Glass cut lines and blue lit sky.
October 2010
Rory ran her hand over her stomach, smoothing the wrinkles in her dress looking in the full-size mirror of her hotel room. She turned and fussed until she was sure that the dress fitted her perfectly and was without any wrinkles. She was ecstatic to go out tonight. Maybe she should tone down her excitement as she was meeting up with just a friend. Well, not just a friend but Logan Huntzberger. And she knew the Logan's of her world. They were self-centered, egoistic pompous jerks. And they never failed to disappoint her when it came to living up to the expectations she had of them.
Then why couldn't she ignore the fluttering in her gut every time she closed her eyes, and the particular blond's smirk flashed in front of her. The way Logan looked at her on the terrace, like he knew her, and the way his eyes twinkled when he said inappropriate naughty things just to get a reaction out of her. Or the way his lips pursed when she told him she had a boyfriend.
Rory picked up her phone to check any updates from California, but aside from that one voicemail, she was on the receiving end of radio silence. Maybe for once, she should give Jess a taste of his own medicine and move to Hamburg without a word and live the rest of her life in retreat as a librarian. Spending her evening boating in the canals of Hamburg with a book in her lap.
Rory picked up her black clutch, looked at herself one last time in the mirror before heading out. She felt confident in the red shirtdress she was wearing. It was chic yet sophisticated. A perfect blend between professional and brave that embodies her life perfectly. Or instead where she wished to. Besides, it brought out the blue in her eyes.
"Crap. I am going to be late."
Rory had a pretty good day after the voicemail from Jess. It was a day of many discoveries. First, she knew her hotel's name was actually Waldhaus Reinbek and not Rainbow. She should remember that in case she got lost tonight. And secondly, the bar - Clockers that Logan texted her the address of, was in the Reinbek district, five minutes away from her hotel. And third, she was in love with Schnecken. They were like cinnamon rolls but only better. If only they could survive a 12-hour flight and another 3-hour drive to Stars Hollow.
Rory reached the place Fifteen minutes later than the agreed time. Clockers weren't easy to find, but it was well worth it when Rory did. She had to look out for the discrete doorbell and buzz through to an interior of forest charm—all mossy walls and piled wood and fairy-lights twinkling from tree branches above. She looked around to find Logan.
"Hey, Ace." Logan said loudly in her ear above the music.
"Logan, stop sneaking up on me." Rory said, placing her hand on her chest.
"What?" Logan asked, leaning towards her.
"I said stop sneaking up on me."
"Maybe we should move away from the music." Logan said, leading her towards the back. "I'm sorry, but it sounded like you were saying I should stop sneaking up on you."
"You heard right. You completely startled me." Rory said, placing a hand on her chest.
"Okay, but can it be said sneaking up when you are specifically here to meet me, and I come up to you?" Logan asked, shoving his hands in his pockets.
"No, but…"
"But?"
"You just startled me."
"I promise to wear bells next time." Logan said.
"Huh, Funny visual." Rory said.
"You look good tonight." Logan said, smiling at Rory.
"Thank you. So, which one is ours?" Rory asked, glancing around the tables.
Logan put his hand on the small of her back and led her to a table.
"Rory, these are some friends from work. Carter, Nolan, Lee, and Piper. This is Rory." Logan introduced them.
Rory felt a pang of disappointment.
After the initial first greetings, Rory sat down on the chair Logan pulled for her. She could see the strawberry blond on the table eyeing them and then rolling her eyes at the gesture.
"Do you work at HPG? I only ask because I haven't really seen you around." Nolan was the first to break the silence.
"No. I work for a newspaper in Manhattan. It's quite small. You might not have heard of it." Rory replied.
"We are all in this line of work. I assure you we would have heard about it." Piper said, pursing her lips.
"Yes, of course." Rory was taken aback by that response. Usually, when she told anyone she worked for a small newspaper that they might not have heard of, they left her alone and didn't inquire further about her work. "Newsday."
"Ah, Harry. I met him at a conference once and accidentally spilled my drink on him. I still remember the stare-down he gave me. His scary eyes are still engraved behind my eyelids." Carter said with a shiver.
"Because you spilled your drink on him, Carter." Logan said. And held up his hand to get the waitress's attention to order drinks for Rory and him.
"I assure you, Carter, if anyone would have spilled anything on my dress yesterday, I would have smacked them." Piper said, sipping on the straw of her drink. Her ruby woo lipstick stood distinctly against her pale skin. Her heavy curls shook along with the disappointed shake of her head.
"You know, they call you Piper the Viper in the office for a reason." Carter said dryly.
Rory was shocked at the statement. She assumed Piper would be furious or at least annoyed, but much to her surprise, Piper kept sucking on her straw and simply shrugged her shoulders. Rory was impressed with that kind of indifference.
"Macallan, neat for me. Rory?" Logan's voice pulled Rory to look at him.
"Um..." Rory paused to study the menu.
"They have good gin." Logan said.
"Okay. A gin for me.." Rory said, looking at the menu and handing back the menu.
Rory wondered again why would Logan ask her here to drink with his friends? Rory was expecting an evening with Logan. Not with his slightly drunk posse and a very angry strawberry blond.
After a few rounds of drinks, Rory was intoxicated enough to get over her initial awkwardness of meeting a new group and it blur into where she was finding everything entertaining. She needed to use the ladies' room and sip on club soda for the rest of the evening.
"I need to use the ladies' room." Rory got up quickly. The room spun for a second, and she found Logan's hand on her waist steadying her.
"Woah, you okay there, Ace?" Logan asked, his words slurring.
"'Yeah, the room was very swishy-swashy for a second." Rory said, chuckling. "Swishy-swashy." Rory said again, this time laughing as she said it in Logan's ear. "It's a funny word."
"Ace, you okay?" Logan asked, mildly amused and mildly concerned.
When Logan suggested they meet over here for drinks, he had no clue about Rory's low alcohol tolerance. But he was glad to see her let loose after her third drink when she started making an effort to get to know everyone better.
"'I'll go with her." Piper said, offering a small smile to Rory.
"Uhoh." Rory said before she could stop herself and hoped the other girl didn't hear it. She would like to come back alive and finish her drink.
As Rory stumbled out from her seat, she found Piper's hand on her elbow.
Rory was washing her hands in the sink as Piper reapplied her lipstick, looking in the mirror.
"So, Roo-ry? You are Logan's….?" Piper asked, putting the lipstick back in her purse.
"I am not Logan's anything. Except maybe a friend." The trip to the restroom had sobered Rory up to a certain degree.
"But you would like to be more?" Piper asked, studying her.
"No. I hardly know Logan." Rory scoffed.
"So, you don't find him cute?"
"No." Rory lied.
"Ah, a good girl." Piper mused, tilting her head to the right.
"I am not Logan's… anything. We are not dating or anything." Rory emphasized again. She didn't want anyone getting any wrong impressions about Logan and her.
"Oh, I know. Logan doesn't date girls like you." Piper replied.
"What's that supposed to mean?" Rory asked, crossing her arms.
"Logan never dates anyone remotely interested in anything more than getting the invite to the year's fashion week. Or a designer of some sort at best. You know fashion, interior, graphic. That kind. Oh and he definitely has a thing for User interface designers. Web too." Piper said with a smile.
Rory shifted uncomfortably on her feet.
"That's the only reason I was confused. I thought you were his cousin or something but the way you both kept looking at each other all evening..." Piper trailed off, eyeing Rory.
"We did not." Rory said quickly.
"If you say so." A thin smile appeared on Piper's lips.
"I have a boyfriend." Rory said when she was convinced that Piper didn't believe her, "I think."
Piper looked at Rory quizzically.
"Okay, that does complicate things." Piper agreed.
"I get it. You are trying to do that protective friend thing or maybe something more." Like a jealous ex thing. Rory didn't say the second one out loud.
"Oh, trust me, Rory. I am not. Logan can take care of himself. I am just curious about the other things." Piper said, drumming her fingers on the slab.
"Okay." Rory said apprehensively. She was having weird cryptic conversations with a stranger in the ladies' room at midnight. This was definitely the strangest thing she did this year.
"But hey listen, keep this. Should you need any… let's just say any assistance in the future?" Piper handed Rory something.
Rory opened her palm to see a card. Piper's business card.
"You coming, Rory?" Piper asked over her shoulders, her thick strawberry curls bouncing as she turned to open the door and step out.
Rory followed Piper out and sat back down next to Logan. The trip to the ladies' room and talk had sobered Rory. She kept up with the conversation on the table for some time, but the place kept feeling too stuffy. Rory gulped a glass of water down.
"You want to head back to your hotel?" Logan asked Rory.
"Not Really." Rory replied honestly.
Logan nodded his head. Took out his wallet, paid for his and Rory's share, and nudged her elbow to get up. Rory left the bar without any protests after saying goodbye to everyone at the table. It was a fun night. She enjoyed talking to everyone. Even though she was hesitant about it in the beginning, the group was a good bunch. She didn't really go out with her friends from the office after work anymore because of the long commute that waited for her back to the apartment.
Rory walked alongside Logan on the pavement. Hamburg looked beautiful in the evening. The night sky was clear enough to see the star above her head, and the lights from the streets were dancing on the canal water.
"So Viper was interesting." Rory slapped her hand on her mouth immediately. "I mean Piper."
Logan laughed, "She is, and she's really good at scouting the right acquisitions for the company. I thought you might like her, you both have a lot in common."
Rory wondered what made Logan assume that. She was nothing like Piper.
"I had fun tonight, Logan. So, thank you." Rory said, turning to look at Logan as they crossed a bridge to the other side of the street. This was not the same route she took to the bar.
"That's good. It was nice to see you have fun as well." Logan said, shoving his hands back into his pockets.
"I have fun." Rory protested.
"I am not saying you don't. I am just saying it was good to see that." Logan said genuinely and then added. "I am sure you get into all kinds of trouble with the amount of fun you have."
Rory looked at him. And there it was, that teasing glint in his eyes. She wanted to tell him all the fun, stupid things she did in college, but there were none. No missing classes. No partying in dorm rooms until the cops arrived. No beer pongs. She felt like stealing Jess's fake swan story right about now.
"Oh wait, I have one. My friend Paris and I moved into an off-campus apartment. And the Polish woman upstairs moved her chair around too much at night, and it bugged Paris endlessly because that's when she did her best studying. So she made me break into… actually no, she broke into the woman's apartment, I refused to come up the stairs until she had already broken in and the door was wide open." Rory started explaining.
"Because it's not breaking and entering then. It's just entering. That's still a crime, you know." Logan interrupted her.
"Yes, but half of one. So after breaking in, Paris glued her entire furniture to the floor with her craft glue gun." Rory said animatedly, her hands waving in the air.
"Couldn't she just put on some earphones or even ear muffs like normal people?"
"This is Paris we are talking about. But what happened afterward was even funnier. For a month, every day, we kept finding dead mice outside our door!"
"How's that funny?" Logan asked.
"It wasn't then. But now that I think about it, it's hilarious because Paris woke up before anyone else every day for her Krav-Maga class and was greeted by it right outside the door. I never had to look at it. Just hear Paris grumbling and plotting."
"So the lady knew it was you guys?" Logan asked, slightly disturbed by the story.
"She knew it was Paris. That's why first thing in the morning. Paris said, she was making a point. If it was meant for me, her special delivery would be later in the evening because I would come back late from the paper." Rory explained.
"Wow. And I thought the most disturbing part of this story was how that lady randomly found a dead mouse for thirty days straight. But I think it's your friend, Paris." Logan said.
"Wait a minute, Is this Paris, the student editor from Yale daily news Paris?" Logan asked, raising his eyebrows.
"I was wondering how long it would take you to deduce that Sherlock." Rory laughed and stopped to stand by the railing next to the canal. The view was stunning from there.
"Well, I would have helped that lady find a lot more mice because Paris made my last few months at Yale insufferable." Logan said, stopping next to Rory.
"Your dad offered her a letter of recommendation if she could get five bylines out of you that year." Rory said, her body swinging sideways, watching Logan groan.
"Even though she tried to make my life hell, a Letter like that from my father is worth a lot in the industry. So I hope my suffering served her well." Logan forced it out.
"No, you don't. And she went to med school after that."
Rory and Logan both laughed at that.
"Do you feel like that ever?" Rory said, pointing in front of her.
"Like an inanimate building under construction? No." Logan said, looking where she was pointing.
A colossal skyscraper that was being built. From his conversation with some associates earlier at the conference, he knew it was probably the most awaited opera house in the country that Rory was pointing at. The six-story building was scheduled to be finished last year but was costing the city more and more after every appraisal and was still nowhere near being completed. But once it would be finished, it was going to be one of the most famous landmarks in all of Germany. One of the largest and most acoustically pleasing concert halls in the whole world.
Elbphilharmonie.
"Like you are working to be something, but no matter how much you try, you don't see it happening and you don't know how to fix it."
Logan turned his face to look at Rory. And she looked tired. Logan was going to let her be, but then she let out a sigh.
"I used to feel like that in college." Logan said.
"What are you talking about, Logan? Something tells me you were exactly what you wanted to be in college." Rory said lightly.
"What tells you that?" Logan asked, offended.
Rory looked at him to see if he was being serious, "The drinking, partying, blowing classes and the college paper, all those girls. Tells me you were exactly where you wanted to be in college." Rory scoffed.
"That was not all my life was. A part of it, a huge part of it was spent on planes with my father, without any regard for my college, my birthday, holidays, whatever. I would always get a call an hour before the plane was supposed to leave to see my father on the tarmac. Kind of makes you want to live your life in my moment a lot." Logan grimaced.
Rory had no idea that behind that happy rich boy facade was so much anger and resentment.
"Logan, I had no idea. I am sorry." Rory said, touching his arm. "But look what that made you today." Rory said, turning around and leaning backward on the railing, "Merger and Acquisition director of one of the fastest-growing media conglomerates in the world. And I don't think your father spent so much time grooming you to stop there."
"Yeah, that is true. But at the time, I had no idea this was where I was going to be. All I could see was this stupid dynastic plan that I was supposed to follow, and I couldn't come to care for any of it."
"But some of that has been for good. I enjoy where I am now." Logan said, looking at Rory to see if she got the point of all this. He didn't want him opening about his life to be all for nothing.
"I get it. But sucks when you are still figuring it out. I just wish things could go according to my plan." Rory sighed.
"See, that's where you are wrong, Ace. And I'll show you." Logan said excitedly. "Close your eyes." Looking over the canal and then at Rory.
"What?" Rory asked, confused.
"I said close your eyes, Ace." Logan urged.
"Okay." Rory closed her eyes hesitantly. For seconds she felt nothing but a light breeze of the ocean air over her face. It was good, but she was hoping for something more as well.
Logan looked down at her face. He contemplated kissing her. Logan pulled her towards him, placing his hands on her back and taking her hand in the other. As the music from the shipping passing by the canal played in the background.
"Huh. That ship has impeccable timing." Rory said, looking at the ship passing them.
"What can I say, Ace. I have good timing." Logan said, looking down at her.
Rory felt a pull towards Logan. So she tore her gaze away from him to look around. There was a group of friends taking a picture near them. A tourist group coming out from a restaurant. When she woke up this morning in her hotel bed, she never imagined herself dancing with Logan as the music by an absolute coincidence played in the background.
It wasn't a slow dance. They weren't dancing in perfect rhythm. Rory kept squealing at every spin, laughing as she collided with Logan. Logan caught her as she tripped more than once. But if someone looked at them from afar they would think it was a couple in love enjoying their evening being in love.
"Do you realize it yet?" Logan said, a coy smile playing on his lips as they slowed down.
"What?" Rory asked, slightly breathless. Sweat dripped from the side of her forehead. Her heart was drumming against her chest
"You don't need to plan everything, all the time." Logan said, holding her hand in his against his chest. "You need to learn to live a little. Without planning ten steps into your future."
"I live a little." Rory said her nose was wrinkling. "In fact I would say I live a lot. Jackie Brown has nothing on me, mister. "
"Sure, Ace. Smuggling money across country borders to a black market gun runner sounds right up your alley." Logan challenged.
Rory stared at him. He had that infuriating smug look on his face. He knew he had her. She was nothing like Jackie Brown, probably never would be. Which was for the best. But that also proved Logan's point. She didn't do things out of her zone.
Logan stepped back. Shoving his hands into his pockets. "Ace, it's getting late. Let's get you to your hotel. I have an early morning tomorrow." Logan said.
Rory frowned.
"Okay." Rory said hesitantly.
The entire walk back home, Rory thought Logan was acting too shifty. And Logan couldn't stop thinking about kissing her, so he knew he needed to put some distance between them tonight.
It's probably all the alcohol. It'll go away in the morning.
"This is me. I can go up by myself. Thank you for the evening again, Logan. It was unexpected but the good kind." Rory said, clasping her hands together.
"See you tomorrow, Ace." Logan said, waving at her and quickly turning to walk back to what Rory assumed must be his hotel.
Author's note - Like I said in my other fic, lack of reviews bring you slower updates. So please leave your reviews and let me know me what you think of this particular chapter.
As this an AU, so Rory and Logan falling into each others arms might take a little while (even though they literally did in this chapter) But there are no reasons that we can't enjoy them falling in love in the meantime, right?
Anyway, enough from me and on to your reviews :)