Forget that I rang you... (Part B)
Title: Forget that I rang you...
Author: sowell
Characters: Logan/Veronica, Keith, Lianne, Wallace
Word Count: 11,310
Rating: PG-13, for language and angst. Seriously, if you don't like angst, I'd advise staying away. Look at the excerpt. It's all downhill from there.
Summary: Future fic. Five years out of Neptune, and everyone's moving on except Veronica.
Spoilers: There are no spoilery references, but it won't make much sense if you haven't seen through the end of Season 2
Disclaimer: These characters belong solely and 100% to Rob Thomas and Co. Not mine. Don't sue.
Notes: 1) So, so, so, so much love to nessaassen and leucocrystal for their incredibly insightful and thorough beta work. They cleaned up my mess and made it readable - they are awesome. Also, thank you to everyone else on my flist who offered. It was really very appreciated. 2) Be warned - this fic may or may not contain hints of my EXTREME FRUSTRATION with Logan and Veronica this season. Just saying. 3) Title is lifted from, of course, Francis Dunnery's "Good Life."
X-posted to veronicamarsfic. As always, feedback is adored and slobbered over.
She steered clear of public places after that. Unfortunately, privacy came at a premium in Neptune. There were exactly two places she could go without being seen or approached: her room and her father’s office. Her room had grown sparser and emptier as the years passed. Now there was nothing left except a few paperbacks she’d never gotten around to reading and the laptop she’d brought from New York. Enough to keep her entertained for about, oh, twenty minutes. She spent an entire morning attempting to help out in the Mars Investigations office, but she hadn’t worked in the detective business in years. She’d found herself more in the way than anything else, and after a few hours of uselessly sifting through files, her father had shooed her out the door in exasperation.
That left the hospital. The first time she went back, she didn’t even make it through the front doors. The second time she made it all the way into her mother’s room, only to find her sleeping, every painful breath sounding in the quiet room.
“Go ahead,” the nurse said, smiling at her. “You can wake her. She’s been sleeping most of the day.” She’d tried to reach out and touch her, shake her awake, but she was trembling too violently. She found herself outside on the concrete walkway within minutes, sucking in air and daylight, trying to just stay conscious. She couldn’t make herself go back in.
“Just do it,” Wallace told her. “Even if you don’t mean it. Just tell her goodbye.”
“I don’t want to do her any favors,” she said. Her voice sounded like a toddler’s, small and cranky, and she wondered what it was about Neptune that reduced her to a scared child.
“I think you’ll be doing yourself a favor,” he said, frustrated. “This is the last chance you’ll have to make peace, Veronica.”
She hated to admit that he was right, but every day that passed made her stomach hurt a little worse. She would try anything, to make that go away.
“Maybe,” she said softly. “Maybe.”
The third time she went to the hospital, she just sat and watched her mother sleep. She couldn’t talk to her. She couldn’t. She wrote four different versions of notes to leave on the bedside table. She even ended one with “Love, Veronica.” But the one she finally settled on said: “Came to see you. Didn’t want to wake you. Be back tomorrow. Veronica.”
~
Twenty-four hours later, Lianne was dead. It was sooner than Veronica had been expecting, than anyone had been expecting. They’d all thought they had a few more weeks, but Lianne had taken a turn for the worse - quietly, without complaint - and died alone in the middle of the night. She’d signed the DNR papers, according to the hospital, so the nurses had let her flatline without calling for help.
Veronica knew, just from the look on her father’s face, exactly what he was going to say before he even opened his mouth. It didn’t stop the words from hitting her like a punch to the gut when he finally said them.
Her mother had abandoned them. She’d lied and she’d slept around and she hadn’t been able to give up drinking for her family when her daughter had given up everything - everything - for her.
And she’d died alone, unforgiven, and in pain.
It was all Veronica’s vengeful wishes come to life, and she couldn’t even enjoy it, because her mother was dead, and it felt worse than Veronica could have even imagined. It was an aching sort of emptiness, to know her mother was going to be buried in the ground and never speak or smile again. If this was what closure felt like, Veronica decided she could do without.
She didn’t cry. She turned away from her father and went back to checking her email.
~
The day of Lianne’s funeral was gorgeous, bright and breezy and warm, all blue skies and fluffy clouds and perfect, rustling trees. It was the kind of day for putting guilt behind you, for shrugging off burdens and turning over new leaves. Her father certainly looked lighter already. The circles under his eyes seemed less dire this morning, and he swung Alicia’s hand like they were twenty years old and in love instead of pushing sixty and struggling to get by in a town that was quickly outgrowing them.
And Veronica’s mother was about to be put in the ground, where she would rot, like Lilly, and Lynn and Aaron, and all the other people she’d already watched die. That band of taffy was stretching in her stomach again, gut to throat, and she wished it would just snap already.
She didn’t care, she told herself. Lianne had been a crappy mother and a crappy wife and she might as well have been dead for years, for all the effect it had on Veronica. She didn’t care that she was gone for good, and she didn’t care that she’d never really forgiven her, and she was numb, and detached, and so very, very over it, and….
She barely made it to the bushes before she threw up. Her father was there a second later, a hand on her shoulder as she wiped her mouth and her stomach heaved.
“I’m fine,” she told him, through the hollow nausea in her throat.
She could see all the possible answers in her father’s eyes, all the assurances and offers of help - a shoulder to lean on, a set of ears to help her through this. And she could see that he was already through it. Somehow, he’d come to terms when she wasn’t looking. The worst thing she saw there was pity, because she’d had a chance to make things right, and she hadn’t taken it.
“I’m fine,” she said again, before he could speak. She got up, kept stumbling toward her car, away from his acceptance and his peace.
~
The band broke. She found herself on Logan’s property that night without any memory of driving there. If her life were a movie, the heavens would be dumping rain and the wind would be howling, and she would show up on his doorstep like a lost kitten, drenched and shivering, and he would pull her through the door and kiss her until she was warm again.
But her life wasn’t nearly so glamorous. The night was clear and beautiful, and she couldn’t show up on Logan’s doorstep without warning, because he had a gated property and a multi-million dollar security system in place to prevent people from doing exactly that.
He sounded annoyed when he answered her intercom buzz. “If you’re here for another sandwich and makeout session, I’m going to have to start charging,” his voice said through the static.
She tried to speak, but the words wouldn’t come out.
“Veronica?”
She started to cry.
“Jesus,” she heard. The gates opened a second later, and she drove down his endless driveway, trying to wipe the tears away so she didn’t drive right onto his lawn.
He was waiting at the door for her, naked concern on his face. “What’s wrong? What happened? Is it - oomph!” He broke off when she threw herself at him, attacked him with her mouth and her hands and her legs wrapped around his waist. He caught her, of course, plastered her against him, because he really didn’t have another choice, the way she was kissing him.
He kissed her back like they hadn’t spent five years apart, his big body flexing and tightening under her, and she was suddenly beyond aroused, beyond desperate for him. He made a few valiant tries.
“Veronica,” he groaned, as she placed little kisses all along his jaw. She was still crying. “Slow down, let’s talk about - ” But she rolled her hips against him once, and the rest of his words turned into a hiss of pleasure.
Then later, when she’d already stripped off her shirt and they were halfway to his bed: “This isn’t healthy. Seriously, we have to talk before we just…” By the time he forced out the last word of the sentence, he was flat on his back; her mouth was on the salty skin of his stomach and his hands were on her head, pulling her closer, even as he was telling her to stop.
Finally, when she had her fingers wrapped around the hard length of him, guiding him into her, she heard the soft plea, “I don’t want you to regret this later.”
She couldn’t promise him anything, and she knew it. She should stop and talk, like he’d wanted to from the beginning, but she couldn’t do that either. The only thing she wanted was his skin and his mouth and his body inside of hers, and so she arched up, pulled him against her, as deep inside of her as he could possibly be.
She didn’t try to reassure him, and he didn’t try to comfort her. She didn’t say anything except for his name, once, when she came, and he kissed the tears from her cheeks and let the salt dry on his own lips.
~
Veronica always assumed one-night stands with strangers were the most awkward things in the world, which was why she made it a point to never have them. She was wrong. The most awkward thing in the world was a one-night stand with your estranged ex-boyfriend, who had just let you use him for comfort sex. She rolled over in the morning to find him watching her. His expression went guarded the minute they locked eyes.
“My mother’s funeral was yesterday,” she said without preamble, voice still raspy from sleep and tears. Well done, Veronica. Way to ease the tension.
But he just brushed some hair out of her eyes and said, “I figured.”
She had to smile. “What gave it away?”
“Your outfit,” he said. “You never wear black.”
He rolled out of bed, strong and easy and gorgeous, and she felt the tears well up in her eyes again for no reason. “I’ll make coffee,” he said, without a hint of expression in his voice, and she wasn’t sure if he was pissed, or sad, or anything at all.
She stared at herself for a long time in his bathroom mirror. The room was simple; no solid-gold trim, no crystal chandeliers. She could see her discarded funeral clothing lying in a heap by his bed. Well, most of it. Her shirt was still somewhere in his foyer. She put on his bathrobe instead - blue, silk, and perfect against her skin. For some reason she was suddenly convinced it was the best thing she’d ever worn. She followed the faint noises into the kitchen.
He looked like a walking Hanes ad in his T-shirt and boxers, all stubble, messy hair, and languid movements. He went still when he saw her, the coffee pot hovering in mid-air between the counter and percolator. “I borrowed your robe,” she said shyly. He didn’t answer her, but she saw his knuckles go white on the handle, and she had the sudden feeling she had missed something very, very important.
He set the coffee pot back on the burner in a careful, controlled motion, before turning to face her completely. “We have to talk,” he said, face inscrutable. Yes, she was definitely missing something. Her stomach began to flutter, and not in the good way.
“Wow, a little soon to jump into the relationship talks,” she tried to joke. “I thought I was supposed to be the girl, here.” His entire body winced. “Kidding,” she said weakly. His expression didn’t soften, and she didn’t like this one bit. She crossed her arms to stop them from shaking, suddenly achingly aware of how naked she was under the robe.
“Veronica,” he said gently. “I’m engaged.”
It was interesting, she’d think later, how peaceful things always got before they went to hell again. Her father always said it was life’s way of letting you breathe. She was pretty sure it was life’s way of making sure you never saw it coming.
One confession, and the whole room seemed to bottom out under her. Walls pressing in, vision wavering, body going numb. “What,” she whispered.
“I have a fiancée,” he said, again, in case she misunderstood the first time. His voice was low and controlled, but she could see his fists clenching and unclenching at his sides.
She wanted to say something else; she really did. But she was suddenly choking - on the silence, on his strained face, on the fact that his stupid robe was still blanketing her skin. He took a step toward her and she scrambled back against the counter. He stopped, caught in mid-reach for her.
“I need you to not touch me right now,” she said hoarsely.
He barely nodded; his eyes were on her frozen expression. “I’m sorry,” he said miserably. “I’m so sorry I didn’t tell you. First you said you didn’t want to talk about it, then last night you were so upset…” He trailed off at the look on her face.
“So it’s my fault?” she barked with a hysterical half-laugh. “Is that what you’re saying?”
“No,” he whispered, closing his eyes.
“God, were you ever going to tell me?” she yelled. “Did you think you were doing me a favor by doling out a pity fuck when you were engaged?”
“Don’t do that,” he said sharply. “You know it wasn’t like that.”
“Then what?” she cried. “Or did I miss the part where you were planning to leave her, due to the deep, meaningful roll in the hay we just had?”
He slumped against the counter, hands moving restlessly in his hair. “I love her,” he said helplessly, and she realized that she’d never actually known what it felt like to have your heart ripped from top to bottom, every painful, grasping inch. All the practice in the world couldn’t prepare you for the real thing. It took her a full thirty seconds before she could speak again.
“I’m sure,” she said, voice wobbling. “Is this how you always show your love? By sleeping with ex-girlfriends?”
His mouth drew into a tight line, despite the torture in his eyes. “No. Only you. Apparently I’ve still got some of that masochistic streak left after all.”
“Oh excuse me,” she said, nearly blind with anger. “I’m so sorry for being difficult. Please, what can I possibly do to make this more comfortable for you?”
“You can stop being a bitch and listen,” he snapped.
The anger dropped from his face the second he met her eyes. “Shit,” he muttered. “I’m sorry. Jesus, I’m so sorry, Veronica.” He threw up his hands. “I don’t know how else to say it. I swear, the last thing I wanted to do was dump more shit on top of you right now.” He looked at her, all tormented brown eyes and drawn face, and it took superhuman strength to keep from breaking down right there.
She bit down on her lip until she tasted blood. “Tell me how to act, here, Logan,” she said, voice trembling. “I don’t know what to say. What did you expect?”
“I didn’t expect anything,” he said, and there was a fifteen-year-old bitterness in his words. “I assumed it was a one-night thing. That you needed someone, and you’d be gone in the morning. That’s how it usually works with us, right?”
“Then why did you sleep with me?” she whispered, raw and scratched.
“I missed you too much to say no,” he said simply, without defense, and that was all it took to crack what was left of her composure.
“God, Logan,” she choked out. It hit her in a rush. There wouldn’t be any more chances for them, any more beginnings. He wasn’t her ex-boyfriend anymore - he was someone else’s future husband. The love of someone else’s life. Not her safe place. Not hers at all. “I have to go,” she muttered. “I have to get out of here.”
He took a step toward her, and she jerked away again, tripping back toward the bedroom. “Slow down,” he said, harried. “You’re upset. Let me drive - ”
“No!” she said. “Just- I can’t be here right now.”
He trailed anxiously behind her as she grabbed her clothes. “I know you’re pissed, but if you’ll let me- ”
She was throwing open the front door before he could finish the sentence. “Veronica!” he called, as she raced down his front steps for the second time that week. He was still framed in the doorway as she drove away.
Her father was sitting at the kitchen counter when she stumbled in, still wearing her clothes from the day before. He rose when he saw her, took one look at her face, and pulled her into a hug. He was murmuring things to her, trying to figure out what was wrong, but all she could do was shake her head and weep into the front of his shirt.
“Okay,” he said finally, gently. “It’s okay. Just cry.”
~
There were some things that Veronica would never forget about Neptune. The shiny SUV’s lining Main Street on a Saturday afternoon. The names of the streets you shouldn’t travel after dark. The palm-decorated skyline of the PCH highway, and the back roads to Dog Beach.
She met Wallace there the Thursday after her mother’s funeral. She requested he leave his wife and kids at home, and he seemed to understand. They spread out a blanket and sat looking at the ocean. It was still early spring, but it was California, after all, and there were already girls lying out in bikinis and stay-at-home moms under umbrellas with their infants. The newest generation of the PCH bike club came and went in the parking lot, and she made a mental note to ask her father about Weevil.
The thing about Wallace was that he let her talk and talk and talk, and he didn’t ask questions that hurt her, and he didn’t call her on being self-absorbed, and he never ever tried to give her advice. He let her talk about her mother, and about Logan, and he sat and listened and hurled rocks toward the water.
“I know it’s stupid,” she said softly, “and selfish, but I never thought he’d end up with someone else. I thought he’d always be sort of…mine.”
Wallace pulled her in close, so she could lean against his shoulder. “You know you’ll always have me, right?” he whispered above the waves. For once the promise didn’t bounce right off her. Her brain grabbed madly at his words, and she was terrified by how much she wanted to believe him.
~
She didn’t think she’d see Logan again, but he came to visit her a week after she put her mother in the ground. Her father let him in, then knocked on her bedroom door to tell her she had a “gentleman caller,” like she had never left high school.
“How are you?” he asked carefully, when they were seated across from each other, untouched coffee mugs in hand. She wanted to say something cutting, but if he could be an adult, then so could she.
“Fine,” she said coolly. “Cheat on your fiancée much lately?”
Okay, maybe not.
She saw the little muscle start to twitch in his jaw. “I think I liked it better when you were out of practice with the sarcasm,” he said grimly.
“Well you can’t have it both ways,” she retorted.
That sobered him right up. “I know,” he said on an exhale. “I know.”
He looked beaten, and guilt-ridden; he looked as though he hadn’t had a decent night’s sleep in a week, and she found herself having to consciously side-step the urge to comfort him. If anyone deserved comfort right now, it was her. Or his poor, nameless fiancée. “Let’s just get this over with, Logan,” she said shortly. “Have you told her yet?”
“No, she’s uh - she’s away for a couple weeks, visiting her family in San Francisco.” He was rubbing his palms in agitation over the coarse fabric of the couch. “I didn’t think she’d appreciate hearing it over the phone.”
She couldn’t argue with that piece of logic, although she really wanted to. “Are you going to tell her?” she asked, hearing the steel creep into her voice. Her fingers were very cold, and she realized abruptly they were curled so tightly over the edge of the cushion that she’d lost circulation.
His voice was scratchy with exhaustion and strain when he said, “I can’t lie to her. Not about this. And I can’t tell her. I can’t hurt her like that.” He looked at her, tortured. “And I don’t want to hurt you any more than I already have. I don’t know how to fix this Veronica. Tell me what to do. Do I tell her?”
Her spine snapped to attention. “Oh no,” she said angrily. “You do not get to put this on me, Logan. You made this mess - you have to deal with it.”
He hung his head, defeated, and they sat in the heavy silence for a few seconds. She almost certainly didn’t want to know, but she couldn’t stop herself from asking the question anyway. “If you tell her, do you…do you think she’ll forgive you?”
His laugh sounded quite hollow. “Forgive me? No. I don’t think she’ll forgive me. I think she’ll dump me so fast my head will spin around. You’d like her.”
“I’m sure we’d be shopping buddies in no time,” she muttered.
He turned his head to stare at her, and his eyes were haunted. “She’s blonde,” he said slowly. “And tiny, and prickly, and way too good for me.”
Jealousy shot through her fast enough to give her whiplash. “You have the worst timing ever,” she informed him angrily. “And if you think I want to hear this, you’re insane.”
He steamrolled over her like she hadn’t even spoken. “If I tell her what happened, I’ll break her heart. I swear to God Veronica, I don’t want to do that.”
She had to shove her teeth together to stop the trembling. “Because you love her,” she said with effort.
“Yes,” he said painfully. “Almost as much as I love you.” He must have seen the shock on her face, because he gave a strangled laugh and looked away. “Don’t look like that,” he said in a low voice. “You know it’s true, Veronica. I always have.”
She wondered if this was what her mother had felt like, when Jake Kane married someone else. She wondered if her mother had felt this way until the day she died; like she was breathing through a very narrow tube. Just enough air to stay conscious. Certainly not enough to move forward. Definitely not enough to thrive.
“So I guess it’s settled then,” she said unevenly, knowing the answer. Tears were threatening again and she dug her nails slowly into her palms, bracing herself.
Only, he didn’t say what she expected. He was quiet for a long moment. His eyes were still turbulent, but his voice was steady when he said, “That depends on you.”
She went very still. “What?”
“You said before that you were going back to New York. Are you still going?” he asked her with controlled calm.
Her heart rate was beginning to do funny things. “Do you want me to go?”
“I don’t want you to go because of me,” he said, his gaze piercing right through her. “Not because of this.”
She had to speak very, very carefully now, to make sure they understood each other. “I could never stay here and act like everything is okay after this,” she told him, watching his eyes, trying to latch on to the shifting emotion there.
He brushed a hand along her cheek, and she shivered with the tenderness of it. “I know,” he murmured.
“So…what?” she asked faintly. She could feel awful, dangerous hope start to rise in her.
“You could leave,” he said, his voice dragging out of him like wet gravel, “and it can stay a secret. You’ll be gone, and she’ll never have to know. She’ll never have to get hurt like that.” He slid his fingers through hers, and in her mind she heard him telling her he didn’t know their last time would be their last time until it was too late. “Or I can tell her now,” he said carefully, “and you…you could stay.”
His eyes were burning into hers, and she couldn’t have looked away if she tried. “Veronica, when you left the first time, I barely survived. And I don’t -” his voice cracked, just a little, “I don’t want you to leave again. Not if you don’t want to.” She should say something, she knew, but she was afraid to break the moment. She couldn’t predict which way it would shatter.
“If you stay - if she finds out what happened…” he said thickly. “It’s up to you,” he continued, holding her eyes. “What do I do, Veronica? Do I tell her?” She tried to pull her hand out of his, mind whirling, but he squeezed tight. His other hand was stroking her cheek a little - small, reverent caresses. He was asking her a question, and she wasn’t even sure he knew what he wanted the answer to be.
“Do I tell her?” he asked again, quiet and desperate.
And suddenly she saw: if she said yes, he would do it. He would break off his engagement, because she was here, and she wanted him to. He would kiss her now, and tell her in that husky, shuddering voice how much he loved her, and then they would go back to his king-sized bed and make love and laugh and cry and smile at each other until their cheeks ached. She could see it all playing out frame by frame in her head, a perfect playbook of what could be. She knew this story; she’d lived this story. She thought of all the times they’d been here before, all the times they’d caught each other when the other was falling. Of how much alike they were. Of how well they made love and how well they fought. How well they tore each other down. She thought of how spectacularly it always fell apart, of how much it always hurt, and how they’d been chasing after closure for fifteen years without success. Of how miserable they always ended up, and how close he was to escaping it all, to getting out. To maybe being happy.
And she made the right decision. “No,” she whispered through the tears in her throat. “You don’t tell her.”
He swallowed slowly. He took a moment to collect himself, the struggle plain as day on his face. And then he squeezed her hand once and let her go. “Okay,” he said, and she tried very hard not to hear the relief in his voice, and the grief.
They looked at each other for a few seconds; then he wrapped his arms around her, and she did her best not to press her face against his chest. “I’m still going to miss you,” he said softly into her hair, a little bit of despair in his voice.
She wanted to tell him she was going to miss him, too, and that she was glad he’d found a way to have some peace, even if it was with someone else, but she didn’t want him to see her cry again. A million things went through her mind, but the only one she could manage to get out was, “I can’t believe you actually grew up.”
He looked at her for a long, surprised moment, and there was a devastating sort of affection in his eyes when he said, “I can’t believe you actually noticed.”
~
Lilly Kane’s grave was located on the opposite side of the cemetery from Veronica’s mother. Even the dead were segregated by wealth in Neptune, and the Kane family had secured prime real estate for their little girl. Dappled by tree branches and backed by an extensive garden, the rose-hued stone drew eyes as easily as the girl herself had done. Veronica sat down on the accompanying bench for the first time in five years, feeling the nostalgia well up in her.
“Hey Lilly,” she said softly. The day was perfect and sunny and made for being out-of-doors, and it made her never want to set foot on the East Coast again. “I’m almost thirty, Lilly,” she continued. She shook her head. “I still feel sixteen.”
She tried to imagine Lilly’s arch smile, tried to imagine what she would say if she were alive, how she would scold Veronica for sitting around in a graveyard, moping about a boy. But it wasn’t working. Because Lilly would be thirty, too, now, and maybe she would have been a Neptune trophy wife, or maybe she would have been slogging through the rain forest building houses for poor tribes in South America, or maybe she would have died in some other tragic and completely spectacular way. Maybe she would be married to Logan. Veronica wasn’t sure if she was more devastated or relieved that she’d never have to find out.
“I’m really, really lost right now, Lil,” she said as her tears blurred the spring flowers around her. “I wish you could just be here to tell me what to do.” But Lilly hadn’t answered her in years. She left a picture of the two of them preening at age fourteen, rolled up inside an “I ♥ New York” shot glass in front of the headstone
It took a full twenty minutes for Veronica to walk the twisting tar paths from her best friend’s resting place to her mother’s. Lianne didn’t get quite as swanky a deal - apparently being the town drunk wasn’t on the same level as being the daughter of its favored benefactor. Her mother’s grave was a little more crowded, another flat gray stone among hundreds, lined up in rows in the sun.
There was no bench, so she slid to the ground in front of it. It was the newest grave in the section, she could tell. Her father had inscribed “Wife and Mother” right above her name and dates, and Veronica had to be glad that he hadn’t taken the lie any further and written “loving Mother” or “darling Wife” or, worst of all, “She will be missed.”
She had nothing to say to her mother. She didn’t have any practice talking to this particular ghost. She didn’t want to reminisce and she didn’t want to ask advice and it was a little tough to vent her frustrations when a silent slab of granite was her only audience. Granite didn’t fight back, and she still very much wanted to fight.
So she sat. She thought about how terrible a cook her mother was, even before the vodka took over. She thought about how she had her mother’s blue eyes and blonde hair, and how adoringly her father used to look at her before everything went to hell. She thought about her mother picking boys out of her yearbook and bringing home stray animals and how, even though he would have defended Veronica or Keith to his death, Back-up always really liked Lianne best.
She thought about all the things that she’d forgotten, or discarded along the way, how much she she’d buried and how much she still didn’t understand. And when the shadows started to stretch around her, and Veronica stood up to leave, she leaned over and whispered her forgiveness into cool stone.
She didn’t leave anything except flowers.
~
Logan drove her to the airport. He bought a ticket, despite her raised eyebrows, and walked right through security with her. They slouched next to each other in the hard plastic chairs and attempted to make small talk for all of five minutes before they gave up and stared out at the tarmac.
“I’m not coming to your wedding,” she said without warning, and immediately felt her face flood with color. He just looked amused.
“You assume you were actually getting an invitation,” he teased, and she felt a little less like she wanted to die.
“Okay,” she said, relieved. “Good.”
“Same here,” he added as an afterthought. “When you get married, I don’t want any engraved cards in the mail. And I won’t call you by your married name.”
She had to smile. “We’ll put it on the list of things we won’t talk about,” she agreed.
“We might want to make a list of topics that aren’t forbidden,” he pointed out. “Much shorter.”
He stood up with her when they called her row to board. And maybe he slid his hands up into her hair and held her a little too tightly when they said goodbye, but they would never talk about that, either.
But there were a few things that still weren’t off-limits. “Logan,” she said softly, right before she turned to go. “I’ll miss you, too.”
~