Chapter 5
Veronica's P.O.V.
Can you call it friends with benefits when you're not exactly friends and the benefits just make you feel…I don't know.
Guilty isn't the right word for it. The whole using each other thing, it is, after all, mutual.
I couldn't call it cheap, really. Not when it goes both ways. He doesn't like it any better than I do, that much I know.
I'm always half-inclined to expect a dirty victory smirk to slither across his face so that I can remember that I hate him. But it's never been that way. He would never make it that easy.
Always afterwards, there's this slow redness that starts to creep up his neck and into his cheeks and he'll rush to the bathroom to splash cold water to hush his skin into a numb, ghastly white.
And then I'll know. That he's just as afraid as I am.
He chews at the end of his pencil and nervously darts his eyes sideways at me. Then he clears his throat and lifts himself in his chair.
A paper plane suddenly lands in my hair, and I pull it out and turn to discover Dick Casablancas grinning my way. I narrow my eyes and he blows me a kiss.
I turn again to face forward before Mrs. Murphy turns from the blackboard and notice Logan chuckling. He waves at me with a derisive smile spread across his lips, wiggling his fingers jokingly.
His smile dwindles and a cold clarity settles in on his face and I remember that I don't understand him at all. And I think to myself, maybe I do hate him.
But hate isn't the right word for it.
(-)
"It's de ja vu all over again," he greets from behind me as I sit dejected by my car while the Neptune High parking lot empties out.
When I first noticed that the air had been conveniently let out of one of my tires, I decided to sit and wait until my classmates departed and pulled out my Sidekick for a rousing game of Internet Solitaire.
"Yeah," I mumble to him, putting away my phone as the last car besides his X-Terra leaves the parking lot. "If nothing else I can depend on continuity."
This is the first we've talked since the little confrontation in the bathroom a few days ago. Neither of us mention it.
He plops down to sit by me.
(-) Flashback (-)
Veronica Mars stood by her car, frowning and biting her lip in confusion. She blinked back her tears and wrapped her arms around herself as a few of her former friends stood a few feet away, grinning and waving patronizingly at her. Duncan stood among them, sighing disdainfully and avoiding her eyes.
Logan departed from the group and strolled by her on the way back towards the building, biting into an apple.
He chewed slowly and stopped to stand by her momentarily.
"Bummer," he noted towards the car, with no sympathy in his voice and continued back into the school. Veronica heard a clap of thunder above her and a drizzling rain began to make its way down and dejected, she sat down beside the flat tire as the other students piled into their cars and drove quickly away.
Noticing that Veronica had been returning from the bus stop daily with a sulking face and spitballs in her hair, Keith Mars had decided to use the remainder of their savings to buy her a used Le Baron. And now on the first day she had taken it to school, someone had let the air out of one of the tires. Fleetingly, she wondered if it had been Logan and felt a sinking dread in her chest.
"Hey…" she heard a voice behind her and turned to find him standing there.
"What?" she snapped, sounding harsher than she'd intended.
"Come on, lemme walk you home."
"Just leave, Logan."
"I'm going that way anyway, Veronica… there's a bus stop by your place."
She turned and looked up curiously at him. "Where's your car?"
He shrugged and dug his hands into the pockets of the hoodie she'd returned to him just a few days earlier, and looked dismally down at his feet.
"Just lemme walk you home…"
Slowly, Veronica got up on her feet and gave him an unsure nod, wrapping her arms around herself again as the rainfall grew heavier. She wondered why he had waited in the building for everyone to leave instead of just taking a ride from one of his friends as he unzipped his hoodie and pulled it off, offering it to her.
"No I—you keep it."
"Uh… here," he replied quietly, slinging one side on his shoulder and holding the other towards her. Tentatively, she stepped beneath the damp little tent he formed with the sweatshirt and his arm, and he made certain not to rest his hand on her shoulder.
They walked in an uncomfortable silence for about fifteen minutes, each one occasionally opening their mouths to say something, but deciding against it.
"I'm sorry," he blurted out suddenly, looking down at her face. It shone with the dew from the raindrops and her forehead creased into little worried lines. Her eyes looked bigger than he remembered.
"What about?"
Logan didn't care to specify all the things he felt sorry for, instead he just frowned thoughtfully at her and shrugged. It was then he noticed that his hand had come to rest around her and that she was tucked comfortably into the crook of his arm. He felt himself lean closer.
"All sorts of things," he answered finally, when the question had long since drifted away.
When she didn't respond, he pulled the wrinkled, folded picture he had taken from her from his back pocket and started to hand it to her. She took it and looked up at him. The tips of their fingers met briefly.
"Sorry it's all messed up…"
"It's fine… I-I have copies," she smiled forgivingly. "You can keep this… I mean, if you want—"
"Yeah, I… yeah. Thanks."
She stopped suddenly.
"What?"
"You, uhm… you turn here, I think." She replied, pointing at the opposite end of where she was to turn towards her apartment complex. "The bust stop's that way."
"Oh… I could still walk you home. It's only a few more minutes…"
"No, it's fine Logan…"
"But—"
"My dad's home."
"Okay." He nodded, pulling the hoodie off his shoulders and resting it along hers.
"Uh—"
"Just keep it," he smiled apologetically. "To shield you… for the next time I throw up on you…"
She smiled warmly as he pulled on the hood on her head. Wet tendrils of her long hair snaked out from beneath it and he let his fingers linger along them as he slowly pulled his hands away.
Before Veronica entirely realized it, she'd risen on the tip of her toes and was placing a gentle kiss on the edge of his mouth.
She pulled away abruptly, and mirrored his shocked expression as a blush crept up her cheeks. She had meant for it to be on his cheek… well, she hadn't meant for it to happen at all. Taking a step backwards, she realized his hand had a strong hold on her elbow and quickly pulled her back, this time pressing her body against his as he captured her lips with a violent urgency.
An arm snaked across her waist and the other's hand snuck into her hair as she circled her arms around his neck, feeling herself levitate into the air. His tongue traipsed across her bottom lip, stopping for his teeth to tug it apart from the top so he could slip inside.
Then it occurred to her that they were not levitating but that he had entirely lifted her into his arms and she floated, feeling a sudden sensation of warm sunlight along her skin, like the first day of summer.
Just as abruptly as it had began, he set her down and took a few awkward steps backwards. Veronica noticed the raindrops shine at the edge of his milky eyes and his lips pink from a rush of blood.
"Uh, I… I'm sorry, I-I shouldn't have…" he trailed off. He continued to retreat backwards with a confused fear in his eyes before turning and disappearing into the rainy, gray afternoon.
Veronica pulled his hoodie closer around her and walk the remaining way home. She quietly asked her father to call AAA for her and went into her room where she changed into a dry set of pajamas. Pulling out the music box her mother had left behind for her when she'd abandoned the family two months ago, she opened and listened to the droning hum of the music.
Abruptly snapping it shut, she dropped the music box, along with the note promising her mother's return, into the wastebasket and walked out into the kitchen where her father was attempting to make a casserole. She smiled slowly to herself and snuck up behind him to pull him into a hug.
"Hey, Kiddo," he greeted, placing a small kiss on her damp forehead.
"Hi, Daddy."
(-) 00 (-)
Veronica's P.O.V.
He pulls out a cigarette and sticks it between his lips, retrieving a lighter from his pocket and sparking its end.
"You given up on me?" he smiles, blowing tendrils of smoke from the side opposite me.
"It just occurred to me that ten years shaven off your life could work out in my best interest."
Logan smirks in response and takes another drag, watching me expectantly as I stare straight ahead. He takes another. And another.
I pull it out from his mouth and throw it forward, extending my leg to crush the stub beneath my boot as he erupts into laughter.
"You care! You really care!"
"Shut up, I do not!"
He chuckles again and pulls out the pack, sticking another cigarette in his mouth. I yank it out and toss it away before he has a chance to light it.
"Logan!" I shake my head to myself. "Did you ever even try the nicotine patches I got you?"
"The ones you left in my locker on my birthday?"
"It was charming," I inform him.
"I thought it was a gag gift."
"No, it was clever but thoughtful. I'm perfect that way."
"Oh, okay."
I roll my eyes at him. "Whatever."
I sigh and plop forward on my knees, inching towards the flat tire.
"Uh, what're you doing?" he asks, standing up.
"Changing my tire."
"Since when do you know how to do that?"
"I know plenty of things."
"You are Woman. Hear you roar."
"Logan, this is my fourth mysterious flat tire. It's called adaptation."
He leans against my car and, I may be imagining it, looks a bit impressed. Wrong time to remember that I hadn't replaced my spare after the last flat tire I had.
"Oh no…"
"What?"
"I seem to be lacking in the extra tire department."
He smiles again and lowers his hand to me. I take it and pull myself upward.
"Come on," he leans in close. "I'll drive you home on the back streets."
