I have no idea where this came from. It just came. I hope you like.
I don't own the Gilmore Girls.
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday
"Hey Pops!"
"Ruby Tuesday." Her dad smiles from his bed.
She grins and climbs up to join him, sitting at the end on the bed, her back against the foot board, throwing her long, exposed legs over his.
"What are you wearing?"
She glances down at the long, over-sized t-shirt and short shorts she has on and then looks back up at her father. "Shorts." She rolls her brilliant green eyes, inherited from his mother, a woman she'd never met, and pushes her long wavy chestnut hair, that's she'd inherited from her other grandmother, out of her face.
"You think that's an appropriate outfit for a seventeen year old?"
"It is when it's a bazillion degrees outside. I was gonna wear my nuns outfit but I would have melted. Sorry." The rambling she also got from her grandmother, he thinks wistfully. And her mother.
"What are you reading?" Her voice breaks his thoughts as she moves her legs and tucks them under herself. "Hemingway? Seriously Dad, you're so predictable. Crack open a 'Harry Potter', you might be surprised."
"You haven't forgotten it was me who read those to you when you were little?" When she reached his thigh, unlike now where she towered above him in her heels.
"No," She grins, "I hadn't. Just checking your memory old man!"
"Forty is not old."
"I know, it's ancient!" She giggles and places her head on his leg. He runs his hand through her hair, like he had when she was little and frightened in the middle of the night.
"Your next round of chemo starts tomorrow, right?" She whispers, and he almost doesn't hear her. She lifts her head and locks eyes with him. He nods, unable to form the words.
Her eyes glass over and she lets out shaky sigh, a sign, her father recognises as the arrival of tears.
"So, it's hot out there, huh?" He changes the subject, and mentally kicks himself for choosing the weather to distract his daughter.
But she smiles, blinks away a tear and nods at him. "Guy on the weather said it's the hottest day since records began."
"Seriously?"
"Well he seriously said it. I don't know if he was being serious. His face doesn't move so it's hard to pinpoint sarcasm."
"It's sucks I'm missing the good weather stuck in here."
"We could always pull a Wentworth Miller and break you out of here." He catches the glint in her eye. The one Rory claimed she got from him.
"How?"
"Well, I'll distract SourPuss Nurse Betty and then you sneak out. I've been told you're awful good at sneaking out." She smirks and then bites on her lower lip. "I'll even sing." She giggles before clearing her throat, "How about some Queen? You want to break free. You want to be free from something and self satisfied and you're free." She sings, her eyes sparkling.
"Those aren't the words." He tells her, laughing.
"I don't care!" She laughs back, sitting up on her knees and throwing her arms above her head, "God knows, God knows you want to be free!"
"What is going on in here?"
They both turn to see the ward nurse at the door, her arms crossed in front of her. "You are aware this is a hospital?"
"We're aware." Jess rolls his eyes and Ruby bites back a giggle. "That's why we passed on 'Another one bites the dust'. A little depressing for a cancer ward."
The nurse turns her gaze to the teenager, who gives her a bright smile, "Hey Nurse Betty!" She waves.
"For the last time, my name is Lisa."
"But Renee Zell-"
"Just keep it down." Lisa interrupts her. "Some patients are trying to sleep."
"Sorry." She mumbles, but her father doesn't fail to notice the smirk she's holding back.
Hey, Rubs, there's something I need to tell you."
"Yeah?" She looks at him, her eyes curious, a small content smile on her lips, and it almost breaks his heart.
"I'm not having anymore chemo."
"What? What'd you mean?" She takes a shaky breath and locks her eyes with his, and he wants to tell her he's kidding.
"I'm not having anymore chemo." Hes calm. He has to be.
"Why?"
"We discussed it with Dr. Kelly, it's not going to help."
"It'll give you, us, more time." Tears fall freely down her cheeks, streaking her makeup.
"Only a few months, and I'd rather have less time, where my quality of life is much better. You know how sick the chemo makes me."
She nods and tucks her hair behind her ear. Her eyes leave his and she gazes out the window. "How long?"
He doesn't need her to clarify. "Three months."
"So we have the summer?" She looks back at him. "We should go away. Get out of New York." She wipes her eyes, face and neck with the back of her hand. He muses that she looks like her mother when she cries.
"Anywhere in mind? Disneyland maybe?"
She smiles and shakes her head, the hair she'd just tucked away flying free again. "No. The house in the Hamptons. We'll lounge around and you and mom can read. I'll paint. You and mom will have yet another Rand or Hemingway debate. Normal stuff."
"Normal." He agrees taking her hand in his. "I love you kid, you know that."
"Yeah, you're not so bad yourself." She squeezes his hand and he grins back at her. "Hey dad, can I get a tattoo?"
"No."
"But you haven't heard what I want yet."
"Fine go ahead." He's humouring her. He has no intention of ever agreeing to a tattoo.
"A star on-"
"No." He interrupts her. "No daughter of mine is getting something as generic as a star."
"Will you shut up. Now let me tell you a story. Once, when I was about five I asked Grandma what stars were. And she told me that they were the people in heaven looking down on us. She pointed out Grandma Liz. I realise she stole the idea from 'The Lion King' but it's a nice concept. And we live in New York, and you can't see the stars here. So I was gonna get a star with your initials so I'd always know you're looking down on me." Her tears start to fall again, and he shifts in his bed and pats the space beside him.
She crawls beside him and places her head on his chest. "I love you daddy."
"You too Ruby Tuesday."
"Dad, will you tell me a story?" She whispers into his chest.
"Any in mind?" He asks, knowing what story she's going to request.
The same one she always requests, "The one about how you and mom got together. After the horrible expedition to California."
He chuckles and places a kiss on the crown of her head. He beings the story.
How he and Rory manged to make it back together. He'd been working in a small publishing house in New York, during her freshman year at Yale. Seeing her everywhere, in everything. So, at the end of the year he send her a copy of his first novel, a short one, nothing major and a train ticket to Grand Central Station. He still can't believe she used it.
He glances down at his daughter and she smiles. "I gotta go. Mum's arriving from Star Hollow soon. I promised I'd cook."
"Okay." He kisses her head again she sits up.
"We'll be by tomorrow. Bye Daddy." She kisses his cheek and then turns on her heels and leaves.
A single tear runs down his cheek and rolls onto his neck.
"Hey kid."
Ruby looks over at the man now standing beside her, her dad's business partner. "Hey Matt."
"How you holding up?"
"Okay." She nods, wrapping her arms around the flagpole. "He loved it up here." She glances around the roof of the Brooklyn apartment where she lives with her parents. Parent, she corrects herself. "Mom made a good choice, you know, throwing his ashes over the city."
"Yeah, if there was anyone who was New York, it was your dad." He takes a deep breath and pulls a small book out of his jacket pocket. "Your dad wanted me to give you this." He hands over the book without looking at her, his eyes firmly watching the skyline changing colour, from blue to orange.
"What is this?" She turns the book over to read the title.
'After the Horrible Expedition to California'
"When did he?"
"He had it on his computer. When he decided to stop treatment he asked me to publish it." Matt tells her.
"So, it's a proper book now?"
"There's just the one copy. So look after it." He smiles and pulls her into a hug. "He loved you kiddo."
"I know." She nods and fixes her emerald sweater. Her dad always hated her in black.
"I'll leave you to it. I'll check on your mom." He nods back towards Rory, who is standing with her mom and step-dad. Luke looks more upset than anyone, she thinks. She makes a note to hug him later.
She opens the books and reads the dedication.
Okay, so, I'm gone, right?
This is just to let you know that you don't need a stupid generic tattoo to know that I'll always be watching over you.
But knowing you, you probably already have the damn thing.
So you have your star and your story. Forever.
Goodbye Ruby Tuesday. I love you.
Ruby uses her thumb to rub the tattoo she got on her wrist the day after her dad passed away.
A single tear runs down her cheek and rolls on to her neck.
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