Thanks for your reviews!
OoOoOo
The apartment was quiet when Logan stepped into it. His words to Rory rang in his ears as he now realized that he'd probably smashed not only her heart but Brian's as well. He hadn't meant to, this hadn't been part of the plan.
On his way up the stairs, however, he met Brian coming down, and Brian pushed by Logan without so much as a glance.
"Hey," Logan said, "What's going on?"
Wordlessly Brian walked over to the little table and picked up the park model. It was then that Logan realized the one on the entertainment center was no longer there.
"What are you doing?"
As though Logan was totally invisible, Brian climbed the stairs with the model in his hands.
"I'm sorry," Logan finally said. "Can't we talk about this?"
"About what?" Brian asked turning on him. "About the fact that you've been cheating with my girlfriend behind my back?"
Logan opened his mouth to reply, but Brian cut him off. "Or maybe about the fact that you used her to break up me and Mandy? What was that all about? Huh? What did I ever do to you?"
"Listen…"
"Save it." Brian's face went rigid. "I thought you were my friend."
"I am," Logan pleaded, but Brian wasn't listening, he was already walking up the stairs.
Logan exhaled in resignation. The only good thing he could see in the whole disaster was that Brian hadn't already moved out. However, Logan knew it would never be like it was before. One step at a time he climbed to the top, walking into his room, and fell onto his bed.
His whole body felt like it had just been squeezed in a giant vice grip. He closed his eyes, but her rock hard face jumped into his consciousness, and to escape from it, he opened his eyes and rolled over. The ceiling seemed to press down onto his chest, choking the air out of him. "What've I done?"
OoOoOo
With shaking hands, Rory unpacked her little suitcase. This was supposed to be the best weekend of her life. Why did Logan have to go and ruin it now? Why? Six weeks ago, three months ago, four years ago. She would've been able to handle it then, but now? Now, it was just heartless and cruel.
She picked up the white satin gown she had bought especially for this weekend, ran a sad hand over it, and sat down on the bed heavily. All her dreams. All her hopes. Smashed.
Defiantly she stood, dropped the gown into a drawer, and slammed it shut. How was it that no matter what, she was doomed to be the one in pain? The one scrambling to hold on to everyone else.
Trying not to, she saw her and Chris at the Independence Inn the day of Sookie's wedding.
"What exactly are your intentions?" Rory had asked him after talking to her mom, wishing that conversation wasn't locked in her head forever.
"Excuse me?" Chris asked confused.
"Your intentions – are they honorable?"
"Completely honorable."
"Yeah? Because we have been waiting for this for a really long time and we take disappointment extremely hard. I mean it, property damages is often involved," Rory said in one long breath. She was so happy they would finally be a family.
"Well, I better follow through on this, huh?" Chris responded cheekily.
"I think it's an excellent idea."
With a swipe at her face, she brushed the memory and the ache in her stomach away, but it and the memory weren't going anywhere. As she picked up the empty suitcase to throw it into her closet, a picture of Lorelai sitting forlornly on her bed slid through Rory's mind, and her chest wrapped around it.
"What's wrong?" Rory asked, even now shaken by the distress in her mother's eyes.
"Nothing," Lorelai said, shaking her head.
"Yeah, nothing." Rory sat down on her bed. "What's wrong?"
"Chris and I broke up."
"Broke up? Why?" Rory asked, slightly distressed.
Lorelai's gaze traveled out the window as Rory struggled to make sense of it.
"Sherry's pregnant."
It had been the beginning of the end.
In the present, Rory stood from the bed. She didn't want to be here. She didn't want to remember. She wanted to leave, to get away from everything and everyone. With no other thought she walked right through her apartment grabbed her purse and left.
OoOoOo
The silence was growing until everything solid seemed to be swallowed by it. Finally, Logan could take it no longer. He walked down the hall and knocked on Brian's door. No answer.
"Brian, I think we need to talk."
"Go away."
"I just want to talk."
"You've said enough already."
Logan turned the knob and pushed the door open. "I don't think I've said nearly enough." He walked into the darkened room, lit only by the eerie glow of the computer screen. Knowing he was pushing his luck but seeing no other way to make things right, he sat down on the bed. "Okay, I'll talk, you listen, and if you still hate me, well, then there's not much I can do about it."
Brian continued to move trees and bushes around the screen with his mouse wordlessly.
"First of all, I didn't do any of this to hurt you," Logan said slowly. "The whole thing with Mandy was a mistake. I should've been honest with you, but I didn't think you would listen."
Logan took a deep breath. Brian was going to listen anyhow.
"Mandy was my old roommate," Logan said softly.
The mouse slowed.
"We were engaged."
The mouse stopped completely. "Engaged? You were engaged to Mandy?"
"I thought I was in love with her. We lived together for almost six months, but mostly she was the one doing the living, and I was the one taking care of everything else. I don't think she was ever as committed to us as I was. I gave, she took. That was about the extent of it – until she walked out. I thought my world had ended, and I acted like it. I'd go and whine to Rory everyday about how I couldn't go on and how I'd given up on the whole idea of dating."
"Rory?"
"Yeah, we'd been friends for a long time – even before Mandy, but that's all I thought she was… someone to go and talk to. Someone who would listen and make things better. I never really saw her as any more than that."
Logan shook his head at the idea that he could have been so utterly and completely blind. "When I found out you were going out with Mandy, Rory tried to keep me company and keep my focus off the two of you. She came over here when you two were gone, and I went over there when you two were here."
"Chinese food girl," Brian said slowly.
Logan nodded. "Only it wasn't like you thought – we really were just friends. She was helping me out – until…" The breath escaped Logan's lungs as the kitchen scene with Mandy flooded his mind. "The night you brought Mandy over… I was trying not to get in the way of you two, but she started coming on to me…"
Brian snorted contemptuously. "Yeah, right."
"I'm serious. She was telling me that we could get together and how convenient it would be. I knew you wouldn't believe me, so Rory and I came up with a plan, but it wasn't supposed to go this far."
"I wasn't supposed to fall in love with her," Brian clarified.
Slowly Logan nodded. "And she wasn't supposed to fall for you, but at the time I really didn't think long term. I just knew I had to break you and Mandy up."
"So you used Rory."
That hurt, but it was the truth. "Yeah, but then the more I was around her, I kept feeling like she wasn't really with me anymore. I guess that's when I realized I was in love with her."
"Well, you sure picked a fine time to figure this out."
"I didn't pick it. I was going to keep my mouth shut because I didn't think she felt the same way, and I didn't want to mess anything up between the two of you."
Brian snorted again. "That worked."
"But then at work today, I found this card that she'd written at Christmas – right before the plan I guess. Anyway, it pretty much said that she was interested in me, and I guess I realized if I didn't do something, I was going to lose her…"
"To me."
Again Logan nodded. "I never meant for any of this to happen."
Brian sat in silence considering. Without a word, Logan sat. He had said what he had come to say, the next step was up to Brian.
"So, what now?" Brian finally asked.
"I don't know," Logan said, rubbing his hands together, and hating the fact that he had to say the next words. "I think that's up to you and Rory."
OoOoOoO
Rory had sat in the swings at Bushnell Park until almost midnight Friday night, remembering how Brian's arms felt around her and how special she felt under his gaze. If only things had been different. If only she had been honest with him from the start. If only her heart hadn't fallen so far or so hard, she could've withstood the blow of losing him now.
It was only when the chill seeped its way past her coat and into her core that she had gotten up and gone home. How would she ever face either of them again? By now she should have learned to deal with the humiliation but it never got any easier. Every heartbreak, every disgrace, every time she was shoved down, it cut right through her.
Under her covers Saturday morning, she lay shivering despite their warmth. "Happy birthday to me."
OoOoOO
"I think you should call her," Logan said Sunday morning as he and Brian sat at the table over cold Cheerios.
"How can you sit there and say that?"
Logan shrugged. "What choice do I have? The two of you are together. Whatever you decide, I'll have to find a way to deal with it."
Her phone rang at one-thirty in the afternoon, and Rory stretched from the bed to answer it. "Hello?"
"Hi," Brian aid.
She sat up straight and sniffed. "Hi."
The line between them went silent as she fought to find the words to say to him.
"I think we need to talk," he finally said.
"Yeah, I think so too."
OoOoO
They walked through the Azalea Garden, the pebbles of the path crunching at their feet providing the only sound except the wind in the trees. Rory wanted to reach out and take his hand. He looked so shattered and so sad. But she kept her hands at her sides for fear of what he might do if she ventured out onto that limb.
"I talked to Logan," Brian said when they had walked so long they could no longer see the entrance to the trails.
Her gaze swung to his profile. "Oh?"
"He told me about the plan."
Unconsciously her gaze fell to the rock path, and she dug her hands deeper into her pockets as the guilt washed over her. "I'm sorry about that."
Brian glanced at her, and she felt his gaze melt through her skin.
"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked, and his voice was hollow.
Slowly she shrugged and shook her head. "I didn't know how. I never thought you'd fall for me, and then when you did I guess I didn't want to do anything to mess that up."
"Why wouldn't I fall for you?"
"I don't know. We're just so different, you know? You go out, and you take life by the throat. Me, I'd rather hang back and hope that life doesn't notice I'm there."
His gaze dropped to the ground. "You still could've told me."
"I didn't want to lose you," she said softly. "You're the best thing that's ever happened to me."
He looked at her, and the glance yanked all the sadness back to her eyes.
"And Logan?" he asked softly.
The name lodged in the middle of her chest. "Logan and I are just friends."
Brian shook his head and laughed softly. "I think you're kidding yourself about that."
"No, I'm not," she insisted, pleading with him not to throw them away over this. "He was never interested in me – not in that way anyway. We were just friends."
He kicked a rock down the path. "Yeah, well, sometimes friends make the best matches."
But she shook her head sadly. "Even if we could've made it work before, it's too late now."
"Why?"
"Because I love you."
Brian's steps slowed on the trail, and the he turned to her, took her hands in his and led her over to the little bench on the trail's edge. She sat down, gazing at him, fearful of what was coming next.
With a sad smile, he looked at her as he laid his arm across the back of the bench although it never touched her. "I don't think you're in love with me."
Her heart turned over with the words. "Yes, I am."
"No," he said dejectedly. "I think you're in love with the idea of me. You're in love with the idea of being in love, with the idea of us, but it's not real."
Frantically she turned to him. "Yes, it is. It's real."
"No," he said, breaking through her protest as he looked down. After an agonizing moment he looked back up at her and smiled softly. "I haven't been totally honest with you either. I've known for awhile that our differences were keeping us apart, but I tried to tell myself that it was the whole sleeping together thing."
"But I…"
"But that was just an excuse," he continued without stopping to hear her protest. "It was an excuse so I didn't have to be honest with you, and with myself If we weren't working as a couple when we weren't sleeping together, sleeping together wasn't going to change that."
"I'm sorry," she said, pleadingly. "I should never have…"
"No, sleeping together would've been a mistake. I see that now. You taught me that." He shrugged as his thumb traced its way across the edge of her shoulder. "Maybe that's why we got together in the first place. Because I needed to learn that."
"But if we would've…"
"We would've been that much more miserable now."
Her gaze locked on his. "But we were so good together."
Slowly he smiled. "Yeah, well, sometimes good is standing in the way of great."
She looked at hands as the pain washed over her. "Logan."
"He told me today that whatever we decided he would go along with it. He wants you to be happy – no mater what that means for him."
Defiantly Rory shook her head. "Logan only wants what's best for him."
"No," Brian said softly. "He loves you Rory. He as ever since I met him."
Her eyebrows knitted in confusion.
"I just didn't realize you and his girlfriend were the same person until yesterday." Brian sniffed quietly and ran his other thumb down the side of his nose. "Give him a chance. Okay? A friend deserves that much."
The tears came to her eyes then as she leaned into Brian. "I'm so sorry about everything." He pulled her to him and held her as she cried.
"I know."
OoOoOoO
When he heard the door close down stairs, Logan never moved from his bed. One, small piece of him said he should go down and find out what happened, but the bigger piece sitting on his chest like a gorilla said that would be akin to suicide.
On top of losing the love of his life, his rash admission had cost him the two best friends he'd had. All that remained was confirmation of that fact.
Ever-so-quietly he heard the knock in his door, but he set his jaw, praying that Brian would just go away.
"Logan?" Slowly the door swung open. "Hey, you here?"
"Yeah," he said quietly, wishing that he wasn't.
Brian pushed into the room. "You got a minute?"
Logan shrugged as though he really didn't have a choice.
Smoothly Brian grabbed the chair and straddled it. "I thought you should know Rory and I broke up."
Even though it was that he had been hoping for all day, the air in Logan's lungs escaped with the news. "I hate to hear that."
"Yeah," Brian said softly. "So do I. But I wanted to tell you that it wasn't because of you."
Logan's gaze snapped up to Brian's battle scarred face.
"Not totally anyway," Brian said, summoning a smile to his face. "We were just too different. We both knew it, but we were afraid to say it out loud We were afraid to hurt each other."
"So, it's over then?"
"Yeah."
"Are you okay?" Logan asked, feeling more like a friend instead of the instigator of the mess.
"No." Brian sniffed once. "But I will be."
I borrowed some lines from the season 2 finale, 'I Can't Get Started.' Now that everything's out in the open, it just depends on what Rory and Logan decide. Please review!