Air
Veronica takes the aisle seat. Her theory is that what goes on inside the plane is always going to be more watchable than anything that might happen outside. Besides, she has no idea exactly how much Logan paid to make this happen, but she guesses it would have made a hole in even his bank account, so she figures she owes him the view.
"I get it," he says, "You want the seat that comes with the escape route."
"No, I just want the seat that has easy access to the bathroom." She smiles across at him. "And if what you're about to say involves the words club, mile and high in any particular order, don't."
He grins.
Their flight attendant is a long-limbed redhead who catches Logan's eye and leans across Veronica to serve him first. In spite of herself Veronica registers a stupid note of triumph when he asks for mineral water and it turns out it's for her.
When she'd heard from her dad she'd phoned Logan to ask him if he'd pick her up from the airport. He'd turned up still buzzing and it jarred with her disappointment, until he made her close her eyes and she'd found two tickets for a flight that evening pressed into her hand.
It's not very often her plans are taken out of her hands, but it's happened twice today, and she can't say she regrets the result. Like she'd said to Logan in the hallway, everything is going to be fine.
Even asleep, Veronica doesn't give much away. Curled into her seat she looks like it's her against the world, arms wrapped across her chest, elbows on the defensive.
But she's here with him, and there'd been a definite twinkle in her eye when she'd reminded him that of course, when they'd made the reservation, she and her dad had booked separate rooms, and he probably had them under surveillance.
He never told her, but he'd planned her eighteenth birthday. He'd thought about buying her something completely over the top, like a car, but he had no way of knowing how she'd take that. In the end, he'd gone with what he knew best: the party she would remember for the rest of her life, and this time for the right reasons. He'd had it all worked out: venue; caterers; guest list that he'd rewritten six times to include the people she would actually have wanted there. He'd had to rewrite it twice more after that, because by his definition a party meant you shouldn't be able to fit all your guests in the same taxi home afterwards.
It was going to be one night of pure, exhilarating pleasure: one good memory to sit alongside the others and paint them a little less painful.
When she'd ended things with him, he'd thought about throwing the party anyway. It might have been a noble gesture; it would more likely have been done in a spirit of bitterness and vengeance. Either way, he didn't do it.
Outside, the sky fades, dusk setting in even above the clouds. As he looks down at Veronica she shifts suddenly closer to him in her sleep, and he wonders what she's dreaming about. It's funny, he thinks, how sleeping beside him she seems near and far away all at the same time.
"Wake up, sweetie." He nudges her shoulder.
She turns towards him, soft and sleepy-eyed.
"We're landing in half an hour."
Veronica looks down at the world below her, lights shimmering in the darkness. A hundred anonymous places: the good, the bad and the ugly all indistinguishable under cover of night-time.
She tells Logan this, and he laughs, and says that if she'd flown this route the number of times he has she'd be able to identify half the places they've passed blindfolded. She asks him where exactly they're flying over now, then, and he tells her, and she doesn't know whether or not to believe him.
She wonders if this is what he wants, if really he'd rather be back home with Dick and the others, if he's doing this just because it was something she wanted.
Lilly fills the space between them. She isn't an obstacle: in a lot of ways, she's the thing that draws them together. Two people reminded by each other of love moved just beyond their grasp. Once upon a time they both tried to keep up with her; now they can't leave her behind.
Veronica watches as the plane dips lower in the sky, the world below rising to meet them. Logan gave her the window seat: like he said, he'd seen it all before. But when she glances back at him, he's watching, all the same.