Story: Somebody Else's Page
Chapter: Nothing Ever Went Quite Exactly How We Planned
Description: Rory/Logan. Slightly AU. What if Logan managed to take a little less time off during his college career and made it through without overlapping Rory's years at Yale? She's about to start her first internship at the Stamford Gazette, just as it's being taken over by the Huntzbergers.
Disclaimer: I write fan fiction. I own none of these characters. None of this happened on the show, which is the whole point of fan fiction. You get the idea.
Rory stepped off the elevator and gave a little wave to the receptionist, who returned the gesture as she kept performing her endless duties flawlessly. Just upon entering the offices, she could tell people were moving at a faster clip and far more engaged in in-house duties than she'd witnessed in her limited exposure to the paper. If anyone was holed up in their private offices, they were doing so for work purposes and not just to avoid learning new ways in which their budgets were about to be slashed, including the loss of those they depended upon. Duties were being shared, no longer limited to specific individuals who would work tirelessly and thanklessly in their diligence week after week. Most of the tasks had been repackaged for the time being in order of importance and open to anyone with the proper experience, or in some cases, a willingness to learn.
She'd sat in on the meeting, as had everyone in the building per the boss' request, in which the new system was laid out. It was met, as expected, with hesitation and uncertainty, but Rory hadn't seen Harry reach for antacids once and as far as she knew he hadn't shopped his resume either. It wasn't the cornerstone of efficiency, but it was a far cry from the workplace it was only a month prior.
"Are you sure you want it done this way?" Harry asked, holding a proof in his hands.
Logan nodded, amused but confident in the face of direct questioning. "I am."
"Because it requires the deadline being moved up."
"By an hour," Logan said dismissively, with an easy shake of his head.
Rory watched as Logan did his best to win Harry over by acting as if it were only easy changes he was asking for. He'd won a lot of battles, one at a time, that way. Rory had been watching, under the guise of learning, but she had to admit it was something to see these older task masters bowing piece by piece to a new way of thinking.
"Gene's gonna plotz," Harry said finally.
"Gene is going to enjoy the efficiency this brings," Logan corrected. "I know change can be shocking at first, but it's an inevitability for all of us. Gene can adapt. At least, if he can't, then it gets into Darwinism and frankly, that's outside my scope."
Harry shrugged. "You're the boss. Hey, Gilmore, there's a stack of stuff that needs fact checking. Huntzberger says you can do it," he said, looking once more back to their leader, with a wary trust.
"Huntzberger is correct," Rory said eagerly as she slung her bag on the floor inside her cubicle and pulled out her chair. "What else you got for me, Boss?"
"That will take you all afternoon," Harry said, his tone dampening her eagerness.
"I believe she was talking to me," Logan corrected with a wink at Rory. "Once you're done, come see me. I'm sure I'll have something else for you to do."
Rory beamed. "Great."
"I feel like I've lost something," Harry said wistfully.
"You've still got your job," Logan said with a slap on his back.
"I gotta go talk to Gene," Harry said in a droll tone as he turned and walked away from them.
Rory shot Logan an impish smile as she logged onto her computer. "Harry seems torn."
"Harry's coming around. He just keeps his feelings inside," Logan said, putting a sunnier spin on the outlook.
"Harry probably just has enough antacid build-up inside him to get him through his chat with Gene," Rory mused.
"I'm a big proponent of whatever works," Logan said, tapping on her cubby with two fingers. "How long you think you'll be with those?"
Rory considered the stack. "Couple of hours. Why?"
"The accounting department got hit by the flu last week, and the germs migrated over to production. We have a layout deadline and two diehards that are doing more sneezing and zinc ingesting than actual boarding."
Her eyes widened. "You'd let me work on layout?"
He raised an appraising eyebrow. "Have you ever done it?"
She nodded. "Yeah, all the time at school, but this is a real paper."
"I hate to break it to you, but the Yale Daily News is a real paper. There are deadlines and jockeying for column size and ad space and the whole nightmare. The fact that people pay for our subscription is not a dividing issue in that regard. And I'm going to let you assist, not run the whole show."
Her eyes lit up as her joy filled her. "I'm yours. And I can stay late, if you need. My first class got cancelled in the morning. I think my professor is taking a personal day to finish reading our last assigned papers, but he claims he has a root canal."
Logan smirked. "I might take you up on that, depending on how things go between Harry and Gene."
Rory giggled at his remark and opened her first document to begin her work. "Poor Harry."
Logan made a tsking noise with his tongue. "Come find me when you're done. I'll get you a SARS mask and get you started."
"Sounds good, Boss," she said dutifully as he headed off toward his next stop in the office as she set to work. She got into a groove quickly, starting to make her completed stack larger than her to-be-completed stack in no time. Harry came wandering back when she still had a few to finish and leaned over her partition as if it were some form of life support.
"I hate these new kids."
She paused, frowning at the potential for him to be talking about her. "I'm sorry?"
"Not you. You're not annoying. You even smell nice, too," he said.
"Um, thanks?" she queried, not having expected either complement.
"I've been here through a few changes of hands, and the younger the guys are, the more they change. Like the newspaper business hasn't been surviving for decades without them."
"Things seem to be picking up around here," she offered.
Harry sighed. "It's all a distraction. He's going to pull the rug out from under everybody, make them hope that doing things backwards and upside down will help, but at the end of the day circulation is what it is. He can't revolutionize the whole damn industry."
"He can try," Rory supposed, trying to understand Harry's jaded opinion coming from many past experiences.
"Yeah, well, he'll still be faulted, even for trying. The more he takes on, the bigger a mess it'll all be. Gene blew a gasket when I changed his deadline. He's got a team of his own, that he has to convince to break all their habits that have been in place for more than a decade. I mean, hell, what's next? He's gonna have us trying to print the paper on biodegradable toilet paper and non-toxic food dye?"
"I think he'll settle for increased productivity and stop just shy of the toilet paper thing," Rory guessed. "Do you want the ones I have done already or would you rather wait until I'm all finished."
"I can take what you got," Harry said, standing up from his perch. She handed him the larger stack, and he was taken aback. "You're done with all these?"
Rory smiled sheepishly. "I read fast."
"Jeez, Gilmore. Pretty soon you'll have Huntzberger's job," he muttered as he started to head off with her finished product.
"I make no promises about toilet paper," she called out to him in jest.
She went back to her task, feeling accomplished in the moment and excited for her next project. It felt like her dream of working for a real newspaper was finally coming true. It was so much more exciting than any of her school papers, as honored as she was to work on them, and even though she still wasn't in a paid position she felt like she was getting real experience. She was finally getting a chance to show people her skills and wow them with her competency. The pieces were falling right into place for what she'd expected of her future.
-X-
"Your father called again."
"You already told me that," Logan said to his secretary, whom he was sharing with the city editor. The previous woman assigned to the last editor-in-chief retired when the paper changed hands, and in an effort to make due with less staff, Logan had usurped an existing employee. He didn't need his own secretary for much anyhow, other than apparently to field his father's calls and make sure he got in touch with key advertisers. He wished they were ringing his phone off the hook, but in reality he was far more often the one trying to get more of them on the line.
"Yes, and he's called three more times since then."
"Then maybe the old man needs a new hobby," he said, staring at a deal that he was pitching via teleconference to a new set of online advertisers. He'd had a meeting with several teams to handle a complete revamp of their online space, but he'd yet to make a final decision until financing was in place.
"He could take up golf,' she suggested.
Logan looked up. "He already plays golf. And polo. He really likes poker, but my mother hates the smell of cigar smoke when his group plays at the house, so he doesn't play as much as he likes."
"And still he has time to call his son twenty times a day."
"If only it were out of love and concern for my well-being. Thanks, Linda, I promise he will assume I'm the problem and not you."
She shook her head and went back to her desk, leaving him alone in his office. It was a minimalist space, or it was before he'd started to fill it with charts and graphs and projections, most of which were leaning up against the walls. There were stacks of reports from all departments. None of it was personal, but it was less echo-inducing than on his first day, when every movement seemed to reverberate off the walls until he thought his head would crack from the pain.
There was a knock at his doorframe, and he expected to see Linda standing there with that look on her face—the one that was tired of not nagging him to just call his father back already. Instead he saw the bright, energetic smile of Rory Gilmore waiting to see him.
"I'm here for my mask," she joked genially.
"Come on in," he said, waving her in. She took a hesitant step in, eying the space while forming her opinion.
"Do you like charts?" he asked with a laugh as she started to leaf through the ones stacked up against his desk.
"I love all graphic representations of information."
He frowned. "You're serious."
She shrugged. "It's all so organized and visual. What's not to love?"
"It's depressing. Look at the trending direction. That's a cost analysis-to-asset ratio. It's supposed to go the other way," he said, pointing to the poster-sized piece she was surveying.
"But it's clear. It tells you everything you need to know with one glance," she supplied.
"Yes. Unfortunately, it does," he agreed sadly.
She turned her big blue eyes on him. "Things are still going badly?"
He shrugged off the melancholy. "It's too early to tell. So far I've confused enough people to keep them distracted from hating me. If I save their jobs, then they'll like me. If not, they'll go back to hating me, but at least then I'll deserve their ire."
"At least you get a reprieve," she offered.
"It does help to know that not everyone hates me," he said with a small smile.
"I'm not sure you can count people who aren't depending on you for their livelihood. You don't pay me."
"Still, having someone around who smiles and enjoys being here in and of itself is refreshing. I should pay you for your attitude alone," he assured her.
"You can hire me the second I graduate. I should probably have a degree to fall back on, in case my attitude changes," she said lightly.
"I'll have contracts drawn up by the end of the week," he said, his sincerity clouding his attempt at playful repartee. "Have you been down to Layout yet?"
She shook her head. "Harry sort of pointed in the general direction on my way to Human Resources on my first day."
"Harry might need a few pointers on how to properly welcome new staff."
She shrugged. "He told me I smelled nice."
Logan had no words for that. She did smell nice. He could tell her that, but then he'd be admitting that he noticed, and he was fairly certain that while she would laugh off Harry's mentioning the fact, he doubted he could play off his own personal observations of her. Normally it would be no secret that he found her physically attractive, but after her blunt proclamation that she had no interest in him beyond a working relationship, he worried about giving her cause to doubt his intentions.
"Harry's a man who knows what he likes," he said awkwardly, wondering where his usual way with words had gone.
"So, Layout?" she asked, forgiving him his moment of awkwardness.
He stood up and shut the folder he was working on. "This way."
She kept pace beside him, even in what looked to be dangerously high heels, a feat that never ceased to amaze him. Most girls teetered around on the things in a harrowing manner, but she had seemed to master the skill like every other task she set her mind to conquering. The fact that they elongated her already long legs was a detriment to his professional decorum. "So, you have a boyfriend?"
He shouldn't have asked it. It took her by surprise, his interest in her personal life. Her steps faltered, but she was graceful enough to catch her balance and continue on the arduous shoes. "What?"
The line of thought had been clear in his mind—he'd been thinking about her legs and the way she'd shut him down preemptively before—but relaying his inner chatter seemed a very bad idea. Usually quick on his feet, he found himself at a loss to explain it to her satisfaction. "Just making conversation."
"Oh. Well, in that case, no. No boyfriend."
"That's a shame."
He winced at his choice of comeback. He was better than this. Pretty girls didn't cause him that level of social anxiety. Pretty girls were his favorite thing in the whole world, his favorite pastime as it were. This pretty girl had no interest in whiling away the hours with him unless it was for journalistic pursuits, and both of those derivations from his preferred manner of enjoyment should have been enough to focus on business in her presence. But despite all his inclinations and years spent building up a general loathing for hard work in the path his father had chosen for him, he found she was far more enchanting than any other pretty girl he'd ever encountered.
"Not really. I mean, some people need relationships to be happy, I guess, but I've never really put dating at the top of my list."
He turned his head sharply to discern whether or not she was joking. "Oh, really?"
"I mean, I've had boyfriends. I just got out of a relationship, in fact. But it's hard, isn't it, when you're in school and working? It would probably be easier if I just dated casually, not getting tied down in long-term relationships," she mused aloud, as if it were just occurring to her for the first time.
"It would take any work out of the equation," he said as they rounded the corner.
"Exactly. My roommate keeps trying to get me to try speed dating. She's all about efficiency."
He frowned. "Speed dating? What's that, dinner at a drive-through and heading back to the guy's place after the movie previews?"
She smiled at his gap in knowledge. "No. It's where twelve guys stand in a room where twelve girls are seated, and you get five minutes to talk to each person of the opposite sex."
He couldn't quite believe this was an activity that anyone that looked like she did would take part in. "People do this?"
She nodded, stifling a giggle. "Yes."
"On purpose?"
She shook her head at him. It was elating, for her to be amused by him for any reason. "Yes. It's very common among working professionals."
"But you're in college. You must meet interesting guys all the time. You could go out any night of the week and no fewer than ten guys would hit on you. Am I right?"
"That has never happened to me," she admitted.
He found this equally hard to believe. "Where do you hang out?"
She rolled her eyes at him. "Recently? Here," she said.
"And Harry's already taking a shine to you," he mused.
She laughed out loud. "What about you?"
"I don't think Harry has any special feelings for me," he teased.
"I meant are you dating someone?" she said, composing herself.
He shook his head. He didn't date someone. He dated anyone. Whomever he chose, whenever the mood struck him. "No. I don't do that."
"You don't date?" she clarified skeptically.
He smiled knowingly. "I date. I just date casually, as I believe you described it."
"And? Is it easier than having a long-term relationship?" she asked, waiting for her theory to be proven.
"I wouldn't know. I've never had one."
She looked at him in astonishment. "You must have."
He shook his head. "Why?"
She gestured to him. "Why wouldn't you?"
He considered the question. It wasn't a fact about himself he'd ever put to reflection before. "I have a short attention span."
She nodded, seemingly accepting his answer. "Okay then. So, this is it?" she said, as they entered their destination.
"This is it. Jump in; let me know where the problem spots are. I'll be here unless I have to take calls from potential new revenue sources."
She asked no further questions, she just sat down at a workstation and dove in. He felt good in the choices he was making, the chances he was taking. His confidence was assuring to those he was asking for change, and he'd depended almost exclusively on that working in his favor. There were no other examples for him to draw from, and the numbers were not in his favor. His father had engrained in him to trust his gut, even though his father called to question every last decision his son had ever made. It was one key reason that he'd kept his decisions of late under wraps from his father's watchful eyes. So he'd keep involving interns and assuring Harry and hoping that they could pull along the rest of the old timers as they tried to bridge the gap to the future. It was their only hope—and hope was a blindingly new concept for him.
-X-
"Go home."
"I'm almost done," she said willfully, her fingers still clicking on the keyboard faster than her mind was truly processing.
"It can wait."
"But I won't be here tomorrow. I'll be sleeping in and if this doesn't get done then someone else will have to finish it along with a bunch of other stuff they don't have time to do. The worst that happens to me is I miss breakfast, and I really never have time for that anyway."
Logan crossed his arms and stood his ground. "Log out."
She pouted, more for effect than anything else. "Five more minutes."
He shook his head. "I'm leaving. We're the last ones here. And I'm not leaving you to walk alone to your car."
"But," she began, but he pulled her rolling chair with her along with it from the desk.
"Back away from the computer. You're going to need bifocals when you're twenty-five."
"My vision is perfect," she assured him.
He smiled at her insistence, in a way that made her warm. She brushed off the momentary connection she felt. "You're the boss, don't you want everything done?"
He tapped the mouse to set the computer to shut down. "It's never done. The news never stops and all we can hope for is to meet deadlines. Ours has passed, the paper will come out tomorrow, and all this will wait for tomorrow. I'll do it instead of taking my father's phone calls."
She looked up at him from her still seated position on the chair. "Your father?"
"My one and only, unfortunately."
"Is he coming here?"
He snorted. "That would indicate I was some sort of priority in his life. We'll talk soon so he can tell me the dozen or more ways I've been slacking in my work life, and possibly throw in a barb about how I'm not getting any younger and that male heirs don't produce themselves."
Rory bit back a smile. "You could try speed dating."
He made no attempt to hold in his smile. "I still don't think that's a real thing."
She cocked her head at him. "Okay, then. You could tell him that you don't need to be in a hurry because men can produce viable sperm until they die."
"I'm not sure that will be much of a comfort to my father, but I'll pass on the trivia nonetheless," he said genially, and she could tell that he found her amusing. She felt slightly foolish, like a naive college kid. She didn't want him to view her that way. When he offered to let her take on a much more active role, she thought that maybe, just maybe he viewed her as sophisticated and capable.
"Glad I could help," she offered lamely.
"If you really wanted to help, you'd be my date to the dinner I have to attend next weekend," he said offhandedly, the likes of which startled them both. "I just mean that it's going to be mind-numbing and dull and it would be great to have someone to actually talk to for once at one of those things. I didn't mean to sound like I was asking you to come with me," he said, explaining his prior comment.
"A bunch of your father's friends?" she guessed, not delving into the specifics of his lexicon.
"My father doesn't have friends. He has acquaintances and associates that kiss his ass in exchange for his not trashing them at the next party," he said distastefully.
"Good times," Rory said dryly.
"You have no idea," he assured her. "I wouldn't put anyone I like through that kind of an evening."
She wasn't quite sure what to say to that, seeing as he'd sort of just implied he would bring her along before almost violently backing out of the idea. Suddenly her body adjusted to the late hour and she became keenly aware that they were the last two people in the office.
"I should get going. I don't want to miss the last bus back to campus."
He stared in bewilderment. "The bus?"
She nodded. "Yeah. There's a direct line."
"At this hour? You can't take a bus at this hour."
"I don't plan on walking, so yeah, I can," she argued back, unsure as to why he was so against her mode of transportation.
"Don't you have a car?" he posed.
She nodded. "I do, but the oil light came on yesterday so I took it to the dealer."
If he didn't enjoy the idea of the bus, the fact that she'd mentioned the car dealer was enough to blow the top of his head off. "Why would you take your car to the dealer?"
"The oil light came on," she said more slowly, as if he'd not quite heard her the first time.
"The dealer is such a rip off. Didn't your dad ever tell you that?"
She crossed her arms protectively over her chest. Her defenses kicked in. "No."
He realized that he'd committed some kind of social faux-pas and instantly began attempting to ease the damage he'd done. "Let me take you back to your dorm."
"I take the bus all the time. Just because you're uncomfortable with the idea doesn't mean that it's not a perfectly economical and reliable form of transportation."
"I'm not suggesting that the bus is beneath me," he began, defending himself from her scathing tone.
"Really?" she asked knowingly, wishing he'd just admit his feelings of superiority. After all, she wasn't blind. She'd seen his type at school—the rich frat boys that bounced from prep school to prep school and got by on their money and charm. Heck, her father was that type, minus the college education.
"I was concerned for your safety. It's late, and even if you do catch the last bus, then it might not be the safest environment for a woman to take alone."
"I can take care of myself," she said, willing her words to have enough bravado behind them. "I have a whistle and mace."
"I'm sure you could put any man in copious amounts of pain, should they attempt to harm you," he conceded.
"Good, then. I should go."
He stood up, blocking her path while shaking his head. "Sorry. I can't let you take the bus."
"Why not?" she cried out.
"I'd feel much better knowing you got home safely."
"You want me to let you take me home for your own peace of mind?" she inquired, her eyebrows furrowing in consternation.
"I think so, yes."
She let out a groan. "I'm exhausted. Talking to you is exhausting," she complained.
He smiled. "So you'll let me take you?"
She tossed up a hand and let it fall back to her side lazily. "Fine. It's late. I don't want to argue, despite the deep-rooted feministic sensibilities that are being trodden all over at my dropping the fight," she uttered.
"If it makes you feel any better, I don't think of you as any less of a woman for letting a man come to your aid."
She glared at him haplessly. "Tons better. Thanks."
She slipped her bag, with the whistle and the mace still rolling around under the weights she'd dropped in on top of them, and followed his lead out of the office.
-X-
"Turn here," she began, her tired from pointing from his passenger side.
He smirked in the darkness. "I know. I've been here before, remember?"
She gave a heavy, single nod. "Right. Fruit."
He glanced her way as she gave an unapologetic yawn. He'd never been with a girl who acted so comfortably around him—not being on simply to keep his interest. Indeed it was quite late, and after the long hours of work they'd each put in that day, he couldn't blame her for being more excited to hit her pillow than to chat with him for one more second. It was an interesting contrast to any other ride home he'd experienced with a member of the opposite sex. "Can I ask you something?"
Her head lolled his direction, the back of it pressed into the leather of his headrest. "Sure."
"Why do you want to be a journalist?"
Her tired blue eyes lifted for a moment as she considered her answer. And he should have known she'd choose her words carefully, in answer to her first real-world boss asking such a question. He wanted the answer from the girl he'd argued with just before they left the office. Part of him was hoping that in her tired state, her defenses would be down and she'd be the real version of herself that didn't have to impress her boss.
"I want to experience as many different realities as I can. As long as I can remember, I've written down my thoughts, in journals or stories. It seemed like the perfect combination of who I am and what I want to see."
Her answer was substantial, and probably the exact answer she would have given some guy at a bar who'd asked the same question. That, he was starting to realize, was her draw. She wasn't putting her best foot forward to impress him—she was doing it because she loved what she was doing. He just happened to be the guy she was doing it with.
"I wish I felt like that," he said, jealous of her inspiration.
She stared at him quizzically. "Doyle says you're a great writer."
"He did not," he said, trying to catch her in a lie, even if it was a lie to make him feel good about himself.
She shook her head. "Swear to God."
"Did you ask Doyle about me?" he asked as the connection occurred to him.
She turned her head back to face forward and shrugged one shoulder. "Just in passing. We were passing the time before Paris got back from her lab. He said you could write better than anyone else on the paper that he'd seen, but trying to get you to put pen to paper was like trying to get a kitten on meth to sit still."
He couldn't help but laugh at Doyle's assessment of him. "I do love to procrastinate."
"He seemed to think you had more difficulty stopping the party to work," she said gently.
"That too. College was a good time, I'm not going to lie."
"You seem to have buttoned everything down and turned over a new leaf. Look at what you've done so far at the paper," she complimented him.
"I have no idea what the hell I'm doing," he said, baring his soul to her.
She smiled at his honesty. "Don't worry. I won't tell anyone. You act like you've got everything completely under control."
"My plan is to keep that up until I actually do."
"Like a self-actualizing mantra?" she asked with disproportionate skepticism.
"I'm not promising it'll actually work," he admitted.
"I'm glad to get to be working with such industry giants," she teased.
The joke had a sobering effect on him, and he turned to look at her in the dark of the car. "Would you like a meeting with my dad?"
His question roused her from her weary state. "Like an informational interview?"
He shrugged. "Sure. Just a sit down, make a contact, pick his brain. Just because it's the last thing I'd ever want to have to do—to sit down with my father over a cup of coffee and ask him to talk about his life—doesn't mean you shouldn't want that."
She blinked, realizing just how wide her eyes had gotten. "That would be… great."
"Then I'll set it up," he said definitively.
Proper words of gratitude failed her at the more than generous offer. It was his mode of operation, it seemed, in regard to her that day—giving her precious experience she might not otherwise have gotten at the paper, giving her a lift home, and now setting up a meeting with his father, who was the one guy every aspiring reporter hoped to get to shake hands with, let alone have a whole conversation. "Thank you."
"It's not a problem," he assured her, trying to shut down her appreciation.
"It's a great opportunity. And I wouldn't have it if not for you," she said, doing her best to make him accept her gratitude.
He pulled the car into the nearest parking lot to her dorm. "Trust me, I'm not doing you any favors."
"But you are," she argued.
"If you want to thank me for something, thank me for the ride. That's the only thing I've done for your benefit."
"You didn't give me much of a choice in the matter," she said, gaping at his logic.
"You would have rather spent an hour on a bus alone at night, assuming you didn't miss your connection and spend the night stranded at a bus stop, than have me deliver you to your door in the comfort of a climate-controlled vehicle?"
"Do you always assume that every woman would rather be with you than any other option they might have?" she asked, turning it back on him.
"Excuse me?" he asked, offended despite any underlying belief in the truth of her assumption.
"I mean, I get that you're charming and rich and you have a really fancy car, but there is nothing wrong with the bus. I'm a college student who takes her car to the dealer when dash lights come on, and I want to meet one of my journalistic idols, and there's nothing wrong with any of that," she defended in a huff of emotion.
There was silence in the car, a heavy sense of understanding hanging between them. He wet his bottom lip and put his hands in his lap. "I'm sorry."
She shook her head stoically. "You don't have to be sorry. I shouldn't have gotten so worked up."
"No, if I offended you somehow, that was not my intent," he said, giving support to her issue.
"I really am grateful, for the ride and the offer," she gushed a little, overcompensating for her harsher tone earlier.
He smiled. "I know."
"And if there's something I can do for you," she offered in an open-ended fashion, as she was almost certain there was nothing she had access to that he would need from her.
"I appreciate that," he said with a wave of his hand. "Do you want me to walk you in? Looks like there's a street light out," he said, taking notice of what was the current bane of her roommate's existence.
"I'm fine, really. My door's a few hundred feet away. You know," she said at last, realizing he'd taken the route before. "Unless you want something to drink. We should have soda and water, unless Doyle's drained our reserves again," she said, thinking aloud. She wished she could stop doing that in front of him of all people. It was one thing to do in front of her mother or any of her close friends, but the ability to hold back any kind of verbal overflow from her constant mental chatter was something she wished was easier to handle. She couldn't believe how much it threw her, having her boss feel more like a peer than anything else.
"Maybe another time," he said, allowing her to make her departure from their evening of arguing and repeated apologies.
"Right. Thanks again."
He smiled at her, his warm brown eyes creasing similarly to the corners of his mouth. He was charming and easy to talk to—or, at times, argue with. It translated easily into him being downright engaging, or at any rate impossible to ignore. She's pushed off these separate facts, attributing them to his being her boss—her possibly alcoholic and under-qualified young boss at that. But at that moment, as she went to depart from his car before the day turned into the next, it was a source of tangled confusion.
"My pleasure," he said, finally not arguing with her or trying to convince her that she owed him nothing at all for the allowances he'd made for her. He owed her nothing, and he'd been so generous with anything she seemed in need of, even without her asking for any of it.
With a simple smile, she unlatched her door and stepped out into the cold night air, pulling her jacket closed as she hurried toward the door to her dormitory, where she'd once again be enveloped in warmth and security. She couldn't help but wonder if he truly would never want anything from her in return for his kindness.
-X-
He didn't feel like going straight home. He should have, as he knew without double checking his schedule that it was packed the next day, and the day after that, and the day after that—each of those days starting at an early hour. The list of things he still needed to secure before speaking to his father was formidable. The old man was still going to laugh at him, once he heard the finer details of his plan, but his chances of getting shut down before proof of his failure could manifest were far lesser if he went in with lists of advertisers and new revenue streams, in writing with signed contracts, to prove to his father that there were, in fact, people in the world willing to take a chance on him—even if his father wasn't among them.
It was a fight that would be grueling, and possibly unending. It caused a weariness that was only felt in the marrow of one's bones. Watching one of the most beautiful creatures he'd ever come in contact with leave his car for the frosty air and a single bed did nothing to shake him from his doldrums. She possessed tenacity and self-righteous indignation in spades, he realized as she argued with him over such matters that might never have been called into question by anyone else. Who in their right mind turns down a ride from a trusted source, when the alternative left you shivering in the cold with only a basic plastic partition to break the force of the biting wind before boarding a large vehicle full of strangers late at night? Her only argument was that she was capable of taking care of herself, really, and it hadn't occurred to him that he was attempting to take care of her.
After all, he didn't take care of anyone. His interests were limited to him most times. Not to say he wasn't liberal with his wealth. He saw nothing wrong with buying rounds for near-total strangers or showering his dates with excessive trinkets in lieu of actual feelings. He found it was easier than getting involved in more messy, complicated relationships. His relationship with his family was enough. He wanted time spent with the fairer sex to be carefree and fun. With enough alcohol, it often overrode the fact that girls content with that kind of relationship were difficult to listen to or, for that matter, converse with.
Nevertheless, he wasn't about to give up on a system that had worked for him for years. One girl with sharp wit and a sense of middle-class superiority wasn't about to get the better of him. If she'd rather sit down for a chat with his old man instead of heading to a bar for happy hour with him, that was her loss. He would go to the bar anyhow, just to prove to himself that she had no effect on him. It'd been too long since he'd been to his old college haunts, to enjoy the spirits that had sustained him during his tenure on that campus.
He got out of his car and decided to walk across campus to get into the spirit of the outing despite the cold, secure in the knowledge that it was one situation where he was completely confident. Let the idealistic intern have her feministic ideals and her organized office space. The night was still young, and his problems would be there whenever he got around to dealing with them.