Another chapter should be up in a day or two. I originally wrote them as one but it got way too long. Sorry for the random flashback in the middle, sometimes I can't help but indulge myself.
Chapter 14
Nirvana
10:30 pm Thursday September 6
She drinks too much at dinner. And then when they break off from the boys to change and then go to a night club down the strip she gets absolutely laughing drunk on the expensive champagne she pays for by the bottle with Logan's money. Mac, whose in a thin tiara and sash, is probably a little more sober but having way more fun dancing on a table with Parker while Jackie snaps obligatory pictures.
When Parker breaks a heel they stumble down the block to a row of high end boutiques and get distracted, deciding to spend a little time drunk shopping. Mac tries on a feathery flapper dress and suggests getting married in it while Jackie purchases a floor length designer gown worth a fourth of her crazy Vegas money. Parker weeps when her credit card goes through for a patent leather Prada purse and a pair of Louboutin pumps. Veronica switches shirts in the middle of the store, hoping no one manages to capture the moment on film. The cashier dutifully removes the security tag from between her breasts when she checks out an hour later.
After spending the majority of their money on extravagant liquor and clothes they come to the consensus that a cab would be a better idea then crawling back to the hotel. Somehow they manage to cram themselves and all their purchases into two cars. Parker is drooling, out cold with her head stuck in a shopping bag. Mac, who Veronica has long known is a very hyper drunk, rallies her with a few pinches in the hip.
By now the paparazzi are camped out in front of the hotel, and the whole place explodes when the cabs roll up. Parker, whose quick fingers are already pulling a compact out of her purse, is muttering a string of expletives as their car is mobbed. Bellboys rush both vehicles and Veronica, most sober of the four, emerges to direct them. Half of the boys play defense while the others unpack the car holding all the purchases.
People are screaming things at her, but Veronica is a master at tuning them out. She turns, grabs Mac's hand and helps her on wobbly feet out of the cab. Mac's got her phallic shades pushed high on her nose and is nothing but smiles. Jackie and Parker are less self assured, but Jackie knows the drill and is all class as she puts on a demure smile even as she stumbles in her heels. The top Veronica bought at the boutique is made of nothing but white sequins and it reflects the flashes like a sparkler. She's dying to do some damage to the closest camera. But she smiles and stays quiet. She learned a long time ago that anything else would get her in trouble.
She's stretched across the couch with her laptop resting on her stomach. He said he'd be back at the hotel at 5 but she's been waiting forty five minutes now. Bare feet digging nervously into the expensive upholstery as she worries and misses. He's been home for just two weeks now after wrapping his first feature film. He spent the first sixteen weeks shooting in LA and then the next month jetting across the globe for locations.
He'd called every day. Mostly in the middle of the night. And on one long weekend she'd flown to Paris to spend exactly fifty-three hours in a hotel bed and bar with him. For half a year he'd been exhausted and preoccupied and bordering on snippy. And then the minute he got home he'd basically forced her into a car and they spent a much more lucid weekend in Santa Monica. And somehow it had taken exactly two days to forgive him for everything. He basically turned falling in love into an art form. And she fell for it hook, line, and sinker.
He walks in the door exactly an hour late, looking deep, dark eye circle tired. He's holding a rolled up magazine in his right hand and she remembers belatedly that he had been at a meeting with Nadine. She closes the laptop and sits up, running a hand through the blunted edges of the hair that she's recently cut to just under her chin. "What did we do now?" she sighs.
He opens his mouth but thinks better of it. Instead he throws the magazine on the coffee table, shrugs out of his jacket, and flops onto the couch next to her, his head landing in her lap. "It doesn't matter," he replies.
His hair is getting shaggy, and she runs her fingers through the pieces that fall in his eyes. She tilts her head to the side as she answers quietly, "It does to you, so it does to me. Tell me what's wrong."
He sighs, takes one of the hands playing with her hair and kisses the inside of her wrist before sitting up, "I'm gonna take a shower. Do you want to go to dinner?" He stands and walks towards the bathroom before he remembers the magazine sitting in front of Veronica. He wants to go back, but he's sure that would do more harm then good. She'd probably fight him for it.
"As long as we go somewhere I can wear jeans and eat noodles smothered in heavy sauce," she mumbles to his retreating back. Waiting until he is just out of sigh to lunge across the couch to get to the coffee table. Flipping pages until she gets to what she's sure is the cause of Logan's headache. The headline reads: Logan Echolls' Girl A Real Class Act. It's a collection of pictures of her flipping off photographers at various locations on the Hearst campus. Most of the times she's at a table alone, pouring over textbooks. Occasionally she's walking with Mac and Parker. In one she has her arms wrapped around Logan and she's giving them the finger behind his back. The pictures are collage style and spread across two pages. She feels painfully sick to her stomach and in the silence of the living room makes an audible choking noise.
She crosses the room and enters the bathroom after a few minutes. Logan's shrugging out of his shirt, shower already beginning to steam behind him. She leans in the doorway, "So Nadine's in the parking garage cutting my brakes as we speak?"
Logan turns to face her, trying to gage the damage in the angles of her face, "No she's pissed at me. She says I should have laid down ground rules." He winces as her mouth falls open, "Her words not mine."
"You're mad at me," she points out. It's not a question.
"No," he shakes his head, walking towards her until he can catch his fingers in her belt loops, "Not at all. This is my fault. I made a choice and everything changed. How you react to it isn't up to me."
She leans her head just under his chin. She had once been in the car when Logan threatened to run over a photographer if he didn't get out of the way. But this last year, once he realized what exactly it was he wanted to do, he's changed. He's not exactly flashing smiles, but he's not openly hostile anymore either, "How do you do it?"
"I don't," he shrugs, before thinking better of it, "Or I didn't. You just have to remember that this is exactly what they want. A full page spread dedicated to making you look bad. Controversy sells babe, and you're making it too easy for them."
She groans, "People I know are going to see this."
It breaks the moment, and he smiles into her hair, "It's not that bad. I laughed." She snorts, and is about to say something sarcastic before he uses the leverage he has on her jeans to try and drag her into the shower with him.
They make it into the hotel unscathed. Mac insists on trying her hand at roulette, at which she is terrible. "Wait no," she insists when Veronica tries to drag her away, turning to reveal an greenish complexion. She takes a deep breath to try and steady herself before admitting, "Veronica something's wrong."
Her eyes are unfocused and Veronica tries to remember how many shots of vodka Mac took in the limo. At least five. Plus all the glasses of champagne. Parker is distracted by black jack and Jackie is like a zombie at the slot machine, so Veronica grabs Mac's wrist and drags her into the nearest ladies room solo.
Mac is still giggly, and she heads straight for the handicapped stall to take a seat next to the toilet. She smiles up as Veronica slides down the stall wall across from her, "I don't think I'm going to throw up."
Veronica smirks, crossing her legs as she leans against the cold marble partition, "Well I'm positive they'd ask us to leave the casino if you puked on the roulette wheel, so lets hang out here for a few more minutes. "
Mac runs her hand through her hair, taking in Veronica's dark jeans tucked into black boots, and the glittering top she'd purchased what seemed like five seconds ago. Her hair is a mess of curls, her lips a flushed shade of red. There's still a bruise around her temple, but it's mostly hidden by her makeup. Mac sighs, it's like she doesn't even have to try "You look really pretty."
Mac's in a green silk blouse and a perilously tight pencil skirt and Veronica tilts her head at the observation, replying back sweetly, "So do you Mrs. Casablancas."
"Not yet," Mac replies in a sing songey falsetto, she pauses before staring at her best friend with hooded eyelids, the grin still not gone from her face, "You still hate him don't you?"
"No," Veronica argues with a sloppy shake of her head, "I think he really love you. And that's all I care about." It's true. She may not think Dick deserves Mac, but she can't deny that he has consistently made her best friend happy for a long time. That the life the two have created together is something Veronica actually envies.
"Do you remember what you said when he first asked me out?" Mac whispers, nausea completely gone. She tucks her legs underneath her and leans back against the wall, remembering life as it was seven years ago.
Veronica snorts, "Well I remember laughing. A lot."
"You told me guys like Dick didn't date anyone. That he didn't know how and didn't want to learn." Mac recollects, reciting the word clinically and without any sort of annoyance. At the time it had been good advice. She couldn't rewrite the past, Dick had been a different person before her. Someone she might have even hated at certain points in her life. So much had changed. And she like to think the man she loves had been there all along, just waiting for someone to find him.
"That sounds smart," Veronica nods, sliding down the stall wall until her head hits the cold tile of the floor. She is suddenly so tired, "Definitely something I would say."
Mac crawls over, lying down so they are shoulder to shoulder. There is an intricate gold pattern on the ceiling, all swirls and loops, "I kept expecting for the other shoe to drop. For him to do something horrible and hurt me, but it hasn't happened yet."
"Well he did work pretty hard for that first date," Veronica recalls, "A whole year of being obsessed with you while you were with Max. Didn't he send you flowers every day for a month?" Veronica remember stumbling across more then a few over the top bouquets set in front of their door that year. Different colors and types every day. Their apartment had smelled like a funeral home, but Mac refused to throw any of them out until the last petal had fallen from the stem. She should have known it had really only been a matter of time.
"Two." Mac corrects. She shifts, adjusting the tiara slightly on her head so the prongs stop digging into her skull; her sash is sporting a few stains from the club. "You know I fell in love with him on our first date? He took me to dinner, and he was so nervous and it was awkward and I was planning on giving him the just friends speech. But then he took me to the beach, and we just sat there and talked. About our lives, our parents, mostly about Cassidy. He just, he makes me feel like I could tell him anything," Veronica glances over, wondering how they can look at the same guy and see two different people. She'd never even think of talking to Dick like a confidant. Mac adds after a moment, "I'd never felt anything like it before. The way he looks at me, the way he treats me. I didn't know it was possible to be happy like this."
"I knew you were done for the day you agreed to get up at six on Saturday to go surfing," Veronica notes. She had looked ridiculous is her wet suit, but Dick had been so excited he'd carried her out of the apartment over his shoulder. She'd come back with sunburn on her shoulders and a smile on her face.
"That's another thing, he makes all the things I used to hate fun. He dropped me off that night, and I could tell he wanted to kiss me. But he was trying to play it off like a gentleman, and he was walking to the car and I called him name, walked over and kissed him. And I just knew." Mac shakes her head. She'd had every intention of letting Dick down easy when they'd left that night. But somehow in the span of three hours he'd managed to worm his way into her heart. And she'd yet to figure out how to get rid of him.
"That simple?" Veronica asks.
"Wasn't it for you?" Mac replies, head tilting to the side to get a better look at her friend.
"With Duncan, yes," she agrees, before her eyes squint, "With Logan, I don't know. It feels like I've fallen in love with him so many times over the years. It's gotten hard to keep track. But I think I remember the moment, even though I didn't realize it at the time." She might have talked about it, even though she's never told anyone else. She's drunk and nostalgic, and her heads been filled with nothing but Logan for days.
But Parker burst in, pushing open the stall door and wrinkling her nose, "You guys realize this is a public restroom floor you're laying on right?" When Veronica and Mac don't respond she crossed her arms over her chest, "Logan texted, apparently we have to get back to the room ASAP."
Veronica pulls out her phone, she has six missed calls, three snarky texts, and it's half passed two. "Fuck," she curses, belatedly remembering the strippers, "he's gonna kill me." She stumbles to a standing position, and it takes both her and Parker but the eventually manage to get Mac vertical as well.
The foursome laugh in the elevator, but when the doors open on their floor everyone goes immediately silent. Waiting at the door is a trio of buff gods dressed as computer nerds. Parker barely manages to get the camera out as the boys grab Mac by the wrist and drag her into the room. "In case I forget," Mac murmurs as they approach, "tell Logan he's my hero."
5:00 am Friday September 7
He makes it back into the room as the sun is breaking over the horizon, so drunk he can barely see straight. Piz and Wallace are nowhere to be found, but he wrangles an incoherent Dick onto the couch. He approaches the bedroom door to find a white sequin top dangling from the doorknob.
He'd thought with the prices he was paying for the fucking suite a little bit of security would be appropriate. But over the years he'd learned what lengths girls would go to get in front of him. He opens the door prepared to discuss trading an autograph for putting some clothes on.
But he's pleasantly surprised; Veronica is facedown on top of his bed in nothing but a pair of jeans and a lace bra. She has a silver tiara tangled up in her hair, and eyeliner smudged across half of her face. She looks up at him groggily as he approaches the bed.
"Worst proposition ever," he slurs as he flops down next to her on the bed. He's still got her top in his hand and he studies it, the expensive fabric and the minuscule, tightly sewn on sequins. He wishes he'd gotten a chance to see her after dinner, "But since you started off strong I'll make an exception."
"I'm also covered in male stripper," she groans as she drags herself across the few inches of space to lay her heavy head on his chest, "Still interested?"
"You're really drunk," he points out, breaking into a grin.
"So are you," Veronica argues, picking up her head to show him her insulted face.
"Yeah but I'm better at it," he smirks in reply.
"Did Serenity and Venus treat you right tonight?" she quips back, her eyebrow quirking.
He adjusts, sinking lower on the bed and pulling her up so her head rests just under his chin, "Dick didn't want any strippers so we just played poker in a VIP room."
"Wait a second," Veronica shakes her head, "Are you telling me that Richard Casablancas, the man who used to have entire conversations with me without taking his eyes of my chest, didn't want strippers at his bachelor party?"
"People change Veronica," Logan observes, his fingers attempting to dislodge the cracking tiara from her long hair.
"Maybe," she whispers in reply. She knows its true. She's laying her head on top of the evidence, she just never thought it would happen to everyone she knows. Especially when it feels like she is still exactly the same.
The smile drops from Logan's face, but his tone doesn't grow annoyed, it drops to a whisper, the words coming out slow, "You really don't get it do you? Dick has never loved or been loved like he has with Mac. His parents couldn't have given less of his shit and his brother took a swan dive off the side of a building. She doesn't care about his car, or his house, or how big his trust fund is. She redefined him. And he doesn't plan on going back. Or fucking it up in any way."
She takes a minute to process his words, because she knows at some this stopped being about their friends. This about them. And the heartbreakingly sweet way his fingers are weaving through her hair. "She got a stripper," Veronica observes, trying to break the mood she's inspired in him.
It works, his straight face breaks into another grin of amusement, "He doesn't care."
She keeps looking at him, face dazed and dress shirt completely rumpled. The stiches on his forehead are covered by his messy hair, his knuckles are scabbed over, and the brace seems to be helping his ankle a ton. She catalogues his injuries and it adds to the knot in her stomach. She can feel the alcohol buzzing in her head, but she lets the declaration slip out despite all the reasons she shouldn't, "I love you too."
His hands go still, "What?"
She doesn't blink, "I love you too. Still."
"You're drunk." he notes, fingers regaining feeling as he frees the last piece of the crown from her hair.
She leans forward, catching him off guard with a kiss that lasts only a heartbeat. "I mean it," she promises, and lays her head back on top of him.
He goes quiet for a long time, allowing himself to contemplate all of the ways he can react to this. Since no matter how hard he tries she seems to be able to read him like her favorite book, he goes for aloof. Well as aloof as he can possibly towards the girl he may or may not love undyingly. He shifts again, turning so that they face each other on their sides. She's smiling at him, this silly drunk smile he's only seen a few times. He closes his eyes, "Go to sleep."