To Be or Not To Be
Disclaimer: I do not own the Gilmore Girls, or any characters associated. I'm just taking them for a little ride.
Rory sat on the edge of the bathtub, in her old bathroom at her mother's house in Stars Hollow. She should be at Yale, her afternoon Lit class would start in only a few minutes, but she wouldn't face school, or go home to the apartment she shared with Logan; she couldn't even look Logan in the eye right now, let alone take up space in his Pent house. The egg timer on the counter dinged and Rory looked down at the pink and white stick next to it, two bold pink lines told her the same thing that the last six tests had, she was pregnant, and screwed.
Rory felt tears snake down her cheeks, how was she supposed to tell Logan that not only had she cheated on him, though he had done it first, but that she was also pregnant, and it was nearly definitely not his. Or course she knew what his solution would be, terminate the pregnancy and they would forget all about it. Her mother had been given the same option by Rory's paternal grandparents. Lorelei hadn't taken the easy way out, and neither was Rory. To be honest, she really didn't care about Logan's reaction; she'd been trying for the last two weeks to figure out how to break up with him. Jess had been right, not everything was fixed, she was still dating a jerk with a Porsche, and Jess had every right to be angry with her when she told him, despite the fact that she'd slept with him, she was still with Logan. She'd deserved every single hurtful thing he'd said to her, but the one that resonated in her mind was: "I thought you said everything was fixed." Until he said it, it hadn't really clicked with her, Logan was still a something she needed to fix, her love life needed fixing and now she wasn't sure if she could.
Lorelei found Rory that evening sitting at the desk in her old room, surrounded by balled up pieces of notebook paper. She gingerly picked her way through the room and put her hand on Rory's shoulder. "Hey, child of mine," she said gently, noting the tear tracks. "What's wrong?"
"I messed everything up," Rory said quietly. "I slept with Dean, I quit Yale, I stole a yacht." Rory could feel the hot tears rolling down her already chapped cheeks. "Jess yelled at me, told me I wasn't the girl he remembered. He was right, I'm not a DAR kind of person, I'm someone who mocks dumb movies and drinks way too much coffee, and spends an unnatural amount of time with my mother, and I've screwed it all up."
"Baby," Lorelei said, sitting down in Rory's old reading chair. "That was over a year ago."
"I slept with Jess," Rory said, her red eyes looking right into her mother's. "I went to his open house and told him everything was fixed, and we had sex, and I ruined everything."
"Did you tell Logan?" Lorelei asked. "Is that why your back?" Lorelei would be thrilled if she freed herself rom that jackass, these days she would gladly take Jess over the Blond Wonder. At least Jess was doing something with his life, instead of drinking and partying his way through the Ivy League, plus, Rory changed more then she wanted to admit.
Rory shook her head. "I've been trying to figure out a way to tell Jess," she said, indicating all of the discarded pieces of paper. "I don't know what to say."
"What do you need to tell Jess, honey?" Trying to follow Rory when she was upset was like trying to follow the plot of a badly dubbed Kung Fu film, everything came out piecemeal in the wrong order.
"That I'm pregnant, and I'm sorry, and I wasn't using him to get back at Logan," Rory took a deep breath. "I think I was using Logan to hide from all of my screw ups, since I slept with Dean, I shouldn't have let it all change me."
"Wait," Lorelei was stuck, not sure she was hearing what she was hearing. "You're pregnant?" A tear slipped off Rory's chin as she nodded. "Are you sure, sometimes those tests are wrong." Rory showed her the seven empty boxes in the trash. "You gave up faster than me, I took fourteen."
"They're more accurate now," Rory reasoned.
"Jess' open house was two weeks ago," Lorelei said. "You think it's his?" Rory nodded. "How do you know?"
"Logan and I haven't had sex in a while," Rory said. "And I was with Jess around the right time."
"Why are you still there then?" Lorelei asked.
"I didn't know how to leave," Rory told her. "I guess this is a pretty good out. 'Sorry Logan, I'm pregnant with another man's kid.'"
"So that's why you've been avoiding me," a voice said from the doorway. Both Rory and her mother jumped at the sound.
"Jesus, Logan," Lorelei shouted. "Don't you know its polite to knock before barging into someone else's home?"
"I've been ringing the doorbell for five minutes, I heard voices, I can in," Logan shouted back. "I'll have Finn pack your things," he said to Rory, then turned and left. Neither Gilmore said anything as they listened to his Porsche shriek out of the driveway.
"Well, that took care of itself," Lorelei said, not in the least bit sad to see the Huntzberger go.
"Yeah, but it'll be all around campus by Monday."
"Call Paris, then pack an overnight bag," Lorelei tossed her the phone and left the room.
"Where are we going?" Rory called, but her mother had already started clomping loudly up the stairs. She sighed and hit three on her cell phone. Who would have thought, after meeting Paris that first day at Chilton, she would be the friend Rory called to tell her she was pregnant. Paris was going to yell. Not that Paris every really did anything else.