Glimpses

Chapter 25

November 7th, 2021

As the day went on, Rory found herself pondering about something she'd never really thought about before. 

Logan had always been a smart, strong, masculine, charming and a determined man, hardly showing a weakness other than his lack of communication sometimes - hatching plans and then revealing them at the very end just like it had been with the proposal. Of course there was the lack of parental love, which Rory had always been very aware of having her own experiences as a comparison. So in that sense the flaws in his communication when it came to putting himself out there, were really no wonder if one considered his family. Having one loving sister didn't make up for everything that had been missing from his life until she met him and showed him another way, everything until then, besides his friendship to the guys, having been superficial at best. At least that was the way Logan had once described his feeling to her.

Rory began to think back, years and years - and wondered, whether Logan had in fact shown signs of the mental weaknesses that he'd admitted to having (had) last night. She was definitely not judging - she knew better not to. She'd been a mess just the same while torturing herself mentally rather than physically. But what was different now was that the image that she'd had of Logan had suddenly transformed into someone far less perfect - more human. It wasn't necessarily a bad thing, just different.

In her mind she'd always been the mess of a women who panic-dialled him when she needed to talk or just to lean on him, while usually speaking about nothing in particular, while he somehow had always been there to return that call, if not pick up straight away, no matter what he himself had going on. It had been rare that he called her needing her support, for example. He always seemed to have everything firmly under control. She felt that maybe she'd taken advantage of him too - maybe not asked enough how he was really doing? How he was dealing with having everything under control? How okay had he been back then? Because as she knew from experience, these things didn't just start out of nowhere but often crept up little by little.

It was after she'd read everything she could find on the internet with the few keywords Logan had given her, that some traits and tendencies were actually reaching back quite a while in time. He'd always pushed himself - in sport, in how hard he worked, in how much, or rather how little, sleep he needed, in how heavily he could party, not to mention all the extreme sports and reckless behavior. He had a risk-behavior streak - many of his activities had been just asking for trouble, Costa Rica being just the prime example of his escaping mechanism from difficult situations. She'd never even asked how he'd coped after her graduation in detail, avoiding the gentle topic, but she could imagine it hadn't been pretty. Perhap her carefree attitude towards their Vegas agreement had in fact made a lot of things worse.

And from there on, things apparently had only grown more serious. He'd been stuck doing what he didn't really want to be doing on so many levels, being a man of power with no real power over what he wanted. Having a career and money, contacts and company - it wasn't enough. And even one of the strongest men she'd ever known had crumpled at that pressure.

It was in fear of that pressure that Rory also hesitated a great deal about how should she bring Logan into her, and more importantly Em's, life. She couldn't put him under that kind of pressure, after having such serious issues, by suggesting he needed to step up his game and suddenly become a father figure. Not that she planned on doing that soon, but she had, in fact, thought about it already. That was just too much to ask. Even asking him to be a perfect boyfriend seemed like too much after all the crap he'd been through. She needed to caution herself to keep things as slow and steady as she'd first planned. Maybe slower. But thankfully, they had a therapist with whom to discuss these worries soon enough. She just hoped it was a good match, knowing how not all people klicked in a therapy setting. The trouble just was that Rory didn't want Logan to know how differently it made her view him, recalling him mention especially how he didn't want special treatment.