Title: Southern Hospitality
Chapter 1: Oh, Look Who It Is!
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters you recognize. I do own the characters you don't recognize, except for maybe people that I'm talking about who are real and you just don't recognize. Anywho.
A/N: I'm a masochist, apparently, because here I go, my fourth story—under this name alone—that has slapped me in the forehead so that I must begin typing it at four in the morning. Thanks to curlymonic1215 who suggested this idea to me in a roundabout way.
Now, I don't live full-time in Atlanta, but it's my second home, and I live there part of the year, and it's a great place, so this whole thing will be a little Atlanta friendly.
Every chapter will be in a different perspective. Hopefully there will be more than two, if I'm lucky and smart and good at this story.
This is a very in depth summary, cause it was originally intended as part of the story, but I decided it sucked in the grand scheme of things, so it's going here.
In depth summary of Rory's life up to this point: Rory Gilmore, upon graduating from Yale at the age of twenty-two, class of 2007, had accepted a position to work on the news floor at CNN headquarters in Atlanta. That basically meant that her day was spent reading the latest news on the wires and typing it up for the on-air reporters to read…well, on the air. She'd started her job on July the fourth, and never had a normal sleeping schedule again. Sometimes she'd take a midnight to eight shift, and she'd be incredibly busy, or she'd take a two a.m. to ten a.m. shift, and spend her time catching up on her correspondence. The best part of her job, though, was the fact that she was learning to expect the unexpected, while learning about a city she'd never visited before.
Days within moving to Atlanta, she'd already toured the World of Coke and the Underground, near Peachtree Street, one of the busiest parts of downtown, and the most tourist-filled. After a week, she'd discovered that on the Marta train was the fastest way to travel, and the Marta bus went more places. After a month, she'd become a "friend" of the Fox Theater, with season tickets to any and all performances coming over the next year. She'd seen "Billy Elliot", "Purple Rain", and "Some Like It Hot" over the course of two weeks, followed closely by a Broadway-worthy production of "West Side Story". She went to the last "Screen on the Green" of the summer in Piedmont Park, and had seen "Viva Las Vegas", complete with two women dressed as Elvis and Ann Margaret, who had gotten to meet the mayor of Atlanta and proclaimed that it was the Elvis woman's birthday.
In other words, by September 2008, she was proud to call herself a resident in Atlanta, and she'd even taken a liking to sweet tea, although nothing could ever replace coffee.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Rory
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"Still here, Gilmore?"
I don't look up from my computer at the voice, just grin.
"Sorry to burst your bubble, Davis, but I'm definitely not free for lunch today."
"Ah, come on." Eric pulls Christa's chair from her desk and straddles it next to mine. "It's after eleven. Your eight hours were up three hours ago."
"And you've still got three to go," I remind him, avoiding eye contact as I grab a file from next to his leg. His very muscular leg, clothed only in thin cotton….
Shaking that practically adulterous thought from my mind, I open the folder and start reading the report from a week ago frantically and then, suddenly, stop.
It's not adulterous for me to think of Eric like that. I mean, he's not married. I'm not married. He's not seeing anyone. Lord knows I'm not seeing anyone. So why can't I go out with Eric? Sure, we work together, but it's not the kind of work where you're sure to see the same person two days in a row, unless you go out of your way to see them.
"Okay," I say, dropping the folder near my keyboard and saving everything. He stands up suddenly, surprised, I'm sure, by my sudden change in attitude.
"What'd you say?"
"I said 'okay'." I grin at the shocked look on his face. "I would love to have lunch with you, Davis." I double-check that everything on the computer is saved, and then stand up, also.
"Seriously, Gilmore?"
"Seriously."
"Wow. This is a milestone. Are you sure you're not a pod person?"
"Who, me?" I ask, putting a hand on my chest and feigning shock. "Why, Davis, I'm surprised you'd ever ask. Don't I seem normal?"
"Well, yeah, but see—that's the trick of the pod people." He grins as we start from the bustling news floor to the food court thick with tourists.
"Ah. See, I never knew that. You must be a pod person."
He grins.
"What, no comeback?"
"Nope, too busy thinking about food."
"I should have known." I shake my head slightly.
"What, like you weren't? So…whaddya think? Food court, Underground, or an actual restaurant, hopefully not crawling with tourists?"
"I'll take the third door. I think I'm starting to have my fill of tourists."
"And only after, what, four years?"
"Fourteen months," I correct, knowing full well that he knew that.
"I know," he grins. I roll my eyes at him as we exit the building and make our way to his car.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
"You're an odd person, Gilmore." Eric shakes his head. I've just told him about the time my mother had visited the CNN offices and, after the VIP tour, she insisted I make a video in the gift shop with her. We were supposed to read the news, like a news team, but Mom insisted on singing all of her stories, and I couldn't read mine, I was laughing so hard, and then Mom had sent the tape into MTV as our audition for The Real World: 26 gazillion or some odd number.
"It's completely true!" I laugh and lean across the table to tear off a piece of his breadstick. "My mother and I do stuff like that all the time."
He raises his eyebrows as I eat his breadstick. "And did MTV pick you?"
"Well, no. But, we were finalists. They even showed us on MTV."
"I'd pay to see that."
"I've got a tape of it at home. You could come see it sometime."
He grins, and I blush, realizing the implication of my words. "I'd like that."
"I…I would, too." I smile at him, and he smiles back. "So…any embarrassing familial stories you'd like to share, Davis?"
"Um, there was this one Thanksgiving right after my oldest sister got married. See, my father and brother-in-law didn't get along, and my mom got the bright idea to have our dinner in a public place, so, since my family is huge, and holidays are incredibly important in our family, we rented out a room at the Fox."
"Love that place," I gush. He grins.
"Me, too. So, we rented out one of the huge ballrooms. I mean, huge. It rivaled my sister's wedding reception hall. And there was this show at the Fox. 'Chorus Line', I think. So the management told us not to be too loud. We couldn't hire a band, basically. That was fine with us, cause it was Thanksgiving, and who hires a band at Thanksgiving?"
He pauses to look at me. "Then what happened?" I prompt.
He shrugs. "The obvious. My dad and brother-in-law got into this huge fight, the likes of which are unknown, and most of the males in the family took their sides, and then the females took their sides, and 'A Chorus Line' was ruined for thousands of Thanksgiving theater owners."
"And what side did you take in this huge fight?" I smile.
He smiles back. "I took my nephew and niece by the hands and we went outside."
"Sweet!"
"Thanks. It took my sister an hour to find us, though."
"Where were you?"
He shrugs. "Just outside. The big enclosed entranceway."
"Ah. And, how many sisters do you have?"
He mentally counts. "Eight. But, two are in-laws, one's a soon-to-be-in-law, and one's a 'partner' of another."
"Oh. A 'partner'. Seriously?"
"Yep." He nods.
"So, you've got two married brothers, one engaged brother, a gay sister, at least one married sister, and then two other sisters."
"Both of my other sisters are married."
"You're the bachelor?"
"I'm the baby."
"Mama's boy?" I tease.
He laughs. "I'm not a big Mama's boy. I try to have dinner with my parents once a week, and we spend holidays together."
"That's nice." I smile. "I wish I saw my mother more, but she lives in Connecticut."
"And what does she do that far away?" To reciprocate for my earlier act of theft, Eric leans over the table and grabs my whole breadstick.
"Hey!"
"Food theft rules," he says matter-of-factly. "But please, continue."
I grin. "She owns an Inn with her best friend, and she's getting married in December."
"Outdoor wedding?" he asks, most likely joking.
I roll my eyes. "Probably. She's got this insane thing for snow. Loves it, can smell it the day before it happens. She says that all good things in her life happened to her when it snowed."
"Crazy."
"Exactly."
"So, do you like new Daddy?"
"Yeah, I do. I mean, my dad was always a once-a-week father, and this guy…. Luke was always a father figure to me. And he and my mom have a two-year-old, Susanna. Named after the lead singer of the Bangles after Mom found out that Luke plays the guitar. And well. She's hoping that her second daughter will be the one she can make the girl band with."
"Your only sibling?" Eric raises his eyes at me over the water glass he's lifting to his lips. To wash down my stolen breadstick, no doubt.
"No. I've got another half-sister, Georgia, my dad's daughter. I hardly see her, though. I hardly see him," I add as an afterthought. Eric waits a respectable amount of time before clearing his throat and knocking me out of my 'woe-is-me-cause-my-dad-is-a-deadbeat' stupor.
"Shall we go get dessert? I know this great little place in Little Five Points."
I grin. "Absolutely."
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Eric insisted on walking me to the Marta. Insisted. Sweet! He gave me a small, respectable good-afternoon kiss on the lips, and then hurried off to head back to work. I grinned after him.
Just think. After over a year of harmless office flirting, I'd finally gotten over my last work-related romance hang up and agreed to lunch. And I'd had a wonderful time! We'd gone to this dark little Italian restaurant and eaten breadsticks before and after lunch before he drove me out of downtown and to this tiny little bakery café thing in Little Five Points, and we ate some more and laughed and then he walked me to the train and kissed me goodbye and now here I am, sitting in one of these incredibly ugly orange seats, my laptop and work on the seat next to me, my head thrown back onto the wall off the train, my eyes poring over this advertisement for a Spanish injury lawyer, and this is an incredibly long run-on sentence.
I laugh at myself and sit up, bringing my gaze back down to normal level. My gaze catches two little brown eyes peering from the crook of an arm. I smile. She smiles back, and then moves the arm so that she can see me more plainly. The person attached to the arm makes a little noise of surprise.
"Brett! I was reading. You made me lose my place." The voice is familiar, but I can't place it.
"I want to see her," Brett points to me, and then owner of the voice follows her arm with his eyes and looks at me. I look at him, too.
And almost fall from my chair in shock.