehead.

Brilliant. What’s the first place to bring a boy whose mother just drowned herself? The beach. She grits her teeth at her own thoughtlessness.

Veronica puts her hand lightly on Logan’s forearm and he jumps.

“This was the wrong place, Logan. I just...I come here to think sometimes.”

Logan’s eyes drop to the sand in front of him then cast out along the shoreline. “It’s fine, Veronica. I can’t just avoid water forever. Besides, I remember this place, too. I haven’t been here since...”

“...Homecoming.”

“Yeah.”

Veronica cuts her eyes from Logan to the shoreline and back again. She swears he sounds almost nostalgic, which is a word she never expected to use to describe one Logan Echolls. Mostly because he never admits to missing the past and certainly not in front of her. She pushes her boots off and while he’s not looking at her, Veronica shimmies out of her lace tights and lets her bare toes wriggle into the cool sand. She walks by Logan and starts down the beach, hoping to get him to follow. With the briefest of pauses, he pivots and follows her until they fall in step. One of his big strides to two of hers.

Whenever she comes here, Veronica can imagine the four of them strolling along in their formal clothes, Lilly’s laughter bouncing off the water in waves. Her own giggles filling the nearly vacant beach. She looks over at Logan, remembers how he smiled that night. She hasn’t seen him that happy since. The way he looked at Lilly, the way she looked at Duncan. She was sure none of it would ever end. Of course, that meant it all came tumbling down around her ears soon after.

Logan stops walking abruptly. Veronica gets two steps ahead of him before she realizes it. She turns around and faces him, expecting him to be off in his own head again. Instead, he has her firmly in his sights and she wonders what thought grabbed him so intensely.

“You ever think the two of us would have been better off if we’d never met the Kanes?”

The question startles her to the point that Veronica’s mouth hangs open. “What do you mean, Logan?”

He runs his tongue across his bottom lip, eyes serious. “It’s just that...it hurts, right? It hurts to...” He shakes his head once and sighs, seeming to think twice about his next words. “It’s stupid.” Logan starts to walk again, but Veronica moves to block him. Their eyes meet and she narrows hers slightly.

“Tell me.”

When he looks to the water and back to her, clearly working through an inner struggle, Veronica shakes her head.

“Wait, I know what the problem is. It’s this, isn’t it?”

Veronica gestures up and down her lace-covered outfit and at her face and hair. “Can’t talk to me seriously while I look like Madonna’s stand-in?”

A smile threatens to break Logan’s serious expression in two. Veronica unties the lace scarf holding her hair up and runs her hand through her hair, breaking some of the hairspray’s hold on it. She removes the huge star earrings and pulls the necklaces and rosaries over her head. “Better?”

Logan takes his time looking her up and down. “Wellll...it’s a bit more concealing than I like, but I’ll work around it.”

Veronica puts her hands on her hips. “Logan, I am virtually in my underwear here.”

He lifts his eyebrows, eyes showing some of the spark that’s been missing. “Are you? I didn’t even realize.” Logan’s faux innocent look is as effective as ever. Meaning not at all.

She rolls her eyes and gestures at him with both hands. “Enough. Spill.”

He takes a deep breath and sits down on the sand, as if the weight of what he’ll say next won’t permit him to stand. He sits, knees bent, elbows resting on them, eyes on the glassy black water. Veronica takes a seat next to him, immediately realizing this outfit is not meant for beach sitting. She jumps as the cold sand hits her barely covered rear.

Logan cuts a look at her and immediately takes his jacket off. He hands it to her and she smiles, unsure what to do with this unexpected kindness. It takes more than twenty four hours to wipe away a year of flinching in his presence. Every nice gesture in the last day has left her on edge, waiting for the other shoe to drop. So far, no dropping to speak of.

“Thanks.” Veronica finds that to be a safe enough response and stands up to pull the jacket on. She shivers happily at the borrowed warmth she gains when she slides her arms in. Borrowed warmth from Logan and it feels better than she would have guessed. She tucks it under her and sits back down, snuggling into it. Logan watches the whole scene with interest, a smile touching his mouth.

Logan being nice to me without being asked. That's one for the books.

In favor of finding out what he meant by the remark about the Kanes, Veronica drops the question of how different he is treating her. For now.

“Do you love Duncan?”

Logan could have announced he was running away to join a monastery and it would have startled Veronica only slightly more.

“Duncan?” Mind whirling, she repeats what he said, desperately wondering why he said it.

“Yeah, dark hair, blue eyes, few inches shorter than me. Pretty sure you know him.”

Veronica purses her lips and delivers a withering look to Logan. “It's not an easy question, Logan.”

“Actually, it is. Kind of a yes or no thing.” He laces his hands in front of him, but turns his head to fix her with a solid look. Veronica can feel the weight of his stare on her as she turns away and sees if there is an answer out on the water waiting for her.

“I think I did. I don't know if I do.” Her voice is soft and steady.

“And it hurts, right? That it didn’t work out?”

“Yes, Logan, it hurts.” Veronica snaps, wondering why Logan is harping on this.

“So, do you wish you'd never loved him? Never met him?”

“Oh.” Veronica blames the confusing fact that they are having this conversation in the first place for her slow uptake on Logan's meaning. It’s hard to remember that he’s the one who’s been drinking. Just being around him this much is making her feel like she’s been pounding ‘em back.

Logan’s voice grows harder, more desperate. “I mean, is it worth it? Jesus Christ. I've loved two women in my life so far and they're both dead, Veronica. Dead. Fucking dead.” The break in his voice on that last word lifts Veronica’s hand to his arm. The small warmth of it there draws his attention and his eyes.

“So, my real question is...is it worth it? If I never loved Lilly, never loved my Mom...I wouldn’t feel this way. It wouldn’t...hurt like this. Would it?”

Veronica starts to feel a bit of panic as she sees Logan can’t seem to stop talking. Copious amounts of alcohol have finally poured over the dam, bringing his emotions and this torrent of words with it.

She takes her hand back, starts to fiddle with the cuff of the jacket sleeve. “I guess you’re right, Logan. It wouldn’t hurt like this. But you know, I loved Lilly, too.” Veronica feels the pain rush back into her like the tide coming in. “I wouldn’t trade it, though. I wouldn’t give up all the times we had together. I wouldn’t give her up. She was my best friend.” She says the last two words so quietly, the breeze off the water nearly takes them.

She can feel rather than see Logan turn to look at her. The specter of a dead girl they both loved seems to hang there in the suddenly still night air.

“So, you still miss her?”

Veronica still has to get used to Logan’s gentle voice, the one he used with Lilly when he thought no one was around to hear. She sometimes thought of it as her own little secret about him and kept it all to herself. The weighty emotional experience of the last twenty four hours has rubbed her emotions raw and she can only nod. A few seconds pass and she clears her throat, finding more words.

“I miss how it used to be.”

“You mean when you and Duncan were together?”

“When all of us were friends.” Veronica thought of dating Duncan, hanging out with Lilly, and the funny little side friendship she and Logan always had. He teased her. He made her giggle and turn red in the face. She gave it back to him in her innocent way back then. The two of them ganged up on the Kanes on occasion, laughing conspiratorially. At least, they used to. She feels a couple of tears sting her eyes and tries to blink them away.

As if reading her mind, Logan answers. “I can only try to fix one of those things, Veronica.”

Veronica turns to him, eyes sad. “I’m not asking you to fix-” Her voice catches in her throat as he covers her hand with his own, fingers lacing into hers.

And it’s the softest kiss she’s ever felt. A brush of lips across her cheek, a trace of warmth and she wonders how he moved so quickly that she never saw it coming. It passes so quickly she barely has time to register what happened before it is over and Logan is looking at her again.

And this look is loaded with intention.

Something tells me he’s looking for more than the friendship we had. Fixing that would be a good starting place. We, on the other hand, decided to start by making out. Good plan, Mars.

He stares at her, eyes glittering in the dimness. He looks so intense and sad, so enamored and yet lost. Veronica has no idea how one body could contain so many warring emotions and still manage to convey them through eyes heavy with drink.

“Logan...” Her voice is questioning, but she doesn’t actually ask one. It’s too blunt, too direct to ask for specifics from someone reeling. The fact is, he keeps kissing her and she wants to know why. But despite how uncomfortable it makes her, Veronica is learning patience with Logan. Two words she’s never put together before. Patience. Logan.

His fingers slide out of hers and she cringes inwardly. And quickly, a mild surge of frustration fills her. She likes answers and every moment with Logan is only giving her more questions. She can feel him retreat, bit by bit. Veronica tries to remember he’s been drinking, he’s been grieving and he’s been having no comfort but her. If she begins to pull away, he will almost certainly go under. She can feel the truth, deep in her bones like an ache that won’t go away.

Her hand reaches out to cradle his, the flash of white catching her eye. She lifts his bandaged hand closer, eyes lifting to his in question.

“How’s it feeling?”

His eyes soften on her, gratitude for a subject change visible there. “Looks like I won’t lose the hand thanks to the prompt medical care I received.” He smiles at her, a glimmer of white teeth as he ducks his head halfway without losing eye contact. “It feels fine. Good, even.”

And as Veronica continues to hold his hand, she wonders how he does that. He says one thing but all that echoes through her mind is what he’s left unspoken. The implication is right there, just under the surface.

And that’s one answer she has come up with so far tonight for all her questions. There is a lot going on under the surface of Logan Echolls.

She wants to be able to read his mind, however drink-addled it might be. Veronica doesn’t know if he doesn’t want to hate her or if he’s just tired of hating her or if he never hated her at all. Because that last one is what has turned out to be the truth for her. She never hated him.

In the past year, she hated what he was trying to do to her and the fact that he knew her well enough to hurt her in the most tender areas. She hated how he looked at her, how he talked to her, how he forgot all the secret jokes they shared and the lazy days they spent together with Duncan and Lilly. Despite all that, she could never quite hate him.

Now, in the past twenty four hours, Veronica has begun to think she may have moved well past not hating him and into a completely new place altogether. When Logan’s warm hand squeezes hers for a moment, she’s pretty sure she’s not alone.



On to Chapter 16: Some of Us Are Looking at the Stars