Fic: Alice (8/8)
Title: Alice (8/8)
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 Seven: Alice
But maybe he's the father,
of that lost little girl
It's hard to tell in this light
And I want to know the same thing
Everyone wants to know
How's it going to end?
-Tom Waits, "How's It Gonna End?"
________________________________________________________________
"But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"- Alice Through The Looking-Glass
________________________________________________________________
As the wait for the results began, Alice felt that time was going excruciatingly slow. But, she soon found that time was going far too quickly for her comfort.
All of a sudden, there is a letter in her mailbox, and it is going to tell her who her biological father is. The letter comes on Christmas Eve. It is the last day of post, and Alice cannot help but feel bitter. If they had just sent it a day later, she would not have received it before Christmas. She is certain her holidays are now ruined.
For a moment, she simply stands by the mailbox, with the crisp white envelope in her hand, letting the enormity of the occasion wash over her. Her gloved fingers are shaking, partly because of the letter, and partly from the chill. For once, everything is silent. She is acutely aware of the soft sounds of light breezes brushing against the branches across the street and fluttering the hair on her forehead. There are no birds, no sounds from inside the house, no shoes crunching against the snow. There is only Alice and her trembling fingers. She briefly considers throwing the letter away. Burying it under the compacted snow, or thrusting it into the slush that has accumulated where the lawn meets the road. Then nobody would get hurt. The blocky print on the front of the letter addresses her as Alice Gilmore. She closes her eyes and wishes it were that simple. Before she opens her eyes, however, her fingers freeze and she drops the letter. It lands safely in the snow and tumbles a few inches toward the house. She takes it as a sign.
Her mother arrives, laden with armfuls of presents, impeccably wrapped and yet festively decorated to Lorelai's standards. She stumbles down the porch, blind from the bundle obscuring her vision. Her impractical boots skid a little on the icy path and she lets out a small, amused screech.
"Alice," she calls, her voice thick with laughter. "Come help your old, burdened mother!"
Alice picks up the letter but does not reply to her. Rory stops, pulls a smaller present out of the way, and scrutinizes her daughter. "You okay, sweets? You're pale."
Alice cannot think of the words to use, so she resorts to sweeping one hand towards the other hand with the white paper clasped in its fist. Rory's eyes widen, and her mouth opens wide. "Is that…?" she begins breathlessly. Alice nods.
Her mother panics, bursting into action. She runs to the car and dumps the presents in the back seat. "Okay. Okay. This is earlier than they said it would come, but it's okay. Right? Yeah, it is. We just need a plan of action. No time to make a list. Though it's not like there's a choice to be made. We just gotta…open it."
Alice clenches the letter in her hand until it wrinkles. Rory calms down long enough to look at her daughter properly, and her face softens. "Do you want to open it now, or wait?"
"Wait," Alice says firmly.
"Okay, then," Rory gestures with her hand, "Get in the car. We're going to be late."
________________________________________________________________
The drive to Stars Hollow takes far, far longer than Alice has ever experienced. The hazardous weather conditions obstruct their passage and slow them almost to a halt. Her mother squints at the frost on the roads and the freshly falling snow softly sweeping onto the wind-shield, concentrating as hard as she can on keeping the car on the road. Alice takes deep breaths in and out and in and out and in and out. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and.
Stars Hollow is beautiful in the snow, as always. The town square looks like something out of a fairytale, and as ever, Alice and Rory are swept away by the magical fantasy world in which they lose themselves, indulgently and briefly. It doesn't look to be the type of town where children don't know who their fathers are.
The Crap Shack is lit bright and inside shadows bustle about. Alice can make out Jess's outline sitting on the couch, book in hand. She wonders if he has read his letter yet. She knows she will have to do this soon, regardless. Her mother seems to have formulated a plan in the course of their travels. She leads Alice around the back of the house and into the kitchen, which is mercifully empty save for Luke, cooking over the stove with a towel thrown casually over his shoulder.
"You're late," he greets them distractedly. "As ever."
Rory raises her fingers to her lips and motions to Alice. Confused and bemused, Luke cocks an eyebrow at her. She sighs. "We got the paternity test results, and we need a quiet place to open them. Can you find us somewhere?" she entreats him.
Unfortunately, the announcement for dinner has just been made and half the family troupes in as she is talking. Suddenly the room is abuzz with gasps and squeals. Rory shoots a frantic glance at her daughter who feels her resolve weaken. She turns to her mother. "Let's just get this over with," she announces, grits her teeth and strides into the living room. Everyone follows.
On the way, Rory grasps Jess' hand. "Did you open your letter?" she urgently whispers into his ear. He shakes his head and tells her he hasn't been home in two days.
In the living room, Alice stands near the window, letter in hand. The whole family troupes over to her and halts expectantly. She stands, staring at the envelope with an inscrutable expression on her face.
"Take your time, hun," Lorelai reassures from somewhere by the stairs. Alice looks up, at her mother and Jess, at the people clustered around her and steadily encroaching on the sacred circle between her and everybody else. She seems to make a decision, and her hands move.
Swiftly, she tears the envelope in two.
"You know," she announces, ignoring the open mouths and comically suspended outstretched hands facing her. "I don't think I want to know. Everything's good now. This way nobody gets hurt. I mean, that's the point of family isn't it? Being together and loving each other even if you don't know if you are blood-related." She beams, satisfied with herself.
"Well," Luke hedges. "If you're sure?"
"I am," she responds, resolutely.
The crowd dissipates gradually. Audrey and Will amble off to the kitchen, complaining about wasting time and food going cold. April follows them, shrugging and giving Alice a kind smile. Doula and Gary accompany their father outside to get their gifts from the car. Liz runs to the bathroom. Left in the room is Alice, Rory, Jess, Luke and Lorelai. They all look at each other for a long moment, and then glance about themselves, unsure of how to proceed.
"Well, that got rid of them!" Alice grins.
Lorelai lets out a small, triumphant cry. "I knew you didn't mean it! Ha! It's only in two pieces; we can still make it out no problem."
"Of course she didn't," Rory replies. "She just had to get rid of the audience." She looks encouragingly at her daughter. "Go ahead, sweets."
Alice glances up at them one more time and clumsily pulls out the two sheets of paper from their paper cases. She places them up together, making sure they are exact. A collective breath is sucked in and held. Alice examines the pages carefully and for a long time. "Well?" Rory demands eventually.
"I'm not sure," Alice replies hesitantly. "There's a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo." She turns the page. "Hmm," she mutters.
"What?" Everybody bursts out.
Alice scrunches her face in confusion. "They aren't one hundred percent sure. There's a 72.99 percent chance Jess is my dad, and a 24.99 percent chance Logan is."
"Paris said that would happen," Rory says softly. "because we did two separate tests, remember? Testing you with Logan, and then a separate test with you and Jess. It means that whoever has the highest percentage has the most genetic markers in common with you. So I guess Jess is your father." She glances sideways at him. "I'll call Paris now," she pulls out her cell, "and get that confirmed."
A quick call to Paris confirms that those test results would confirm Jess as Alice's father in a court of law nine times out of ten. Any discrepancies in Logan's results could have been due to the fact that Rory's DNA wasn't used.
Alice supposes that something is supposed to happen now, everybody hugging or celebrating, or hell, even talking, but all that does happen is an uncomfortable silence that is disrupted by Doula, Gary and TJ returning from the car. Awkwardly, Alice gestures to the door in a desperate attempt to escape the ensuing explanations. Everyone nods and lets her go, with sympathetic smiles. Nobody knows where to look.
________________________________________________________________
She lies across the bench of the gazebo for at least an hour. It is bitterly cold but she doesn't think she can face returning to the house just yet. There are pretty lights strung all over the beams holding up the roof, and if she lies flat on the wooden slats she can see the stars. She stares at them for so long that they begin to blur. She realises when she feels wet on her cheeks, that her vision is actually being obscured by tears.
Logan has called her cell phone five times, but she cannot bear to answer.
She shouldn't be surprised when Jess appears in the square, but she is. She sits up with a start when he tosses her coat at her and proceeds to sit beside her. She is mortified by the fact that she is still crying, and cannot seem to stop. She brushes her fingers over her eyelashes and cheeks and apologises profusely.
"Don't be," he says quietly.
They sit quietly for a few minutes, and then she bursts into tears again. "S-sorry," she apologises again. "I feel like such a jerk."
"It's understandable," he reassures her. "I wouldn't be too stoked to have me as a father either."
"That's not it at all," she tries to explain. "I'm just feeling overwhelmed. You'd think I'd have had enough time to prepare myself for these results, but apparently not."
"Don't think this is something you can prepare yourself for," he snorts. "But seriously, I get it. You already have a dad, and this is all totally weird."
"Yeah," she sighs. "Totally weird. That about covers it."
"Look, I told you before, nothing has to change."
"But it does," she cries, her voice dramatically rising in volume and pitch. "Dad will never visit and as soon as Mom works up the courage to tell me that you and her are together I'll be in a whole different family and everything will change!"
"Jeez, calm down!" He waves his hands around a bit. "Rory and I aren't getting married or anything. If we manage one day at a time we'll be doing well." He sighs loudly and rubs his jaw. "We'll just go slow, okay? Play it cool."
"Cool," she repeats slowly, testing the word on her tongue. "I can do that. Frank at the Sands."
He shakes his head in amusement. "Christ, you really are my daughter."
She puts her coat on and rubs her hands together briskly to warm them. Jess leans back on his elbows to stare up at the stars. Alice is reminded forcedly of their night on the porch steps, and how she had frenetically searched his face for similarities with her own. She sees them all again now, the features she had made excuses for or attributed to Lorelai and recessive genes. The thick, wavy black hair, the brown eyes, the posture.
"How long," she muses quietly, "do you think it took April to start calling Luke 'dad'?"
"Probably whenever it felt comfortable, or he felt like her dad." Jess' tone is soft. "I never called my father by anything but 'Jimmy' up until the day he died," he says seriously. She realizes that this is his way of telling her that he can be 'Jess' to her forever, and he will understand. She glances at her dark surroundings and studies her watch. Jess seems to know what she is thinking, and assures her that nobody is going to bombard her with questions when she walks through the door of the Gilmore-Danes house.
She stops him at the threshold of the house. "I got an A on my interview."
He tuts. "Doing well in school. I might have to ground you."
She tries really hard not to, but she smiles a little.
________________________________________________________________
Inside of the house, her mother sits her down and tells her that she has spoken with Logan. Alice is too exhausted to imagine facing another emotionally draining conversation. In fact, she simply wants to go to bed, curl up, and shut her brain down entirely. Unfortunately, it is never that easy, and she must endure another long phone conversation with her father.
Logan is understandably subdued, but surprisingly gentle and calm. She knows that he is distracted and hurt, but she had expected him to be angrier, and colder. In truth, she is a little hurt by how calm he seems, when she feels so torn. She feels that he has given up on her already. Accidentally, she says it out loud. Logan breathes heavily down the line for several seconds while she feels her heartbeats spiral out of control.
"I'm trying to be grateful in defeat," he says finally.
She groans in frustration. "This childish competition you have with Jess is incredibly offensive to me, you know!" she exclaims.
"You say that now," Logan argues, "but soon you'll be swooning over his sarcasm, and artistic integrity, and crazy hair, just like your mother. She always looked at him like the sun shined out of his-"
"Dad!" she cries, and stifles a giggle.
He laughs a little with her and sobers up.
"Come to Paris," he entreats her suddenly.
"Uh, what?" she asks dumbly.
"This summer. Come to Paris with me. Just the two of us."
She bites her lip and glances out the window. "I'm sure some reporter will have broken the story by then."
"Screw them," he responds brightly. "I never wanted this life anyway. I guess I forgot that somewhere along the way."
"And work?"
"I promise I won't even bring my laptop."
She grins. "Okay, then."
She returns to the living room from her mother's old room and smiles at the collection of people congregated there. Her mother is sitting with a sleepy Jess, head on his shoulder and fingers entwined with his. Doula and Audrey are having a high-pitched disagreement over nail polish, which April is tiredly trying to referee. Gary, Will and TJ have found a football somewhere, and are tossing it around the room, getting in the way of everybody else who is trying to watch Casablanca. As Alice enters the room, Lorelai stands and tries to shut everyone up, because Humphrey Bogart has just seen Ingrid Bergman, by catching the ball. This inevitably ends up causing mass chaos, including a possible concussion and a shattered lamp.
Alice slips in through the madness to her mother's side. Rory greets her with a smile, and pulls her down beside her. "How's Logan?" She questions, voice thick with sleep and contentment.
"Bien," Alice sighs.
Her mother smiles knowingly. "So you're going to Paris, then?"
Alice nods and smiles. She nestles her head into her mother's shoulder and sighs contentedly.
"What colour nail polish?"
"Watermelon."
"This is gonna be good." She settled herself and grinned. "Pass the popcorn, Jess."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)
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 Seven: Alice
But maybe he's the father,
of that lost little girl
It's hard to tell in this light
And I want to know the same thing
Everyone wants to know
How's it going to end?
-Tom Waits, "How's It Gonna End?"
________________________________________________________________
"But it's no use now," thought poor Alice, "to pretend to be two people! Why, there's hardly enough of me left to make one respectable person!"- Alice Through The Looking-Glass
________________________________________________________________
As the wait for the results began, Alice felt that time was going excruciatingly slow. But, she soon found that time was going far too quickly for her comfort.
All of a sudden, there is a letter in her mailbox, and it is going to tell her who her biological father is. The letter comes on Christmas Eve. It is the last day of post, and Alice cannot help but feel bitter. If they had just sent it a day later, she would not have received it before Christmas. She is certain her holidays are now ruined.
For a moment, she simply stands by the mailbox, with the crisp white envelope in her hand, letting the enormity of the occasion wash over her. Her gloved fingers are shaking, partly because of the letter, and partly from the chill. For once, everything is silent. She is acutely aware of the soft sounds of light breezes brushing against the branches across the street and fluttering the hair on her forehead. There are no birds, no sounds from inside the house, no shoes crunching against the snow. There is only Alice and her trembling fingers. She briefly considers throwing the letter away. Burying it under the compacted snow, or thrusting it into the slush that has accumulated where the lawn meets the road. Then nobody would get hurt. The blocky print on the front of the letter addresses her as Alice Gilmore. She closes her eyes and wishes it were that simple. Before she opens her eyes, however, her fingers freeze and she drops the letter. It lands safely in the snow and tumbles a few inches toward the house. She takes it as a sign.
Her mother arrives, laden with armfuls of presents, impeccably wrapped and yet festively decorated to Lorelai's standards. She stumbles down the porch, blind from the bundle obscuring her vision. Her impractical boots skid a little on the icy path and she lets out a small, amused screech.
"Alice," she calls, her voice thick with laughter. "Come help your old, burdened mother!"
Alice picks up the letter but does not reply to her. Rory stops, pulls a smaller present out of the way, and scrutinizes her daughter. "You okay, sweets? You're pale."
Alice cannot think of the words to use, so she resorts to sweeping one hand towards the other hand with the white paper clasped in its fist. Rory's eyes widen, and her mouth opens wide. "Is that…?" she begins breathlessly. Alice nods.
Her mother panics, bursting into action. She runs to the car and dumps the presents in the back seat. "Okay. Okay. This is earlier than they said it would come, but it's okay. Right? Yeah, it is. We just need a plan of action. No time to make a list. Though it's not like there's a choice to be made. We just gotta…open it."
Alice clenches the letter in her hand until it wrinkles. Rory calms down long enough to look at her daughter properly, and her face softens. "Do you want to open it now, or wait?"
"Wait," Alice says firmly.
"Okay, then," Rory gestures with her hand, "Get in the car. We're going to be late."
________________________________________________________________
The drive to Stars Hollow takes far, far longer than Alice has ever experienced. The hazardous weather conditions obstruct their passage and slow them almost to a halt. Her mother squints at the frost on the roads and the freshly falling snow softly sweeping onto the wind-shield, concentrating as hard as she can on keeping the car on the road. Alice takes deep breaths in and out and in and out and in and out. One and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and.
Stars Hollow is beautiful in the snow, as always. The town square looks like something out of a fairytale, and as ever, Alice and Rory are swept away by the magical fantasy world in which they lose themselves, indulgently and briefly. It doesn't look to be the type of town where children don't know who their fathers are.
The Crap Shack is lit bright and inside shadows bustle about. Alice can make out Jess's outline sitting on the couch, book in hand. She wonders if he has read his letter yet. She knows she will have to do this soon, regardless. Her mother seems to have formulated a plan in the course of their travels. She leads Alice around the back of the house and into the kitchen, which is mercifully empty save for Luke, cooking over the stove with a towel thrown casually over his shoulder.
"You're late," he greets them distractedly. "As ever."
Rory raises her fingers to her lips and motions to Alice. Confused and bemused, Luke cocks an eyebrow at her. She sighs. "We got the paternity test results, and we need a quiet place to open them. Can you find us somewhere?" she entreats him.
Unfortunately, the announcement for dinner has just been made and half the family troupes in as she is talking. Suddenly the room is abuzz with gasps and squeals. Rory shoots a frantic glance at her daughter who feels her resolve weaken. She turns to her mother. "Let's just get this over with," she announces, grits her teeth and strides into the living room. Everyone follows.
On the way, Rory grasps Jess' hand. "Did you open your letter?" she urgently whispers into his ear. He shakes his head and tells her he hasn't been home in two days.
In the living room, Alice stands near the window, letter in hand. The whole family troupes over to her and halts expectantly. She stands, staring at the envelope with an inscrutable expression on her face.
"Take your time, hun," Lorelai reassures from somewhere by the stairs. Alice looks up, at her mother and Jess, at the people clustered around her and steadily encroaching on the sacred circle between her and everybody else. She seems to make a decision, and her hands move.
Swiftly, she tears the envelope in two.
"You know," she announces, ignoring the open mouths and comically suspended outstretched hands facing her. "I don't think I want to know. Everything's good now. This way nobody gets hurt. I mean, that's the point of family isn't it? Being together and loving each other even if you don't know if you are blood-related." She beams, satisfied with herself.
"Well," Luke hedges. "If you're sure?"
"I am," she responds, resolutely.
The crowd dissipates gradually. Audrey and Will amble off to the kitchen, complaining about wasting time and food going cold. April follows them, shrugging and giving Alice a kind smile. Doula and Gary accompany their father outside to get their gifts from the car. Liz runs to the bathroom. Left in the room is Alice, Rory, Jess, Luke and Lorelai. They all look at each other for a long moment, and then glance about themselves, unsure of how to proceed.
"Well, that got rid of them!" Alice grins.
Lorelai lets out a small, triumphant cry. "I knew you didn't mean it! Ha! It's only in two pieces; we can still make it out no problem."
"Of course she didn't," Rory replies. "She just had to get rid of the audience." She looks encouragingly at her daughter. "Go ahead, sweets."
Alice glances up at them one more time and clumsily pulls out the two sheets of paper from their paper cases. She places them up together, making sure they are exact. A collective breath is sucked in and held. Alice examines the pages carefully and for a long time. "Well?" Rory demands eventually.
"I'm not sure," Alice replies hesitantly. "There's a lot of legal mumbo-jumbo." She turns the page. "Hmm," she mutters.
"What?" Everybody bursts out.
Alice scrunches her face in confusion. "They aren't one hundred percent sure. There's a 72.99 percent chance Jess is my dad, and a 24.99 percent chance Logan is."
"Paris said that would happen," Rory says softly. "because we did two separate tests, remember? Testing you with Logan, and then a separate test with you and Jess. It means that whoever has the highest percentage has the most genetic markers in common with you. So I guess Jess is your father." She glances sideways at him. "I'll call Paris now," she pulls out her cell, "and get that confirmed."
A quick call to Paris confirms that those test results would confirm Jess as Alice's father in a court of law nine times out of ten. Any discrepancies in Logan's results could have been due to the fact that Rory's DNA wasn't used.
Alice supposes that something is supposed to happen now, everybody hugging or celebrating, or hell, even talking, but all that does happen is an uncomfortable silence that is disrupted by Doula, Gary and TJ returning from the car. Awkwardly, Alice gestures to the door in a desperate attempt to escape the ensuing explanations. Everyone nods and lets her go, with sympathetic smiles. Nobody knows where to look.
________________________________________________________________
She lies across the bench of the gazebo for at least an hour. It is bitterly cold but she doesn't think she can face returning to the house just yet. There are pretty lights strung all over the beams holding up the roof, and if she lies flat on the wooden slats she can see the stars. She stares at them for so long that they begin to blur. She realises when she feels wet on her cheeks, that her vision is actually being obscured by tears.
Logan has called her cell phone five times, but she cannot bear to answer.
She shouldn't be surprised when Jess appears in the square, but she is. She sits up with a start when he tosses her coat at her and proceeds to sit beside her. She is mortified by the fact that she is still crying, and cannot seem to stop. She brushes her fingers over her eyelashes and cheeks and apologises profusely.
"Don't be," he says quietly.
They sit quietly for a few minutes, and then she bursts into tears again. "S-sorry," she apologises again. "I feel like such a jerk."
"It's understandable," he reassures her. "I wouldn't be too stoked to have me as a father either."
"That's not it at all," she tries to explain. "I'm just feeling overwhelmed. You'd think I'd have had enough time to prepare myself for these results, but apparently not."
"Don't think this is something you can prepare yourself for," he snorts. "But seriously, I get it. You already have a dad, and this is all totally weird."
"Yeah," she sighs. "Totally weird. That about covers it."
"Look, I told you before, nothing has to change."
"But it does," she cries, her voice dramatically rising in volume and pitch. "Dad will never visit and as soon as Mom works up the courage to tell me that you and her are together I'll be in a whole different family and everything will change!"
"Jeez, calm down!" He waves his hands around a bit. "Rory and I aren't getting married or anything. If we manage one day at a time we'll be doing well." He sighs loudly and rubs his jaw. "We'll just go slow, okay? Play it cool."
"Cool," she repeats slowly, testing the word on her tongue. "I can do that. Frank at the Sands."
He shakes his head in amusement. "Christ, you really are my daughter."
She puts her coat on and rubs her hands together briskly to warm them. Jess leans back on his elbows to stare up at the stars. Alice is reminded forcedly of their night on the porch steps, and how she had frenetically searched his face for similarities with her own. She sees them all again now, the features she had made excuses for or attributed to Lorelai and recessive genes. The thick, wavy black hair, the brown eyes, the posture.
"How long," she muses quietly, "do you think it took April to start calling Luke 'dad'?"
"Probably whenever it felt comfortable, or he felt like her dad." Jess' tone is soft. "I never called my father by anything but 'Jimmy' up until the day he died," he says seriously. She realizes that this is his way of telling her that he can be 'Jess' to her forever, and he will understand. She glances at her dark surroundings and studies her watch. Jess seems to know what she is thinking, and assures her that nobody is going to bombard her with questions when she walks through the door of the Gilmore-Danes house.
She stops him at the threshold of the house. "I got an A on my interview."
He tuts. "Doing well in school. I might have to ground you."
She tries really hard not to, but she smiles a little.
________________________________________________________________
Inside of the house, her mother sits her down and tells her that she has spoken with Logan. Alice is too exhausted to imagine facing another emotionally draining conversation. In fact, she simply wants to go to bed, curl up, and shut her brain down entirely. Unfortunately, it is never that easy, and she must endure another long phone conversation with her father.
Logan is understandably subdued, but surprisingly gentle and calm. She knows that he is distracted and hurt, but she had expected him to be angrier, and colder. In truth, she is a little hurt by how calm he seems, when she feels so torn. She feels that he has given up on her already. Accidentally, she says it out loud. Logan breathes heavily down the line for several seconds while she feels her heartbeats spiral out of control.
"I'm trying to be grateful in defeat," he says finally.
She groans in frustration. "This childish competition you have with Jess is incredibly offensive to me, you know!" she exclaims.
"You say that now," Logan argues, "but soon you'll be swooning over his sarcasm, and artistic integrity, and crazy hair, just like your mother. She always looked at him like the sun shined out of his-"
"Dad!" she cries, and stifles a giggle.
He laughs a little with her and sobers up.
"Come to Paris," he entreats her suddenly.
"Uh, what?" she asks dumbly.
"This summer. Come to Paris with me. Just the two of us."
She bites her lip and glances out the window. "I'm sure some reporter will have broken the story by then."
"Screw them," he responds brightly. "I never wanted this life anyway. I guess I forgot that somewhere along the way."
"And work?"
"I promise I won't even bring my laptop."
She grins. "Okay, then."
She returns to the living room from her mother's old room and smiles at the collection of people congregated there. Her mother is sitting with a sleepy Jess, head on his shoulder and fingers entwined with his. Doula and Audrey are having a high-pitched disagreement over nail polish, which April is tiredly trying to referee. Gary, Will and TJ have found a football somewhere, and are tossing it around the room, getting in the way of everybody else who is trying to watch Casablanca. As Alice enters the room, Lorelai stands and tries to shut everyone up, because Humphrey Bogart has just seen Ingrid Bergman, by catching the ball. This inevitably ends up causing mass chaos, including a possible concussion and a shattered lamp.
Alice slips in through the madness to her mother's side. Rory greets her with a smile, and pulls her down beside her. "How's Logan?" She questions, voice thick with sleep and contentment.
"Bien," Alice sighs.
Her mother smiles knowingly. "So you're going to Paris, then?"
Alice nods and smiles. She nestles her head into her mother's shoulder and sighs contentedly.
"What colour nail polish?"
"Watermelon."
"This is gonna be good." She settled herself and grinned. "Pass the popcorn, Jess."
"But I don't want to go among mad people," Alice remarked.
Oh, you can't help that," said the Cat: "we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad."
How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
You must be," said the Cat, "or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass)