Chapter 179

March 1st, 2016

"A whale and a rabbit?" Logan reflected, laughingly, having spend the last ten minutes listening Rory speak about the book she'd been asked to write. He loved listening to her and watching her. It was like seeing a mirage from the past every time she was here. The conversation was not just fun, not just interesting - it was stimulating. Every lunch, every dinner, every time she stayed over… He cautioned himself not to think of her like that. It was a slippery slope. Fun and casual was safer.

"It's not funny," Rory argued.

"It's pretty funny," Logan disagreed, his sleek smile plastered onto his lips.

"And she kept coming back to it, comparing the archetypes to characters in some play by Aeschylus, Oh, and you haven't lived until you've heard a tipsy Brit try to pronounce Aeschylus," Rory pointed out.

"Hey, Aeschylus is hard even when you're not tipsy. It was like her lips were falling off," Logan commented, taking a sip of his wine.

"And try convincing her that Willy Loman is not one of the characters in Aeschylus. That was a hoot," she complained.

"Oh, well, I'm learning so much here," Logan reflected.

"She had five martinis. Five! And she got there before I did. So I don't know how many she had before," Rory exclaimed, in disbelief.

"I've read things about this woman. It all kind of aligns," Logan commented.

"I did, too. Her decades of breaking barriers and empowering women. Her drunken, naked tirade through Harrods. Halfway through her third martini, she asked if she could lick my juicy apple cheeks," Rory continued to describe.

"Ooh, do I want to know what that means?" Logan chuckled.

"My brain is fried," Rory sighed, sounding indeed tired.

"Well, let's talk about something else," Logan suggested.

"Oh, Conde Nast. Just got the message. Pushed! Again!" Rory exclaimed as she suddenly remembered. She'd talked about this to him before.

"You're kidding!" Logan commented, being genuinely disappointed for her. He knew the quick fixes to these things. He hates to see her struggle. She shouldn't have to if she only… again he reversed himself back from those thoughts.

"I know I'm not their highest priority, but Conde Nast asked for this meeting. Months ago. This came from them," Rory explained, dissapointedly.

"Conde Nast?!" suddenly a familiar, yet an unexpected - unwanted voice asked, and Logan could see blood drain from Rory's face. "Procrastinators supreme. May I?" Mitchum pulled a chair up to take a seat for a moment.

"Help yourself," Logan said as he'd already done what he was going to anyways.

"How you doing, Rory? Long time, no see," Mitchum said.

"Um.. It's been a very long time," Rory replied, cautiously, yet Logan stayed on guard. He was well aware of the relationship the two of them had had back in the day, and he knew it to be a sore subject. He was ready to defend her if it came to it, but he wasn't really sure how to do this with tact so he wouldn't hurt Rory either.

"I didn't know you two were still in touch," Mitcum said, and Logan could tell right then and there 'in touch' meant more to Mitchum than just having an old friend in town. Mitchum could tell.

"Rory was passing through town on a job and I begged her to have lunch," Logan tried to save the moment.

"Hmm. Nothing better to do?" Mitchum asked, and Logan could only hope Rory didn't read too much into those lines considering her work situations.

Rory chuckled nervously. "He did beg," Rory said.

"So? What about Conde Nast? Are they dicking you around?" Mitchum asked, thankfully not poking too much around the hornet's nest.

"No. Just, um, lots of postponements," Rory explained. Again Logan could just see how this was embarrassing for her, even in a casual mention his father managed to put her down and could already predict the next sentences coming out of his mouth.

"You want me to make a call?" Mitchum offered.

"To Conde Nast?" Rory reflected, not believing her ears.

"I can set a meeting, make it stick. It's no problem," he assured, cockily.

"No, that's okay. Thank you, Mr. Huntzberger," Rory declined as Logan could've already predicted.

"So what brings you to town?" Mitchum asked.

"She's working on a book proposal. Co-writing with Naomi Shropshire," Logan explained for her, knowing these were where her professional strengths laid at this moment.

Mitchum laughed. "Naomi Shropshire? Have some hangover medicine ready," he added with a chuckle.

"She's a character. But that's what makes her unique," Rory replied, not really knowing what else to say. She couldn't badmouth her lifeline, could she?

"Ah, I gotta go," Mitchum said, glancing back towards the bar. "Um, hey, the party next week for your uncle... Is Odette coming?" Mitchum said, rising from his seat. Of course he had to bring Odette up - Logan groaned on the inside.

"She will be there," Logan replied, humbly, trying to sound casual.

"Gets engaged to a girl who lives in another country. Smart girl," Mitchum commented with a chuckle.

"And Conde Nast? The offer stands," Mitchum offered.

"You're very nice. Thank you," Rory replied, not quite believing herself that she'd just said that. But she'd been caught off guard, she was still shocked to have seen him at all.

"I believe that's the first time anyone's said that to me. I mean, someone not sticking a shiv in my back," Mitchum commented, as he headed off. "See ya," Mithcum added and the two nodded as he left.

"How did this happen..." Rory asked in a voice just as panicky as Logan had worried she was.

"It's okay," Logan tried to calm her. He didn't want to outright say it didn't matter to Mitchum, but she didn't want Rory to feel cheap either.

"He's seen us," Rory fretted.

"As far as he knows, we're just friends," Logan tried to calm her. He felt dirty even saying it.

"Of all the millions of restaurants, he walks in here?" Rory exclaimed but then registered the sneaky look on Logan's face. "What?" Rory asked.

"Eh, this is one of the family holdings," Logan replied, not wanting to brag.

"'Course it is," Rory reflected. She shouldn't really have been surprised, should she? But especially now as she was keeping some distance mentally, these things tended to slip her mind.

"Why do you think I sprung for the $300 bottle of wine?" Logan tried to lift the mood, that signature smirk of his making Rory push the meeting to the back of her mind.


May 8th, 2022

They'd spent the day unpacking Logan's boxes. Rory mostly just lounging on the couch, watching the final season of This Is Us, and sorting some simpler things, while Logan did most of the heavy lifting and sorted through the more personal things - those mostly to do with his work or finances. A lot of those boxes were of no real use to Logan - clothes, shoes, interior decor that Logan really didn't need which they were going to donate. The books had found their rightful places in their joint bookshelf and some in Logan's study. There were a few less then nice reminders form the past as well, like photos of his wedding, but those he simply thew into the bottom of one of those boxes, not quite aming to destroy them but put them away somewhere in the back of their storage room, wanting to spare Rory the unpleasant feelings. He didn't want them around, but he didn't hate it so much that he'd need to get rid of them either. There was some art, some antiques and some whimsical gifts Odette had gotten him - like the funny whiskey bottle that came to his mind from 2016. There were documents, financial papers and with those Logan took care to go them through as he now sat next to Rory.

"You know…," Rory began, as an episode had come to an end. She hadn't really watched it with her full attention, the process of sorting out Logan's past life taking priority as a defence mechanism of getting too emotional over the show, needing to keep her hormones in check by not going too deep into that particular show.

"What?" Logan asked, throwing another bunch of papers in to the discard pile.

"It's so much easier being with you when we don't have such a major gap in wealth anymore," Rory admitted, being surprisingly straightforward and open about the subject. Money was not exactly something they discussed often. And besides the occasional mention of taking the copter or having family holdings all over the globe, back in the day, everything else had just been assumed.

Logan sighed, feeling a little worried where this was going.

"Was it really that hard? I don't think I ever made it intentionally difficult for you…," Logan said, unsure how else to respond. Logan leaned back, placing his arm across the back of the couch, loosely around Rory's shoulders. Sure there had been fancy gifts, but he'd never thought they'd make her feel uncomfortable - instead he'd loved each time how little these things mattered to her when it came to their price tag.

"It wasn't hard. But it was just always in the back of my mind," Rory confessed. There was the Birking which had gotten so much attention from others she'd eventually looked it up and hardly dared to wear it again, there was living with him during college... so many contrasts that had brought out their ineaqualty.

"I never thought of you as less, you know. Not once. And there have been plenty of times I wish I didn't have that privilege. And not even because of the plans my dad had for me," Logan said. He'd wanted to have the opportunities without the weight of it, he'd wanted people to treat him like they would someone without the money - not sucking up all the time, for example.

"I know," Rory exhaled.

"And if it's something my mother said…," Logan began but didn't really want to bring it up.

"I believe the term she used once...Not to me but to my grandmother was - 'there's your money and then there's our money," Rory revealed.

"You're kidding?" Logan reflected and made a disgusted face. He had been under no impression her mother had ever been nice to Rory, not since recently at least, but now he thought even less of her.

"I wish I was," Rory said but she let it go, not needing to elaborate what else Emily had said.

"Do you feel worried it might change things between us if I accepted my dad's money?" Logan asked, after a brief silence, and rubbed her shoulder with the side of his fingers. He did wonder what had brought this up in her mind.

"I mean.. Less than it would've back then. As back then I had literally nothing - I even owed my grandparents money. Now…I have something, but I know it doesn't compare. And I don't want to compare but I know there'll always be some that will. I'm pretty sure once the word gets out about your role in your family again you'll be more of an interest again and I'll probably get the expected speculations," Rory discussed, leaning into his side.

"Well, if it makes you feel any better, my dad wasn't half as wealthy when he died than what you maybe remembered him by. Most of what he had is in the company," Logan shared.

"What? No private planes?" Rory asked, rolling her eyes a little. It just didn't soudn right and she was almost expecting a joke.

"The company has a plane and a copter, but my dad… not so much. He got into some trouble with the IRS a few years ago, mostly his accountant's fault as he claimed, but his own as well. He managed to put a bunch of things on other family member's names before it got bad, but he ended up having to sell a bunch too. But sure, he was no poor man either, he kept his living standards pretty similar, on the surface at least," Logan explained.

"I didn't know!" Rory said.

"He didn't exactly parade it," Logan said. "But what this essentially means is that while there's access to a lot of the company perks, there's a yacht somewhere - I don't even know where. Some cars which I couldn't really care less about. A mountain cabin, nothing as big as the place in Martha's was, in Lake Tahoe. Sure, some investments and such. But no restaurants, no cattle, no house in the Keys or Saint Tropez," he listed a couple of things that came into mind.

"We should probably go see an accountant at some point then," Rory stated, after taking it all in for a minute.

"If I accept it," Logan replied, shrugging his shoulders.

"You will," Rory said, it having become more and more clear to her as they'd gone through his things how much the work had meant to him. There had been these little pauses at certain project overviews - again things that should've been in the office, but weren't, a few more smaller prises, some articles on him concerning work that Rory had missed but Odette had saved even. Logan was too good to just sit in the sidelines and Rory knew she could never hold him back.