Sorry this took forever. I know I'm the worst.
Chapter 17
Positive
4:15 pm Friday September 7
The screen door slams behind her as she enters her father's home. Darrell is playing something violent on Xbox that involves explosives. He waves as she and her duffel bag skulk across the living room. She has exactly half an hour to change and pack her things for the overnight at the hotel. She and Mac will be sharing a room a floor above Logan and Dick's. The rest of the rooms on both floors have been blocked out for out of town friends and family.
They'll be rehearsing the ceremony in ballroom. The dinner afterwards, along with the actual ceremony and the reception will be held outside on the grounds. The dresses aren't even being dropped off until tomorrow morning so she doesn't have to worry about that. The silver dress she's wearing tonight is hanging in the closet, the back dips far and she's probably going to be freezing by the end of the night.
She dumps all of the clothes she brought to Vegas into the laundry hamper and starts grabbing things for her overnight stint at a five star resort. She's zipping up her bag when the door opens behind her. She fights the gasp that bubbles in her throat, a reflex she's been trained to be ashamed of. A tilt of her head shows it's Keith and her body relaxes vertebra by vertebra.
She turns slowly, not sure which side of her father she's going to get this afternoon. He looks at her and then glances away, so she prepares for the worst. "Sometimes I forget Veronica," he sighs, "Sometimes I forget that you're twenty-seven years old, because when I close my eyes you're still this baby."
"Dad-" she starts, wondering what he read in her book that could have provoked this kind of reaction. But then Keith crosses the rest of the room and wraps his arms around her, lifting her off her feet.
"It's a great read kid," he compliments, "I'm proud of you."
She relaxes again, all the way this time, and returns her father's hug. "Thanks Dad," she whispers in reply.
5:00 pm Friday September 7
Mac's getting frustrated with her hair, it's not wrapping around like it's supposed to. Her white lace dress is beautiful, made from pieces of her mother's wedding gown, a compromise they'd settled on months ago. She downs a glass of complementary champagne to calm her nerves and concentrates until she can live with her creation. Her hands are still shaking slightly, she'd never imagined it would be like this. That she would get to be a princess with this kind of happy ending. By this time tomorrow she'll be someone's wife, and if that's not the scary she doesn't know what is.
There's a knock at the door and after a second Veronica uses her key card to enter their shared hotel room. She's still in last nights jeans and T-shirt. She sets her stuff down on the ground and smiles at Mac, "Hey pretty lady."
"Hey," Mac smiles as she dabs on the bare minimum of makeup, "just in time for my minor panic attack."
"What's wrong?" Veronica questions as she starts pulling off her clothes. She balls everything up and throws them on what she assumes is her bed. Then she pulls her dress off the hanger and shrugs it on. She's wearing a diamond stud necklace; belatedly remembering it was a present from Logan on her twenty-first birthday. He'll probably appreciate that she hadn't "forgot it during the move" like a lot of the expensive jewelry he'd purchased her through the years.
She still remembers that night in perfect detail. He'd rented out a bar and filled it with all of her friends, she'd ended up dancing on top of the bar and trying to sing along to Devil Went to Georgia with Parker. They'd done a lot of drunken and inappropriate things in the limo on the way home. She'd worn her engagement ring the whole night without fidgeting and he'd smiled bigger then he usually did when they were out in public.
"I'm scared of Dick's family," Mac sighs as she rubs on lipstick with her pinky finger, "I'm being completely objective when I say he's the best of the bunch. And my relatives aren't the most respectable either. They will be asking the bartender if moonshine is on the menu."
"Come on," Veronica replies, as she joins Mac at the mirror in an attempt to tame her own hair, "it's a wedding, aren't pervy uncles and racist grandma's kind of a requirement?"
Mac wishes that those were her only problems, but unfortunately that's not how her life has gone, "Dick didn't invite his mom but all her of siblings are here. His dad is married to some twenty five year old Filipino he met while he was on the run from the cops. She speaks bare minimum English limited mostly to carat, clarity, and cut." She sucks in a gasp of air, "Plus his dead brother is the guy who took my virginity."
Veronica's hands still and she turns to look at her best friend. Cassidy and all he'd done to both of them is something she's been try to forget since prom night. It makes her heart beat in her ears and her breath go shallow. Mac is looking straight into the mirror, her face blank, and when she speaks her voice is paper thin, "Most of the time it doesn't matter but right now it's making me hyperventilate."
She doesn't know what to say, so it comes out slow and awkward. "It's a lot, I know it is," she reaches across to squeeze Mac's shoulder it what she hopes is a comforting gesture, "but you're happy, okay? That's the only thing you have to remember."
Mac blinks, pulling her gaze away from the mirror and training her eyes on Veronica with a bittersweet smile, "Shouldn't you be pushing me out the door? You were making runaway bride jokes five minutes after I told you we were engaged."
"Yeah well," Veronica shrugs, "I've reconsidered." She has, Dick and Mac are getting married. They should get married. She never thought she'd be okay with it, not in a million years. But she also didn't think of a lot of things, like she'd get back together with Logan exactly four days after her flight had departed from New York City. If there's anything more insane then Mac and Dick it's Logan and Veronica part twelve.
There's another knock on the door and then Dick is actually in the room instead of in her head. He takes a look at the two girls and raises his eyebrows, "Bad time? Are we talking girl stuff that will make me go deaf?"
Veronica rubs Mac's back before smiling up at the woman's husband to be, "Perfect actually." She grabs her hairbrush and a handful of bobby pins, making a quick exit stage left. She is more then willing to let the blonde in the suit handle this meltdown.
With Veronica gone Mac turns to face her fiancé with a slow smile, hand going up to fidget with her hair again, "Hey honey."
He leans against the door and crosses his arms over his chest, "Reconsidering the moms thing?"
She shakes her head, "No, not at all."
He smiles wryly, "Reconsidering your choice of groom?"
She exhales, standing and crossing the room to wrap her arms around his waist, laying the side of her finished face on the lapel of his suit jacket. "Reconsidering my insistence of a big wedding. Didn't you suggest eloping in Puerto Rico?"
"The Dominican Republic actually," he corrects, one hand going to the small of her back and the other worrying at her bare neck. She's been sad way too much this week and he's definitely not a fan, "and the offer still stands."
She blinks up at him, looking ridiculously hot in her complicated white dress. There are a million buttons down the back and he's planning a strategy when he realizes for the first time in nearly a year they will be spending the night apart. She smiles mischievously, and it's even hotter then the dress, "We just leave?"
"If you want to. We're rich remember?" he replies with a nod. His fingers rub the shell of her ear, they're triple pierced and one has this painful looking rod through it, tonight she has varying sizes of diamonds in every hole and he touches each one as he looks down at her, "I don't care what we do, as long as you think it's perfect."
She keeps staring at him, she's not crying but her eyes are all red and dry. She remembers the night her website had launched, he'd counted down the seconds in her ear as she clenched her eyes shut. The day her mom had gotten into that car accident and had to have surgery on her leg she'd fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder in the waiting room. She has never felt so completely comfortable with someone. And they could be anywhere and it wouldn't matter. Not at all.
She buries her face in his chest and hugs him tight, releasing him with an, "Okay,"
His eyebrows knit together, "Okay what?"
"Okay let's go downstairs," she whispers as she pulls away, leaning up to kiss him on his cheek, "I'm gonna be fine."
He's still not convinced, "Are you sure?"
She pulls away and looks at him, reaching up to rub her thumb across his cheekbone. He closes his eyes at the touch, just for a second and she leans up to kiss him again.
"Positive."
5:15 pm Friday September 7
He answers the door smiling. "Hey," he whispers, he's messing with his tie. She looks amazing. He's pretty sure he gave her that necklace. The memory involves her in the back of a limo wearing nothing else.
"Hi," she replies, taking a step inside and kissing him without warning. He reacts accordingly, catching her face in his hands and pressing her against the door she'd just kicked closed. It's a good kiss, the kind that makes her head spin and her toes curl inside her high heels.
He pulls away and she lets her head fall back against the door with a smirk, she's still clutching the undone sides of his tie, "So we're pressing play? What exactly does that entail?"
He rolls his eyes, tucking her hair behind her ear and making a face, "You tell me remember?"
She looks down, concentrating on the mess he's made of his blue, silk tie. It's Italian she's sure of it, Logan has great taste when it comes to these things. His shoes probably cost more then everything she's wearing. Excluding, of course, the diamond he'd bought her all those years ago. She's biting her lip as she murmurs, "Do you still wanna get married?"
He takes a deep breath. He can't look at her, "So now you're proposing to me?"
She glances up, and there's a catch in her voice. She makes her fingers keep moving, no faltering or hesitation as she wraps and twists the fabric. "Are you gonna get me back by barricading yourself in the bathroom?"
He tightens his hold on the sides of her dress, knowing what he's about to say isn't going to go over well, "How about we live together?"
She blinks, physically feeling as if she's been slapped. "Wow, that sounds like a no. I guess we are even." She pushes the finished knot all the way up to his throat and then tries to pull away. She still has her hair to think about after all, but Logan is having absolutely none of it.
"This isn't a game Veronica," he points out softly, they're still in very close quarters and that makes it easy for him to force eye contact," It's been six years, how can you be sure you even like me anymore?"
Her face is hard and her mouth is as sharp as a knife, "Or how can you be sure of the same, right?
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you," he whispers, "as much as you try to deny it you've always known that. But taking things slow has never been our strength, so I'm just trying to break old habits. We live together; we figure it out from there. Can you and your emotionally fragile conscious handle that?" He's smiling, confident, cocky. He's used to getting what he wants. And he wants her. Always. Maybe that will even be enough to keep them together this time.
She watches him for an awkward amount of time, silent as she contemplates her future, their future, "Your house or mine?"
She beams and he kisses her forehead and pretends to concentrate, "I think we'll go with my mansion over Keith's bungalow, but let's pretend for a few days just to see if we can get that vein to pop in his neck. You know the one."
"We're talking the house where we were both held at gun point right?" she observes with a kink of her eyebrow, "I'd rather live with my dad."
"So we'll buy a new house," he shrugs, "Like it's hard or something?"
"One that doesn't have seven unnecessary bedrooms?" She's trying to picture looking at houses with Logan. He'd been particular about his apartment, their apartment, in college. He liked open spaces, a lot of light and a lot of big rooms. Anything that didn't feel like a hotel suite or the house he grew up in.
"We'll have one for every night of the week," he argues.
"Pass," she replies with a smirk, "Unlike a high maintenance movie star I require only one bedroom." She waggles her eyes in mock seduction.
"I'm not planning on living in a shack," he prefaces, trying to put to bed all of Veronica's noble notions of living like the ninety nine percent. He's won her over with Egyptian cotton and heated bathroom tiles before. "Which qualifies anything under four bedrooms and not directly located on the coast, so we're gonna have to do that thing that couples do, where they give and take, what's that called-"
She winces, "Compromising?" She tries to make it sound as much like a dirty word as possible.
"That's it," he retorts, leaning in.
She side steps the advance, "I have to fix my hair." She flounces across the room to the vanity mirror.
He turns to watch her go, catching the best part. Veronica naked from the waist up, "Excellent choice."
She glances up from pinning the left side of her hair back and scoffs at him. "Thanks roomie," she winks back snarkily.
And he laughs.
6:30 pm Friday September 7
The wedding party makes it down the fake aisle in the ballroom. Piz is passing out flutes of champagne and Parker is already slurring a tad. She leans on Wallace as he guides her down the aisle and Veronica and Logan are kissing more then they're talking. The other two couples, Dick and Mac's work friends, look a little uncomfortable but no one seems to notice or care. Dick starts a speech about love and Mac makes gagging noises and the priest is obviously ashamed of all of them. The bride's parents arrive and she forgoes walking down the aisle because Mrs. Mackenzie is already verging on tears. They'll figure it out tomorrow. She'll get down the aisle one way or another. They decide to move to the tent where guests are already beginning to converge.
Mac and Dick knit their fingers together and go off to tipsily greet their guests. Veronica and Logan drift off to some dark corner and Parker laces her fingers behind Piz's neck.
"Do you think we'll ever get married?" he whispers into her throat.
"Wow," Parker hisses sarcastically, "did you feel that? That was my heart skipping a beat."
"I'm serious," Piz grins as he dips her. She's in bright blue. Parker likes loud colors, the kinds that catch everybody's eye when she walks into a room.
"Me too," she smirks, "I can't wait to hear your proposal, 'hey uh, do you think maybe you could say yes, or something?'" She mimics him perfectly.
"Who says I'm going to propose to you," he replies, squinting at her teasingly.
"Oh please," she rolls her eyes, "we're getting married. Two kids and a golden retriever. Get used to it." She smiles and he spins her and he's glad she said it out loud. He's been awkward walking past jewelry stores for months, he's pretty sure he should let her pick out her own ring though. But he's not sure, they'll figure it out in a few months after they furnish their apartment. Maybe they'll buy a dog too.
"Shit," Veronica curses from across the crowd, "we've been spotted."
"By who?" Logan mutters, he's screwing up her hair on purpose, she's nearly positive. He's doing torturous things to the side of her neck as he backs her up against a tent pillar.
"My Dad," she replies, pushing him away as she takes a deep breath and tries to fix the knots she's made in his hair. Keith Mars is zeroing in fast, with Alicia following close behind.
"Here," he reaches out, trying to wipe the smudges of lipstick off the corners of her mouth, "let me just fix it."
"We're the epitome of class as usual," she grumbles as he wraps an arm loosely around her waist and turns to face her Dad and stepmom in a much-needed show of solidarity. "Hey Dad," Veronica beams, "Alicia you look great."
"Sheriff, Mrs. Mars" Logan nods, "Nice to see you both again."
"How's the leg, Logan," Keith asks politely. His daughter looks beautiful, although her hair's a little bit of a mess.
"Getting better everyday," Logan answers.
"And the head?"
"Even better then the leg," Logan replies quickly, he's starting to fidget with the side of Veronica's dress, where silk meets skin. She needs another drink.
"Dad," Veronica interrupts, "We were just headed to bar. We'll be right back. Save me a dance okay?" She takes Logan's hand out from under her dress and drags him away with a wave to her father. Keith smiles and asks his wife to have the first dance.
They make it to the bar eventually, only mildly embarrassing themselves in front of people with camera phones. They find the bride and groom to be there already and Veronica immediately heads towards Mac to get a status update. She's scarfing down an abandoned tray of mini keishes and has just been handed her amaretto sour when her heart stops.
"Holy shit," she reaches out to grab Mac's wrist, her best friend immediately whirls. "Oh my God," Veronica continues to sputter, "Holy shit. Holy shit."
"Veronica," Mac squints, "Isn't that?"
"Jackson," Veronica inhales sharply. She drops her drink; she's feeling very dizzy. She actually just might pass out.