A/N: I'll have more notes at the end, but I feel the need to warn you all that this chapter is slightly experimental, so I apologize in advance if anyone finds it a bit confusing. I did my best to make it as clear as possible.
Now, without further ado...
Chapter 3 - Sophie's Choice
Rory Gilmore: Hey, Mom! Are you free for lunch today? I'm in the neighbourhood and I thought I'd stop by. Let me know.
Lorelai Gilmore: What do you mean, you're in the neighbourhood? Are you okay?
Rory Gilmore: It's a long story, but, yeah, I'm okay. Just need to talk to you.
Lorelai Gilmore: You sure it can wait until lunch, kid?
Rory Gilmore: Sure. I'll be waiting for you in the house. Bring the burgers.
.x.
The red Prius that Rory had bought upon her return to New England was parked in the driveway when Lorelai came home, an occurrence that had become far too unusual for their liking. Normally, she'd be thrilled that her daughter had found the time to pay her a visit, but it was Friday afternoon, and knowing that Rory was supposed to be at work filled Lorelai with worry. Nothing good could have caused the sudden opening in her schedule; of that Lorelai was sure.
That worry grew into dread when, on her way to the porch, she noticed that the door to the garage had been left ajar. If her motherly instincts were right, she was about to walk into Shakespeare-approved levels of emotional distress, because there was only one thing that Rory could be looking for in there.
The Logan Box.
In true Lorelai Gilmore style, Rory had refused to get rid of everything that reminded her of Logan, arguing that they'd been together for so long that she'd be all but possessionless, if she made a bonfire out of everything he'd ever seen or touched. So, instead, she'd shoved everything into a huge cardboard box, labelled with his name on the top, and (upon realizing that her closet was too small for the final product) stashed it all away in the garage.
In the seven years that followed, she'd only tried opening that box twice - one in the search for a misplaced dress, and the other in the hopes that she'd be able to prove to herself that she'd healed.
Both attempts had ended with Rory crying on the bathroom floor after drinking too much tequila (and God knows what else), sobbing as she told her mom that she hated him for not loving her.
In Lorelai's opinion, that amounted to three times too many that Logan had reduced Rory to a puddle of snot and tears on the bathroom floor, and she wished - like a mother often does - that she could make her daughter forget that he'd ever existed.
But she couldn't, and truth be told, even if she could, she wouldn't. She was far from a hopeless romantic (in fact, she liked to think that she was the opposite of that), but even she had to hold onto the hope that one day Rory would look back at her memories from those three years with fondness, acknowledging Logan's role in shaping the person that she'd grown up to become. Lorelai herself struggled with that; she hated that the playboy who broke her baby girl's heart had changed her, and she hated even more that some of those changes had been for the better.
So, instead of doing the impossible and erasing Rory's pain away, Lorelai would resign to do what was within the realm of possibility. She'd sit with her daughter on the bathroom floor, running her fingers through her hair and drying her tears, listening to her incoherent rants and cursing his very existence. Once it became clear that, however better she might be feeling, Rory was in no shape to crawl back into her bedroom and face the spilled contents of the Logan Box, Lorelai would be the one to bring her a pillow, leaving her to wallow in her misery for just long enough to shove all the contents back into the box and take it back to its rightful place in the garage.
More than a saying, 'out of sight, out of mind' had become a hope.
One that, in the privacy of her own thoughts, Lorelai couldn't find it in herself to hold on to.
Which was why she was surprised when she walked into Rory's old room to find her daughter surrounded by clothes and books and jewellery, clutching her pink Birkin bag like a lifeline as she looked through the pictures from his graduation day.
"Rory?" she called, and her daughter hesitantly peeled her eyes away from a picture of her and Logan sharing a chaste kiss on the Yale courtyard.
Then, Rory smiled at her mother, the brightest smile Lorelai had seen in seven years, and when she spoke, her voice was dreamy and the littlest bit joyful.
"He doesn't hurt anymore."
.x.
Honor dropped the shopping bags on the floor, kicking off her shoes while Logan took off his leather jacket. Buying him a new suit had taken them almost an hour, until they found an Armani piece that he actually liked and she considered good enough to appease their mother. Then, seeing as he was in such a good mood, she'd dragged him along as she looked for the perfect dress for that night - and the Ferragamos to go with it.
His light-heartedness hadn't subdued throughout the morning, not even after their shopping trip officially turned into running errands in preparation for the funeral. They hadn't talked about it, but she knew that the sharp upturn in his mood was a direct result of having spent the night with Rory.
"So, Baby Brother, how do you feel about using some of Dad's Macallan to fix me a Manhattan?"
Her suggestion was met with Logan's first deadly glare of the day, and he let out an impatient sigh before replying, "That's sinful, Honor."
"More sinful than shooting it?"
Logan rolled his eyes. Years earlier, he'd sneaked a bottle of Macallan to one of his 'sub-parties' in the pool house. When Mitchum walked in to see Logan and his friends doing shots with his eight thousand-dollar whiskey, he got angrier than Logan had ever seen him, and after all the guests were gone, Honor had been able to hear every word of his reprimand, all the way from her bedroom.
Aside from having to kiss his brand-new Nintendo 64 goodbye, Logan was grounded for months, and although his late teens and early twenties were filled with much bigger screw-ups, that was the moment of absolute stupidity that Honor seemed to have chosen to never let him live down.
"Fine. But may the records show that I'm doing this under protest."
She gave him a radiant smile and they walked to the living room together, Honor gushing about his bartending skills while he tried to dismiss her praises. He headed straight for the bar cart, and she plopped down on the couch and lit a cigarette, her feet propped up on the coffee table.
"Mom's gonna kill you," he said, without even turning around to look at her. Shira had, once again, decided to quit smoking, which mean that cigarettes were supposedly banned from the house, and Honor was blatantly breaking the rules.
Sometimes, he was convinced that the only difference between him and his sister was that she worried about getting caught.
"Oh, please. I bet she's been living off Moët and Marlboros all week."
Logan laughed, handing his sister her drink and sitting on the armchair with his own glass of scotch. She studied him for a few seconds, once again marvelling at how happy he seemed to be, especially when compared to how gloomy and irritable he'd been all week.
"You know that I love you with all my heart, right?"
He looked at her, knowing exactly where she wanted that conversation to go. He'd be annoyed, if he wasn't so surprised that it'd taken her all morning to bring up that subject.
"I know."
"And you know how I've never tried to meddle in your love life? Even when you slept with all my friends, or when you were dumb enough to break up with Rory, or...- Well, the whole thing with Chloe, to be honest." She smiled at him. Unlike their mother, she had nothing against her brother's ex-fiancée, except for the fact that she knew they weren't getting married for the right reasons. She'd never bought his lies about being in love with her, and she'd even overheard him telling Colin that he knew she was only with him for his black Amex. But he insisted on telling his family that he was happy, and their mother was so openly against their relationship that Honor had never found it in herself to tell him that he deserved more. "You remember that, right?"
"I do."
"Good. 'Cause I'm cashing in thirty years' worth of meddling rights, and you'd better listen to me."
"I'm listening."
She flicked her ashes in the ashtray on the end table, giving him a stern look. When she spoke, her tone was just as grave as her expression, and her words sounded almost ominous.
"Tread carefully."
.x.
Lorelai wasn't stupid.
She may not have had the chance to get the Ivy League education that Rory had, but frankly, that was more because she was too busy having a baby to graduate from the pretentious high school that would have gotten her into Yale. And she was the first to admit that she wasn't as freakishly smart as her daughter - then again, who was?
But none of that meant, in any way, shape or form, that she was stupid. Especially when Rory was involved.
Standing on the doorway to Rory's room, seeing her daughter surrounded by memories of him, she knew that there was only one thing that could have caused her heart to magically mend itself, after seven years failing to do so: Logan must have decided to come back from the dead.
Still, she wasn't prepared to hear her daughter say, between bites of the hamburger she'd brought from Luke's, that he'd left her a voicemail on Wednesday, asking her to come over to his parents' house for dinner, and that, instead of ignoring his message or making a pro/con list that would have turned against him, Rory's reaction was to get in her car and drive all the way to Hartford on a whim, simply because he'd asked her to.
Lorelai tried to hide her disapproval of Rory's subservience, but Rory knew her mother way too well to overlook the way her lips pursed slightly, or how she seemed to be struggling to keep her thoughts to herself.
"I know I shouldn't have gone," Rory admitted, voicing Lorelai's thoughts with that astounding precision that only they were capable of. "But he sounded so apologetic on the phone, and I...- I guess I got curious."
"Curious enough to drive an hour and a half just to find out what he wanted?" Lorelai asked, her tone sounding a little more challenging than she'd planned, and Rory gave her a sad smile in reply.
"Wouldn't you have done the same, if it was Dad?"
Lorelai's reply was a frustrated sigh. She hated that her daughter was still so tightly wrapped around Logan's finger that she'd unquestioningly give in to his demands, but she hated it even more that it'd taken her so little to pull the Christopher card. She knew that her own relationship history didn't give her much room to talk, and she was well aware of the similarities between Rory's relationship with Logan and the one she'd had with the father of her daughter. But she also knew how horrible it was to realize that the closure that she and Chris had spent decades hoping for wasn't the one they needed, and it killed her to watch her daughter make the same mistakes she did, hanging onto the hope that she'd be lucky enough to get a different ending.
"I'm not sure your dad and I are such a good yardstick, sweetie."
"But you would have."
"Yes," she admitted. It wasn't like she'd never driven to Boston for less than noble reasons, and there was no point in lying about it when Rory knew a huge chunk of the truth. "I would."
Rory smiled at her. She knew how hard it could be for her mom to admit to things that could be detrimental for whatever point she was trying to make, and she appreciated the honesty.
"He apologized. A lot. Then we talked. Yelled. Then talked some more."
"Did you at least get to slap him?"
"Well, no." Rory laughed. "I wanted to, but even without any slapping involved, I think we're good. I understand his side, and it looks like he understands mine, so... It feels like we're on the right track, or something."
"So, he made you drive all the way to Hartford just so he could apologize?"
"Well... that was his excuse, but no, not really."
Lorelai narrowed her eyes at her daughter. It didn't take a rocket scientist to figure out that the most logical explanation for why Rory was still in Connecticut was that she'd slept in Connecticut, and she'd find it really hard to keep her thoughts to herself if Rory revealed that the whole thing had just been an elaborate booty call.
"Please, tell me you didn't have sex with him."
Rory felt her cheeks burning. She should have imagined that her mother would figure everything out right off the bat, but she'd hoped she'd get a little more control over the pacing of that conversation.
"Please, don't get mad."
"Rory!"
"Mom! Please! I told you not to get mad!"
"I'm not mad, Rory! I'm...-" Lorelai sighed, not knowing what to say. 'Disappointed' might have been a good word, if it wasn't such a cliché. She was disappointed that her daughter had, yet again, fallen for his act, disappointed that Rory was trying to act like it wasn't a big deal, and most of all, disappointed because she knew that she was in no position to judge.
God only knew how many times she'd slept with Chris, even though she knew it would be the worst possible decision.
"I don't know what to say," she confessed. "Did you at least get to talk about it afterwards?"
"We did, this morning."
"And...?"
Rory hesitated, sipping at her milkshake while she debated on whether she wanted to open that can of worms. On the one hand, Logan's accidental confession was huge, and her mother would definitely be able to help her sort out its possible implications. But she felt like she had to figure out some things by herself before she could talk to someone about Logan's lingering feelings for her.
So, instead of giving Lorelai the play-by-play of their breakfast, as she normally would, Rory chose to just say, "And... nothing. He was halfway through a rant about how we have the worst timing, and then his sister showed up."
.x.
"Honor." Logan looked at his sister, his serious expression a perfect match for hers. "When have I ever been anything but careful?"
She laughed, taking a long drag of her cigarette. "I mean, sure, if by 'being careful' you mean 'somehow managing to never get a girl pregnant by accident'. But what about all those near-death experiences? Or that appalling criminal record? Or, better yet-"
"Okay, I get it," he interrupted her, his tone slightly more annoyed than she'd expected. "I'm reckless and irresponsible and there's no way I won't fuck this up. Is that what you're trying to say?"
"Of course not! I'm just saying, you've never been too big on considering the consequences before you take a leap, but right now, you might want to hold off on diving head-first, at least until you know how deep that pool is. I love Rory, and I'm over the moon to see you so happy, but, Logan...- Condoms can't protect you from catching feelings."
"And there aren't any casts that can mend a broken heart," he added, earning a sympathetic smile from her. That kind of statement was never made if not by experience, and while there was a part of her that had once hoped that he'd someday get to know the woes and joys of true love, that didn't change the fact that he was her precious baby brother, and she'd felt his grief over his breakup with Rory almost as if it was her own.
"No amount of Jack Daniels and coke, either," she added.
"I would know." He sighed bitterly, leaning his head back against the backrest and staring at the ceiling as his mind once again went through the hazy memories of the first two years post-Rory. His downward spiral had been dramatic, fuelled both by the need to find something that could take her place and the desire to feel like the person he was before her - and what better way to feel like the old Logan than by blowing thousands of dollars on cocaine and taking a new girl home every night?
He'd been well on the way to crashing and burning, and Honor was the only person who noticed it in time to drag his sorry ass into a therapist's office, threatening to get their parents involved if she found any reason to suspect that he was slacking off.
Not that she had ever expected - or even wanted - Logan to rise from the ashes as a new, straight-as-a-ruler man. And proof of that lied in the way she nudged his arm with her shoulder, offering him her cigarette with a small smile and an apologetic, "I can't do much better than this right now."
Logan smiled back at her, declining her offer with a head shake. He'd tried smoking a few times, back in high school, when a pack of Marlboros and boxed wine were the coolest, most rebellious things a guy could own, but overall, he'd never been all that impressed by the experience. The lingering smell was too bad, the taste too unpleasant, the buzz too unnoticeable.
But his lack of desire to give nicotine another chance didn't stop him from giving his sister a mischievous look, flashing her his best up-to-no-good smile as he said, "I can, if you're up for it."
Honor smiled back at him, with an impish smile that put his to shame. She'd worry about him later, she decided; for now, she'd just enjoy spending time with her incorrigible little brother who, sixteen long years later, still kept an Altoids tin filled with weed on his bedside table.
"Mom's gonna kill us when she finds out."
Tomorrow, she decided. Tomorrow she'd be a sister, a mother, a role model.
"You mean, if she finds out"
Today, she was just the big sister in yet another installment of 'you and me versus the world'.
.x.
"I need to tell you something else," Rory said, dipping a french fry in her vanilla milkshake, and Lorelai caught herself thinking that Luke (and Taylor) would have an aneurism at that sight. "But I need you to promise me that you'll let me talk before you freak out."
Lorelai sighed. It seemed that nothing good could ever come from a preamble like that, and she couldn't help but worry about what might have happened, during Rory's dinner with Logan, to warrant such an opening.
"I can try," she replied. "But I reserve the right to judge."
"Fine," Rory conceded, deciding that there wasn't much to judge, anyway. She took a deep breath, bracing herself for what she considered the hardest conversation of the day, and then announced, "Logan invited me over because apparently, Mitchum talked him into offering me a job."
"What, is Logan the head of the 'Daddy knows best' club, now?" Lorelai asked, unable to keep the sarcasm off her voice.
"Looks like it," Rory said, remembering all the things he'd told her about his dad, over dinner and breakfast. She didn't know exactly how it'd happened, and she might never give in to the need to ask for details, but she did know that their relationship had become far less strained than it used to be, and that he'd grown to respect Mitchum's opinion much more than he let on. "Anyway, he's taking over the family business, and he offered me a position in the Hartford office. It's a really cool job, once in a lifetime kind of opportunity, and I'd get to move closer to home. Maybe even live in Stars Hollow."
"Sweetheart, you know that I'd love to have you closer to home. Hell, I'd start remodelling your bedroom in a heartbeat if you told me you're moving back in, but no matter how many things you add to the 'pro' column, this is still Logan we're talking about."
Rory looked at her mom, trying to find the words to voice a concern that had been bothering her ever since Logan first mentioned the idea of her working for him: in which column should she write his name? He was right; they did work well together, but they were also more than capable of being dysfunctional to the point of counterproductiveness. Would their decade of emotional baggage somehow work to their advantage, keeping them constantly in sync? Or would it be too heavy to let them thrive, condemning them both to the biggest failure of their careers?
She didn't know, and for someone who liked predictability and certainty as much as she did, not knowing was the worst kind of torture.
"I know it's Logan, Mom; I'm just not sure if it's all that bad."
The look Lorelai gave her was almost pitiful, and Rory had to admit that she was surprised by how sensible she sounded when she said, "If the only reason why it'd be any good at all is because you miss him, then yes, it's exactly that bad. This is your career we're talking about, kid."
"But it's not just because I miss him," Rory protested. "It's the kind of job that some people would kill for."
"I know, honey, but the question is, would you?"
Rory sighed, frustrated by how she kept coming back to the fact that accepting Logan's offer would be a huge detour in her life plan. Sure, being a book critic was nothing like her lifelong dream of being an international correspondent, but she could at least claim that she'd had enough living off a suitcase for a lifetime, and as long as she still had a desk in a newsroom, she'd be able to fool herself by thinking that one day, her editor would give her a piece that could be considered real journalism.
But after seeing Logan dangle a new, shinier option on her face, she kept thinking that the price she paid to keep that illusion alive was getting much bigger than what she was willing to pay. Her reputation as a ruthless critic who destroyed writers in her reviews had led people in the business to refer to her as 'the Gordon Ramsey of Literature' (a title that, she'd eventually learned to wear like a crown), but it also meant that, more often than not, her assignments were books that she wouldn't have touched with a ten-foot pole, if she'd been given the choice. She missed reading good books, just as much as she missed her mom and her hometown and the feeling that what she was doing meant something, in the grand scheme of things.
"I wouldn't," she admitted. "But I wouldn't have killed to go to Yale, either, and I don't regret it one bit."
Lorelai nodded in acknowledgement. She didn't like the idea of Logan showing up out of the blue and trying to sweep Rory off her feet with a job offer that sounded too good to be true, but she also knew that her daughter was knee-deep in denial about how miserable and frustrated she was at work, and she worried about the consequences that an eye-opening moment - such as a very tempting job offer from her ex - might have.
Rory was too goal-oriented to settle for mediocrity, and Lorelai still remembered the last time she'd found herself without an arrow pointing north.
The mug shot stashed away in the Logan box made sure neither of them would ever forget.
"Looks like you've made up your mind, huh?"
"I guess so."
"Can I just give you some motherly advice, then?" she offered, earning a surprised look from Rory. Ever since the Yale debacle, Lorelai had done her best to refrain from expressing her opinions on Rory's life-changing decisions, only offering her input once it was too late for her daughter to change her mind.
That approach had, for the most part, been working just fine, although she did regret not having told Logan that his girlfriend wasn't ready to become his wife. She could have saved her daughter a lot of heartbreak and pain, if only she'd acted a little more like Emily and a little less like herself.
A bitter, bitter pill to swallow.
"You know that my love-hate thing with Logan has always veered more on the hate side."
"Yeah?"
"And you know that I only want you to be happy."
"I do, but-"
"Shush, 'mother knows best' moment going on here," Lorelai chastised her. "All I'm saying is, if you think Logan will be it for you, then go for it. Take the job. Take all the leaps you can. Marry him, for all I care. Just make sure you won't end up heartbroken and unemployed if things don't work out the way you want them to. And remember," she grinned, "I let you pick your bridesmaid dress when Luke and I got married."
"Mom, no one's said anything about getting married."
Yet, Lorelai wanted to add. She still believed that Rory would have regretted accepting Logan's proposal, but she'd long since changed her mind about why. Seven years earlier, she'd told her daughter that he wasn't The One, that she wouldn't have hesitated in saying yes if he was; now, she was sure that he was the right guy, at the wrong place, at the wrong time.
But if her newest assessment was right, Lorelai was sure that it was just a matter of time before they decided that their unexpected reunion was a sign that those holdbacks were out of the picture. And once they did...
She could almost hear the wedding bells.
.x.
The guest bedroom on the third floor, with its bay window overlooking the driveway, had always been their go-to place whenever they planned on engaging in activities that their parents would frown upon - from curling up with first editions borrowed from Mitchum's office to smoking entire packs of cigarettes stolen from Shira's nightstand. It was there that Honor gave her brother her version of The Talk - the most brutally honest, oddly useful conversation about sex that he'd ever had - and where, for years to come, Logan would put her sisterly advice to good use with girls from school and daughters of family friends.
It was only natural, then, that after a quick stop in his bedroom to retrieve the Altoids tin from its place on his bedside table, they'd end up in that room, sitting on the bay window bench, sharing a moment of peace in what was bound to be one of the hardest days of their lives.
"I have a question," Logan announced, peeling his eyes away from the lawn to look at his sister, who met his statement with a laugh.
"It's not a philosophical question, is it? 'Cause I don't think I'm high enough for those, yet."
"It's not philosophical," he replied, feigning impatience. "It's about Dad."
"About Dad?" she repeated, her confusion sounding so legitimate that it was almost comical.
"Yeah, I...-" He sighed, taking a second to recollect his thoughts. "Do you think this is what he had in mind?"
"I'm pretty sure Dad would kill us if he caught us smoking weed in the house."
Logan laughed. "Oh, I know that. I meant Rory and I." He hesitated, glancing outside the window, regretting that he'd brought up that subject. "Do you think he was trying to get us back together?"
It was Honor's turn to hesitate. A few years earlier, the answer would have been obvious - Mitchum just wasn't the type of man who had the time or the energy to worry about who his son was dating. But things changed when Chloe became a part of the picture, and Honor had witnessed enough conversations between her parents to know that they'd have jumped at the opportunity to break off their son's engagement, if they weren't afraid that their interventions would result in Logan cutting them off his life entirely.
Still, she found it hard to believe that their dad would have gone to such great lengths just to give Logan a glimpse of a second chance, especially when she considered that no one, not even the great Mitchum Huntzberger, could possibly be able to time their own death with so much precision.
"I don't think that's what he wanted," she replied. "But I'm sure he knew it was inevitable."
A/N: I'm posting this a day earlier because this is one of my favourite chapters so far, and I was so excited that I just couldn't wait until tomorrow! So let me know what you think!
I'd also like to address the subject of Logan and drugs, which I've explored a little bit more in this chapter. I know this is a bit of an unorthodox portrayal, but. The first scene with Logan I've ever watched was the one where he and Rory are standing on the scaffolding and she makes a comment about how high they are ("I meant off the ground"), and to me, that whole dialogue implies that, (a) she's assuming (or even aware) that he does/has done drugs, and (b) she's right. Also, back when I first started plotting this fic, Tove Lo's Habits was playing nonstop on the radio, and it felt so perfect for my vision of Logan that I couldn't resist building a background on top of it.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and once again, thank you all for the support (there's nothing better than to wake up to lots of reviews and new followers!).
See you all next week!