"For Choices" Chpt 10 (Gilmore Girls)
Finally home! Finally have high-speed internet again! *does a tap dance*
Sorry ya'll! But I had half a dozen projects and tests and such in the week or so leading up to vacation, and then vacation turned out to give me no time to write instead of more. We stayed busy, and I'm very sorry. I hope you're all still out there and still interested. :) Please do review and let me know what you think and if you are here. Thanks, and enjoy!
Chapter 10
Rory wouldn't have thought it would be so easy to return to comfortable conversation after such a reletively deep subject, but somehow they did it-and it didn't seem strange at all. It didn't take much longer for Dean to finish eating, and by then what was left of Rory's hot chocolate was long cold. She swallowed the last bit in one gulp before following Dean outside. Out on the sidewalk, he glanced back at Weston's.
“So...was that 'something' or just the precursor to something?” he asked curiously. There was no inflection at all; no indication of a preference one way or the other. It was simply an honest question, and his expression was sincere as he asked it.
“What do you mean?”
Dean shrugged. “Well...I guess I mean that I've got work this afternoon, but it's barely nine in the morning and for the moment I'm still free.”
“Work?”
“Yeah; I've still got both jobs in New Haven. I went part time for the summer so I could be here, but I have to work. I need the money to finish up school in the fall.”
“Right,” Rory nodded. “Of course. Work. I...no, that was definitely something,” she concluded, answering the original question. “That was more than something; that was plenty.” It was true, too. Sure, maybe nothing had changed, but she felt...better. At least the deperate, panicked pressure in her chest had faded.
That, and she didn't want to push her luck.
She sighed. “Thank you...you know, for putting up with me and my impulses. I just needed to...talk to someone, I guess. Not about...but just talk,” she fumbled.
Dean gave her a strangely knowing smile. “It's fine. You're welcome.” He smirked shyly. “Thanks for listening to me and my admittedly confusing logic.”
“Are you kidding? After the years you spent listening to me, I owe you...”
“Maybe.” He started to move off, but paused to look at her for a long moment. “Look...I guess, if you ever need anything else...”
Rory's eyebrows went up. “Oh, well...sure. You too. Thanks.”
He nodded once. “I'll see you later then?”
“Sometime, inevitably-or so it seems.”
The corner of Dean's mouth quirked up, and he left. Rory turned to go too, but only made it a step before she realized that he couldn't do much with the return offer she'd given him; she turned back to call after him.
“But you don't have my new number!”
They said it together, and she found Dean taking the last of several strides back to her. They both froze when they realized they'd overlapped each other, and Rory was the first to recover.
“Your house number's not the same?”
“Yeah, of course it is; I meant I have a new cell phone.”
She blinked. “Oh.” So...he didn't mind if she had his cell phone number. Well. Another step, she supposed-one she wasn't going to argue with.
She pulled her own phone from her purse, and by the time she'd done that Dean had his out of his pocket and they simply traded devices to input numbers. Rory didn't know which he wanted, so she tapped in both her cell and her apartment phone and handed it back, realizing he'd been waiting for a moment since completing his own task.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
He gave a half shrug, as if to say it didn't matter, and his hands went into his pockets with his phone. “Bye.” She smiled again, a little at least, and wacthed him go.
Well...there it was, the awkwardness that was still prevalent. It wasn't enough to deter her, but it was enough to remind her that any friendly relationship with Dean would take some work. Considering it couldn't be any worse than her current situation as a whole, Rory didn't mind that so much. In fact, she rather relished the idea of challenge she was actually relatively sure she could overcome-versus the one she didn't even want to think about right now.
She looked up and down the sidewalk for a moment, at a loss as to where to go. Finally she made her way to Luke's, and found her mother there at the counter. She didn't know what to say as she took the next stool, so she said nothing. For once, Lorelai didn't have much to say, either.
“Hey...”
“Hey, Mom.”
From behind the counter, Luke set a mug down in front of her. “You ready for that coffee yet?”
Rory stared at the empty mug for a moment. Seeing Dean had kept her from losing her sanity, but nothing had changed. And with Dean gone, the happiness of the progress they'd made that morning was pushed to the back of her mind.
She sighed and picked up the mug to hold it out to Luke and his coffee pot. “Fill 'er up.”
Rory stayed until Sunday afternoon, but Lorelai wasn't certain why she did. She holed up in her room and, presumably, wrote. Or moped. And pretended that nothing was out of the ordinary. Whenever she emerged Lorelai tried to begin conversation-any conversation. She tried to tell Rory that they needed to schedule a doctor apointment for her, get her on vitamins, and half a dozen other issues...
But Rory didn't seem to be listening. After everything Lorelai had tried to assure her of Friday night, either none of it was sticking or she was worrying too much to remember. Nothing was getting through. When she left it was nearly without a word. It wasn't until they were in front of the house at Rory's car that the facade broke-at least for a moment.
Rory held onto her for a long time, and Lorelai had no qualms about letting her. When her daughter finally pulled back, she took in a deep breath.
“Mom, look, I'm sorry, just...give me some time. Please?” she asked quietly.
Lorelai opened her mouth to comment on that, but Rory stopped her.
“I know, I know; I can't take too long. But please.”
Lorelai sighed. It was against her better judgement, but she did have her daughter's mental health to consider. That, and she loved her. “Okay,” she nodded, rubbing Rory's arm up and down once. “Some time.”
Rory didn't quite smile. “Thanks.” She let her mother kiss her forehead, and then she climbed into her car and was gone. It wasn't long before Lorelai sensed Luke at her back, and she leaned into the arm he slipped around her shoulders.
“Is she gonna be okay?” he asked after a moment. “Should you have let her go like that?”
Her lips pressed into a thin line for a moment before she answered. “She's got a lot to deal with right now, Luke. She knows we're here for her if she wants our help, and that's really all we can do. She has to figure out the rest for herself.”
It was hard to say. It was hard to think. But it was the truth.
Rory nearly dropped the stack of folders in her hands when the phone rang, and barely got them to the counter to pick it up before it stopped.
“I was heading to work; please make it quick,” she said immediately, assuming it was her mother. A little time had turned into a week, and then two, and...and she didn't know when it would end, when she would be readt, and she was tired of her mother's prodding questions about when it would be. She wouldn't have bothered to answer at all if the sound hadn't surprised her so badly already.
“Sorry,” Jess answered. “I don't get a lot of free time myself.”
She relaxed a little. “Oh. Hey. Haven't heard from you since you left here last time.”
“Business as usual, and then some. I assume it's the same there-which is probably why Luke seems to have the impression that you're a little stressed out right now.”
Rory scowled. “What?”
“Last e-mail I got from him; he didn't really say much, but he seemed worried about you. He said you haven't been home in two or three weeks.”
“Luke can e-mail?”
“It's a very recent development. He's not so great at it yet.”
“Wow, I really was gone for a while, wasn't I?”
“Rory, are you okay? Like I said, he didn't give any specifics, but still...Luke doesn't worry for nothing, you know.”
She let out a breath. “Yeah, I know, I just...you hit it on the head. I've been busy. Thanks for the concern, but I've got it under control.” She was glad he'd called. She was. It was a nice break from the monotany she'd voluntarily allowed herself to fall into over the past couple of weeks or so-because the routine was easier than thinking; it had worked before she'd known anything, and it worked now. Mostly. Still, she was glad to talk to him, but the last thing she wanted was a conversation of any real depth. He needed to drop it.
“Don't tell me that,” Jess answered immediately.
“Tell you what?”
“Look, I may not know you as well as I would have if I hadn't run off, but I do know you. I know when you're avoiding something, anyway. I can hear it.”
“Jess, I'm fine.”
“The immediate denial doesn't help your case.”
Rory glowered into the phone. “So what, is this going to become a regular occurrence now? Two lines in an e-mail and you give me the third degree?” There were things she didn't want to talk about, but avoiding talking about them only made her think about them, and she didn't want to do that, either. All she wanted now was to get off the phone and get to work.
“It was more like one line, really.”
But she shouldn't be angry at Jess. He only pressed because he cared, and she took a deep breath to keep from snapping again. “Fine. Whatever. Look, I need to go or I'll be late for work.”
She heard him sigh. “Fine. But keep in touch, ok? Don't go shutting down on me because something's going on over there-if that's what it is. Let me help.”
Rory rubbed at a temple with her free hand in hopes of staving off the headache she could feel coming. “I really don't think there's anything you can do.”
There was silence for a moment. “So something is going on.”
She refused to answer, because skirting around it didn't help either, in the not-thinking-about-it department.
“Whatever. I'll let you go.”
“Jess-“
But the line had gone dead.
Luke didn't expect the day to go any differently than every day of that past three weeks. Every day had been the same, and he hadn't expected a change. Every day began early, as his days always had, but every day since Rory had left again had been just a little less bright than usual. Lorelai didn't talk much, and as a result he didn't have much to say to anyone, either.
He'd known going into a relationship with Lorelai that her daughter would always be a part of it, and that had never bothered him because he loved them both. The mother-daughter feud of four years past had been enough to bear, and he could only hope that the current relative silence between them wouldn't last. As far as he knew there was no hostility in it, but it worried him.
Still, he hadn't expected the call that came from out by the counter after he'd ducked into the kitchen during a lull that afternoon.
“Luke? You back there?”
He frowned in confusion and emerged from the kitchen to answer the young woman now standing by his register. “Rory?”
She crossed her arms and let out a breath. “Yeah. Hey.”
Luke approached to rest a hand on the edge of the counter as he faced her. “Decided to grace us with your presence, did you?”
Rory grimaced. “I know, I know, I'm sorry. I was...freaking out.”
There were only two or three customers still scattered through the diner, which gave him the freedom to not worry too much about monitoring the volume of his voice. “Well I guess you had a right too, but you could have answered the phone more often. Lorelai has been moping around for almost three weeks worried about you. I was worried about you.” Now though, he lowered his voice. “And it didn't help that it's not just you we had to worry about.”
She glanced down almost involuntarily, but quickly jerked her head up again. “I'm sorry,” she repeated.
Luke stared at her for another moment before he spoke again, his tone softening. “So what are you doing here?”
Rory swallowed. “I uh...I wanted to know if you and April were still taking that boat trip-and if I was still invited.”
He felt his eyebrows climb. “Oh. Well, yeah. April's flying in Friday. We're leaving Saturday morning.” He shrugged. “Of course you're still invited, if you want to go. Do you want to go?”
She nodded immediately. “I think I kind of...need to.”
Luke chose not to ask for details. “Okay, well...is that enough time for you to get ready? That only gives you a couple of days to sort things out at work; we can wait a little, if you need us to...”'
“No, no, that should be fine. I'll be ready.” She hesitated. “Are you sure? You don't mind? I don't want to intrude on your time with April, or anything...”
“Hey, inviting you was my idea in the first place, remember? And I did clear it with April first.”
Rory smiled uncertainly. “Right. Thanks.” She started to step back, acting as if she were going to leave already.
“Whoa, hey, where are you headed? Did you want some coffee or something...?”
“I don't have a lot of time; I have to go to work in the morning. I should head back to Hartford.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You drove all the way out here just ask me if you could go on a boat trip?”
She winced. “I thought I should ask you in person. You were right; I have been kind of avoiding you guys since...” She trailed off and shrugged.
“Yeah.”
“It had nothing to do with you or Mom, I promise. I just-“
“Yeah,” he repeated.
Rory took a deep breath. “Anyway, thanks. I should get going.” She smiled a little, sheepishly. “Can I have a rain check on taking that coffee?”
“It'll still be here Friday.”
“A different pot, I hope.”
“Same pot, different batch of coffee.”
“That's what I meant.”
“I know that's what you meant.”
“Then why mention it?”
Luke shrugged. “Something I learned from two of the woman in my life. It makes things more interesting.”
Rory smirked. “Well you know I could do this all evening, but I was just going.”
He crossed his arms and looked at her closely. “You're not going to go talk to your mother?”
The smirk disappeared. “I uh...I think I'm gonna need those couple of days of that one.” Her eyes ducked. “Don't worry about it; I'll stay at the house Friday night anyway, so...”
It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but he'd take what he could get. It was progress, anyway. “If you say so.”
“I'll talk to her then, I promise. But really, I should go now.”
Luke nodded reluctantly. “Fine. Can I tell Lorelai you were here?”
“You probably would no matter what I answered.”
He shrugged. “Good point.”
Rory readjusted her purse on her shoulder and turned for the door. “Thanks, Luke; see you Friday.”
“Yeah...”
And he watched her go, hoping he was getting the whole step-father thing at least halfway right.
“She came to the diner to talk to you, but she didn't come see me?” Lorelai repeated incredulously. It made no sense whatsoever, but Luke wouldn't lie.
“See, this is why I considered not telling you at all...”
She snorted, took a sip from her coffee mug and carefully lowered herself to the couch beside him. “Well then I would have hated both of you, so you made the right choice.”
“Nice to know.”
Lorelai let out a breath. “Well I know this is...kind of bad. Crazy. Scary. I was there. I know she may not want to face this yet, but she has to. And she could talk to me, for crying out loud. Is that too much to ask?”
Luke shrugged. “No, but...really, Lorelai, how did you react after you found out you were pregnant with Rory? What did you do for the first few weeks after that?”
She sat forward and opened her mouth, and closed it again before sitting back once more. “I freaked out quietly on the inside and went to school and pretended nothing was different,” she mumbled.
“See?”
“But she's twenty-four Luke, not sixteen. She's supposed to be more adult-you know, generally more mature?”
“In a lot of ways she is, but just because she's an adult doesn't mean it's impossible that she's every bit as scared as you were.”
Lorelai swallowed back a sudden lump in her throat and took a gulp of coffee to push it back but didn't entirely succeed. “I know, but...I don't want her be. I never wanted her to have be scared like that. I never wanted her to have go through this at all.She was supposed to grow up and go to Harvard and have a brilliant career and eventually get married and have her 2.5 kids, and live the American dream a whole lot better than most people get to. That's what was supposed to happen, not this...” she sobbed. “God, I knew we shouldn't have folded on Yale. Everything just skewed off from there...”
She was crying, and Luke had long since pulled her into his arms and set her mug on the coffee table. “It's okay. It's okay...She'll still have all of it. I promise.”
She calmed some and nodded, but then scowled in no particular direction. “It was still stupid to let her go to Yale though,” she grumbled.
“Hey, Yale was good for her and she did great there. Yale was fine.”
Lorelai crossed her arms and shrugged. “Sure. But if she'd gone to Harvard she'd have never met Logan Huntzberger.”
Luke sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Look, let's just give Rory a break over this one, okay?”
She shook her head. “I'd love to, but I can't,” she said, finally the mother again. “I have to talk to her as soon as she gets home.”
Two days was indeed enough time to get things sorted out at work, though it took a little more convincing than Rory had anticipated. Still, it wasn't too much trouble and Friday couldn't have come quickly enough. She put her bags in the car the night before and headed home straight from work, hoping that with Luke gone to pick up April and her mother at the inn she would have the house to herself for a little while before any of them returned.
But the jeep was in the driveway when she got there.
Rory sat in her car and stared at the house for several minutes, before finally deciding to get out and go in anyway. She wasn't sure what to expect; if Lorelai had noticed her pull in, she likely would have been out the door already.
She pulled her bags from the back seat and made her way inside, dropping them in the entryway to look for her mother.
“Mom? I'm home.”
“In the kitchen.”
Rory edged around the corner into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom.”
Lorelai was sitting at the table, sipping coffee and facing the kitchen doorway. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you doing? Been sick a lot?”
“Some, yeah. It's...annoying, but probably not as bad as it could be.”
“Well if you're not complaining about it too much it's probably not, no.”
Rory shrugged. “I guess not.”
Her mother set her coffee mug down and stood, crossing her arms. “So you're going on this boat trip with
Luke and April, huh?”
“Yeah, uhm...the whole...just working thing wasn't working, so...”
“So what, you're trading one kind of running away for another, is that it?”
“What?”
“That's exactly what you're doing.”
Rory grimaced. “Mom-“
“No, Rory. Luke and I have spent the last three weeks worried about you, and we've barely heard a word. We support you and promise to help you out, and that's how you repay us? You block us out the moment you get away from Stars Hollow? What the hell is that?”
\“Mom, I'm sorry. It wasn't you guys, I swear. I mean, I'm glad you reacted the way you did; that you want to be here for me. I'm thankful for that. I'm going to need that. I just-“
“You're scared.”
She swallowed. “Well-of course I'm scared. Weren't you?”
Lorelai nodded once. “Scared as hell. But running around pretending everything's all good isn't going to change anything.”
“I know that...” she trailed.
Her mother shrugged. “Then what are you doing, Rory?” she asked quietly. “We want to help, but we can't do anything if you won't even answer the phone.”
When she was right she was right, and...she was right. Rory had known it all along-it was only common sense-but pretending had been easier. It was still easier.
But she couldn't do it anymore, could she?
“I know.”
Lorelai looked at her closely. “Well?”
Rory nodded. “I know. I do.” She swallowed again and found her throat clogged. “I'm sorry,” she choked. The next moment she found herself in her mother's arms, being rocked back and forth, just a little, as if she were a child.
It was strangely comforting, and yet not so strange at all. She remembered what it had felt like, all those years ago when she really was young. Rory held on tight, blinking back tears. “I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. Please help me...”
“That's what I'm here for, sweetie. I'm here.”
Sorry ya'll! But I had half a dozen projects and tests and such in the week or so leading up to vacation, and then vacation turned out to give me no time to write instead of more. We stayed busy, and I'm very sorry. I hope you're all still out there and still interested. :) Please do review and let me know what you think and if you are here. Thanks, and enjoy!
Chapter 10
Rory wouldn't have thought it would be so easy to return to comfortable conversation after such a reletively deep subject, but somehow they did it-and it didn't seem strange at all. It didn't take much longer for Dean to finish eating, and by then what was left of Rory's hot chocolate was long cold. She swallowed the last bit in one gulp before following Dean outside. Out on the sidewalk, he glanced back at Weston's.
“So...was that 'something' or just the precursor to something?” he asked curiously. There was no inflection at all; no indication of a preference one way or the other. It was simply an honest question, and his expression was sincere as he asked it.
“What do you mean?”
Dean shrugged. “Well...I guess I mean that I've got work this afternoon, but it's barely nine in the morning and for the moment I'm still free.”
“Work?”
“Yeah; I've still got both jobs in New Haven. I went part time for the summer so I could be here, but I have to work. I need the money to finish up school in the fall.”
“Right,” Rory nodded. “Of course. Work. I...no, that was definitely something,” she concluded, answering the original question. “That was more than something; that was plenty.” It was true, too. Sure, maybe nothing had changed, but she felt...better. At least the deperate, panicked pressure in her chest had faded.
That, and she didn't want to push her luck.
She sighed. “Thank you...you know, for putting up with me and my impulses. I just needed to...talk to someone, I guess. Not about...but just talk,” she fumbled.
Dean gave her a strangely knowing smile. “It's fine. You're welcome.” He smirked shyly. “Thanks for listening to me and my admittedly confusing logic.”
“Are you kidding? After the years you spent listening to me, I owe you...”
“Maybe.” He started to move off, but paused to look at her for a long moment. “Look...I guess, if you ever need anything else...”
Rory's eyebrows went up. “Oh, well...sure. You too. Thanks.”
He nodded once. “I'll see you later then?”
“Sometime, inevitably-or so it seems.”
The corner of Dean's mouth quirked up, and he left. Rory turned to go too, but only made it a step before she realized that he couldn't do much with the return offer she'd given him; she turned back to call after him.
“But you don't have my new number!”
They said it together, and she found Dean taking the last of several strides back to her. They both froze when they realized they'd overlapped each other, and Rory was the first to recover.
“Your house number's not the same?”
“Yeah, of course it is; I meant I have a new cell phone.”
She blinked. “Oh.” So...he didn't mind if she had his cell phone number. Well. Another step, she supposed-one she wasn't going to argue with.
She pulled her own phone from her purse, and by the time she'd done that Dean had his out of his pocket and they simply traded devices to input numbers. Rory didn't know which he wanted, so she tapped in both her cell and her apartment phone and handed it back, realizing he'd been waiting for a moment since completing his own task.
“Sorry,” she said sheepishly.
He gave a half shrug, as if to say it didn't matter, and his hands went into his pockets with his phone. “Bye.” She smiled again, a little at least, and wacthed him go.
Well...there it was, the awkwardness that was still prevalent. It wasn't enough to deter her, but it was enough to remind her that any friendly relationship with Dean would take some work. Considering it couldn't be any worse than her current situation as a whole, Rory didn't mind that so much. In fact, she rather relished the idea of challenge she was actually relatively sure she could overcome-versus the one she didn't even want to think about right now.
She looked up and down the sidewalk for a moment, at a loss as to where to go. Finally she made her way to Luke's, and found her mother there at the counter. She didn't know what to say as she took the next stool, so she said nothing. For once, Lorelai didn't have much to say, either.
“Hey...”
“Hey, Mom.”
From behind the counter, Luke set a mug down in front of her. “You ready for that coffee yet?”
Rory stared at the empty mug for a moment. Seeing Dean had kept her from losing her sanity, but nothing had changed. And with Dean gone, the happiness of the progress they'd made that morning was pushed to the back of her mind.
She sighed and picked up the mug to hold it out to Luke and his coffee pot. “Fill 'er up.”
Rory stayed until Sunday afternoon, but Lorelai wasn't certain why she did. She holed up in her room and, presumably, wrote. Or moped. And pretended that nothing was out of the ordinary. Whenever she emerged Lorelai tried to begin conversation-any conversation. She tried to tell Rory that they needed to schedule a doctor apointment for her, get her on vitamins, and half a dozen other issues...
But Rory didn't seem to be listening. After everything Lorelai had tried to assure her of Friday night, either none of it was sticking or she was worrying too much to remember. Nothing was getting through. When she left it was nearly without a word. It wasn't until they were in front of the house at Rory's car that the facade broke-at least for a moment.
Rory held onto her for a long time, and Lorelai had no qualms about letting her. When her daughter finally pulled back, she took in a deep breath.
“Mom, look, I'm sorry, just...give me some time. Please?” she asked quietly.
Lorelai opened her mouth to comment on that, but Rory stopped her.
“I know, I know; I can't take too long. But please.”
Lorelai sighed. It was against her better judgement, but she did have her daughter's mental health to consider. That, and she loved her. “Okay,” she nodded, rubbing Rory's arm up and down once. “Some time.”
Rory didn't quite smile. “Thanks.” She let her mother kiss her forehead, and then she climbed into her car and was gone. It wasn't long before Lorelai sensed Luke at her back, and she leaned into the arm he slipped around her shoulders.
“Is she gonna be okay?” he asked after a moment. “Should you have let her go like that?”
Her lips pressed into a thin line for a moment before she answered. “She's got a lot to deal with right now, Luke. She knows we're here for her if she wants our help, and that's really all we can do. She has to figure out the rest for herself.”
It was hard to say. It was hard to think. But it was the truth.
Rory nearly dropped the stack of folders in her hands when the phone rang, and barely got them to the counter to pick it up before it stopped.
“I was heading to work; please make it quick,” she said immediately, assuming it was her mother. A little time had turned into a week, and then two, and...and she didn't know when it would end, when she would be readt, and she was tired of her mother's prodding questions about when it would be. She wouldn't have bothered to answer at all if the sound hadn't surprised her so badly already.
“Sorry,” Jess answered. “I don't get a lot of free time myself.”
She relaxed a little. “Oh. Hey. Haven't heard from you since you left here last time.”
“Business as usual, and then some. I assume it's the same there-which is probably why Luke seems to have the impression that you're a little stressed out right now.”
Rory scowled. “What?”
“Last e-mail I got from him; he didn't really say much, but he seemed worried about you. He said you haven't been home in two or three weeks.”
“Luke can e-mail?”
“It's a very recent development. He's not so great at it yet.”
“Wow, I really was gone for a while, wasn't I?”
“Rory, are you okay? Like I said, he didn't give any specifics, but still...Luke doesn't worry for nothing, you know.”
She let out a breath. “Yeah, I know, I just...you hit it on the head. I've been busy. Thanks for the concern, but I've got it under control.” She was glad he'd called. She was. It was a nice break from the monotany she'd voluntarily allowed herself to fall into over the past couple of weeks or so-because the routine was easier than thinking; it had worked before she'd known anything, and it worked now. Mostly. Still, she was glad to talk to him, but the last thing she wanted was a conversation of any real depth. He needed to drop it.
“Don't tell me that,” Jess answered immediately.
“Tell you what?”
“Look, I may not know you as well as I would have if I hadn't run off, but I do know you. I know when you're avoiding something, anyway. I can hear it.”
“Jess, I'm fine.”
“The immediate denial doesn't help your case.”
Rory glowered into the phone. “So what, is this going to become a regular occurrence now? Two lines in an e-mail and you give me the third degree?” There were things she didn't want to talk about, but avoiding talking about them only made her think about them, and she didn't want to do that, either. All she wanted now was to get off the phone and get to work.
“It was more like one line, really.”
But she shouldn't be angry at Jess. He only pressed because he cared, and she took a deep breath to keep from snapping again. “Fine. Whatever. Look, I need to go or I'll be late for work.”
She heard him sigh. “Fine. But keep in touch, ok? Don't go shutting down on me because something's going on over there-if that's what it is. Let me help.”
Rory rubbed at a temple with her free hand in hopes of staving off the headache she could feel coming. “I really don't think there's anything you can do.”
There was silence for a moment. “So something is going on.”
She refused to answer, because skirting around it didn't help either, in the not-thinking-about-it department.
“Whatever. I'll let you go.”
“Jess-“
But the line had gone dead.
Luke didn't expect the day to go any differently than every day of that past three weeks. Every day had been the same, and he hadn't expected a change. Every day began early, as his days always had, but every day since Rory had left again had been just a little less bright than usual. Lorelai didn't talk much, and as a result he didn't have much to say to anyone, either.
He'd known going into a relationship with Lorelai that her daughter would always be a part of it, and that had never bothered him because he loved them both. The mother-daughter feud of four years past had been enough to bear, and he could only hope that the current relative silence between them wouldn't last. As far as he knew there was no hostility in it, but it worried him.
Still, he hadn't expected the call that came from out by the counter after he'd ducked into the kitchen during a lull that afternoon.
“Luke? You back there?”
He frowned in confusion and emerged from the kitchen to answer the young woman now standing by his register. “Rory?”
She crossed her arms and let out a breath. “Yeah. Hey.”
Luke approached to rest a hand on the edge of the counter as he faced her. “Decided to grace us with your presence, did you?”
Rory grimaced. “I know, I know, I'm sorry. I was...freaking out.”
There were only two or three customers still scattered through the diner, which gave him the freedom to not worry too much about monitoring the volume of his voice. “Well I guess you had a right too, but you could have answered the phone more often. Lorelai has been moping around for almost three weeks worried about you. I was worried about you.” Now though, he lowered his voice. “And it didn't help that it's not just you we had to worry about.”
She glanced down almost involuntarily, but quickly jerked her head up again. “I'm sorry,” she repeated.
Luke stared at her for another moment before he spoke again, his tone softening. “So what are you doing here?”
Rory swallowed. “I uh...I wanted to know if you and April were still taking that boat trip-and if I was still invited.”
He felt his eyebrows climb. “Oh. Well, yeah. April's flying in Friday. We're leaving Saturday morning.” He shrugged. “Of course you're still invited, if you want to go. Do you want to go?”
She nodded immediately. “I think I kind of...need to.”
Luke chose not to ask for details. “Okay, well...is that enough time for you to get ready? That only gives you a couple of days to sort things out at work; we can wait a little, if you need us to...”'
“No, no, that should be fine. I'll be ready.” She hesitated. “Are you sure? You don't mind? I don't want to intrude on your time with April, or anything...”
“Hey, inviting you was my idea in the first place, remember? And I did clear it with April first.”
Rory smiled uncertainly. “Right. Thanks.” She started to step back, acting as if she were going to leave already.
“Whoa, hey, where are you headed? Did you want some coffee or something...?”
“I don't have a lot of time; I have to go to work in the morning. I should head back to Hartford.”
Luke raised an eyebrow. “You drove all the way out here just ask me if you could go on a boat trip?”
She winced. “I thought I should ask you in person. You were right; I have been kind of avoiding you guys since...” She trailed off and shrugged.
“Yeah.”
“It had nothing to do with you or Mom, I promise. I just-“
“Yeah,” he repeated.
Rory took a deep breath. “Anyway, thanks. I should get going.” She smiled a little, sheepishly. “Can I have a rain check on taking that coffee?”
“It'll still be here Friday.”
“A different pot, I hope.”
“Same pot, different batch of coffee.”
“That's what I meant.”
“I know that's what you meant.”
“Then why mention it?”
Luke shrugged. “Something I learned from two of the woman in my life. It makes things more interesting.”
Rory smirked. “Well you know I could do this all evening, but I was just going.”
He crossed his arms and looked at her closely. “You're not going to go talk to your mother?”
The smirk disappeared. “I uh...I think I'm gonna need those couple of days of that one.” Her eyes ducked. “Don't worry about it; I'll stay at the house Friday night anyway, so...”
It wasn't what he'd hoped for, but he'd take what he could get. It was progress, anyway. “If you say so.”
“I'll talk to her then, I promise. But really, I should go now.”
Luke nodded reluctantly. “Fine. Can I tell Lorelai you were here?”
“You probably would no matter what I answered.”
He shrugged. “Good point.”
Rory readjusted her purse on her shoulder and turned for the door. “Thanks, Luke; see you Friday.”
“Yeah...”
And he watched her go, hoping he was getting the whole step-father thing at least halfway right.
“She came to the diner to talk to you, but she didn't come see me?” Lorelai repeated incredulously. It made no sense whatsoever, but Luke wouldn't lie.
“See, this is why I considered not telling you at all...”
She snorted, took a sip from her coffee mug and carefully lowered herself to the couch beside him. “Well then I would have hated both of you, so you made the right choice.”
“Nice to know.”
Lorelai let out a breath. “Well I know this is...kind of bad. Crazy. Scary. I was there. I know she may not want to face this yet, but she has to. And she could talk to me, for crying out loud. Is that too much to ask?”
Luke shrugged. “No, but...really, Lorelai, how did you react after you found out you were pregnant with Rory? What did you do for the first few weeks after that?”
She sat forward and opened her mouth, and closed it again before sitting back once more. “I freaked out quietly on the inside and went to school and pretended nothing was different,” she mumbled.
“See?”
“But she's twenty-four Luke, not sixteen. She's supposed to be more adult-you know, generally more mature?”
“In a lot of ways she is, but just because she's an adult doesn't mean it's impossible that she's every bit as scared as you were.”
Lorelai swallowed back a sudden lump in her throat and took a gulp of coffee to push it back but didn't entirely succeed. “I know, but...I don't want her be. I never wanted her to have be scared like that. I never wanted her to have go through this at all.She was supposed to grow up and go to Harvard and have a brilliant career and eventually get married and have her 2.5 kids, and live the American dream a whole lot better than most people get to. That's what was supposed to happen, not this...” she sobbed. “God, I knew we shouldn't have folded on Yale. Everything just skewed off from there...”
She was crying, and Luke had long since pulled her into his arms and set her mug on the coffee table. “It's okay. It's okay...She'll still have all of it. I promise.”
She calmed some and nodded, but then scowled in no particular direction. “It was still stupid to let her go to Yale though,” she grumbled.
“Hey, Yale was good for her and she did great there. Yale was fine.”
Lorelai crossed her arms and shrugged. “Sure. But if she'd gone to Harvard she'd have never met Logan Huntzberger.”
Luke sighed. “Fine. Whatever. Look, let's just give Rory a break over this one, okay?”
She shook her head. “I'd love to, but I can't,” she said, finally the mother again. “I have to talk to her as soon as she gets home.”
Two days was indeed enough time to get things sorted out at work, though it took a little more convincing than Rory had anticipated. Still, it wasn't too much trouble and Friday couldn't have come quickly enough. She put her bags in the car the night before and headed home straight from work, hoping that with Luke gone to pick up April and her mother at the inn she would have the house to herself for a little while before any of them returned.
But the jeep was in the driveway when she got there.
Rory sat in her car and stared at the house for several minutes, before finally deciding to get out and go in anyway. She wasn't sure what to expect; if Lorelai had noticed her pull in, she likely would have been out the door already.
She pulled her bags from the back seat and made her way inside, dropping them in the entryway to look for her mother.
“Mom? I'm home.”
“In the kitchen.”
Rory edged around the corner into the kitchen. “Hi, Mom.”
Lorelai was sitting at the table, sipping coffee and facing the kitchen doorway. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“How are you doing? Been sick a lot?”
“Some, yeah. It's...annoying, but probably not as bad as it could be.”
“Well if you're not complaining about it too much it's probably not, no.”
Rory shrugged. “I guess not.”
Her mother set her coffee mug down and stood, crossing her arms. “So you're going on this boat trip with
Luke and April, huh?”
“Yeah, uhm...the whole...just working thing wasn't working, so...”
“So what, you're trading one kind of running away for another, is that it?”
“What?”
“That's exactly what you're doing.”
Rory grimaced. “Mom-“
“No, Rory. Luke and I have spent the last three weeks worried about you, and we've barely heard a word. We support you and promise to help you out, and that's how you repay us? You block us out the moment you get away from Stars Hollow? What the hell is that?”
\“Mom, I'm sorry. It wasn't you guys, I swear. I mean, I'm glad you reacted the way you did; that you want to be here for me. I'm thankful for that. I'm going to need that. I just-“
“You're scared.”
She swallowed. “Well-of course I'm scared. Weren't you?”
Lorelai nodded once. “Scared as hell. But running around pretending everything's all good isn't going to change anything.”
“I know that...” she trailed.
Her mother shrugged. “Then what are you doing, Rory?” she asked quietly. “We want to help, but we can't do anything if you won't even answer the phone.”
When she was right she was right, and...she was right. Rory had known it all along-it was only common sense-but pretending had been easier. It was still easier.
But she couldn't do it anymore, could she?
“I know.”
Lorelai looked at her closely. “Well?”
Rory nodded. “I know. I do.” She swallowed again and found her throat clogged. “I'm sorry,” she choked. The next moment she found herself in her mother's arms, being rocked back and forth, just a little, as if she were a child.
It was strangely comforting, and yet not so strange at all. She remembered what it had felt like, all those years ago when she really was young. Rory held on tight, blinking back tears. “I'm sorry, Mom. I'm sorry. Please help me...”
“That's what I'm here for, sweetie. I'm here.”