Author's Note- This is the first in a series of rewritten scenes for Lits. I've got several more I'm planning on redoing, but I'm always open to suggestions. So feel free to tell me by way of review or PM, if you have a particular scene you want to see reworked to make Lits happy... Anyway, this may seem like a strange place to start, but I think you'll be surprised at the twist I'm taking on this.
Raincoats and Recipes
The door swings shut behind the gawky figure retreating out of the Gilmore house as quickly as his legs can carry him. Rory glances at her mother, willing her not to say what she knows she's thinking. "So, I'm almost done getting the CDs together. I picked a wide selection so we'd have choices, and then I picked a bunch that probably only you will like, but it's good to have options," she says, knowing that her voice sounds thin and the words don't cover up the truth that is staring them both in the face.
Lorelai glances into her room, taking in the mess of the bedclothes. Looking back at her daughter, she asks in a no-nonsense tone, "So what did he borrow?"
Rory sighs. The jig is up. "I'm sorry I didn't talk to you about it first. I know I promised I would, but I swear, I didn't know that this was going to happen. I mean, I didn't know he was going to show up tonight, and it just happened. It's awful for you to find out like this, I know, but everything's okay. I'm okay, and we were, you know, safe. So all those Trojan man jokes all these years really apparently stuck. And I'm lucky, too, because Dean, he's -- well, aren't you glad that it happened with someone who's good and really loves me?"
Sadly, Lorelai looks at her daughter. This wasn't how it was supposed to happen. Dean may love her daughter (though if he let her first time be like this, maybe not as much as he should), but there's still one very large, hulking problem. "But he's married," she points out.
"You don't understand the situation," Rory protests.
"Is he still married?"
"Yes, but--"
"Then I understand the situation."
"It's not working out between them. They're not happy." Rory defends her actions; this, sleeping with Dean, this isn't the mistake. It isn't. The mistake was ever leaving Dean in the first place. Leaving him for someone inconsistent and volatile. She should have known that fireworks and electricity and a connection right down to the foundations of her soul wasn't what she was meant for- she was meant for safety and security and people who would care for her and protect her.
Lorelai sighs sadly. "Oh Rory," she murmurs, half-disappointment, half-commiseration. She's been here. She thinks she knows what led to this.
"He tried the best he could, but it didn't work. It's over," Rory insists.
"He told you that?"
Rory nods.
"He told you he's leaving her?"
At that, a sudden shadow of doubt crosses Rory's face. "Well..."
"He told you he's moving out, they're getting divorced, he's got a lawyer, they've divided up the monster-truck season tickets?"
Her self-doubt changes to anger, and Rory says, "We didn't exactly get around to discussing everything. It's been a crazy night."
"You, of all people -- the girl who thinks everything through, the list maker -- you didn't bother to discuss those things before jumping into bed with a married guy?" Lorelai demands, trying to understand why her daughter wouldn't at least take a moment to think things through. Dean was never the one who made Rory lose her head. It was a different boy who always sent her daughter's reason out the window.
"He's not a married guy!" Rory exclaims, her voice rising as her temper is stoked. "He's Dean- my Dean!"
"He's not your Dean, he's Lindsay's Dean!" Lorelai says, louder than she meant to. "You're the other woman!"
"It's over!" Rory defends yet again.
Lorelai shakes her head. "It's not over 'til he's out of the house with the ring off!"
"He took the ring off."
Lorelai can't believe her daughter's stupidity. Her daughter, the genius, is going around sleeping with married men! What happened to not following in her footsteps? "Oh my god, I don't believe this!" she exclaims.
"He's in love with me, not Lindsay!"
"Does Lindsay know that?"
"She's not good for him, okay? She lets him quit school and work himself to death and--" Rory begins, desperate to justify this. She needs her mother's reassurance; she needs to know that she did the right thing, that she's finally with the right guy. The safe guy, who will never let her down, the guy who's safe and who will never break her the way she's been broken before.
But her mother gives her no such reassurances. "No, Rory, uh-uh, you can't be one of those girls who blames the wife for forcing the husband to cheat."
It terrifies her. For months, all she read in her mother's looks was disappointment over her treatment of Dean, disappointment over her choices in men. Well, she's finally realized her mistake and she's gone back to the security of someone who will know how to fix the cracks he left in her supposedly untouchable foundations, but suddenly Lorelai doesn't seem to approve. How can she be so fickle when all Rory really wants is her support? "He wasn't cheating," she says quietly.
"He was cheating, Rory. He was cheating, and you were cheating with him. There's no other way to spin that, kid."
"I'm not spinning it, and I'm not a kid. I'm 19!" Rory exclaims, trying not to panic.
Lorelai looks at her daughter sadly. "This is your first time," she says quietly. "It's just not the way your first time was supposed to be."
"Oh, and how was my first time supposed to be?" Rory asks, voice still raised, not following her mother's lead into soft tones.
The belligerence in her voice riles Lorelai up again. What's gotten into her? Why is she acting so juvenile about this? Where has her angelic Rory gone? "Well, first of all, it was supposed to be in a retirement home. And secondly, ideally, it was supposed to be with someone single."
"My first time was with someone sweet and kind who loves me!"
At her words, something hits home with Lorelai. Throughout the argument, Rory has been repeating how much Dean loves her. But not once has she... "Yeah, sweetie, he loves you," Lorelai says, "But do you love him?"
"I--"
For a very long moment, there is dead silence in the house. And then Rory's eyes flood with tears, and she leans against the wall as if she can no longer support her own weight. "Please tell me I did right," she chokes out, voice breaking on every word. Lorelai rushes to her side and catches her up in her arms, and together they slide down the wall to sit tangled up on the floor. Rory leans against her shoulder and sobs. "Please tell me I did right."
"Rory, I can't do that," Lorelai says quietly. "Talk to me. What happened?"
"It wasn't supposed to be Dean," Rory sobs. "It was supposed to be J--" The volume of her crying increases, and she can't even stutter out the name, but Lorelai knows who she means. "It was supposed to be him."
Lorelai strokes her daughter's hair, trying to comfort her in any way she can. "Sweetie, that was more than a year ago. I thought you were over him."
Rory shakes her head, burying her face in her mother's chest, apparently too distraught to speak. She draws several gasping breaths and manages to get herself to a point of composure where she can speak. "He came to see me last night," Rory whispers, not looking at her mother. "He asked me to run away with him. I said no. Was that right? Mom, I... I love him. Was I right to send him away? Mom, he looked so upset, like he was breaking inside, and I just... please tell me I did the right thing."
"Oh Rory," Lorelai whispers as her daughter's words devolve into hysterical crying once more. She is torn between anger at Jess, for putting her daughter through this, and an unexpected sympathy for the young man. Meeting Liz, hearing her stories, has given Lorelai some insight into what Jess' childhood might have been like, and she's fully understanding for the first time just how damaged he really is, how hard it must have been to open up to Rory as much as he did. And she's seen evidence, over the past few days, that Jess is trying to grow up and better himself, just as Luke said. For the first time, she begins to see that maybe her daughter wasn't the only one who was destroyed by their parting of ways.
Eventually- Lorelai isn't sure how long it is, but she knows that her daughter hasn't cried this much consecutively since she was an infant- Rory calms herself and pulls out of Lorelai's embrace. Wiping at her eyes, she rises to her feet. "What do I do?" she asks, looking lost. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Sweetie, I can't tell you what's right or wrong for you," Lorelai says. "Patch things up with Jess, or don't. That's your decision."
A tense silence follows, during which Rory plays with her hands and stares at the floor. Then she looks up. "I want to talk to him," she says. "I need closure. Or something."
Or something indeed. Lorelai might not like it, but she knows that in the unlikely event that her daughter and the ex-hoodlum manage to have a rational conversation, the odds are high that they'll do more than find closure. It scares her, but she has to be okay with that. If Rory is still hurting so much over him more than a year later, it was more than infatuation and attraction. All of Rory's insistence that there was more to Jess comes back to her, making her wonder.
"Okay then," she says. "In the morning, we'll talk to Luke. He might know how to get in contact with Jess. And Rory, you know it wouldn't be fair to Dean to see him while you still have these feelings for someone else, right?"
Rory nods. "Yeah," she replies tearfully. "Not to mention, he's married, right?"
"Right." Lorelai gives her a small, supportive smile.
"I'm gonna go to bed," Rory says quietly, and slips into her room, closing the door behind her. She looks at the rumpled sheets, and sighs, willing herself not to cry again. Taking her pillow from the bed, she lays down on the floor fully clothed. As she hears the front door close- presumably her mother heading back to the inn- she realizes that she's got what she wanted: her mother's support. And oddly, it isn't for the thing she was looking for.
Jess wasn't the mistake. Dean was. And even though admitting it hurts, being without Jess has hurt more, a constant physical ache in her chest that she's grown so accustomed to, she can actually ignore it at times. It's always there, though, and it's not going away until she figures this thing out. Closure, or maybe finding a way to be together despite everything, she doesn't know. But she will. And that's enough to bring her peace of mind for the first time since a fateful bus ride thirteen months ago...