Anne Elliot, with all her claims of birth, beauty, and mind, to throw herself away at nineteen; involve herself at nineteen in an engagement with a young man, who had nothing but himself to recommend him, and no hopes of attaining affluence, but in the chances of a most uncertain profession, and no connexions to secure even his farther rise in the profession; would be, indeed, a throwing away… Anne Elliot, so young; known to so few, to be snatched off by a stranger without alliance or fortune; or rather sunk by him into a state of most wearing, anxious, youth-killing dependence! ( Chapter IV)

i.

Some things had changed in the life and ways of Rory Gilmore since graduating from Yale and refusing Logan Huntzberger's marriage proposal seven years ago.

She ate the occasional fruit, for one, and did the occasional run in Central Park (a brisk walk, more like, which invariably ended prematurely with her lying on the grass with book in hand). She wasn't one to wait and see if she had her mother's possibly alien metabolism. And she had come to love walking.

For another, she dated.

And truth be told, she had become quite good at it, quite adept at the drinks-and-dinner repartee, the art of hooking up but not digging deep. Once, she had caught herself (flirtatiously? nervously?) twirling a coil of her hair around her finger while having a drink with Samuel Mendez (but with some embarrasment, tucking her finger back into her fist as soon as she realized). Her mother alternately felt proud and uneasy at the social development of her late blooming little circus freak.

But truth be told, after seven years and a near-serious relationship that succumbed at seven months (in year four), Rory found it old and tiresome. While her friends actively snapped at every opportunity—every hope—to enter into the relationship, to her, going out with virtual strangers became an exertion of real, physical effort. (Coming home from such evenings, her back and abdominal muscles felt like she had done several hundred crunches, which she had never actually done in her entire life.) And for what? She learned of the good and the bad in men and in sex, but at the end of the day, she would still rather curl up in her flannel pjs and spend a nostalgic night with reruns of The Office. At least her abs seemed to benefit from all the clenching it bore on especially trying evenings.

She stopped berating herself for this, stopped thinking of herself as odd and accepted that perhaps she would always be a social misfit of sorts. She also stopped wondering why no man had come along that could make her feel that this social exercise was worth pursuing. Or why no man had yet come along that could make her feel, period. At her age, she reasoned once to Lorelai, perhaps it was normal to find the romantic idealism of youth slipping away, as a good dose of Paris-like pessimism crept in to take its place. (Was she ever a romantic idealist?)

She devoted herself ever more fully to her dream job as reporter at The New York Times, persuading herself that this was her life—a good enough life, close enough to her dream life. The life she did not throw away at 22.

Dating, moreover, simply brought home the point in a most nagging manner that she did not have anyone. And that, if she were honest with herself, she did miss. Not anyone in particular—of course not. She missed being in a relationship, is what it was, missed being part of a pair, one of two, seeing her black leather pumps next to black leather loafers, her blue toothbrush next to his green (it was green, if her memory serves her right). To have someone laugh or respond with a witty comeback at her obscure references to Madame Bovary or The 40 Year-Old Virgin (which had fallen flat with Samuel Mendez, who neither watched Apatow nor read Flaubert. She had to stop seeing him.) To be so sensitized to someone's touch as to feel it through to her bones. She had not felt that way—to be so desiring and so desirable—in seven years.

Nearly every man fell short. Ridiculous! her grandmother had railed, time and again, as every socially-appropriate match arranged by Emily did not flourish beyond the second date (if Rory was being polite; otherwise, the affair usually ended at the first). He (they) just wasn't intelligent enough. Or funny enough. Or sweet enough. Not the right smile. And the hair was off. (She did find herself slightly more partial to blondes, but refused to reflect on why that was so. She's become a great walker, and a bit more partial to tea, and so what?) And the toothbrush, should she happen to discover, upsettingly never turned out to be green.

She had a pretty framed photograph on her desk, of two dark-haired blue-eyed women on the grass with a dark-haired blue-eyed toddler on the lap of the younger. Your son is adorable, co-workers would say automatically, as they perched on the edge of her table and glanced at the picture. Sometimes she corrected them. Sometimes she didn't. The strangeness of her 46 year-old mother having a little boy was not lost on her 29 year-old self, as was the achiness of having a little boy who was not hers bouncing on her lap. At your age, your mother had a 13 year-old daughter, Emily once said caustically at dinner. Coming from her, that too was ironic and strange and achy. Why should her life be so demarcated by social norms for age and status? Have a relationship, a child, at 29. (Don't get married at 23.)

And so she continued to date. But with disembodied detachment, as she is while at the supermarket picking out the necessary, tolerable piece of anti-oxidant fruit to eat at least once a day.

Then one evening four months ago, David Monroe came along, at Emily's nth find-Rory-a-suitable-mate fete. Blonde, intelligent, nice, and a pair of warm enough arms to wake up to in this winter season. He will do. She felt respectable having a relationship at 29. In the eyes of her grandmother and the rest of society, at least, her sexuality, personality, and other oddities will no longer be questioned. He will save her from dating.

Unfortunately, he could not save her after all. Her carefully cultivated okay-ness with the life she did not throw away was about to crumble with David's close connection with one Louisa Monroe. She could not have known that what she had thrown away seven years ago was about to come back. And that her heart cannot be persuaded to keep still, keep itself from becoming completely undone, by his return.

ii.

There are things that had not changed in the life and ways of Rory Gilmore since graduating from Yale and refusing Logan Huntzberger's marriage proposal seven years ago.

She still ate Pop Tarts for breakfast. At times, for dinner.

And she still talked to her mother everyday. This morning's call was especially crucial to Rory's job. Her ability to finish reading, editing, and writing the drafts crammed on her desktop hinged on her finally making a decision once and for all.

"What do you think I should do?" she asked Lorelai plaintively. (Some things had not changed, see.)

"I really can't tell you, hon," Lorelai replied in a distant voice, drowned by a cacophony of children's loud and high-pitched voices in the background. "What do you want to do? You know if you don't want to go, you could always say you have babysitting duty with your slavedriver of a mother—your poor forty-six-year-old-but-still-hot-mother—who is saddled with a five year-old child precisely because she was so freakin' hot. That should do the trick. I can't believe you'll be in Hartford and not here, anyway."

"I don't know what I should do…or want to do. I wouldn't ask your opinion if I knew," Rory groaned, impatient. "Hey, is that the play date you're having for Ian?" she asked, referring to the noise, and smiling when an off-key chorus of "Hi, Rory!" jarred in her ear.

"Okay, remember when you were 8 and you asked me whether you should pick the brown-haired doll or the yellow-haired doll with the birthday money your Grandmother sent you and I said you should get the brown-haired doll because it kind of looked like you, when what you really, really wanted was the red-haired doll because then you could pretend it was Anne of Green Gables? We bought that brown-haired doll and you never played with it. You did sulk for a good day and a half, too."

"Dolls? You bring up my 36-hour obsession with the red-haired doll?" Rory snapped.

"Top of mind. Ian had been asking why he had to keep playing with your brown-haired doll."

"Give gender equality a rest, Mom. How much longer til you give him his frogs and snails and puppy dogs' tails?"

"I'm just trying to give my two children, whom I love dearly and equally, the same growth experiences," Lorelai reasoned unconvincingly. "Anyway, until his 6th birthday party. Until then, he'll just have to continue training the brown-haired doll for Steve and Kwan's WWE matches. At least some child is finally playing with the poor thing."

"I do remember her, the red one," Rory relented, allowing herself a brief reminisce. "Ugly, but red-haired. It just didn't seem right for me to buy an ugly doll with Grandma's money, even given the literary allusion to L.M. Montgomery," she sighed wistfully. "But we need to focus here," she reprimanded her mother and herself.

"But I was on-topic," Lorelai huffed. "My maternal pearls of wisdom have rolled underfoot and gone unappreciated yet again. The moral of little Red's story is, you do know what you want, sweetie. Really. And the second moral is, you sulk when you don't do it or get it. Sulking and wallowing inside for days on end…or at least for 36 hours, though ever gracious about things for the rest of the world to see. Now this engagement party…"

"Hm…so, uh…the engagement party is…the red-haired doll?" Rory muttered dubiously.

"The party may be the brown-haired doll, or the red-haired doll, and Emily is David—or whoever—so there!" Lorelai said, triumphantly, shouting "Steve and Ian, get off of Kwan this instant! And go lick that chocolate syrup off your faces…good boys!"

Then, without missing a beat, she added, "What I'm saying is that deep down you may really, really want to go, and by not going, you'll wallow in regret for the rest of your days. Or you may really not want to go, and by going, you'll wallow in regret for the…"

"I do appreciate the insight into my indecisiveness and eagerness to please, Ms. Anna Freud," Rory interrupted curtly. "I ask you one simple question, Mom. Just tell me what to do and I'll do it," she followed on cue. And let's put these past four sleepless, stupid nights to an end.

"If it was so simple, then why are you agonizing over it so much?"

"I'm not agonizing." It's been five sleepless, stupid nights, not four, she corrected herself.

"Yes, you are. I can see you right now. You're rubbing your fingers against your forehead, chewing your bottom lip, agonizing, agonizing…"

Rory promptly put her hand down and twiddled a pencil to keep it busy. "I'm not agonizing…just…wondering. If it's okay, you know? Wondering if it would be okay with everyone…him and his fiancee…that I'm there." She said this in a small voice. Really, why would anyone care she was there?

"Hm," Lorelai murmured meditatively. "I'd wonder too. I'd wonder how he looks now. You know if it were me, I'd go just to see. Maybe his hairline has receded. Maybe he's growing a paunch. A wart on his nose."

"Or maybe he's just as devastatingly handsome and reeking with charm, as ever," Rory retorted drily. She's seen his photos every now and then, in the news; every now and then, in her mind.

"Devastatingly handsome?!? Reeking?" Lorelai gasped. "Tell me you've been reading the Kathleen Woodiwiss with a half-naked Fabio on the cover."

"Well he was," Rory said a tad defensively. "Maybe not devastatingly, but um, quite."

"And you're afraid because his devastatingly handsome looks will persuade you to rip out your bodice and pour your heart out of your heaving bosom."

Rory cringed. "It's really about time to return The Flame and the Flower to Babette, you know. Unfortunately, my ripped bodice and dripping bosom would go to waste as he's getting married, which is the whole point of this…this…decision. I mean, it might be awkward. Is there some social rule that says I should or I shouldn't go? Or am I stupid for thinking it might be awkward?" Seven years. God, so stupid.

"You mean heaving bosom, dear. She is agonizing…agonizing…" Lorelai breathed heavily on the other side of the phone. She began to hum Farmer in the Dell along with Ian's playgroup.

"David wants me to go; I really should go, for him. He's so eager for me to meet his favorite cousin, the effervescent Louisa Monroe…and so eager for me to meet her fiance, the amazing Logan Huntzberger!" she half-laughed incredulously.

"Effervescent? She sounds like bubbly. And you know, a bit of bubbly is your best friend at that party."

"Announcing the engagement of the effervescent 23-year-old Louisa Monroe, daughter of hotel magnate Charles V. Monroe and New York socialite and humanitarian Vanessa Monroe, to Logan Huntzberger, erstwhile CEO of the Huntzberger Publishing Group in Western Europe, and now Chairman of HPG in the United States," Rory read aloud from last week's edition of The Times Style section. Unaccountably, it was still there, lying on her desk. She rolled it carefully, along with her neat little Pro-Con list, and slipped it quietly in the trash can by her feet. There.

"Sounds like a match made in heaven," Lorelai muttered, with a shudder that Rory wouldn't see. "Just what the Huntzbergers ordered." There was the briefest moment of awkward silence, during which Rory and Lorelai remembered how Rory was not what the Huntzbergers ordered.

"So David knows. Of course…?" Lorelai hedged. "He knows that you know more about Logan than he does or ever will. Hey, maybe you know more than the girl, even. She sounds like she might have a purity pledge, so in among these virginal socialites. You could give her notes on the hot and heavy."

"Ugh, stop it." Logan really liked it when I pressed my tongue against the pulse point on his neck. She shook her head so hard to be rid of the unbidden thought she made it spin. "Of course David knows. Well…" Rory amended, rifling through what she managed to reveal to him. "…part of it."

"Which part?"

"The important parts…that Logan and I, uh, knew each other from Yale."

"Uh-huh. You knew each other, all right. Down to whether he wore boxers or briefs, left the toilet seat up, and drooled while he slept. That can't be all you told him, Rory."

"I said we knew each other, and we went out for a while."

"A while, meaning 3 years."

"Time is relative. It was 7 long years ago, ergo, 3 years count as a while," Rory bit out tersely.

"Guess so, Einstein. While Jesus said, and I quote, 'the truth shall set you free'."

"I wasn't lying. What else should I have said? That oh, and by the way, it was pretty serious and he did ask me to marry him but I turned down his proposal? Totally unnecessary. Logan and I are practically strangers. It would have ruined the whole….engagement thingy that David has been so excited about." It would have marred the lovely, cream colored invitation with its intricate calligraphy.

You are cordially invited to cocktails to celebrate the happy occasion of the engagement of Louisa Monroe to Logan Huntzberger.

That's what it said, in black cursive, so expensive as to be definitive. A happy occasion it is, then. Which goes perfectly well with the effervescent bride-to-be, though not with the inexplicable scratchy sensation at the back of Rory's throat. They were practically strangers...

Lorelai turned the tables and proceeded to badger Rory for her opinion on Ian's upcoming space-themed birthday party. (Should I still include Pluto in the décor? I feel sorry for the poor little minor planet.) Clearly, the topic had run its course and Rory would just have to decide on her own.

She was calmer, though, when she hung up the phone and decidedly awakened her computer from its sleep. And like a revelatory sign, there was David on her IM window:

what time shd i pick u up

There really was no need for any more of this fuss and indecision; of course she would go. If she didn't, it might mean that she is giving more weight and meaning to this event—this man—than was warranted. If she didn't, she wouldn't be able to show David—show him—that she was happy, the loss muted and the pain made distant by these last seven years that they heard not a thing from each other. If she didn't go, she wouldn't be able to see for herself whether he was happy these last seven years, without her.

More than seven years were gone since this little history of sorrowful interest had reached its close; and time had softened down much, perhaps nearly all of peculiar attachment to him,--but she had been too dependent on time alone; no aid had been given in change of place…No one had ever come within the Kellynch circle, who could bear a comparison with Frederick Wentworth, as he stood in her memory. ( Chapter IV)