i. the fall
The book grows with her belly, swelling and tender, full of promise and taking form in ways that somehow feel fated, even if she hadn't known or planned for them. A book and a baby. They're surprises she never expected and burdens she's not always sure she's ready for, but she nurtures them anyway, lovingly, carefully, and with the occasional reprimand, until they're both flourishing and healthy.
She'd never imagined herself as a mother. It was a hazy, eventual step in the grand plan of her life, nestled somewhere between winning a Pulitzer or Peabody and getting married. But as her life turned the corner on 30 with no Pulitzer, no husband, or even a stable full-time salaried job in sight, she'd begun thinking it wouldn't happen.
It hadn't been a tragedy for her.
She was an academic godmother to Davey, if not a religious one, and a surrogate aunt to Lane's twins and Paris and Doyle's kids. She reminded herself of her panic at the sight of Sookie in labor, and told herself she didn't have to put herself through that gut-wrenching experience. She read dozens of articles about how it was becoming more and more accepted that women could be entirely happy and fulfilled in their lives without motherhood — something she'd always known anyway — and continued on with her life.
She hadn't thought she'd be an author either — especially not after the disaster with Naomi Shropshire — never mind an author of an autobiography, having always been an unspeakably private person, happier to find and tell the stories of others than her own. But here she was, writing her entire life. Actually putting pen to paper, sometimes literally but mostly figuratively, to write, admit, and confront the shades and shadows of her life.
This baby and this book, they aren't what she planned for, or expected, or even wanted, but they're what she has now, and she's going to nurture them, cautiously excited to watch them grow.
So she finds a doctor in Hartford and has appointments every few weeks, where they monitor her weight and blood sugar levels, where she sees the tiny human inside of her grow from the size of an olive to the size of a peach and anticipates when it will become a sweet potato, a butternut squash, and a small watermelon.
The book comes to being more quickly, the arcs and curves of the life she's already lived pouring out of her easily, the process at once catharsis and escape. At her most productive, she writes eight thousand words in one day — about her first day of school. The majority will have to be cut or rewritten, but it's a soothing practice.
The rest of it is harder.
She tells her grandmother, who had once imagined this happening, though Emily's dreams had been under simpler, more traditional circumstances, who now looks at Rory with the same love and support she always has, and promises this child will be unconditionally loved and supported too. And she tells Luke, who stops making caffeinated coffee at home and at the diner, who fusses over her and worries and fumes, and who sometimes has a disappointed look on his face, but doesn't give voice to those thoughts for fear of upsetting her.
She knows what he wants to say to her. That even though he's never been Logan's biggest fan, that even though there's some large part of him that would like to kill Logan, there's another part of him that would never forgive her not telling a father about his child.
She knows all of this, and yet still can't bring herself to do it.
To call Logan, to tell him, to say the words would make this all real, and would force upon them — her — decisions she hasn't been able to confront: each other, or not; together, or not. She's not ready face the possibility of not, and clings desperately to hope and the could bes running through her head.
But she has to tell him.
She knows this unequivocally.
She's halfway to calling Logan more than a dozen times before she finally buys the plane ticket in her fourteenth week. She has the three phones laid out in front of her, each of them scrolled to Logan's contact information, as she sits in her grandparents' Hartford home, in the bedroom whose walls once bore posters of *NSYNC and 98 Degrees and which always had sunflowers on the end tables. She's been staring at the phones for the better part of twenty minutes as she tries to decide what to say and which one to use.
The cell reception is robust enough in Hartford to support her other two phones so that she doesn't actually need the Nokia, but she likes having it there anyway. Solid as a rock, it's her tether to her home and the girl she once was. She won't use it for this.
The choice between the other two is harder. It's symbolic, deciding if the call should be considered business or family.
The Huntzberger monolith, she knows, with its obligations, contracts, and dynastic plans, would treat this as business — a check and an unspoken expectation to take care of it, quietly, and that would be the end of if.
But Logan. The Logan she still thinks inexplicably of as hers. She can't bring herself to imagine what he'd do, how he'd react, can't bring herself to imagine another kind of expectation that would appear in his eyes before he could control it, and she can't decide if she would prefer seeing it or not.
Because of course she knows. She didn't spend so much of herself loving him to not know that all she had to do to have him was ask.
It's a power she wishes she didn't have.
After all that she's done and made him do, after the parts of themselves they had to compromise to grasp at and cling to each other, those ties between them shouldn't exist anymore. She shouldn't be allowed to need him anymore.
In the end, she decides she can't have this conversation over the phone. Rory convinces herself, at least a little, that it's a noble decision.
Something this important needs to be discussed in person. She owes him at least that courtesy.
Really, it's because she needs more time.
So she boards a plane in Hartford and lands in London, but doesn't stop by his Mayfair apartment in the first two weeks she's there. Instead, she books herself a room at The Dorchester and takes brisk daily walks through Hyde Park, stops by Harrods to buy Lorelai a teddy bear in a bearskin, and has afternoon tea service at The Savoy with only her laptop for company. She compares the cut fruit from Waitrose to the cut fruit at Sainsbury's and Tesco to while away her time and tries to decide if she could twist the final verdict into something meaningful so that it warrants a few lines in her book. Rory at thirty-two might not be able to, but Rory at sixteen had been able to turn a story about repaving a faculty parking lot into something beautiful and poignant.
She wonders where that girl went and spreads a little more lemon curd on her scone.
Manuscript Rory hasn't yet made it to Yale, let alone met Logan or spent Christmas with him in London, but the city and the lights strung up over Oxford Street bring up the memories unbidden. Rory jumps forward in the story.
In her mind, the days surrounding Christmas 2006 are a hazy dream. Even though everything should've felt more settled than ever — Logan and she were solid, despite the distance and missing him terribly, and her parents were finally giving marriage a go. It seemed that everything had fallen into place and was as it should be, but she'd felt unmoored, adrift, because nothing was quite right.
Because nothing was as she'd expected it to be.
In that year, Lorelai and Christopher had gotten their chance at another life, one that had haunted them, that they gravitated toward and pulled away from for the two decades of her life. But, like two puzzle pieces warped by time and spilled coffee, they hadn't fit — almost, but not quite. Not anymore.
In another life, where Christopher was stronger and where Lorelai loved him more or herself less; in another life, where they hadn't been forced to make the decision at sixteen, and could have grown up separately and more slowly; in the infinite other lives they wondered about, they could've had their own Christmas in London or Paris or Timbuktu. But in this one, Lorelai needed Luke and Chris needed to find his own way.
The parallels haven't been lost on her.
And Rory thinks, just maybe, she and Logan are that other life.
It would be poetic.
It's that thought that solidifies her resolve and finally brings her to touch finger to phone to call Logan.
She's always put her faith in the tidy arcs of a well crafted story.
He picks up quickly, so Rory doesn't even have time to steady herself, or wonder if he's back in Connecticut for the holidays.
"Hello?" he answers, slightly distracted. She can hear typing on the other end and wonders if he hadn't looked at caller ID before picking up and doesn't actually know who it is on the other end. Maybe he'd been expecting a call.
She hasn't heard his voice in two months, and the deep timbre of it makes her want to cry. It might be the hormones.
"Rory?" Logan breathes. At her continued silence, his voice turns insistent. "Rory. Are you okay?"
For him, her response is apropos of nothing, but it's something she's been thinking about a lot lately. "Do you remember right after we first started dating, the dinner at my grandparents' house? Even though we'd only been dating for like two weeks, Grandma kept talking about kids and your family and Cape Cod. It was way too early, but even then I caught myself imagining what it could be like. I've always had an overactive imagination, but when I thought about it, I thought that you could be it."
This is the most honest she's been with him about her feelings in a long time. In the last few years, he's been her first, and sometimes only, sounding board for family drama and professional advice, but she hasn't talked to him — or anyone, not really — about him in a long while. She couldn't.
"Rory, what's going on?" He sounds concerned, which she takes as a good sign. At the very least, he hasn't hung up.
When she finally speaks, the words tumble out of her quickly, either because she's a pressurized hole at the bottom of a deep well or because she's afraid she'll lose her nerve. She can't really tell which one, though that's par for the course these days, not knowing how she's feeling. Her entire body, her entire being, feels foreign to her.
"I'm in London. I'm staying at The Dorchester, which is decorated for Christmas and it's so beautiful. London at Christmas always was my favorite." Her favorite what, she doesn't say, leaving him to guess. She begins to ramble on about that Christmas long ago when they'd walked against falling snow on Old Bond Street, so in love and like something out of a catalog or Christmas movie, before she regroups.
"I have something I need to say to you and I came to London to say it to you, because I told myself it's not really something you say over the phone, but here I am calling you instead of showing my face anyway." Her voice changes quality, taking on a more desperate air. "I know what happens next if I don't tell you. I know what it looks like. But I have no idea what comes next if I do tell you."
"Rory," he pleads. "Please just tell me what you have to say."
"I love you." It's not what she meant to say, but she can't deny that it's true and she's kind of glad it's out there now. It's not her right, but she needs him to know she loves him. She doesn't think she could live knowing he doubted it. She doesn't know when she realized this herself, except that she doesn't think she ever really stopped. Loving him is as much a part of her as the caffeine addiction or relying on a lucky outfit — not quite inevitable or rational, but as indelible a part of her as her blue eyes. She isn't so romantic as to believe in soulmates, except, perhaps, in the cases of her mom and Luke and Kirk and Lulu, but she does think Logan fits. In her conception of who she is, in her ideations of her future, in every path she wants to take, he fits in the spots where she can't get life to lay quite right without him. "That's not what I had to say to you, but it's true. I love you and I should've told you earlier. I should've asked you not to marry Odette. I should've done a million other things differently. And I'm being selfish right now saying all of this. But I don't want to find someone else who fits when you already do. You've always fit."
She hangs up before he can respond or she can say anything else and busies herself with her nightly ritual, pretending the previous twenty minutes were all a nightmare as she brushes her hair and smooths shea butter onto her skin.
He shows up at her door just as she's unmaking the bed and stares at her for a long while after she opens the door. She's almost twenty weeks along now and the bump should definitely be noticeable, especially to him, the person who has spent more time learning the contours of her body than anyone else in the world, but her shirt is loose, so maybe it just looks like her metabolism and steady appetite for Pop Tarts have caught up with her now that she's chasing her mid-thirties.
Wordlessly, she steps aside to let him in.
"Did you mean it?"
"Which part?" she asks, slightly stupid. Then, she shakes her head a little. "It doesn't matter. I meant it all."
"What did you have to say to me in person?" He looks slightly wrecked, but not nearly enough, and though the words stick halfway in his throat, he still looks better than the situation would call for him to. It's really not fair, how good he looks.
"Oh. Um." She considers how to phrase it, but decides if a picture is worth a thousand words, the real thing has to be worth at least a million more, so she takes his hands in hers and rests them on her middle, the bump protruding against their hands. He's always been sharp, so she imagines he knows what that means immediately. She says the words anyway. "I'm pregnant. With a baby. Our baby."
"A baby," he breathes. He looks stunned and a little bit sick, and chokes out a laugh. "I was hoping for a puppy."
She laughs at that, though to her ears it sounds more like a sob.
"I… how?"
She laughs at that, too. Laughing is coming easier by the second.
"The usual way." She shrugs. "You were there."
"You're pregnant," he repeats. It isn't a question, but he doesn't sound angry or upset, either. Mostly, he still sounds awed.
"Yeah. That's what I needed to say to you in person. I'm pregnant. And I love you. I'm pregnant and I love you."
"Is everything okay?" He lifts his eyes finally to meet hers.
She nods vigorously. "Yeah. All normal, all healthy." With a slight smile, she adds, "It's the size of a Coke can right now."
"So it's…" He takes a moment to do the math. They haven't seen each other since their supposed last hurrah in September and it's almost Christmas. It feels like longer. "You're fifteen weeks along?"
"Closer to seventeen, technically. They do this funky math with the date of my last period." She shrugs, by way of further explanation.
He soaks up the information in stride, mind focused elsewhere. "When were you going to tell me?"
"When I saw you next."
"Which was?" He doesn't sound accusatory or indignant, sounds just like the guy he's always been — supportive but never presumptuous of who she should be or what she should be doing, but also not letting her get away with complacency or her own blindness to her prejudices.
"I was working up to it."
"Okay. Okay," he repeats, sounding more sure with the second.
He meets her eyes, and for a moment considers her. Then, lips lifting in a crooked half smile that makes his eyes glitter, he steps toward her. The movement is confident and decisive, but he stops short of touching her.
She gets what he's asking.
In answer, Rory wraps her arms around his middle, and sinks her weight against him, presses her cheek to his shoulder. One of his arms immediately wraps around her back to pull her close while the other tenderly cups the back of her head. He presses his nose to the top of head, breathing her in as he rubs slow circles at the small of her back.
She revels in the warmth and strength of him.
Neither of them moves. As the tears in her eyes soak through his sweater, a combination of relief and joy and exhaustion washes through her, breaking out of her body in shaky, quiet sobs.
He tightens his arms around her, pulling her closer and pressing his lips to her forehead, all the while whispering into her skin the steady drumbeat of his own heart: I'm here, I'm here, I'm here.
She tries stifling her yawns as long as she can, so they can stay like this for a little while longer or else talk about everything, but he notices quickly and ushers her to bed, promising that he'll still be there in the morning.
And he is, when she wakes up at 1:00 and again at 3:00, 5:00, and 6:00.
"What do you need?" They've ended up curled into each other over the course of the night, and his voice is soft, muffled by her hair in his face. She didn't know how much she needed him to be here until he was. There's a lot for them to face, beginning and ending with his family and Odette, with her own mixed up in between, but he's here and he doesn't seem to be running. Whatever is coming next, she can't help but feel that a weight has been lifted off her shoulders.
He's here and she doesn't have to be alone.
In the months after she'd first gone to the doctor, and the weeks after she'd landed at Heathrow, and the minutes after she'd hung up the phone, she had cycled through a million ways to tell him. But despite all of that preparation, she hadn't let herself imagine what would come after, hadn't let herself think about how he would react. To imagine him angry or cold, rejecting her and leaving her alone, had terrified her. But he's here, warm and solid behind her, thumb smoothing steady circles on the skin of her stomach and lips pressing warm kisses to the nape of her neck.
"Need?" You, she almost says. A career, a crib, a new wardrobe to accommodate her expanding midsection, and her own place, probably. She unloads none of that on him. Instead: "Um… nothing. I'm staying with mom and Luke in Stars Hollow, when I'm not blowing my trust fund on London's fanciest hotel. I have a doctor in Hartford and appointments every few weeks."
"How often do you go?"
"Once a month for now, but the appointments will get more frequent as I get closer to June 3rd."
"June 3rd," he repeats. Rory can't tell if he remembers the significance of the date, but for her, it had been another strange, slightly surreal connection in her life of parallels. Lorelai has chosen to believe that it's a good sign, the date coming around again to redeem itself.
"When do you leave?"
She admits it sheepishly. "I don't actually have a return flight."
It gives him pause.
Logan sits up a little and turns his head to look at her.
"You were that confident I'd come?" There's a wry smile on his face that could also be a playful smirk, and she thinks he's joking, trying to alleviate some of the tension floating in the air, but can't tell by his tone if he's serious or just teasing her.
Whether it was optimism, realism, or stupidity that caused her to book a one-way flight, Rory can't say, but when she'd bought her plane ticket, she hadn't thought twice about booking just one way. It had never crossed her mind to need a return ticket. And other than a doctor's appointment scheduled for the second week of 2017, there's nothing to truly tie her to the States and everything to keep her in London.
She must look adequately stricken, because his face sets with tender resolve and he takes her hands in his. "Rory," he insists, one of his hands coming to her cheek to tilt her face so that she meets his eyes. "I will always come. I love you."
It's the first time he's said the words to her in a decade, and they coil warmly in her chest, squeezing and wrapping their way up her throat and down to her fingers. After Hamburg, he'd told her he loved her — begged her to know it — in a thousand different ways, but neither of them had given voice to it. She'd pretended not to understand that the kiss at her hairline each time she walked away was I love you and didn't acknowledge that the glimmer in his eye when he looked at her was I love you and ignored that his sighs every time she pulled away were steadily, faithfully, unequivocally I love you.
She knew, as well as she knows the feeling of a keyboard under her fingers or the taste of coffee on her tongue, that Logan wouldn't hesitate. For reasons that are a tangle of love, duty, joy, and decisiveness, he would choose her if she asked him to. Between them, he has always been the more sure-footed, the more confident, the more action-oriented. She knows, and has always known, that if at any point in the last ten years she'd indicated to him she wanted him, he'd have been by her side in a flash. What these intervening years and months and weeks were, then, were for Rory herself to decide that she wanted him, too. For Rory too to unequivocally, irrevocably choose him.
It had taken her longer to get there, but she isn't taking it back now. She doesn't want a future without him in it. By showing up in London, finally admitting that she loves him, she does what she hasn't been able to in the last ten years: she chooses him.
Instead of responding, she kisses him, soft and sweet and then determined and demanding. His lips on hers are sweet and tender and fiery, at once absolution and a promise. She drinks him in and laughs when he collapses them into the pillows. She gets to kiss him for the rest of her life. The thought fills her with joy.
He is slow with her, the first time, tender and sweet and worshipping as he explores the new curves of her. And then he is unbridled, frenetic, and fraught, but always, always, always devoted.
She is undone.