Fic: Alice (7/8)
Title: Alice (7/8)
Universe: Gilmore Girls, next-gen
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rory/Jess
Summary:Alice Gilmore-Huntzburger's bookshelf had always played host to a collection of books by Jess Mariano
Chapter Six: How's It Gonna End
"Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? what brought you?"
It was almost five in the morning when Rory pulled up into Jess' driveway. Ten minutes later, and her knuckles were bruised by the time he opened the front door. Her hair was dripping wet at the ends. The weather was conveying itself in the most fittingly literary terms as possible. Damn pathetic fallacy. She was Lear, cast out on to the moors. No, she was Catherine or Heathcliff wandering around the moors. Although Jess' modest but nice house in a suburb of Hartford wasn't exactly moorish. But weather was making up for any discrepancies by raining as heavily as it possibly could. Her mascara was running down her cheeks and neck in rivulets. She was shivering wildly, her whole body convulsing. He opened the door an inch, eyes sleepy and befuddled. He took in her appearance, the hysteria which had so clearly taken possession of her, without comment. "This situation seems vaguely familiar," he commented, eventually. "You want a towel?"
She held out a sheet of paper with shaking hands, but he had already turned around and retreated into the house. She burst through the door behind him, and stopped in the hallway, paper limp in her hand by her side. She seemed as thrown as him, as bewildered by this situation and as unsure as to how exactly she had gotten there. Her eyes were wild and darting. It was possible that she was drunk; she couldn't quite remember how many glasses of wine she had consumed over the course of the night. He returned with a towel, which he offered to her. She ignored it and held out the sheet of paper one more time. They both stood opposite one another, one arm outstretched, staring at the other.
"I made a list." She shook the paper in her right hand "About you. And I thought you should know that you failed. The cons way outnumber the pros."
If she had been expecting his expression to reveal his feelings about that statement she was disappointed.
"Show me that." He tore the page from her fingers. It was ruined by the rain. The ink was running and the pages were limp. He unfolded it, and pursued it with clenched jaw and hard eyes.
Calmly, he refolded it and gave it back to her. "You want a drink?"
She paused, and then nodded sharply. He poured them both something harsh and bitter. It burned its way down her throat and mixed with the wine already in her system, making her feel nauseous. He sat down, and rubbed his mouth with his hand and averted his eyes from hers..
"When did you write that list?" he asked softly.
"About two hours ago."
"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," he sighed heavily.
She struggled for something to say.
"Jess, I-" Her voice sounded weak and pathetic to her own ears.
He didn't say anything for a long time.
"You don't know me at all," he said seriously. His tone was marked by its pure despondancy.
"That's not true and you know it."
He stood up and snatched the paper from her again. "Here," he said, hitting the paper with his left hand and suddenly growing angry. "'Cons five through eight: Jess is unreliable, undependable, unambitious, untrustworthy.' You can't possibly still believe that. I can't have spent my whole life trying to prove otherwise and have still gotten nowhere!"
She flushed a dark red under her mascara-blackened cheeks.
"I have my own company. I wrote ten books, three of which were New York Times Bestsellers. I own my house, I pay my taxes, I give money to goddamn charity. God, even Lorelai can see that but you can't. You, who always believed I could be more than I was won't accept it when I do it. Don't you think that's a bit fucking ironic, Rory? Especially from the girl with a criminal record who got pregnant out of wedlock!"
"Jess, I didn't mean..."
"I talked to Logan!" he shouted. "And I didn't hit him, or get in a fight with him. We sat down and conversed like adults. You kept a huge secret from me, a massive thing, and did I freak out on you? No! I accepted my responsibilities and I worked my ass off to try and forgive you. You, on the other hand, make up childish lists to make huge, potentially life-altering decisions based on the person I used to be!"
"I fell in love with the person you used to be!" she cried.
"But not for long," he countered. "The things that attracted you to me, the danger and spontaneity, no matter how made-up in your head they were, were the pros once, weren't they? And now they're your ways to convince yourself to keep away from me. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?"
She wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry in earnest. "I don't know how I feel about you! I never have. What do you want me to do? Make a new list?"
"I want you to fuck the list!" He began tearing it up roughly. "I want you to make a decision based on how you feel for once in your life!"
"I did that once," she sobbed. "And you broke my heart."
A dense silence followed, in which she cried into her own chest and he struggled vainly for something to say. He raised a shaky hand to his face and took deep breaths to calm himself.
"But before that... it was good?" His voice was quiet, pleading. It reminded her of a child, or as much as Jess could remind anyone of a child.
"Yeah," she said softly. "It was good."
The atmosphere of the room had shifted from anger to something else, something calm and dense, as if all their history had congregated around them and now pressed against them, heavy and pulling. It seemed sacrilegious to speak at all. The room had become the temple of their relationship, and they were the patron saints.
Jess took a half-step towards her. "You can't break a heart twice."
"You don't know that."
"Sure I do. It's simple physics."
"But you can break it worse. Deepen the cracks, so to speak," she breathed. He was only inches away from her now. She could feel his breath whispering across her cheek.
"Never gonna hurt as badly as the first time."
"How do I know that for sure?" she murmured. Her breath hitched in her chest.
"You don't," he breathed.
He closed the gap, and kissed her very softly. She sighed into his mouth, and he kissed her again, still tenderly. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She ran her hand over the fabric covering his shoulder and down his arm. His skin was soft and warm, and she parted her lips slightly to allow him to kiss her more deeply.
"Please," he murmured against her lips. "Let me prove it to you." She ran her hand up his neck, over his ear and into his hair.
"Okay," she breathed into his neck.
________________________________________________________________
Resignation brings a curious large courage-when there is nothing more to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut sometimes to the heights?- Algernon Blackwood
________________________________________________________________
"Don't say what you're going to say," Jess ordered Luke, making himself comfortable on the couch. He opened the beer in front of him and took a sip. "Lorelai here?"
"No, she and Audrey are visiting Rory and Alice. And you didn't know what I was going to say."
"You were going to say something about me being an idiot for putting us all through this again."
"No, I wasn't," Luke insisted. "I'm always on your side when it comes to Rory, aren't I?"
Jess examined his hands very carefully. "Yes, you were always very keen to see us together. Couldn't go ten minutes without saying hi, if memory serves correct."
"Shut up," Luke said affectionately. "You were just kids. She was just a kid, anyway." He took a sip of his own beer. "Besides, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I told you not to go back to her, wouldn't I?"
"Yes," Jess agreed. "You would."
They watched the football in silence for several minutes. Neither were particularly interested in it, but the patterns of male bonding dictated that one must have a credible excuse to talk without expressly sitting down to talk. Any pathetic excuse would do, and when the awkward silences struck they had the advantage of pretending to pay attention to the television. Of course, neither was particularly conscious that they were participating essentially in girl talk without nail polish. Because they had football. And beer. If they were women, they would have been drinking wine. Obviously. Had Lorelai had been in the house, she would have spent her time in the kitchen grunting in imitation of them and growling, "Me man, me like beer," to her own great amusement. Well, we all have our little traditions.
One beer later, Luke turned to his nephew again. "Be careful," he told him seriously.
Jess sighed crankily. "I'm not going to get the kid involved. Jeez."
"I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about you."
"Think I'm used to it by now," Jess responded, contrarily.
Luke laughed sarcastically and shook his head. "Yes, I'm sure you're such a glutton for punishment because you're immune to being hurt."
"Shut up," Jess bit back.
Luke continued to chuckle for several minutes. On screen, a player on the opposing team scored a touchdown. Both men groaned appropriately. Luke looked at Jess.
"You know I'm proud of you. How you've handled everything with Alice and how you've turned out."
"Christ," Jess muttered. "Could you be any sappier?" He stood up to leave the room. "I need another beer."
They didn't speak again for the rest of the night, simply sat in silence watching the game, and the post-game analysis, and the build-up for the next week's match. They both appreciated their time spent together, however, and over the years they had endeavoured to do it as much as possible. The atmosphere was not even ruined by Will's entrance and excited response to the football. By the time the womenfolk arrived home, Jess was preparing to leave. He was glad not to have to create conversation with the girls, because their secretive smiles told him they had been talking to Rory about him. He detected, with some doubt, that they were pretty supportive of the idea.
It didn't matter how long it had been going on, the idea that Lorelai Gilmore approved of him still seemed inherently wrong to Jess. It made every rebellious hair on his body stand up to attention. When he thought about it, he wanted to act out in the strangest ways, to go back to being Stars Hollow's resident rebel-in-chief. On his way out to the car, he spent several moments staring very seriously at old Babette's newest gnome, Topsy, with his mind working furiously. Eventually, however, his conscience caught up with him. Poor Babette was too frail in her advanced age to suffer any more bereavement. He briefly considered breaking into Kirk's Market and messing with the stock again, but ultimately decided against it. The walk to Luke's Diner sobered him up again, but he decided to play it safe and stay in the apartment upstairs.
He went to bed extremely despondent about the model citizen he had become.
________________________________________________________________
Alice was sitting in the living room, in the big, comfy armchair they had designated the best place to read, perusing Atonement when a noise distracted her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that it was her mother, shoes in hand, obviously attempting to slip past her. She slammed the book shut loudly, so that Rory jumped in fright. She put a hand to her heart with a pained expression on her face. "Hey, honey," she said with a voice that was a little to high-pitched. "I was just, uh,..."
"Sneaking back into the house?" Alice finished for her.
"Why would I need to do that?" Rory squeaked, her eyes darting around the place wildly.
"Because you went out for snacks-" she consulted her watch. "Four hours ago, and you don't have any bags or food or anything."
"Uh, well, see...funny thing is, the store was closed for...fire!"
"Oh?"
"Yeah, a fire. Kirk was going crazy, and I had to help calm everybody down."
"And let me guess, miraculously there was no-one hurt or smoke damage or anything?"
"Well, it was localized in the...store room!"
"And if I call Kirk right now, he'll confirm this?" Alice picked up the phone in her hands and shook it in Rory's face.
Rory nodded her head energetically. "Sure."
Alice put the phone down on the table again. "You're commitment to your ridiculous fabrication is almost admirable." She brushed past her mother and started up the stairs. As she climbed, she called back, "Hope you had a nice date! Next time, just go instead of making things up."
She heard her mother's sigh of relief from the landing.
________________________________________________________________
"Do you like it?"
She opened up the box and stared at the giant pearls nestled inside. "Wow."
"Is that a yes?"
"Yes!" she enthused.
He picked up the necklace and fastened it around her neck. "It's a family heirloom."
She touched it lightly. "Which in the Huntzberger family means it came over on the Mayflower or something, right?"
Logan laughed. "Not quite, but close. My mother was very keen that you get them before she died. They're passed down the female line, usually, at the age of eighteen, but Honour agreed you should have them, and I think in the circumstances, you should have them now."
"Dad, this is very sweet, but it can't act as insurance. I'm not going to forget about your side of the family even if we find out we're not blood-related."
"I know," he agreed. "It just feels like we've been growing more and more distant ever since the divorce. And I know," he held up his hands. "That's largely my fault. But I want you to know, things are going to change from now on."
"It's not all your fault," she admitted, and sighed deeply. "I hate what you did to Mom. She didn't deserve that. We had to start our lives from scratch, and I hated you for that, and I hated that fact that I missed you." She started to sniffle. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.
"I'm so sorry," he mumbled into her hair.
She sobbed harder. "Me too."
He pulled away from her. "Things are going to be different from now on, sweetheart. I swear."
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.- George Eliot
________________________________________________________________
Lorelai thought the idea of Rory and Jess: Take Forty-Two was an absolute riot. She laughed without pause for a whole ten minutes, when Rory told her about their late-night reunion, to the point that she complained of her stomach muscles hurting afterwards. Clearly she was the only one in the world who got a kick out of it, but that was Lorelai Gilmore for you anyway. She quickly pronounced poor Alice as the kid with the most screwed up family in the entire world. She tried to draw a family tree to calculate their family, present and future, with her two dads. "If you and Jess have kids, and he's Alice's step-cousin-in-law, then her sister will also be her step-cousin-once-removed? No, wait, is it step? And she disintegrated into another fit of giggles.
"Jess and I are not having kids!" Rory exclaimed, hotly. "We're taking everything very slowly."
"Oh, yeah, that's what the pair of you are famous for!" Lorelai grinned wickedly.
Audrey decided to referee. "Has he bought you any jewellery or flowers or presents? That would suggest you're not moving that slowly."
Rory shook her head in relief.
Lorelai turned to her youngest daughter. "I'm sorry, young grasshopper, but I have much to teach you yet. Jess is not a flower-giver. The question is, has he lent you any books yet?" The two looked at the woman opposite them expectantly. Said woman's skin was rapidly turning a nice shade of scarlet.
"Amazing," Audrey commented. "Even your forehead is red."
"Shut up," Rory mumbled. "It's just a book. He found it in a little bookshop in New York, and I'm the only person he knows who likes Ayn Rand, and he knows I like first editions..." she trailed off, knowing she had said too much.
"So he lent you a first edition?" Lorelai prodded.
To the table, Rory mumbled that he had lent it with the understanding that she was to keep it.
"He gave you a first edition?" Lorelai screeched.
Audrey looked at her mother. "This is good?"
"This is practically a proposal!" She crowed.
Rory hid her face in her hands in mortification as her mother and sister pranced around the room singing "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb and generally getting themselves so excited that Rory's emphatic assertions that she was not getting married, and they weren't even properly together again, and it's just a book for the love of God could not discourage them.
Universe: Gilmore Girls, next-gen
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: Rory/Jess
Summary:Alice Gilmore-Huntzburger's bookshelf had always played host to a collection of books by Jess Mariano
Chapter Six: How's It Gonna End
"Bitter love, a violet with it's crown of thorns in a thicet of spiky passions, spear of sorrow, corolla of rage: how did you come to conquer my soul? what brought you?"
It was almost five in the morning when Rory pulled up into Jess' driveway. Ten minutes later, and her knuckles were bruised by the time he opened the front door. Her hair was dripping wet at the ends. The weather was conveying itself in the most fittingly literary terms as possible. Damn pathetic fallacy. She was Lear, cast out on to the moors. No, she was Catherine or Heathcliff wandering around the moors. Although Jess' modest but nice house in a suburb of Hartford wasn't exactly moorish. But weather was making up for any discrepancies by raining as heavily as it possibly could. Her mascara was running down her cheeks and neck in rivulets. She was shivering wildly, her whole body convulsing. He opened the door an inch, eyes sleepy and befuddled. He took in her appearance, the hysteria which had so clearly taken possession of her, without comment. "This situation seems vaguely familiar," he commented, eventually. "You want a towel?"
She held out a sheet of paper with shaking hands, but he had already turned around and retreated into the house. She burst through the door behind him, and stopped in the hallway, paper limp in her hand by her side. She seemed as thrown as him, as bewildered by this situation and as unsure as to how exactly she had gotten there. Her eyes were wild and darting. It was possible that she was drunk; she couldn't quite remember how many glasses of wine she had consumed over the course of the night. He returned with a towel, which he offered to her. She ignored it and held out the sheet of paper one more time. They both stood opposite one another, one arm outstretched, staring at the other.
"I made a list." She shook the paper in her right hand "About you. And I thought you should know that you failed. The cons way outnumber the pros."
If she had been expecting his expression to reveal his feelings about that statement she was disappointed.
"Show me that." He tore the page from her fingers. It was ruined by the rain. The ink was running and the pages were limp. He unfolded it, and pursued it with clenched jaw and hard eyes.
Calmly, he refolded it and gave it back to her. "You want a drink?"
She paused, and then nodded sharply. He poured them both something harsh and bitter. It burned its way down her throat and mixed with the wine already in her system, making her feel nauseous. He sat down, and rubbed his mouth with his hand and averted his eyes from hers..
"When did you write that list?" he asked softly.
"About two hours ago."
"I was hoping you wouldn't say that," he sighed heavily.
She struggled for something to say.
"Jess, I-" Her voice sounded weak and pathetic to her own ears.
He didn't say anything for a long time.
"You don't know me at all," he said seriously. His tone was marked by its pure despondancy.
"That's not true and you know it."
He stood up and snatched the paper from her again. "Here," he said, hitting the paper with his left hand and suddenly growing angry. "'Cons five through eight: Jess is unreliable, undependable, unambitious, untrustworthy.' You can't possibly still believe that. I can't have spent my whole life trying to prove otherwise and have still gotten nowhere!"
She flushed a dark red under her mascara-blackened cheeks.
"I have my own company. I wrote ten books, three of which were New York Times Bestsellers. I own my house, I pay my taxes, I give money to goddamn charity. God, even Lorelai can see that but you can't. You, who always believed I could be more than I was won't accept it when I do it. Don't you think that's a bit fucking ironic, Rory? Especially from the girl with a criminal record who got pregnant out of wedlock!"
"Jess, I didn't mean..."
"I talked to Logan!" he shouted. "And I didn't hit him, or get in a fight with him. We sat down and conversed like adults. You kept a huge secret from me, a massive thing, and did I freak out on you? No! I accepted my responsibilities and I worked my ass off to try and forgive you. You, on the other hand, make up childish lists to make huge, potentially life-altering decisions based on the person I used to be!"
"I fell in love with the person you used to be!" she cried.
"But not for long," he countered. "The things that attracted you to me, the danger and spontaneity, no matter how made-up in your head they were, were the pros once, weren't they? And now they're your ways to convince yourself to keep away from me. What the fuck am I supposed to do about that?"
She wrapped her arms around herself and began to cry in earnest. "I don't know how I feel about you! I never have. What do you want me to do? Make a new list?"
"I want you to fuck the list!" He began tearing it up roughly. "I want you to make a decision based on how you feel for once in your life!"
"I did that once," she sobbed. "And you broke my heart."
A dense silence followed, in which she cried into her own chest and he struggled vainly for something to say. He raised a shaky hand to his face and took deep breaths to calm himself.
"But before that... it was good?" His voice was quiet, pleading. It reminded her of a child, or as much as Jess could remind anyone of a child.
"Yeah," she said softly. "It was good."
The atmosphere of the room had shifted from anger to something else, something calm and dense, as if all their history had congregated around them and now pressed against them, heavy and pulling. It seemed sacrilegious to speak at all. The room had become the temple of their relationship, and they were the patron saints.
Jess took a half-step towards her. "You can't break a heart twice."
"You don't know that."
"Sure I do. It's simple physics."
"But you can break it worse. Deepen the cracks, so to speak," she breathed. He was only inches away from her now. She could feel his breath whispering across her cheek.
"Never gonna hurt as badly as the first time."
"How do I know that for sure?" she murmured. Her breath hitched in her chest.
"You don't," he breathed.
He closed the gap, and kissed her very softly. She sighed into his mouth, and he kissed her again, still tenderly. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her closer. She ran her hand over the fabric covering his shoulder and down his arm. His skin was soft and warm, and she parted her lips slightly to allow him to kiss her more deeply.
"Please," he murmured against her lips. "Let me prove it to you." She ran her hand up his neck, over his ear and into his hair.
"Okay," she breathed into his neck.
________________________________________________________________
Resignation brings a curious large courage-when there is nothing more to lose. The soul takes risks, and dares. Is it a curious short-cut sometimes to the heights?- Algernon Blackwood
________________________________________________________________
"Don't say what you're going to say," Jess ordered Luke, making himself comfortable on the couch. He opened the beer in front of him and took a sip. "Lorelai here?"
"No, she and Audrey are visiting Rory and Alice. And you didn't know what I was going to say."
"You were going to say something about me being an idiot for putting us all through this again."
"No, I wasn't," Luke insisted. "I'm always on your side when it comes to Rory, aren't I?"
Jess examined his hands very carefully. "Yes, you were always very keen to see us together. Couldn't go ten minutes without saying hi, if memory serves correct."
"Shut up," Luke said affectionately. "You were just kids. She was just a kid, anyway." He took a sip of his own beer. "Besides, I'd be a bit of a hypocrite if I told you not to go back to her, wouldn't I?"
"Yes," Jess agreed. "You would."
They watched the football in silence for several minutes. Neither were particularly interested in it, but the patterns of male bonding dictated that one must have a credible excuse to talk without expressly sitting down to talk. Any pathetic excuse would do, and when the awkward silences struck they had the advantage of pretending to pay attention to the television. Of course, neither was particularly conscious that they were participating essentially in girl talk without nail polish. Because they had football. And beer. If they were women, they would have been drinking wine. Obviously. Had Lorelai had been in the house, she would have spent her time in the kitchen grunting in imitation of them and growling, "Me man, me like beer," to her own great amusement. Well, we all have our little traditions.
One beer later, Luke turned to his nephew again. "Be careful," he told him seriously.
Jess sighed crankily. "I'm not going to get the kid involved. Jeez."
"I'm not talking about her. I'm talking about you."
"Think I'm used to it by now," Jess responded, contrarily.
Luke laughed sarcastically and shook his head. "Yes, I'm sure you're such a glutton for punishment because you're immune to being hurt."
"Shut up," Jess bit back.
Luke continued to chuckle for several minutes. On screen, a player on the opposing team scored a touchdown. Both men groaned appropriately. Luke looked at Jess.
"You know I'm proud of you. How you've handled everything with Alice and how you've turned out."
"Christ," Jess muttered. "Could you be any sappier?" He stood up to leave the room. "I need another beer."
They didn't speak again for the rest of the night, simply sat in silence watching the game, and the post-game analysis, and the build-up for the next week's match. They both appreciated their time spent together, however, and over the years they had endeavoured to do it as much as possible. The atmosphere was not even ruined by Will's entrance and excited response to the football. By the time the womenfolk arrived home, Jess was preparing to leave. He was glad not to have to create conversation with the girls, because their secretive smiles told him they had been talking to Rory about him. He detected, with some doubt, that they were pretty supportive of the idea.
It didn't matter how long it had been going on, the idea that Lorelai Gilmore approved of him still seemed inherently wrong to Jess. It made every rebellious hair on his body stand up to attention. When he thought about it, he wanted to act out in the strangest ways, to go back to being Stars Hollow's resident rebel-in-chief. On his way out to the car, he spent several moments staring very seriously at old Babette's newest gnome, Topsy, with his mind working furiously. Eventually, however, his conscience caught up with him. Poor Babette was too frail in her advanced age to suffer any more bereavement. He briefly considered breaking into Kirk's Market and messing with the stock again, but ultimately decided against it. The walk to Luke's Diner sobered him up again, but he decided to play it safe and stay in the apartment upstairs.
He went to bed extremely despondent about the model citizen he had become.
________________________________________________________________
Alice was sitting in the living room, in the big, comfy armchair they had designated the best place to read, perusing Atonement when a noise distracted her. Out of the corner of her eye, she could see that it was her mother, shoes in hand, obviously attempting to slip past her. She slammed the book shut loudly, so that Rory jumped in fright. She put a hand to her heart with a pained expression on her face. "Hey, honey," she said with a voice that was a little to high-pitched. "I was just, uh,..."
"Sneaking back into the house?" Alice finished for her.
"Why would I need to do that?" Rory squeaked, her eyes darting around the place wildly.
"Because you went out for snacks-" she consulted her watch. "Four hours ago, and you don't have any bags or food or anything."
"Uh, well, see...funny thing is, the store was closed for...fire!"
"Oh?"
"Yeah, a fire. Kirk was going crazy, and I had to help calm everybody down."
"And let me guess, miraculously there was no-one hurt or smoke damage or anything?"
"Well, it was localized in the...store room!"
"And if I call Kirk right now, he'll confirm this?" Alice picked up the phone in her hands and shook it in Rory's face.
Rory nodded her head energetically. "Sure."
Alice put the phone down on the table again. "You're commitment to your ridiculous fabrication is almost admirable." She brushed past her mother and started up the stairs. As she climbed, she called back, "Hope you had a nice date! Next time, just go instead of making things up."
She heard her mother's sigh of relief from the landing.
________________________________________________________________
"Do you like it?"
She opened up the box and stared at the giant pearls nestled inside. "Wow."
"Is that a yes?"
"Yes!" she enthused.
He picked up the necklace and fastened it around her neck. "It's a family heirloom."
She touched it lightly. "Which in the Huntzberger family means it came over on the Mayflower or something, right?"
Logan laughed. "Not quite, but close. My mother was very keen that you get them before she died. They're passed down the female line, usually, at the age of eighteen, but Honour agreed you should have them, and I think in the circumstances, you should have them now."
"Dad, this is very sweet, but it can't act as insurance. I'm not going to forget about your side of the family even if we find out we're not blood-related."
"I know," he agreed. "It just feels like we've been growing more and more distant ever since the divorce. And I know," he held up his hands. "That's largely my fault. But I want you to know, things are going to change from now on."
"It's not all your fault," she admitted, and sighed deeply. "I hate what you did to Mom. She didn't deserve that. We had to start our lives from scratch, and I hated you for that, and I hated that fact that I missed you." She started to sniffle. He wrapped his arms around her and hugged her tightly.
"I'm so sorry," he mumbled into her hair.
She sobbed harder. "Me too."
He pulled away from her. "Things are going to be different from now on, sweetheart. I swear."
With memory set smarting like a reopened wound, a man's past is not simply a dead history, an outworn preparation of the present: it is not a repented error shaken loose from the life: it is a still quivering part of himself, bringing shudders and bitter flavors and the tinglings of a merited shame.- George Eliot
________________________________________________________________
Lorelai thought the idea of Rory and Jess: Take Forty-Two was an absolute riot. She laughed without pause for a whole ten minutes, when Rory told her about their late-night reunion, to the point that she complained of her stomach muscles hurting afterwards. Clearly she was the only one in the world who got a kick out of it, but that was Lorelai Gilmore for you anyway. She quickly pronounced poor Alice as the kid with the most screwed up family in the entire world. She tried to draw a family tree to calculate their family, present and future, with her two dads. "If you and Jess have kids, and he's Alice's step-cousin-in-law, then her sister will also be her step-cousin-once-removed? No, wait, is it step? And she disintegrated into another fit of giggles.
"Jess and I are not having kids!" Rory exclaimed, hotly. "We're taking everything very slowly."
"Oh, yeah, that's what the pair of you are famous for!" Lorelai grinned wickedly.
Audrey decided to referee. "Has he bought you any jewellery or flowers or presents? That would suggest you're not moving that slowly."
Rory shook her head in relief.
Lorelai turned to her youngest daughter. "I'm sorry, young grasshopper, but I have much to teach you yet. Jess is not a flower-giver. The question is, has he lent you any books yet?" The two looked at the woman opposite them expectantly. Said woman's skin was rapidly turning a nice shade of scarlet.
"Amazing," Audrey commented. "Even your forehead is red."
"Shut up," Rory mumbled. "It's just a book. He found it in a little bookshop in New York, and I'm the only person he knows who likes Ayn Rand, and he knows I like first editions..." she trailed off, knowing she had said too much.
"So he lent you a first edition?" Lorelai prodded.
To the table, Rory mumbled that he had lent it with the understanding that she was to keep it.
"He gave you a first edition?" Lorelai screeched.
Audrey looked at her mother. "This is good?"
"This is practically a proposal!" She crowed.
Rory hid her face in her hands in mortification as her mother and sister pranced around the room singing "Reunited" by Peaches and Herb and generally getting themselves so excited that Rory's emphatic assertions that she was not getting married, and they weren't even properly together again, and it's just a book for the love of God could not discourage them.