Chapter 1: Sunday Morning
This story is a sequel to my other story; Your new Fairytale, so if you haven't read it already, it might be a good idea to read that one first.
Thanks to everyone that's been reading that story and encouraging me to write this sequel. I know I should have started it weeks ago - but at least now it's here!
The sound of a phone ringing cut through the silence in the bedroom and effectively woke Jess up. He felt Rory stir in the bed next to him as she reached for her phone.
"Hello" He listened as she answered with a content smile on his face. He still couldn't believe that he was actually waking up next to her. It was almost too good to be true.
As he heard Rory sigh into the receiver he turned his head to look at her as she was propping herself up against the headboard. "Well, I don't think he…" He heard her start, but by the look of things she was being cut off by the person on the other end.
With a questioning look and a hint of worry starting to grow at the out of his stomach, Jess sat up next to her.
Rory rolled her eyes as she took the phone away from her ear and put the call on speaker. A feeling of relief lifted the worries right out of him as he heard Babette's nasal voice on the other end.
"…'cause I worry, sugar, and after reading his book I do think you belong with him, despite the way he treated Pierpont"
"Well…" Rory answered, when Babette finally left enough silence for her to get a chance to say something. "…that's a good thing, isn't it?"
"Yes!" Babette exclaimed, leaving both Rory and Jess looking even more confused.
"But then…" Babette continued. "…there's this sad, lonely old man in the book – and he's supposed to be Jess, isn't he? I'm no college graduate, but that is pretty obvious, isn't it?"
"Well…ehm….yeah?" Rory answered, still not understanding the upset state that seemed to have caused Babette to call her up at 7.30 on a Sunday morning.
"And he's all alone!" The nasal voice all but screamed on the other end.
Jess and Rory shared a confused look and Rory shrugged her shoulders as to say that even though hearing the beginning of the phone call, she was as clueless as he was about the meaning of it all.
"Well, but Babette…" Rory started. "…that's just...It's a book"
"About the two of you!" She shouted, her voice being even more high pitch than usual.
"Yeah?" Rory asked and knitted her eyebrows together in confusion.
"And now he's all alone" Babette repeated in a sad voice.
"Who is all alone?" Rory asked, the word 'now', having confused just a tad bit.
"Jess!" The woman on the other end screamed out, making Jess jump a little at the sound of his name.
"Well…no?" Rory tried to straighten it out. "He's not alone now. He's…He's right here."
"So you're not breaking his heart and leaving him?" At the statement that Jess was in fact not alone right now, Babette's voice seemed to have lost some of its edge.
"No!" Rory exclaimed. "Why would you think that?"
Babette sighed. "It's just…I read the book, and in the book Jess is all alone and sad…and it just breaks my heart that the two of you couldn't work it all out!"
Finally understanding what she was getting at, Rory smiled. "Oh, Babette" She shook her head as she spoke. "The old man in the book is not Jess – not anymore"
"Then who is he?" Babette's voice was sounding immensely confused.
"Well, he is Jess, but the version of Jess that would have been had I married Logan" Rory tried to explain and there was a moment of silence on the other end.
"Oh" Babette breathed out. "It's that kind of book" She scoffed at herself. "I'm sorry sugar, I guess I was getting all worked up over nothing"
"It happens to the best of us" Rory assured her.
"It's a great relief, let me tell you"
"Always happy to help" Rory smiled at Jess, who was rolling his eyes and shaking his head at the woman on the other end of the line.
"I'm gonna go pass the good news on to Patty" Babette explained, her voice revealing a hint of the excitement at being the first one to deliver the good news.
"You do that" Rory nodded.
"Have a good day then, sweetie" Babette added before she hung up.
Rory placed the phone on the nightstand and turned to look at Jess with a smile on her lips, he returned the smile with one his lop-sided grins that she loved so much.
"They're all crazy" He stated and even though he gave it his best efforts to make his voice sound annoyed and bitter, the happiness he felt made it quite impossible.
"You like it" Rory teased as she moved closer to him on the bed.
Jess snorted and shrugged his shoulders.
"Ah, come on" Rory crawled down under the covers again and leaned her head against Jess' chest. "You like that they care"
"Why would I care what a bunch of crazy people think?" He muttered as he slid down into a lying position.
"Because you want them to like you" She stated as if that was something that was obvious to anyone.
"I don't care if they like me" He retorted and bent head down to press his lips against the top of her head. "All I care about is that you like me"
A mischievous grin crept onto Rory's lips. "So why did you go through all that trouble of making them read your book then?"
Jess snorted again. "Because it was important to you"
"To me, huh?" Rory propped herself up on her elbows so she could meet his eyes.
"Yeah" He nodded.
"Mhm" She nodded as well, still grinning.
Jess nodded again, in response to her nodding. "That's all"
Shaking her head in a display of utter disbelief, Rory leant forward and kissed him.
In the other end of the apartment, Vanessa also woke up in a bit of an unusual way this early Sunday morning. But it wasn't a phone ringing that woke her up. No, Vanessa startled out of bed at the sound of a loud thud right outside the bedroom door.
Still a bit dizzy from sleep, she looked around the bedroom to find the source of the sound and concluded that Matt wasn't in bed. She took a hesitating step closer to the door, when a loud groan was heard.
She recognized the voice; it was definitely Matt groaning outside the door. It sounded as if he was really in pain and without thinking, Vanessa grabbed the nearest thing that could, with some good will, be used as a weapon – in this case she found herself grabbing onto a dictionary from Matt's desk – and took a deep breath before she headed towards the door to fend off the burglar that was obviously attacking her boyfriend in the other room.
With her heart pounding, she pushed the door open, ready to fling the dictionary at the burglar's head. Only…she didn't find any attacker or burglar to fling the dictionary at. The only thing she did find was Matt, lying on the floor a few feet away in a fetal position, holding on to his right foot with both of his hands and groaning.
She put the dictionary down on one of the boxes Rory brought with her and that was temporarily stocked in the living room and walked up to her groaning boyfriend.
"Matt?" She whispered as she bent down beside him.
He answered with another groan. "Are you okay?" She asked as she put her hand on his shoulder.
Matt nodded. "Yeah, just doing my morning-yoga session" He replied sarcastically.
Vanessa rolled her eyes. "Yeah, okay. I'll leave you to it then" She started moving to get up from her crouching position.
"No, no" Matt let go of his foot and grabbed onto her arm. "I was just kidding. Please help me"
"No, really?" Vanessa smiled as she helped him of off the floor. "What were you doing?"
Matt looked down at the floor, as he, leaning heavily on Vanessa's shoulder started limping back to their room. "I was on my way back from the bathroom, and I stumbled on one of these stupid boxes" He stopped for a second and gestured towards the boxes. "Stupid, stupid boxes" He repeated as he kicked at one of them, which was followed by a scream of pain.
"Smart move" Vanessa deadpanned.
"Shut up and help me get back to bed" Matt muttered back.
Chris rolled his eyes at Matt's scream as he was lying in bed, staring at the ceiling. He'd heard the thud, he'd heard the groans and he had just decided to step out of bed and go help Matt, who had obviously stumbled over one of Rory's boxes, when he had heard Vanessa coming into the living room.
It was funny, how fast things were changing. I wasn't that long ago that it was just the three of them; him, Matt and Jess, living here. Now, there were five of them.
Matt and Vanessa. Jess and Rory. And him. Alone.
He had to admit, after reading Jess' book, he couldn't place all the blame for Jess' hurting on Rory. They'd both done their share of hurting the other.
But still. When Jess got his happy ending it was all the more obvious how he himself, didn't. It was not as if he wanted Jennifer back. No, he was done and over with that. It was just…
What if he never did find anyone?
Of course, both Matt and Jess would be busy with their lives; the lives that they shared with their girlfriends. They would want to hang out with other couples and do couple-things.
And in time, they would probably move out, maybe start families. Of course, they would probably invite him for holidays and such – out of pity for their eternally lonely friend, nothing else.
Time would pass, and within years he would be someone they met at work, promised that 'they should hang like in the old days some time soon' but never did.
Of course he would be fine with that. He would be happy for them. They had found love. What friend would want to stand in the way of that?
Maybe he should get himself a dog to keep him company. He'd always liked Golden Retrievers, his family had had one while was growing up. They made good company.
Sighing, Chris rolled over on his side and tried to fall back asleep. Sunday mornings always made him feel so melancholy.
In Stars Hollow, Lorelai stretched and yawned as she was waking up next to Luke in her bed. When her eyes caught the alarm clock on the nightstand she froze and stared at it wide-eyed for several seconds.
Stunned, she sat up straight in bed and looked around her. Luke was still sound asleep next to her and with an irritated frown she pushed his arm.
"Luke!" She called, her voice startled. He mumbled in response and she raised her voice and nudged him again. "Luke!"
"What?" He rolled around on his back and blinked a few times before he opened his eyes.
"Is this what it's going to be like?" She asked in accusing voice.
"What?" Luke's face wore and expression of confusion.
"I think you should have had the decency to inform me that it is contagious" Lorelai explained, although the explanation only seemed to confuse her fiancé even more.
"What?" Luke asked again, as he rubbed his eyes and sat up next to her.
"You've infected me – and I didn't even know it was contagious. I mean, I did know you suffered from it, but I never even imagined I could ever catch it" Lorelai rambled on, not really clarifying anything.
"I'm sorry?" Luke offered in an attempt to calm her down, even though he had no idea whatsoever as to what she was talking about.
"Oh!" Lorelai snorted. "You should be sorry. You should be very sorry. Tell me, is there a cure?"
"Could I…" Luke cleared his throat. "Could I just ask…what on earth are you talking about?"
"Oh! Yeah, right. As if you don't know" Lorelai scoffed.
"I really don't" Luke stated.
"You!" She pointed towards him with, trying to make her voice sound dangerous. "You've given me the early-bird disease"
"What?" Luke asked, having lost count of how many times he'd asked that during this rather short conversation.
"Your early-bird germs have infected me!"
Trying to make some sense out what she was saying, Luke knitted his whole face together in confusion.
"This is the third morning this week that I have woken up, by myself, before eight. That has never happened before in my life"
Luke sighed, and leaned back into bed.
"Go back to sleep" He muttered and tried to pull her down towards him.
"There's the problem" She said. "I can't. You see…I have this lifetime behind me of sweet, sleepy mornings, mornings of not waking up until noon. Mornings of walking around in my pajama's, still half-asleep, mornings of having to rush to work because I didn't want to wake up – now, you've ruined all that with your early-bird germs!"
"Your co-workers will thank me" Luke murmured as he rolled over to his side and pulled the covers with him.
"Oh, no!" Lorelai pulled the covers back. "Don't even think you can go back to sleep after waking me up!"
"I didn't wake you up – you woke me up" Luke clarified.
"Hmph" Lorelai snorted. "You, personally, may not have woken me up – but it's still your fault that I'm awake. Didn't you hear me? You've infected me!"
With a loud sigh, as he saw his lie-in morning slip away, Luke sat up again. "What do you want me to do about it?"
Lorelai pondered for a second. "Coffee would be good."
Shaking his head and sighing, Luke got out of bed. "You're insane"
Lorelai smiled wide. "I love you"
A hint of a grin was visible in Luke's face. "I might be crazy, but I love you too"
Sipping at his morning coffee, Taylor Doose was reading the last page of the book Jess and Rory had handed out at the town meeting the week before.
When he reached the last line, he slammed the book closed with a huge frown on his forehead.
"Well, this is just outrageous" He muttered to himself as he got up from his chair and started pacing around his kitchen table.
"I can't believe he'd have the guts to something like this" He gestured towards the book.
"I should have known; I should have stopped him" He scolded himself as he paced.
Suddenly he stopped as if struck by a sudden idea. He nodded to himself and muttered inaudibly to himself as he walked over to the phone and dialed a number.
"We need to call to an emergency town meeting" He demanded as soon as the person on the other end was picking up.
"About that horrendous book" He stated as an answer to a question from the other end of the line.