A/N: So, in full disclosure, I have no idea where this chapter came from. I was blocked for a while, and then I just started writing and words flowed from my fingertips and somehow this happened. I regret nothing. Lol, enjoy!
Chapter 17a: Distance
The next morning, Saturday, Veronica had gotten a case to work on at the office. Apparently the busy season was beginning early this year. Normally they were busy during the early summer months, around Christmas and Valentine's Day, those apparently being peak times for cheating spouses. However, this was not a case of a cheating spouse. An business owner suspected his partner of running illegal activity through their company and wanted it looked into.
Due to the case, she hadn't even noticed that Logan hadn't been by for lunch until it was well after five in the evening and her stomach was growling. With a sigh, she turned off the computer and locked up for the evening, heading home to find something to eat and switch to homework mode.
After securing dinner but before curling up with her homework, Veronica sent a quick text to Logan asking him about his day: short, simple, and open-ended. It's not like they had actual plans or something. He could have just as easily gotten caught up in something, like homework or video games.
By Sunday night, Veronica was getting a little worried having not heard from him all weekend. Then again, she had been busy with her case all weekend and couldn't say she had made significant effort to see him either. Putting the thoughts out of her mind, she comforted herself with the thought that she would see him in the morning and went to sleep.
However, that was not the case when Monday rolled around. He was no where to be found. Again, she tried to text him and got no response. Veronica did run into Dick, though, and cornered him against a building near the quad, "Do you know what's up with Logan?" she asked, putting on her best "Scary Veronica" face.
Dick looked around, "I haven't seen him," he said, trying to find an escape route.
"You live with him, Dick," Veronica reminded, not letting Dick leave. She wanted answers.
He took a deep breath, "He hasn't been there. I don't know where he went. I'm not his baby-sitter... Wait... I saw him talking to Parker, you should ask her..." Dick trailed off. This response caught Veronica off guard, allowing Dick to escape and run off to the other side of the quad before disappearing into a crowd of people.
Logan did show up to class on Tuesday, though he didn't provide an explanation for his absence. He took his usual seat next to her but said nothing. Granted he was running late and the professor had already begun, she at least expected a 'hello' or something.
"Are you going to lunch?" she asked as soon as the professor had dismissed the class before he had a chance to avoid her again.
He looked at her like he hadn't noticed she had been there the entire time, "Uh, yeah, lunch. Sure. Let's go," he said, offering her his hand so they could walk together.
"Is something going on?" she asked, trying to keep the conversation light as they made their way to the lunch line. "I texted you a couple of times and Dick said you weren't home..."
Logan snorted, "Dick is too high most of the time to know that he is even there. I would hardly call Dick a reliable source, Veronica."
After a thought, Veronica agreed that Dick was not the most reliable source to credit information to, "You're right. I'm sorry. I guess I'm just over-thinking things again. How was your weekend?"
He nodded and led her to a nearby table, "Boring. I finally sat down and wrote that paper for my English class, all fifteen pages. I... uh... turned my phone off so I wouldn't get distracted. I probably should have told you."
Veronica felt something strange was up, but said nothing about it, "It's okay, I'm glad you're taking your education seriously." The pair picked at their lunches, neither one of them really eating anything and quickly got pulled into separate conversations when their friends arrived to the table.
When it was time for News Writing, he again walked with her to class despite the uncomfortable silence.
"All right class, today we're going to do an exercise on media bias," the Professor said, starting the class, "I want each of you to partner up and write a few sentences about something you did recently and then trade. From your partner's sentences, I want you to create three headlines that exemplify different biases we find in the media, a positive spin, a negative spin, a conservative spin... choose whichever ones you like, I want to see who did this week's reading."
Veronica wrote a couple sentences about her stakeout, the mob connections to the business partner and the money laundering that was occurring, leaving out most of the important details. Logan scribbled a few sentences about Dick getting high before passing the paper to Veronica. Normally they would talk and laugh while completing the "reading check" assignments, but today neither of them said a word.
After class, Logan walked her to her car, placed a soft kiss on her forehead and went in search of his own car. Upset, though she wasn't sure why, Veronica got in her car and drove to work, keeping her mind focused on the job. It wasn't like her and Logan were fighting, they were just having an off day. He would probably be himself by the morning.
A/N: Okay, so another two parter. Though, it wasn't originally. I felt there was too big of a jump between what is below and stargazing, so I added in a chapter before it to kind of fill in that time period. If there are any flow issues between these, I'm sorry! I wrote the next one first and then kind of filled in some details in the above. Any mistakes are my own as this is not beta'd (though I'm not sure if there is a need at this point since we're already 17 chapters deep...)
Chapter 17b: It's Over
Or not. After a few days of bizarre behavior, Veronica had given in and allowed herself to have a night with her girl friends. Sometimes what a girl needed was a good distraction. However, that was quickly proving to not be effective.
"Do you guys know what's up with Logan?" Veronica questioned as she closed the nail polish bottle and placed it on the floor in front of her. Parker had suggested that they have "girl's night" and while that wasn't exactly Mac or Veronica's thing, they had agreed to let Parker have her fun for one night.
Mac shrugged, looking through the bottles of nail polish on the floor, many of them belonging to Parker, before deciding on an electric blue for her finger nails. Parker finished painting her big toe before looking up, "Why do you think something's up?"
Veronica shrugged, "I don't know, he's just seemed kind of distant all week. Like he normally jumps at the chance to have some alone time, but lately he's been coming up with all of these lame excuses." She really didn't know what was going on in his head. Maybe he was bored of her?
Mac and Parker shared a quick glance while Veronica looked through the nail supplies for toe spacers. "Maybe he's stressed about midterms," Mac suggested, knowing midterms weren't for a few weeks and that Logan wasn't really the "midterm stresser" type. She instantly regretted the words as soon as they left her mouth.
"You know something," Veronica accused, abandoning her search and focusing her attention on her friend. Sometimes being a private detective came in handy; she could read people like books.
Mac looked to Parker for help who, in response, help up her hands in innocence. Veronica watched the interaction, "one of you is going to tell me what's going on," she demanded.
"Fine," Parker gave in, looking away. How could she break the news to her friend? "He wants to break up with you, but he doesn't know how. He asked us for advice, you know, a 'girl perspective' so he wouldn't hurt you. I'm sorry," she finished sadly, wondering if she should hug her friend. Veronica wasn't much of the hugging type, though. "This is why I wanted to do girls' night. You deserve a little pampering, try the facial cream," Parker finished, passing Veronica the bowl of homemade facial cream. She had read about it in some magazine and insisted that they try it.
Mac looked between the two of them, torn between wanting to yell at Parker for telling Logan's secret and wanting to comfort Veronica. "Good job, Parker," she settled, "you don't even know for sure if he will. He said he was thinking about it. Veronica…" Mac started, noticing her friend start to tear up.
Veronica stood; ready to bolt from the room. Her friends did not need to see her like this. Why was she so upset anyway? It's not like they were official or anything. They just went out on a few dates. She had said it herself: a few dates did not make her his girlfriend. "I'm fine Mac, I think this stuff is a little strong, though," she said, wiping her eyes and putting the bowl down away from herself.
If anyone in the room believed that performance, she deserved an Oscar. Instead, the two other girls looked at her with pity in their eyes. "I think I'm just going to go home," Veronica continued, collecting her bag, "I have a paper that I forgot to write and I should really do that. Scholarships, grades, all that important stuff. I'll see you guys later, though."
With that, she walked past them and out of the room. Briefly, she considered going up the flight of stairs to Wallace's room. Technically this did fall under the territory of best friend responsibilities, however, Wallace still lived with Piz and Veronica did not feel like dealing with him at the moment. Instead, she went directly out to her car.
Logan would get a kick out of that; all semester he had forbade her from walking to her car alone at night. She figured it didn't really matter at that moment, since he was ending things. Nothing bad happened; she made it safely to her car. He was just overreacting. Typical Logan, she sighed.
Making sure to lock her car doors as soon as she was safely inside, she finally allowed herself to cry. They had been doing so well. Well, if he was having trouble ending things without hurting her, maybe she should just rip off the band-aid and end things with him first. His house was, after all, just a short drive away. She could go over there, end things, and be home in thirty minutes.
Mac glared at Parker, "you have to tell him what you did," she insisted, crossing her arms at her roommate. Mac understood why Parker did what she did, but it didn't change the fact that she did it.
"Fine!" Parker grumbled, picking up her cell phone and calling Logan. It rang a few times before she heard his familiar voice through the phone, "so… I might have done something tonight…"
Logan's audible sigh was heard through the phone before his response, "what did you do?" he asked, calmly. He wasn't really in the mood to be bothered, considering Dick decided it would be a good night to eat his "special" brownies, forgetting that they were "special" and going off on a very interesting trip.
"I kind of told Veronica that you might possibly kind of be ending things with her," Parker said, speeding up towards the end so her words ran together. Oops.
The silence was deafening before he spoke, "Okay. Okay. Listen, I really have to go, Dick's trying to pet the rainbow, so… I will talk to you later. Please, just don't tell Ronnie anything else, okay?" With that, Parker heard dial tone and closed her phone.
"What did he say?" Mac asked, in the middle of cleaning up girls' night.
Parker stopped her, just because Veronica wasn't there didn't mean they couldn't have roommate bonding time. "He said Dick was trying to pet the rainbow and he had to go and to not say anything else to Veronica. I don't know what the first part means, but I can do the second," she said with a sigh.
Dick, meanwhile, had decided that the railing on their deck was indeed a rainbow, and a furry rainbow at that, and needed petting. Of course, with Dick not being of full mental capacity, Logan was concerned that he may somehow find a way to send himself over the railing. While this wouldn't be deadly, Logan figured that might end in a trip to the emergency room, a place he didn't particularly want to spend his evening. So, he corralled Dick back inside and two his own room, where he could ride out his high in solitude.
Logan was half-disappointed when Veronica didn't show up at his place that evening. He expected her to show up and either fight for them or yell at him or something. Though, he wasn't complaining that he didn't have to deal with an emotional Veronica after dealing with Dick, he was just surprised.
A/N: I know. Go ahead and hate. I'd probably hate me now too if I didn't know what was going to happen next... oh wait. Haha. Well. Reviews are wonderful. For serious. Also, I'd like to make a shout out to all of you who have been with me since day one. Your dedication is amazing and I heart you. I heart all the rest of you too. I just hearted them first. Haha. Okay. Review and stay tuned for more to come. Peace.