Chapter Five
[Where we left off.]
Veronica nearly had to sit as those words came out of Parker's mouth. Parker's face was lit with a brighter smile, calm, she didn't look like she was kidding. Veronica couldn't find words, dropped her gaze with an amazed, shocked smile. In the corner of the room, Parker's stereo was playing a CD.
Fellows will fall in line,
Eager young lads and roues and cads
Will offer you food and wine!
Totally unprepared are you to face a world of men
Timid and shy and scared are you, of things beyond your ken!
You need someone older and wiser telling you what to do
I am seventeen, going on eighteen, I'll take care of you.
"I know, big surprise, right?" Parker moved to the back of her dorm, picking up a mug full of warm tea, took a moment to stir the bag before she took a sip. "It just sort of happened, really. We bumped into one another at Wallace's party in August…"
Veronica had been there, with Piz. Tess had not been there due to morning sickness, according to Logan. Veronica couldn't remember whether or not Parker had attended.
"And I guess just old feelings and a little booze..and we made a baby." Veronica stared at her incredulously, because finally she had grown to truly believe that Logan had gotten his act together. Had fallen in love and started a family and left his old ways at the curb. And now here Parker was telling a completely different story. And if she weren't on her meds and she weren't so calm and capable of keeping eye contact, Veronica might have just spat out that she had to be a liar.
But it was too much, and Veronica's head was spinning as if she had spent the entire afternoon drinking. She simply turned and stumbled from the room. Made it down the hall and out the entrance of the dorms. Her stomach hurt, and she almost felt sad. Downright depressed. Veronica didn't know Tess very well, had kept her distance, but she didn't want it to be true for her sake, every time she thought about her she remembered feeling Logan's baby fluttering around under her palm.
She stopped outside of the building briefly to catch her breath and clear her head. Okay, Veronica. So Logan's ex girlfriend, who incidentally has a history of mental instability just told you she was expecting Logan's prodigy, when Logan is just a couple of months away from greeting a prodigy with a really nice girl whose family is really concerned about her. Do you call her brother and share that information, or do you keep it to yourself?
If it were true, Tess was going to need her family to get her through the repercussions of that.
With a few more deep breaths, Veronica pulled her phone from her pocket and queued up Shawn's phone number. Hit the call button and listened as it rang. Once, twice….
"Veronica Mars! Did you get my care package today!"
"Uh," Another deep breath. "Yeah, yeah I did. I gotta make a few calls but I think we should meet up, how soon can you get down to Neptune?"
[Twenty minutes later.]
"Hello?"
"Wallace!" Veronica adjusted the phone on it's holder in her Saturn. "Never been happier to get a hold of you, I have a question."
"Okay," Wallace's voice was clear, but concerned, Veronica smiled softly at his patience.
"Your party this past summer, did you see Parker there?"
"Uh, yeah. For a little bit, I did." He kept it short, and that worried Veronica more.
"But?"
Wallace sighed, and she could just see him rubbing his temple. "Well she left, kind of early. With Logan."
[Ten minutes later.]
Veronica had to wince at the laughter when Logan answered his phone, her hands unsteady on the wheel of her Saturn. "Hi, yeah?"
"I have couple of questions, I need you to answer them quickly and thoroughly."
"Uh, okay." She heard him say quietly away from the phone. "I'll be right back, okay? It's Veronica." Logan's feet sounded on smooth flooring before his footsteps disappeared into carpet. He lifted the phone up. "What's going on?"
"Shawn, somehow, managed to get a sample of Parker's urine. Some interesting things showed in her test so I have to ask you, did you see her at Wallace's senior year whoohoo party?"
Logan seemed uncomfortably quiet, and she waited patiently until she heard his voice reply. "I mean, yeah, I saw her, and she was totally wasted…"
"So you took her home and had sex with her?"
Logan was completely silent on the other end, and Veronica checked her phone's screen to see that the call hadn't been dropped, her stomach twisting into a knot. "Logan, I thought.. you said you were happy. So you took your crazy ex for a wild ride?"
"I didn't have sex with her, Veronica, I love Tess. I knew that back in August."
"Then why is she pregnant, Logan?"
She could almost hear that question shattering over his head, and he stuttered. "Wh-what do you mean, pregnant? If she's pregnant I had nothing to do with it, I've been with Tess since last spring and I've never been a cheater…"
"You've always been a cheater…"
"Never!" The intensity almost knocked her further back into the seat of her car. "Never, I kissed Lilly's friend, but I didn't have sex with her and Madison and I had sex after we had broken up. I'm not a cheater, not on you, not on Lilly, not on Parker, and not on Tess. Don't call me pointing the finger based on what some psychotic bitch has to say about me, I have bigger fish to fry."
The dial tone was deep, and almost cleansing, and Veronica wasn't sure who to believe when she ended the call, pointing her car in the direction of her rendezvous with Shawn.
Little did she know, Shawn was a tiny bit ahead of her. He had some surveillance from Wallace's dorm hall all the way out into the parking lot to Logan's car and finally throughout the Grand. And he was less than happy with what it detailed but he hoped at the same time that perhaps there was an explanation behind it.
One that wouldn't send Henry after the kid.
He arrived at the place Veronica had asked him to meet her at, with a laptop bag, borrowed discretely from Gus. Veronica was seated at a table with her own laptop, her eyes moving up to him when he drew near, he spoke before she could get a chance, "Spirits tell me you followed the path I set for you and you know Parker and Logan slept together a couple of months ago."
Veronica immediately slipped past the suggestion that spirits were speaking to him and got right down to business. "I don't know that, Logan said they didn't."
"Yeah well, check your email." Veronica glanced at the screen and typed to get to her inbox as he sat and prepared his equipment. "She comes, they leave, they end up at his hotel room."
Oh boy, that really didn't look good. Veronica played the mixed footage two or three times before she sighed. "That'd mean he lied right to me. I called him on it and he said nothing happened." Veronica stared at the image of Logan and Parker walking into the Grand lobby in slow motion, wondering what had gone on that night that had changed or maybe started the good direction he had headed off into.
He met her at the party, he took her back to the Grand where his room was. His room where Tess was sick as a dog in the bathroom? She looked up at Shawn. "It's not possible," She pointed to the screen. "The night of this party Tess didn't go because she didn't feel well, but she was living with Logan in the Grand by then."
Shawn frowned as his theory crumbled in front of him. "I mean, maybe they got a separate room then?"
"In the hotel his pregnant girlfriend was in? He would have taken her to the Four Seasons if he wanted to screw her that badly."
He didn't have an answer for that, so he came up with the next best thing. Pressed his fingers into his temples and looked at her. "I sense…we must go to the Grand and find out why they were there that night, then."
It wasn't very late yet. Logan marked the time by the quietness of the room below him, everyone went to bed by 11, but were partying well past 9:30, every night, like clockwork. He could still hear the clanking of glasses and the dull voices coming from a radio. Occasionally laughter would sound as well, and he sighed as he lay in bed. Tess was curled into his side with her head on his chest and his fingers ran absentmindedly through her hair.
The phone call with Veronica had him in edge. He was so pissed off that she would think for a second that he would do anything that would hurt Tess, and possibly his relationship with what was now the only blood he had in the world. Assuming Lynn isn't really knitting blankets in South America. The thought made him smile past the sting of anger and he looked down at Tess. So innocent and different from what had always been his life in Neptune. Logan did something stupid, Logan hates his life, everyone is angry at Logan. With her she loved and trusted him, and she was giving him something both terrifying and thrilling at once.
And despite the ache in his heart when he smelled Promises and the stab of pain that had come with her accusation when all he had ever done as anyone's boyfriend was love his significant other, there was a sense of finality in putting that part of his past behind him. Tess smelled like citrus, she didn't have the perfect sea blue eyes most rich guys loved in a girl, her hair was wild and red, and reminded him of Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman".
He bent slightly to drop kisses down her face. Smiled at the noises she made as he woke her, made her scrunch herself up in an attempt to hide her base skin from his devilish mouth. "Whaaaaaat."
"What, did I steal you away from your reverie?" They met one another with amused expressions and Logan laughed first, dipping to steal a soft kiss. "Hey, Tess, do you trust me?"
"I try not to but then you smile like a raccoon caught in the trash, and I can't help it."
He grinned down at her, liking the thought of himself as a filthy raccoon getting what he wanted. He brushed some hair from her face. "Get up, pack a bag. Let's go to Hawaii."
"You're crazy."
"So I hear, but I'm nuts about this girl, she's having my kid and I'm just dying to sweep her away to tropical paradise, we'll spend the remainder of her gestation period there, and I was thinking," Her attention was completely his, and he grinned at her face. "I was thinking tomorrow at sunrise…we could leave a giant story for Grandma Echolls down in South America to wake up to."
Veronica was uneasy walking into the quad the next morning. All she and Shawn had dug up in the records at the Grand were that Parker had gotten a room in her name on the night in question. Logan easily could have humped her brains out, too drunk to think to use a condom before returning to cuddle Tess in the Penthouse suite upstairs.
And that just didn't seem much like Logan. Even when he had accidentally procreated with Tess, they'd been dating semi-seriously. Logan never forgot his armor before he went into battle with a woman he didn't plan to wake up to the next morning, he'd never forgotten it when he had been seriously dating Veronica. Then again with the promise of Keith castrating him had she gotten pregnant, she could see why.
Parker was, as luck would have it, sitting near the building with a book in her lap. Veronica recognized it pretty quickly, and she felt a little queasy, suddenly. What to expect when you're expecting. Still, she managed a weak smile and walked over, ducking down next to her. "Hi."
Parker glanced up at her. "Oh, hi! I wasn't sure…"
"Sorry I bailed like I did I was just so surprised…but I'm happy for you." So long as I can choke back a little vomit at the idea. "And I know with Logan being otherwise occupied this must be really tough for you and all so, I mean, if you need someone to be moral support or just to come with you to your ultrasounds and stuff, I wanted you to know I'm here."
Parker broke into a beaming smile and she touched her friend's arm. "Thank you, Veronica. I'd appreciate that." She closed the book over a bookmark. "Logan won't be gone forever but he can't just ditch Tess, he wants to be a part of his baby's life and all. I hear she's super nice."
"I've only met her a few times, but she's always been nice to me."
"Good," Parker paused. "I have an ultrasound next week, actually, my first, think you can come to that?"
"I absolutely will work my schedule around it, just leave me a voicemail with the details…"
"Veronica!" Uh oh. That voice. Veronica half turned and spotted Piz walking over, a sheet of paper in his hand. "Hey Veronica you'll never believe what we just got faxed to announce over the air," He hurried to her side and noticed Parker, and waved meekly. She stood to look at it as he showed it to Veronica.
It was a brief Reuters blotter printed off of a computer, the headline reading in big, bold letters, "LOGAN ECHOLLS SECRETLY WEDS GIRLFRIEND ON OAHU." It went on to say that it had happened that morning on the beach, and that Tess was due to give birth to their first child in two months. Included toward the bottom was a photo, Logan in a nice shirt, and jeans, and Tess in a simple white dress, him bent down as they kissed.
Veronica, inwardly, was relieved, to a degree. Hoping it had been something he had planned before she had accused him of knocking Parker up to. Parker's face was blank, and she quietly excused herself before hurrying into class. Veronica thanked Piz for showing her the article, and then hurried to get in touch with Shawn to tell him their plan had gone into effect.