New Years: Dick
"Sparkly?" He can't help but echo, looking across at Mac. She seems stunned trying to get her mouth to work.
Obviously he needs to take point here.
He pushes his hair back and leans forward and snatches Veronica's nervously trembling hand.
It's a decent rock if all those gold digging 'mother figures' have taught him anything.
He's a little hurt that Logan hadn't told him he was doing this. He wouldn't even have tried to talk him out of it. Not very hard anyway. Veronica has this power to make him absolutely miserable, but he's learned from Mac what else that means.
"So where are you guys moving then? I mean, since we've done such a shit job at deterring you from getting hitched, there isn't much point in living with us anymore."
Veronica smiles softly at him because maybe she knows him well enough by now to know what those words actually mean.
That he's happy for them, that he wants them to hurry up and start their lives together. That if she hurts him again he'll wreck her, but, above all, he's excited because this means he and Mac can live alone like proper adults.
"Shouldn't Wallace be here?" Mac finally manages and Veronica looks sheepish, "You already told him..." She's disappointed and he totally gets it. Fennel is a nice guy and all, but Logan is his best friend and he would have liked to know first.
"Yeah, so if you want to forego the classic, 'you break her heart I'll break you' speech, feel free because I've already gotten several earfuls." Logan can't seem to look at Mac, maybe he thought she should have been higher up on the knowledge list, too, "I did, however, bring booze." Logan holds out his hands and produces four glasses and a bottle of sparkling wine.
They all sit in the sand, drinking the bottle dry, waiting to ring in the New Year together.
The topic of marriage keeps coming up. It's not like it's surprising, or anything, it's just that every detail Logan or Veronica mention makes him wonder what Mac would want to do. Where she wants to have it, what kind of ceremony, is she religious? No, but is she going to want a religious thing anyway? Are Sam and Nat?
The countdown starts from somewhere deep in the house and seems to just roll through the crowd and out onto the beach.
He grabs Mac's empty glass and pushes her hair away from her mouth, strands stuck in her lip gloss.
She closes the small distance between them at the end of the countdown and he wraps his arms around her.
Its quick, but it feels like a promise. Every year, from now on, is going to be with her and he doesn't want it any other way. All his years belong to her.
"Happy New Year, Cindy."
The smile on her face is shy and sweet, "Happy New Year, Richard."
"Alright, enough mush!" Veronica's arms come out of nowhere and capture Mac. Pulling her, laughing, away from him, "I want my Maid of Honor!"
Veronica is drunk, but Mac giggles and wraps her arms around her too. Yeah, she's drunk as well. So much for New Year's sex, he'll be spending the morning, whenever that happens, holding Mac's hair.
"She is going to be worshiping at the porcelain thrown." He's not sure he's ever heard Logan's voice so full of happiness, it's got that warm, rich quality to it that he always wants to be there.
"Yeah..." He whines a little, filling his glass up with the little that's left in the bottle.
"You'd rather be holding her hair than be with anyone else though."
"Maybe."
Yes.
He looks over at Logan who's got that terrible, 'I know what's going on here' look.
"What?" He sighs.
"I've seen the dress."
"What?"
"The wedding dress, in your closet. You going to ask her soon?"
"No. Not until after college. We've agreed."
Logan looks impressed that they've talked about it at all.
"We'll see how long you hold to that."