Hey guys. Sorry it's taken me so long to update. Ive got a lot of stuff going on with schoolwork at the moment, so I'll apologize in advance for late updates. This chapters not as long as i wanted it to be, and it took me ages to get into writing it.
Thankyou to everyone who reviewed. Please do the same for this chapter. Ta :)
CHAPTER FOUR
Invisible
He kissed her back. Obviously. It wasn't like Dana didn't expect him to. You'd be hard pushed to find a girl that Logan wouldn't make out with, if she forcefully initiated it. He wasn't exactly picky. Female, and breathing were really the only specifications Logan insisted on, and Dana was pretty sure he'd waver on at least one of those at some point in his life.
She knew he'd return the kiss, so why did her eyes flutter open in a second of surprise, when she felt his lips softly reciprocate?
She should have known there was something seriously wrong, when the epiphany to kiss Logan struck, and didn't make her want to vomit. She should have concluded right there and then that she had finally lost every last one of her dwindling marbles. Instead, she dug herself a very deep hole. Or rather she dug herself a medium sized hole, to add to her ever-growing collection of hole's that were getting so catastrophically huge, they were threatening to swallow the entire universe.
It didn't take long for Dana's medium sized problem with Logan to explode into an earth-shattering dilemma. First he'd dropped her, like he'd suddenly realized he was locked in a passionate cliché with his own flaming grandmother. Then the lights turned off automatically, because the school was so ridiculously 'energy efficient'. Then the stupid door thought it would be hilarious to keep them trapped in such a compromising situation, knowing full well that any desperate pleas for help would remain unheard until exactly 7:45 the next morning, when the caretaker checked all of the classrooms had enough chalk.
"What do you mean it's stuck?!" Dana demanded, through gritted teeth, not entirely managing to keep her voice as controlled as she would have liked.
"I mean it's stuck." Logan snapped back, in a similarly unsteady voice. Somehow, despite the fact that he was obviously unnerved by the events of the last few minutes, and facing the prospect of a very painful murder at Dana's hands, Logan still managed to lace his voice with that self assured 'I'm better than you' tone. And it made Dana want to throttle him.
"The lock gave way, and the hinges slipped. We're not getting out of here until someone saws through." He spat, grudgingly informing her of something other than the ridiculously obvious.
Of course, as the icing on the cake, there was no way to contact the outside world. Dana's cell phone was dead, and Logan had left his on the table he'd practically jumped over to follow her. They were really making teenage organizational skills seem nonexistent.
Dana exhaled two deliberately long and calming breaths, before she spoke again.
"At least I don't have to worry about my sleeping arrangements for tonight." She reasoned with a shrug.
"Yeah… You know, you've really got your priorities rationalized…"
"Ooh, was that dictionary a great buy or what? I bet it provided you with hours of word-ly fun. AND, you're now marginally more intelligent than a lamppost."
"And, she's back to 'bitch-mode'." Logan announced to no one in particular, like he was providing the running commentary. "What happened? Two minutes ago, you had you're tongue in my mouth!"
"Urrgh, shut up."
"No I wont fucking shut up. What the hell is wrong with you?"
"Nothing is wrong with me!" she shouted at him.
"Dana, you're a freaking nut job! Is it any wonder no one wants to share a room with you?!"
He must have seen her crumple. Even in the diminishing light the change in the atmosphere was painfully obvious. He knew he'd gone too far.
"Dana… I'm sorry. I didn't mean that." He said, his voice barely more than an anguished whisper.
"Yeah you did." She whimpered.
"Dana-"
"It's okay." She interrupted, knowing she only had a set amount of time before the all too familiar threat of tears spiralled out of her control. "It's true. No one wants me around. I can't even get YOU to kiss me for longer than five seconds."
She saw him bristle uncomfortably, either out of annoyance at her evidently low opinion of him, or confusion as to why she'd kissed him in the first place.
"Don't worry." She assured him "I'm not in love with you or anything, I… I just wanted to make sure that I wa-wasn't… invisible y-yet!"
Her original calm tone had risen to a high-pitched wail towards the end of the sentence, and the last few words were pretty much indecipherable. The tears were falling like there was no tomorrow, and Dana brought her hands up to her face, and tried to stop the stupid little snuffly sounds she was making, because she was actually reminding herself of Nicole.
"Invisible…?" Logan breathed, somehow actually understanding hysterical girl talk. Dana suspected this wasn't the first time he'd had to deal with this kind of situation.
"Dana, you are anything but invisible." He asserted strongly, and actually brought himself to place a comforting hand over hers. Not something he usually did so willingly, especially after such a recent conversation that involved the dreaded 'L' word.
"Try telling my mom that." Dana choked in between sobs.
She told him the whole story. For some reason, once she'd started, she couldn't seem to shut up, and the whole sorry mess came babbling out. She told him about how her parents had realized that they didn't love each other anymore, and that they'd only stayed together for so long because they didn't think she was old enough to cope with them divorcing. She told him that her dad was moving to Ohio with 'Shandice' the cocktail waitress he'd shacked up with, who was just about old enough to be her older sister.
Then she managed to whimper out the part about her granddads sudden death, and how he was the only one who'd ever believed in her. She hadn't even been able to say goodbye.
"And my mom hates me!" she sobbed, now crying so much that Logan had pulled her into his arms in an attempt to calm her down.
"Dana, you mom doesn't hate you." He promised soothingly.
"Yes she does! She didn't even want me to leave Paris. My grandma had to persuade her. And you know how long I was home before she shipped me off here? Three days! She made me miss the funeral."
She collapsed into another wave of the seemingly never-ending tears, and buried her face into Logan's chest. He didn't seem to mind the fact that his shirt was now tear stained and covered in mascara.
"And what do they mean that I'm old enough to deal with them splitting up? I'm not old enough! I'm only seventeen!"
"At least they waited." Logan said quietly. "Mine split when I was six. My mom pissed off in search of fame, and my dad married her best friends 19 year old daughter."
Dana blinked. She could tell by his tone that this wasn't something he was comfortable with sharing. He had never said much about his family. The only consistent piece of information was that his dad was a famous movie producer.
"It only lasted seven months. He's now on wife number four. But my brother told me he's getting way too cosy with the female lead in his latest movie. Seems he's looking to make it five."
"Parents suck." Dana summarized bitterly. "And what kind of stupid name is 'Shandice'?"
"My brother once dated a 'Veronique'." Logan laughed "And this girl called 'Indigo'."
Dana momentarily considered making a comment about the womanising gene in his family, but she immediately decided against it. Instead, she tried her hardest to be nice. They sat and talked about stupid names for about half an hour, trying to one up each other, until Dana just started making them up and swore blind that her room mate in Paris was called 'JaffaCakia'. Logan didn't believe her.
Dana woke up comfortably nestled in Logan's arms. She actually felt mildly better for sharing her soul-crushing secret with someone, even if that someone was Logan. She had a feeling she'd have blurted it out to just about anyone if they picked the opportune moment. Some things just kept getting bigger until it was impossible to contain them.
Credit where credit was due, Logan hadn't been terrible company. She might have even considered changing her opinion of him from 'hopeless conceited wanker' to 'just-about-bearable conceited wanker'. That was until she realized just where his hand was oh so casually resting.
