Veronica's Hangover
Chapter 5: Signing on the dotted line
A/N Thanks so much to everyone who has provided feedback.
This chapter is mostly Logan/Sophia-centric.
It doesn't have a lot of LoVe, but I wanted to tell the story of how Logan got to where he is now.
Flashback - Saturday Evening – Wedding Chapel:
Sophia paced the wedding chapel waiting for Logan and Veronica to arrive. She was not happy. She had to find a way to put a stop to this farce of a wedding. She could not allow Veronica Mars to rip out Logan's heart all over again. She had worked too hard to pull him out of the gutter last time.
As if on cue, the chapel doors burst open and the couple entered, laughing, smiling, and kissing. Sophia's heart sunk at the sight of Logan's smile. Many people would say that Logan Echolls was always smiling. Sophia tended to think of it as a perma-smirk. Logan found amusement everywhere in the world, but he rarely found happiness. The smile currently residing on his face was the first truly joyful smile Sophia had ever seen from Logan. It lit up his face, and she wanted to kick the petite blonde, knowing the destruction she would rain down on Logan's psyche in the aftermath of this wedding.
"Everything set Soph?" Logan asked.
"Yes, I ordered the Platinum plus package - photos, video, the works. I have the clothes, I have the rings, but Logan, I have very serious reservations about this wedding"
"If you didn't, you wouldn't be my Sophia." Logan said giving her a kiss on the cheek.
"Logan. I've seen you in the aftermath of Veronica." Sophia said.
Veronica reached out and touched her arm. "I have serious regrets about the way I hurt Logan."
Sophia turned to face the girl. "Veronica, I truly believe you are a nice person. I trust my instincts, and I instantly liked you when you sat down at the poker table. But you are toxic to Logan, and I don't want to see him destroyed the next time you decide to leave him."
"I don't plan to leave Logan again." Veronica answered.
"You are very drunk, Veronica. You shouldn't make promises and commitments when you're this drunk. It never works out."
"I'd never have the guts to do this if I wasn't drunk." Veronica said.
"Shouldn't that tell you something?" Sophia asked.
When Veronica didn't respond, Sophia turned to Logan. " And what about you Logan? You're not even that drunk. You know that she's going to be angry about this in the morning."
"Probably." Logan admitted.
"And you think that's ok? You're taking advantage of a drunk girl."
"I'm taking advantage of the opportunity that has presented itself." Logan admitted. "I'd rather wake up in the morning with a pissed-off wife to make it up to, than to have her walk out of my life again without doing anything to stop it."
"I feel the same way." Veronica said.
"At least have her sign a pre-nup. We can download a form right now to fill out." Sophia said.
"OK." Veronica said. "I don't want Logan's money."
"Absolutely not." Logan said.
"Logan!" Sophia insisted.
"Actually, maybe I do want an agreement, but not a pre-nup" he said. He took Veronica's hand and looked down at her.
"Veronica, remember why we decided to do this?"
"Because I love you." she smiled at him.
Logan laughed. "No, I mean the other reason. Remember? We're metaphorically being locked in a room together to work out our issues instead of running away from them."
"Oh that. Yes!" Veronica answered.
"So in that respect, will you promise me that you won't attempt to get a divorce until we've lived together as husband and wife for at least one year?"
"Yes."
"The emphasis was on the word 'together', Veronica. I'm not willing to count time spent living apart as part of the year. Is that ok with you?"
"Yes. I agree." she said.
Sophia interjected: "I'm going to get that in writing."
"Soph!" Logan said annoyed.
"It's OK, Logan," Veronica said. "I'll sign it. Maybe I will need a written reminder of the commitment I'm making, when I'm tempted to give up too easily."
Logan nodded, and Sophia waved over an employee of the wedding chapel. Explaining what she needed, the employee nodded and returned a few minutes later with a printed Word document.
"Please understand, this document is not legally binding." the chapel employee admonished. "My cousin is a lawyer. For an extra $300, I can call him and have him legalize the document."
"That won't be necessary." Logan said. "Veronica will keep her word."
"Thank you for your faith, Logan." Veronica said, reaching for the pen and signing her name with a flourish.
"Miss Mars? My name is Jane and I'll be your wedding attendant tonight. If you will follow me, I'll show you to the Bride's room." A perky brunette announced.
Veronica nodded and kissed Logan on the cheek before following.
"Logan." Sophia attempted one last time. "I am so afraid for you. Please don't go through with this. Hasn't history taught you anything?"
Logan pulled Sophia into a hug and squeezed. "I know, Sophia. You're afraid. I'm terrified. But history has taught me one thing. I will never love another like I love Veronica Mars. She's it for me. And if I don't go through with this tonight while I have the opportunity, I will regret it for the rest of my life."
Sophia nodded, beaten. "Your tux is in there, Logan." she said pointing to the Groom's room. She dropped into a nearby chair feeling a migraine coming on.
Damn Logan Echolls and his impulsive streak.
Present time: Vacant Commercial Office Campus – Neptune, CA
Sophia had discovered an ideal location for Salacia Corp. The former corporate campus for an insurance company had been vacant for a year, but showed no signs of damage. The security company was doing an excellent job keeping teenagers and vagrants out.
She had mixed feelings about showing the location to Logan. She knew that he would love it. She knew that he would immediately want to sign on the dotted line. However, once they did this, and once they hired a local workforce, there would be no turning back. When Veronica inevitably broke Logan's heart again, he wouldn't be able to pull up roots to escape this time. On the other hand, Logan was a grown man, and needed to be able to accept the consequences of his decisions.
She texted the location to Logan and waited for him to arrive.
Sophia had first found Logan five years ago on a barstool. She had been working a second job bartending several nights a week to keep up the mortgage payments after her husband's untimely death. Logan had recently transferred to UCLA, and had taken up a permanent residence on the corner stool at the bar.
She'd instantly seen through his sneer of entitlement to the broken boy within. She might have let it go at that. After all, every bar in America had broken boys lining the barstools, but there was something different about this boy. She'd thought he'd had the saddest eyes she'd ever seen on a boy so young.
She found that he shared a strong resemblance with her late husband, and the more she looked at him, the more she wondered what her own little boy might have looked like, had he lived beyond four years old. Had he not wandered through the unlocked gate in her backyard and into the neighbor's pool. She thought he would have looked a lot like Logan Echolls. There was probably some psychological mumbo-jumbo word for it - transference, maybe? But she developed a fierce instinct to protect Logan.
He came in every night, tired, unshaven, usually with a text book, which he would prop on the bar, reading and writing, while he sipped on vodka and cranberries - one after another. He didn't seem to eat much. In fact, he seemed underweight. She chatted with him here and there most nights, usually about trivialities - sports, weather, movies.
He never made any overt attempt to pick up women. He just focused on his studies while he nursed his drinks. But inevitably, most nights, some girl or another would slip onto the stool next to him. Sometimes, the more perceptive ones would slide back off the stool and look for a guy more willing to give them the attention/flattery/validation they thought they needed. Sadly, most of the girls weren't so perceptive, so night after night, Logan would allow himself to be led away by the hand. If he had been enjoying himself with the ladies, it would not have bothered her so much, but to Sophia's eyes, every time he returned, he'd looked a little more dead inside.
One night, a distraught girl tried to make a scene because Logan hadn't called her. Logan hadn't even defended himself. He'd just looked at the girl blankly. Sophia was forced to chase her away when Logan's lack of reaction had made her even more irate.
That was when Sophia felt she needed to intervene. The bar was mostly dead, so she pulled up a stool across the bar from Logan. She asked him why he kept trying to fill up his soul with meaningless sex, when it obviously wasn't working.
She'd expected a sneer or a smirk, or a sharp retort, but he'd quietly pondered the question for a moment. He then raised his eyes to hers and said "Veronica Mars."
She looked at him in confusion, and asked him to clarify.
"I'm trying to fill the Veronica-sized hole in my soul with meaningless sex, and you're right. It's not working. Running away didn't help. Booze doesn't help. Nothing helps."
Sophia had heard hundreds of love-gone-wrong stories in her days moonlighting as a bartender. She wasn't sure why she wanted or needed to hear another one, but she wanted to help this boy. She asked Logan to tell her about Veronica.
"People think that I'm this tragic figure because my first love was murdered by my father." he said. "Losing Veronica hurt more. Every time I lost her."
Over the next several months, Sophia got to know Logan. She learned about his tragic childhood. Physically abused by one parent and neglected by the other. Taught by his mother how to sit, stand, and enter a room so that all eyes would be on him. Posture and gait and grace - how to create an emotional reaction using his physical gifts.
His father taught him that public image was everything. Anything was acceptable as long as the public image wasn't tarnished. Infidelity didn't count if it wasn't captured on film. Logan was never taught to do the right thing once the cameras were off. Nobody looked at his report cards. Nobody gave him a curfew. Nobody really cared.
Sophia learned about The Fabulous Four. The magical, practically incestuous, pseudo-family he'd tried to create with Veronica and the Kane siblings. It was doomed from the outset. The volatile Lilly Kane could never provide the kind of emotional stability that Logan craved. The icy Duncan was an emotional vampire, feeding off of Logan's strength, but never giving anything in return. And Veronica, the fragile, moral center of the group, was too passive to make any kind of an impact, much like Logan's mother had been. She'd tried to hold them all together while ignoring the fact that her own family was falling apart. Four lonely kids, and not a decent mother among them.
Sophia learned about the death of Lilly, and the profound effect it had on the remaining three. Duncan had become over-medicated and almost catatonic. Logan had become a walking fireball of rage, channeling his anger at Veronica, ostensibly because of her perceived crimes against the Kane family. He'd admitted to Sophia that the real reason he'd gone after Veronica was that picking on her was the only thing that made him feel alive most of the time.
Sophia wondered if Logan had done Veronica a bit of a favor, because while Duncan had become weaker, and Logan had burned hotter, Veronica had become stronger. She was no longer the passive, fragile ingénue that Logan had wanted to protect. Instead, she became a wisecracking spitfire who defended the weak. Had dealing with Logan's rage been the impetus that had turned Veronica into the fighter that she would eventually become? Had Logan, by turning against and terrorizing the one he'd perceived as weak, virtually formed her, like soft clay, into the only girl he could ever love. The one who had ended up breaking him? How was that for a big ball of irony?
She learned that although he had spent most of his life being revered for being the son of a movie star, his good looks, his money, fame, and popularity, nobody had ever told Logan how brilliant he was. Intelligence wasn't valued in the superficial world from which he had come. He had no concept of his potential. Sophia began filling that role. She urged him to have more faith in his mental faculties and to rely less on his looks and his money and his name. Somewhere along the way, the line began blurring and Logan stopped being a customer, and started being her son.
Sophia's day job was as a personal assistant to the infamous and personable CEO, Ben Adams. He also saw the potential in Logan and agreed to mentor him on days when they both had availability in their schedules. Sophia was tireless at finding pockets of time for them to get together.
At the bar, Logan cut down to one or two drinks a night and started ordering real food off the menu. He still left with girls now and then, but had become more selective, actually talking to them and weeding out the vapid, the gold-diggers, and the star-struck. He preferred intelligent women.
He was making improvements, but Sophia was frustrated that he never seemed to date the same girl twice. When Sophia confronted Logan with that fact, she realized he still had a long ways to go.
He had answered her honestly. "I can't. I just can't get attached. It feels like I'm…somehow…cheating on her."
"Logan!" Sophia exclaimed. "She was dating another guy when you left Neptune. You were dating another girl right before then. It's not cheating for you to move on with your life, and you don't owe her anything. It's over. Good riddance."
"I'm going back for her someday." he said quietly and with conviction.
Sophia reached out for him, wrapped her hands around his neck and playfully made a strangling motion.
"What am I going to do with you Logan?" He gave her his patented smirk.
Three years ago, when she had known Logan for almost two years, Logan had disappeared into Ben Adams' office. Eight hours later, he emerged with a smirk, a business plan, and Ben's blessing to steal Sophia away as his assistant. That was the birth of Salacia Corp. Since then, everything Logan touched had turned to gold. He was a brilliant entrepreneur, validating the faith that Sophia had given him.
But now, Sophia was afraid. Would Veronica undo all the improvements Logan had made over the years? Would Sophia be able to pull him off a barstool again, or would she have to pull him off a bridge railing this time.
Logan's SUV pulled into the parking lot. He got out and looked around.
Two sprawling four-story, blue-tinted glass buildings were situated in a grassy park-like setting. A parking garage sat at the northern end. So far, he thought it was beautiful. Sophia led him inside of the main entrance.
"I know you were looking to build, but when I saw this place, I thought you would love it." Sophia said.
The lobby was open all the way to the fourth story ceiling. A wide staircase doubled back and forth along one wall and an elevator bank was straight ahead. Balconies on each floor looked down upon the lobby. Sophia led him through the sprawling maze of cubicles and offices. She explained that each story had the same floor plan, and that the second building was identical. After looking over the office that was to be his own, Logan was convinced.
"Let's sign." He said to Sophia as he walked her to her car.
"You'd better be 100% positive." Sophia said. "If things don't work out with Veronica, we can't just fire all of our employees and move away."
Logan looked at her scornfully.
"Yeah, yeah. You and Veronica are true love and rainbows forever." Sophia said. "She'll never break your heart ever again."
Logan ignored that dig. "How are the reception plans going?" Logan asked. "Everything's handled? Caterer? DJ? Cake?"
"Everything is fine. I can't believe you gave me less than a week to put this together." Sophia answered.
"Why? You always work miracles, Sophia. Did Charlie R.S.V.P.?" Logan asked.
"Yes, he'll be there." Sophia answered, kindly. Logan allowed a small smile. It was a start. His brother had finally agreed to meet with him for coffee a month earlier. The conversation had been pleasant, but tentative. Charlie hadn't been as easy to get close to as his imposter had been. He reminded Logan a lot of himself. They'd made plans to get together again, but Logan wouldn't in a million years have predicted that their next meeting would be at the celebration of his marriage to Veronica.
"Did Veronica email you any more addresses for our reception?"
"Yes, she sent a few. The invitations are already in the mail." Sophia scowled.
Satisfied, Logan moved on. "Have you found a house yet? Or a condo? Remember, I'm buying." he asked Sophia.
"I haven't looked yet. I only need a modest house with a yard to grow a garden in."
"Maybe Veronica's place would work for you."
"Won't Veronica be needing her place?" Sophia asked.
"No, we're going to start house hunting for something a bit more luxurious. Can you have the Realtor email me a list of residential properties? It needs to be in the 90909 zip and needs to be gated to keep the paparazzi out."
"Noted. Find a mansion for Veronica to take in the divorce." Sophia said.
"Can't you just be happy for us Sophia?" Logan asked in frustration.
Sophia sighed. "I want to be Logan. You know I have always wanted for you to find somebody to love. You deserve it more than anybody I know. I think you need it more than anybody I know."
Sophia touched Logan's arm. "You want to know the kicker? When I was playing poker with 'Annie', I thought she would be the perfect girl for you. Blonde, beautiful, intelligent, with a wicked, self-deprecating sense of humor. I planned to invite her to eat with us the next day. But, that was when she was still 'Annie'. Veronica is a different story. Veronica is the one that hurt you so badly you almost jumped off a bridge. I'm just afraid of seeing you hurt like that again."
"I'm happy Sophia. We're happy. Trust me, I think we're in a really good place."
"Until she leaves you again."
"Soph, Veronica's leaving me was always a reactionary thing. I'd do something stupid. She'd dump me. I don't do stupid things anymore. I've grown up."
"You broke up with her once. That wasn't a reactionary thing."
"No, it wasn't." Logan sighed.
"I felt like I was a disappointment to her, like I could never measure up." He answered quietly. His heart hurt just remembering the pain he'd felt during that time, and the strength it had taken to be able to walk away from her.
"So what if she makes you feel that way again? How are you going to handle it?" Sophia asked watching Logan's eyes for any flicker of doubt. She didn't find any.
"The difference is, that I'm not a disappointment now." Logan answered. "I've built a company from the ground up, and the profits and growth are off the charts. I don't need to get my self-worth from Veronica anymore. I have all the proof I need that I measure up. Look at this place." He swept his hands out indicating the office campus. "We're going to fill these buildings eventually. We're going to single-handedly reduce the unemployment rate in Neptune. And we're going to keep growing and making profits."
Sophia wiped a tear away from her eyes. "I've never been so proud of you, Logan as I am now."
"I'm proud of myself, and I'm proud of you for getting me here."
"Come here you little jackass." She said hugging him tightly.
"Draw up the papers for me to sign and place some newspaper ads. Salacia Corp. has a new home and we're hiring!" Logan said waving his hands and grinning.