Love is a story she tells herself each night before falling asleep.
The first time she falls, it's Cinderella, and Madeleine and Louise and all the other stepsisters are watching with something resembling respect as her Prince spins her around on the dance floor. She's having so much fun at the ball that she doesn't even notice her carriage turning back into a pumpkin as the clock strikes twelve.
Second is the Beast, in his beautiful fortress of books and roses with sharp thorns. She's alone, and scared and she knows that nobody thinks she wants to be here. But the Beast is good, really, and she can't help but think that if people can't see beyond the thorns, they don't deserve the rose anyway.
The third time she's Sleeping Beauty, only the princess hasn't even realized she was sleepwalking through things until she's not anymore. She's bled before, pricking her finger on other boy's thorns, but she's made a bandage of parties and risk-taking. The Prince can dance, and talk nice to her grandparents, and the fairy who cursed her through genetics, hardwired her to be unlucky in love, has been banished from the kingdom.
There's a fourth, but he was nobody, just a man who didn't know how to dislodge the apple from her throat, leaving her to cough it up herself. Fourths aren't important, or at least that's the story she tells herself.
There was one book on Rory's shelf that she avoided looking at most of the time. She'd kept the poems in a folder for years, but for her 24th birthday Roger had bound them into a book. (Things had fallen apart soon afterwards.) He'd teased her about the Dorothy Parker ones ("Can they really be considered love poems?") and had frowned over the Margaret Atwood, but they were all there in the book. He'd gotten the order wrong; the Dean poems were all mixed up with the Logan ones, but she didn't want to explain that the poetry was chronology, a story of her life. It didn't matter anyways; she knew which poems went with which time period.
There was Dorothy Parker's Love Song ("… My own dear love, he is all my world—/ And I wish I'd never met him") for 11th grade; there was Marilyn Hacker for the beginning of her time with Logan (You did say, need me less and I'll want you more) and One Art for when they broke up for good (The art of losing isn't hard to master;/so many things seem filled with the intent/to be lost that their lost is no disaster). Roger didn't have his own section, just a few scattered poems, because Roger rarely reminded her of poetry. He reminded her of news print, of champagne, of documentaries. Of her mother's ill-fated engagement to Max Medina. (To actually compare the two would be giving Freud too much credit; he was like the engagement, not Max himself.) Roger was solid, respectable. Someone both her mother and her grandparents could approve of.
The Jess poems were the most out of order, but she'd long since stopped expecting chronology to apply to him. He was the marginal notes in every book they'd ever shared. He was smoke coming from a faraway house fire, so beautiful that you can almost forget that somebody had to burn for this.
These were the men that she had loved, bound neatly as though they could be contained, put away only to look at on special occasions. It wasn't as all-encompassing as a boyfriend box, but if there was one thing Rory Gilmore was good at, it was travelling light.
The smog-filled streets of Manhattan were a breath of fresh air. People walked fast crossed streets didn't talk avoided eye contact. Prided themselves on their ability to drink bad coffee. Rory could do all of these things too now. She could now gulp down the worst cups of coffee she could have imagined without batting an eye. The city swallowed her whole. It worked, like a bad habit.
She did know a few places, though, with coffee that rivaled Luke's, and she was in one such place now. She was waiting for a coworker who was going to stay in her apartment for what Rory referred to in her head as The Duration. It wasn't the nicest place; her pay was barely enough to live off of in Manhattan and her apartment reflected this. But it was close to work and left her enough money to afford food. Anyway, as far as apartments went it was adequate. Her view was of another identical building, and her bed was two feet from her kitchen counters, but it was hers. Richard and Emily would be appalled and probably insist on paying for a nicer place, had they ever set foot in the place. As it was, they were just please she was living close enough to come to Friday Night Dinner, which Emily still hosted, albeit sporadically.
Shana slid into the seat across from her. "Sorry I'm late! I was walking past St. John the Divine and I realized that it's the backdrop to one of my favorite books from when I was a kid. I just had to go in and see if it looked how I pictured!" She pushed her kinky hair back into place behind her ear and went to order her coffee.
When she returned, Rory asked, "Which kid's book is set in the cathedral? You know, that sounds familiar, but I just can't think of what it was."
"The Young Unicorns."
"Oh yeah, I have read that! The church had all sorts of secret passages, right?" Rory wrapped her hands around the warm mug, letting the heat transfer.
"Exactly. But from the looks of it, the real life church has a depressing lack of passageways."
"That's too bad."
"So, you said you're looking to sublet your apartment for a few months?"
"Yeah. Just temporarily. I'm taking some time away from the city. November through January. I might need to spend a few nights here, though."
Shana laughed. "That won't be a problem. Just let me know in advance and I can crash with my boyfriend. That's what he'd like me to do permanently, but I'm not about that kind of commitment, you know?"
"Okay, so you're fine with me staying a few nights as needed?" Rory clarified.
"Of course. So tell me, why are you spending three months away?"
"My mom's getting married. I was already visiting her for Christmas, so she decided I should come for longer to help her plan." For some reason, Rory found herself focusing more on the rough grain of the table than on Shana. She forced herself to resume eye contact, a strategy she'd been working on for years. She'd never quite gotten over being shy, just better at hiding it.
"God, I can't imagine spending three months with my mother, " Shana said. "You two must be close."
"We are." Somehow, that wasn't enough. She needed to make Shana (and maybe herself) understand that this trip back to Stars Hollow was a good thing. "And going home's fun. I went back all the time in college. My mom lives in this tiny town where everyone knows everyone else, and everyone who lives there is really eccentric."
Shana wrinkled her nose. "I couldn't do the whole small-town thing. Too white."
"Actually, Stars Hollow has a pretty large Korean community," Rory said, a little too quickly. "I think my friend Lane was set up with every Korean guy in a ten mile radius during high school. Her mom had her whole future planned out. She was supposed to marry a doctor."
"Oh yeah? I assume she didn't."
"She married a musician instead. They're in a band together."
"Oh, is that who you went to hear last month? You said something about that."
"Yeah, that was them." Rory looked around the coffee shop, feeling oddly as though she were back in Stars Hollow and somebody was about to come up to her and join the conversation. She was relieved to find that she recognized no one.
"What about your mom, did she have any big plans for your future?"
It took Rory a minute to realize that she had been asked a question. "Harvard, then journalism. But it was what I wanted, too."
"I thought you went to Yale."
"Yeah," Rory said, staring past Shana out the window. "I did go to Yale."
"I still think it's nuts that you grew up somewhere that small. I couldn't do it. Don't you find it suffocating, living somewhere where everyone knows you? I wouldn't want everyone knowing my business like that."
Rory's mind flashed to the town's reaction when she'd broken her arm, but she suppressed the thought. "I liked it. It was a good place to grow up."
Shana shook her head. "Crazy. Now, we should talk rent…"
It took an hour and fifty nine minutes to get from Manhattan to Hartford with no traffic, that is, if you trusted Google maps, which Rory wasn't sure she did. In the more plausible circumstance that there was traffic on a Friday night, it took considerably longer, leading to apologetic calls to grandparents because she could never bring herself to leave at 4:00 when she doesn't have to be there until 6:45.
"I'm pulling off the freeway now," she assured her grandmother at 7:15. "I'll be there in just a few minutes."
"Dinner is waiting, Rory."
"I know, Grandma. I'm really sorry."
"You should really start leaving earlier. I know that you have work, but surely your boss understands that there's such thing as family obligation. It's not as though we have these dinners more than once a month! Surely you can get out of work early that often."
"I have to hang up so I don't get pulled over. I'll be there in a minute."
When she arrived they went straight to the table, where the salad had already started to wilt. Emily glared at it as they sat down. "I told that maid to wait until you'd arrived to set it out!"
"It's all right, Grandma. I'm sure it'll be good anyway," Rory said. Please don't punish the maid because I was late.
"That's not the point! I don't care whether the salad is good, I care that I gave that girl specific instructions and she chose to disobey them!"
"Well, she's probably terrified to put anything out late after what happened Monday," Lorelai said.
"Monday?" Rory asked.
"I was here to talk about the wedding, remember? And when I stayed for diner the maid put the salad out at one minute past seven, and Mom threw a fit."
"I did not throw a fit," Emily said haughtily.
"Mom, you were like the Cookie Monster when he's gone too long without chocolate."
"I was not! I simply told her that if she couldn't do the job I requested, she'd be better off finding another career. And I suggested that she not try to become a dancer, since she lacks the sense of timing necessary for ballet."
"Grandma!"
"Well, it's true."
"Why don't we move on to a more pleasant subject," Richard suggested, adjusting his bow tie.
Rory took a bite of her salad, trying to ignore the hunger pangs she felt at the smell wafting in from the kitchen.
"Yes, let's," Emily said. "Rory, have you heard from Logan Huntzberger lately?"
Rory was prepared for the question; she'd known it had to come eventually. "He sent me a friend request on Facebook, but I didn't see it until a few days ago. I don't go on much."
Emily looked scandalized. "Facebook? What's that, some sort of ghastly online photo album of people's expressions?"
"It's just a website for friends to keep in contact," Rory said.
"Well, I don't know if you would have seen it on this website, but Logan is doing very well in California. He's moving up through his company quite quickly, and I have it on good authority that he's on his way to becoming very wealthy, completely independent of his father's money."
"He's a bright boy, that Logan," Richard said, all but winking at Rory.
"He's seeing this horrible woman though," Emily said gravely.
"Oh, dreadful," Richard agreed. "He brought her to the Huntzberger's Christmas party last year, and she never spoke for more than five straight minutes about anything but tennis. Seems she's an amateur athlete of some sort."
Rory tried to focus solely on the salad in front of her. One of the cherry tomatoes had a large bruise on it, but she speared it on her fork and ate it anyway.
"He seemed miserable with her," Emily said. She looked at Rory slyly and said, "You know, if you go to see him the next time he's in the area, I'm sure he'd love to get coffee with you."
"Hold on," Lorelai said, holding up her hands. "You're not seriously trying to set Rory up with a guy who not only broke up with her two and half years ago, but already has a girlfriend?"
"I'm not trying to set Rory up with anyone, Lorelai. I'm simply suggesting that two old friends get a cup of coffee and catch up. There's nothing wrong with that, is there?"
"No, but—"
"Just because you didn't like the boy doesn't mean that he isn't still a part of Rory's life. Didn't she just say he sent her some sort of request on that website?"
"Mom, everyone adds everyone on Facebook! It doesn't mean anything. I think Marsha Lewis from my kindergarten class friended me, do you want me to start dating her?"
"Lorelai, you are getting hysterical."
"This is really good salad, Grandma," Rory said. "I like the walnuts."
Everyone ignored her.
"You just can't let things go, can you? You pick a man you like, and that has to be the right one, never mind what's best for Rory. It shouldn't surprise me, you did it with me and Christopher! You just keep pushing and pushing, and you won't even think about—"
"That's enough," said Richard firmly. "Now, this is supposed to be a pleasant dinner. None of us see Rory as much as we'd like, and I will not spend the limited time we do have with her listening to you quarrel with your mother, do you understand?"
"Yes, Dad," Lorelai said sullenly.
"Very good. Now, Emily, as we've all finished our salads, perhaps it is time to see where that maid got off to so she can bring us the next course."
"That dinner was completely deceptive," Lorelai said as they walked towards their cars.
"I agree." Rory pulled her coat tighter around herself.
"It smelled so good! How could it have tasted that way?"
"I don't know what to tell you."
Lorelai grinned. "So, should we make up for it with a second dinner at Luke's?"
Rory resisted looking down. "Actually, I think I'm just going to head home tonight."
Lorelai looked startled. "Head home? You never 'just head home' after Friday Night Dinners. Sweetie, do you really want to spend the next three hours driving?"
"I'll be fine. Anyway, it's nine at night, maybe it won't take that long."
"But it's after nine on a Friday night, when all the bad Connecticut kids leave for New York to go clubbing." Lorelai had moved on to a playful tone. "Come on, we can watch The Godfather. Much better use of three hours."
"Mom, I just really want to go home."
"Um, okay," Lorelai said, looking down and then quickly back up. "If that's what you want. You should go."
"I'll call you on Sunday."
"Good."
They looked at each other.
"Bye, Mom," Rory finally said, hugging Lorelai tightly.
"Bye, Kid."
Traffic wasn't as bad as it had been on the way to dinner, but the drive still dragged on. By New Rochelle, Rory was scared she might fall asleep at the wheel. She pulled off the freeway and into the city in search of coffee. After a few minutes of driving, she found a 24 hour diner and parked.
The diner was mostly empty; there were two people drinking coffee and a group of teenagers that seemed to be leaving. Rory sat down at a dusty corner table. There was no point in trying to get her drink to go; unlike Lorelai, she had never mastered the skill of drinking coffee while driving.
"What'll you have, dear?" the matronly waitress asked.
"Could I get a 16 ounce coffee please?"
"Coming right up. Is that all you want?"
"Yes."
The diner was small and dark. There was a jukebox in the corner, and as the teenagers were leaving one of them fed it a dollar and set it to play a Clash song. "Ah, but which Clash song?" she could hear Jess' voice asking in her mind. She ignored it and went to sit down.
After a few minutes, the waitress set down the coffee in front of Rory. "Here you are, dear."
"Thanks."
Rory was finished drinking by the time the song was over. Not wanting to wait, she went to the counter to pay. All in all, the whole thing took less than five minutes, and then she was back at her car, turning the key and waiting for the engine to turn on.
Nothing.
She tried several times more, getting increasingly frustrated after each one. "Dammit," she said, hitting the top of the steering wheel with her hand. She dug her phone out of her purse and dialed the operator. "Hi, I need the number of a tow truck."
As she waited for her car to be towed, Rory tried to come up with a plan for getting home. She knew there must be a way to get a bus from here to lower Manhattan, but it was eleven o'clock at night. She'd never taken the bus that late at night before, and wasn't eager to. She tried to think of some friend from work who'd be willing to spend upwards of two hours driving to get from Manhattan to here and back, but she hadn't been with the New Yorker for very long; no names came to mind.
She scanned through her contact list, not quite sure what she was searching for, when she saw his name. He'd given her his cell number at her birthday party, admitting that he'd finally caved and gotten one. She clicked call.
"Jess? This is Rory. You wouldn't happen to still be in Manhattan, would you?"
Jess told her that it would probably take him an hour to get there, maybe more since he had to borrow a car from a friend. Luckily, Rory's computer had been with her in the car, so she went inside the diner, ordered more coffee, and got to work on one of her articles. Officially, she was a freelance journalist, so her salary depended on her number of accepted pieces. Because of this, writing at night was nothing new to her; whenever she woke up in the middle of the night stressed out about money she would get out her computer and work. It made her feel less like she was standing on the edge of a precipice looking down.
She'd just finished proofreading the article when Jess arrived. "Hey." His hands were shoved awkwardly in his pockets, as though he weren't quite sure what to do with them.
"Thanks for coming to get me." Rory almost stood, but that felt more awkward somehow.
"No problem."
"Do you want to sit down?"
"Sure."
Rory closed her laptop and put it into her bag. "I was just finishing up some work."
Jess nodded and sat down across from her.
"You should get some coffee. It's really good here," she said.
"Okay, I will."
"Thank you so much for being willing to drive all the way here just to get me."
"No problem."
"So, um," Rory looked at her hands, which were folded on the table. "What are you doing in New York, anyway? Shouldn't you be back at Truncheon by this point?"
"I'm actually taking a break from Truncheon."
"Oh."
"Yeah, I saved up enough cash to take some time off and see about writing another book. Don't know how long my money will last in New York, but it seemed like the right place to be."
Rory's eyes widened. "Jess, that's amazing! I can't believe you're writing another book!"
"It's not going to be anything earth shattering, but it keeps me going. Didn't someone say that books were the only thing that could keep a mind from scratching itself raw?"
Rory thought for a moment. "He says something like that in Cloud Atlas."
Jess nodded. "Yeah, that's it."
The waitress returned and Jess ordered a cup of coffee.
"Could you bring us both a slice of pie, please?" Rory asked.
"Apple or cherry?"
"Apple. We're celebrating."
As the waitress left, Jess raised an eyebrow. "Celebrating, huh?"
"Hey, I don't care what you say, I'm proud of you. Writing a book is a huge deal."
"It's fine, we can celebrate. But you're the one who dragged me all the way out here to pick you up, so you'd better be paying."
"Of course."
Rory couldn't think of anything to say, so she lifted her mug and drank the cold dregs at the bottom, barely managing to avoid a grimace as they slid down her throat. To make small talk with Jess seemed inadequate, but all that came to her mind were quiet, polite questions, the sort that could be asked at a fancy party with people she hated but not at one in the morning in a dingy coffee shop with a boy she had once loved.
"How's Luke?" she finally asked, even though she already knew the answer.
"Fine."
"Come on, I thought you'd outgrown your one syllable answers."
"Hey, don't mock my answers. They've stood by me through some difficult times."
"Jess."
"Luke's been good. He's been trying to get me to visit more. Keeps making excuses about needing help with things around the diner or getting the rest of his stuff moved to your mom's house, but I think he just likes having me around. There, how many syllables was that?"
Not enough. "He misses April."
"Yeah, he talks about her sometimes."
Silence.
The pie arrived. The apple in it looked as though it had come from a can, probably with lots of sugar added. Despite years of growing up with Lorelai and her love of processed foods, Rory would have preferred real fruit. She ate it anyway.
"Read any good books lately?" Jess asked.
Rory smiled and started to talk.
"Coffee?" Lane asked.
Lorelai just looked at her.
"Stupid question," she said, pouring. "So where's Rory this morning?"
"New York." The words stung a little bit in Lorelai's mouth but she tried not to show it.
Lane looked surprised. "But wasn't last night a Friday Night Dinner?"
"Yes."
"I don't understand. Rory always stays over at your house after Friday Night Dinners. It's one of the few times I know I'll see her."
Lorelai shrugged, not wanting to make this a bigger thing than it had to be. "Last night she said she wanted to go home."
Lane looked as though she were about to respond, but Caesar called her from the counter. "Lane, Gypsy's pancakes are ready!"
As Lane was turning to go, Lorelai put a hand on her arm. "I'll tell Rory you asked about her."
"Thanks, Lorelai."
As happened many days, Lorelai had only managed to get a few sips of coffee before somebody sat down across from her. Today it was Miss Patty. "Lorelai, sweetie, where's Rory?"
"Still in New York."
"Oh. Why?"
"Just—wanted to be there, I guess." Lorelai held up her hands in a partial shrug.
Miss Patty's face turned coy. "Is she still dating that handsome young man she brought to town last year? Robert, wasn't that his name? I thought she'd bring him to her birthday party this year, but I guess you can't expect someone to invite their own guest to a a surprise party!"
"It was Roger, actually. And they broke up just a little while after that visit."
"Why? They seemed so happy together." From the expression on Miss Patty's face you would have thought Lorelai had just informed her of Roger's death rather than a simple breakup.
Lorelai forced a smile. "You know, Patty, Rory never really told me why. It just didn't work out, I guess." That was what Rory had said when her grandparents asked the same question. Emily had spent the entire evening glaring at Lorelai, most likely because it was the same excuse she herself had always used. She hadn't had the words to explain to Emily that she hadn't wanted to teach Rory this, that her example was not the one she wanted Rory following.
"You mean you didn't ask her?" Miss Patty asked, looking aghast.
"No, I asked. But Rory's an adult now. She doesn't have to tell me every aspect of her life if she doesn't want to."
"Surely she must have said something to you. Was it really bad?" Miss Patty lowered her voice for the last part. "I promise not to tell anyone else if you don't want me to."
"Patty, I really don't know."
"But Sweetie, you tell each other everything!"
Apparently not everything, Lorelai thought sadly. "I have to get to the inn," she said. She stood and left, looking regretfully back at the last few sips of coffee, which she'd had to leave behind.
End of Chapter Notes: I didn't feel like any of the references in this chapter needed explanation, so I didn't write any. I can't decide if I should only explain the confusing references, or if I should just do all of them in the end notes just to make it easy. If you have an opinion, you should let me know in the comments. Thanks!