Disclaimer: Not mine.
four times rory doesn't call logan & one time she does
i.
Three weeks after graduation, or, even better, three weeks after she turns him down, the campaign trail has lost its initial shine. There's nothing glamorous about this life, not from where she's sitting (all the way in the back). Most of the time, she's okay with that and frankly, she'd be lying if she denied she still got a thrill out of doodling Rory Gilmore, Girl Reporter in random notebooks and on various scraps of paper.
Tonight, she's propped up against the uncomfortable headboard of a generic bed in a generic hotel room in Anytown, America. The lights are out and only the glow of the television keeps her company. It's these other times, few and far between, but no less significant, when she's alone in a motel room, unable to sleep the sleep she desperately needs in order to be at least a semi-functioning human being the following morning, that she wonders if she made the right choice. Second-guessing, what ifs, maybes--Rory's become a world-class expert in all of those. She flips channels listlessly, not really paying attention to what's on the screen, but she likes the simple monotony of the pushing the channel button in five-second intervals.
At first, she moves past it without noticing, but goes back when she realizes there is at least one thing on television at this time that isn't an infomercial. This turns out to be a grave error in judgment, because unfortunately, the one thing that is on television at this time that isn't an infomercial is pretty much the last thing Rory wants to watch on a Tuesday--technically, Wednesday--night in Room 204 of the finest Best Western this town has to offer.
The Long Morrow.
She watches anyway--the damage is already done--and she wonders if he's watching, too. Probably not. He's always had better self-preservational skills.
ii.
She's in San Fransisco for the night and she's never been so focused on people-watching. She knows that if this were a movie, they'd run into each other, literally, and maybe he'd spill his coffee on her or she'd spill hers on him and then awkward silences and strained conversation would ensue against the backdrop of melancholy and contrite warbling. And then he'd be on his way to wherever he was before they collided, but not before he tells her it was nice to see her again and she will spend the afternoon going over each moment in excruciating detail before finally picking up the phone and, in a moment of equal parts insanity and desperation, inviting him to dinner. This time, conversation will be less awkward, but still cautious, and if she were less impatient she might stick around to daydream the specifics and what happens next, but instead she just skips over to the happily ever after set to happy bubblegum pop.
Her life isn't a movie, though, so she doesn't run into him and there is no conversation and she doesn't call. She spends her evening walking amid the bright lights and big city, strolling in and out of shops. She's always suspected San Fransisco to be beautiful. She's not wrong.
iii.
She's waiting at the airport, again--Gate 13, red-eye flight to Atlanta--and listening to 3-days worth of voicemail when she sees the ticker scrolling across the bottom of the screen. President visiting Germany, Gas prices at an all-time record high, Mitchum Huntzberger dead at 57, Dow drops 6 points. Rory blinks, unsure if the lack of sleep is finally getting to her and manifesting itself as a cruel joke in which she is the punchline. It wouldn't have been the first time.
The ticker scrolls by again, and now she's sure it's mocking her with its 12-point type matter-of-factness in delivering soundbytes and bare-boned news. No details, no information, and she's not even certain she wants them--would they even matter?--but surely there has to be more. She knows the what; it's only natural that she covet the why, when, how, and where.
She snaps her phone shut and pulls her eyes from the overhead television. What to do, what now? She lets herself wonder what he's doing, how he's doing, if she should call.
She should call. Right? A call of condolence, a murmured I'm sorry for your loss. Easy. Simple. People do it all the time. It's the right thing to do. Nevermind the history, the fact that they haven't spoken in almost two years. That's the sort of thing that becomes moot in times like these--if books and movies are anything to go by. So it's settled. She should definitely call.
It's 4:44 a.m. now, and Rory's almost completely sure she's lost her mind. Nearly 25-years old and reduced to numbing inactivity by five words. The entire situation is so ludicrous, so unbelievably and painfully ludicrous, that she can't help a bubble of hysterical laughter from coming up to break the silence.
In the end, she adds her name to the flowers her grandparents send.
iv.
Twenty-five is a milestone. A quarter century old. She wants to crawl back in bed and bury her head in the covers.
Instead, she stares at the book, a signed first edition of The House of Mirth, and wonders what it means. Or maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe she just wants it to mean something. But she can't stop asking herself: who sends an ex-girlfriend a birthday present after a break-up, let alone a break-up that occurred approximately two years and five months ago? And not just any birthday present, but a novel that details the aspirations and scheming that propel a socialite to snag herself a husband. And how is said ex-girlfriend supposed to respond to such a gesture? Is she supposed to respond? Does he want her to respond? And how did he find out where she lived?
Rory doesn't know the rules of this game; she feels like she's walked in on chapter 17, page 243, and no one thought to fill her in on the first 242 pages. She's equal parts touched and annoyed and there is a part of her that wants to send it back, remove it from her existence, and pretend it never happened. Instead, she fingers the novel carefully before picking it up, holding it, cataloging the heft of it in her palm. She wonders where it came from. It's not in perfect condition--he knows she likes her books to wear evidence of their pasts. The note is unexpected, but simple, short, to the point: Rory, Just a little extra birthday hoopla. Logan. If he's hidden some sort of message in his words he hasn't really given her all much to work with.
She spends the rest of her morning and the better part of the afternoon reading away her birthday. It's the perfect way to celebrate.
v.
This is getting ridiculous.
They've been doing this song and dance for months now. At first, it was nice--safe, but not quite at the same time. Then she was charmed by how old-fashioned it all was, and supposed, in another lifetime, it would probably be termed courting. Now? Well now, it sucked.
No, that's a lie. Not all of it sucked. The parts where reading his letter was the best part of her day or where she scribbled down her innermost thoughts and dreams and tucked them inside an envelope--on paper, maybe they didn't sound so fanciful--or even where, upon unfolding the paper, skimmed to last page to see if he'd ended with a Yours or Love or even a I miss you. Those parts didn't suck.
What sucks is the waiting--the anticipation, and the realization that today's mail consists only of bills and various credit card offers.
It's the cruelest, most prolonged, most exquisite form of foreplay she's ever experienced.
And she's done. Enough. No more. No matter that it was her idea, a last ditch effort to salvage something that she wasn't even sure was salvageable. It started out as a simple thank you for her birthday present, generic pleasantries that somehow turned into a furious outpouring of emotions and regret and anger.
She hadn't expected him to respond. And again, she didn't know what it meant that he had. So she did the one thing she still knew how to do: she wrote back.
Cue 7 months, 2 weeks, 5 days, and 43 letters later. Scratch that. 44 letters. She's just read his latest and instead of immediately digging up a pen and something to write on, she takes a moment to think about what is going on here. Except she only gets as far as deciding that she has no idea as to what's going on here, aside from the obvious fact that they are in some sort of holding pattern, some weird pseudo-non-relationship relationship and as far as she can tell, it appears that he's willing to go on like this indefinitely.
Unfortunately for him, she's not as willing. Which is why, after approximately three hours of phone tag, lengthy explanations, and one Paris Gellar's determination and impressive ability to elicit information, she's staring down at the phone number displayed on her cell phone, one keystroke away from hitting send and possibly upending this tentative balance they've struck. It's too late to back out now, though, and when the call connects, Rory closes her eyes, half expecting to hear alarm bells signaling her to abort, abort, abort.
What happens, though, is that he answers--on the fifth ring, no less, which gives her enough time to start panicking about having to possibly leave a message on his voicemail--and she only pauses for a second before lamely saying hello, to which his response is an equally lame: it's about time.
coda.
It takes time, but they set out to learn who they've become without each other. On the surface, they are older and a litter wiser, perhaps; the years apart give them new movies to watch together and books to discuss; he discovers she can cook more than just whatever comes out of the tube, and she isn't surprised to find he still hasn't learned to recap the toothpaste. What it boils down to is that despite the time apart, Rory is still Rory and Logan is still Logan, and for the most part, they still fit. It's not as easy this time around (they recognize that it's not supposed to be), and doubts and uncertainty linger past their welcome, but as far as do-overs go, they've concluded that this is probably the last of their allotted quota, so they'd better not fuck it up.
They don't.