Chapter Text
There is no
ending to be had. Sleep kisses our eyelids. Stars wheel in
the dreams. The river plants its tide in us, saying, sea, sea, sea.
-Traci Brimhall
“Saturday, your name’s Tony Cabrini,” Veronica says, throwing Weevil the ID card. He catches it, then tucks it discreetly into the lining of his black leather jacket. Logan would twirl it around his fingers like a sharp, she thinks, with a pang of fondness for both of them. “The badge’ll get you into the gala, but after that? You’re on your own.”
Weevil will be tracking his client’s husband, a prosecutor suspected of an affair with opposing counsel. Veronica, meanwhile, will be snapping photos of the mayor as he gladhands the eco-elite: the oil executives who earmark a few grand for coral restoration per spill, and the heiresses in ‘sustainable’ couture whose private jets emit the CO2 of a small city. She’s searching for evidence of the hypocrisies they’re trying harder to conceal.
The copy editor told her to lighten up, her voice as sweet as fondant, and thick with condescension. The op-ed writer advised her to stay humble. And the stipple artist added, with a gravelly huff, “You won’t be meeting Deep Throat, Mars.”
You have no idea what I’m capable of, Veronica thought, studying the guest list so she’d know where to aim her camera. She’s already identified a few targets. There’s a judge who golfs with a founding member of the Liberty Lobby, and—rumor has it—trades blowjobs for verdicts. There’s a pension-stealing Ponzi schemer whose son filed articles of incorporation the same week he was released from Club Fed. According to Wallace, the Bridgewater risk manager used to supply the Alpha Deltas with cocaine and steroids, and his doping ring nearly took down Hearst’s football team; fortunately for them, the “distinguished alumni” could afford a decent cover-up, and his clean-cut, Kennedy handsomeness hid the rest.
They don’t know what they’re in for, Veronica smirks.
Hopping off of her father’s desk, her nail snags on a seven-year-old groove in the wood; when she first unpacked the office, anger made her clumsy with the boxcutter. She’d been dwelling on the image of Don Lamb at the station, sitting in her father’s chair, admiring his reflection in the gold nameplate that announced his unearned title. He was stiff and unsmiling, a jarhead to the core, where Keith had been loose-limbed and affable, and she mourned the loss of her dad’s easy smile even more than she resented that jumped-up deputy.
Of course, Keith was doing his best to stay positive, and he’d seemed more like his old self at the consignment shop, where they perused the shelves for items that would give their office “gravitas”—distract clients from the bugs trapped in the light fixture and the ominously rumbling pipes, that is. Veronica decided on a bronze figurine of Lady Justice, willowy, beautiful, and blind—she was still learning how to be practical—and Keith chose the desk, rapping the oak until the proprietor craned her neck around a pink fringe lamp to glare at him. She must have a sixth sense for which customers buy on layaway, Veronica thought. She returned the prim old woman’s scowl, although she hardly looked intimidating herself, in her rainbow-print shirt (size youth large), bubble skirt, and sandals with daisy buckles, an antique tricorn sliding down her forehead and obscuring her eyes.
Hanging the hat on the rack, Veronica wondered why her dad sounded so satisfied when he declared the desk was “built to last.” We’ll just have to sell it after Election Day, she figured. She still had a child’s devout faith in the infallibility of the law, and was confident the majority would soon rule in their favor: “what is popular is not always right” was unconvincing, when her dad had been winning elections all her life and she had a seat at the 09er table. So Veronica had been certain, back then, that they’d rebound from their fall from grace, and Mars Investigations would be a blip in their family history. A paragraph in her college application essay (“Adaptability is a trait that will serve me well in my academic career, especially when it’s combined with my understanding of how much more adaptable the working poor have to be to survive in America”), an orientation icebreaker (Two truths and a lie: “I have a phobia of the number thirteen, I was Balboa County Spelling Bee champion in 1995–the winning word was ‘dolomite’—and I know how to hunt a fugitive.”), and then, forgotten.
“You’ll need a suit,” she tells Weevil now. “Fitted, but nothing flashy.”
“I’m no amateur, V,” he reminds her, arching his brow. The fuzzy lamplight softens his unimpressed expression; they never turn on the overhead fluorescents here, because it’s easier to confess secrets in the shadows. “I had lessons in disguise, the same as you, and I get the job done, even if I can’t pull off the head-tilt.” Veronica rocks on her heels in chagrin. “If any of the ‘esteemed guests’ start asking questions,” he adds in a preppy accent that makes her blink twice, “I’ll just namedrop one of your exes.” Then, in his normal voice, “I’ll tell the caterwaiters all about my boss, the tiny blonde ball-breaker, and the newspaper that’s too cheap to pay its interns.”
Instead of apologizing—he wouldn’t welcome it anyway—Veronica says, “You can always bat your lashes,” and grins when Weevil does just that. Then he runs his hands through his black hair, which is now a full inch long. He must be experimenting with styles for going undercover. He doesn’t look like himself, and she wonders how long he’ll last before buying a razor and resorting to wigs. Whenever she feels overwhelmed, she still sharpens the layers of her bob.
They head into the lobby, where her dad is praising Pony’s sit-stay-rollover and Daniel is glutting the dog with treats; he keeps them in a jar at reception between the pen cup and the star cactus.
“There’s my shutterbug!” Keith says, smiling proudly at his daughter. After scarfing down the treats, Pony scampers toward her, nearly barreling her over.
“Sorry, Dad, I’ve got to go,” Veronica replies, struggling to clip a leash on the squirming puppy. “I have to restock Skist and and chips for the graduation party.”
“You’re running really late,” Daniel says. “Commencement season was, like, four months ago.”
“Logan had an odd number of credits when he re-enrolled.”
“They could’ve let him walk in the spring anyway!” The teenager sounds endearingly indignant.
Weevil is silent, bending down to scratch Pony behind the ears, and Veronica’s brows pull together when she realizes why. The old outrage sparks in her chest at the memory of their own commencement, when the Sheriff stormed into the Neptune High auditorium to arrest him. Weevil had begged Lamb to spare him the humiliation of the perp walk—not for himself, but for his abuela, who watched from the bleachers—and the look in his dark eyes was terrible. The Sheriff forced his arms back instead, so the handcuffs would be visible under the billowing sleeves of his gown.
He’s been wearing costumes for years, just like I have, she thinks. PCHer bravado. That's a kind of mask, too.
“Logan said he’d rather celebrate in private anyway,” she tells Daniel with a shrug, even though it hurts her to know he's suffering yet another casualty of the Echolls’ notoriety.
But what’s his alternative? Grinning on stage, defiant, and pretending the flashes in the crowd aren’t warnings of a Page Six feature? The Post would buy a portrait of Logan Echolls in his cap and gown to print next to his mugshots—or worse, his father’s mugshot—and Tara Palmieri’s gleeful insinuations that he fucked drunken coeds, bribed professors, and paid students on scholarship to write his senior thesis.
Her dad stops her at the door, touching her elbow to pull her into a hug. “Tell Logan ‘congratulations,’” he says quietly. “From me.”
She examines him closely, judging his sincerity, but Veronica sees only truth. So she pecks his cheek, tenderness swelling behind her sternum when she notices his patchy shave and deepening crow’s feet. “I will,” she promises. “And Dad...thank you."
In the driver’s seat of her boyfriend’s car, Veronica takes a moment to look up, meeting the eye above the words “Mars Investigations.” She lets herself feel gratitude for this place, which she has clung to, fled, and, finally, outgrown. It suits Keith Mars better than the Sheriff’s office ever did: he’s able to follow his conscience—especially now that he’s managed to accrue some savings, since Veronica is paying her own way. Instead of enforcing laws he doesn’t agree with while praying silently for jury nullification, he can turn down the dodgy cases. And he no longer has to measure his words during press conferences in order to placate the mayor’s top donors.
As much as Mars Investigations stole from Veronica—sleep, peace, the last of her childhood innocence—it has served her well, in the end: she’s made sure of it, using her PI know-how to do the job that suits her best. There’s no work today, though. She’s free. So she rolls down the window to savor the breeze and turns up the volume of the stereo: an old favorite, the Dandy Warhols, are playing. Her mouth curves with dark humor when she deciphers the lyrics—“I never thought you’d be a junkie because heroin is so passé”—but she sings along when they warn, “The boys had better beware.”
Parking in front of Logan’s place, she can hear dreamy synthesizers; Mac must’ve commandeered the computer to get M83 on the playlist. Hearing the refrain, “death is her boyfriend,” Mac’s idea of a joke, Veronica thinks again that their tragic, wild youth is perfect fodder for movies and songs. “Normal” people would say it was stranger than fiction.
Their friends are laughing in the distance, and Pony bolts around the side of the house to join the revelry. Slinging her tote over her shoulder with an ‘oof,’ Veronica unlocks the front door, the glass nazar keychain Mac brought back from Istanbul cool against her wrist. After dropping the snacks on the counter, Veronica rushes upstairs to change into her bikini, fluffing her bob and putting on raspberry lip balm; David used to call it ‘juvenile,’ but Logan likes how it tastes. Then she drags a stool into the guest room to reach the lockbox on the high shelf, which is hidden beneath a pile of alpaca wool blankets; Logan hasn’t noticed it yet. Inside, she finds her gift to him, which she wrapped meticulously in orange paper and topped off with a curling ribbon.
Just before she walks out to join the party, Veronica notices a stack of mail abandoned on the glass console table. She flips through it without shame—she’s not about to let a nasty message ruin her boyfriend’s day—but refrains from breaking the seal of the starry turquoise envelope signed Carrie Bishop.
Logan’s professor mailed him a stately burgundy card from Papyrus, full of earnest praise for his “incisive wit” and “cynical but engaging take on the human condition.” There’s a Hallmark card from his former sponsor, too, with fat pink roses on its cover; it must have been chosen by his wife. Beneath the brusque “You did it, kid,” written in spidery capitals, there’s a promise in copperplate script: “I’ll bake you that coconut cream pie you like.” A slim package marked “Priority” turns out to be a Graf von Faber-Castell pen with a walnut barrel and an eighteen-carat gold nib. Probably costs more than my LeBaron, Veronica thinks, tossing it into the junk drawer, where it will remain until it’s sold, the proceeds donated to the animal rescue. Otherwise, Logan would trash it out of spite, because it was sent by a documentarian who’s been hounding him for an interview. In the attached note, the Coppola cousin brags that Jim Jones’ sons have already signed on, and so has Phil Spector’s reclusive daughter. Veronica takes pleasure in crumpling it into a ball and throwing it into the bin.
Logan’s sister sent him nothing—no surprise, but Veronica seethes at the absence anyway. Trina e-mailed last week, pleading for gory details about his car crash, since she’s playing a drunk driver in a Michael Bay movie. “I’m practicing my death moan,” she wrote, explaining that her character flies over a guardrail and breaks her skull on the asphalt. The hero’s lover bleeds out, too, of course. Nothing fuels a plot like a beautiful dead girl.
As soon as Veronica slides open the side door, she zeroes in on her boyfriend, who is crouched by the pool, petting their blissed-out dog. Spotting her, he stretches to his full height, his mouth curving as though her presence here is his greatest accomplishment. Then he saunters over to kiss her, and she smiles back at him, hardly noticing their friends until Wallace groans and Dick shouts lewd encouragement—quickly stifled when Amelia calls him a “cretin.”
Veronica ignores them all, focusing instead on the way her skin tingles beneath Logan’s hands. His mouth tastes tart and sweet like lemonade, and she runs her fingertips under the waistband of his blue trunks, pouting when he pulls away.
“Ouch,” he says mildly, and she realizes the gift box is jabbing him in the chest. But as soon as she throws it aside, he kisses her again, curling his tongue around hers until she’s gasping.
When he finally steps back, Veronica hands him his present, and he runs his fingertip over the shiny wrapping with delight. Explaining, “I’m saving the best for last,” he checks out the cards first, and his pleased surprise when he reads them cracks her heart. He doesn’t mention that they were already opened.
Logan must notice the sudden stiffness of her posture when he tears the turquoise paper, because he angles it into her line of sight. To her relief, there’s no come-on inside, only a bookmark, a Pop Art rendition of a ‘55 Thunderbird convertible in aqua blue. Veronica regards it quizzically, but Logan’s benign expression doesn’t falter as he flips over a note tied with glittery ribbon. In a bubbly cursive that reminds Veronica unpleasantly of Lily’s, Carrie has written, “Back to mint. Xx.”
Logan sets the bookmark carelessly aside in order to examine his girlfriend’s offering, looping the bow around his finger before it drops to the ground. He bursts out laughing when he sees what Veronica has brought him: a jackass-yellow mortarboard.
“Down,” she orders, pushing ineffectually at his shoulder until he bends over; her hands slip because he’s slathered in sunscreen and dripping sweat.
Lifting the cap with great ceremony, she intones, “Logan Echolls,” and he kneels to make it easier for her to place it on his wet head. He looks up at her with a love so intense that it borders on worship—it’s an expression she’s only seen in oil paintings of men in armor, paying tribute to ladies whose golden crowns are studded with cabochon rubies. Veronica kisses his forehead with rare reverence, then motions for him to stand.
There's a chorus of whoops and a splash, and Veronica jolts to attention as though she’s waking from a dream, relieved none of their friends witnessed the raw exchange. They were watching Amelia knock Dick into the pool, goaded by his cadre of surfer bros, who look like an Abercrombie & Fitch ad Lily would’ve taped to her ceiling. They flex their muscles at one another while Dick shakes his shaggy blonde hair like a sheepdog; he’s vowing revenge, but it’s more of a tease than a threat.
Veronica shakes her head, too, perplexed and appalled. Amelia drove down from Palo Alto last week to attend Logan’s party, and she met Dick her first night in Neptune; it turns out his fraternity brother owns the restaurant where they were eating dinner. After a false start (“Heard you like to play with big sticks. You should try mine,” a hip thrust, then, “Oh, you’re into chicks? That’s cool. Girl-on-girl’s my favorite Pornhub category.”), they established an odd rapport. Before Veronica had finished her gin martini, they were happily sharing a charcuterie board. “I can’t resist a himbo,” Amelia explained.
“He’s not that bad,” Logan says, correctly interpreting her expression. “He’s more mature than he used to be.”
“That’s not saying much,” Veronica replies, chomping on a tortilla chip. She knows there must be a brain somewhere under all that shag, because Logan would’ve gotten bored with him years ago, otherwise, and as much as Veronica detests his innuendo, she can acknowledge his quips are occasionally clever. Still, Dick has determinedly avoided any opportunity to cultivate his native intellect, choosing instead to treat life like a never-ending party, and she’s disgusted by the waste; his flaws are even more obvious when he stands next to her hard-working boyfriend. If “growth requires excavation,” like her therapist always says, Dick would never get his shovel past the topsoil.
Mac, of all people, agrees with Logan. Of course, she gagged when she recounted his attempt to make amends for the bullying: after the apology, he lunged for a kiss. According to Wallace, Dick told his Psi Sigma brothers that she was off-limits—not that Mac needed the protection, since pulverizing a frat boy’s ego is as simple for her as MySpace HTML.
The Dick Casablancas they knew and loathed in high school would never have supported Logan’s sobriety. Instead, he would have pressured him to drink, like the villain in an after-school special. He learned his lesson after Beaver, Veronica admits. But before he proved his loyalty, keeping Logan company on Visitor’s Day at the rehab center, he was a bystander to his best friend’s nearly-fatal hedonistic spiral. That, I’ll never forgive.
Wallace is deep in conversation with Logan’s classmate, a writer from New York with a lumberjack beard ill-suited to the weather. Veronica had expected Logan to mock him, because he appears at first glance to be a millennial artist cliche: he’s covered in tattoos—“so it goes” is inked on his wrist in typewriter font, and a retro pinup’s legs are furred from his chest hair—and has a seemingly endless supply of plaid shirts with pearl buttons. But Logan appreciates his sardonic humor and his utter unshockability, and Veronica softened to him when he revealed his encyclopedic knowledge of noir. Her own favorite colleague is reclining on a lawn chair beside them, looking like Halle Berry in her orange bikini. The truth is, she’s Veronica’s only friend at the paper, besides the already-doting head editor. Covering the crime beat, she followed the Kane trial, and could read between the lines enough to recognize Veronica’s role in solving the mystery. So she has a healthy respect for the younger woman’s skills—unlike the rest of the staff, who still call her “green.” When Wallace cringes and smiles simultaneously, Veronica knows she must have made an awful morbid pun. But those Law & Order-worthy zingers endeared her to Keith, whom she lauded like a hero when he stopped by the office to take his daughter to lunch.
“I’m sorry I was late,” Veronica tells Logan. “I had to give Weevil that ID.”
“Always business with you, Mars,” he sighs, hugging her so she knows he doesn’t hold the delay against her, or disapprove of the petty crime. Thus far, Logan has been unwaveringly supportive of her new job, despite her erratic schedule and the inevitable risk she’s taking in trying to expose scandals. At least I get more rest than I did as a PI, she thinks, since I don’t have to run to school after the stakeouts, skidding into homeroom seconds after the bell. He is reassured by her lack of under-eye circles and her stable weight. She's been free of migraines since 2008.
“I don’t care if you’ve got to leave in the middle of dinner. I don’t care if you’re out till four am,” he told her, meeting her in the driveway after her first assignment. Lifting her heavy camera from around her neck to sling it over his shoulder, he continued, “I’m happy as long as you tell me the truth about what you’re up to, and call for backup before you think you need it. Don’t wait until you’re facing down the barrel of a gun.” Taking a deep breath, Logan said, “Veronica…I want you to be safe, but…I want you to be yourself.”
“I love you,” she whispers, and she basks in the warmth and lightness in his voice when he replies, “Love you, too, Bobcat.”
Mac is approaching with a cocktail in each hand, looking sleek in a metallic one-piece that matches her platinum quiff. She gives one of the glasses to Veronica, then shrugs apologetically at Logan, who is now rubbing sunscreen onto his girlfriend’s pale shoulders while she stretches like a cat.
“I wasn’t sure what to get you. Dick said you drink Shirley Temples, but I figured he was joking—I try to ignore at least three-quarters of what comes out of his mouth.”
“Good call,” he replies. “Hey, awesome tattoo. Is it new?”
Veronica takes hold of her friend’s bicep to peer closer at the odd shape rendered in electric purple. It looks like a Rorschach test.
“It’s the Mandelbrot fractal,” Mac explains. At their blank expressions, she dimples. “Nevermind. Math thing. I thought about getting binary code, but it felt too obvious, so I’m knitting in Morse code instead. Knitting and quilting are really popular in STEM—all that trig, I guess. I’ll make you a scarf with a secret message, Veronica.”
Logan laughs when Veronica bounces on her toes, launching into a speech about her favorite forms of cryptography. She reminisces about her dad’s baseball-inspired hand signals, the jumbled letters he wrote in lemon juice, and the lights he taught her to flash in an army rhythm when she was a kid. She talks about the blooms in the margins of her notes to Lily, and her cereal box decoder ring. “I had one of those too!” Mac exclaims. It sparked her interest in data encryption.
Meanwhile, Logan has drifted toward their other friends, who are congregating around the barbecue grill. Amelia is telling his rapt flight instructor about her near-death experience skydiving, and Wallace is trash-talking the Celtics to a drag racer with a ginger mullet. When they welcome Logan with cheers and back slaps, Veronica relaxes, listening to them chatter with half an ear. She only looks over when they start comparing scars, prepared to intervene if anyone inquires about the marks left by assault and battery. But it turns out there was no need to worry. After bragging about shark skin grafts from a botched snowboard landing and “gnarly" road rash—Veronica says a silent thank you to the PCHers for giving Logan a hatred of motorcycles—his friend asks about the fresh weal on Logan’s ankle, ignoring the faded lines that surround it. They must know better than to bring them up, Veronica thinks, as her boyfriend describes his encounter with the runaway surfboard. She wonders how much he’s confessed to them.
Dick takes a hearty swig from his silver flask, then hands it to one of his buddies so he can cannonball into the pool. Logan dives elegantly after him, and when he surfaces, he is laughing. Instead of joining the others in their boisterous splashing, he swims to the shallow end, climbing onto the crocodile raft. Before his cap floats into the drain, Wallace fishes it out of the water to throw it back to him. Logan catches it one-handed, then he puts it on, tilting the cardboard rim to shade his eyes and shutting them in obvious contentment.
When he opens them again, he meets her gaze, and Veronica is certain all their friends can recognize the love and pride in her expression. For once, she doesn’t bother with a pokerface. All that matters is that Logan can see.
———————
By moonrise, the couple are alone, sprawled on the raft together, watching the stars. The breeze should make Veronica shiver, but Logan gives off enough heat to keep her warm: her goosebumps come from desire. She runs a fingernail lightly over his collarbone to make his skin pebble, so they match. There’s not much clean-up left to do: their friends collected the glasses and cans and carried the bins out for them. Even Dick helped, righting overturned chairs while Amelia barked orders.
Tilting her head back against his shoulder, Veronica asks, “Did I ever tell you about that dream I had, the night before our high school graduation?” It’s a surprise when he says no; by now, he’s heard all about her long-ago visions of Lily: the giddy mischief in her best friend’s voice, the radiance of her complexion, and the bubblegum pink light that made the blood on her smashed skull shine.
So Veronica describes her dream, that other life. Her dad in his uniform, making gentle jokes at Lamb’s expense, and her mom, beaming as she coaxed Veronica to smile for the camera. Duncan and Dick, teasing her like friends. Lily, alive, and Wallace, a stranger.
“Was I there?” Logan asks, oddly bashful.
“You kissed me,” she answers to his obvious relief. “You called me ‘sweetie.’” He frowns when she adds, “You said I was ‘the most gullible girl you ever met.’”
“That doesn’t sound like you,” he says, and Veronica rolls over to press her ear against his chest. “Or me, for that matter.” In the dream, he kissed her because she was sweet, the way he kisses her now when she’s tart.
In real life, Logan is charmed by her misanthropy—and sometimes even her malice. “It’s alright to be mean,” he shrugs. “You pick the right targets." (Of course, she hears the unspoken caveat: "now you do, anyway.") When Veronica grumbles about the staff at the paper—the micromanagers, the clumsy writers, the ladder-climbers who try to trick her into making a mistake—Logan joins in on her mockery, quipping until she’s giggling too hard to dwell. She learned to play well with others in Palo Alto, but Neptune has revived her inner sourpuss. At least I’ve got a decent editor, she thinks, knowing she’ll keep her on a gently curving path, if not the straight and narrow, and make sure HR dismisses any complaints about her penchant for sarcasm. Her dad and her friends accept Veronica as she is. And fortunately, Logan loves her best when she’s honest.
“What would Lily think of us?” she wonders. “Together, I mean?”
Logan walks his fingers up her spine, gathering his thoughts. “Maybe she’d be jealous at first. But considering Weevil and Aaron, well. I’d be able to shut her up.” Veronica startles, because in all her fantasies of her best friend surviving, she’d never accounted for the fallout from the cheating, the beatings, the adultery, and the rapes: the divorce papers and the criminal trials, the screaming fights in public and the private tears of shame.
“What?” he asks, reading her expression in the shaft of moonlight. “You think it would’ve stayed a secret forever?” He scoffs. “The truth would’ve come out eventually. It would’ve been up to me to forgive her. Lily’d probably pretend it was no big deal, too. It’s not like Jake and Celeste would ever send her to a shrink. She’d end up like Dick, getting high until the bad memories were hazy. I bet she would’ve dropped out of Vassar. She’d guest star on The Hills or something: seduce Brody Jenner, pour a pitcher of margaritas on Lauren Conrad, strut the red carpet at the VMAs in a mesh dress and a thong. She’d do a photoshoot with Terry Richardson, just to make Celeste stroke out.”
Veronica wrinkles her nose at the image: her best friend posing for that mustachioed pervert, sucking on a Ring Pop alongside Blake Lively. “Lily was too smart,” she declares. “She’d get bored of sloppy-drunk catfights. I think she’d get a column in Bust—no, xoJane—and write a juicy memoir to prove she could outsell Cat Marnell. She’d roll her eyes at all those stories about snorting Ritalin and popping Plan B in La Perla and last night’s liner.”
“Do you think she was sorry?” he asks. There is no resentment in his voice, only wistful curiosity. “She never wanted to talk about anything heavy. And she never apologized.”
She would’ve apologized to me, once I found out about our parents’ affair, Veronica knows. But it wouldn’t have mattered to her whether she said it out loud; she understands how difficult it is to choke out an “I’m sorry,” and, in any case, actions speak louder than words. Although Lily appeared carefree and confident, she was an insecure kid, desperate for escape and attention, as easily manipulated as she was titillated by her own cunning. Sometimes, she was cruel, or haphazardly loving. But if Lily knew how much I loved Logan? That I was happiest with him? She’d let go of her jealousy. She wanted me to be happy, more than anything else. And Veronica believes wholeheartedly that Lily would’ve been able to cajole her ex-boyfriend out of a grudge, even if it took a few years. Despite his tendency to punch first, Logan has a talent for forgiveness. He doesn't give up on people. His mom, his sister, Duncan, Dick, Carrie, and, of course, Veronica herself are proof.
“I like to think that she’d approve,” Veronica says. “Maybe she’d even try to matchmake.”
“So you could lick my wounds?” he asks, skeptical.
“She’d nominate us for Homecoming Court,” Veronica replies, warming to the topic, “so we’d have to slow dance. Or force the 09ers to vote us Class Couple, thinking I’d cave to peer pressure.”
She can picture it so vividly: her strapless red satin dress, his white suit and black bow tie. The fairy lights hanging from the ceiling, the DJ playing “I Hear the Bells”. Logan’s big hands would circle her waist, then settle at the small of her back, and they’d sway together, awkward and stiff under their classmates’ stares. And then he’d make a joke, and she’d relax, letting him pull her flush against his body.
She knows which photos Lily would connive to get into the yearbook: Veronica and Logan walking across the quad, absorbed in conversation, oblivious to the make-out and the hacky-sack game behind them. Laughing together at the lunch table, his brown Sketchers bumping her decorated Keds. Lily would zoom in on Logan’s teasing grin when he stole the snickerdoodle that Veronica had set aside for a spirit box. And she’d capture Veronica’s blush when she brushed his cheek, trying to steal it back, and got distracted by the smoothness of his shave and the ocean-musk scent of him.
“Have you been watching romcoms?” he asks dryly.
“No,” she laughs, “but Lily loved them—almost as much as she loved a good scheme. Remember?”
“There’s one thing that your dream got right,” he says firmly. “With or without Lily Kane...we’d be together.”
It comforts her to be reminded: the truth will always come out, and Logan and Veronica will always love each other.
I’ve wasted enough time on “what ifs” and “if onlys,” Veronica decides, sliding up his body to kiss him. She is still sharing his breath when she asks, “So what do you want to do tomorrow?”
Her heart beats, gentle and steady, with the surety of their tomorrow.