100 yards.
The distance between them was a mere 100 yards, but to Logan it felt more like a 100 miles. His easy confident stride belied the storm of confusion that masqueraded as thoughts. As he made his way toward Branford, Logan once again puzzled over the enigma that was Rory Gilmore. In the three days since he returned from the LDB event, he had yet to see or hear from her. There were no return phone calls. No answers at the door. No chance encounters at any of the coffee carts on campus. Not even a glimpse at the library. The afternoon he spent wandering around three floors of dusty bookshelves hoping to catch her sniffing books proved fruitless. Ace had disappeared. And for the first time in his charmed and privileged life, Logan felt a trickle of fear worming its way into his consciousness.
For the millionth time, he racked his brain for what could have gone wrong. His recollection of Saturday night's events was a bit fuzzy. Logan never got that drunk. He was never that out of control. But on that night he was, and the reason for his excessive drinking eluded him. Somewhere in the depths of his heart, however, Logan understood exactly why he had drunk himself into a stupor. But his mind just wouldn't let him face it. Not yet.
Still, even though his memory was foggy, he instinctively knew he didn't do anything to hurt Ace. Yeah, there was the drunken phone call. It was stupid, but harmless…some mindless talk about pennies? All very innocent. Surely, there was nothing said that would cause Ace to completely ignore him.
Logan shook his head in an effort to clear it. The weekend had turned out to be a bad one on the ladies front. First, he'd ticked off Alexa when he left her - as she was unbuttoning his shirt no less - to help Finn and Robert burn Colin's clothes. The expression on Colin's face had been priceless. His entire bag of designer argyle sweaters, pressed pants and paisley socks went up in smoke. Logan laughed at the memory, which he was able to remember surprisingly well. Alexa didn't find the situation quite so funny however. She was hot and all, but definitely too clingy. He hadn't wanted to find her in his bed and Logan didn't regret not sleeping with her at all. And now, somehow he had pissed off Ace, who, at the moment, was the very opposite of clingy. Women. Logan sure knew how to work them, but he doubted that he would ever understand them.
Outside Rory's bedroom window, Logan was dismayed to find it shut tight with the blinds closed and curtains drawn. He shouldn't have been so surprised. Her window had been dark each night that he'd come by. Feeling a bit disconcerted at how worried he was getting, Logan wondered if something had happened back in Stars Hollow. Had Ace gone home? Was she alright? Did something happen with her mother?
He made his way to her door and knocked, not expecting anyone to answer. Surprisingly enough, however, the door swung open and Logan heard her before he saw her.
"Marty, I figured you'd be right back. You forgot your - oh!" Rory stopped short when she saw that it was not Marty at her door.
Something unameable crumbled in Logan as he noted the abrupt change in Rory's demeanor. Her eyes turned cold and she automatically retreated into an aloof stance, her crossed arms acting like a shield. She looked up at him frostily.
"Hey, Ace," he said smoothly. If there ever was a time to turn on the charm, this was it. "I missed you. Been burying that pretty nose of yours in some thick book again? May I come in?" He tentatively reached out to her, but stopped when she inched backwards away from him. Logan did his best to cover his growing fear and confusion. What the hell did he do to cause this?
A myriad of emotions warred within her. Every instinct told her to close him off, to not let him in. She had to protect herself. But her body screamed at her to go to him, to touch him, to do everything in her power to ease the look of worry in his soft brown eyes. The battle waged on but in the span of that moment, Rory decided that her heart had been wrecked enough and she was not going to let him do any more damage.
"Now's not a good time. I have a ton of work to do," she stated simply, her voice devoid of emotion.
Logan forced his lips to curve into a wide, disarming smile. "C'mon, Ace, I'm sure you have five minutes to spare for me," he said in a low, soft voice.
Oh, God, not the sex voice! No fair, Rory thought frantically. There was no way on earth she could resist Logan's sex voice and he knew it. Ironically enough, that infuriated her enough to give her strength. "No, Logan. I said now is not a good time," she said forcefully, her cheeks starting to flush.
Good, she was getting angry. Logan knew he was making progress. He was starting to feel like himself again. "Ace. Five minutes." He gently caressed her outraged cheek with a finger.
"No...Logan..." she faltered.
Logan seized his opportunity and bent down to touch his lips to hers. He had meant to give her a small kiss as a way to distract her enough to step inside so they could talk. But as soon as he touched her, Logan's mind stopped working and the kiss spiraled out of control. It wasn't apparent until this very second how much he had missed her. All he wanted was this - the feel of her mouth, her arms tight around him, her sweet, clean floral scent. God, she felt so good.
Even as she was drowning in the passion of Logan's kiss, a bubble of rage rose within Rory. How dare he come here and work his charms on her. What a bastard to try and manipulate her into giving him what he wanted. She was not going to give in. Logan wanted their relationship on his terms and his terms only. Unfortunately, she could no longer abide by his terms. Although she loved him, she knew they could not be together. Rory had to end it. It was time.
She broke off the kiss and shoved him away as hard as she could. Slamming the door closed behind her, she whirled on him and gave in to her anger. "You jerk! You can't just come crawling through my window anytime you feel like it! I'm not some toy that you can come play with at your leisure!"
What the hell was she talking about? Since when did she have a problem with him coming over. "I didn't crawl through the window," he replied easily. "I came and knocked at your door."
If looks could kill, Logan would have been ashes on the floor. "Oh, don't you try and worm your way out of this. You know what I mean."
"I'm not worming my way out of anything. Didn't I just knock at your door?"
"Yes!" Rory replied shrilly. She was so mad she could hardly think straight.
"And so your point would be?"
Taking a deep breath, Rory tried to get her thoughts in order. Getting into a verbal sword fight with Logan was definitely not the way to go. "My i point /i is that you can't just come waltzing over whenever you feel like it. I said I was busy and you totally ignored that and just kissed me."
"So I should have called first? I called you and you never returned any of my calls, so I thought I'd come over to say hi and make sure you're okay. If you didn't want to be kissed, then you should have politely said so instead of kissing me back." Logan knew he had to keep her off balance. It was his only chance to get himself out of whatever minefield he'd stepped on and to find out exactly what was bothering her.
"The very fact that I didn't call you back should have signaled that I was busy, or that I didn't have time to spend with you. Or even that I didn't i want /i to spend any time with you."
Ouch. Logan felt like he'd gotten punched in the gut. But he pressed on. "Well, actually, the fact that I hadn't heard from you made me think that something terrible must have happened, because you always return friends' phone calls and are very diligent about staying in touch with people. If you hadn't heard from Lane or you mother after leaving them several messages, would your first thought be that they didn't want to talk to you?"
Frustration seeped from every pore of her body. Damn him. He was doing that thing he does so well. "Look, Logan, it doesn't matter anyway. I -"
"Of course it matters, Ace." He heaved a mighty sigh. "Okay, let's just cut to the chase here, shall we? Obviously, you're mad at me about something. Is this about Saturday night? Look, if it bothered you, then I'm sorry. I didn't realized it'd upset you this much." Was she really this i mad /i over him calling her while he was trashed?
Rory stiffened at the mention of what happened on Saturday. How could he talk about it so casually like it was nothing? Was he really that much of a callous womanizer that he didn't even realize she had feelings at stake? Logan started sexing up some other chick while he was on the phone with her! She wanted to tear his balls out.
"You asshole! Of course, I'm mad at you about Saturday! Inconsiderate pervert creep! How could you!"
It was Logan's turn to get mad. Rory was getting psychotic over one stupid phone call. She was being completely unreasonable. "Okay, so I was drunk. I'm a guy. Drunk guys to dumb things. No big deal." He shrugged.
Logan's shrug nearly caused Rory to come unhinged. It was so utterly dismissive. "Are you serious! You were drunk! That's your excuse! Way to take responsibility for your behavior there, Logan. What, you think you can just sail through life not owning up to your actions?"
"No, I'm very aware of the consequences of my actions. In this particular case, I don't think my actions warrant such an extreme consequence. I just don't see how your anger is justified. I did nothing wrong."
Rory stared at him in disbelief. She could not believe what she was hearing. How she could have fallen in love with this heartless fiend was beyond her. Beneath a facade of confidence, charm and wit, Logan was nothing but a cold, unfeeling bastard who used people for his own amusement. She felt so betrayed. All her rage and anger drained away. A painful emptiness took their place. Her heart lay shattered at her feet.
She could feel the tears coming and she fought against the growing lump in her throat. Logan saw her beautiful blue eyes fill with tears, but was still at a loss as to why. He wished there was something he could do or say to make things right, but he just didn't understand how things between him and Ace had gone horribly awry. His heart wrenched at the inexplicable sadness on her face.
"Rory," he said softly and cupped her face in his hands. "Tell me how to fix this. Make me understand."
But she merely shook her head. Rory gathered the courage to look him straight in the eyes. The tenderness she saw there nearly killed her. "There's nothing to fix, Logan. There's nothing to understand. We can't go on the way we have been. This is over. Whatever there was between us, it's over."
Logan froze at the unexpected note of finality in Rory's voice. She was ending things. A loud buzzing started sounding in his head and for a second Logan felt as if he were falling. "I don't want to lose you, Ace." His voice was uncharacteristically plaintive.
Rory looked at him almost with sympathy. "You can't lose what you don't have," she said gently. Gathering what courage she had, Rory took Logan's hand and led him to the door. "Bye, Logan."
He faced her and looked long and hard into those expressive blue eyes of hers. Empty, but haunted eyes looked back at him. Gone was the merriment and giddiness she had whenever she spoke of her mother and the craziness that was Stars Hollow. Gone were the flecks of anger or mischief that he loved to spark within her. Gone was the focus and seriousness whenever she was caught up in a book or busy highlighting pages of text.
But saddest of all, gone was the look of love that Logan woke up to after their nights together, the look of love that flashed when she glanced at him over a cup of coffee, and the look of love that shone when she smiled at him, and him alone. Gone was the look of love that had scared him shitless, but now would give anything to get back. But it was too late. And he knew it.
"Bye, Ace."
As the door clicked shut behind him, Logan steeled himself for the long solitary walk back to his dorm. Damn, whiskey. He was going to make sure that Finn got rid of all traces of Johnny Walker Red from the room. Tonight, it would be all about the tequila. And lots of it.
Lastly, Logan made a mental note to have Colin, upon pain of death, keep his damn cell phone out of his hands at all costs.
