There's The Rub
Summary: There's The Rub with a few...subtle differences: Paris never stayed and Dean arrived earlier than in the show.
A/N: Thanks for the reviews, feels nice to be writing again, hope I'm doing okay...
Disclaimer: I own nothing. Are these things really necessary?
"Okay." Lorelai said, glancing around the room, "One more thing: why is Jess' jacket on your chair?"
There were very few times that Rory Gilmore was at a loss as to what to say, but now was definitely one of them. The last time she had felt this acutely 'deer in the headlights'-y feeling was probably the morning after the dance at Chilton, when she'd fallen asleep with Dean at Miss Patty's, but this was worse. Rory knew her mother's feelings towards Jess all too well; she figured that finding Jess' jacket on her chair was on a par with finding Dean's boxers under her bed to Lorelai.
Lorelai's eerily calm voice cut through Rory's thoughts, "Why is it here, Rory?"
"Well..." Rory started, staring at her fingers as she twined and untwined them, nervously, "Jess brought a care package that Luke made for me last night."
"And, upon entering the house, he headed straight for you room, threw down his jacket and made good his escape out the conveniently open window? The nerve!"
"Mom, will you please hear me out before you get mad and jump to conclusions?" Rory asked, exasperated.
"That was not getting mad and jumping to conclusions; that was me being cutely sarcastic while my daughter tries to explain why she is housing the jacket of a guy who's not even her guy. If I was mad, you would be halfway to a convent right now. Explain away."
"He- he brought over my food – per Luke's request – and then kind of invited himself to dinner-"
"Well, I can see why you just had to invite him into your room then..."
"And so we were eating dinner, then Dean came over, and he found Jess, and started to get really mad and he said- he said he couldn't do it anymore and we- and we broke up." Rory spoke numbly, trying to be void of emotion in order to get through the whole explanation whilst retaining her composure.
"You what?!" Lorelai exclaimed, an edge of sympathy now present in her voice.
"We broke up! Again! And- I dunno, I just- I didn't want to be alone; you were gone and I just wanted someone there. So I asked Jess to stay. And so he did, in the chair, far, far away from the bed."
Lorelai's internal resolve crumbling, she took a seat next to Rory on the bed and put a comforting arm around her, before asking one of the many questions still floating around her head, "Why him?"
"What?" Rory asked, confused, "I said: I didn't want to be alone and he was just...there."
"But, you could have called me, you knew I would have taken any chance to escape the evil clutches of my mother, or called Lane's "secret" (from only her mother) cell phone and she would have been round here in less than three seconds. Why was Jess the one you wanted?"
Rory frowned, not altogether prepared for this line of questioning, "He was just here at the time, and-"
"Yeah, but-" Lorelai tried to interject.
"But nothing, I don't want to talk about this anymore." Rory said, climbing out of bed, "Can we just get breakfast and forget all about my horrible, horrible night?"
Lorelai nodded, "Okay, if that's what you want, fine."
"Thank you." Rory said, walking to the kitchen, before quickly turning back to Lorelai, "Mom?"
"Yeah, hun?"
"Are we okay?"
"Yeah, we'll be fine. It'll just take a little time to get over thinking my darling little girl was deflowered by the town hoodlum."
Rory made a disgusted face, turning back around to start getting out some pop tarts, "Do you have to say 'deflowered'? And you said you didn't jump to any conclusions!"
"It wasn't a conclusion, it was just one of the many possibilities flying around my pretty, little brain upon seeing his jacket in your room." She paused for a second, "And would you rather I used more colourful language than 'deflowered'?"
"On second thought, deflowered is just fine."
"That's my girl," Lorelai grinned, grabbing a pop tart, "and I better be scoring major cool points here! Not once did I voice my concern of said deflowering before hearing an explanation, nor did I threaten the life of said hoodlum!"
"Said daughter is very grateful." Rory quipped, happy to be on lighter terms with her mother.
Lorelai paused for a minute, before asking, "So he was a perfect gentleman the whole night?"
"Well I was asleep for most of the night, so who knows? Maybe he pawned all of your jewellery, broke the fancy china AND made some long distance phone calls, we'll never know."
"Okay, Miss Sarcastic, but when the phone bills come in, he will be my number one suspect." Beat. "And since when do we have fancy china?"
"Since you started using the word 'deflower'?"
"Touché." Lorelai conceded, before asking, "Do I get one more question?"
"At the risk of losing some of your cool points, yes."
"How are you? In light of recent events relating to a certain tall, floppy-haired male."
"Well, I haven't really had a chance to think about it. I was kind of overwhelmed last night by the shock of it, it all seemed really sudden and huge, and I was pretty much unconscious as soon as my head made contact with my pillow. Then, this morning, Jess was here, and then you were freaking out, and I still haven't really had a chance to come to grips with how I'm feeling. It's weird, last night I felt so awful and today it's just...numb. I'm beginning to see that this has been a long time coming - I mean, not many people stick with their first boyfriend for their whole life..."
"Okay," Lorelai cut her off, "I can see that you're confused..."
"You can tell?" Rory deadpanned.
"Hey, I hear confusion goes great with coffee! How about it? Luke's? Plus, I hear there's a certain hoodlum there who likes to steal jewellery and make long distance phone calls..."
"Coffee sounds good."
"Okay, then, to Luke's!"
"To Luke's." Rory agreed.
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"Oh Luke!" Lorelai cried, entering the diner with Rory in tow, "I need enough coffee to make up for a day of tofu, cucumber-water, Emily and no caffeine, stat!"
Luke rolled his eyes, pouring each woman a cup and setting them down on the table, "Since I don't think I actually have that amount of coffee on the premises, this'll have to do."
Lorelai scrutinised her cup carefully, while Rory grinned at her mother's antics, "I suppose this'll do. But keep 'em comin'!"
"Hey, Luke," Rory grabbed his attention before he went off to serve someone else, "I just wanted to say thank you for the care package, that was really nice of you."
Luke looked at her blankly, "What care package?"
Rory was cut off before she could say anything else, "Hey, Luke, I think Taylor's trying to put a sign up on your window..." came Jess' voice from counter.
Luke's attention was immediately drawn to Taylor, who was, indeed, standing outside looking too overly casual to not be doing something to annoy Luke. He stormed over to Taylor, muttering vague profanities interspersed with various 'Dammit, Taylor's.
Lorelai turned to face her daughter, "That was weird."
"Yeah, it was." Said Rory, looking over at Jess, who had returned to reading at the counter; the picture of nonchalance, "I'm gonna go order, you want anything?"
"Enough pancakes to clog a couple of arteries?"
"Done." Rory said, walking up to the counter, looking expectantly at Jess.
"Can I help you with something?" he said at last, putting his book down.
"Huh. Looks like Luke didn't know anything about the care package."
"You wanna order?"
"Which is kinda strange considering it was he who supposedly prepared it."
"Y'know, we're pretty busy today, you better decide what you want fast, God forbid a Gilmore go hungry."
"You're squirming, I've never seen you squirm. It's entertaining."
"Well, I s'pose we could always give you a salad."
"Not gonna answer me, are ya?"
"Something nice and healthy for a change?"
"Okay, I give. Two stacks of pancakes, please." Rory relented, then added, "And let me know if you're ready to engage in actual conversation, instead of the one-sided ones you're so fond of."
"Will do."
Rory walked back to her table, chuckling quietly to herself at his stubbornness about admitting to actually doing a nice thing.
"So you're all done, then?" Lorelai asked when she sat back down.
"Yup, pancakes are on their way."
"No, I meant with the flirting with diner boy over there." Lorelai corrected, a mischievous glint in her eye.
Rory rolled her eyes, "I was not flirting."
"Whatever," Lorelai said, casually, "just seems to take you an awful long time to order some pancakes."
"As opposed to the time it takes you to order when Luke's here..."
Lorelai narrowed her eyes, suspiciously, "What are you saying."
"Nothing," Rory replied, smirking as she mimicked Lorelai's calm expression of before, "just seems you spend a lot more time talking to him than his other customers do."
"Okay," Lorelai started, relenting, "can we play nice again?"
Rory laughed, "Just 'cos you know I'm right."
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Dean was not having a good morning. He felt heartbroken and somewhat betrayed after his break-up with Rory last night and, on top of that, he kept getting the weirdest looks from townspeople. They were mainly sympathetic, with hints of incredulity at times, and I wasn't happy about it. Of course it could be paranoia, but you never could be certain in this town. It was for this reason that he was skulking behind an aisle in Doose's Market, trying to hear what Patty and Babette were talking about, in the hopes that it would give him a clue as to why he had been attracting so many looks today. Surely they had not found out about the break-up already?
"Haven't you heard?" he heard Babette say to Patty, "Maury saw him this morning, walking out of the house, bold as brass!"
"No!" Dean heard Miss Patty exclaim in disbelief, "Mind you, I don't blame the girl, you just have to look at the boy to, well... But, really, it's cruel to string the other poor boy along like this..."
"And, Maury told me, he was wearing the same clothes we saw him in last night, bringing her all that food!"
"Well, who would have thought it of Rory, our Rory? And with Jess?" Miss Patty asked, rhetorically.
At this point, Dean understood everything clearly. Everything from why he'd been getting the strange looks that morning to why Rory had always been so defensive over her friendship with Jess. But how long had this been going on for behind his back? Or did she just take the first opportunity after the break-up to- to...
He refused to even think about it. He needed answers, and he needed them now. He stormed out from behind the aisle, startling Babette and Miss Patty, who immediately tried to appear as if they were doing nothing more than innocently browsing the shelves. He didn't stop, and continued straight out of the market, the conversation he had just heard replaying over and over in his head, until he saw Rory walking back from Luke's with her mother and made an angry beeline towards her.
Dean was definitely not having a good morning.
A/N: Ugh. I feel like I did really badly with that chapter but it did not want to be written. I'm sorry if it was rushed or OOC, but please have mercy on a poor, sleep-deprived, homework-ridden writer who has spent sooo long this week just staring at an empty document. I'll give you a cookie? Promise it'll get better soon, I just had to get this out of the way before I could start having some fun writing. Apologies again, and thanks if you've made it this far in the story,
Jay-La52
PS: I should be updating about once a week (at the weekend), but if my teachers are particularly demonic on particular weeks and set me tonnes of homework, it'll probably slip into once every two weeks.
