I Can Never Write a Love Song (Part 3/8)
Title: I Can Never Write a Love Song
Prompt: 100_situations #018. Numbered
Part: Three of Eight
Fandom: 30 Rock
Pairings: Jack/Liz, Liz/Other, Jack/Other
Word Count (this part): 1,797
Rating (this part): PG
Table: Number Two.
Summary: Twenty-five things that happen after Jack and Liz's divorce. (Follows ' Almost.')
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Tina/NBC/etc. Title is from 'Love Songs' by Brandi Carlile. Not suing me would be appreciated.
*
7. She gets an e-mail from Jack.
(The thing is, Jack never e-mails her. Almost never. Once about five years ago. Maybe? He's called her, texted her, but for some reason when he sits down in front of his computer, he never feels a need to write her. So when Liz sees she's gotten an e-mail from 'John Donaghy,' she thinks it's spam that somehow picked her ex-husband's name. Maybe she has a virus? Maybe he has a virus? Her suspicions don't go away when she looks at the subject line: We Regret to Inform You. We regret to inform you, and when she opens it, she'll find an invitation to look at some horny girl's webcam feed. But it says:
The wedding of Jack Donaghy and Laura Fowler will not take place as previously scheduled.
She blinks, studies the words. The wedding was supposed to happen in five weeks -- and Liz was probably going to look for a dress four weeks from now -- and, last time she saw them -- for drinks, before Liz went on a -- failed -- date with a guy from Match.com, they were happy. (And she wasn't as happy for him as she should have been, and felt guilty.) She never saw them not happy, but she supposes she wouldn't be in a place to see them at their worst. Her first impulse is to call Jack, but she waits. When she does call -- and okay, she only waits about twenty minutes -- he doesn't pick up and it goes to voicemail. Probably on purpose. He doesn't want to talk. Why would he?
"I'm sorry, Jack." She pauses. "Okay. Call me. When you feel like it. Okay. Goodbye."
She doesn't hear from him for another week. When she does, he opens the conversation with, "I'm not getting married."
"I know."
"Liz..." Then nothing.
"You want some company? We could talk."
"I would like some company. But I don't want to talk, at least not about the fact that I'm not getting married."
"Okay. Okay."
They go out to dinner, during which Jack tells her anecdotes. Some she's heard, some which are new to her, ones he's probably told to Laura. He laughs riotously at the ending of several of them, but his cheerfulness feels forced.
Eventually, she gives up on pretending there's nothing wrong. "I thought you were supposed to call when you announce the cancellation of a wedding."
"Jonathan called most of the guests," Jack says nonchalantly. He must have been waiting for this; didn't trust her to keep up the 'no talking about the wedding that isn't going to happen' agreement.
"Oh. And I got an e-mail because?"
"Jonathan can't be asked to call everyone. We had a rather lengthy guest list. I thought I should call you, but I didn't want to. I didn't want you to ask me any questions."
"Can I ask them now?"
The waiter comes over to refill their wine glasses, and she and Jack fall into silence for a short period that somehow feel interminable. After the waiter leaves:
"I'd rather you not."
"Jack--"
"What are you going to ask? Why is it we didn't get married? Many reasons which all boiled down to us not being right for each other. Our engagement... It was an impulsive act."
"You shouldn't be impulsive with a woman who has kids."
"Isn't it possible we were both being impulsive?"
She nods. "Yeah. Sorry."
He exhales. "Don't be. I certainly have a history of rash decisions when it comes to marriage. Except for you. I considered our future very carefully. That didn't work out any better."
His words don't hurt, exactly -- because she knows they're true -- but they do stun her for a moment. She glances down at her half-eaten meal. "You're right, it didn't."
He suddenly looks remorseful. He leans forward. "Liz--"
"Don't apologize, if you were going to. I know we didn't work out. I know you considered our future very carefully. It's not like you said, 'That didn't work out any better because you suck.' It just didn't work."
They fall into silence; that sort of silence where what's not being said seems so meaningful that breaking it feels impossible. That's the silence she and Jack faced toward the end, when he refused to discuss what was going on between them. She wishes she could have been the person he told all of his feelings to back then so she could be that person now. But maybe Jack's the sort of guy who'll never have that person; doesn't want that person. Doesn't want to say aloud exactly what's going on with him.
"I'm sorry about Laura," Liz says.
"I appreciate that." Jack takes a sip of wine. Returns to his meal. There's more silence before the night is over. He doesn't kiss her cheek when he says goodbye to her outside the restaurant, so maybe it was a Laura thing. A habit he decided to share, a habit he'd rather break now that she's no longer in his life.
"Call me," she says, "if you do want to talk about it. About her."
"I will call you, Lemon," he replies, "but there's nothing more to discuss." He exhales. "I'm not getting married. It's for the best.")
8. She returns to casual dating.
(So does Jack. She knows he sleeps with a lot of the women he goes out with -- if not all of them -- and Liz sleeps with a good amount of the men she sees. Honestly, she's slept with more men in the couple of years since she and Jack divorced than she did in the ten years before Jack Donaghy first walked into her life. And maybe it's due to her reaching her sexual peak, or something like that, but she thinks it's because Jack finally made her enjoy sex. Made her see it as something worthwhile. As intimate and exciting and vital. It's strange, how the man who made sex seem meaningful is also the one who caused her to treat it as meaningless.
No. Not meaningless. Meaningless is the wrong word. She just no longer sees it as an obligation she has to submit herself to. The word 'meaningless' probably popped into her head because she's never in love with these men when she goes to bed with them; doesn't fall in love with them later.
The chance is there, though, right? There's always a chance.)
9. She decides she's going to have a baby.
(Liz is forty-four, still single, when she decides to go the surrogate route. Jack encourages her, and advises her to make sure the agency does thorough background checks and psychological testing.
"You don't want some sort of defective carrying your child."
"I wouldn't put it that way, but yeah. I'll do my research."
And she does do her research. Reads about horror stories, New York law, and reliable fertility clinics that will 'bring together surrogates with a loving person or couple looking to have a child' (direct quote from one of the sites).
For a while, she finds herself focusing on the horror stories.
"Someone can keep my baby. Legally. Because I have a stupid jerk uterus--" She stops because, crap, she is making this sound ridiculous. But she's planning on mixing her eggs with a stranger's sperm and putting that inside another stranger, so isn't it already pretty ridiculous? "I can't have a baby the way a normal person does. There are all these things wrong with me, and on top of that I can't even have a baby--"
It takes a second for her to realize she's no longer talking about articles she read online, but about something she's never really faced. Because she wasn't truly ready then, when she first found out she couldn't carry a child. She wasn't ready, and she and Jack were falling apart, and maybe she wasn't supposed to be a parent. Maybe she didn't want to have a baby anyway. But she does, and she can't, and--
She ends up crying. In public. On a bar stool.
At least she's alone.
Jack slides an arm around her, and she turns toward him. The embrace is awkward, but she's grateful for it.
"You'll be fine," Jack says. "You'll get what you want."
*
She eventually settles on a clinic. Starts meeting with prospective surrogates. They're all from other states, states that recognize surrogacy contracts. (One is from Ohio, which Jenna finds exciting because Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate was from there, and Liz doesn't get why Jenna remembers stuff like that.) The one she clicks with, thankfully, is from Pennsylvania, so it won't be too difficult to keep in contact with her. (Liz also takes some comfort in the fact that her surrogate lives in her home state, if not her hometown. It's silly, maybe, to care, but it makes her happy.) Her name is Carol and she has two kids with her husband. She's been a surrogate twice before, is psychologically sound and physically fit, is as perfect as Liz could hope for, and she says, "I want to help you have a baby," with such sincerity it makes Liz both want to cry and feel a little mistrustful. But only a little.
It takes three months for Carol to get pregnant.
Liz stops dating because, well, she can't imagine trying to hold down a relationship while she's waiting for her baby to be born. She can't imagine explaining this to someone. It's hard enough talking about it with people she knows. (Her mother seems not to... well, it's not like she judges Liz. It's not like she doesn't know there's a reason why she can't do this by herself. But her mom doesn't seem to fully accept it. Honestly, Liz doesn't fully accept it.)
Jack gets it. This was one of the options he read about when... back when they were married. But she doesn't see Jack much and, when they talk over the phone, he doesn't seem to be interested in hearing about the baby stuff, about the nursery she's decorating and the ultrasound picture she has on her desk. So she doesn't tell him the other things, like how jealous she is that she's never going to feel what it's like to be pregnant. That another woman will have the memories of Liz's child growing inside her.
But at least Jack was right. She's going to get what she wants.)
End Part Three of Eight
Go on to Part Four.
Prompt: 100_situations #018. Numbered
Part: Three of Eight
Fandom: 30 Rock
Pairings: Jack/Liz, Liz/Other, Jack/Other
Word Count (this part): 1,797
Rating (this part): PG
Table: Number Two.
Summary: Twenty-five things that happen after Jack and Liz's divorce. (Follows ' Almost.')
Disclaimer: Characters belong to Tina/NBC/etc. Title is from 'Love Songs' by Brandi Carlile. Not suing me would be appreciated.
*
7. She gets an e-mail from Jack.
(The thing is, Jack never e-mails her. Almost never. Once about five years ago. Maybe? He's called her, texted her, but for some reason when he sits down in front of his computer, he never feels a need to write her. So when Liz sees she's gotten an e-mail from 'John Donaghy,' she thinks it's spam that somehow picked her ex-husband's name. Maybe she has a virus? Maybe he has a virus? Her suspicions don't go away when she looks at the subject line: We Regret to Inform You. We regret to inform you, and when she opens it, she'll find an invitation to look at some horny girl's webcam feed. But it says:
The wedding of Jack Donaghy and Laura Fowler will not take place as previously scheduled.
She blinks, studies the words. The wedding was supposed to happen in five weeks -- and Liz was probably going to look for a dress four weeks from now -- and, last time she saw them -- for drinks, before Liz went on a -- failed -- date with a guy from Match.com, they were happy. (And she wasn't as happy for him as she should have been, and felt guilty.) She never saw them not happy, but she supposes she wouldn't be in a place to see them at their worst. Her first impulse is to call Jack, but she waits. When she does call -- and okay, she only waits about twenty minutes -- he doesn't pick up and it goes to voicemail. Probably on purpose. He doesn't want to talk. Why would he?
"I'm sorry, Jack." She pauses. "Okay. Call me. When you feel like it. Okay. Goodbye."
She doesn't hear from him for another week. When she does, he opens the conversation with, "I'm not getting married."
"I know."
"Liz..." Then nothing.
"You want some company? We could talk."
"I would like some company. But I don't want to talk, at least not about the fact that I'm not getting married."
"Okay. Okay."
They go out to dinner, during which Jack tells her anecdotes. Some she's heard, some which are new to her, ones he's probably told to Laura. He laughs riotously at the ending of several of them, but his cheerfulness feels forced.
Eventually, she gives up on pretending there's nothing wrong. "I thought you were supposed to call when you announce the cancellation of a wedding."
"Jonathan called most of the guests," Jack says nonchalantly. He must have been waiting for this; didn't trust her to keep up the 'no talking about the wedding that isn't going to happen' agreement.
"Oh. And I got an e-mail because?"
"Jonathan can't be asked to call everyone. We had a rather lengthy guest list. I thought I should call you, but I didn't want to. I didn't want you to ask me any questions."
"Can I ask them now?"
The waiter comes over to refill their wine glasses, and she and Jack fall into silence for a short period that somehow feel interminable. After the waiter leaves:
"I'd rather you not."
"Jack--"
"What are you going to ask? Why is it we didn't get married? Many reasons which all boiled down to us not being right for each other. Our engagement... It was an impulsive act."
"You shouldn't be impulsive with a woman who has kids."
"Isn't it possible we were both being impulsive?"
She nods. "Yeah. Sorry."
He exhales. "Don't be. I certainly have a history of rash decisions when it comes to marriage. Except for you. I considered our future very carefully. That didn't work out any better."
His words don't hurt, exactly -- because she knows they're true -- but they do stun her for a moment. She glances down at her half-eaten meal. "You're right, it didn't."
He suddenly looks remorseful. He leans forward. "Liz--"
"Don't apologize, if you were going to. I know we didn't work out. I know you considered our future very carefully. It's not like you said, 'That didn't work out any better because you suck.' It just didn't work."
They fall into silence; that sort of silence where what's not being said seems so meaningful that breaking it feels impossible. That's the silence she and Jack faced toward the end, when he refused to discuss what was going on between them. She wishes she could have been the person he told all of his feelings to back then so she could be that person now. But maybe Jack's the sort of guy who'll never have that person; doesn't want that person. Doesn't want to say aloud exactly what's going on with him.
"I'm sorry about Laura," Liz says.
"I appreciate that." Jack takes a sip of wine. Returns to his meal. There's more silence before the night is over. He doesn't kiss her cheek when he says goodbye to her outside the restaurant, so maybe it was a Laura thing. A habit he decided to share, a habit he'd rather break now that she's no longer in his life.
"Call me," she says, "if you do want to talk about it. About her."
"I will call you, Lemon," he replies, "but there's nothing more to discuss." He exhales. "I'm not getting married. It's for the best.")
8. She returns to casual dating.
(So does Jack. She knows he sleeps with a lot of the women he goes out with -- if not all of them -- and Liz sleeps with a good amount of the men she sees. Honestly, she's slept with more men in the couple of years since she and Jack divorced than she did in the ten years before Jack Donaghy first walked into her life. And maybe it's due to her reaching her sexual peak, or something like that, but she thinks it's because Jack finally made her enjoy sex. Made her see it as something worthwhile. As intimate and exciting and vital. It's strange, how the man who made sex seem meaningful is also the one who caused her to treat it as meaningless.
No. Not meaningless. Meaningless is the wrong word. She just no longer sees it as an obligation she has to submit herself to. The word 'meaningless' probably popped into her head because she's never in love with these men when she goes to bed with them; doesn't fall in love with them later.
The chance is there, though, right? There's always a chance.)
9. She decides she's going to have a baby.
(Liz is forty-four, still single, when she decides to go the surrogate route. Jack encourages her, and advises her to make sure the agency does thorough background checks and psychological testing.
"You don't want some sort of defective carrying your child."
"I wouldn't put it that way, but yeah. I'll do my research."
And she does do her research. Reads about horror stories, New York law, and reliable fertility clinics that will 'bring together surrogates with a loving person or couple looking to have a child' (direct quote from one of the sites).
For a while, she finds herself focusing on the horror stories.
"Someone can keep my baby. Legally. Because I have a stupid jerk uterus--" She stops because, crap, she is making this sound ridiculous. But she's planning on mixing her eggs with a stranger's sperm and putting that inside another stranger, so isn't it already pretty ridiculous? "I can't have a baby the way a normal person does. There are all these things wrong with me, and on top of that I can't even have a baby--"
It takes a second for her to realize she's no longer talking about articles she read online, but about something she's never really faced. Because she wasn't truly ready then, when she first found out she couldn't carry a child. She wasn't ready, and she and Jack were falling apart, and maybe she wasn't supposed to be a parent. Maybe she didn't want to have a baby anyway. But she does, and she can't, and--
She ends up crying. In public. On a bar stool.
At least she's alone.
Jack slides an arm around her, and she turns toward him. The embrace is awkward, but she's grateful for it.
"You'll be fine," Jack says. "You'll get what you want."
*
She eventually settles on a clinic. Starts meeting with prospective surrogates. They're all from other states, states that recognize surrogacy contracts. (One is from Ohio, which Jenna finds exciting because Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate was from there, and Liz doesn't get why Jenna remembers stuff like that.) The one she clicks with, thankfully, is from Pennsylvania, so it won't be too difficult to keep in contact with her. (Liz also takes some comfort in the fact that her surrogate lives in her home state, if not her hometown. It's silly, maybe, to care, but it makes her happy.) Her name is Carol and she has two kids with her husband. She's been a surrogate twice before, is psychologically sound and physically fit, is as perfect as Liz could hope for, and she says, "I want to help you have a baby," with such sincerity it makes Liz both want to cry and feel a little mistrustful. But only a little.
It takes three months for Carol to get pregnant.
Liz stops dating because, well, she can't imagine trying to hold down a relationship while she's waiting for her baby to be born. She can't imagine explaining this to someone. It's hard enough talking about it with people she knows. (Her mother seems not to... well, it's not like she judges Liz. It's not like she doesn't know there's a reason why she can't do this by herself. But her mom doesn't seem to fully accept it. Honestly, Liz doesn't fully accept it.)
Jack gets it. This was one of the options he read about when... back when they were married. But she doesn't see Jack much and, when they talk over the phone, he doesn't seem to be interested in hearing about the baby stuff, about the nursery she's decorating and the ultrasound picture she has on her desk. So she doesn't tell him the other things, like how jealous she is that she's never going to feel what it's like to be pregnant. That another woman will have the memories of Liz's child growing inside her.
But at least Jack was right. She's going to get what she wants.)
End Part Three of Eight
Go on to Part Four.