Continued...
Logan noticed the crowd inside the gates before Veronica did. She had spent the ride busy staring at the floorboards, her fingers loose as she entwined their fingers. He had been debating questioning her on her silence for most of the ride, but he didn’t want to start an uncomfortable conversation and then have her disappear to make it to class on time.
“Oh, this should be good,” he muttered without thinking, eying the growing group of onlookers gathered around the flagpole. Veronica started suddenly, her eyes flashing up to the windshield.
“Hmm,” she murmured. “Well, at least they aren’t gathered around us for once.”
“Yet,” Logan said. “We’ve barely made it onto school property. I’m more worried about you acquiring some new enemy of the PCHers now that Lilly won’t keep Weevil from killing you.”
“You mean you wouldn’t initiate a fight to the death for my honor?”
Logan shrugged. “You’ve got some lofty expectations of me considering we haven’t even really had a first date. I think I’m really only obligated to cry at your funeral right now. Maybe scream your name in a painful falsetto as he tears you from my arms.”
Veronica nodded. “I see. Well, it’s a good thing Weevil likes me then.” She dropped his hand with a smirk and jumped out of the car.
“Maybe not for much longer,” Logan commented as they got closer. They maneuvered through the crowd until they were close enough to see Lilly and Weevil at the center of it, just as Lilly’s palm connected to Weevil’s cheek.
“Shit.”
Shockingly, Weevil didn’t strike back. The look he gave her could’ve frozen anyone else solid, but she was Lilly and she only glowered back at him.
“You want it to be public, Lilly,” he told her in a low growl. “Fine. You’re bringing it on yourself with all your little bullshit. You want so much for all of them to give a damn what you do with yourself, but it’s bitter as hell that none of them love you as much as you love yourself anymore, isn’t it? You’re just a sideshow, and you damn well know it.”
“You…!” Lilly sputtered with her anger, furious beyond control. “Fuck, all you were supposed to even be was a good lay, and you weren’t worth keeping around for that! All your damn love letters and the sappy phone calls. You’re supposed to be the boy! You’re just a pathetic little cholo, and the sex wasn’t even worth it.”
Weevil smirked. “Yeah, I don’t live on an acre of land, princess. And my neighbors all heard whose name you were screaming all night long.” He turned away from her, shaking his head. “I will say, white trash girls won’t do the things you do, Lilly. And I didn’t even have to work for it.”
He was gone before she could respond, but Veronica caught his eye for a moment as he headed toward the parking lot, obviously planning on taking the rest of the day off. She could’ve sworn she saw pity on his face.
“This is not going to be good.”
. . .
“I don’t know why you think you’re just going to sit there and partake in the table’s pizza like nothing happened yesterday,” Logan said, watching as Wallace’s hand froze above the pizza box.
Wallace shot Veronica an accusatory look, and all she could offer in return was a shrug.
“The tension is palpable,” Dick said, licking his finger and ticking it off in the air. Veronica’s head spun toward him. “Impressed? Word-a-day toilet paper.”
Logan shook his head, ignoring the comment. “She’s all in one piece,” he said to Wallace, “and I know that’s because you were there. So I won’t kick your ass.” Wallace visibly relaxed. “But… you also helped her coordinate this incredibly stupid plan behind my back, which has to be violating some sort of man code. So you should still probably sit somewhere else.”
Wallace looked at Veronica. “I want it on the record. I chose you first today, and I was rejected. It is your fault I have to leave.”
“I take full responsibility,” she told him, discreetly sneaking him a slice of pizza. “Your next spirit box will reflect my gratitude.”
“That better not mean you’re spitting it in,” he told her.
“What if it means I’m spitting in it less than usual?”
“You’re sick, you know that. You just ruined snickerdoodles for me, and that may be the meanest thing anyone has ever done to me.”
“Don’t worry,” Veronica told him. “I’ll just let Backup lick them so that the sugar will stick.”
“I hate you.”
Veronica turned to Logan after he walked away. “How long are you going to punish him?”
“Don’t know yet. If you really meant all that about the cookies, I’ll probably cut him some slack. Otherwise, a few days.”
“You know if was all my idea, and I made him an unwilling accomplice, right?”
“Of course,” he told her. “But if I’m angry with you, I lose. No happy fun backseat time for Logan. If I’m mad at Wallace, no one loses. You sneak him pizza, and he gets to sit with his real friends and make you feel guilty about it. Which means you are the only one even a little upset by it, which is, coincidentally, exactly what I want.”
“I don’t think you’re getting your backseat time anyway,” she told him. “I don’t even have a backseat right now, and you would definitely not be invited to it after that speech if I did.”
Logan squeezed her thigh. “You have a standing invitation to mine. Any time.” He turned to Dick before the conversation could go in the direction that his brain was already starting to drift toward. “Hey, think you could help me pick up Veronica’s car later. She left it at Duncan’s yesterday.”
Dick gave Veronica a lecherous look at the mention of Duncan, but was derailed from whatever comment he had been about to make when Logan’s foot connected with his shin.
“Why don’t you take Wallace?” Veronica suggested. “Dick will just help you pick the fight that you are dying for.”
Dick looked ready to argue when Veronica shot him a look. He begrudgingly nodded.
“I think Wallace has probably gotten his fair share of the Kane house,” Logan said. “Besides, until that dog breath cookie is in his mouth, he is on the shit list.”
“Logan, we’re having dinner with my father tonight,” Veronica reminded him. “You cannot show up with a broken nose. I don’t want to have to explain that.”
Logan’s hand played along her thigh. “You have so little faith in me.” Logan commented. “You think I’d get into a fight with Duncan - with Dick there as backup - and he would be able to break my nose?”
“I think Duncan could trip Dick, and he would kick you in the nose on the way down.”
“Once,” Dick said, jumping in. “And I don’t drink everclear anymore. Lesson learned.”
“The punch had everclear on Halloween, Dick.”
“We aren’t going to start anything, Veronica,” Logan said, cutting off Dick’s response. “We’ll get your car and go.”
It really was his plan. But he couldn’t say how Duncan would react.
And he definitely couldn’t speak for Lilly.
TBC...