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She’s a cliché. A stumbling drunk, slurring, broken-hearted cliché.
Well, she’s not actually drunk. Veronica knows she’s sober enough to get home safely. She even made it halfway through reciting the alphabet backwards before she got distracted by the way the letter ‘L’ ceases to make sense when repeated sixteen times in a row. It could happen to anyone.
She has no need for a designated driver, but unfortunately Mac didn’t agree and insisted she come along. And then she hid Veronica’s keys. Veronica is vaguely aware that she might be doing something a little (a lot) embarrassing and Mac is playing witness. Desperate times, and all that. Allowing Mac to come along is her desperate measure.
“This is a bad idea,” Mac sing songs. She leans against the wall and looks at Veronica from one corner of her eye. “Have I mentioned that already?”
“Once or twice,” Veronica says, digging through her bag for her wallet.
“Then don’t come crawling to me to erase the surveillance footage when you’re arrested for trespassing.”
“It’s not trespassing if the son of a bitch gave me a key.” Which she can’t find, and that would be the cherry on top of this horribly embarrassing cliché of an evening, wouldn’t it, if she came all this way to have to go home empty-handed?
Veronica upturns her messenger bag and its contents (wallet, receipts, movie tickets, keys, phone, note pad and pen, as well as her pepper spray, assault whistle, and lock pick set) splay across the floor of the Neptune Grand. The items clatter against the hardwood. Mac winces at the sound but doesn’t otherwise respond.
“What?” Veronica asks.
The floor is too far away and for some reason everything on the floor is a little fuzzy around the edges. Like she turned the dial on a microscope a bit too far so it went right past sharp and back into blurry land. That must be her problem. She’s too focused on the task at hand.
But maybe her purse contents will be clearer if she sits down?
She drops to her knees, tossing aside items in pursuit of her wallet. A receipt from a coffee shop on campus serves as a momentary distraction.
A whole milk latte and a double shot Americano.
The latte was hers. The Americano was Logan’s drink. She frowns at the receipt, balls it up, and throws it down the hallway. Something weird happens with gravity, though, and it drops pathetically six inches in front of her. Odd.
Mac laughs, but Veronica is single minded in her focus and ignores her. She sits on her butt to sort through her wallet; legs spread in second position to corral her belongings.
“I know it’s in here,” she mumbles. She removes a series of cards from her wallet (credit, membership, and gift) and tosses each aside with a ‘Nope’ as she discerns it’s not the one she wants. She pops the ‘p’ of the word a little more each time and laughs at the sound it makes.
Mac sighs but bends down and starts picking up the cards. “Veronica, this is sad.”
“No, Mac, this is college. Seventeen magazine says the best way to get over someone is to get under someone else, but I’m not going to do that, so—“
“So stealing is the better option?”
Veronica finally finds the white room key, hidden in the midst of a stack of punch cards from delis, smoothie shops, and coffeehouses across Neptune. She clutches it between her fingers and rises to her knees, the sudden movement causing her head to spin and the liquid in her stomach to slosh from side to side. Ugh.
“No,” she groans and takes her time standing up, using the wall to steady herself. “It’s not stealing if I’m just taking back what’s mine.”
Logan texted her the week before to inform her he had a box of her stuff and did she want to pick it up before he left for Aspen? Veronica ignored the text. He could burn her stuff for all she cared.
But then she went to the Mackenzie’s Christmas Eve party and after one too many (okay, four too many) cups of spiked eggnog she decided that she does want it back. Logan’s in Aspen so the timing is perfect. He’s likely off doing what he does best – drinking his heart away and sticking his -- his -- his carrot to all the snow bunnies. And how dare he think he can just steal her stuff and not give it back?
The asshole.
Logan doesn’t deserve the satisfaction of having her Rilo Kiley CD and purple sweatshirt in his possession. If she doesn’t get to be happy at Christmas then he doesn’t get to keep her stuff.
“Come on, drunky. Let’s get this over with.” Mac picks up the contents of the messenger bag, dropping the stack of cards to the bottom, and takes the room key from Veronica.
“I’m sad, Mac.” Veronica whispers, needing to speak the words but also hoping that Mac will miss them.
“I know,” Mac says. “And you’ll be even sadder when your hangover kicks in and you remember how we spent this fine holiday evening.” She opens the door, walking in first, and Veronica follows. “And you might want to lower your voice.”
Veronica shakes her head at Mac and smiles affectionately. Mac is a silly girl. She already was whispering. You can’t get any quieter than whispering.
The room is silent, which makes sense considering both Dick and Logan are gone until the new semester starts. But it’s quieter than Veronica expects. All the times she’s been in the suite this late it’s never been this quiet. There was always Logan’s breathing, or his foot tapping, or his indiscernible mumbly sleeptalk.
She misses him, and she hates him, and now she’s pissed.
“Who the fuck does he think he is,” Veronica half-shouts into the air of the suite. She doesn’t expect an answer, but if the universe surprised her with one that’d be nice. “You know what he said to me, Mac? Huh?”
Mac sets Veronica’s bag down in the entryway and sighs. “Yes. You told me. Where’s the box?” She turns on a lamp and surveys the room for Veronica’s possessions while Veronica stays where she is, hands on her hips but on occasion losing balance.
“My shoes shrank,” Veronica says, frowning down at them.
Mac laughs and Veronica doesn’t know why because it’s a logical thought. The wedged sandals fit perfectly three hours prior but she’s having a hard time standing in them now which means they shrank. Logic.
She tosses them on the couch and that’s when she sees it. It triggers an unexpected white-hot incandescent rage and she marches across the room.
“Not who I want him to be? Bullshit!” She picks up that fucking hideous red crushed velvet pillow from the couch and throws it across the room. The move messes with her equilibrium and she stumbles but regains her footing. “And me? Not needing anyone? That’s rich.” She picks up a stack of coasters from the coffee table.
They’re metal and dense. It might be because tired, or more than a little sad (not drunk!), but they’re heavier than she remembers. “Stupid. Son. Of. A. Bitch,” she yells, emphasizing each word by throwing one at Logan’s bedroom door. Three hit the door in a satisfying snap of sound and the other two deflect off the wall. They probably left a dent in the paint. She snickers.
She’s out of words, but she still has a coaster in her hand, so she throws that one too but it goes wide and hits the tall gold floor lamp to the right of the couch. The lamp teeters like a Weeble Wobble and Veronica’s head moves back and forth along to its rhythm. Eventually it tips over and crashes to the ground, the light bulb shattering.
She giggles and looks up at Mac who is a mixture of startled and amused. Veronica giggles some more and then doubles over, holding her stomach as she laughs. She’s gasping for air and looks up at Mac, repeatedly pointing to the lamp. “A LAMP FOR A LAMP!” she screams. Those are probably the funniest words anyone has ever said. Ever.
Within seconds, the combined effort of the laughing and the throwing exhausts her. She slumps down to the floor and looks at her hands because she’s vaguely aware that she shouldn’t be proud of herself but she doesn’t know why. Ugh.
Oh. OOOH. There it is.
She just threw a tantrum in front of one of her best-friends.
A door opens and Veronica dreads getting thrown out of the hotel by security, but it’s not an unfamiliar rent-a-cop’s voice she hears.
“Veronica? What the hell is going on?” The voice is low and sleep-fogged but it is absolutely Logan’s and fuck isn’t that fantastic.
Veronica’s eyes shoot up and Logan is in front of her. His hair is sticking up, a little smushed in the back, and his v-neck shirt and jeans are rumpled. The way he is swaying from side to side is probably a figment of her imagination but the rest of his presence is real. She hastens to stand, ignoring how the quick movement makes everything whirl, and crosses her arms over her chest.
“Fancy meeting me here,” she says. Wait. Is that right?
“Yeah,” Logan replies, rubbing sleep from his eyes. “You broke my lamp.”
“You broke my lamp first!” she retorts. Veronica steals the room key back from Mac and throws it at Logan. It hits him square in the chest and his hands flail to grasp it but he’s unsuccessful. He leaves it on the ground and glares at her.
“What are you doing here?” he asks.
“And that’s my cue,” Mac says. She’s holding a box in her arms, but she drops it to the floor and pats Veronica on the shoulder as she walks by. “Don’t kill each other.”
“Mac, I’m coming with you,” Veronica says, running after her, but Mac stops her by pressing a palm against her shoulder.
“No, you’re not. Because I don’t want you throwing up in my car.”
“I’ll swallow.”
Mac raises an eyebrow and Logan snorts. She glances back and forth at them.What was so funny?
“I see,” Mac says, still moving towards the door. “You’re scared.”
“No I’m not.” Was that a twitch, or did Veronica really stamp her foot along to those words? “I’m not,” she says again for emphasis.
“Is it because you’re drunk?”
“I’M NOT DRUNK!” she yells, defiant in her refusal.
“Well, if you’re not drunk, and you’re not scared then why do you need to come with me?”
Mac leans up against the wall, casual and almost bored. Veronica is having a hard time tracking this conversation. “Huh?” she asks. “Because I want to?”
“Veronica, you’re mad at him and you need to tell him why.”
“He’s a total dumb fuck if he doesn’t know why.”
“Well, the dumb fuck is standing right here and can speak for himself,” Logan says, his voice hard and unyielding.
“Mac, I don’t want to,” Veronica whispers, not wanting Logan to hear. “I want to go with you.”
“Trust me.” She hesitates and looks between Veronica and Logan. “I’ll wait downstairs, okay? Text me when you’re ready to go.”
Veronica nods and Mac opens the door to leave. “Merry Christmas, Logan,” she says, and then closes the door behind her.
“Yeah,” Logan mutters. “Merry Christmas.”
“I came to get my stuff,” Veronica says. Her back is towards Logan and she doesn’t plan to turn around. She doesn’t want to see his pitying glance. Or worse would be if they reverted back to what they were senior year of high school – when, to cover up the hurt they both felt, they attacked.
She’s using all her energy right now to pretend she’s okay – she doesn’t have any left to pretend she hates him.
“You ignored my text.”
“You’re supposed to be in Aspen. I thought I’d take care of it myself.”
“Wow. Something new and different for you.”
The accusation is more annoying than anything else. She’s also at that point in her tipsy (not drunk!) state where she’s kind of pissed off at herself for feeling this way. She reels around and glares at him, shaking her head in disgust.
“Yeah. I’m awful. Thanks for the reminder.” She picks up the box Mac dropped and walks away, grabbing her messenger bag still in the doorway.
“Why do you do this,” Logan shouts. “Why do you always run away?”
“Come off it, Logan. If it really bothered you all that much you wouldn’t let me.” She has her stuff. She returned (okay, threw in a fit of pique) the room key he gave her and they’re over. Closure complete. Done and dusted. Tonight she’ll sleep off her tipsiness, spend Christmas with her dad, and in six days she can put this whole hellish year behind her.
Christmas sucks, anyway.
“Your shoes!” he yells but she has her dignity. She doesn’t need her shoes.
Sophomore year of high school she spent Christmas mourning Lilly. A happy smile was affixed to her face that whole month to make her dad feel better. After Shelley’s party, only eighteen days before Christmas, all she wanted was to spend her time alone alternating between screaming and crying.
The following year it was her and her dad and it might have been okay. But then the Echolls’ Christmas party happened, and she worried for her onetime friend but didn’t have permission to express that.
Missing Wallace and knowing that her and Duncan’s relationship was approaching its expiration date were the highlights of Christmas senior year.
And now there was this hollow ache to keep her company her freshman year at Hearst.
Any illusions she had that this would be the year when Christmas felt okay were clearly misguided. It was foolish to think she’d get to spend it with Logan and her dad. That her smile would be genuine and not just for someone else’s benefit.
She presses the button of the elevator and glances up at the display light waiting for it to chime and take her back down to the lobby. She’s never coming back to the Grand again. Also, she’s never dating a guy whose name ends in ‘an’ ever.
Too bad Brians of the world. So long any fella named Ryan or Jordan. Sorry, Ethans, you probably all have great personalities.
A door opens behind her and she knows, feels it in the tips of her toes, he’s watching her retreat. He’s done it before, but this time he doesn’t get to see watery eyes. She’ll keep her eyes turned downward and start on a preliminary visual inventory of the contents of the box she holds.
Maybe if she stays really still he’ll think she’s a statue. She holds her breath.
There are steps behind her. The hallway is silent otherwise and the sound of heels clicking on the hardwood, coupled with her still tipsy (not drunk!) state, causes her to panic a little because he’s like threatening her with his proximity. It’s loud, it’s too loud. She won’t allow him to get closer.
Veronica looks over her shoulder and narrows her eyes. Stay away, stay away, stay away. She’s begging him without saying a word to keep his distance.
He doesn’t comply and her eyes go wide as his long strides begin to close the distance between them. Fifty feet narrows down to forty and she knows she absolutely cannot allow him closer than forty feet.
She flees.
Hangs a left at the elevator, bursts through the door that leads to the stairwell, and runs. The box is slipping, her messenger bag hits against her thigh, and the jostle of running down the stairs aggravates her upchuck reflex.
She’s a flight of stairs ahead of him, but he’s gaining ground. Her inseam, on a good day, maxes out at twenty-eight inches. His has to be thirty-three at least and it’s not fair. It’s not fair that he can catch up to her now.
Veronica’s being hunted and she lets out a velociraptor like screech as she continues to sprint. Stay away, stay away, stay away.
She’s definitely been running for hours, but Veronica keeps moving her feet. The large nine painted on the cement wall of the stairwell tells her that she’s only conquered two flights. That’s not possible.
Why in the hell is he chasing her?
“Stop chasing me,” she huffs out. She misses a step and almost careens into the wall, but she braces herself and drops the box in the process. Maybe that’ll slow him down. Like those bad guys in Home Alone. She keeps running.
“You told me to!” he yells back.
And now? NOW is the moment he chooses to listen to her? Oh God she wants to throw up. Mac may have been right. Veronica is maybe a little drunk. Each footfall upsets her stomach. She wants to stop and rest but he is literally chasing her.
“That’s not what I meant,” she says. There’s sweat beading at her hairline and it rolls down her nose. Because this night isn’t embarrassing enough? She’s broken into his suite, been abandoned by her friend, is now sprinting in a stairwell at close to midnight on Christmas Eve and now she’s sweating?
At least when Logan broke up with her in the quad she was having a good hair day and managed to hold in the tears until she was alone. This is not going out in a blaze of glory or even a single match of glory. This is mortification at its absolute finest.
Partly from the weight of humiliation, but also because she really is going to vomit, she still has six floors to go, and Logan is right on her heels, she stops running and tucks into the corner. She’s halfway between floors five and six in the stairwell of the Neptune Grand and she’s done.
Logan’s footsteps stop as well. He was less than six inches behind but he never reached out and grabbed her hand. Veronica wonders how long he would have given chase. Through the lobby? Outside the hotel? Would he have followed her all four miles to her apartment?
She pulls her knees up to her chest and rests her forehead against them. Her bare feet against the floor shoots a welcome chill up her spine.
Logan is vaguely somewhere hovering over her. She squeezes her eyes shut and looks up, trying to open them enough to peek through but still give the impression she has them closed. It was what Lilly used to do in elementary school when cheating at Heads Up Seven Up. Veronica always chastised her for it, but she employs the tactic now.
“I can see you looking at me, Veronica,” Logan says. He smirks from one side of his mouth and raises an eyebrow. This is actually amusing to him. The fucker.
“Why did you chase me?” she asks, hiding her face against her knees again.
“Why did you break into my apartment?”
Veronica doesn’t look but she both senses and hears him sitting down beside her. The skin on her right arm prickles and she childishly jerks it away though he’s made no attempt to touch her.
“I wanted my stuff.”
“The stuff you threw at me?” he laughs. It stings that he can find humor in this situation when she wants to die, but when she turns and looks at him, there’s no malice there. This isn’t a Logan laughing at her misery or mocking her. He’s laughing at a punch line of a joke she can’t remember telling.
“I didn’t throw it at you. It was slowing me down.”
“Rilo Kiley takes great offense to you calling her dead weight.”
“I guess I’ll have to download some other angry girl music in her absence.”
The light in the stairwell is too bright and her head is impossibly heavy. She closes her eyes and rests her head on the wall behind her. She wants Logan to leave her alone, but she doesn’t have the energy to ask. Worse than that, she doesn’t think she’d be able to handle it if he obliged her.
They sit in silence and though her eyes are closed she still sees spots of light spinning behind her eyelids. Veronica groans and turns her face away from him. The cold cement wall against her cheek is the best sensation she’s ever felt. She presses her hands against it and tries to get closer but how do you hug a stupid wall?
“You okay?” Logan asks, his voice soft, almost like a caress. She resists the urge to tip herself a few inches to the right and collapse into him. She will not be that girl. There will be no comfort found from the guy who broke her heart in the first place.
This wall is nice, though.
“I’m going to throw up.”
“Here,” he says, and his arms brushes against hers as he moves. “Suck on this.”
Her eyes shoot open and she glares at him. “God, Logan. What is wrong with you?”
In her line of sight he holds up what looks like a piece of hard candy. The corner of his mouth twitches with barely restrained glee.
“Oh,” she says, and looks down at her hands.
“Ginger drop. Supposed to help with nausea.”
“Who are you, Mary Poppins? You going to pull a coat rack and a lamp out of your pocket next?” She takes the proffered drop only because she will do literally anything to get this roiling to stop.
Veronica waits for him to make some sort of follow-up joke – something about it not being a coat rack in his pocket, but he just shrugs. Most of all she misses her friend who made lewd comments and told her stupid jokes.
“Had food poisoning. But now that you mention it, I’m suddenly in the market for a lamp.”
Veronica feels like she just won something because there he is. “Thanks. Is that why you’re not in Aspen?”
He nods but doesn’t explain further. It surprises her that he’s still here. She thought he was done with her. It surprises her even more that he possesses the bleary-eyed look of sickness rather than debauchery.
“Are you planning to stay here all night?” he whispers.
She shakes her head and pulls her knees tighter to her chest. “As soon as I can stand without feeling like I’m dying Mac will give me a ride home.”
She bristles against his appraising stare. He’s already found her wanting. There’s no need for him to look closer and realize how right he was to leave her. Still, she can’t help but look up and he shoots her a quick smile.
It takes all of her impulse control not to smile back. He lifts up from the ground an inch or two and pulls his cellphone from his pocket.
“What are you doing?” she asks. He doesn’t answer, just continues to mess with his phone. His movements are too sure. Too fast. She can’t keep up. “If you take a picture of me I’m putting a hit out on you.”
“Telling Mac to go home. I’ll call a cab for you.”
“What. Do you have a directory of every college freshman woman at Hearst downloaded to your phone?”
They wince in perfect time with each other. Logan because that was a direct attack against him, and Veronica because she knows she sounds jealous.
“I’m going to ignore that,” he says. His voice is listless; almost defeated. He must be as horribly depressed by this whole affair as she is.
“I’d appreciate that,” she whispers.
“Come on,” he says, and she hears him move to stand up. “Let’s go back upstairs. You need to eat something.”
She shakes her head, too fast, too hard, and ugh is that bile rising up in her throat?
“Come on, Veronica. You’ll feel better once you’ve had something to eat and a cup of coffee.”
“I don’t doubt that. But I refuse to walk up those stairs.” And she won’t even get into all the reasons why she won’t step foot into his room again.
It’s a trip down memory lane she doesn’t want. Remember how we use to lay on that couch and you’d play with my hair until I fell asleep? And there! That’s the wall we had sex against the night you took me out for my birthday. And over there is the bed we were sleeping in the night you told me you still loved me.
Pass. Pass on all of it.
He sits back down beside her and he’s even closer this time. She looks at him as he plays with his cell phone, dialing a number and pressing the phone to his ear. If he’s calling someone at the front desk to help move her out of this stairwell she’ll never speak to him again.
“This is Logan Echolls. Yeah, I want to put in an order for room service. Give me the Angus burger, no onions, a club sandwich, a bowl of your chicken tortilla soup, two coffees, and strawberry? –“
His voice lilts up and he glances at Veronica, his eyebrows raised in question. It sucks she knows exactly what he’s asking. She shakes her head.
He nods, and smiles, seemingly pleased that their system of room service ordering is still intact. “—no, chocolate ice cream. Yes that’s everything. Oh, except do you have any Gatorade, the blue kind? And can you deliver that to the east stairwell between floors five and six? Yes. East stairwell. Thank you.”
It’s such a small thing, but it leaves her speechless. The way he orders for her and knows what she needs. She envies him that because apparently she didn’t know what he needed. He’s kind enough not to mention the tears that well in her eyes and lets her look away without guiding her face back to his.
“I hate Gatorade,” Veronica says. She pitches to the side but somehow resists stripping down and stretching the length of her body against the cool floor.
“You’ll hate being hung over at Christmas dinner even more.”
She grimaces at the truth of the statement. Her dad would never get over that one.
“I’m going to go rescue your stuff,” he says. “And grab your shoes.” He appears even guiltier than he sounds, his eyes heavy-lidded and the corners of his mouth turned down. “Stay here?”
She nods, because where else is she going to go? The ginger drop has surprisingly helped, but it still feels like she’s a moment away from throwing up eggnog and rum all over her spangly Christmas sweater.
When Logan returns he sets the box down at her feet and resumes his previous position. She doesn’t jerk her arm away this time, and the goosebumps are still there.
The silence wraps around her and she finds it, coupled with Logan’s presence, to be strangely comforting. He broke up with her twenty-six days ago and her mind has been going nonstop in that time. This is the first time she’s been quiet and felt okay. A little more at peace instead of harried and desperate.
Maybe that means tonight actually served a purpose. Or maybe she’s at peace because she’s near Logan and, if that’s the case, she’s screwed.
The hotel does in fact deliver the food to the stairwell and they eat without talking. Logan makes her coffee the way she likes it and hands her the lid from the pint of ice cream so she can scrape off the ice cream that lingers there. She hates it, but she’s missed him and it’s Christmas.
“I miss you,” she says. She can’t stop herself. It comes out and surprises both of them equally but she doesn’t regret articulating it. Especially when she sees the way the sentiment allows Logan’s shoulders to relax.
With that admission, her nausea diminishes one half-step and perhaps the discomfort had less to do with her being drunk and more to do with pretending to be okay.
“I miss you too,” he returns.
“I’m really mad at you.”
“Me too.”
She expected that because after all he’s the one who broke up with her, right? It doesn’t prevent her from still feeling the sting.
“But, if it helps I’m also mad at me,” he says. The admission just adds another layer of melancholy to her thoughts. Logan’s always mad at himself.
He curls his legs up so their positions match. Knees pulled up to their chests, balancing bowls of ice cream, heads tilted to the side.
In that instant they’re twelve again and Logan’s just moved to Neptune. And maybe, like the first time they met on the soccer field, they’re on the precipice of being friends.
“I want to be okay again,” Logan says. He sounds so hopeful and yet almost as heartbroken as she is.
The things he said when he broke up with her have repeated in a constant month long loop. Disappointment. He thinks he’s a disappointment. Verbally contradicting those fears won’t convince him. Perhaps sitting in the stairwell a bit longer and drinking her Gatorade will.
“Me too,” she says. And means it.
He scoops the remaining ice cream into her bowl while he pours himself another cup of coffee. Once they’re both finished, they stack the plates and Veronica wraps up the half of the club sandwich she couldn’t finish. When she wakes up in the middle of the night thirsty and in need of more ibuprofen the sandwich will be a godsend.
Logan stands first and helps pull Veronica to her feet. She expects to feel uneasy at his touch but it’s almost normal. Almost comfortable, and that’s enough to make her not regret this night. If they really are friends, if everything has changed and they can be around each other again, she knows that this Christmas Eve will be something he teases her about. When he does, she hopes she can laugh.
Now, though, the memory of her drunken stumbling through the hallway as she screamed at him is enough to make her face flame. She presses a hand to her cheek, and yup it’s warm.
“I can drive you home,” Logan offers.
She shakes her head. As good as she’s feeling, she needs some time away from him. She also wouldn’t be able to handle him walking her to her door and not have it end in a kiss. “I’ll take a cab.”
It’s way past midnight and she needs to get home. Her dad thinks she’s with Mac and she doesn’t need him checking up on her.
Logan breathes out a sigh but nods in acceptance and picks up the box of her belongings. “You want to at least put on your shoes, Britney?”
He walks her outside and loads the box into the trunk of the cab. Before she can overthink it, she throws her arms around his waist, presses her cheek to his chest, and hugs him like it might be the last time. “I need you to be my friend,” she whispers against his shirt. “That’s what I need.”
“Okay.” His chin rests against the top of her head as he holds her tight and nods. “I’m here. I promise, Veronica.”
They pull away and she sees the sheen of a tear in the corner of his eye. Everything in his face expresses his gratitude and love. It’s still there. He still loves her.
He stands on the curb as she starts to get in the cab, his hands shoved deep in his pockets. At the last second she steps up on the ledge of the cab door and props her head on the frame. “My dad wants to watch the Eagles game tomorrow but I’m going to be too busy cooking dinner.”
“Plus,” Logan says, arching a brow, “you don’t want to.”
“Plus that. Come over and keep him company?”
Logan hesitates for a beat and the waiting stretches into two, but then he nods yes and she smiles at him.
“Great,” she says. “Kick off is at two. We’ll watch Christmas Vacation after dinner.”
“Okay.” He kicks a pebble off of the curb and into the street. “I have --” he clears his throat and starts again. “I already bought you a present.”
She looks away from where he’s standing and bites her lip, staring at the play of light from the streetlamp on the pavement below her feet. “Me too.”
“Good,” he says and nods, taking a step back, the grin lighting up his face.
“Merry Christmas, Logan.”
“Merry Christmas, Veronica.”
She slides into the cab and shuts the door. After she gives the driver her address, she leans against the backseat and smiles up at the roof.
This Christmas isn’t perfect. In fact it’s far from that. But in these first moments of the holiday Veronica is less lost and decidedly more hopeful. And yes, the night didn’t end in frantic makeup sex with Logan, but tomorrow he’ll be at her house. He’s her friend again.
Logan didn’t go to Aspen, she thinks. And he bought me a present. And he still loves me.
That last thought brings an ever wider smile to her face and she turns her head to watch for houses decorated with Christmas lights.
Her favorite is the large house at the edge of the 09 zip code with the roof lights that spell out ‘Merry Christmas’ and the animatronic Santa who waves at her. Veronica waves back and the cab brings her home.