"Logan!" A very familiar voice called after him. He spun around. Veronica was sprinting towards him, face flushed, breath panting out.
"What's wrong?" he asked, frantically checking her over for injury. All of a sudden, she pushed up on her toes, grabbed the front of his shirt, hauled him down to her level, and planted a deep, passionate kiss on him. Surprised, he didn't respond for a second. But only a second, before he kissed her back, just as fiercely.
Finally breaking the kiss to breath, he looked at her curiously. "Thank you," she breathed.
"For what?" he asked puzzled. "For kissing you? Ronnie, anytime." There was a sarcasm in his tone that irritated her for a moment, before she pushed onward.
"For Everything. You take care of me even when I don't want you to, which I know sounds stupid, but…I want you to know before I go to the internship, that I love you, and I always drive me crazy and do things that set me off, but you're a wonderful man, the kindest, most considerate, loyal man I know. And I know I've been awful to you and I don't expect you to forgive me, but," she broke off when Logan pulled her into his arms, kissing her passionately, adoringly, lovingly.
"Ronnie, I love you. I always will. But you're with-"
"I'm not. He broke up with me."
"I love you Veronica, but I won't play second fiddle to anyone, not Piz, not Duncan."
"What's Duncan got to do with anything?" Veronica asked, annoyed.
"We're not discussing this here. Airing our history for public consumption." He escorted her to his car, looking up and finding Piz in the dorm windows and nodding to him.
Logan drove them to a house Veronica had never been to. "Who live here?" she asked.
"I do. Well, Dick too."
"Since when?" she asked. She'd never heard of any of these plans.
"Yesterday. We rented it yesterday. Super sleuth, I must admit, I'm surprised you didn't know. I'm having a new house built in the 09er zip where I used to live. In a bank vault, I found plans for a house my mother was going to have built. It was never started, so I'm doing it, with some minor modifications."
Entering the smallish – for Logan – beach house, they walked into the kitchen where Dick was drinking a beer, and doing something on his laptop.
"Veroni-minx! Want one?" he offered. "They're in the beer fridge." He jerked his thumb towards a very new looking refrigerator. Veronica stalked over and whipped the door open. Expensive beers of all brands and sizes filled the stainless steel appliance, and her jaw dropped.
Logan shut the door firmly, and grabbed a water bottle and a can of Veronica's favorite soft drink from the other fridge. Veronica knew Logan and Dick both hated grape soda and was touched Logan had bought it for her, before he'd even lived there a full day.
Veronica cracked it open and followed Logan outside the house onto a porch that led right to white sand and beautiful blue waters. Waves crashed, and Logan plopped down in the sand. Sitting cross legged beside him, Veronica waited for him to speak.
"I love you Veronica. But I don't want to be your back up guy. I want to be your only guy, not the one you date in between stints with Duncan and the other nice, normal guys like Piz that you date to torments me."
"Torment you?"
"Torture then. You know it killed me when you went out with Duncan after we broke up; going out with guys who are just like him is not good for my self esteem."
"I've only dated Piz and he is not like Duncan. Anyways, I dated Piz because he was so, so normal. No. He was average?"
"So you dated him because he was dull?"
"No, I dated him because I wanted to share in the normalcy. To just be, without any impending sense of doom. Which didn't happen because I'm me and this is Neptune. I've accepted that I'm not normal. I have baggage that he doesn't, couldn't understand. I never felt that connection to him, to anyone, that feel with you."
She'd never been this open, this honest with him, and he felt a stirring of hope. Her blonde hair fluttered in the breeze, and he tucked a strand behind her ear. He caressed her cheek and pulled her closer, onto his lap. His arms around her, his chin resting on the top of her head, they watched the waves crash on the sand. Young families walked along the shore, their hands entwined, just as Logan and Veronica's were. It was a moment of pure synchronicity. She traced pattern on his skin, with one hand, while he rubbed his thumb in circles over her palm.
"When we were broken up, I left you a message on your phone. Why didn't you answer it?" he asked, rather suddenly, breaking their still quiet.
"Logan, the only message I got was a semi drunk hate-Veronica speech. Why would I respond to it?"
"Did you listen to it all?" he checked.
"No. Just the beginning, and then I deleted it. I didn't want to hear you accuse me a of digging through somebody's trash again."
"I poured my heart out via voicemail, Veronica."
"I'll find it. Don't worry."
"I know, super sleuth." He paused. "Veronica. While we weren't together, I got a set of pictures of you walking out of the women's clinic. What was going on?"
"It was Dick's baby drama. I talked to the doctor there about how difficult it would be to smuggle an abortion pill out of the clinic. That's what happened. Her roommate slipped it into something she was eating and she miscarried. I felt terrible for her."
Logan pressed his face into her neck. "I was worried something had happened to you, and you weren't telling to spite me."
"No, nothing happened, Logan. I would never do that."
They sat together in the sand until the sun sank into the horizon.
"How do you feel about chicken?" Veronica asked.
"As a species or as dinner tonight?"
"Dinner, Logan."
"Amicable. Why? What did you have in mind?"
"I was thinking a quick grocery run, and then fried chicken and sweet potato fries."
"Sure thing, sugarpuss." Standing, Veronica felt pins and needles in her legs, as blood rushed back. Logan picked her up and put her over his shoulder, holding her securely with a smirky-smile on his face.
After they returned from the grocery store, they made dinner together. They didn't speak much, as they had music on, but they smiled at each other and touched affectionately as they cooked.
Even though it was just the three of them, it was a happy, rather familial affair. Dick pronounced her cooking "the bomb" and Logan discovered that he really liked sweet potato fries. Not that it was surprising, given his affection for orange. Since he was a baby, he'd loved oranges and carrots, cantaloupe and pumpkin.
They sat on the beach again after dinner, and enjoyed the sunset.