#at this point she'd have a lot of stuff prepared and we'd be spending all day together working on recipes and making sure everything was go

[lesbianphan]

if I may be honest for a minute, this christmas is gonna be entirely weird to me (I already cried once) cause I basically have no family left (the ones I do don't spend time with me lol) and for the first time I can remember in life, I'm not making a christmas meal for my family and lots of desserts and doing my best to keep everyone entertained and even though it was super stressful, I already miss it. I'll be strong cause it's all that's left for me.

[marshmallowatheart]

To All The Boys I've Loved Before (Part 17)

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Dear Veronica

I had a lot of fun at the zoo, we should go again sometime. Maybe we'll get a chance to see the pandas?

- L

P.S I thoroughly enjoyed your leaning tower of chocolate cake.

Veronica chuckles at the note, remembering how thoroughly he had enjoyed it. She makes a mental note that chocolate goodies are kryptonite against Logan Echolls.

She wonders what other foods he likes. Does he like lasagne as much as she does? She remembers that he's allergic to shellfish, was there anything else he was allergic to? She tries pulling out memories that she'd long ago sealed away and she wonders if he still likes honey on his toast.

--vm--

"Look what the cat dragged in, Veronica Mars," Trina smirks, descending down the staircase like she's in a movie and this is the moment everyone's been dying to see.

Veronica gives her a small smile and a head bob. "Hey Trina, how's it going?"

"I thought you were in Australia," Logan says; he would have postponed this dinner if he'd know his sister was back in town. Trina's an unpredictable wild force of nature that would embarrass him without a second thought for her own amusement - he doesn't want to have to deal with that when he has all of these other added pressures in making this dinner go well.

"Yeah, well, I'm back baby bro," she grins, enjoying the fact that he's rattled with her presence. Trina's always had the most fun when people didn't want her to be there. "So I've clearly been out of the loop lately. Are you two together now?"

Logan's hand finds Veronica's and he starts to tug her away to the kitchen or any other room where his sister is not. "Yeah," he answers. "Hey, if you're back home who's playing Dead Hooker number 2 on CSI?"

Trina rolls her eyes and decidingly ignores her brother in favour for the blonde beside him. "Veronica, look at you. All grown up. Hey, we should go shopping sometime now that I'm back in town."

Veronica nods her head, offering the aspiring star a smile. "Sure, Trina."

--vm--

It feels like she's living in a flashback of her life when she settles down at the Echolls' dinning room table. The home decor hasn't changed much - minus all of the Aaron Echolls' blockbuster movie posters that were once plastered along the walls - Lynn Echolls is still the charming hostess she always was (though she does look lighter and more radiant than ever before).

Veronica's happy to see that it's still Mrs Navarro cooking that's filling up the table - she'd always made delicious food that tasted like heaven on a plate.

"Logan tells me you have two sisters," Lynn says, bright smile and pearly white teeth. "Your mother must love having three girls."

"Her mother's not with them anymore, mom," he says, wide-eyed and pointedly, before Veronica can even get a word in.

"Oh, I'm so sorry, Veronica," she amends, bashful and eyes full of sympathy. "I remember now."

"It's okay," Veronica assures her, picking at her food with her fork. "Dad, he loves having three girls," she adds in, trying to de-spell the awkward tension. "But you know I think he secretly wanted one of us to be a boy, someone to play catch with and go fishing," she chuckles, hoping to ease up any of Lynn's concerns. "I don't mind the sports but fishing is way too gruesome."

Lynn chuckles along with her, sensing what the petite blonde is doing and welcomes it. She continues to cut her meat and mentions, "Maybe he can take Logan with him the next time he wants to go fishing."

Trina snorts, loudly and radically. "Logan's so spoiled, he might as well be a girl," she remarks. "Don't let his tough-boy looks fool you, Veronica Mars. Logan won't survive a day without a household staff and take-out."

Logan is already regretting accepting his mother's invitation for dinner.

Veronica humours Trina with an uneasy chuckle and at the same time defends her faux boyfriend. "He did help me bake some cookies once so maybe there's hope for him yet."

Logan gives her a smile and she reciprocates the gesture, feeling her heart swell at the way his eyes seemed to light up.

--vm--

After dinner, Logan pulls Veronica away to the pool house because Trina is wildly inappropriate and his mother gets a call from her agent and reaches for a drink so he knows she's getting bad news.

It fills him with disappointment whenever he sees her fall into old habits but his mother definitely takes bad news better than his father used to. And well at least his mother doesn't drink herself into oblivion anymore.

Logan busies himself behind the counter, getting out drinks and snacks for them and Veronica plops on the counter near him.

He lets out a breath, handing her a soda and says, "Hey, I'm really sorry about what my mom said to you."

Veronica shakes her head. "It's fine. It's nice to know that not everybody has 'drunk mother abandons family' in the back of their mind when they talk to me," she jokes, swaying slightly on his counter.

He nods his head, he gets it, there's always been some headline attached to his name and he basks in moments when he's just Logan - those moments seem so few and far but when he's with Veronica, he feels like he's just him.

"Do you miss her?"

"I miss the person she used to be," Veronica offers softly. "She wasn't always drunk," she says, reminding him and herself. "She used to come to my soccer games, we'd bake cookies and prepare dinner together. Stuff that mothers are supposed to do, you know?"

He nods his head, he has vague memories of her when he'd first moved here; Lianne Mars was nice to him and it was the first time he didn't mind the company of someone else’s mother.

"But those were in between the bad moments," she swallows. Her eyes falling from Logan to her can of soda. "Sometimes she'd miss picking me up from school because she was passed out drunk. Or she'd burn the waffles because she was too dazed out."

She lets out a breath, trying to control her emotions as she shares this part of her with Logan. It's always been hard to talk about it but right now it feels like a bit easier with Logan.

"The months before she left, it got really bad," she meets Logan's eyes and he's attentively listening to her, offering her looks of understanding and silently waiting for her to continue. "Dad got calls to pick her up in the middle of the afternoon or at night," she sighs loudly and shrugs; it's a distant memory but it feels raw and as present as ever. "He tried for years to hide that side from us and then it got to the point where he couldn't anymore."

She bites her lips, she can feel tears caused by long ago memories start to brim in her eyes so she shakes her head and shrugs. Swallowing down her soda, hydrating herself as much as she can. She doesn't want to cry over this woman that's left them anymore. "There's moments I forget who she's turned into and I miss the times when we were happy with her."

"And then I remember that she left us," she comes off the counter, can in hand, searching for the bin and Logan lets her distract herself from her rising emotions. She spots it easily enough and throws it in.

She lets out a breath, looking at Logan and her voice feels hoarse that she wonders if she's at her limit talking about this but she still has these feelings that for some reason wants to let itself out now, to him. "Normal people get divorced when they're unhappy in their marriage but she didn't just leave my dad, she left all of us."

"Even though I was so angry, even though I know how bad things could get with her there, I wanted her back," she admits, it's one of her more vulnerable thoughts that not many people are privy off. "I would have welcomed her back if she came back to us."

She doesn't know how Logan's wiggled himself into being a person that she's comfortable enough to share this with - maybe it's because he's the only person that she's not lying to or maybe because he's been a friend that's allowed her to be vulnerable or maybe because he understands what she's talking about even if their emotions are derived from different situations.

"But she didn't, Logan, she left us, moved to Arizona and has this white picket fence life with a new family," she tells him and he's shook - she can see him registering the new information and she remembers how distraught she was when she'd learnt this.

"A family that she's there for, a family that she's sober for while we're left to think why weren't we enough?" Her voice cracks, she hates to admit that the thought still does creep up at times when she's particularly nostalgic.

"I found out last year," she confesses, a bitter smile gracing her lips. "Perks of spending afternoons at the Sheriff's departments and fiddling around with systems I'm not exactly authorized to," she lets out a humourless chuckle.

"I never told my dad or my sisters." She wouldn't be surprised if her dad knew - if he wanted to know, he'd know. "Just Wallace," she says in a quiet voice and meets his eyes once again. "And now you."

She gives him a half-smile when she says that, a silent thank you for listening. And he returns it, a silent thank you for trusting me.

"My mom drinks," he confesses, walking towards her - she's on the couch, pillow in her lap and looks at him in surprise.

"She doesn't drink as much as she used to - and as far as I can tell there's no more pill popping. But when Aaron was alive, things weren't good at all," he settles beside her sideways, his one leg folded with his arm on the back rest of the couch and his head is resting on his palm.

"He was the worst husband. Even worse father. He liked to portray the perfect family life on screen but we were far from it."

He's not used to this sharing thing. He's not ready to talk about everything that his father has done - he's not sure if he'll ever be - but he thinks if he ever is, Veronica might be the person he'd be able to confide to about it.

"I miss those good moments in between all the bad too," he offers.

He remembers a time - it feels like from another life - but there'd been a time when Aaron had been a father, when he was a kid, years leading up to his tenth birthday.

And then suddenly his father turned into this angry vengeful monster that took his anger out on his son, using anything he could get his hands on - including his hands - to teach Logan a lesson.

She gives him a small half smile, tilts her head and she once again thinks that he has the most beautiful brown soulful eyes she's ever seen.

"Hey, you wanna play Mario Kart before I take you home?"

"Sure, if you're ready to lose," she grins and he laughs.

He relaxes next to her, the game is on and she's being her usual snarky self and he reciprocates in kind. Being with Veronica feels so natural and it feels so good like a relationship should feel. He hopes that she feels it too.