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Tap tap tap tap tap—

Cheryl, who sits one desk over, keeps glaring at him around the side of her computer monitor, but Steve could not care less. He continues to rap his pen against the edge of his keyboard—tap tap tap—because it’s his desk and his God-given right to make whatever noise he damn well pleases. If they don’t want him “disturbing the peace,” they can give him an office.

So far, Steve Connelly has had a very trying Thursday.

First, someone parked in his spot in the garage at work. Then he spent an hour on the phone with IT sorting out a problem with the e-mail servers.

Then, just before lunch, his boss called him into his office to yell at him. That’s the main thing bothering Steve, truth be told—not just the dressing-down itself, but that Mark had the nerve to lay into him like that.

He’s Steve Connelly, for Pete’s sake. He’s the Neptune Herald’s highest paid staff writer. He drives an Audi. He was on Geraldo!

Before Steve Connelly came along, there was no “Pixie.” Well, technically she existed, sure, in a so-called literal sense... but barely. She didn’t have a name. Or, again, technically, it’s likely that she had some kind of name for personal use, but she didn’t have a publically acknowledged moniker. She certainly didn’t have a brand.

And who’s responsible for the Pixie’s brand now?

tap tap tap tap

Steve Connelly. Steve Connelly is the one who turned her story into a matter of national interest. Neptune’s Indestructible, Undefeatable Masked Avenger: The Pixie. By Steve Connelly.

tap tap tap

Steve Connelly put this whole town on the map.

Okay, fine, once again, technically, that might be a bit of a stretch—Kane Industries put Neptune on the map twenty years ago—but the point stands:

Who does fucking Mark think he is? Mark has no right to lecture him about generating new content.

Apparently the old man didn’t care for Steve’s latest draft—an admittedly dry piece on the Pixie’s purported involvement in the recent arrest of Cormac Fitzpatrick. Mark called it “speculative and unsourced,” but what he meant was “utterly lacking in any juicy details about the Pixie herself.” Of course that’s the only content anybody actually wants to read. No one cares about gangsters and crime statistics, but tell them the brand of lipstick the Pixie prefers, and they lose their damn minds.

And Steve’s no dummy—he knows that. If he could write about her favorite hamburger joint, he would. The fact is, there is no new content to be had. Zilch. Nada. Nothing. You can’t write a story when there is no goddamn information.

The more he thinks about it, the more it pisses him off.

He sits at his desk in the Herald bullpen, tap tap tapping his pen and glaring at the webpage on his computer screen. It's one of those crappy armchair detective sites, dedicated to uncovering the Pixie’s true identity. The most recent post is just the moderator’s five-hundred word speculation on whether Pixie’s wearing different boots now. The really sad part is that it’s a better-researched version of a column Steve wrote on the same topic a week ago. 

Pathetic. He’s supposed to be the paper’s Pixie tsar, and here he is, reduced to analyzing the comparative orthopedic merits of Steve Madden v. Doc Martens.

tap tap tap tap tap

It’s not just him, though.

No journalist—professional or amateur—has had much luck with Neptune’s cat-suit-loving heroine lately. It’s been well over a year since Logan Echolls first interviewed her for the college newspaper (the interview that should’ve been Steve’s, dammit) and months since the kid’s written anything else on her.

And Echolls is the only one who ever really got close. He and the Pixie were definitely sharing info for a while there—sharing more than that, if internet speculation is to be believed—but then last spring, he stopped following her story. His interest evaporated, or so he tells anyone who asks for a quote. His hobbies now appear limited to binge drinking and sorority girls. The last thing he wrote for the Hearst Chronicle was a real page-turner about a gopher problem in the Environmental Club’s sustainable tomato garden.

So what happened? Lovers’ spat? Did Pixie ditch Echolls or vice versa?

If they did fight, Pixie hasn’t found a replacement P.R. rep yet. All she’s done for months is fight crime and lock up bad guys without so much as a head tilt for a photographer, or a “Catch ya later, boys” for the Sheriff’s deputies. She’s been downright rude.

tap tap tap

Something must have happened.

Steve stares at his monitor until his eyes start to blur. If only he could gain Pixie’s trust... like Echolls did. Well not exactly like Echolls did—he’s not a twenty-year-old trust fund kid—but if only he could get in the same room with her. Talk to her. He could win her over, submit his application to be her new chief of propaganda. He’d do ten times the job Echolls ever did, and, unlike that spoiled brat, he’d actually know what to do with all that access.

That’s what vexes Steve the most.

If Echolls has had a falling out with the Pixie, he should be milking it for all it’s worth. Forget Geraldo, he could get Greta! Oprah, even! Doesn’t he realize what a cash cow he’s sitting on?

taptaptaptap

Well, maybe he does and maybe he doesn't. Maybe he doesn't care, considering he's already got fame and fortune. Maybe it ended badly for him, and he's afraid of looking like an idiot.

tap—

—Now there's an interesting thought.

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Maybe Steve doesn’t need to gain the Pixie’s trust at all.

tap tap tap

Maybe all he really needs to do is get in the same room as Logan Echolls.

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Pal around with him a little, guy talk. Stroke his ego a little. 

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The Echolls kid probably doesn’t have a clue that he's squandering unparalleled ad-revenue-generating material. Steve can probe it out of him no problem, if he just gets the kid talking. It's human nature to want to badmouth your ex.

Taptaptap—Steve tosses the pen and grabs his notebook, flipping through to the class schedule he compiled earlier in the Hearst semester. (It pays to be prepared.)

This, he thinks, could actually work. All he needs to do is convince the entitled spawn of celebrities to complain about something. How hard could that possibly be?

Logan Echolls is pretty much exactly what you would expect—sprawled out in a rolling chair, three-hundred dollar tennis shoes propped up on the desk in front of him. He’s chewing on a pen cap and staring at a folded up newspaper without much regard for the goings-on of the Hearst Chronicle bullpen around him. To be fair, said goings-on are sluggish, almost non-existent. Just finding this place was an Odyssean quest. Why is a student newspaper run out of the basement of the Geography department, anyway?

“Logan Echolls?” he asks, approaching the kid. There’s a beat, like Echolls is making up his mind whether or not to acknowledge the question, but eventually he sighs and glances up from his paper. “We’ve spoken on the phone, but it’s nice to finally meet you in person.” Steve extends his hand. “Steve Connelly, Neptune Herald.”

Echolls blinks, unimpressed. He swings his legs down from the desk and takes the offered hand, shaking it once and then wiping his palm along the thigh of his jeans, faux surreptitious.

Yep. Pretty much exactly what you’d expect.

Echolls rocks back in his chair, stowing his pen behind his ear, while Steve pulls up a seat from the nearest empty desk.

“What can I help you with?” asks the kid, though the inflection is all leave me alone. His eyes drop back to the newspaper in his lap (the crossword puzzle, looks like).

“Well, I think you can guess.”

“I don’t write about the Pixie anymore,” Echolls drawls. “We got a new person covering her. Find Parker Lee if you want to talk superheroes.” He gives a dismissive nod across the room and retrieves his pen.

“I don’t want to talk superheroes,” Steve corrects quickly. “I want to talk about you and the Pixie.”

“Um—okay? There’s not much to talk about. I used to write stories about her. I used to write a whole lot of stories about her. I got bored. I stopped.”

“You got bored writing about a hot chick in a cat-suit who fights crime?”

“It gets old. You’d be surprised.”

“Nah, I don’t buy it.” Steve leans back, folding his arms and studying his subject carefully. Echolls is listening, but only just. His disinterest seems completely genuine. “I think there’s more to the story.”

"It's your prerogative to be wrong," Echolls says with a shrug. Before Steve can counter, he adds: “Gut.”

“Huh?”

“A three letter word meaning exenterate.” Echolls pins the newspaper against his knee and begins to write. "G-U-T. Gut."

All right, if the kid wants to be a pain in the ass, Steve decides to leave it all out there. “I think you slept with her.”

“Well research has never really been your strong suit." He's not flustered, just taps the pen against his lips, pretending to consider. “Come to think of it, I’m not exactly sure what your strong suit is.”

“C’mon, you covered her story for months,” Steve presses on. He refuses to be riled. “You got interviews, exclusives... You knew what kind of fucking lipstick she wore.”

“We flirted,” Echolls allows, bored, “That’s pretty obvious, but that doesn’t mean we were screwing.”

“Well, sure. I mean, she’s got a secret identity to protect, right?” says Steve. “That’s how these girls work. They keep you on the hook. But I bet a guy like you doesn’t give up easy.” Echolls finally glances up at him, eyes glittering over the edge of the newspaper. There it is. “I think you were after her for months... that’s when you wrote all your best material on the Pixie—the interview, the story about her and the barrio kid... Good stuff, Echolls, you’re not a bad writer, y’know...”

“Maybe that’s why your boss offered me your job.”

Smarmy little prick. 

Steve swallows his pride, because he’s on a mission, and smacking Logan Echolls will not help him accomplish that mission. “Not my job, but there’s still a place for you at The Herald if you want it,” he says earnestly. Echolls just rolls his eyes, like he knows The Herald is beneath him. It is, too. A trust-fund douchebag like him with a famous last name? He’ll have some cushy gig at a national publication fifteen seconds after they hand him a diploma. “But that’s not why I’m here. Thing is, I look at you—young, good-looking, rich, getting your education... I see you as a closer.” Flattery, in Steve’s experience, will get you everywhere, and it certainly seems to be doing the trick this time. Echolls’s eyes are glued to him. “I see you as a guy who’s not gonna stop until he gets what he wants. You’ve stopped chasing her around—so I’m gonna go ahead and guess that you got what you wanted.” He grins, but Echolls doesn’t react at all. “And now that you have, you’ve moved on. Am I right?”

Even if he’s wrong, even in the likely event that the Pixie threw him over, there’s no way that Logan Echolls will admit to that. 

“Why do you even care?” asks the kid. “If I’m not writing about Pixie, isn’t that good news for you? More people will read your crappy newspaper.”

“Hell yeah, it’s great for me, buddy,” Steve agrees. “All I want is some info. Like that shit about the lipstick—people loved that. So—what is she? Blonde, brunette, redhead? Eye color, tattoos? I always figured brunette and feisty. Like a Megan Fox type.” Echolls is just staring at him like he doesn’t speak the language. “Look, you don’t need to tell me what she’s like in the sack or anything, I mean America doesn’t want that. Hell, I’m not even asking for her real name…” (Well—he is and he isn’t. Steve’s more than happy to inflate the Pixie’s positive P.R. bubble if he gets a good by-line, but if Logan Echolls is feeling vengeful… well, that'd be a hell of a story too.) He goes on: “I’m just saying, it’s been two years that she’s been on the scene and a year since we’ve had anything new about her. People want more.”

Something passes over Echolls’s face, then, this look that makes Steve think he’s about to get punched. It’s a strangely primal instinct; he can’t identify anything that says Echolls is pissed, and the kid doesn’t move, but all the hair on the back of Steve’s neck stands up, and he feels the powerful impulse to duck.

The feeling is gone in an instant, and Echolls sets down his newspaper on the desk beside him.

“Well,” he begins, then hesitates. Almost there, almost there... Echolls drops his gaze again, and when he looks back up, he's wearing an abashed kind of smirk: “To be honest, dude, I wish I could tell you. Fact is, I never got that far with her. You're right, it wasn't for lack of trying, but she was just a tease. It got old after a while, so I cut my losses and moved on to greener pastures. Or—as the case may be—blonder ones.”

Steve falls back in his chair. “You’re telling me that you spent more than a year chasing this chick, and you never got anywhere with her?”

Echolls shrugs again. “What can I say? She’s a master of deflection.”

If he’s being completely honest with himself, Deputy Roland Meeks doesn’t have much faith in this operation. Sheriff Lamb has commissioned similar jobs before, and they’ve never been successful or informative. Meeks doesn’t see why today should be any different.

But he has his orders, so, at a quarter past four, he joins Deputies Johnson, Turpin, Bullock, and Laramie in standing outside Apartment 502, awaiting—in the absence of a search warrant—the return of the tenant.

It’s not long before the tenant in question is stepping off the elevator and strolling towards them. The second he spots the deputies, his pace slows and his shoulders slump. He throws his head back in a theatrical display of irritation and then slouches on up to the door.

“Jesus, you guys too?” whines Echolls, twirling a key ring on his finger like it’s a six-shooter in a cowboy movie. “First Steve fucking Connelly, now the Keystone Cops. Must be something in the air."

“Mr. Echolls,” begins Deputy Laramie, “there’s been a...”

“Oh, no, let me guess,” says Echolls. “There’s been a sighting of the Pixie in the neighborhood, and given the circumstances, it’s absolutely necessary that you search my apartment.”

“Given your history, Mr. Echolls...”

“My history? I wrote a couple stupid articles about her in the school newspaper, and that makes me America’s Most Wanted?”

“Mr. Echolls...”

“Oh my God, shut up, let’s get this over with.” He unlocks the door to his apartment and lets them all in. It’s not Meeks’s first time here; Lamb’s scraped together a search warrant before, and there’s been at least one other “authorized search” besides that. It never comes to anything. If Logan Echolls has any information about the so-called Pixie, he’s not hiding it in his luxury suite. His computer’s clean, and he’s already passed a handful of lie detector tests. This whole thing seems like mostly a waste of everyone’s time.

Echolls obviously agrees with that sentiment. He tosses his book bag on the sofa, sweeps into his kitchen, and then re-emerges in the living room holding a bottle of Perrier. He deposits himself on the couch and gestures around the apartment. “Have at it, deputies, you know the drill.”

They do. Laramie heads to the kitchen, Johnson goes to the bedroom, and Bullock and Turpin take the living room, while Meeks sits down to talk with Echolls himself.

“Do you mind if I text my girlfriend?” the master-of-the-house asks dryly, “I was supposed to meet her. I don’t want her to worry.”

“Of course,” says Meeks. Then, while Echolls is busy on his cell phone, the deputy pulls a miniature voice recorder from his pocket and deftly sticks it to the underside of his chair. The “search” is just a pretense: their real mission today is to plant the bugs.

“You have questions?” Echolls drawls, when he’s done texting.

“Have you been in your apartment at all today?”

“I woke up here.”

“I meant...”

“I went to Hearst campus around ten. Stayed there all day, came home just now.”

“And did you...?”

“I saw nothing suspicious, nor did I interact with anyone I know or believe to be the unidentified suspect known as the Pixie.” Echolls uncaps his sparkling water and takes a swig. Then he sets the bottle down on the coffee table and says, “If you like, I can do your lines for you too.”

Meeks sighs. He has to admit—as annoying as Echolls is—he has a point. “We won’t be long.”

“Oh please,” says Echolls, sarcastic. “Mi casa, su casa.”

The deputies have been in the apartment about ten minutes before there's a knock on the door. Echolls doesn’t seem interested in the matter—he’s flipped on the television and is absorbed in The Animaniacs—so Turpin goes to answer it. He barely has time to undo the chain latch, before someone is pushing past him into the living room.

That someone is a petite blonde girl, who marches authoritatively in, carrying a large pink plate of something that turns out to be cupcakes. She ignores the deputies entirely as she sets the platter down on the coffee table and hops onto the couch beside Echolls—half on top of him, really.

“Oh my God, Baby, I got here as fast as I could! Are you okay?”

“I told you, I’m fine,” says Echolls, switching off the T.V., while the little blonde runs her hands through his hair, worryingly checking his face for any signs of damage. “I was at school, and nothing even happened.”

“Some kind of break in?” frets Blondie.

“Just a sighting in the neighborhood.”

“Why are they searching your apartment?”

“I guess they thought the Pixie might drop by for a hang.”

Blondie rolls her eyes and tosses her hair, disentangling herself from her boyfriend and finally acknowledging the three other men in the room—no, four, Laramie came in from the kitchen. “I wish you boys would arrest that woman already,” she says, climbing up off the couch and facing them, arms crossed.

She's quite a sight: about five feet tall, wearing a puffy emerald green jacket with a fur-trimmed hood, along with a short denim skirt, knee socks, and Keds. Part of her hair is pulled back in a braid, and the rest falls straight down almost to her elbows. She's cute—young, though—and there's something almost familiar about her.

Meeks is trying to figure out what, when Bullock recovers enough to clear his throat and say, “You’re worried about your boyfriend’s safety, Miss...?”

“Mars, Veronica Mars. You can call me ‘Ronnie,’ everyone does.” She flashes a smile. Veronica Mars, of course, that’s why she’s familiar. She’s Keith Mars’s daughter. Meeks even met her a couple of times, years ago, when Keith was still on the force. She was just a kid back then. Meeks remembers her as an odd little girl, but she looks to have grown up sociable enough. “Of course I’m worried about Logan,” she says. “That woman—the Pixie?  She’s obsessed with him. It’s so pathetic.” Meeks glances at Echolls, who just shrugs, glances heavenward, and puffs air out of the side of his mouth. Clearly, having two women vie for his attention is not the burden that Ronnie Mars imagines it to be.

“What makes you think she’s obsessed with Logan here?” asks Bullock, pulling out his pen and notepad.

“Are you kidding?” she says. “Did you read that interview she did with him? The flirting? She was all over him.”

“Yeah, she was pretty desperate for me,” agrees Logan. “Oof."  He winces.

“Aw, I’m sorry, Baby, did I step on your foot?"

"Don't worry about it, Sugarplum."

She blows him a kiss. "Do you want a cupcake?”

“I’ll pass.”

“They’re really good.” Ronnie continues, now addressing the rest of them: “Help yourself. Straight from the ZTB Bake Sale. Anyway, what was I saying? Oh, right—the Pixie. The sooner you guys catch her the better. Logan won’t even do interviews with her anymore. She's crazy. And before you say it, Baby, yes I know what you think, but the Balboa County sheriff’s office is perfectly capable of taking care of Neptune without her running around. Plus—that outfit? The cat-suit, the lipstick? I mean... attention-whore, much?” Ronnie takes one the cupcakes from the coffee table and sits back down on her boyfriend’s lap. “You sure you’re okay, Logan?”

“Phenomenal.”

“And you don’t want a cupcake? They’re really good. Agnes and I made them. Agnes did the icing, I can never get it to twirl right, you know?” She takes a swipe of said icing on her finger, seems completely oblivious to the fact that there are four other men in the room—five, actually, Johnson’s returned from the bedroom now too. “But I did the batter. I thought you liked my baking—you're not hungry? Do you think you’re coming down with a stomach bug or something?”

“I think I might be,” says Echolls, yawning. “That sushi yesterday didn’t sit well with me.”

“Really? I liked it. Next time we should go to that new place on South Street. My friend Lydia’s boyfriend works there. I think it’s called Sushi Grotto... or Sushi Garden? It’s by the place where Marjorie broke up that fight between those two drunk dudes—remember? The bar? With the purple fairy lights?” Ronnie doesn’t seem to require much feedback from her boyfriend, which is fortunate, since he’s dropped his head onto the couch back, offering only the occasional mhm of acknowledgment. “Anyway Sushi Garden’s supposed to be really good. They have this thing called Sake-Sangria, and if you go at happy hour, you can get bottomless drinks for like—eight bucks, and only one person at the table has to order it, and then everyone can drink for eight bucks, because it’s bottomless. But only at happy hour. Maybe it is called Sushi Grotto...”

Laramie clears his throat, makes eye contact with the other deputies and then jerks his head toward the door. Time to leave. It’s not like they’re going to get anything else here, and they’ve already planted the bugs.

“Mr. Echolls,” Meeks talks over the babbling blonde, “Everything looks normal here. We’re going to be heading out...”

“So soon?” says Echolls. His girlfriend pokes him in the chest.

“Be nice, Logan, they’re trying to protect you.”

“Aw, I thought that’s what you were here for, Pumpkin.”

“Ha. I’d like to see the ‘Pixie’ even try take me,” scoffs Ronnie. “I’d scratch her eyes out.”

“Well, she wears goggles and a mask, so that’d be kinda hard.”

Ronnie frowns. “Are you saying I couldn’t take her?”

Echolls either doesn’t realize his misstep or genuinely doesn’t care that he’s made one. “I mean, she literally beats people up every day, so...”

“I could beat people up. You don’t think I could beat people up? We had a trainer come in to the ZTB House to teach us self-defense, and I did the best of any of the sisters. Also I do Pilates, and tons of cardio...”

"Yeah, but that's different than fighting people every day, Ronnie..."

"I'm in really good shape. Like... really good shape.."

"So you're saying you could fight the Pixie?"

"I'm not saying I want to fight the Pixie, I'm just saying if I absolutely had to..."

They don’t stop arguing even to say "goodbye" to the deputies, and they’re still disputing the matter when Meeks closes the door behind him.

By the time he’s back in the patrol car with Johnson, however, the audio from the listening devices is streaming loud and clear, and the happy couple appears to have reconciled their differences. Ronnie is now describing her friend Bethany’s new diet in minute detail, her voice growing and shrinking as she moves around the apartment.

“You know,” says Johnson, in the driver’s seat, “If I hadn’t seen her, I wouldn’t get it, but...”

“Stan.”

“What? Just saying...”

“That’s Keith Mars’s daughter, you know.”

“Really?” Johnson pauses, thinking back. “Good old Deputy Mars, huh? So Blondie's the kid the mom took off with, right?”

“Think so, yeah.”

“Wild.” Johnson snorts. “I bet Keith hates the boyfriend.”

“Echolls?”

“Yeah.”

Meeks chuckles, imagining it. “Probably.”

They don’t say anything for a while, and the girl’s chatter fills up the car instead. She’s going on and on, with occasional input from Echolls while they try to settle on a restaurant for dinner.

“I want something substantial, but not too heavy... maybe just something like a Bleu Cheese Salad... or maybe nachos. Or a smoothie.” 

“Whatever you want, Buttercup...”

“...I could do Greek, too...”

“I told the Sheriff this was a waste of time,” says Johnson. “Princess in there obviously doesn’t know about anything her boyfriend might be doing with the Pixie.”

“Yeah,” says Meeks. He reaches for the Red Bull in the cup holder and prays that these two hurry along to dinner, so he can head home. “He’s not gonna give us anything while his girlfriend’s hanging around.”

“Steve Connelly said what now?”

“Do you really need me to repeat it?” asks Logan, reaching over to Veronica’s lap, where she’s holding the carton of French fries they’re supposed to be sharing. They’re seated on the bench at Rambeau Park, working their way through a bag of fast food and enjoying the temperate early evening weather. V’s leaning against his shoulder as she munches on a double-double, but she pauses long enough to tilt her face up at him and say:

“You didn’t punch him, did you?”

Logan shakes his head. “No, I didn’t punch him.”

"Good." She takes another bite of her cheeseburger, then reasons, “Well, it’s probably for the best. If Steve Connelly thinks you hit it and quit it, at least he won’t suspect little old sugar and spice me.”

“Well...”

“Oh, God, you did punch him, didn’t you?”

“No," he says. "And why do you always assume that I punched someone?”

“Same reason you always assume I tasered someone.”

“I didn’t punch him. I just... led him in a different direction.”

Veronica frowns. “Meaning?”

“I told him you scorned me.”

“Scorned you?”

“Yeah.” He sips his coke, while Veronica waits for an explanation. “Apparently I was ready and willing, but Pixie resisted my significant charms, and I was forced to move on. Full disclosure, the term 'tease' may have been applied.”

Veronica raises a challenging eyebrow. “Move on? To easy sorority girls?”

“I’m sorry, are you supposed to be ‘easy’ in this scenario? I waited a year and a half to see your face. It was practically a Biblical epic.”

“Damn straight.” She studies him carefully for a moment, and he takes the opportunity to kiss the tip of her nose. It's been months, but he's still a little in awe that it's as simple as that now. Veronica breaks into a wide, mischievous grin. “So you defended my honor, huh?”

Logan snorts, then returns to his dinner. “I just figured it was the best way to get Steve Connelly off my back. We're better off if he thinks I don’t know anything.”

“Uh-huh, sure. You weren’t at all preserving my pristine reputation.”

“I wasn’t. Didn’t even cross my mind.”

“You just let yourself go from ‘love ‘em and leave ‘em bad boy’ to ‘bitter, rejected suitor’ because you didn’t want to have a conversation with Steve Connelly.”

“Well you know how I hate conversations.” Logan polishes off the last bites of his burger, then digs out a napkin to clean up. Veronica's still smiling at him, bright and affectionate, the kind of smile that just demands to be kissed, so Logan obliges once again. Then he asks, “You think they planted bugs in my car, too?”

“Probably not, but we'll ask Mac to take a look just in case.”

“Right.”

“They were searching under false pretenses too. I wasn’t anywhere near your neighborhood.”

“You mean to tell me that the sheriff might not be totally on the up-and-up?” Logan gasps. “Color me disillusioned.” He extracts his arm from where it’s wedged between them and wraps it around Veronica’s shoulders so that they can both sit more comfortably. She settles in, working her methodical way through the cheeseburger, while Logan snacks on the fries. “How long until I can ‘find’ the bugs in my apartment?”

“Hmm... two days maybe.” One at a time—and careful not to upset the French fries—she slings her legs onto his lap. Her sneakers dangle over the side of the bench, and Logan gives the elastic of her right knee-sock an experimental snap. “Don't worry," she says, "I’ve got a plan. By the time I’m through, they won’t want to surveil you again any time soon.”

“No?”

“Mhm. I’m thinking lots of Britney Spears and lots of Spice Girls. Oh, and I hope they like The Hills, because I have a lot of opinions on Heidi and Spencer’s relationship.”

"Well this should be a fun couple of days." He snaps her sock again. "Okay, I got one. I call your Speidi monologue and raise you one lengthy rant about how Hearst doesn't have valet parking.”

Veronica laughs. “I like it.” She leans over to rest her head in the crook of his neck. Logan runs his fingers along the ridges at the hem of her jacket.

“How’re the new boots working out?”

“Okay. Better arch support, but the soles are lighter. So jumps are easier, but...”

"Not as much weight in the kick."

She sighs mournfully. "Exactly."