Chapter 37

November 8th, 2022, Cambridge, MA

It was not a proud moment for Rory. She'd shut herself into a bathroom, the faculty one - which was just the single occupancy space much like headmaster Charleston had in his office - and held the crumpled up napkin she'd already spent the last ten minutes bawling into. Her upper lip was all reddened, as was her nose… and her eyes were all puffy.

"Get a grip, Rory!" she tried to talk to herself in the mirror burst just burst into tears yet again. The work day was over and most people had left the building for the night, so she wasn't really concerned about having someone hear her. But she just didn't feel like leaving the space. She hadn't known she was still that person to have breakdowns like this - and this was the part she was truly ashamed of. She'd made arrangements so that Catalina would pick Em up for her tonight, pretending she had to work late. She just needed to get over this… but it was so embarrassing. Right now she just felt like hiding from the world.

Her phone buzzed for the third time. It was Angie. Logan had already messaged too, asking if she was okay.

"I don't really feel like talking right now," Rory texted Angie back.

Yet on that note the woman just called again and in that moment Rory knew she should just take it or she wouldn't stop calling.

"Yes?" Rory answered with a broken voice.

"Giselle called me," Angie explained.

"Uh-huh," Rory acknowledged her, but didn't feel like saying much.

"Mistakes happen," Angie said, making it evident she'd gotten a recap of what had happened already.

"This shouldn't have...," Rory replied, sniffling her nose.

"But tomorrow is a new day and there'll be other assignments you'll ace," Angie suggested, innocently.

"I screwed up because I was distracted. I was distracted because I wanted to go on a lunch date with Logan and I just… and I really screwed up," Rory added.

"Well if anyone deserves to be distracted it's you, okay? And a date with Logan - what more reason to?" Angie discussed lightheartedly.

"This is just what I do… he always distracts me and I start making bad decisions…," Rory explained, feeling like blaming both herself and him. "This is not a mistake a 38-year-old makes, it's an early-career mistake. Something that wouldn't happen because there would be someone more experienced supervising. They might as well suspend me, maybe even fire me for this," Rory rambled.

"I'm sure it's not that bad," Angie assured.

"Well, I'll hear about it tomorrow, won't I? I got called to see the chair tomorrow morning," Rory added.

"So right now there's nothing you can do about any of it, right? Just take a deep breath and just… face up," Angie tried to sooth her.

"Why does this always happen when Logan is in the picture? It's like I become this teenager..," Rory continued.

"You're not behaving like a teenager just because you have something resembling a social life," Angie insisted.

"I could just sense how disappointed he was…," Rory replied. Naturally, Logan didn't even know the details yet but her brain was already imagining his reaction.

"In you?" Angie wasn't quite following.

"Yes, in me… in me screwing up at a job that's supposed to be a piece of cake, at a job he already thinks is supposed to be beneath me, and even more so because I screwed up at something I boasted about at the beginning of our date. In the date too, I guess… fuck, I flew out of there like something was on fire," Rory blurted, succumbing to her self-pity again. "I'm not like this when he's not around...," she continued, shaking her head.

"Do you want me to call Otis for you? While I am pretty sure you're just having a bad day and Logan is at max perhaps a little confused. He's probably right now at his house just thinking about whether you're okay…. And this is just a momentary glitch for you. And that too is allowed when you're having a bad day. Hey - Simon just kneeled on top of my laptop in the car and I nearly had a heart attack. And, yes, I yelled at him. I'm not so proud of that myself," she explained, referring to her youngest.

"Nah…, not today," Rory replied, honestly not really wanting to explain things to anyone.

"Has Logan called? I bet he has…," Angie suggested.

"Called, no… just messaged," Rory admitted reluctantly.

"So you see. Just write him back. Just be honest… that's what a relationship is about, right?" Angie continued. "Hey, you're going to be fine. And this what happened - it's an honest mistake. People make mistakes - old, young, famous or infamous, white, black… college-graduates or not… it doesn't reflect the person who you are and who had a clean track record for the past four years you've been there. You're going to be fine," she added.

Rory knew that to be not technically true. While she had indeed had no big bloopers like this - she'd had some things on her record which hadn't been looked well at. Because she wasn't really doing this for the money, she'd left early or come in late a number of times mostly because of something to do with Em. Mostly her work enabled things like that. She'd even once told them to dock her pay if they had a problem with it. And it wasn't that she'd left anything undone - everything had gotten done and she'd made sure of it. It was just the attitude that had rubbed some people the wrong way. She was pretty sure there was some enviousness on the matter too, since many people knew she came from money even if they didn't know the complicated details of it.

"Then he'll just want to talk about it..," Rory argued.

"Then just tell him you don't. Not right now," Angie assured. "Just trust me, things will look better once you get tomorrow out of the way and you can just put it past you," she said.

"Maybe..," Rory said unsurely. She hated being this person who required peptalk and handholding at bad moments like this. She hadn't needed it in a while, and now it almost felt like because she'd let her guard down, she was being punished for it.

"Maybe - yes?" Angie teased.

"Uh-huh," Rory mumbled, just wanting to hang up already. Angie had an almost annoyingly positive attitude towards life and right now she just wasn't feeling it, despite appreciating her pep-talk.

"Just take a Uber home and I'll make sure you have some Cupcake Therapy waiting for you when you get back," Angie insisted. They sometimes did that to each-other, send surprise deliveries.

Rory almost felt like a child, but she had to admit it did have a ring to it. Still it didn't mean she loved the fact that she needed this type of pick-me-up. She wanted to be stronger than this, more mature.

"Fine, bye..," Rory relented, gratefully.

She glanced down at her phone and read over Logan's message once more. She could hear his tone of voice as she did, and that just cut through her, making her want to fall apart all over again. There was something about Logan just made her want to strip away all of her barriers and just fall apart. That couldn't be a good thing, could it? That couldn't possibly be an attractive feature, surely…

"Okay? Not really," Rory replied to Logan, hesitating for several moments how honest she was going to be about this. She'd held things in before, but doing this right hardly meant she could continue doing the things she had before. "It was just a really bad end of the day," Rory typed, taking a deep breath. "Sorry for ending our date like that," Rory added, hoping to end it on a more practical note. But she could tell it was still kind of like steering the attention onto something other than her current state.

She put her phone aside, and focused on washing her face with some cool water, hoping to look at least somewhat presentable before she considered ordering herself a ride. She dried her face up - there was little left of her makeup.

"I could offer you a ride home if you're still at the office," was Logan's response. She could still see him typing something and retracting a few times.

Eventually he added, "I stayed working at the coffee shop across the street for the afternoon. The place looked cosy," he said, fibbing a little. But technically, he had said during their date how he was getting a little sick of his home office so it was believable enough.

Rory didn't even know what to say - she felt guilty for even the brief consideration that he might've stayed to check up on her. Maybe he'd expected this reaction and had wanted to be around to pick up her pieces? Maybe that was all that they ever were - her breaking and him comforting her? Was that all they would be? Was it some knight-in-shining-armor kind of fetish? But there was an odd mixture of relief, embarrassment and disappointment that perhaps he'd seen this reaction coming. The latter was a little infuriating even, despite being rather accurate.

In that moment her earlier request - insinuating that they could ever start fresh - just seemed ridiculous.

But what would it mean if she refused his offer - whatever his real reason for staying was? She wasn't going to lie and offend him by choosing a ride service instead, was she?

"That'd be nice," Rory forced herself to type, hoping desperately that the evening dusk would hide the redness in her face.

With one last deep breath she unlocked the bathroom door and headed for her office that still had her desk light on to get her things.

"I'll meet you out front in 5," she read his message that he'd typed a couple of minutes ago, just before buttoning up her coat.

Her mind felt numb, too exhausted to think about what she'd say when she saw him. She just didn't want to think and in a way perhaps that was her own self-protection mechanism.

But as the door swung open upon her push - there he stood - and something within her cracked.

His impression spoke of concern, not a hint of judgment for Rory to go on. She'd wanted to be mad at him for sticking around - for knowing she might crack. But all that happened was that she melted into his arms wordlessly and his arms wrapped around her like the most comforting blanket she'd felt in forever.

Logan was short of words too, not wanting to say the wrong thing. Even 'it's going to be okay' seemed too trivial, almost sounging like mocking. Things between the two were still so fragile it felt too dangerous to really say anything beyond - "Come on, my car's that way".

With his arm protectively wrapped around her shoulders he led her out into the street, where his car waited. It would've been visible from her office window had she paid attention to the outside world. He let a car passed, looking out for her, before crossing the street and opening his car door for her.

Rory really didn't look that good, she'd been crying - that much he knew.

Obviously he was curious about what exactly had happened. He wanted to assure her that she was always too hard on herself - but as they'd agreed he wasn't supposed to linger on their past knowledge of each other. Yet he knew that the fact that he'd stuck around probably defeated the point just the same.

"The other way is a little quicker this time of day," Rory noted, feeling like she needed to break the silence with something.

"Good to know," Logan replied, not planning on arguing with her. A minute or two really made no difference to him.

"There was once this big crash here - like four cars and a truck, I was like four cars away so it was quite scary seeing all the ambulances and fire trucks do their thing before we were allowed to move on," Rory explained, wanting to speak about anything other than what had happened, several minutes of silence later.

"I'm glad you were safe," Logan replied. His tone really did sound like he cared and that was scratching Rory's facade that was holding her together.

Rory realized this was stupid... she couldn't just pretend nothing was up.

"Why did you stick around?" Rory asked a moment later.

"I was worried," Logan admitted.

"Did you expect I would be like this?" Rory asked, accusing him a little. But really she was more angry at herself than him.

"No. I honestly hoped it was nothing. Just a simple thing you'd go back and fix. But I just didn't want to leave you. So I worked at the coffee shop for a bit… I never saw you leave so…," Logan explained, shrugging lightly.

"I didn't want you to see me this way…," Rory confessed, sniffling a little.

Logan wasn't in the best position to really go into this while he was driving, having to navigate his way down from the Longfellow Bridge in the dark and give way.

"You don't have to worry about it..," Logan said, keeping it as simple as possible.

"You want to hear what happened, I assume?" Rory asked.

"I won't pry but yeah," Logan admitted.

"I was going to just say I didn't want to talk about it and I don't... but if I can just get it out of the way then...," Rory began, taking a deep breath. "One of the files I uploaded was the wrong one. And there was no way of retracting that since the deadline passed while we were out. So they'll be getting a grant proposal with not all the required documents which basically means that all the hard work is down the drain and the department is losing out on some serious cash. All because of me," Rory confessed, looking down at her hands that were in her lap, fidgeting about with her phone cover.

"I'm sorry...," Logan replied, letting the silence carry.

"I thought I was better than this, that I was beyond stuff like this - that I could trust myself more but I just lost my guard. And I thought I knew how to deal with failure better than this. And honestly, half an hour ago I was trying to convince myself in the bathroom how being around you is what's bringing this side of me back to the surface…," Rory shared, being a little surprised of her own honesty that seemed to be pouring out of her.

Logan didn't know what to say. Was she blaming him for her reaction? Was she bolting from this because she'd let herself feel something?

"And now?" Logan asked, the fact that she'd spoken in the past tense catching his attention.

"I'm not blaming you… It was my screw up and my reaction…," Rory explained. "The fact that you waited…," Rory began, her words getting stuck in her throat again. But she was determined not to cry.

"I stayed because I care…," Logan assured, pulling into the cobble-stone streets.

"Not because you wanted to pick up the pieces again?" Rory said.

"I wanted you to walk out of there with your head held high…," Logan explained.

"Are you disappointed that I didn't? That I'm not miraculously… I don't know - 'fixed'?" Rory said.

"You're just too hard on yourself…," Logan said. "And no, you can't disappoint me by just feeling what you feel…," he added, pulling up across the street from Rory's home finding there the only vacant parking spot.

"What about what I did... and I know it's so ridiculous I even need for some type of assurance on this..," Rory continued.

"Hey, I can't do your work, so what do I know?" Logan shot back.

"Your opinion has just always mattered to me. I'm kind of surprised it still does this much," she said.

"Well... I am not judging... I'm really not," Logan replied, despite knowing how he did think she was capable of more. In his mind this wasn't judgement, it was rather believing she was selling herself short. But just like none of her failuers in journalism had done nothing to the way he saw her, this did just as little.

"But I do think that being around you is making me more vulnerable…," Rory confessed with a sigh.

"Maybe that's a good thing?" Logan added hopefully.

Rory shrugged. It didn't feel like a good thing, not yet anyways.

"Hey…," Logan began, unsure what exactly to say and reached out to squeeze her hand.

"Yeah, I know…," Rory replied, not needing another 'It'll feel better tomorrow', or 'it'll be okay'.

"I hope I didn't ruin our fresh beginning…," Logan said on a lighter note. He didn't know how to do that, and the fact that he'd stuck around, feeling like he wanted to watch out for her, was proof of that. He couldn't help the fact that deep down he knew her.

"That might have been a little naive...," Rory admitted.

"I just think it'd take at least one of us to suffer amnesia…," Logan teased jokingly.

"Yeah… wouldn't want that either," Rory agreed, the corner of her mouth lifting. "Thanks for this..," she said, seeing a Door Dash guy pull up nearby, figuring it must've been the cupcakes Angie had ordered for her. "I better go…," she replied, and slipped out of the door, smiling humbly at him.

"I'll see you tomorrow..," Logan said, knowing he would be dropping Em off tomorrow evening.

Rory waved goodbye. She wasn't fully over everything that had happened… but his presence had helped her see things more clearly. Their history was impossible to ignore. But what she needed to learn to accept was that maybe he wasn't seeing the worst in her like she'd always been so conscious about. That part had been a lot easier without him around.

AN: I know I sometimes tend to get sucked into writing Rory as this crying mess, but in this case I really do not plan on sticking to it. It's just a brief relapse in this case to get us forward to other things.