Logan Echolls was doing his best not to allow the sob building in his throat to escape as he waited by the elevator in the Neptune Grand Hotel, he could still taste Kendall Casablanca's lipstick and her perfume was still clinging to his skin, the sex had been great, a marathon he should have been proud of. Tempting an experienced woman that hot away from her husband should have given him a sense of pride that he had managed to have her panting and writhing under him like he did. But as he was leaving the suite and she was putting her dress back on before going back to the banquet her husband had dragged her to, he had found Veronica Mars standing in the hallway outside his former best friends Duncan Kanes penthouse apartment suite, her lips swollen from her new boyfriends kisses, her beautiful golden hair a little dishevelled from having been in bed, that unmistakeable post sex flush to her cheeks. That easily accessible pink blouse on… he could have just opened the buttons and cupped her breasts in his hands…. Her eyes were wide and a little embarrassed.
Veronica Mars… the girl who had torn his heart out just a few months ago. The girl who haunted his dreams and occupied almost every other thought in his head. Wondering what she had been doing, what she was thinking, if she thought about him… what he could possibly do to make up for the way he had screwed up this summer? If it was still too late to get her to forgive him… if she had ever loved him the way he had fallen for her. If she could see right through his bitterness? And if she could… why hadn't she forgiven him yet?
Isn't that all anyone wanted? Someone who would choose them? Over everyone else... under any circumstances. He knew she loved people like that…she had chosen her dad over all of Neptune. Why wouldn't she choose him? Be with him? Love Him?
He had found out from Dick Casablanca's that she had began to date Duncan Kane when he had been at the clambake and he had gotten so wasted he had propositioned Kendall Casablanca's. His cycle of self-destruction was fully underway after that. He knew how much Veronica had loved Duncan, how she had pined for him during most of last year… she had kept their relationship secret to protect Duncan's feelings… but she hadn't shown any of that consideration to him at all. It had been weeks.. only a few weeks since they had split up and he had fought the urge every day to go to her work, or bother her… she had told him that when things got out of control for her, she had needed to be alone. So he had left her alone… and she had gotten back together with Duncan instead. Didn't she know he was still in love with her?
"Are you breaking up with me?"
"I can't stay with you…"
She had been the only good thing left in his life after this hellish year… the only glimpse of sunlight… and she had thrown him away like he meant nothing to her… like after everything they had been through together had meant nothing at all… that he was just a Duncan substitute. She had taken his heart and ripped it out… and then she had taken his best friend too, so he had no refuge this time. Duncan and him had been friends since kindergarten… and she come between them both.
She had been with Duncan tonight… they were having sex now… he felt the air in the hallway being pulled from him as he pleaded for the elevator to hurry up and ascend to his floor. Those sounds he had heard coming from the room next door that had made him smile at first while he had been waiting for Kendall to sneak away and join him. He had known that Duncan had a suite here… he hadn't known which one though… now he knew what her voice sounded like when she cried out in pleasure….. jealousy tore through him. Those sounds should only have been for him… now he would never get them out of his head… He didn't want her to have the satisfaction of seeing him crying over her. He squeezed one hand over his other fist and pushed down until it hurt and bit his lip. She had looked so shocked to see him there, a little angry even.
Logan had never been so grateful for the skills his father had instilled in him, the ability to act like a complete jackass and say exactly the right thing to strip your opponent down to their core while hiding the agony he was truly feeling.
"FYI if the cuddling was the best part… he didn't do it right" he had snarked only moments ago.
His voice had sounded so cavalier but really as soon as he had gotten around the corner from her, he was trying to fight the tears away… but the millions of sickening images of the two of them together began to flood his thoughts. He had thought watching them holding hands and kissing at lunch had been bad enough… he had been able to convince himself that it didn't matter because, he knew how chaste Veronica could be… he knew that their relationship was just restarting and it would probably take time to reach this point… he had hoped they would realise that they were terrible for each other or she would come to her senses and realise that Duncan loved the old Veronica… the one she had been before Lilly had died. That he could have a chance to win her back… he had just been waiting for it to fizzle out. Instead… she looked happier and it broke him.
Logan pushed the button again, he could hear the door in the hallway opening, Kendall had been planning to shower so it could only be Duncan.
Please please hurry up…. He didn't want to have to share an elevator with her. Normally he waited around a moment longer than he had to in the corridor at school to catch glimpses of her. She hadn't even looked over her shoulder at him, she hadn't even said a word.
There were places in the school he couldn't even go to anymore, the girls bathroom had never held such torment for him before. He knew where she kept the out of order sign… he had toyed with the idea during those first few weeks before school before Dick had told him about her Duncan of putting the Out of Order sign folded in her locker so she would know he wanted to talk to her. He had driven an hour out to San Diego to go find a mall that had one of those little I Wuv You Beary Much teddy bears to put in her car. It was still in his bedroom, he would stare at it when he couldn't sleep. He had been hatching all the little ideas before her birthday of how to win her back… then Duncan had swooped in like the fricking Calvary and stolen her before he got the chance.
"Hey why didn't you wake me?" Duncan's voice asked sleepily and he heard Veronica's voice smiling as she give him some quip about having to get home before her dad activated the homing device in her molar. It was then the first tear did escape… what hell was this? Was there no escaping this hurt?
She was everywhere, he couldn't go anywhere without hearing her name. Those rumours he had started last year had seemed like a good way to get back at the girl who had betrayed their friendship. Now they were a constant reminder… her uncovering of Lilly Kanes killer, and her fathers book had given her a kind of heroine status at school. The girl who took down Aaron Echolls, now it meant she was always being brought up in conversation at partys… how great it was that she and Duncan could finally find some happiness after everything they had been through… wasn't it so great that they were back together like a fairy tale? The girls at his school had been driving him crazy with it, its why he hadn't been bothered in dating any of them. Kendall didn't care about anything other than helping him forget who he was for a few hours.
He heard her say good bye to Duncan and he darted for the stairwell, getting in through the doorway just before she turned the corner. He could see her through the mirrored glass and he couldn't tare his eyes away, she tucked her hair behind her ear and wore a content happy smile on her face and pressed the button for the ground floor. It was when she was gone that the first sob wrecked through his shoulders and he pounded his fist into the back of the door.
She wasn't even sorry… she treated him with such disdain. He saw this very clearly for what it was… three people who cared about each other, stuck in a very horrible situation. He loved them both, he wanted them to be happy… part of him really did. Being with Veronica was the first time Duncan had really smiled since Lilly… since his father had… but was he okay with it? NO. Because at they still got to be happy, they got to be together and Logan.. he got to be tormented. He was really trying, he was. When she began dating him after that night on the bridge… he had felt like he could hope again. That there had been a purpose to the nightmare his life had become.
He would give anything for the woman he had spent tonight with to have been Veronica.. to get the chance to hold her again. She was everything he wanted. Maybe it was time he started to realize… that he wasn't going to find a way back.
He was dying inside.
Maybe he didn't deserve one.
"Hi this is Logan with todays inspirational message" he sobbed as he dialled his voicemail.
"Nothing hurts as much as watching the one you love move on with their life like you never existed -M Sosa." He said drunkenly he sat at the bar in the Neptune Grand Hotel bar.
He mused at the fake ID in his hand… Veronica had made this for him.
Yep… even now he still couldn't escape her memory.
You don't know real pain, until you watch the one you love, love someone else.