What Happens In Hamburg

Chapter 6

"And you say I don't know what you went through, you're right again, I really don't. So please enlighten me," he added a few minutes of silence later.

Rory was still processing. Her head had stopped throbbing, the cold temperature waking her brain up from her haze.

"Okay, let's go talk. But can we go back to the apartment first? I could really use some coffee, before we do this?" she suggested practically, her anger having been replaced by some level of understanding. She rose to leave, Logan still observing her carefully, trying to read her mood. "And Logan...," she began, "I do love you," Rory added. As much as she hurt both because of the past and the events of the evening, she couldn't deny that she had feelings for him, it was the least she could do - make sure he didn't feel like he was alone in this.

Logan smiled weakly, realizing the difficult discussions that lay ahead. He placed his hand across her shoulder supportively, as they walked onwards.

***

"I'll go make some coffee," Logan said, as they'd arrived at the apartment.

"Okay. Do you have a large piece of paper or a whiteboard or something? Markers?" Rory asked, already developing the idea in her head how they could do this productively, at least attempting to separate the facts from their emotions.

Logan knew well enough that this was her way to tackling big problems, and he didn't object. "Check under the bed, there should be something. And markers I should have in the top drawer of the desk," he called out from the kitchen.

By the time Logan returned with two large coffees and some grilled ham and cheese sandwiches he'd scooped up, Rory had removed one of the large abstracts paintings from his wall and hung the old poster presentation the white turn-side outwards on to the nail on the wall and separated half of the paper with a vertical line, on column marked L and the other R. The row headings listed: proposal, breakup, time in between and present day pro-con.

"This is going to take all night isn't it?" Logan sighed. It was not that he didn't want to do this, it was just a daunting prospect, and Rory got that.

"It might. But I think we can agree, that we need to do this. We'll do as much as we feel up to, and just continue tomorrow if we still have things to discuss. This may not be very pleasant but it's the only thing I can think of that we can do to break the pattern. We need to replace the guessing and fear with knowing, right?" Rory explained after taking a large gulp of coffee.

"Right," he agreed.

"So, here goes. What was going on in your mind when you decided you were going to propose to me like that back then? You'd recently told me to choose what I wanted to do, wherever I wanted to do it and then you just sprung it on me in public and made me choose all or nothing," she said, trying to state the facts as she saw them.

"I did, didn't I? Like I said before, I was an idiot. The explanation that I have is just that I got the job offer, taking me across the country, alone, and I realized I didn't want to do it without you. You were still undecided on the job front as far as I knew and I figured the West Coast could have offered you just as many opportunities. And I guess I was just so sure that you'd say 'yes', that I didn't even consider the alternative. And when you hesitated I was just so offended, I couldn't think straight. Like you didn't love me enough to come with me, like we weren't on the same page anymore," he explained.

"But I was too young to get married and settle down, I was still figuring out who I was, hell, in a way I am still doing that. And I needed to make the career choice first, like you yourself told me to do. And I know it was the right thing to do. When I saw you at graduation, I never expected you to say all or nothing, that just left my mind completely blank. That was so unfair. By saying 'no' to you never meant that I didn't love you. Hell, I could've even come with you, but just not as Mrs. Huntzberger. That alone would've been like a loss of identity. You must realize that that association in itself would've completely altered my career prospects?" she tried to explain.