"No Going Back"
Copyright 2007 Penn O'Hara
T
Usual disclaimers apply.
LOCI Canon Timeline: During-ep for LOCI: Season Six "Renewal"
My LOCI Timeline: Post "Wheelin' Car"
oOo
Chapter Two
Heading Carolyn's car toward his old neighborhood, Logan expected it to feel like going home, but no matter how familiar and unchanged everything was, it still couldn't dispel his emptiness. Flipping radio stations, he hit a song Carolyn liked, but which now took on a significance too close to the bone.
He found himself following the lyrics of Broken, his heart sinking with the words. "'Cause I'm broken when I'm lonesome, and I don't feel right when you're gone away…"
Shit, Carolyn! What have you done to me?!
Parking the car, he set out on foot to his old local store intent on organizing his newspaper delivery for the next four days. He waited in line as Guillame attended the customer in front of him, then smiled broadly as the short, balding Italian hailed him.
"Michael! Good to see you again! Don't tell me your bella has kicked you out?"
"Nothin' like that," Logan assured him. "She's…away…on a… business trip. Thought I might check over my place while she's gone."
"Not good, Michael." Guillame shook his head in reproof, folding ham-size arms across a barrel chest. "She should be staying at home making you bambinos, not leaving her man for…bah!...business!"
"Yeah, well, the world's a different place than when you and Anna were startin' out." Guillame and his wife had produced five children and seventeen grandchildren and Logan knew the Italian was proud of their brood.
"And a better place."
Logan wasn't sure he could argue with the man. "Get your delivery boy to drop me a paper every morning 'till the weekend?"
"But of course! Can I help you with anything else?"
"Nah. Unless you can speed up time?" Logan asked, more serious than joking.
"Son, you gotta it bad," the old Italian sympathetically tutted.
Logan lifted a shoulder, his gaze dropping. "Yeah, I guess I have."
oOo
His feet dragging, Logan followed his old route home, head down, not noticing the dog leash until it was wrapped around his legs.
The dog's handler laughingly helped him disengage himself, the both of them only succeeding in making the leather strap more entangled around his body. Her dog didn't help, whining and pulling on its collar, stretching the lead tight and making it immovable.
Finally free, Logan accepted the woman's profuse apologies, noting her long hair and fresh face, but more impressed by the hesitant innocence that seemed to regret her imposition on him.
"You okay?" she laughed.
Logan grinned. "I'll live."
"Okay. Sorry…." She turned away. "Marvin! I'm supposed to be walking you!"
Resuming his course, Logan would have forgotten the incident and her, but an unexpected jab of insight made him turn around and watch her walk away, her dog pulling strongly at the lead.
Her innocence was more than the vulnerability he thought he saw in her face – it was a fragile thing, already fractured, the crack still showing.
Logan frowned, but picked up his pace. He was suddenly eager to get home and shower and call Carolyn again. If she was still at the cocktail party, he'd make her ears burn and pant for him. And if she was back in her hotel room he'd wet her panties with what he would say to her.
But his old apartment was a huge disappointment. It was devoid of the expected comfortable familiarity, lacking Carolyn's favorite perfume, the oils she liked to burn, the clatter she made as she banged around in the kitchen, and the sound of their mutual choices of music.
Logan flipped out his cell, stared at it, then thought better of it, not wanting her to think he was so desperate he couldn't be without her for one night. Showering, he dragged on the sweatpants he'd packed, prowled his apartment, tried the TV then finally gave up and went to bed.
Lying on his back, staring at the ceiling, he admitted he was totally pathetic. He felt raw and frustrated and when finally he fell asleep, it was fitful and disturbed by visions of a dark-haired Polish siren who had completely turned his life upside down.
oOo
The next morning, Logan, dressed once more in his workday suit, lifted the copy of The New York Times at his door, his brows knitted. Guillame's delivery boy had been and gone, but got it wrong. The name of Harry Campbell and another apartment number on the label confirmed the mistake and Logan made his way down the corridor to the correct address, a muted dog bark piercing the early morning quiet.
Before he could summons the occupant, the door opened and a scuffling behind it confirmed the existence of a large-sized dog within the apartment. Logan's brows lifted as he identified the dog's owner as the woman he'd run into last night.
"You scared me…," she said. "Marvin…stay." She fussed with the dog behind her, then smiled brightly at him.
"You don't look like Harry Campbell," Logan said, stating the obvious.
"Are you friends with the landlord?"
"Hate him."
"Then I'm Holly," she smiled.
"Illegally somebody, huh?" he joked.
"Sshh." She grinned, entering the game.
Logan was back in his comfort zone, slipping into the light-hearted banter with an attractive woman with which he was so familiar. If there was a slight amount of reticence in him, he could only blame his being out of circulation since taking up with Carolyn.
"Yeah, you and half the building," he added, enjoying being a co-conspirator. "I'm Mike. I'm not really a Times kinda guy."
The moment suddenly became awkward, with nothing left to say. She was standing at her door in a dressing gown and he had no right flirting with her. He turned, "Ah, see ya," and headed down the steps.
Logan couldn't prevent one look back. A mixture of detective's intuition and male protectiveness gave him pause, to consider what it was that grabbed him about this woman. To say she troubled him was inaccurate, it being more an awareness of her tentatively reaching out to him, not sexually, but looking for a friend, maybe a champion.
Shrugging off the sensation, he continued on down to the front of the building.
oOo
tbc…
