Chapter Text
Tuesday night before Thanksgiving, Piz’s new band has a gig at a nautically-themed dive bar called The Beachcomber, and Veronica dutifully shows up.
She has no idea what Piz’s old band sounded like, but he insists—with a degree of passion heretofore unparalleled in her boyfriend—that the new one blows Black Licorice out of the water. Over an unremarkable crowd of mildly attentive townies (because, well, Tuesday night), Ars Nova performs seven pretty decent covers plus two original songs, while keeping up enough amusing mid-set banter that Veronica feels confident her post-set enthusiasm will be believable. Sincere, even.
The only real problem is that she’s having trouble paying attention. Her eyes are glued to Piz, of course; she sees no one but him, sips her IPA, smiles blandly up at the stage, but all she can think throughout the whole forty-five minutes that Ars Nova plays is: Why haven’t you dumped me yet?
Seriously.
Why.
It’s not low self-esteem talking, either. She knows, in a general sort of way, what might attract a guy to her, and she knows, more specifically, some of the things that Piz likes about her. They’ve been together seven months, and it’s not like Piz has any more trouble talking about his feelings than the average red-blooded American male raised on John Wayne and James Bond, so it’s not that Veronica doesn’t know where he’s at. It’s not that she doesn’t understand what’s good about their relationship. It’s just that she’s pretty sure they hit their expiration date some time ago, and they’re still not... expired.
For weeks—months, if she’s being honest, since the whole Logan beating the crap out of him ordeal—things have alternated between flat and strained between Piz and her, culminating in a pretty painful fight about a month ago. He said some things, she said some things... well, no, mostly he just said some things, and she stood there and took it because she couldn’t really argue with anything he said. And after that, she’d been certain they would break up, that he would just dump her already and the niggling guilt that plagued her whenever he made her a mixtape or met her after class would be over already.
But Piz didn’t dump her. He stuck with her.
He wants to “work things out.”
He wants her to visit his family in Oregon over Christmas.
It’s the adult thing to do, work things out. It’s romantic, too, in a way; it’s attractive to Veronica that Piz wants this enough to work at it, rather than just calling it quits when things become anything but pleasant.
Piz would never dump her and run off to sleep with Madison Sinclair.
Veronica pretends she didn’t just think that, takes a long pull from her beer, and claps extra loud when they finish the current song.
When the set ends, Piz and the band hang back to chat with the owner of the bar, and Veronica waits for him at her table along the wall. She wishes Wallace or Mac or even Parker had come out too, but they didn’t, and now all Veronica has for entertainment is the table of very loud, very intoxicated young people across the room. It’s a handful of guys—college age, maybe Hearst, but Veronica doesn’t know them—and two girls in short dresses whose faces are invisible to her from this angle, though she has mentally christened them the Brunette and the Redhead. The whole table is noisy and incomprehensible, bubbling over with the joyless laughter of too much alcohol and too little to say to one another. Veronica catches something that sounds like the punchline of a raunchy joke, and she hopes that the girls have been watching their drinks.
She’s chewing on her bottom lip, her mind drifting to dark what-if scenarios and the taser in her bag, when Piz finishes up and joins her at the table. He’s flushed with excitement, absolutely glowing, and for a moment, Veronica is distracted. She allows herself—or rather, forces herself—to focus on her boyfriend and the fact that this is a happy moment.
“You. Were. So. Good,” she says, and Piz full-on grins.
“Yeah? The Death Cab cover wasn’t too on-the-nose?”
“No, it was great! All of it was great!”
“And—uh...” Piz blush-laughs, but there’s confidence in his voice when he asks: “Did you like the second song?”
Veronica gives herself a mental gold-star for catching this one: “Desmond Fellowes. Very sweet.” She leans across the small bar table and pecks Piz on the lips. “I felt like Pattie Boyd.”
“Pattie Boyd?” scoffs Piz, as Veronica falls back into her seat. “Please. I am no one’s George Harrison! I’m Lennon, through and through!”
“Uh-oh. Does that make me...?” But before she can finish the Yoko Ono joke, they’re interrupted by the loud and enthusiastic approach of the rest of Ars Nova—three other shaggy-haired Hearst boys, who are all still kind of in awe of Veronica and, by extension, Piz.
“Don’t repeat that John Lennon thing in front of the guys,” Piz whispers quickly to her before the rest of the band reaches the table, “Toby’s kind of sensitive because we didn’t play his ballad, it was seven and a half minutes long, Veronica, you wouldn’t believe... Hey guys!”
Despite her boyfriend’s warning about Toby and his apparent sensitivity, "the guys" seem to be floating blissfully in the region of Cloud 9 when they drag chairs up to the table. They’re all carrying beers that Justin—the twenty-one-year-old junior in the band—procured for them, and they settle in for a complete rehash of the set. Veronica lets go of her hope for an early dismissal, as the boys seem almost as interested in hearing her reaction to every riff and chorus as they are in animatedly recapping their own feelings on the matter.
It’s actually kind of adorable, and Veronica smiles and nods, nods and smiles along. She wishes Mac were here, though. Wallace would be bored with this crew, but Mac would appreciate it; they would be able to share secret smiles, while earnestly assuring the boys that no, Grant didn’t set the tempo too fast on “Hotel Yorba,” and yes, the crowd was super into “Mass Romantic.”
Justin gets up to purchase another round, and his absence around the table once again frees up Veronica’s view of the loud, drunk table she was watching earlier. There seem to have been some developments since Veronica last paid them any attention, as Redhead is now standing—Veronica catches sight of her face for the first time—and tugging at one of the boy’s arms.
“I’ve got a nine a.m. tomorrow, baby,” she’s complaining, “We gotta go. Charlie, c’mon...”
It’s too loud, there’s too much going on, for Veronica to hear this Charlie’s response, but the girl is headed for the exit with one of the guys a minute later, his arm draped around her shoulders as they make their way out, dripping in couple aura. Eight months, if Veronica had to guess a number.
She glances back at the table, where the brunette and three guys continue the party. They’re all drinking, but only the girl seems to be growing progressively louder.
Down girl, Veronica reprimands herself. It’s just some friends in a bar.
Why is she always so damn suspicious of everything?
Just before Justin returns to his seat and obscures her view again, Veronica sees the girl toss back a shot and throw her hands up in the air, with a passionate “Woohoo!” that brings half the bar’s attention to her. Even Piz glances over his shoulder at the party behind them.
“Very classy,” he snorts, and returns his focus to his girlfriend and bandmates.
Not your problem, Veronica, she thinks about ten minutes later, when movement from that side of the room draws her attention again, and she sees Brunette stumbling towards the bathroom. She wishes Justin would move over a few inches, so she could see the guys at the other table—get a read on them. But of course: Not your problem, Veronica.
Besides, anyone watching her own table might be equally suspicious. Veronica is a small young woman alone with four guys, and though she knows that at least one of these men is trustworthy, that she’s only had one beer all night, and that she watches the preparation and presentation of all her drinks with nearly obsessive diligence, an outside viewer would have no way of knowing that.
Then, Brunette stumbles back to her chair, nearly knocks it over before she lands correctly, and Veronica knows it’s not the same thing.
The other table leaves before Veronica’s. When they get up, Brunette turns toward Veronica and Ars Nova, and Veronica gets her first look at the girl’s face: pretty, pouty-lipped, there’s a momentary chill in her expression, in the downturn of her lips at the ends and the lines of her heavily lidded eyes, but when the boys join her on her side of the table, she’s smiling brightly again, throwing an arm around one of the guys’ shoulders. She looks suddenly like someone else, which is so shocking because:
“That’s Carrie Bishop!”
Piz pauses halfway through his thesis on the hotly contested issue of whether they should open with an original song next time, and he looks up at Veronica, then follows her stare across the room to where Carrie and her three cohorts are making a crooked line toward the door.
“Uh—friend of yours?” he asks, and Veronica, still following Carrie’s progress with her eyes, shakes her head.
“We went to high school together,” she says. I kind of hated her most of the time doesn’t seem relevant. “I thought she was in Boston. Northeastern.”
“Probably home for Thanksgiving,” guesses Piz, obviously confused as to why this has such a firm hold on Veronica’s attention. Veronica can’t really explain it herself, except...
“Her best friend was that girl who died on the boat,” she says numbly, which has nothing to do with anything but seems like it should be explained anyway. “The one with Dick Casablancas over Labor Day weekend.”
“Oh.” Piz frowns at his friends. “That’s sad.”
Over the hum of the bar, Veronica hears Carrie calling out, just as they reach the exit: “All right, which one of you assholes is calling me a cab?” and she breathes a little easier.
Half an hour later, Veronica and Piz stroll through the little parking lot across the street from the Beachcomber, fingers entwined, as Piz rhapsodizes affectionate on what a truly wonderful girlfriend Veronica is. He has his guitar case slung over one shoulder, and, all right, he’s a little tipsy after three beers, but it’s cute. It’s really sweet, and she knows he’s still trying to make up for their fight last month—still trying to work things out. It’s good, because to be honest, some of the things he said have been nagging at her. She wonders if he meant them, how much she is supposed to be changing.
She’s not. Changing. Not in the way Piz wants her to.
She’s not going to voice every single thought and feeling that flickers through her. She’s not going to analyze her emotions for him, she’s not going to sit him down and tell him the story of her life. If he wants to know something, he can ask.
He hasn’t, which is also good. In fact, it seems that he’s been more than satisfied with the efforts Veronica has made. She doesn’t complain about having to socialize with people who aren’t Wallace and Mac, she puts in the hours, and is, by all apparent standards of measurement, a happy, attentive, normal girlfriend. It’s like a subject in school, like a math problem: she learns the steps, the formula, and applies it to the problem at hand. She shows up and looks pretty and gets better at smoothing over the rough patches.
Veronica shakes off a prickle of guilt, listens to Piz segue into a commentary on Toby’s ill-fated ballad, and they’re almost to her Saturn when a shriek of laughter pulls Veronica’s attention from her boyfriend and toward a silver Benz parked under the closest streetlight.
Propped against the passenger side door, her purple dress shimmering in the orange light, is Carrie Bishop, cigarette in hand and head rolling from side to side, like her neck is made of rubber. There’s only one guy with her now, in a sports jacket and jeans, and he’s leaning over her, his laughter much quieter, more contained, than Carrie’s manic giggles.
He has his hand on her arm, but it moves upward along her shoulder, then her neck, and he starts to complain: “C’mon, just—just... just finish the damn cigarette already.” He doesn’t notice Piz and Veronica, maybe fifty feet off, and Carrie sure as hell doesn’t see them.
“I don’t want to see your view!” she laughs back, “I want to go to Cube!”
“Cube’s an hour away, babe, I’m not driving that!”
“Then call me a fucking cab, babe,” says Carrie. “I wanna dance.”
“The mating cry of the party girl,” says Piz, just before Veronica lets go of his hand. She’s stalking over toward the couple before Piz senses the change in her mood, before even she can identify what she’s feeling, but she slides her purse off her shoulder and slips her hand to check that her trusty taser is there, ready for the grabbing should it come to that. She goes right up to Carrie and her suitor, and she loops her arm through Carrie’s before the brunette manages to roll her head in Veronica's direction.
“Hey, Carrie,” she coos, and the guy stiffens, his hands moving from Carrie’s neck to his pocket. “I know, I made it, finally! Let’s get out of here, huh?”
“Veronica Mars?” Carrie slurs uncertainly, dropping her cigarette to the asphalt and stomping on it. “What the fuck?”
“Who are you?” demands the guy.
“I’ll give you three guesses,” snaps Veronica. “And you’re not driving my friend here anywhere, so move along. Scoot. Skedaddle.” She shoos him with her free hand, while Carrie gives her a thoroughly suspicious look but remains silent.
“Look, I only had a couple of beers,” says the guy, “I’m totally good to drive.”
“Do you think that helps your ranking on the Creep Factor scale, buddy?” Veronica pulls Carrie to something resembling a standing position, so at least she’s not slumped against the car anymore, “I said skedaddle.”
“I don’t wanna go with you, Veronica Mars,” Carrie manages to complain eventually, and Veronica really doesn’t care. “S’mind your own business, I’m fiiiine...” She stumbles in an attempt to extricate her arm from her would-be protector and grabs the hood of the car for support. She stays hunched over, face concealed by a veil of wavy brown hair.
“You heard her, she doesn’t want to go with you,” says the guy. “So,” he mimics her tone and gesture, “skedaddle.”
Veronica rolls her eyes and whips out her taser, just as Carrie begins to dry heave. Piz is at her side now, or a step behind. He hasn’t said a word but his arms are crossed and he’s glaring at the now considerably more cautious guy, while Veronica waves the taser demonstratively.
“You were saying?”
For a second, she thinks her blazer-wearing Benz-driver will argue, but then he just rolls his eyes, holds his hands up in surrender, and swings around to the driver’s side of the car, muttering, “Fucking bitches,” under his breath as he goes. Veronica pulls the still gagging Carrie away from the hood as the car starts, but only when it peels away does Carrie seem to come around to what’s happened.
“What the fuck did you do, Veronica Mars?” she asks, swatting Veronica’s hand away and tripping back three steps when the support is removed. “I don’t need your fucking help, fucking cun...”
“Hey, hey, hey,” says Piz.
Veronica ignores this. She takes hold of Carrie’s shoulders and shakes her, just enough to get her head in the right direction, and asks in a slow, clear voice: “Carrie, where do you live?”
Carrie taps her lips with the tip of one black fingernail. Pretends to think. Or maybe she really needs to think, her eyes are seriously glazed over at this point: "Uhhh—Davenport.”
“Where’s Davenport?” Veronica asks. “An address?”
“S’in Boston. Davenport Commons. Commons commons commons...” She giggles.
Piz, to her right, sighs heavily, but Veronica presses on: “Where do you live in Neptune? Where do your parents live?”
That puts an end to the giggling. “’Don’ wanna see my parents,” whines Carrie. “I’m not visiting my parents.”
“Where are you staying?” Veronica tries again, but Carrie has become very fascinated with a sequin on her dress and she doesn’t seem to hear the question. She’s humming under her breath. “C’mon,” says Veronica to Piz, “let’s at least get her to the car.”
Piz doesn’t look thrilled, but he leads the way to the Saturn, opens the back door, and helps Veronica half guide, half push Carrie inside.
When Veronica is in the driver’s seat with Piz beside her, guitar case between his legs—Carrie groaning in the back—Veronica opens her cell phone and clicks through her contacts.
“Who are you calling?” Piz asks, eyeing Carrie doubtfully. “And how attached to the backseat upholstery are you?”
“Dick Casablancas might know where she lives, I think they’re friends,” Veronica explains. Anyway they were both on that boat. The mention of Casablancas Jr. catches Carrie’s attention, though, and she sits up immediately, throwing herself over the center console.
“Dick! Richard Casablancas!” she exclaims, and Piz’s winces at the heavy scent of alcohol on her breath. “I want to see Dick! Sweet, sweet, innocent little Dick,” she sings, and then explodes in another round of giggles.
“Innocent? Dick?” echoes Piz. “Now I know she’s drunk.”
“Take me to Dick! I want to see Dick!” She cackles at the innuendo, but starts pounding her hands against the backs of Veronica and Piz’s seats. Her big brown eyes are both glassy and bloodshot, and she’s swinging her head back and forth. There’s something wrong with her, something very wrong with this girl that Veronica knew once upon a time, and even aside from the blaring howl of her voice, it’s incredibly unsettling.
“Maybe we should take her to the hospital,” Veronica mutters to Piz, “She’s on something.”
“Yeah, tequila shooters and tobacco,” says Piz.
Carrie drops the temper tantrum and becomes strangely earnest: “I don’t need to go to the hospital, I need to see Dick. I need to talk to Dick. I need to talk—to—to—to talk to Dick about something. It’s imp—important. I need to talk t-t-t-to him.” She’s stuttering like a broken record, and Veronica clicks on Dick’s name in her phone just to do something. The call goes straight to voicemail, and Veronica makes a decision.
She sticks the key in the ignition and without looking at Piz, pulls out of the parking spot, out of the lot and onto the main road, heading north towards the Neptune Grand.
Veronica tells Piz that he can stay in the car if he wants. She tells him twice, the first time apologetic, when they pull into the parking garage at the Grand (because she feels bad about this) and the second time earnest, when she helps Carrie out of the car (because why does he think it’s a good idea for him to come upstairs?), but Piz declines (because he wants to help her), and the three of them make their way into the hotel.
During the trek to the elevator, Carrie keeps it together enough that they’re not stopped, which is fortunate since Veronica doesn’t recognize any of the people at the front desk. She doesn’t recognize the doorman, either, or the security guard by the bar, or the perky hostess conversing with a group of guests in the lounge: it’s weirdly upsetting. Veronica used to know this whole staff by sight, even if she didn’t know their names. She and Logan had nicknames for the whole security team—“Uh oh, looks like Peaches is about to take his daddy issues out on the Night at the Roxbury twins over there,” or “Come through the south door when you get here, Luca Brasi and the Pinball Wizard are throwing down over a girl, you gotta see it.” But now it’s been... months since Veronica spent a significant amount of time here. Months since she’s set foot inside at all.
Carrie loses her cool almost the second the elevator doors close, as if she’s been waiting for privacy to act like a lunatic. The doors ding shut and she starts to giggle maniacally before falling back against the wall. She swings forward again a moment later and sort of drapes herself over Veronica’s shoulders. Carrie would have the height advantage even if she weren’t wearing stilettos (compared to Veronica’s sneakers) and the angle is odd, but she smiles strangely and kisses Veronica’s forehead.
Piz’s blue eyes go wide, but Veronica ignores this until the elevator stops, drops them on the top floor, and Carrie gives him a sidelong look.
“Guitar?” is all she manages to say, and Veronica realizes:
“You brought your guitar?”
Piz flushes red. “It was on my lap, I just put it over my shoulder out of habit...” They’re disembarking from the lift, but he glances back at the closing doors: “Should I put it back...?”
“Let’s just get this over with.”
Carrie takes off, sprinting to the end of the hallway past the penthouse door. She can’t go too far, fortunately, as the hallway ends shortly thereafter, a dead end, but Veronica picks up her pace anyway.
“Hopefully Logan won’t be in tonight,” mutters Piz, catching up. Veronica nods her agreement—Logan did beat the shit out of him once, after all, she can’t really begrudge Piz a little residual resentment—but privately she prays for the opposite. On a purely practical level, Dick by himself will be absolutely useless in a situation like this (and really, in most situations—unless you’re looking for beer or writing a dissertation on misogyny in college fraternities). If sober, however, Logan will actually have a useful perspective on what to do with their fellow former Pirate, and Veronica—loath as she is to admit it (so she won’t)—could use the input, because she’s at a bit of a loss here.
Carrie is making her way back toward Piz and Veronica, her legs crossing at the knee with each step, so that Veronica catches her arm to hold her still when she reaches them. Carrie smiles—almost sweetly, but her eyes are out of focus—and she points to Piz: “Whozzat?”
“That’s Piz, c’mon Carrie, we’re going to see Dick.”
“Piss, piss, piss,” Carrie sings quietly, but she stands, mostly by her own power, just behind Veronica and a little in front of Piz, when Veronica knocks on the door to Logan and Dick’s place. They wait for someone to answer.
Veronica has stood here a million times, when she was with Logan and when she was without him, and she tries not to think too hard about any of those times. She forcibly stops herself from thinking about Kendall Casablancas wrapping herself around him, from envisioning him that night in January, when she’d come here to talk, to make up, and they’d—well, they’d definitely made up. Not so much with the talking.
After Aspen. After he slept with Madison Sinclair.
“I should’ve called,” Veronica realizes suddenly with horror. “Piss, piss, piss!” sings Carrie, and Piz shrugs. Of course she should’ve called! Logan could have a girl in there. Logan probably has a girl in there! He’s Logan, for God’s sake, he’s always got a girl! And he’s going to answer the door and she’s going to have to see it and—Jesus, she brought Piz to this? What in God’s name was she thinking?
Logan opens the door. He doesn’t have a girl. What he has is: sweats and a Hearst t-shirt, a Killers album playing at a reasonable volume in the background, and a look of utter confusion. Two seconds of silence, and then, of course he notices Piz’s guitar:
“But where’s Denny Doherty?” he asks dryly.
Veronica relaxes. “Is Dick here?”
To his credit, Logan doesn’t make the obvious joke. “Uh—no. He went up to Sac for Thanksgiving. What...?” He stops, changes course: “Who’s that?” He nods at Carrie, who, Veronica realizes, has dropped her singing but seems to be trying to pull all the sequins off her dress. Her chin is against her chest, and her long brown hair shields her face from Logan.
“It’s Carrie Bishop,” Veronica explains. “We found her at...”
But Carrie’s head pops up at the sound of her name, and she spots Logan for the first time. “I know you, Logan Echolls,” she slurs, and pushes her way into the hotel room, kicking off her shoes and shouting, “Where’s Dick? Diiiick. Dick-o-las...”
“We found her at a bar,” Veronica finishes. “She’s looking for your roommate.”
Logan watches Carrie climb on his couch, his eyebrows closer than not to his hairline: “I can see that. What is she on?”
That’s about as close as Veronica expects to get to a professional opinion that Carrie is more than drunk. “I don’t know,” she says, and adds hopefully, “Can you tell?”
Logan rolls his eyes. “Well, as the resident junkie...” (Veronica scowls), “I do have one sure-fire trick to find out.” He opens the suite door a little wider and steps aside for his two other guests to enter, “Michelle, John, you might as well come in, since Mama Cass has made herself at home.” He closes the door behind them, falls back against it, and calls out to Carrie: “Hey, Bishop, what d’you got?”
Carrie, who has been rocking out pretty hard to Leave the Bourbon on the Shelf playing on the stereo, stops to smile coyly at their host: “The blues, Logan Echolls, I got the blues.”
Veronica looks curiously to Logan, who translates, “Xanax.”
“Plus at least two shots and two mixed drinks,” Veronica tells him. Though she’s sure it was more, she only directly witnessed those four.
“You were counting her drinks from across the bar?” Piz asks, speaking for the first time since Logan opened the door and, consequently, reminding Veronica of his presence.
She shrugs, “Force of habit.” Carrie climbs up on the arm of the couch, balancing with her arms outstretched like a crucifix, and Veronica takes the moment of distraction to get a better look at her surroundings. The last time she was here, she was raging and swearing she’d never speak to Logan again, although that hasn’t really panned out—even before this evening—and the memory is a little embarrassing at this point.
She was wrong about the girl, though. Logan is clearly in for a night alone here; there’s a beer open on the coffee table, right next to his laptop and a stack of books and papers, like maybe he was studying.
“Midterm tomorrow,” Logan says, following her gaze to his school materials. Then he sidesteps the pair and makes for Carrie. He’s glaring as he offers her his hand to help her down from her precarious position on one of the three sitting area couches, but Carrie just beams in reply, takes his hand, and steps from the couch to the coffee table—narrowly missing his computer, as she bends over to pick up the beer. It reaches her lips, but Logan snatches it away. Now he’s smirking.
“I’ll share mine if you share yours.”
Carrie matches his expression. “You got hotter since high school,” she observes, and reaches down the front of her dress to withdraw a small plastic bag of blue pills from God knows where.
“And you got drunker, Madam. But in the morning, I will still be hot, and you will be massively hungover.” He plucks the bag from her hands.
“You can only have one,” pouts Carrie, “They’re almost gone.” She tries to whisper, bending close to Logan’s face: “Don’t tell the girl scout, I took two in the car,” holding up two fingers to demonstrate and nearly falling off the table for the effort.
“The girl scout can hear you,” snaps Veronica, as Logan slips the bag of pills into the pocket of his charcoal grey sweats. Veronica expects Carrie to protest, but apparently Xanax and alcohol don’t do much for one’s attention to detail—or memory, for that matter—as Carrie only hops off the table (Logan holds out a steadying hand she doesn’t end up requiring) and zig-zags into the kitchenette.
Logan turns to Veronica and Piz again. “Not that I don’t love the company, but why did you bring her here?”
“Dick didn’t answer his phone,” sighs Veronica, which doesn't explain why she didn't call the landline or try another of Carrie's friends, but whatever: “I was hoping he’d know where her parents live. She was at the bar with some sleaze and—I just had a bad feeling.”
Logan nods slowly. “Dick should’ve landed, maybe he forgot to turn his phone back on.” In the kitchen, Carrie is rifling through the refrigerator and she lands on another beer; Logan hurries forward and swipes it from her, “I’ll open it for you,” he says, but leaves it on the counter when Carrie gets distracted by a bowl of apples. “Dick’s not here,” he says to her, and she just sort of watches him, dead eyed, like she barely understands what the words mean. “He’s up north visiting his mom,” Logan goes on, “So Veronica’s going to take you home.” He glances over his shoulder at Veronica, who sighs but nods her confirmation. What else can she do?
“Where do you live?” Veronica asks again.
Carrie takes a large, crunching bite from an apple. “I’m not going home,” she practically growls. “My parents are fucking crazy, I fucking hate them.”
“Where are you staying?” Logan tries.
“My car.”
Veronica feels Piz move closer to her, and she looks over to see him gape at the confession, but Veronica doesn’t buy it and neither, it turns out, does Logan. “Sure, you waxed your eyebrows, threw on the Gucci, and applied the entire Sak’s cosmetic counter from the comfort of the driver’s seat,” he says sarcastically, then repeats himself: “Where are you staying?”
Carrie takes another bite, chews, and doesn’t meet Logan’s eye. “Here and there.” She steps around him, twirls into the living room and stops just in front of one of the couches, eyes on Piz. “Who’re you?”
“We’ve actually met,” grumbles Piz.
“La Jolla,” says Carrie.
“Gesundheit,” says Piz.
Carrie falls onto the couch, giving the entire room a good look at her thong and Veronica hurries forward to close her legs.
“With Gia,” Carrie adds. It’s a moment before Veronica understands that she has finally told them where she’s staying—where to bring her. La Jolla, care of Gia Goodman. Gia is attending San Diego State, and it shouldn’t be too hard for Veronica to track down where she lives.
Logan sits down on the other couch, the one he must’ve occupied before Veronica’s arrival, judging by the position of his books and laptop. “Well now you’ll have to take her,” he says, “I can’t. I’m allergic to Gia.”
“I thought it was shellfish,” replies Veronica, frowning.
“That too.”
“Well,” begins Veronica, crossing her arms and shifting her weight, “you may be allergic to Gia, but I’m pretty sure Gia’s allergic to me.” A glance at Piz reminds her that she really should explain all of this to him. Later.
“I never held it against you,” sighs Logan. Accusing my father of a terrible crime, he means, and it isn’t until this moment that Veronica appreciates the fact that Logan and Gia Goodman are in the same boat, as far as that goes. “Must be because I’m so mellow and well-adjusted.”
“Yes, that must be it,” Veronica deadpans.
Carrie has now tossed her half-eaten apple onto the floor and grabbed one of the decorative pillows from the couch. She curls up onto her side and spoons it, humming the melody of her “Piss, piss, piss” song from earlier: she looks surprisingly content there.
“La Jolla—that’s near San Diego, right?” asks Piz, shooting an inquisitive look to his girlfriend. Veronica gestures more or less, but nods, “That’s like an hour away. Do her parents live in Neptune?”
“She said not to bring her to her parents,” says Logan—the first time he’s addressed Piz directly, but even still, his eyes flicker to Veronica on the last word. His tone is decided, but there’s a touch of something there, like he’s asking her permission.
“Well, I probably would too, if I was that wasted,” says Piz, while Logan drags himself off the couch again to dispose of Carrie’s left-overs. “But that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have a good grounding and cell-phone confiscation coming to me.”
Logan doesn’t say anything, only scoops up the apple core and looks at Veronica over his shoulder. She nods subtly, understanding, because Logan grew up with 09ers and 09er parents. Find a grown up isn’t his go-to solution any more than it is Veronica’s. He ambles back to the kitchenette and tosses the core in the trashcan under the sink.
“Where’s your car, Carrie?” he asks, but she doesn’t answer. He can’t see her from where he stands (except for one bare foot, bouncing off the arm of the couch), but Veronica can, and it appears that Carrie has begun to doze off.
“Carrie, where’s your car?” Veronica asks louder, nudging the hanging foot, but Carrie only mumbles in response.
“Carrie,” Logan repeats, exasperated, coming around to the front of the couch. “Where did you leave your car?”
“I don’t want to go, I want to sleep,” Carrie grouses. She closes her eyes and smacks her lips. “Tired.”
“I’ll take her to my place,” decides Veronica, but Carrie curls closer around her beloved pillow and groans.
“I wanna stay with Duncan.”
“Logan,” Veronica and Logan correct in unison, making regrettable eye-contact as they do.
“I’m-gon-a take a nap." Carrie mumbles the declaration so it all sounds like one word, and it looks as though she’ll follow through on this particular promise. Her next one, “An’ then Logan’s-a-take-me-dancing,” seems far less likely.
“It’ll be a short dance,” says Logan. He lets out a heavy puff of breath, massaging his forehead with the tips of his fingers as he walks around the coffee table back to the other couch. “Leave her,” he says, “She can call a cab in the morning.”
Veronica glances at Carrie, then Piz, then turns back to Logan uncertainly: “Is it okay for her to sleep?”
“I’ll make sure she’s still breathing,” he replies, picking up his laptop and placing it on his lap. “There’s nothing else for her to do except sleep it off.”
“They always sleep it off,” Carrie whisper-sings from the couch, but Veronica ignores this.
“She’s not your responsibility. I brought her here. I’ll take her back to my apartment.”
“Keith lighten up much recently?” Logan half-jokes, and he’s not exactly wrong—her dad won’t love finding a hungover nineteen-year-old on their couch tomorrow morning, and it’s not like Logan has any adult supervisors to answer to. But Veronica doesn’t want to feel obliged to him either, so she continues to argue the point.
“He’ll understand when I explain.”
“But why bother? And have fun trying to get her down to your car. I’m sure Peaches will just love to see two college kids dragging an unconscious girl across the lobby.”
“Peaches isn’t on duty, it’s some new guy I don’t know,” Veronica tells him inconsequentially, and for a moment, the corners of Logan’s mouth twitch, like he’s going to smile. He drops his gaze to the laptop screen before him. Piz is at her elbow now, looking very concerned, and she’s glad Logan is paying attention to his computer again, because he doesn’t catch the suspicious look Piz sends in his direction as he shakes his head. Veronica’s more than a little sorry that she had to see it, because she knows what it means. He’s not sure Carrie’s safe with Logan.
She grinds her teeth a little, then says to her ex: “I’ll figure something out.”
“Okay,” says Logan. He casts his eyes about the room and locates, hanging off the arm of his couch, a knit throw-blanket with which Veronica was once very familiar. “May I once again submit for consideration,” he says, grabbing the blanket and balling it up, “Leaving her on the couch she has already personally selected to pass out on, and letting her take a cab in the morning?” He tosses the blanket to Veronica, who catches it and—well, even if she isn’t sure about leaving Carrie here, at least she can cover up the girl’s bare legs. When this is accomplished, Veronica folds her arms and turns to face Logan again.
“You have a midterm to study for,” she says, “Why don’t you go back to your room and do that, and I’ll take care of Carrie.” She remembers a second later: “Piz and I will.” She glances at her boyfriend, and at least he doesn’t protest.
Logan’s eyebrows shoot up again. “Um—no.”
“Why not?” She takes a step closer to him. “Someone has to look after her, and you’ve got...”
“I’m perfectly capable of checking her pulse every hour, thanks, Veronica, unless you’re worried...”
“You're an idiot, of course I’m not worried about that, it’s just not your responsib...”
“I’ll be up studying for this stupid test anyway…”
He moves his laptop aside but doesn’t get up from the couch, and Veronica huffs: “I brought her over here, it stands to reason that I’ll take care of...”
“I have plenty of experience with exactly this situation...” he points out.
“It’s not exactly my first rodeo either, Logan...” she counters, but they are neither of them very good listeners, and they’re talking over each other ridiculously:
“...no point in all three of us losing sleep because Carrie Freaking Bishop of all people decided to mix her benzos...don’t even like Carrie Bishop... used to call her ‘Gossiping Hag’ in high school...Lilly was the one who called her that... not going to have you sit on my couch all night...is a classic Logan... this isn’t a classic anything... refuse to listen to what I’m saying… you can’t just call any behavior you don’t like ‘classic’... just charging into a situation without even thinking...being falsely accused of a crime, being mistaken for Justin Timberlake... instead of doing your school work, after all the work it took to get you... would be examples of situations that you might accurately call ‘classic Logans,’ but taking care of a wasted Carrie Bishop is...into this stupid school, and you don’t even take it seriously enough to... not even close to ‘classic,’ it’s literally unprecedented!”
Piz clears his throat loudly, and Veronica wheels around to face him, ready to take a piece out of her boyfriend too, if she has to, but he’s just watching the pair of them with a downright paternal look in his eye that makes Veronica feel just slightly ashamed of herself. Similarly chastened, Logan throws his hands up in resignation.
“I guess we’re staying,” says Piz, and he sits down on the third, vacant couch. Veronica nods, drops her purse to the floor next to the coffee table, and joins him there. Logan stays put for a second, but then gets to his feet and crosses to the wall, where his stereo is still humming with the Killers. He switches it off.
He spins on his heel to face them, and Veronica crosses her legs and arms in what she knows is a combative posture. The fight seems gone from Logan, though; he’s all theatrics as he holds out his hands and quirks his head to one side: “Anyone want a cup of coffee?”
Piz falls asleep just before Conan ends, his head—blessedly—falling toward the arm of the couch rather than Veronica’s shoulder. Logan has kept his eyes moving in a steady rotation between his computer screen, the television, and Carrie, sliding past Veronica and Piz on the couch opposite him only in the necessary circuit between the rerun of Late Night and the sleeping girl.
On the plus side, checking Carrie’s pulse seems to be unnecessary; she’s a loud breather, it turns out, just this side of snoring really, and every half hour or so, she starts mumbling in her sleep. Nothing coherent, but at least Veronica doesn’t have to worry about calling an ambulance.
The nightly news begins, and Logan notices that Piz has nodded off. He finally meets Veronica’s eye and says, just above a whisper—“That Ken Burns, huh?”
He’s referring to the talk show. Veronica smirks. “And here I thought you were just watching for the Jerry O’Connell interview,” she matches his decibel, and Piz doesn’t stir.
“Nah, the pain of the Crossing Jordan cancellation is still too fresh.” He heaves a histrionic sigh—so quintessentially Logan, it makes her insides twist.
It’s only been in the last month or so that Veronica and Logan have really started "speaking to each other" again, though Veronica wasn’t exactly not speaking to him prior to that. Her actual anger towards him for past misdeeds faded sometime in the realm of his takedown of Gory Sorokin, but then she was gone over the summer, and their schedules don’t overlap much at Hearst. And she did feel that she owed it to Piz.
(Because he beat Piz up, that's all.)
She could have sought him out all those months: he would’ve been receptive, she knows now, and plenty of times she wanted to. But she wasn’t taking cases at that point, and it just seemed easier to cut out that whole area of her life—the dramatic area, with jobs and danger and Logan. It was a short-lived experiment, though, and eventually it wasn’t so much a matter of cutting out that part of her life as covering it up. Now she’s not even doing that.
Not really.
Piz, Wallace, Mac, her Dad—they know she’s taking cases again, in the sense that Veronica will say "I'm helping Sarah Webber find her stolen laptop," or "My boss at the library thinks someone's stealing from the Classics section," and they'll make "Crime of the century!" jokes, or wish her good luck, or whatever. But she doesn’t feel the need to involve any of them or give out many details, and she certainly doesn’t feel the need to fill them in on the other cases: the portfolio of information she’s gathering on Sheriff Van Lowe’s corrupt patterns, on Jake Kane’s ties to organized crime, on the Sorokin clan’s activities in the greater Southern California area. For one thing: ignorance is bliss. For another: the more they know, the more danger they could be in.
Logan knows. It's kind of annoying, but also kind of not. He found out by accident—bumped into her on a casing of the Sorokin’s backroom poker game—and now, as often as not, Veronica takes him along for stake-outs or stings or interrogations of potentially threatening witnesses. Sometimes she takes Weevil instead. Usually it’s Logan.
He thinks it’s a mistake that she doesn’t tell anyone about it.
His exact words: “You’re a lot dumber than you look, Veronica.”
But what does Logan know, anyway?
For about ten seconds earlier tonight, Veronica was concerned that Logan might say something that would clue Piz in to her more discreet investigations. The fear passed, though. Even if Logan did let something slip, Veronica can investigate what she wants with whomever she wants. It's nobody's business but her own.
She said something like that to Logan on a stake-out a couple weeks ago; he called her a hypocrite and proceeded to eat all her snacks.
After the news, Logan switches to Fresh Prince reruns, which buys them another hour until there is really and truly nothing else on television. Even the movie channels on Logan’s deluxe cable package have conspired to play nothing of interest.
Her host flips through a three-subject notebook, but glances up at Veronica between pages: “You could sleep if you’re tired. Looks like Carrie’s fine.”
Veronica is tired, but Piz has taken up most of the couch, his tennis shoes burrowing into her thigh, so there isn’t exactly room to stretch out. She sure isn’t going to cuddle up with her current boyfriend on her ex’s couch.
(You’ve done it before, she thinks, remembering Duncan, but that was different. She and Logan were semi-enemies, and she kind of wanted to piss him off at the time.)
Logan understands, though—at least about the couch situation. “You could crash in Dick’s bed. They changed the sheets this morning.” He adds a barely perceptible wink, and Veronica shakes her head.
“But could I ever live with myself? Knowing?”
Logan frowns sympathetically. “Valid,” and he sets aside his computer. “You could take this couch if you want. I can always go study in my room.”
Veronica snorts, because, “That was like—the first thing I suggested, Logan.”
He gets up to go into the kitchen, shaking his head, and—careful not to wake Piz as she rises—Veronica follows. “I don’t think so,” he says. “I feel like I would remember a logical proposition like that.”
“I believe your exact response was ‘um, no.’”
“Hmmm, not ringing any bells, you sure about that, Mars?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Well,” He offers her a soda from the fridge, but Veronica shakes her head and sits down on one of the bar stools at the kitchen island. “I couldn’t just go for that idea right away. I had to fight you on it, I mean, for all I knew, this was just an elaborate hoax to get inside my hotel room to—steal the TV or something.”
“Oh my God, you’re a genius. That’s exactly what it was.”
“You’re so transparent, Veronica. Right for the high-end electronics, every time.”
“I was this close to nabbing the stereo.”
“As long as you leave the Macy Gray CDs.”
“I’m definitely taking the Macy Gray CDs.”
“Damn it, Veronica.”
He snaps the soda can open and slides up onto the counter along the wall, so his sock-clad feet dangle in front of the counters.
“So,” she begins, tracing a pattern in the kitchen counter with the tip of her fingernail, “what kind of sadist is it, exactly, that gives a midterm—not only two weeks before the end of the semester, but the day before Thanksgiving?”
“Professor Galway,” says Logan with a sage nod. “Learn the name. Fear it.” He sips the coke. “What about you? Your classes get cancelled?”
“No—Piz is the lucky one, all his professors let them off the hook. I’ve got my two p.m. Abnormal Psych lecture. No test though. And Professor Benson practically said attendance was optional.”
“You’ll be in the front row, taking notes, won’t you?”
“’Was planning on it,” says Veronica, and she punctuates it with a yawn, “Now I might just sleep all afternoon.”
“If you’ve got a hankering to take a three-part essay test on world history of the military in the twentieth century, I might know a guy...”
“It’s so funny you say that,” Veronica responds, “because I had that craving last week, but it just passed."
Piz is awake for ten seconds before it occurs to him to open his eyes.
He’s slow first thing in the morning. Everyone knows this about him. Pleasant, but slow.
The slight delay in visual functions, however, presents Piz with the opportunity to realize that the surface on which he is awakening is not, in fact, his boxspring dorm bed. Nor is it the couch at the Fennels,’ where he’s been known to crash from time to time—a cut above the dorm fair, but nothing to write home about. No, Piz has fallen asleep on leather: leather that should be less comfortable than it is, as he’s pretty sure there’s no pillow beneath his head, just the arm of a couch.
It all comes back to him in the seconds immediately before he blinks his eyes open.
Logan Echolls’s couch. Neptune Grand. He slept here last night.
Piz squints into the dim light of the suite.
The first thing he sees is the laptop on the coffee table between him and another couch. Vacant. The first thing he hears are low murmurs from somewhere outside his line of vision. He shifts his head and spots the unconscious brunette girl from the bar. Karen—no, Carrie.
The curtains are closed, grey light peeking through the cracks, but the room is lit like it’s still evening: the strange purple and yellow glow that emanates from the walls in this weird LSD trip of a hotel room, reminding Piz of a high-end cocktail lounge—or his high-end cocktail lounge fantasies, anyway. Not that he has tons of high-end cocktail lounge fantasies, per se, but— the point is, it's bizarre that this is someone’s home. Then again, who is he to judge the rich and eccentric?
Piz squirms a little, rolls his shoulders (because a couch is still a couch), and finds the source of the murmurs: he can only see about a quarter of Veronica’s face from this angle. It's mostly concealed by her pale blond hair, falling around her shoulders. She’s leaning over the island counter in the kitchen, arms crossed, as she talks to Logan. For his part, her ex stands on the opposite side of the island, leaning back against the counter along the wall, arms bent at the elbow, fingers curled around the edge of the counter. His pointer finger taps a rapid beat over the marble.
They’re just talking, there’s an entire countertop and like three feet of additional space between them, Piz doesn’t know why it sends a bolt of panic through him. It’s irrational, and it fades a moment later. Veronica doesn’t care for Logan. He knows this. Sort of.
It's not something they really talk about, but...
“...All that Pirate Pride went to their heads, I guess,” Logan is saying, and Piz has no idea what that means, but Veronica snorts.
“What is it with this town anyway?” she replies. Piz digs his cell phone out of the pocket of his jeans to check the time—quarter after seven—“Aren’t there any normal parents?”
Logan makes a face—one of those weird, unexpected Logan Echolls faces that Piz sees him make sometimes, the quirk of the lips that turns into a wide-mouthed smirk. “Not in Nottingham,” he says—sounds familiar, but Piz is still a half asleep and he doesn’t catch the reference until Veronica shoots back:
“Vinnie does a solid Sheriff of Nottingham impression.”
“That makes you Robin Hood, I hope you know,” says Logan, and he ducks his head. Piz wishes he could see more of Veronica’s face. He wishes one of them would notice he’s woken up. He wishes it would be Veronica.
“I’ve always felt a certain kinship with the character,” she says, “Who does that make you in this scenario?”
Logan frowns, thoughtful: “The rooster is kind of a badass. Y’know—with the mandolin?” He mimes the instrument, and Veronica bursts out laughing, so she has to cover her mouth with the palm of her hand.
“You were picturing the Disney Robin Hood? With—with the foxes?”
“Of course I was,” says Logan, “Who else would—you didn’t think I was talking about the Costner one, I hope? Did you?”
“I think I was imagining the Costner one actually...” Veronica’s overcome with the humor of it; she must not have slept that much, if she thinks it’s that funny.
“Veronica,” begins Logan, slow and deliberate, “I want you to know—and it’s important to me that you believe this: I am never talking about Costner. Errol Flynn maybe, but—God, Veronica. Costner? Costner?”
Veronica’s face is in her hands but the giggles break through, and Logan hushes her. He doesn’t bother to check if they’ve woken either of the other two, though; his eyes are bright with amusement and fixed on Veronica.
Just as she's calming down, he adds: "And Weevil's Friar Tuck," which doesn't really help the Veronica-laughing situation.
It’s weird to see them like this, Logan and Veronica. Even when they were dating, there always seemed to be some kind of tension between them. They weren’t comfortable and joking, like this. Or maybe they were, but Piz never saw them interacting one-on-one; he didn’t see them interacting at all much, actually, and Logan was always in a bad mood, it seemed like. Maybe because Piz was there. Maybe he could tell Veronica liked him—
The thought reassures him, and Piz closes his eyes. He makes a lot of noise yawning and bumps the coffee table with his foot as he sits up, so that by the time he opens his eyes again, Veronica has stopped laughing and is standing straight, angled towards the couches, arms over her chest. Logan’s expression is neutral now, his eyes on Piz, too.
“Morning, Sunshine,” says Veronica, a little breathy. Nervous. It’s not ideal.
“The earth says ‘hello,’” Piz tosses back, and he gets up, walking stiffly toward the kitchen. A couch is definitely still a couch. He makes straight for Veronica, who offers her cheek.
He kisses it, while Logan turns to the counter behind him, gesturing: “There’s coffee in the machine.”
Piz nods vaguely at Logan, and Veronica sits down on one of the high bar chairs along the counter. She has a mug of her own there, Piz observes, diluted with cream and—if he had to guess—sugar. Piz is a great believer in experiencing the natural sweetness of coffee, without all the added crap, but when he told Veronica this a few months ago, she made a face and said: “You just like bitter things. It’s why you’re into me.” Which didn’t even make sense.
“Well,” says Logan—and his voice has a high, strained quality, “there’s a horse, and a man that I must go see about him.” He inclines his head and traipses out of the room, hands in the pockets of his sweat pants.
Veronica doesn't watch him go. She just sips her coffee. “We can leave as soon as Sleeping Beauty over there wakes up,” she says to Piz. “I’ll give her another twenty minutes.”
“You’re driving her all the way out to La Jolla?”
“Hopefully just to her car, wherever that is. Fingers crossed that Sober Carrie is more reasonable than the drunk edition. “
“The Drunk Edition,” rasps a new voice, cutting in, “That’s what I was going to call my memoirs.”
Carrie’s awake on the couch, sitting up, though her eyes are still closed. She gets into a mostly upright position, then rests her forehead in her hands and groans.
“Where the hell am I?”
“The Neptune Grand,” Veronica informs her, and Carrie looks up, eyes in slits.
“Veronica Mars?” she asks, “What the hell?”
“Be nice, she rescued you from a bar south of Watershed Street,” announces Logan’s return, and he strolls into the sitting area, dropping onto the couch he occupied last night. “If Shelley Pomroy finds out you were slumming it on that side of town, your name will be just dirt.”
Carrie blinks at her host for a few seconds. “I should’ve known you’d be here, Logan Echolls. So you two crazy kids made it, huh?” Her tone is faux sweet, “Awwww.”
“Actually, this is my boyfriend. Piz.” Veronica hops off the chair, making her way toward Carrie, but her fingers brush along Piz’s shoulder as she goes.
Carrie is more alert now, leaning back on the couch, the blanket that Veronica used to cover her clutched up to her waist as she takes in the room around her—specifically the new introduction.
“Piz?” she repeats skeptically. “Like the candy?”
“That’s pez,” Veronica and Piz say at the same time, and Carrie drops her stare to Logan, a glint of amusement in her puffy eyes.
“Let’s not get too proud,” sneers Logan, “as someone who showed up blitzed at eleven p.m., demanding to see Dick.”
Carrie frowns, confused, as though Logan has said something incredibly deep and complex, and she just wants to understand it. “Dick? That’s right, you guys are roommates. Is he here?” The concern in her voice is odd.
“He’s visiting his family for Thanksgiving,” says Veronica. “Why did you want to see him so bad anyway? I never took Dick Casablancas for your type...”
Carrie shrugs and doesn’t meet anyone’s eye. “Who knows? Drunk brain. It’s inexplicable. Where’s my purse?”
“You didn’t have one,” Veronica tells her, and Carrie nods. She glances at Logan.
“Bathroom?”
He directs her, and Carrie throws off the blanket and rises. There’s something sad about the way her purple party dress hangs on her body in the morning-after-walk-of-shame-full looseness, but Carrie gives no indication that it bothers her. She slips from the room.
Geez."You’re welcome,” Piz mutters sarcastically. It’s not that he was expecting overwhelming gratitude from the girl who spent most of last night singing “Piss” at him, but it would be nice if she at least looked a tad apologetic.
Veronica opens her mouth to say something, but a loud shriek from the next room prevents her, and a second later, Carrie storms back, slamming the door closed behind her.
“Where the fuck are my pills?” she snaps at Logan, who rises from the couch and shrugs, meandering toward the kitchen with an irritating degree of nonchalance.
“How should I know?”
“I know you took them,” barks Carrie, sweeping past Veronica and Piz and following him further into the kitchen.
“Oh really? You know?”
“What, like it was Nancy Drew or High School Musical over there?” She jerks her head in their direction. Piz is properly offended. “Smart money’s on ‘Uppers’ Echolls.”
Logan doesn’t seem particularly troubled by the epithet, though Veronica squirms a little, “Please, that’s so junior year, Carrie. You used to have a much better handle on all the hot gossip. Everyone always wondered how boring your life must have been that you had to obsess over everyone else’s business like that.”
“Mmm, so boring, but watching you self-destruct every other week added such entertainment.” Carrie drops the saccharine sniping act and presses on: “Where are my pills? They’re prescription, Logan.”
“Yeah, I’m sure the pharmacy gave them to you in a Ziploc bag and told you to take four immediately following a dose of Jack Daniels.”
“Fuck you.” Carrie takes a step closer. So does Veronica, incidentally. “I want my pills back.”
Logan waits a beat, his eyes fixed on Carrie, his mouth twisted in something between a grimace and a smirk. She inhales deeply, jaw set, hands in fists. Piz has a thought that he knows is cliché: something about a crack of electricity you can practically see. “You sure about that?” Logan asks eventually. “They’re circling the hotel plumbing by now, I don’t know if you’d really enjoy them anymore.”
It’s only an accident that Piz glances at Veronica just then, but he does, and he catches the smile that dances so briefly across her face in reaction to Logan’s announcement. It’s a familiar smile. Piz has seen it once before.
Carrie is less impressed.
“Fuck you,” she says again. “You owe me fifty bucks.”
She spins away from Logan and stomps back to the couch.
“Fifty bucks?” Logan laughs. “For five Zannie bars? I don’t think so.”
“There were more than five!” Carrie locates her shoes and jams one foot into the violet stiletto.
“Not by the time you handed me the bag.”
Carrie pauses at that statement; Piz can see the moment comprehension hits her, the understanding of exactly how intoxicated she was last night. The genuine emotion passes, however. She puts on her other shoe and glares at Logan.
“Take me to my car.”
“Uh, we’re giving you a ride,” says Veronica, stepping up and waving between herself and Piz. News to him, but Carrie isn't pleased by this development either. She eyes Veronica warily for a moment, like she’s actually scared the five-foot-one blonde might attack her; she doesn’t regard Piz at all.
“No thanks.” She stands up, folds her arms, and waits for Logan. She doesn’t tap her stiletto at him, but the effect is the same.
“God, what is wrong with you?” Logan whines, rolling his eyes, but he goes into his room and when he returns, he’s put on tennis shoes and is carrying car keys.
“And I need water,” says Carrie.
“There’s a faucet full of it.” He waits for her to fill herself a cup.
“You don’t have to take her,” Veronica mutters, but Logan just shrugs.
“Whatever." It sounds a little sulky. "She’s Dick’s friend. That makes her slightly less not my problem than yours.”
“Your midterm?”
“Not till eleven.”
Veronica nods, then rotates back toward Piz. “Let’s go.” She makes brief eye contact with Logan again but doesn’t say anything aloud. Then she winds through the couches, grabbing her purse from the floor and heading straight for the door. Out in the hallway, she almost jogs ahead of Piz to get to the elevator—possibly she doesn’t want to get stuck in it with Carrie and Logan on their way down. Piz doesn't blame her. Watching those two, it's like he suddenly understands what Veronica and Wallace and Mac mean when they say "Oh-Niner" with such distaste. At any rate, Veronica is completely silent until they’re almost to the ground floor.
“I’m sorry,” she blurts out suddenly, a second before the elevator doors open. “I hope it didn’t ruin your first real show for you...”
Piz stuffs his hands in his pockets and shakes his head. He smiles, too, because at least she acknowledged it. “Drugs, hotel rooms, passed out bimbos—it was the rock start treatment, Veronica,” he says, to which she smiles. “Although, there were drugs and rock n’ roll, so... I could’ve done with a little more sex...”
“Well I guess we’ll have to see what happens after I get out of class this afternoon,” Veronica replies. Her smile is sweet. They cross the hotel lobby, and when they’re out on the street again, she takes his hand. Piz breathes easier then. Away from Logan, it’s more obvious that this is the way things are supposed to be. This is the relationship Veronica wants, secret smiles and snarky banter and dark, mysterious histories aside. This is the relationship any sane girl would want, and Veronica is a smart girl.
She’s already dropped him off at his dorm and driven away before Piz realizes he left his guitar at the Grand.