Chapter Ten
Mac and Wallace sat in the front seat of Wallace's late model basketball orange Camaro. The basketball lover in Wallace Fennel had ordered it special with a black racing stripe running across the top of the car from bumper to bumper. Ignoring the resemblence that she had joked about earlier, Veronica slid into the back seat still stunned by their encounter.
Turning as Wallace started the engine, Mac flashed her dimples at Veronica as if she were going to tease her but Veronica managed to get her vocal chords working first. "You knew exactly where we were wandering, didn't you?" she asked in an accusatory tone.
A guilty but remorseless look lit Mac's face, not impacting the depth of her dimples or her grin at all. She shrugged and answered, "That depends. Did we know that we were wandering along West Channel? Yes. We thought it would be fun to tease you about Miss Sofia's Readings, stop at Caffe Delfini for lunch, and then meander around for awhile. Did we purposely stop in front of Casa de Caring? That was all you," she laughed, lightly whapping Wallace's arm to get a nod of agreement before adding, "Now, that's not to say that we didn't know it was there. We were kinda wondering how long it would take you to notice. You were so into your story and all. You're usually much more observant, Bond!" Mac teased.
Wallace piped in as well with his own mocking banter, "You've gone soft, Marshmallow! The Veronica Mars I used to know would never miss something so huge!"
Veronica threw her hands up and shook her head, "Yeah, yeah, I've lost my touch, but seriously, folks. You didn't know Logan was gonna be there? You weren't just trying to see if you could pull one over on me since I've been out of the biz for so long?"
"No," Wallace answered seriously as Mac turned back around to face the road, "We knew it was possible he'd show up but we had no idea that the timing would be like that." He chuckled and shook his head, glancing at her in his rearview mirror, "We couldn't have planned it like that if we'd tried." Then, still alternating between watching the road and watching his friend, he said, "Vee, you do remember he's with someone, right?"
She'd been caught so off guard by seeing Logan again that she'd completely forgotten the headline she and Piz had seen in New York. Wallace's reminder hit her like a ton of bricks. All of a sudden it was hard to breathe. Her eyes and her voice were emotionless as she said, "And I'm with Piz."
Wallace shot Mac a concerned look and Mac gave a subtle shake of her head. No, words were not necessary. Veronica would never react outwardly, but they both knew that she needed time. They just needed to make sure that she didn't have too much time to think or things could end up backfiring on them.
Later, when Mac had headed home and Wallace was the only one at the apartment with Veronica while they waited for Keith to get in, he moved to sit on the couch next to her and bumped his shoulder against hers, saying, "Earth to Mars. You ok, Fly Girl?"
Veronica started to nod as she sat there with arms tightly crossed over her stomach but then knew she couldn't lie and shook her head instead, only managing to get out a shaky, "No," before she covered her face with her hands and her body began trembling with her silent sobs.
Pulling her in for a tight side-squeeze, Wallace said, "Come on, Girl! It's not that bad, is it? I mean, you survived, right?"
Unable to answer right away, a muffled, "You don't understand," was all Veronica managed for several minutes. Finally, when she'd regained some of her control, she said, "That's just it. It wasn't the seeing him that was bad. It was the realizing that we've both moved on that made it rough."
It always amazed Wallace how someone so slick, sly, and full of street smarts could be so emotionally retarded but then, Wallace had never been through even half of what Veronica Mars had been through in her 28 years of life. He hadn't even dealt with a quarter of what she'd survived by the time she was 18. Giving her a hug, he turned his head to look at her fondly before saying with certainty, "Just because you're both with someone else does not mean either of you has moved on."
The look Veronica gave him as she impatiently wiped away her tears said clearly that she thought he must be growing a second head or using the wrong brain or something. Immediately she said as if her words were exactly what he'd been suggesting, "Logan and I don't cheat. When we're with someone, we're with someone. End of story."
"Who said either of you was cheating?" Wallace asked indignantly, noting how she'd said 'Logan and I' along with the plural 'we' but kept his mouth shut on that subject, choosing to continue instead with, "All I said was that you don't have to have moved on to be with someone else. In fact, you can pretend you've moved on all you want but until you've dealt with your past, your past is gonna haunt you."
"I ran from my past," Veronica stated thoughtfully in a small voice.
"You sure did, Flo Jo," Wallace teased lightly before asking her intently, "What you gonna do 'bout that now?"
She looked at him, a certain amount of helplessness mixed with a dash of resigned acceptance in her eyes as she said solemnly, "I'm going to shut it down and flush it out," adding with resolve, "We're adults now. We can be civil and mature about this. We just need to remember who and what we're committed to and accept that his life is here and mine is in New York."
"And how you gonna do that? You don't remember nothin' when Echolls is around," Wallace pointed out.
Decidedly, Veronica looked Wallace square in the eye and said simply, "You're going to help me."
"Help you?! I ain't spendin' your whole visit keepin' track of you and lover-boy!" Wallace protested.
"You won't need to," Veronica said confidently, a plan formulating in her mind, "You'll just need to be a phone call away."
"Say what now?" Wallace asked incredulously, wrinkling his brow and narrowing his eyes at her as he tried to figure out what kind of scheme she had dreamed up now.
"If you're a phone call away, I can shoot you a 9-1-1 text and you can - " Veronica repeated before beginning to explain her plan.
Wallace had already heard enough and interrupted with a firm, "Not gonna happen, V." He shook his head adamantly before adding, "If you're lookin' to prove how mature you are, then why don't you try calling him out and talking to him? See if he'd meet you somewhere or something."
Veronica started to protest but before she could get a word out, Wallace covered her lips with his left index finger and shook his head again, "Nope. Don't even say it, Mars. See, there's this other thing that comes along with being mature. It's called 'closure.' You and Logan never had any. So one way or the other, you my friend, need to figure out how to really deal. I mean, come on, you're badass in everything else. Why not find a way to beat your Kryptonite?"
"My Kryptonite?" Veronica laughed, her jaw dropping incredulously, "How is he my Kryptonite? He's saved my ass more times than I care to admit! That definitely doesn't sound like Kryptonite to me. Try a different super evil," she suggested gamely, hoping to distract him by sidetracking the conversation.
Wallace just chuckled knowingly and gave her a brief headlock and affectionate noogie, "Nope. If you're determined to make him be evil, YOU figure out what kind of evil he is. I think you're gonna find, though, that it's a heck of a lot harder to villainize him now than it used to be, V. He's changed and you bettah reco'nize."
"I reco'nize," she grumbled in return, picking up a throw pillow and bopping him with it, "It's damn near impossible to NOT reco'nize," she added grudgingly with a frown.
Studying her for a good thirty seconds, Wallace had a small questioning ghost of a smile tugging at his lips when he finally asked, "Why is that so hard for you to accept? I mean, isn't that what you always wanted?"
Yes, of course it was what she always wanted, but why did it have to finally happen when they were both already with someone else? Out loud she ignored the second question and shrugged in regards to the first, saying simply, "You know why it's so hard to accept. There's always that nagging thought at the back of my mind wondering how long till the jackass strikes again."
In the middle of Veronica's last dialogue, Keith arrived home and overheard most of her last sentence, choosing to interject and make his presence known before Wallace could say something profound. "Which jackass is striking again?" he asked as he took his jacket off and hung it on the back of one of the stools at the kitchen counter.
"No one, Dad," Veronica replied, pursing her lips and threatening Wallace's life with her eyes, "We were talking about the overall jackassery of the general public, that's all."
"Overall jackassery, huh?" Keith questioned doubtfully before turning to the other occupant of the room, "Is that so, Wallace?"
"Yes, Sir," Wallace responded, just as he always had, backing Veronica up whether he agreed with her or not, "How some jackasses are more jackass-y than others and how, sometimes, even if it's rare, it's possible for a jackass to change allllllmost to the point of losing their jackassery altogether."
Veronica scoffed as her dad puzzled over what it was that Wallace was trying to say, "Jackasses are like leopards. They can roll around in the mud and cover their spots but they can never make them all go away."
"Maybe it's not such a bad thing if they can't get ALL the spots to go away," Wallace returned while Keith looked on, "Maybe, just maybe, those spots can come in handy sometimes, give the jackass some edge."
"So are we talking leopards or jackasses here?" Keith interrupted, "I'm confused."
"Both if it means Veronica admits she likes her jackasses with a few spots or her leopards with a healthy dose of jackassery," Wallace quipped boastfully, holding his hands up as if to shield against the tiny fist he knew was coming.
Veronica stubbornly clenched her jaw and refused to respond but that didn't keep her father from interjecting dryly, "Other than Piz, she certainly has chosen her companions based on their spots and it's mostly seemed the more spots the merrier."
"Don't forget Duncan," Veronica reminded grudgingly before turning to Keith to ask, "Dad, what do you know about Casa de Caring, what it does, what it's about and all that?"
Keith's suspicions were immediately confirmed with her line of questioning and he said cautiously, "I know a few things. Why?"
Hesitating a moment, Veronica turned to Wallace but Wallace stood and clapped his hands together once before saying, "Well, I can see my work here is done. I'll just be moseying on home now." He cautiously took several steps toward the door and when he wasn't stopped, he made a dash for it.
"Traitor," Veronica muttered under her breath as she watched him go, then turned to her dad to explain, "It's just...I found out about it today and I'm curious." It sounded lame even to her but it was the truth, or at least as close to the truth as she was willing to admit.
"Well, Sweetie," Keith began, his tone filled with fatherly patience, "I think that is a much better question to ask Logan. It's his project after all. I'm sure he can answer your questions much better than I can."
Giving a painfully long-suffering sigh, Veronica said, "I know that, Dad. I just...thought it might be better for both of us if I kept my distance."
"Better for both of you or better for you?" Keith asked knowingly, looking down his nose at her with those omniscient private detective eyes.
"I don't know," Veronica answered honestly, smothering a yawn with the palm of her right hand.
Keith pulled her in and gave her a squeeze before saying, "Until you know, don't rule it out. Now get some sleep. Maybe you'll have some answers in the morning."
Nodding, Veronica gave her father another tight embrace before leaning up on tiptoe to give him an affectionate kiss on the cheek. "Night, Dad."