She has been admiring the line of the suit for a good two minutes before it occurs to her to wonder who it is. The fedora is a nice touch, perfectly matched to the muted grey of the suit, but tipped low enough to make it more gangster than dandy. Weevil would be proud, she thinks with a smirk, then does a startled doubletake.
It can't be. No way would he be here. She hasn't spoken to the guy in eight years, but she can still hear the scorn in his voice as he dismisses the idea.
"Baby, there ain't no way you'd get me anywhere near something like that. Bad food, overpriced booze and a bunch of 09ers I'd rather punch than play nice with. Ten year reunion? You'd have to pay me to be there."
Then, of course, he would turn on his best leer and suggest all the forms of payment he was prepared to accept. Veronica shifts on her stool and lifts the martini to her lips to drain it. When she'd conned Piz into coming as her escort she hadn't even spared a thought for the men who weren't her exes. But Eli Navarro. Always more tempting than he should have been.
Apparently, being back in Neptune meant wondering where he lived now. What he was doing. Whether he still shaved his head, and how his skull might feel under her fingertips.
She's biting her lip at the thought when karma bites her on the butt.
"Well,well, well. Look who's back in Neptune."
The inevitability of it has her surrendering to a smile even as she turns to confront the coolness in those hooded eyes.
"Mr Navarro. Should have known it was you filling out that beautiful suit."
"You like? My man Tonio said the silver was going too far, but I told him – Tonio. These white people. They have no taste!"
"It reminds me of that earring you used to wear in school."
"It does, huh? The one you'd never noticed until it turned up in an evidence locker and you had something to accuse me with?" he says wryly.
She blinks, taken aback. After all these years, after the things she did and they way she left, and that's the one niggling him? She'd thought he'd seen through that lie right from the start.
(Don't look at him too long, don't smile when he makes a joke, don't stop breathing when he propositions you and for God's sake girl, do not moan. No, Veronica, you do not want him, and lust? Yes. Let's go with that because the other is even more problematic.)
She'd been such a bullshit artist.
"You used to wear it on a Monday, mostly. Big weekend out clubbing, I assumed. You'd change it by Wednesday, something to do with your metalwork class. I saw you take it out just before that once. Sometimes it made it back by Friday, but usually not. I wondered if the gold hoop was more comfortable."
His expression of awed amusement is so familiar it makes her heart pang.
"You used to keep track of me based on which earring I was wearing? Damn, that's scary."
And there it was. She'd call it a misconception, except she's pretty sure he doesn't actually believe it either. A convenient untruth they had both subscribed to, perhaps.
But she doesn't do that anymore. What you see is what you get. Veronica Mars, not-so-international woman of absolutely-no-mysteries.
She holds his gaze for a long second before she speaks.
"Maybe I just liked looking at you, vato. That ever occur to you?"
His eyebrows shoot up onto his forehead, and his shock reminds her that this had never really been aired, even if it had simmered between them for years.
He had to know, though. Right?
She thinks of the last time she saw him, repacking her car with methodical precision as she sat on a pile of bedlinen and cried. Piz, and her father, and Logan, and Piz, and her father, and Logan ...
His arms had been warm around her, and the sorrow shuddering over her skin had given way to something very different, making her cry even harder. She was cursed. Tainted in her mother's traitorous womb, perhaps. Always wanting the ones she really couldn't have.
She wanted to twist in his arms and pull those mesmerising lips down to her own, and blast away the memory of arousal bubbling in her blood as Logan's fists flew. She wanted to turn their slow burn into a blaze that would set her free of them all – Logan, and Piz, the lies and the baggage – and he could do that, she knew he could. But …
"Anything you need," he said. She had taken and taken and taken, and still he would offer, and if she took this, he'd never stop offering.
And she'd wreck his life too.
So she had breathed him in, and stilled her sobs to a hiccup before wiping her eyes.
"I'm gonna drive out in the morning," she had told him. "But I need to talk to Piz first. Thanks for … everything," she'd said lamely, waving her hands in the air.
"Don't be a stranger," he had ordered. "Call me when you get settled."
She had meant to.
Really.
But it had been so easy, life in Palo Alto. She'd finished out the semester with her basic criminology courses, then switched her focus to law. She had no advantages there, and had to work harder to maintain her grades, and work she had.
In a coffee shop during the day and behind a bar at night, and between shifts, worked hard at dating nice boys who thought she was kooky and sweet, if a little standoffish. Sometimes, she wanted to tell them about the taser, and the pitbull, and how the throaty growl of a well-kept chopper revved her up like nothing else.
But she never did, and eventually, she forgot.
She was remembering now, though. His mouth is hanging open in surprise and he looks vaguely spooked, as if she'd confessed to something far more sinister than a crush.
Not that sinister would surprise Weevil, she thinks with a smile. He'd probably expect it of her. Keep her secrets, help bury the bodies … he thought her capable of anything but acting like a normal teenage girl.
"What? I burst your bubble?" she says wryly, then pushes out the seat next to her. "Forget it. It was a long time ago. Let me buy you a drink and call it penance."
He moves as if to settle on the stool, then jerks upright again and looks over his shoulder.
"Dios. I forgot. Grab your drink and come over to our table. There's someone …"
He doesn't finish, but he doesn't have to either. She figured it out by "our table." Not too many PCHers here tonight, and she couldn't see him happily hanging out with the 09ers.
He was here with a woman, and she'd just confessed to having a crush on him.
Lord, someone shoot her now.
He's tugging her by the hand, then pulls her close to whisper in her ear.
"Please, Veronica, don't embarrass me in front of my wife," he pleads, and just nods when she splutters in astonishment.
He has a wife. Weevil has a wife. Eli has a wife.
And that's when Logan Echolls comes bursting through the doors, champagne bottle frothing over his wrist and inebriated starlet on his arm.
She's never been more glad to see him in her life.
fin
Disclaimer: This fanfiction was written for personal enjoyment rather than profit. No infringement on the rights of the intellectual property owners is intended.