Fic: Temporary Arrangements, (Logan POV, L/V), R

Title: Temporary Arrangements
Author: NessaasseN
Character:Logan POV, L/V
Spoilers: Through 1.22.
Rating: R for language.
Word count: 8900
Summary: The summer after. Veronica goes for normal. Logan thinks normal is a lie. He goes to the beach instead.
Disclaimer: Veronica Mars and all its characters belong to Rob Thomas and UPN



Now that Logan knows, finally, the truth about Lilly, the truth about his father, the truth about Lilly fucking his father and his father smashing her face with an ashtray, his skin feels tight all the time. If his limbs were seamed, the stitches would be pulled taut, straining towards the first rip, the final tear. He tries not to think of how fragile bodies are, every one an open sore—Lilly’s bleeding skull, his father’s crushed ribs, their mouths gaping as they fuck—but he can’t help it, not when he might split wide open any second now, shatter, smash, burst into flame.

Distraction would be good. But there is no one to hit and no one left to hit him, and even though he drains the bottles one by one, the feelings won’t go away. Instead, the bitterness that used to fade into a petulant haze whenever he drank stays focused, anchored to memories, real or pretend, that he can’t stop replaying: Lilly moaning toward orgasm; Lilly screaming her last seconds away; his father stepping back so the blood doesn’t stain his shoes; Veronica whispering ‘I’m so glad you’re here’ and kissing him like she meant it.

Tears come—he can’t stop them—and fuck it if he’s going to cry about any of them anymore. He tries 50 proof and 100, vodka and whiskey, even cheap beer he can barely swallow, but none of it works, and he could be maudlin well enough sober if that’s what he wanted. So, only half-drunk, he pours out the bottles. As the liquid spills, he sees his own flask tipped in mid-air draining into the ocean, and his mother’s wasted and half-eaten body floating in the tide.

He vomits. He throws up until the only thing left inside him is tears, but they’re leaking out of his eyes so fast that soon they’ll be gone too. Just like everything else. Eyes empty, stomach hollow, mouth sour, he staggers to bed, leaving the bottles behind for someone else to clean up. As he drifts off to sleep, he thinks that in life Lilly may have been a bitch, but isn’t he lucky? In death, she just keeps on giving and giving.

He drives to the beach early enough to watch the waves slapping at the gray mist hanging just out of reach. Nothing like another lesson in futility first thing in the morning. He runs into the water with a yell and kicks off the ground, stroking steadily out to the buoy. The ocean feels cold but the air above it is colder, bringing chills to his skin with each spin of his shoulders. He swims until the glare on the water tells him he’ll be late if he doesn’t hurry. As he slouches back to the car, sand coats the bottoms of his feet.

He doesn’t bother to shower before school. Hair damp, skin tan, he saunters down the hall with affected carelessness, and all day he smells of salt and brine and suntan lotion. Free from parents altogether, if not their sins, the promise of summer lingers about him. It is this more than anything that throws his former friends off-balance, blunting their pity (which he doesn't want), their curiosity (which he despises) and their malice (which he shares). But he can feel them circling. So when the first insult flies, he leads with his mouth and follows with his fists, and when he's left standing with scraped knuckles, he can hear the mass exhalation, the sigh of their mingled relief and disappointment. When he comes back from his suspension, they swarm around him just like always.

He hates them for being such easy marks, and he hates himself for bothering, no matter how good it felt to smash his fist into someone. And really he hates himself for that too. Now that everyone's backed off, backed down, he can’t find anything to do with his rage but run and swim through it every morning until he collapses, gasping, on the sand. His appearances at school dwindle to no more than a handful of days and finals week.

******

One morning he feels eyes following him down the beach. A man and a woman in red bathing suits lean against a sun-faded pickup stenciled LIFEGUARD, watching him, the zinc slashed across their cheeks visible even at a distance. They catch him on his way to the car. Their directness stifles his impulse to leer and make Baywatch jokes; they don’t recognize him as anything other than a guy who would make a good beach lifeguard. For that alone he feels grateful enough to play nice, to say ‘thanks’ for the application they push on him and wave with mock enthusiasm as they drive away.

They conduct the run-swim test one morning when he’s already at the beach. He thinks what the hell, and goes along.

A few weeks later he finds himself in the community pool, rehearsing first aid maneuvers, accidentally groping some brunette college girl’s breast as he practices hauling her out of the water. He’s not embarrassed and neither is she, and if it wasn’t for, well, everything, the litany of betrayals he keeps pounding across sand and surf to forget, he might have asked for her number.

It is a moot point, anyway, since he and Veronica are dating again, her relief that he didn’t jump and his relief that she didn’t die blossoming into heady routine, unexpected constancy. He isn’t sure if she’s holding his hand out of pity or penance or both, but he doesn’t really care—when he kisses her it feels like diving, like that sudden shock of submersion, that feeling of being weightless, free.

When she kisses him, he can feel her concentrating, willing the world to disappear. Even though he’s drinking less these days, he still recognizes the craving she breathes into his mouth, clutching at him like he’s her path to oblivion, to the stoppage of time. He wants to ask Duncan if she tasted like this before, all sour apple candy and desperation, but he knows better, even if they were speaking. Duncan's going for normal these days, and normal means playing soccer, organizing the last school dance, finding a summer internship, and shunning the guy dating his ex without his permission. Normal means pretending the kid whose dad killed his sister doesn’t exist.

Logan gets it; he really does, even though it pisses him off. Most days he thinks that Duncan’s choices are at least more honest than Veronica’s way of dealing, the way she’s put Lilly’s murder and her own not-rape and almost-death and most of the last two fucking years into a file box labeled “Case Closed” and shoved it all the way to the back of her closet. Why she doesn’t shove him, and this thing between them, into the box too and leave them there, he doesn’t understand. Not that he’s complaining. But half the time he’s kissing her, he’s waiting for her to wake up and realize she can do better, waiting for her to run out on him, waiting for her to choose to be alone or to be with Duncan or to be with anyone less fucked up than he is.

Because Veronica's going for normal these days too, running down the list one by one—boyfriend, best friend, summer job waitressing by the beach, college applications arriving in the mail daily. She orders two copies of everything, and the pile of unopened manila envelopes on his dresser grows dusty and unwieldy. He’s scared to look at them and she’s scared not to; they fight about it sometimes, sitting side by side in the Xterra.

“Maybe I don’t want to go to college.”

“2nd year Calculus and Physics, what would a boy like you do in college? Besides, you can’t tell me you don’t want out of this town.”

He asks her where she left her Pirate pride and she hits him, hard enough to hurt.

*****

He doesn’t tell her about the lifeguard gig. It’s a more than little spiteful, he knows, to keep another secret, especially a secret as innocuous as this one, one that might actually make her smile. But he figures that it’s for her own good. Sooner or later her bubble is going to break. The truth about the ridiculousness of normal as a descriptive term for anyone living life in Neptune will slap her across the face, and it will hurt even more this time around, since she’s working overtime to believe otherwise. He doesn’t want to be part of that; part of the lie she’s making, part of what gets chucked out in the lie’s inevitable destruction.

So he doesn’t say anything, just tries to be with her, tries not to think about all of the things they are talking around instead of through: the depositions, the trial, the press, Duncan, his dad, hers. He tries not to think at all, a task made much harder by his break-up with the bottle, and the only times he really succeeds is when he’s kissing Veronica or sitting up high on the lifeguard stand.

All his life he has failed to be vigilant enough, and it has cost him almost everything: unmarred skin, smooth bones, Lilly, his mom. Up there his job is to be vigilant, to see everything and react before the shit goes down, before the tide swallows up someone else. He knows how quick and easy it can be. Every morning he flirts with the temptation to disappear, to swim out past the buoy and not look back.

But sitting high above the sand, looking out at the beach from behind sunglasses, he feels something new, a seductive combination of anonymity and purpose. Up there, he isn’t anybody’s secret-keeper. He isn’t the Echolls’ kid or the wronged boyfriend or any of the other terms slung about in the papers these days. He isn’t even a smartass or Duncan’s ex-best friend or the boy Veronica’s seeing. He’s just the lifeguard on duty, easy as that, and it’s so much less exhausting than the rest of his life.

It’s not that the job is so great all the time. He really sucks at sitting still, and he fidgets all the time, swinging his legs, tossing the binoculars from hand to hand. Still, something fierce surges through him when he thinks about quitting, when he wonders if he’s wasting all the hours he puts in there. The answer is simple, in the end. He isn’t going to miss anything this time.

******

Logan has always been good at keeping secrets. Not just the big ones—like “the Echolls are one big happy family,” or “life in Neptune is a California dream”—but all the little ones along the way. His mom saying, “Isn’t this fun? Let’s not tell your dad” while pouring another drink, plus a pint-sized glass, just for him. His father cajoling “Now son, let’s just keep this between us” the first time he caught him in his dressing room with his pants down and some wanna-be actress slut between his legs. Trina, smiling sweetly with a vice-grip on his wrist—“Do this for me, little brother, and I won’t tell them what you did last night.” Lilly seeing her parents fucking. Duncan freaking out. Luke buying steroids. His own face in the rearview mirror, crossing the border from Mexico too soon.

This is how you prove yourself, he used to think. This is how you make people love you. You keep their secrets.

And so he did, for a long time. But eventually he figured it out. Being good at keeping secrets doesn’t mean that people will love you. It just means that they will tell you their secrets. They will tell you, and then they will force you to live those secrets, day after day, until the line between the secret and the real becomes part of the secret you are keeping. He has balanced on that line his whole life.

The trick is not to fall. The trick is always, always to remember what you’re allowed to tell, and what you aren’t, because otherwise, eventually, you will tell everything.

This may or may not lead to disaster. Most of the time, nobody is listening. Even they are, it usually doesn’t matter. People only believe what they want to believe anyway.

But he dreams about telling her. In his dreams, when he delivers the news, when the words fall out his mouth in as lame a phrase as, “By the way, I got a job,” she hugs him so tight he thinks he might find bruises later, and it’s a long time before she lets go. He wonders then if he’s gotten it all wrong, if she isn’t going for normal at all, but instead for the possibility, somewhere far off in the future, that everything might be okay. Maybe she never forgets, even for a second, just how fucked up it all is. Maybe all of this is her way of running on the beach, of putting one foot forward, every day, no matter how heavy it feels. He remembers how mad she was when she found her mother and her money gone that morning, the way her anger leaked all over his shirt, still sweaty and damp from his night on the bridge. He thinks, just for a minute, that maybe she can’t bear to lose him too. That maybe he should try a little harder, so that she won’t have to shut him up in that box with Lilly and her mother and all the things that aren’t coming back from the dead. Because he isn’t dead yet. He lifts her chin and kisses her, just to make sure, and her mouth blots away every thought he has, except for how good this feels, right now. Even if she bolts when the trial starts a few months, even if she cheats on him tomorrow, even if she leaves him standing here and doesn’t look back, in this second, it is okay. It is better than okay, it is terrific even, and he laughs into the curve of her smile and touches his forehead to hers.

*****

He misses something. Of course he does, because isn’t that how the universe fucks him over? On his watch, a little girl disappears off the beach, a pudgy kid in pigtails and a green ruffled tank suit—the distraught woman describes it to him over and over as if her words might make her daughter materialize out of the damp air. He wants to shout at her, shake her, anything to make her stop, so he can start doing something: radio the other towers, look through the binoculars, yell into the bullhorn, comb the sand. But deep inside he knows it’s all for nothing.

Eventually the police arrive, and he isn’t surprised when Lamb hauls him back to the station for questioning.

They go a few rounds. Finally the sheriff leaves him alone to write his worthless statement, in which he documents all the things he saw rather than the things that would help: the things he didn’t see, the things he missed. It’s been weeks since he’s heard Lilly’s laugh echo in his head, since he’s been unable to see anything but her mouth curving in a wet “o” at the feel of his father’s body inside her own, but it’s back now—all the things he fucking missed.

He flicks the pencil away from him and lays his head on the table. It is mercifully cool, like the wind blowing past the bridge that night, and he wishes he had jumped when he had the chance.

*****

He doesn’t call her this time, but he isn’t surprised to see Veronica waiting for him outside the station, her legs tan and steady under her skimpy waitress uniform, complete with “hello my name is” pin. Her mouth is set in that firm line that makes it impossible for him to know what she’s thinking. It has been weeks since she’s looked so guarded, as if she isn’t quite sure who he is or what he might do to her. His stomach begins to ache with dull, familiar pain.

“So about an hour ago I get this call at work,” she says. “It’s the sheriff’s department, calling to tell me my boyfriend’s been picked up. ‘Trouble at work,’ says the nice officer. ‘Work?’ I say. ‘Are you sure it’s my boyfriend you’re talking about? My boyfriend doesn’t work.’ And yet, here you are. So why the mystery? Boyfriend.” she finishes pointedly.

“And here I thought mysteries weren’t your line anymore,” he says.

She glares at him. “Logan.”

When he doesn’t answer, she fishes her keys from her bag.

“Fine. Let’s go get your car. I assume it’s at the beach?”

He nods, and she spins away, her heels clicking across the pavement. He has barely folded himself into the front seat of the Le Baron when she peels out of the lot, and he gives her a look. She ignores it. He fiddles with the radio, the speakers failing to emit anything but static, and finally he gives up, slumping back in his seat, resigned.

“So talk,” she says, without looking at him. He shrugs and stares straight ahead, shutting his eyes against the glare of the sunset.

“It’s no big deal, really. Just playing lifeguard on the beach. Crappy money, good view, you know.”

“No. I don’t. What happened?”

“Some kid went missing on the beach today while I was working. You can imagine what our good sheriff had to say about that. Maybe the taste for kiddy porn runs in the family, right?”

“Logan.”

“Veronica,” he mimics. “What? You asked.”

They sit there awhile. One of her hands has fallen off the steering wheel onto the seat, and he resists the urge to reach out and take it, lace his fingers through hers. To hold her hand, as if that would make everything better. He wants to, even though he knows it’s stupid, but he doesn’t think she’ll let him, so he doesn’t bother. He realizes that they’ve arrived, the Xterra looming just ten feet away.

“It’s not your fault,” she says, her voice soft, and it’s as if he can feel her hand on his arm, even though she hasn’t moved.

He smiles. “Gee thanks. Did it take you ten minutes to think of that line, or was that just how long you needed to convince yourself it was true?”

Her breath is sharp and loud and he forces himself to look at her, to keep smiling. Her mouth curves into a bitter line, but her eyes are open and confused, searching his for a long moment before they empty of everything kind and she looks away.

“Fine. I guess we’re done here then.”

She waits a beat, looks back up at him, gesturing expectantly towards the Xterra. He refuses to move, just looks back at her.

“Fine,” she says again. She reaches down and slides her sandals off her feet, then pulls the keys out of the ignition and climbs out of the car, slamming the door behind her.

“Oh, are you leaving? Going to go do whatever now? Color me surprised,” he calls after her retreating form.

Fuck. Feeling slightly ridiculous in his CSLSA t-shirt and red swim trunks, he clambers out of the car. It doesn’t take him very many strides to catch her, and he reaches out for her arm even as the words are spilling out of his mouth. “Veronica, hey, stop, look, I’m . . .”

She whirls just as his hand brushes her skin. “Don’t. Just don’t.”

“Look, I didn’t mean . . . I’m an asshole, okay?”

“Yeah,” she says, and wraps her arms across her chest, rubbing her upper arms as if she’s cold. “I don’t see how you even get to be mad here. I’m the one who should be mad. You didn’t even tell me you got a job.”

“I know. I should’ve told you. I..”

“Why didn’t you?”

He shrugs. He kicks the sand. Then he looks at her, so pretty and small in her cheap uniform. Honesty was the fucking point, after all. “I didn’t want you to get the wrong idea.”

“The wrong idea like you have a work ethic after all?”

He rolls his eyes. “No, the wrong idea like life is going just fine, just cause now we’re dating and I have a job and a stack of college applications waiting at home.”

Her forehead crinkles. He wants to reach out and smooth the lines away, to run his palm across her skin. It’s stupid, the way he just wants to fix things for her.

“Look, forget it. It was stupid. I should’ve told you. I just didn’t want to lie...”

“Wait, you lied about not having a job so you could not to lie to me? That makes perfect sense.”

How can he explain that it would be a bigger lie to play along, to offer her his job as some sort of proof of happily ever after? He shrugs again and waits for her to walk away.

But she’s shaking her head now, almost laughing, and that’s opening enough for him. He reaches for her arm, dragging her up against him, his hands dropping to circle her waist. He leans in, kisses her forehead, her cheek, then finds her mouth and sinks in, slow. When he pulls away, they are both smiling.

“Why aren’t you madder?”

“Not worth it, really. It’s not like you meant to hurt anyone.”

“I wasn’t hurting anyone the last time I didn’t tell you something either,” he points out, and she looks away.

“Well, I didn’t know that.”

You should have, he wants to say. But her voice sounds tired, exasperated, and instead, he rubs his hand over her back, a peace offering.

“Okay,” he says. “Okay.”

Her hand rises to cup his cheek and he turns to kiss her palm before tilting into its touch, cool and light against his face.

“What did you mean about not wanting me to think everything is fine?” she asks finally. He moves to shake his head, but her grip tightens on his chin, her gaze holding his.

Her eyes are really, really blue, he thinks, the color blue that kids think the ocean is, the color blue of half the lame blue striped shirts hanging in his ex-best friend’s closet. And epilepsy and traumatic sex issues aside, he can’t stop himself from saying, “I just think that if you’re looking for normal, you should date Duncan.”

Her hand falls away from his face, and her mouth falls open, lips parting just a little. She edges away from him, as if she needs the distance to see him clearly, and takes a loud breath before she answers.

“Do you want me to date Duncan?”

He reacts to this without thinking it through, stepping forward and kissing her again, hard this time, with his teeth and his tongue.

“No,” he says, when she pulls away.

“Well, neither do I,” she says, and kisses him back, just as hard, and before he stops thinking entirely, he wonders if she is really trying to convince him or herself.

*****

It’s not that he wants to talk about it, this grand illusion of normalcy she’s been perpetuating since his dad was arrested for Lilly’s murder. And it’s not that he really wants to talk about any of the rest of it either: about how much he hates Lilly for fucking his dad, or how he can’t forgive Veronica for believing he could have killed Lilly, or how desperate it still makes him that his dad almost killed her too. Or how both his dad and Trina haven’t given up on their campaign to pull him into the fold, into the glare of the flashbulbs, while meanwhile he keeps waiting for his mom to walk through the door, having faked her death after all, like the badly executed subplot of one of her B movies. Or how despite all the time he spends with his hands on Veronica’s skin, it’s Duncan’s touch that he misses: his casual clap to the back, his solid punch to the shoulder, the smooth slide of his knuckles against Logan’s own.

It’s not that he wants to talk about these things. Especially with Veronica. But there’s a part of him that wishes they would. It pisses him off to watch her playing happy teenager, swaddling herself in waitressing and college plans and even in his mouth, pretending all of it away as if it were another one of those not real things. It pisses him off because he can’t do the same. He can’t pretend. All of this crap is his life now.

They let him keep his job at the beach. This surprises him, after all the shit they spouted in training about never being less than one hundred and ten percent alert and aware every second of your shift. But when his boss calls him into what passes for his office, some fake tiki wood shack down by the snack bar, he offers Logan cold nachos and consolation.

“You can try,” he says, “but you’re human. You can’t see everything. And a lot of shit happens by the water. Especially in this town.”

Logan salutes the man smartly, leaving before he gives in to the urge to call him David Hasselhoff to his face. After all, he already knows that the water in Neptune is tainted. He likes to pretend that the ocean is different, that it is too huge and changeable to be polluted by the grime of this place. But close to shore, where the waves brush the beach? He knows better. In the mornings when he swims, he shivers whenever his foot brushes stray clumps of seaweed. Telling himself he’s just cold, he kicks away blindly, working his legs until he can feel the muscles pulling in his thighs. He refuses to acknowledge that moment when he is afraid, that shivering second when he imagines his foot making contact with his dead mother, with the missing kid in the green suit.

All the lifeguards that work his stretch of the beach take him out drinking at the end of the week. Over beer and shots, they tell him about the ones they couldn’t save.

In training they tell you that you shouldn’t try to save a drowning man. The body takes over, they say. If you give him the chance, the drowning man will claw his way up your torso and your limbs like you are a ladder or a life preserver. He’ll push you under to meet your own watery end. So you have to wait. You have to watch him drown. Only when he passes out can you go get him.

Invariably, all the experienced lifeguards have their own version of this story, their own memory of watching somebody drown. They tell their tales with wonder in their voices, as if they only half believe them, as if the events they’re narrating happened to somebody else (and, when Logan thinks about it, he realizes that they did). He’s glad that none of these people seem to read the tabloids, that no one has connected his face or his name with the pictures of him and his movie star, murderer dad. Tragedy has happened to him, thank you very much, and he would rather not talk about it.

They run out of A material soon enough, and their talk turns from the tragic to the bizarre: the bus full of tourists from the nudist colony, the guy buried in the sand so deep by his angry girlfriend it took two of them twenty minutes to dig him out, the kid with the crab hanging off his ass. Shot after shot slides down, and he relishes the burn, the loosening of his grip on the thread of their stories. Veronica isn’t here—she’s still working—and he thinks about calling her. He goes outside and dials her number. Talk to me about something real, he wants to say. But the line clicks over to her voicemail, and he hangs up.

He stands there for a while until the girl whose chest he groped during pool training follows him outside. She's drunk and not as hot as he remembers. Swaying against him, tilting her face up, she whispers that she has a question for him.

“Would you save me?” she asks. “Would you save me if I were drowning?”

She sounds like Lilly did when she drank, brash and laughing. He leans down to kiss her, his mouth inches from hers when he realizes that the last time he did this, the last time he cheated, his girlfriend was dead within a week. And Veronica’s already almost died this summer. He pushes the girl away and stumbles towards his car, towards the wide backseat and the safety of locked doors. Facedown on the leather, he shuts his eyes against the glare of the streetlights.

In his dream, Veronica and Duncan are standing beside him under those dangling paper stars from Shelly’s party. He's laughing as he hands them each a plastic cup full of clear liquid. Duncan laughs back and raises his glass; Veronica takes her gingerly, but she’s on the brink of smiling, and she lifts her arm in reply without hesitation. The lantern light streams through the plastic and filters through the liquid inside. Not spiked soda or alcohol this time, Logan realizes, but it’s too late; they have already clinked cups, gulped, and swallowed. The salt water is beginning to fill their lungs.

He watches their eyes grow big and glassy as they clutch at their throats, at each other, desperate for air, desperate to understand what's happening to them. He knows he is supposed to wait, but he can’t; they are drowning on dry land, right in front of him. He reaches out, trying to fit his mouth to each of theirs in turn, trying to give them his breath, trying to save them. But Duncan turns his head away and Veronica won’t open her lips, and no matter how much he begs them, he can’t stop their stubborn refusals, the blind clutching of their hands. In that moment, he hates them. They should have known better than to take the cups. They should have known better than to drink the water. They should have least tried to take him with them. And in that moment, they slip away. They are gone, and he is alone.

*****

Keith Mars tracks him down two weeks later. Logan’s sitting atop the lifeguard stand, laughing at a couple of middle school boys trying to surf and wiping out spectacularly. He’s thinking about hunting down his water bottle when he hears his name. At the sight of Veronica’s father peering up at him through the sun, Logan swallows his laughter. He wishes for his flask.

“Logan. Veronica told me I could find you here.”

“She would know.” His voice almost cracks. Jesus.

Veronica’s dad hasn’t been around much this summer. All this time that Logan’s been making out with his daughter, Keith’s been in the hospital or at the Fennels’ or holed up in his office with some professional hack, working on his book, earning that thick cash advance that does a nice job of saying ‘fuck you’ to all the people in Neptune who turned on him. Without him even having to be vulgar about it.

When Veronica told him her dad was writing a book about Lilly’s murder—one thing she’d known better than to keep to herself—he’d almost broken up with her. He was so sick of his life being fodder for other people’s entertainment. But then, tone flat, words clipped, she'd explained how badly they needed the money, and he'd felt ashamed. He'd let it go.

But looking down at Keith Mars now, at his sweaty forehead shaded by a big brimmed straw hat, at his pudgy body draped in pants and a long sleeved shirt buttoned up to the collar, Logan almost hates him. He wants to hate him. He wants to hate the placid lines of his face, and those stupid rumpled clothes that nobody wears when it’s fucking ninety degrees outside. But when Keith raises his hand to adjust the hat, the cuff of his shirt gapes enough so that Logan can see gauze underneath, and he gets it.

He remembers burns. He remembers how they hurt like a bitch afterwards, even though in the moment that the lit end of the cigarette pressed into him, the sharp flash of heat never felt like pain. But the acrid smell of singed hair and blistering skin always crept into his throat, leaving it as raw as if he’d swallowed acid. The taste lingered for days. His hand comes up to rub his arm, as if he can still feel the circles seared there, long since scarred over in flesh and memory.

“Logan,” Keith says again, and he lets his hand drop back into his lap.

“What?”

“We need to talk. Maybe you should come down.”

He shrugs but starts the climb. Midway, he slips on of the rungs. His leg flails awkwardly, his foot brushing something solid before finding purchase again on the tower. He glances around and realizes that he’s knocked the hat off Keith’s head. Keith must’ve leaned in when he saw Logan slip. As if the man had been bracing himself to catch Logan if he fell.

Logan jumps down the rest of the way and retrieves the hat.

“Here” he says roughly, holding it out. Keith reaches for it, and his hand brushes the pale skin on the inside of Logan’s wrist, right at the place where the vein swells.

“It’s all right,” he says. He looks Logan straight in the face. For a moment they are both quiet, and Logan can feel his blood pulsing under the older man’s fingertips. Then Keith shifts his hand away to take the hat, reaching up to fit it smoothly back on his glistening head.

"Whatever you say." He looks away, eyes drifting across the beach, cataloging the ragged line of people shifting in and out of the water. The kids are still there; boards abandoned, they’re wrestling on the strip of wet sand above the water line. He eases back against the post of the tower so he can keep them in view.

“Tell me about the day the Cross girl disappeared.”

“Already gave my statement to the sheriff,” he mumbles, his eyes still on the kids, and doesn’t even both to put any bite into the last word. He doubts there’s much life left in that barb anyway.

“And I’m sure he was grateful for your cooperation. But statistics on missing kids are bad—the longer it takes to find them, the greater the chance they don’t get found. It’s already been a few weeks. Her parents came to me, asked for my help. So now I need to hear what you remember.”

“Not too much.”

“Tell me anyway.”

It had been another day. Blue sky. Good waves. Lots of people. He thinks he remembers her. She was big for a little kid, round stomach, blunt cut brown hair, green swimsuit. She stood at the edge of the water, jumping back when the tide rushed it. She was never fast enough, and she giggled every time the water splashed her feet. But lots of little kids do that, every day, and he’s not sure if the girl he remembers is the girl who disappeared, or just some fantasy his mind has created. He knows he looked away from her, down the beach in the other direction, scanning the imaginary grid in his head, just like they’d taught him, and that when he came back to the spot where she’d been standing, she was gone. That was normal too, and he hadn’t thought anything of it until some lady started freaking out nearby. Shaking towels, shaking strangers, yelling for help. She’d found it soon enough, but not her daughter.

“I’m sorry,” he says when he finishes.

Keith nods. “Were you drinking?”

He doesn’t quite hear the question. Down by the water, one of the boys has picked up another, and is carrying him, kicking and yelping, into the ocean. He drops him in the water, and Logan tenses, shifting onto the balls of his feet. But then the boy breaks the surface, sputtering and laughing.

“What?” He rocks back on his heels, his shoulder blades brushing the lifeguard stand.

“Were you drinking that day?”

His voice doesn’t accuse. It isn’t weary or bored, but instead carefully casual, routine. Just by the sound, Logan can tell that Veronica’s dad has asked this question hundreds of times, to hundreds of people. But it feels personal just the same. It’s like everyone is always asking him the same questions in different words. How much can I trust you? How much are you to blame?

“I wasn’t drinking.”

“It’s not out of the realm of possibility. Given your history …”

“I said no.”

Keith measures him with his eyes. Logan stares right back.

“All right,” Keith says finally. "Come by the office if you remember anything else. Anything at all. Even if it seems trivial.”

He smirks. “I could always just tell Veronica.”

“You could.” Keith pauses. “Do you really want to have this conversation here, Logan? Wouldn’t you rather come by the house, sit on the couch where I can grill you properly?”

“You’ve made it pretty clear what you think.”

“Unfortunately, it’s what Veronica thinks that matters.”

He ducks his head, looks away, out at sea where the boys are now just heads bobbing in the water, disappearing and reappearing with crash of the tide. The water pushes them apart; it keeps them together. If one of them went under, the other could grab him, pull him up for air before Logan could get near them. They are just close enough.

“I would never hurt her,” he says.

Keith’s face doesn’t change. This promise, too, is routine, Logan guesses. Hundreds of times, hundreds of people. He wonders why he even bothered.

“We’ll see. Come by the office, if you think of anything.”

He nods, and climbs back up the tower. He watches Keith plod back across the sand, his shirt billowing out around him. He watches the boys dash back out of the water and flop down on towels, their faces disappearing from view. The waves crash on without them.

*****

Later that night they stretch out across the couch in her apartment. He plays with her hair, the strands of pale gold slipping between his fingers.

“Your dad hates me.”

He can feel her smiling against his chest.

“My dad hates anyone that I could potentially have sex with.”

“I’m flattered. Why don’t we get on that?”

She laughs.

“He doesn’t hate you. He just worries, that’s all.”

“Must be nice.”

She shifts against him until her face is level with his. She kisses him. He slides his hands under her shirt, pressing his fingers against the warm skin of her back.

“Hey,” he says softly when she breaks away. “You weren’t at work when I came by today.”

“Yeah. Lawyer stuff.” She shrugged, leaned down to kiss him again. He turns his head so her mouth grazes his cheek.

“It go okay?”

She shrugs again. “I guess. But I don’t want to talk about it. Let’s just…” And she kisses him again, hitting him square on the mouth this time.

He wonders just how far her avoidance will take them, if eventually she’ll have sex with him to just get him to stop asking. He wonders if sex will be what finally gets her to start answering.

*****

Not everyone in Neptune likes the beach. Plenty of girls prefer the artificial blue of the swimming pool; there’s something clean and simple about a box of stagnant water stranded in the middle of concrete. No sand means less mess, and like Lilly used to tell him, there’s no pretty scenery to distract from what ought to be the focus of everyone’s attention. Me, he can still hear her say, flashing that wide smile that always felt like a dare, a gauntlet thrown in front of him that he could never resist lunging for even towards the end, when he was pretty sure he didn’t want it anymore.

He’d argued with her, of course. Gimme the beach any day. Equal opportunity for ogling, plus waves and sand and actual stuff to do. Not just painting your toenails or floating around like some Dustin Hoffman wannabe.

She’d thrown him another smile. Weak, Logan, weak. Clearly you aren’t thinking of all the other things you can do around a pool.

He’s not exactly sure what he said back. His memory always snags on the unexpected weight of her throwaway line, like hitting the pause button on the VCR, even though he’s pretty sure that dying hadn’t been one of things Lilly had been talking about.

I’m thinking I prefer the taste of salt to chlorine, that’s all , he’d said. Something like that. And even this half-remembered phrasing sounds bittersweet to him now, as if somehow he was anticipating her death, anticipating the exchange of chlorinated laughter for the salt of grief and body shots and his mother’s swan dive. Sometimes, remembering, he feels like with that chance remark, he somehow invited all of it, made it happen, orchestrated the universe to spin off its axis in order for him to end up where he is now: pressing his mouth to Veronica’s cheeks, to her tremulous smile, tasting the residue of salt on her skin.

It fits, then, that Veronica is a fan of the beach. She doesn’t the mind the sand sticking to skin or the sting of the ocean water or the way the air flattens out her hair or any of the things Lilly used to complain about. Ever since she discovered his little secret, she’s adjusted her schedule, shifting the route she and Backup walk every afternoon so that they arrive at the lifeguard stand just as his shift ends. Some days they head back to the Xterra, drive until they find a quieter stretch of sand, and hang out for a while. She swims, he surfs, they play frisbee with the dog. When it gets dark, he wraps his arm around her and drives them back to her apartment, stopping for fast food on the way. Other days, he just latches onto her hand and walks her home, then spends a half hour kissing her on the doorstep, a still leashed Backup sprawled lazily in the shade nearby.

It should feel normal. Instead, it feels like they are still sneaking around. Like each day is one of a dwindling number, and they are treading water in a steadily draining pool.

At least this is the way it feels to him. The jagged edges inside his chest never quite smooth out; his body prickles with static electricity tingling just under his skin. She stays quiet, contained to the point of being absent; she smiles and she laughs, but she doesn’t push him, not for answers, not for sex, not for anything. So he talks a little faster and laughs a little longer and kisses her a little harder, and his skin still feels tight.

The next time he touches her, he thinks, will be the time that he rips like tissue paper, the time that everything sordid comes spilling out all over her.

He wants to keep holding on. But he can’t stop tasting salt whenever he kisses her. His throat feels parched all the time, mouth dry, throat closing up, even though he’s laughing.

*****

He starts drinking again. Or drinking more, anyway, since if he’s really counting, he never exactly stopped in the first place. He just needs some fun, he figures, some easy relaxation. Just so he won’t feel so thirsty all the time.

The alcohol plays hell with his mornings. He ends up staggering across the sand, head pounding from the growing sunlight, and when he swims he can’t find his rhythm. So instead, he strokes out as far he can and dives, deep as he can get under the waves, kicking back up to the surface only when his vision starts get dark around the edges. Then he wipes his mouth, and dives again.

Between the hangovers and the oxygen deprivation, he spends his afternoons lightheaded and sick to his stomach. The gin in his flask tastes like Draino but it feels cool in his mouth and at the end of the day, his shift almost over, his water bottle empty, he drinks it. His headache softens. Eventually he starts to feel better, loose and warm, sprawled out on the lifeguard chair, way above everyone else. He holds on to the white wood railing a little tighter than he has to, just so he doesn’t look like he’s going to fall.

*****

“Are you drinking?”

He raises the flask in toast. The light glinting off the metal obscures her face, and he squints down at her through the glare.

“Lighten up, Veronica. It’s Monday. Nobody comes to the beach on Mondays.”

And it’s true. The beach is practically empty, save a few of walkers and a couple of dozing sunbathers. It’s late, almost quitting time, and there are no kids today. He tells himself he wouldn’t be drinking if there were kids out there. Not that she would believe him.

“Were you drinking the day that little girl disappeared?”

He smiles. “Funny, your dad already asked me that question. Changing your mind? Deciding it was my fault after all?”

“Don’t be an asshole.”

“Me? Why am I always the asshole here?

“Hmm, let’s see, maybe because you act like one?”

“Well, I wouldn’t have to act like anything if you would just …”

“What? What do you want me to do, Logan?”

All the possible answers twist inside him, knot, until he can’t choose just one. He can’t even find a good comeback. Ducking his head, he contemplates the sand.

“I can’t fix things for you. I just can’t.”

He meets her eyes again. “I never asked you to.”

“Then what are you doing?”

“How very after school special of you. This,” he waves the flask at her,” is not a cry for help, Veronica.”

She waits for him to go on, but when he doesn’t, when he deliberately tips his head back and takes another drink, she turns to go. He sighs.

“Look, if you wanna know what I’m doing, come up here. Come see for yourself.”

He pretends not to watch her stand there and deliberate. She may have improved over the past year—tougher, smarter, hotter—but spontaneous will never be her thing. Casually he shifts over on the tower landing until he’s leaning up against the opposite rail, leaving her plenty of room, and looks out at the water, slick-edged now in the fading sun. He hears her climb up beside him, and he almost laughs when she sets her bag between them, a less than subtle signal of the line she’s drawing. Lucky for him he’s had lots of practice crossing boundaries.

He drinks and she drags her camera out of her bag. He listens for the whirr of the shot being taken, but he doesn’t hear it. When he glances over he realizes she’s just looking out at the water through the viewfinder, framing the scene, but not capturing it. He thinks this might be the longest he's ever seen her hesitate. Eventually she clicks the shutter a few times in rapid succession, and then lets the camera hang from the strap around her neck. She turns toward him, but she can’t quite meet his eyes.

“Duncan came by the restaurant today,” she says.

He should’ve known. “And how is good old DK?”

“He asked me to get coffee with him,” she says. “Just as friends.”

“Just as friends, my ass.”

She frowns, shakes her head. “You know it isn’t like that.”

He just looks at her, the sky framing her face, and she shrugs.

“Well, you should know.”

“Whatever.” He rolls his eyes. What he knows is that Duncan still wants Veronica, and that Veronica is going to do whatever she wants. Everything else is one big question mark.

“I think you should come with me.”

He doesn’t even both with the eye roll for this one. “Yeah, great idea. And maybe we can bring a Ouija board and invite Lilly too. Then it can be just like old times.”

She sighs. “It doesn’t have to be like this, you know.”

“Really? Because I’m not really seeing too many choices right now.”

She blows out a frustrated sigh and lifts her camera again, pointing the lens back out at the horizon. He kicks his feet out in the air, listening to the shutter click, almost immediately this time. When she lowers the camera, she takes a deep breath, and he stills his legs. He curls his hand around the edge of the platform, bracing himself.

“When I was a kid, I used to wonder how far you could see from up here. I thought maybe if you looked into a pair of binoculars, you could see all the way to Japan. All the way into the future. Since it would be tomorrow for the people on the beach over there." She doesn't look at him, but her voice is low, expectant.

"Well cue my ephiphany," he says, relaxing his grip on the platform, relieved and annoyed all at once. God, she's clumsy when she tries to be indirect, like she can't really remember how to be kind like that anymore, no matter how much she wants to. "Tomorrow's just an ocean away, Veronica? That's the best you can do?"

"Yeah, well, Hallmark was sold out of the good aphorisms by the time I got there." Her voice is light, but laced with impatience and irritation, and he waits for her to grab her things and climb down, walk away.

But instead she looks at him, her eyes bright and clear, her expression a mix of determination and sympathy. "It can get better, Logan. It will." She reaches across her bag for his hand, threading their fingers together. "You just have to let it."

He thinks that maybe the view from a lifeguard stand is like a Rorschach test. Veronica looks out and sees Japan. She sees a future he isn't sure he believes in. He looks out and sees water. He sees that his mother is dead, that his father is a murderer, that his ex-girlfriend is dead and his best friend's his new ex, that a little girl is missing. All of the things that Veronica's looking right past, he can't stop seeing.

He wonders what it means that she can still see him, what it means that she's here with him in the middle of this shitstorm--if this is luck, or fate, or some really bad karmic joke. Because when she says that things are going to change, all he hears is the promise that one day, she is going to leave. And all he can feel is how much he already misses her, and how much worse he's going to feel when she goes. Even though she hasn’t gone anywhere yet. Even though she’s sitting beside him, holding his hand, looking like she’s here to stay.

“I love you,” he says finally, his mouth so dry he feels like he's talking through cotton. “I really love you.”

She doesn’t say it back. Instead she tucks her camera in her bag and climbs onto his lap, twining herself around his torso, letting him press her tight to his chest and bury his head in the crook of her neck. They sit like that for a long time. Twilight bruises the sky around them.

*****

Their peace is tentative. In August, the air will get drier and hotter, and when everything begins to fall apart, it will happen with excruciating slowness. Logan can see it play out in his head, like a video he is editing, frame by frame by frame.

Veronica will drink tepid coffee for a few afternoons while, across the booth, Duncan sips lattes and works up to confessing his love. Finally, in lieu of a declaration, he’ll kiss her clumsily by the door of her car. She’ll look up at him with shocked eyes and flee, but later she’ll tell Logan that she needs some time. Some space. Some normality.

He won’t cry. Rude, bitter stones will fall from his mouth; she’ll get angry and throw them back at him. He still won’t cry. He’ll get smashed and fuck the college girl who's been eyeing him since training. When he wakes up in the morning, he’ll tell himself he’s better off, now that the sudden inevitable betrayal part is over. He’ll keep telling himself that.

He’ll keep his job. He’ll watch people drown only as long as he has to in order to save them, and if he can’t, he won’t let the water swallow them whole. And when he climbs onto the tower and looks out at the ocean, he won’t look for fucking Japan or tomorrow or any of that crap. He’ll look for his mom, even though he’s pretty sure that she’s really dead, and he’ll look for the little girl in the green swimsuit, because he really hopes that she’s not. He’ll keep hoping.