Abjure
Rating: PG
Summary: Logan and Rory have been married for three years, and despite their difficulties and Logans cheating, she is prepared to ignore it all for the sake of their marriage, and their unborn child. However, after Rory walks in on him and Paris in bed together, she runs from her marriage. An expactant mother with nowhere to go, Rory is forced to finally take a hard look at her life, and who she wants to spend it with. With Jess living only an hour away in Manhattan, will their lives intersect and come together at last?
Chapter One: Sparks.
Prelude. She stood looking out at the scene before her, tears tumbling down her cheeks. The frigid cold struck her lungs. Here she was, twenty five years old, pregnant and alone.
She had left her husband. That was the only piece of good news to her situation. Although an outsider may argue that being divorced at a mere twenty five could hardly be considered a positive moment in one's life.
However, ever since she had returned from work last week to find her best friend in bed with her husband, she had learned that her life may not exactly exemplify the picture perfect one she had always envisaged. There were flaws.
Flaws that she had previously been willing to ignore, to turn a blind eye in the desperate hope that what was ignored would disappear. But the world did not work in that way.
Life did not take pity on those too weak to look it in the eye. Ignoring things had not eventuated out how she had wished.
Logan cheated for the fourth time in three years. Paris lied for the eleventh time that month. And Rory's naivety was struck, for the first time in twenty five years.
One month earlier. "Ugghhh, Logan stop! 'We're going to be late!" Shrieked Rory. T
hey both ignored her screams, knowing they were not commands she wanted obeyed.
It was the first time in six months that they had had such a good time together. Granted they were just watching DVDs, but still, that was better than the complete silence that had existed between them for the past half year.
Even at breakfast this morning Logan had been distant when he spoke to her about the dinner that they would be attending that evening. It was a charity event, hosted by his firm in a meek attempt to demonstrate that they were more than just money hungry moguls.
As one of the partners of Huntzberger, Fitch and Carter, Logan's presence was mandatory. He would smile at all the right people, make intelligent conversation and dress in an Armani suit to inform people of his financial standing.
She would play the part of the pretty wife, in a dress that would fully show off what it was that Logan Huntzberger was capable of owning.
What had changed between the morning and evening Rory did not understand, but she was not about to question it. Any event that involved Logan and the briefest of smiles was enough to open the champagne for these days.
Finally, after half an hour or so of uncontrollable giggling together on the couch (courtesy of both a tickling fight and the hysteria evoked from watching the awful "Gypsy" with Bette Midler) they were both in immensely high spirits and ridiculously late.
Logan begrudgingly complied with Rory's second request to be release (rather more seriously intended than her previous similar command), releasing her so that they could both get ready.
Rory ran across the marble floored entry and up the circular staircase to their bedroom where she quickly threw on a knee-length champagne coloured silk cocktail dress and the diamond earrings Logan had given her on the morning of their wedding three years ago.
Grabbing her faux fur shrug and throwing on her gold stilettos, she ran out of her wardrobe at the same time Logan dashed out of his. As always, he looked impeccable. He didn't need anyone to assure him of that.
Rory smiled shyly, unsurely, at him. He walked over and took her hand, gently raising it to his lips. Grinning in sync, he led her out of their white-brick mansion and into the waiting limousine. The crisp night air held nothing but sweet promises.
That night both Rory and Logan came across remnants of their pasts. And of each others. Remnants that came in the form of people.
Logan and Paris were reacquainted. An encounter pleasing to them both. Rory and Jess were reacquainted. And encounter both pleasant and full of insatiable temptation.
The way that Logan had remembered Rory's best friend Paris was not very complimentary. At Yale she was haughty, rude and offensively self-assured. He was therefore exceedingly surprised upon meeting her again.
Three years later she had changed dramatically, for the better. No longer was she the gawky, unapproachable girl. Replaced alternatively by an attractive woman, exuding with confidence and an alluring air of supremacy.
Neither Rory nor Logan had seen her in the three years since they were married. Paris was naturally the maid of honor, a position which she dramatized significantly, to the point where an onlooker may have mistaken her for the bride due to her frenzied panic attacks.
However, when they were on their honeymoon they had received an email from Paris. It spoke of her newly engaged status to Professor Knotting, an aged man who taught her in one of her classes at Yale in her last semester. Furthermore, she would be moving in with him at his residence in Florence, Italy.
Since then she and Rory had stayed in touched via emails and the occasional trip Rory took to visit her. Logan had self elected to remain absent from such communication.
But now, mused Logan, now she was someone who was but a mere shadow of the former devil she had personified. Now she was someone he very much wanted to get to know.
As Logan and Paris reacquainted with one another (their spouses absent from this encounter, unaware of the sparks that were radiating off their other halves as they flirted ostentatiously with each other), on the other side of the room further sparks were flying in frenzy.
In contrast to Logan and Paris, Rory and Jess had communicated regularly with each other in the years since she and Logan made their vows. However, as Logan and Jess despised each other, such communications had been of great discretion, resulting in Logan believing that this was the first time that they had seen each other since.
This was, nonetheless, the first time that they had communicated in person. Letter, emails and the occasional hushed phone call were their favoured means of communication, as in the flesh, they were far too at risk to do something that would hinder their tentative friendship somewhat.
Therefore, as they stood face to face in a dim corner, minimal words were exchanged. Rather they studied each other instead, with small smiles of desire twisting through their lips.
They had both aged to their aesthetic advantage.
As Jess studied her fragile face his smile turned into a frown upon the detection that she was lacking laugh lines. Where the women around him had deep crevices of enjoyment etched into their faces, Rory had but a meager few wrinkles that seemed to hover in passing residence, fearful of their fleeting moment's inevitable termination.
"Rory…" he began, but he was silenced by a gently shake of her head.
"Not here Jess. Not now, okay?" she cut in, upon the immediate reading of his expression.
Hesitant, he obliged nonetheless.
"I read more of 'Leaves of Grass'" he offered.
Smiling in gratitude; Rory began to tease Jess over his apprehension towards poetry, just as they had when they were but teenagers.
As Logan and Rory entered their house but a minute before midnight, they were both aware of a shift between them.
Something had altered in one another, although both were unaware what of, as they had each been immersed in the company of another for the majority of the evening.
They walked up to their bedroom with not a word spoken between them.
They changed in their individual wardrobes, and brushed their teeth in their individual bowls.
Only when they were turning out the lamps on their bedside tables did they think to address one another.
Turning to view each other, they spoke.
"Goodnight, Ace" said Logan.
"Goodnight, Logan" whispered Rory.
Each promptly turned away again to face their respective sides of the bed. Praying the other had not seen the fleeting guilt written over their faces.
But tonight such guilty looks would remain unread. Alike to a novel on a shelf in a library, its presence invisible to passerby's unless they were purposeful in their means to obtain it.
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"The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances; if there is any reaction, both are transformed." -Carl Jung. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
AN: Hey everyone. I hope that you like this first chapter of my new fanfic. If you like it or have suggestions or just think i should continue, please review! Its so exciting to get reviews :)
xox