Chapter 24: Therapist Hijinks - Part IV

Veronica

I've been seeing Dr. Lev for weeks, and I've gotten over a lot of my knee-jerk defensiveness to her. She's mean, yeah, but the kind that makes it easier to talk to her, because she's not being all squishy and sympathetic. And I've got a soft spot for a woman who says what she really means. I like how when she plays music in her office, it's never Enya. Most of all, I like how when she asks a question, it slices all the way down to the spleen of the issue.

Today, she tilts her head, silver hair shining in the overhead lights, and says, "Tell me, Veronica. What does it cost you to say I love you?"

"What does it cost me?"

My immediate reaction is with that, plus a couple of newt toenails and a full moon, you could whip up a killer witch's spell that would probably have me dancing a jig in the town square like a marionette wearing a hello kitty tutu.

But I bite back the sarcasm and really think about it. I feel incredibly stupid when I say the words, like a kid tripping over their own feet, but Logan has never looked stupid when he says it to me. Then again, he's so ridiculously handsome, he even looks good when we eat ribs and he has bbq sauce smeared halfway to his hairline. His eyes go intense when he says it, like part of him is burrowing into my rib cage, and it makes me go breathless in a strange kind of panic and also makes me feel at home in a way that's way beyond leases and mortgages. Like there will always be a place for me to go.

I wonder what my eyes look like when I say it. I know I must have said it out loud, at least a couple of times.

"It feels like it doesn't mean anything," I say slowly. "Like when you sign your name to a really sappy greeting card and just send it off, like that's anything." I flick my nails against the metal grommets on the strap of my messenger bag, hook it over my knee again. "Everybody says it, you know? Little kids say it to their pet frogs, I don't know."

"So how's it so hard if kids say it to their pet frogs?"

That's not the whole issue, even I know that. It does feel too light, the words worn out by overuse so they don't carry the right weight anymore. But if that was the only problem, I could just toss it off the way everyone else does. I close my eyes and attempt to remember how I felt, the last time I tried to say it to Logan. I try all the time. Not that he probably has any idea, because most of the time I don't go through with it.

"It feels…awful in some ways," I say after a moment. "Like begging my mom to come home and having her go straight to the bar to order another drink instead."

"So it feels like you'll be refused."

She nods, like she doesn't need me to explain that because she gets it, which is another thing I like about her. She'll ask questions she knows the answers to if she wants me to think about them, too, but she doesn't dwell and get patronizing with it.

"Next question," she says. "Who would you say I love you to, if it didn't feel like that?"

"You know, the obvious. Logan. My dad." I shrug.

"Would they refuse you?"

I shake my head, impatient. "No, of course not. I'm not saying I think they would, the way my mom did. I'm just saying that's how it feels when I try to say it, because that's what you asked about. I didn't say it wasn't dumb."

"You think it wouldn't sound true to them if you said it, and then they wouldn't believe you?"

I snort. "They know I'd take a bullet for them."

"Shouldn't this be easier than a bullet wound?"

"You'd think," I say under my breath. I pick at a tiny hole in my jeans from where I caught it on barbed wire hopping a fence last week.

"Think about it," Dr. Lev says. "You don't have to say it to anyone. Just think…think about what it costs you, when you actually do say it. Think about what it would mean to the people in your life to hear it. Decide if you're willing to pay that price for them."

I look up, sharply. That was a low blow, setting it up like she's asking what I'd be willing to sacrifice for Logan and my dad. This woman, who I've blackmailed and bugged and threatened to put in prison for murder…she knows better than most how far I'm willing to go for the people I love.

"Jesus. I can't believe you just went there."

"Can't you? Have you ever known me to pull my punches?" A small smile plays over her face, and my eyes flare. That bitch just called every bluff I could throw up, in one sentence. She made it about me being a coward and Veronica Mars is no coward. I thought therapists were supposed to be gentle.

"You're a really shitty therapist, you know that?"

"So you keep telling me." She smiles. "Our time's up, but I'll see you soon. It'll be two weeks, not one this time, because I'm taking a little trip to Israel." Her smile warms, grows in some indefinable way as she meets my eyes. "I'm going to meet my daughter."

#

I go straight from her office to work, and spend the day chasing down bail jumpers in blessed peace. Drop off some homemade lemon blackberry muffins to Pete and Jorge at border patrol, because they let me drag another bail jumper back from TJ without bothering with the pesky extradition paperwork or giving any weight to his accusations of kidnapping, spouted from where he was cuffed in my passenger seat. That asshole turned out to have a razor blade in his shoe, which I didn't find out until I was dropping him off to the sheriff. Now my second-favorite leather jacket has a slice through the sleeve and the bail jumper has a black eye and a very sore scrotum.

God, I love my job.

But by the time I pull into my own garage, all that sweet adrenaline has worn off and I'm just a girl again. I shut off the engine and let out a breath, wondering why I can't be as good at being a person as I am at being a detective. It's so much easier to follow a clean trail of facts than it is to navigate the murky territory of emotions and relationships and what exactly being a good wife looks like.

I pout down at the keys I'm flipping over in my hand. The really annoying part is I can't pretend I don't know the answer. If I wrote a Care and Feeding of Logans Manual, I know damned good and well what chapter one would contain. But surely if I do all the things in chapters two through twenty, I can get a pass on chapter one?

I mean, I shot a man to keep him safe. That's pretty clear, isn't it? I don't go around shooting dirtbags for just anyone. Plus, he told me himself that he notices all my under-the-radar methods of showing him I love him.

You did. In lots of ways. Even when we were broken up.

That counts, right? If he knows, that's all the matters. All I have to do is look at him sometimes, and he can tell. Gets all smug and sparkly eyed, or super focused and intense, and fucks me senseless. A little tingle makes me squeeze my thighs together, thinking about how he responds to those looks.

Logan pops his head into the garage and I flinch guiltily. He frowns. "Oh."

"Oh?"

"I heard you pull in, but then when you didn't come inside, I thought maybe you had a bail jumper with you, and you needed some help wrestling them into the house."

"Oh, come on, I don't bring them home with me all that often. That was just the once."

When the bail jumper was pregnant and in for a stupid, petty crime, and I was debating the morality of sending a pregnant woman off to the rough and tumble prison life. And if she just so happened to escape from my house in the night, well. It's not a holding cell, what was I supposed to do?

"Okay." He doesn't question it, just goes back inside.

I haul my messenger bag off the seat, wishing Jeff Ratner was running a bar in our garage so I could grab a quick shot of scotch for my nerves. The feeling is startlingly similar, actually, to all the times I've been dying of nerves because we were trying something new and crazy in bed. The tingling in my lower belly increases and I remember how Logan once nibbled my ankles to calm my anxiety. The way he strokes my hair. Now that I think about it, my husband really rises to the occasion when I'm at my worst. Maybe I should go right in there and blurt that I'm freaking the fuck out. I usually get three to five orgasms out of that deal.

Not such a bad outcome.

He's at the kitchen island, chopping vegetables, and I raise an eyebrow at the unexpected sight. I do most of the cooking in our house that doesn't involve a grill. Logan's not lazy, but a fully staffed childhood has left him a little short in the culinary skills department.

"We're having kabobs," he says. "Stop giving me the skeptical side-eye."

I grin. "I'm too busy being excited that you found a way to cook vegetables that doesn't require you to go beyond your beloved barbecue grill. We might live past thirty after all."

"Damn right." He pops a mushroom in his mouth. "I read on Buzzfeed today that women hit their sexual peak at thirty-three. Best start taking your vitamins, Bobcat, because no way am I missing what you're going to be like then if this isn't your peak."

I snicker, the fingers clutching my heart easing now that I'm looking at him. I really like his face. The way his brown eyes are always a little softer when we're alone together. The way his jaw has gotten harder as he's aged, but his smile has gotten easier, and less cynical.

I clear my throat. "I love you."

It sounds every bit as inadequate as it did in my head. The words just sit in the room between us, like a dead fish I plopped on the table.

Logan's knife stutters, and the blade misses the zucchini and smacks down on empty cutting board. I tense, but then he just starts chopping again.

Itchy heat spreads from my chest up my throat and I'm sure I'm blushing, so I saunter into the kitchen and snatch a bit of bell pepper off his cutting board and pop it in my mouth. "So, uh, what do you want to do this weekend?"

He turns with a smile lighting his eyes and then spreading across his face. I can't stop watching, because there's something different about this smile, or the way it transforms his features, or something.

My heart gives a little hiccough. Oh.

He boosts me up onto the counter, squashing a mushroom, and starts to kiss me before my weight has even come down.

The itchy heat fades from my skin, replaced by the glowing warmth of seeing him happy. I can't believe I was nervous about this. It's Logan, for Christ's sake. That knee-jerk fear is just left over from a life that I'm no longer living. His fingers slip beneath my hair, cupping my neck and pulling me closer like he needs that, and I realize in a twitch of sudden clarity that I'm his family now. The way my mom was mine. And when he needs me, he will never have to watch me turn away towards the bar instead.

My hands clutch at his neck, as desperate as his now. "I love you," I whisper again over his lips, sealing the words into him with a kiss as hot as the air between our bodies. I never want him to doubt he's cared for, the way we both have doubted in the past.

I don't realize he's kissed me entirely out of oxygen until he pulls back long enough to say, "Turns out I'm not very hungry after all."

"Me neither," I gasp.

"Probably better just go straight to bed."

I tip my forehead against his and smile like it's rising all the way up from my toes. This is my life. This is my family. And here, I'll never be refused.

"Definitely, we'd better."

#

The office is quiet the next morning, Weevil out tracking down a designer handbag purse-napped from a PTA meeting. I stroll across the waiting room, feeling the sweet ache and pull in my muscles from the especially gymnastic sex Logan and I had last night. We didn't eat dinner until 3 am and I have no regrets whatsover. I'm feeling languid and warm, and I think the sparkle in Logan's eyes got so bright it jumped right into mine.

I lean in the doorway of the other office and smile. "Hey, Daddy-O."

"Uh-huh?" He doesn't look up from his computer, where he's hot on a trail. It's cute, the way his whole body goes vague when he's focusing hard. I wonder if mine does that.

The words come easier to my tongue this morning, warm like the rest of me. "I love you. You know that?"

"Very funny, Veronica." He looks up, frowning mildly. "I'm not that old. I know, the baldness throws you off, but I prefer to think of that as a choice of low-maintenance masculinity. But you don't have to worry about sneaking in those last words because I intend to be around for long enough to watch Logan start needing adult diapers. That's been keeping me going for a good decade already."

I smirk and cross the office to kiss his bald head. "Ooh, so low-maintenance. You're right."

"You should try going full cue-ball." His chair creaks as he leans back. "I really think you could pull it off, and maybe then we'd stop getting those calls with indecent propositions for 'that smoking hot chick on the bus benches'."

"I prefer to see those as a compliment to your good genes."

"I'd compliment their teeth with my fist if they'd come in to convey their sentiments in person."

"Now I know you've been hanging out with Logan too much." I cluck my tongue. "All that violence is bad for the blood pressure, you know. Keep it up and you won't last long enough to see Logan's pretty boy looks brought low by Depends."

I slip back toward my office. When I quit the FBI, we rented the old nail salon next door and Weevil punched a doorway through to the other side so he and I could have our own offices. Plus a small darkroom/surveillance media space that doubles as a fireproof panic room, courtesy of my husband's nearly infinite paranoia. Then again, my paranoia might be even more infinite because I actually asked Logan to add another panic room in what used to be my dad's coat closet, because he's moving a little slower these days and I was worried in an emergency he wouldn't be able to get all the way across into the other office.

"Maybe I'll start forwarding those bus bench calls to Logan," Dad calls across the reception area. "Make his blood pressure take the hit."

"You do that and we're going to have to call Cliff out of retirement to get him off the assault charges." I scoot my chair into my desk. "But I'm not saying I'd stop you from prematurely aging him. I'm looking forward to getting a good laugh out of how cute his butt looks in those Depends, too."

"Love you, too, honey!" Dad bellows, and I have to laugh, because since his hearing started to go, he always thinks he has to raise his voice for everyone else. But on the upside, everyone from the Radio Shack next door to the ice cream parlor across the street probably feels a lot more appreciated now.

#

I thought about calling the experiment done after Dad, I really did. But when the weekend rolled around, I found myself pulling in to the junkyard and parking in my usual spot, with its prime view of the car crusher.

Weevil's full-time for Mars Investigations since business has picked up, but he still helps out his uncle at the junkyard on Saturdays. I don't have to wait long before he comes out to meet me, wiping his hands on a red shop rag with a half-fond, half-expectant smile on his face.

"That car of yours need a part?"

"Nah, just though I'd come out and see your pretty face."

"Uh-huh. Like you don't get enough of my pretty face Monday through Friday." He smirks. "What do you need, Vee?"

"Just wanted to say uh, hey." Oh God, I have no idea how to do this. I play-punch him in the arm, but it half-misses and comes off too light and awkward. "I—you know, I love you, man."

"What?" His eyes bulge.

"I…you're a good friend. That's all. Whatever." I shift my weight, jittery. "Hey, actually, you know that blue Chevy you said got chopped last week? In the glove box, did you happen to see—"

His dark eyes glitter with a sudden slick of moisture and he pulls me into a one-armed hug so fierce it hurts. "Love you, too, V. You're my girl, you know that? I got you. I always got you."

I choke in a little breath at that and wrap my arms around his waist to hug him back. It's weird because after all these years I don't really know the shape of him, not like this. He's stockier than I expected, but harder, too. And even though hugging isn't really our thing, it's simpler than I expected to lean into it because like he said, Weevil's got me. Always has.

#

This time, I don't even wait a day to work up to it. Just get in the car and drive straight from the junkyard to Wallace's. At some point, the words still sound stupid, but you can't argue with the results.

He's mowing the lawn in a tank top with the sides ripped open all the way down to the waist, droplets of sweat glistening in that thin little mustache that I still can't get him to shave. He smells like fresh grass and Coca-Cola and it's easier with him because I just grin and say it.

"Wallace Fennel, I love you."

He grins back, the light popping right up into his eyes like it's never that far away. "Who wouldn't? Man, I am awesome."

I laugh. "And so humble, too."

He kills the mower and throws a sweaty arm over my shoulders, guiding me inside. "What's up with you? Logan got you going to therapy or some shit like that?"

He gets me a soda out of the fridge and he's got Coke in an old fashioned glass bottle with real sugar—the good shit. Wallace has been slowly going hipster on me, and I pretend not to notice because it comes with such good food.

"Yeah, some shit like that."

He snorts.

"Better watch out. Soon, you'll be crying and volunteering at soup kitchens."

I scoff a little and glance away, thinking of my work at Safe Drinks and all the tissue I've been running through at Dr. Lev's office.

Wallace points his Coke bottle at me, suddenly serious. "That feelings shit is no joke. Watch yourself, girl."

"Oh," I drawl. "I always do. I got this, Fennel, no worries."

It's his turn to scoff. "Yeah." But he squeezes my shoulder as he drops a gluten-free, corn-syrup-free cookie in front of me. "Love you, too, supafly."

#

Mac is last up on the list. It takes me until Wednesday to make my mind up to even do it, because Mac's not into feelings talk. Her love language is newer, faster, crazier tech gadgets that I don't understand, much less could ever afford. And Logan keeps her well-stocked in those under the guise of Christmas and birthdays.

The thing that decides it is that I don't think anybody would expect I would need a declaration either. The first few times Logan told me he loved me, I laughed it off and slid my hand down his pants, because I figured that's what he was going for anyway.

But then he gave me the key to his hotel room. Knowing I was the snoopiest person in North America and I could smell a clue from forty miles away, and that if he had ever done anything sordid in that hotel room, I now had the freedom to ferret it out. Knowing I could come over anytime and bust him with another girl, if one had ever existed. Also knowing that I knew that after a childhood of paparazzi, he valued his privacy more highly than all of his bank accounts.

I don't think anybody could have predicted that a simple key card would melt my cold, cynical heart into a puddle of Hallmark-colored goo. Well, anybody except Logan. He knew, even back when relationships were new enough to him that he still got a little squirmy and darty-eyed when he mumbled that there was no one for him but me, and didn't I know that yet?

I smile fondly at the memories of the couple of awkward kids we were as I take the elevators to the second-highest floor of Kane Software. If even the infamous Veronica Mars needed to know that she was loved, then Mac does, too. Nonchalant, buried in computers, sweet-eyed Mac, who felt like an alien both in the family she was born from, and the family who took her home from the hospital.

Mac's head lifts when I come in, but not her gaze. "Hold on. Let me just finish this one line of code."

Eighteen minutes later, I've read a lab report for my latest case, scrolled Twitter long enough to get righteously indignant three times, updated my Insta with a cute puppy I saw on the way here, and completed a background check for a routine insurance case.

Mac smacks the enter key. "Okay, done." She smiles. "What can I do you for, Bond?"

I take a deep breath, and say the three words I came here to say.

Mac's mouth falls open and tears jump to her eyes. "Is it cancer? Oh God, it's cancer, isn't it? Or the mob. Is the mob after you again? Russian or Italian? I keep telling you, Veronica, you can always pay off the mob. What's the good of marrying a billionaire if he can't pay off mob goons for you when you need him to?"

She searches her desk, but doesn't find whatever she's looking for, so she starts slamming desk drawers and throwing pens and bits of electronic gadgetry out until she finally comes up with an old fast food napkin and starts dabbing at her eyes.

I try to swallow down my laugh, but I can't help the smile. "It's not cancer. Nothing's wrong, Mac. I just…I love you. You've been a good friend to me. Better than I deserved, sometimes."

The tears well up and start to spill over despite her frantic napkin-dabbing. "What, and so you pay me back by coming in here and scaring me to death? Shoo." She waves blue-painted nails at me. "Get out of here. Leave me to my happy coding. You know I'm terrible with this sappy girl stuff."

I come around the desk and hug her. I know it'll just set off the tears all over again but in the moment, I kind of can't help myself. I really do love her so much. Lilly was my closest confidant when I was little, but as my model of female friendships into adulthood, I'm pretty fond of Mac's brand of low-key joking around and always being there for me when I need to illegally hack my way into a database.

"Just send flowers next time, dammit," she sniffles, clutching me back. "Or chocolate. Chocolate would be even better."

Dick Casablancas struts in, carrying two brown paper bags and apparently fully recovered from the cone snail in Bali incident. "Ooh, hot girl-on-girl action. Score!"

Mac shoots guiltily to her feet, not looking at me. "Oh, hi Dick. What an, erm, surprise."

"Dick? Really?" I say it to Mac, not him, because she's the responsible adult who can be trusted to make good choices. Or at least I thought.

"Don't look at me like that!" she cries. "He brings me lunch sometimes, okay? My job is really heavy and he's like an intellectual palette cleanser. Light. A little fruity."

He drops into a chair and burps. "I think you mean hot. With overtones of manly."

I take a second look at him, and something in my stomach flips over. Dick's been part of my life for so long. From leaving me in a bedroom with his little brother, to dumpster diving with me in college, to standing by Logan's side at the altar of our wedding. A constant irritation, a periodic source of information, always in the whirlwind midst of divorcing or re-marrying Mel, or sauntering all sandy-footed into our kitchen to drink up my favorite apricot LaCroixs after surfing with Logan.

I never told Logan about Dick's questionable part in my rape, because I knew it would make Logan turn his back on the oldest, most loyal friend he's ever had. I refused to cost him that. Dick's been such a fixture in my life that I haven't stopped to consider how I actually feel about him in years.

He catches me staring.

"What? You got something to say to me? Let me guess. Turns out that Echolls sperm can't swim and you want some of my boys so the baby will still be pretty. No, I get it, I get it, you're the third girl to ask. Casablancas ain't shooting no blancas, you get my meaning?" He gestures to his crotch, in case I did not, in fact, get his meaning.

Mac sits down and covers her face. "Just don't get any blood on the rug, Veronica."

"You want it, you got it, boom." One more crotch gesture. "But I'm sorry, you're gonna have to turkey baster that shit, Ronnie. I believe in the old fashioned hot injection straight from the source, but Logan, my man, he hits like a house, you know what I mean? Then you're just lying there, staring at your stripey socks, thinking, damn… What hit me and who's that girl and her little dog, too?"

"It's a Wizard of Oz reference," Mac pipes up helpfully.

"No, I got that. That wasn't the part I was having a problem with." I hold up a hand for Dick to stop and take a deep breath.

Mac's eyes bulge. "Veronica, you're not going to tell him that you—"

"No. Ew." I look back at him. "Dick, you're a terrible human being. Charming, loyal, but yeah. Terrible."

I turn on my heel, not a feeling left unexpressed as I leave and Mac dissolves into laughter.

"Love you too, Ronnie-poo!" Dick calls after me. "Is that a no on the Casa-bebe, then? Because I'm serious, my surfer boys can swim." His voice gets louder as he follows me out. "Hey, you sure you don't want to stay for lunch? I brought kung pao!"

#

This experiment is going so much better than I ever anticipated. For the kind of week I've had, I might even be willing to turn over the hint of a new leaf when it comes to telling the people in my life how I feel.

Logan's working at his huge new desk when I get home. I stop in the doorway of his office and give him a flirty little wink. He leans back in his desk chair and links his hands behind his head. "Uh-oh, what's that look for?"

I sashay across the room to him and hop up on the desk, crossing my legs and giving him my very cutest smile. "I love you."

He bursts out laughing. "You think that trick's going to get you laid twice?"

I bat my eyelashes. "Yes."

He takes me by the belt loop and pulls, sliding me easily across the polished surface of his desk until I'm right in front of him. "I've created a monster."

"Don't flatter yourself, lover-boy. I was a spoiled monster way before you came along." I hop off the desk and pull him out of his chair, then give his tight butt a little swat to get him moving. "Now, get thee to the sack, so I can enjoy the fruits of my emotional labor."

"Yes, ma'am," he drawls, but he's smiling like Christmas and New Years all wrapped up into one and damn, does he really have a very fine behind. He's the whole package, my Logan. Good thing I locked that down.

#

After my next therapy session, I'm gathering up my stuff to go when I notice Dr. Lev watching me with one of her knowing Mona Lisa smiles. I used to think she did that smug, annoying little face to trick people into thinking she knew more than she did so they'd spill even more of their guts to her. Now, I'm not so certain it's fake.

"What?" I try not to look defensive. Probably fail.

"I was just thinking." She taps her pen against her notebook. "Logan always said you were the bravest person he'd ever met. When you first start coming to me, I really didn't see it."

"Gee, thanks a lot, Dr. Lev. Guess now we'll have my self esteem to work on next week."

She smiles, not rising to the bait.

"But I do now," she says softly. "Now, I see what he saw."