Paging Starlight841

Inspired by Starlight841's Déjà Vu from their now-missing Kissmet series. Totally devastated they deleted all their stories. The stuff by Starlight841 … SO good. Some of my all-time favourites.

Notes: Another choppy pile of chopped liver. Sorry about that. I wrote this so long ago, I don't think I can even remember the backgrounds of these particular next gen OCs.

Oh, and in case you haven't already noticed, most of the fics posted here were written pre-revival. I just felt like unearthing and unloading a lot of stuff after watching it (25/11/16 forever!).


Lo's normally stoic, straight face was alight with genuine mirth. A workmate wondered if she was on the phone with that ridiculously smart husband of hers. The Dr Tyler with more than one PhD but sans the M.D. was an aerospace engineer who had worked for NASA since his postgraduate studies at MIT.

"Hey, Mom! It's your first pancake, here, calling to let you know I'm on-call this weekend, all weekend, so the old ball and chain and I won't be able to fly up for Friday night dinner. I did that kind and considerate thing the rest of you guys think is important and agreed to swap shifts when some poor schmuck in desperate need asked me. I even responded with a genuinely polite, 'You're welcome.' I'm sure you're pleased that Aunt Paris's uniquely abrasive tendencies didn't completely corrupt me while I was at Mass Gen."

Her workmate was wrong.

"Devon's really busy right now with his smarty-pants space science research and I'll probably be too preoccupied, you know, saving lives and stuff to inform the rest of the 'rents: from Dad to the grands to the great-grands. I know, not much of an excuse seeing as you're probably in another war-torn country, reporting on the tearful woes of refugees or something else equally shocking or interesting or heartbreaking or whatever. But, hey, it's not like we have access to the CNN jet …"

Lo sounded like she was leaving another impressively long-winded message for her mother.

"… although, I guess I could commandeer one of Dad's …"

Her workmate heard a beep and felt a buzz. They grabbed the pager clipped to their chest pocket.

"… I'm aware that I was raised me to be independent from what you, Grams and Grumps call 'unnecessary extravagances,' but I'm sorry. Commercial flights absolutely loathsome."

"Yo, Swan Lake!" they called. All in good humour, there was a lot of teasing directed at Lo for her youth as a prancing bunhead in a tutu and pointe shoes. She had attended Julliard for a year when she was fresh out of high school. "You're needed in the ER."

"I'll be there in a second, Jockstrap." Lo dished out as great as she was given. They joked to her about ballet and she had found ways to poke fun at them for playing football in college.

They frowned at the device in their hand. It was beeping and buzzing again. "Looks pretty urgent."

"Just a sec," Lo sighed. She took out her own pager and proceeded to frown at the flashing alert. She sped through the rest of the voicemail for her mom. "Sorry about that. I'm gonna save some of that irritatingly finite storage space we call a memory and just thank you in advance because I think it is so incredibly awesome how I can always count on my supportive mother who loves me unconditionally to pass on my messages without any convincing or coercion whatsoever, so, thank you. Hopefully we'll have enough time to make it to Hartford next week –"

Both of their buzzers began to sound off again.

"Let's go, Leotard!"

"I'm coming, I'm coming. Geez, dude! Take a pill. Sorry, Mom, gotta go. Give my love to the fam."

"Dr Tyler!"

Lo laughed. "I swear, every time someone calls me 'Doctor Tyler' I think they're talking to Devon. Married life is weird – but good weird. A nicer, simpler, good kind of weird." She lost herself in a classic Gilmore patented tangent of randomness before she finally hung up. "I no longer have to tote around that occasionally awkward and confusing and uncomfortable to explain, triple-barrelled, overly-hyphenated mess that used to be my last name. Not that I don't appreciate the source of my stunning good looks, but it was a mouthful!"

"Paging Lorelai Tyler – paging, in the most literal sense of the word!"

"Crap. I really, really need to hang up now. I just got 'Lorelai-ed.' Kisses! Bye!"


"'… Kisses! Bye!' End of Message."

"Humph." Rory stared at her phone blankly. "Someone 'Lorelai-ed' Lo."

"Did they now?"

"Yup. Sounded like they full-named her, too. I d-don't know how I fe-f-feel about that."

"What is it, Ror? Why the sad face and the stuttering?"

"She's married, Nate. Our little Lorelai was full-named with her new last name."

"Uh huh. I remember. We were at the ceremony. It wasn't lame or operatic. You looked beautiful in your blue dress. I was the handsome one in the tux who walked the bride down the aisle. There was champagne, and terrible dancing on your part –"

"Hey!"

"– and cake."

"Ooh! The cake! I remember that cake. It was rich and tasty. And round, like all the really good cakes are. The roundness of cakes is very important in my book. The icing ratio was a bit off, though, if you ask me. Frosting is key! Did I teach that girl nothing? Remember our wedding cake? The topmost layer – a whole tier made entirely out of icing! I don't think I'd ever seen my mom so proud. Now that was a good cake."

"Good enough to end your melancholy?"

"Yes. No. I don't know. All I know is I feel old and nostalgic. Lo's not a little girl anymore."

"Well, she is thirty years old."

"You know what I mean."

"You are still struggling with empty nest syndrome."

"Am not."

"And, now that Immy's in college …"

New York's beloved power couple strolled arm in arm through Central Park. Their fingers were tightly but comfortably intertwined. They missed this, the simple things – the holding hands, the sheer physical proximity, the talking face to face.

Nate and Rory Gilmore-Archibald hadn't seen each other in a week and were on an overdue lunch date. He'd retired from the New York Governor's office years ago but had his hands full at the Spectator. Rory was an international correspondent for CNN and it had become rare for her to stay in a single location for long.

When their youngest daughter had blossomed into the last teenager they'd (hopefully) ever have to raise and insisted that she didn't need her mother's overenthusiastic parenting anymore, Mrs Gilmore-Archibald dusted off an old goal. She had picked up her dreams of following in Christiane Amanpour's footsteps.

After the year that Rory spent writing for the New York Times, Nate had handed over his reigns at the New York Spectator. She was editor-in-chief of what had turned into their media empire for over two decades, since he had won the city's mayoral race; the start of his impressively prolific career in public service.

Rory loved the job but she had to run an entire paper and oversee every single one of its affiliated operations. Richard Gilmore's unstoppable business sense was something that she'd channelled and had put to fruitful use when she was in charge.

It had been a long time since the Spectator was an aging newspaper attempting to rebrand itself. It had grown into a successful brand associated with fairness and honesty and perseverance. Its parent company, Spec. Press, was a multimedia conglomerate monster synonymous with the greatest city in the world.


Their pairing had been found funny to many. She was a brain surgeon and he was a rocket scientist. Devon and Lo Tyler's courtship had sent more than a few disbelieving sniggers their way.

Lo was off the phone and had rushed to the elevator, managing to gracefully glide through the air whilst she sped. "You coming or what?" She popped an unimpressed hand on her hip, just like her Aunt Serena had taught her. "I thought we were needed in the ER for an urgent emergency." Her face fell into its infamous second-nature smirk. Lo's mom said she looked a lot like her late birth father when she did that. She had never met him. He was a Marine and had died on duty a few months after she was conceived.


The stressful hustle and bustle outside the conference room looked more attractive than the tearfully boring meeting Jack was manipulated into sitting in on that afternoon. Logan Huntzberger was in the process of acquiring another newspaper and had dragged his apathetic son away from New Haven to join him. With his big sister out of the picture, settled in Los Angeles and refusing to return, the future of the Huntzberger Publishing Group had fallen onto Jack's hesitant shoulders.

Jack used to love spending time with his father. That was before their lives in California were uprooted and they relocated to New England.

He was fourteen when the grandfather he'd never met had health problems and was forced into retirement. After Mitchum Huntzberger's heart attack-induced death, not long later, they moved to Boston while Shira kept her run of the house in Hartford. Work soon became his dad's first priority and he was sent to boarding school because no one had the time or could be bothered to put in the effort to deal with him.

It took less than twelve months for his mother to conform to the pressures of living in amongst American blue bloods. Ignoring her upper middle-class pedigree, the former Miss Sarah Blake was malleable enough to be moulded into his paternal grandmother's twisted ideals of a perfect wife. Jack's mom had transformed into a selfish, shallow shell of herself. And his sister … the second London hit eighteen and had her trust fund, she returned to the West Coast and hardly looked back.

The (former) San Francisco Huntzbergers hadn't been close to each other in a while. Logan was the most distant of them all. The Huntzberger Group's CEO for the past eight years became an impervious, emotionless rock the day their patriarch died. He had turned cold and hard. He was nothing like the man who had fathered a younger London and Jack, growing up in the Bay Area.

Logan's face twitched, only enough for someone who knew him really well to notice. A young man who worked for the NYC Pulse had politely knocked and popped his head in to summon somebody for some sort of important task, no doubt. Today's meeting was apparently 'important.' Staff at the Pulse knew not to interrupt Mr Huntzberger's meetings without a dire situation at hand.

Jack hadn't lived his whole life in the Northeast but the earnest-faced guy with the bright blue eyes at the door was instantly recognisable. He was the youngest Gilmore-Archibald boy – the journalist (just like his mother); the one with no political aspirations (unlike his father); the son who hadn't spent the last year gallivanting across the globe for no reasons other than a good time (the opposite of his older brother).

Hayden Gilmore-Archibald had sought work at a paper unaffiliated with his parents' new media empire and found it with the Pulse. An alumnus of Yale and formerly of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, he was now employed as a full-time investigative reporter. As far as Jack had heard during his unwitting visits to the Pulse offices, he was a hard worker and a, if possible, even more talented writer.

Jack didn't understand why his father's jaw clenched whenever Gilmore-Archibald made an appearance. His dad made the same tensed face he always wore whenever he was able to smell strong coffee. Jack's dad hadn't been able to stand the stuff for as long as he could remember.


Jack was sitting below a large tree and reading the Chronicle when a soccer ball flew at his head. The impact came from one hell of a kick. His nose wasn't broken but it sure felt like it was, and he would know. He'd been stupid enough to life to know what the real thing felt like.

He had set aside today's paper. He brought his hand up to his face. Something warm and wet coated his fingertips. He was bleeding.

Jack looked up in search of the Atomic Flee wannabe. A tiny figure swathed in a comically large orange and black sweatshirt, tucked into some loose jeans, ran up to him. There was no one else around. The offending soccer ball had to be from the person who proudly wore PRINCETON across their chest whilst in the wrong state. However, that was better than having HARVARD emblazoned on their clothing when standing within Yale territory.

Jack thought the cause of his pain was a young boy that had an older brother who went to the less impressive Ivy in New Jersey until he noticed a long, golden brown ponytail swinging behind the backwards baseball cap. When the figure came close enough to sufficiently scrutinise, Jack realised that the culprit was a girl.

She was pale, her porcelain skin far too fair to have spent much time away from the Northeast. It was the start of a new school year. The girl had most likely originated from out of town.

She drew nearer. She had to be a college girl, around his age if he had to guess. She was … she was beautiful. Jack didn't need to see beyond her shapeless attire to notice that.

She wasn't Jack's usual type by miles. She wasn't what he would describe as hot.

There wasn't a lick of makeup on her face. It was fortunate that her perfectly even complexion afforded the luxury of not needing it. Her assets were hidden, they weren't prominently put on display like any random pick from his usual rotation. Her slight five-foot frame indicated that she had anything but legs for days.

She simply didn't scream sex. Her very person equated to the exact opposite of what Jack always aimed for.

Still … she had to be awfully fit if her hard kick and lack of heavy breathing after sprinting to his side were any indication. Ergo, stamina. And she was gorgeous. Uncommonly so. She also looked a little familiar. Jack wasn't sure from where or when, but he knew that he'd seen her face before. He didn't know what to make of that.

A set of large eyes flashed with concern. Shocking blue locked on warm chocolate. Jack had never seen irises so startlingly rich a colour before. Those eyes suited her. The unearthly brightness went well with that ethereal baby doll face of hers.

Jack whipped out his second nature smirk, an inherent trait that had yet to fail in serving him well. "I can't decide whether or not this would quality as a cute meet." It seemed that there was a first time for everything, after all. His words fell upon deaf ears and his charm, a distracted stranger.

"I am so, so sorry!" the small girl earnestly cried. She yanked off the dark azure baseball cap that sat back to front on her brown – blonde – blonde-brown – brown-blonde? – head. She gently dabbed his nose with its rounded crown. "I wasn't really paying attention. Tryouts are soon, so I thought I'd better practice, but then my phone ra― oh, crap."

The girl's hands hastily handed Jack her hat and delved into her baggy jean pockets, searching for something. She pulled out a cell phone from her back pocket. "You still there?" She nodded at nobody in particular. "I'll call you back later. I might have accidentally maimed someone …"

Might? Jack chuckled to himself and then winced. His nose still stung.

"… yeah, yeah. Love you too. Bye." The girl turned her attention back to him. "And, again, I have to express how sorry I am about something I did to you. Which I am. Sorry," she grimaced. "I'm sorry about my ball and your nose. And my remissness, thereafter, which led to the rude interruption of my apologies about my ball and your nose." She sighed to herself. It seemed that she'd only just gotten how the sentence she just said had sounded. "And, yes, somewhere in the State of Connecticut, my Grams is saying, 'Dirty!' under her breath in a scandalised yet amused tone."

Jack Huntzberger raised an eyebrow. This girl was many things. Beautiful. Athletic. In possession of an impressive lung capacity. And very odd.


OR (alternate meeting – to be honest, I don't even know if this makes any sense anymore):

Immy Gilmore-Archibald sat alone in a slowly filling dining hall. A considerably tall pile of newspapers was stacked next to several bowls of what used to hold sugary, chocolately cereal.

From childhood, she and her siblings were trained to rise early for the sole purpose of snagging Gilmore-sized helpings of coco puffs before the stations had emptied in the morning at college. Before Immy started at Yale a few weeks ago, she had thought that her mother was insane for doing this. The two times she stupidly thought an extra however-many-minutes spent in the comfort of a warm bed would make no difference proved that her mom's reasons were sound.

Immy practically inhaled her fifth cup of coffee. It wasn't nearly as good as the stuff sold at the cart close to the rowdiest frat house on campus but it made do. She needed her morning fix. Deprive anyone with Gilmore blood coursing through their veins of coffee and thou shalt not live to see another day.

She had finished perusing all articles of interest in her inky paper stack when a select group of hungover guys stumbled into the dark wood-panelled room. She didn't recognise any of them. They dressed like her brothers and approached the empty table she was at, occupied by only herself.

The dishevelled boys, clad in crinkled designer everything, reeked of scotch and cigars. Their combined odour was more pungent than her dad and his friends after a poker night. One of them, a blond with short hair that stuck up in every possible direction, took a seat right next to Immy. The others followed suit and commandeered the rest of the space around her.

The blond, who greatly resembled an ex-boyfriend of hers, spoke up first. "Hey, do you mind if we sit here?"

"You and your pansy boy posse already did. Why try commencing with common courtesy now?" asked Immy.

"Pansy boy?" questioned the tall guy with dark red hair.

The brown-haired one quickly flicked a hand, as if burnt. "Ouch."

"Hostile," said the redhead.

"What did we do to deserve that?" asked the blond.

"I'm not the one who waltzed in here, smelling like an uncleaned gentleman's club during breakfast," said Immy flatly. "You do realise that this is the dining hall, don't you? This is a hall in which people dine. People eat here. It's lucky I already ate or I'd have lost my appetite. Actually, there is now the unfortunate possibility that it may come back up for an encore. Well done."

"We've got a live one here, gents!" The redhead was rubbing his hands together excitedly.

The blond pretended to be offended, though it was obvious he was more amused than anything else. "Pansy boy posse?"

"You're moaning and groaning after an evening of Cubans and some single malt. Hmm …" Immy daintily wafted some air towards her with her hand and sniffed. "… Macallan. Aged less than twenty years – I'd wager, eighteen. Surely headaches such as the ones you are all so clearly sporting warrant copious amounts of harder stuff than that."

"A girl after my own heart," said the brunette boy.

"I think I'm in love!" exclaimed the redhead.

The blond squinted at Immy and then smirked in recognition. "I didn't take you for much of a partier, Gilmore-Archibald."

The rest of the boys took a good look at her. Recognition struck them, too.

Immy narrowed her eyes at the use of her surname. No one else so far had been able to identify her straight off the bat after she'd cut and dyed her hair. "I'm not."

"Then –"

She cut the blond off. "It's been a displeasure. Goodbye, non-gentlemen. Unhappy hangovers." Immy got up to leave, but briefly turned back. She took a chance and whispered into the blond guy's ear. "In omnia paratus?"

The blond jumped up in his seat, and she laughed.

"Thought so." Immy grabbed a black blindfold that was in her handbag and dropped it in the lap of the boy next to his left, the redhead. "Thanks, but no thanks." She walked away, laughing.

"Now I know I'm in love," sighed Huck, the boy with the dark red hair.

Mack, the brunette, was scratching his chin contemplatively. "I thought she was the shy one in her family."

"Nah, that's the really smart surgeon one."

"'Really smart,' Huck? Really? You'd better hope the one that's a surgeon would be really smart, wouldn't you?" said Mack sarcastically.

Jack Huntzberger didn't join in on his best friends' conversation. He was speechless. He was just another Huntzberger boy rendered (momentarily, let's not forget) speechless by a Gilmore girl.


Jack sat near the back of his World Politics class for the subject's first tutorial that semester. He enjoyed school and wanted a good grade but had half an eye trained on scoping the female portion of the room. He couldn't help it. It was second nature. Jack was fortunate that he had excellent multitasking capabilities.

There was small figure at the front that remained a mystery throughout the class. This bothered Jack. He was more inquisitive than most. He couldn't stand leaving a stone unturned.

The figure was the size of a pre-adolescent boy and dressed like one too. It quickly became incredibly clear what their favourite colour was.

They wore cobalt Chuck Taylors, loose jeans and a huge, shapeless hoodie that was sloppily shoved up at the sleeves. Jack would've thought the puzzling person was some precocious child prodigy if they didn't have a long, glossy ponytail and feminine hands. Or pull their books and pens from a big, blue handbag that he knew could have cost as much as his Porsche if the glistening scales were any indicator.

Yes, he was a guy. And, yes, he did know how to identify and differentiate between the price tags of an Hermès premier product. He was a Huntzberger. Knowing things that were apparently 'a thing' and, therefore, everything about those things came with the territory.

Funnily enough, it was Jack's father from whom he'd learnt what a Birkin bag was. Not his Aunt Honour, who was practically a personal shopper for a party of one: herself. He wondered why his dad had stored this kind of menial information. He supposed that it didn't hurt with the ladies.

He blamed his father and the short attention span he'd inherited from the man.

Jack's proclivity for impatience had yet to divert his thoughts from the mystery girl that sat front row, centre. He had an insatiable appetite for knowing all the answers to all the questions he came across. His grandfather would proudly proclaim he'd make a great journalist when they visited. His dad would, then, steely respond that his future was his choice and nobody else's.

When left to his own devices, Jack was torn. He loved to write, always had. He also wanted to be like his dad someday. His father was legendary on the West Coast. Logan Huntzberger moved to California on his own with a nearly depleted trust fund and had risen to the top of Silicon Valley's technology rat race since then. Captain Industries had rendered Apple obsolete before Jack was even born.

Jack only had two years left to figure out what he wanted to do in the real world. He had to make this year and the next year count. He tried to forcibly remove the mystery girl from his mind. He tried to focus all his attention on his World Politics professor. He tried to reign in his wandering eye. Emphasis on try. And that's what he did. Jack had tried to do those things – for the rest of the hour.

He had two more years of college to go. He could be serious about life later. He could think about the future again in twelve months. There was no need to upturn his entire world now. Jack had no reason to make that big a change for a good, long while.

In the meantime, there was that frumpily clothed girl to figure out. And, perhaps, there was the blonde bombshell that had spent the past ten minutes checking him out to ask out.


Immy had taken a seat right at the front of the room at the beginning of class, which was why she'd ignored the funny feeling that someone was watching her. Except for the teacher, all of the eyeballs there were facing the same direction. Forward. And, doubtfully, at her.

The funny little feeling had lingered for the whole hour. It never went away. When the hour was over and the tutorial had finished, Immy spun around and inspected the occupants of the classroom before they left. She wasn't willing to miss writing down any notes for the simple sake of curiosity. Not when they could be proven important when midterms started.

Immy carefully scoured the place. There were some people in Yale sweatshirts chatting, a nerdy guy trying to balance a toppling stack of textbooks, a pair of good-looking blonds at the back unabashedly flirting like there was no tomorrow, and a group of girls fixated on their cell phones. She dismissed the thought that somebody had been staring at her throughout all of class. Her high school days with the current reigning Gossip Girl seriously messed with her paranoia.


Head bowed, books out and pen in hand, Dick was actually taking something seriously for a change. A round robin of a shocker for everyone who knew him – heck, anyone who had even heard of him. The eldest Gilmore-Archibald boy wasn't exactly known for his ambition. No matter how often his grandparents – Gilmores, Haydens, van der Bilts, Archibalds and all – went behind his parents' back in trying to change him, Richard Gilmore-Archibald's lazy ran stories upon stories deep.

It was fortunate that his laughable lack of work ethic had never hindered him. Only one of the Gilmore-Archibald children didn't graduate from high school as valedictorian, and it wasn't him. He and hard work were not bosom buddies but he'd taken a bet that he could graduate top of his class. Six years of indecisive flitting between majors before graduating from college and a lost year after that to 'find himself' later, Dick found himself back at Yale and in law school.

A sharp and rapid knocking issued from his apartment door, the result of a small fist rapping on thick wood.


"His Royal Hotness has returned."

"Like clockwork."

"Who was the idiot that first said predictability was boring?"

A collective of girlish sighs issued around the formerly little known corner that was home to the best coffee cart on campus. An athletic, six-foot four monolith of pretty-boy handsome was there for his first jolt of the day. Had Dick not been caffeine deprived thus far, he still wouldn't be weirded out whatsoever. He knew what he looked like in a mirror. He wasn't ashamed of his perceived attractiveness, nor was he too humble or bashful to appreciate its advantages.

"Hey, Sal. A double red eye, please."

"Cutting back, Gilmore?"

"I can't risk increasing my already astronomical dependency right now. The winter sport season's around the corner."

"Can't let down the Bulldogs, huh?"

"You'd be right, my man."

Someone approached the girls eyeing Dick Gilmore-Archibald.

"My, my. We have lofty aspirations for ourselves right now, don't we?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"The Gilmore-Archibald of every girl's eye, of course."

The Gilmore-Archibald sons were talked about as if they were a boy band that love struck fan girls picked their favourite to fawn over.

"Every girl's eye? I dunno. My heart's been pretty set on the smart one since high school."

"I've always been more partial toward the youngest one, myself. He is, by far, the hottest. In my opinion."


"I'm not being secretive!" cried Immy.

"Uh, yeah. You are. What? Are you ashamed of this person who appears to have preoccupied every precipice of your time as of late?" Lo's voice came from the phone.

"No."

"Was that supposed to convince me? Your tone wasn't very convincing."

"I'm not ashamed."

"Then you'll invite him?"

"Fine. Yes. Whatever."

"It is a him, right? Is that why you don't want to introduce this person you're dating? My, my. Has the family Mary's been doing a little college experimenting?"

"It's a him! No experimenting!"

"Overreact much?"

"Ignoring you now."

"So, this weekend?"

"I heard you the first time.

"Yes or no? I'd like to be able to pass on some verification sometime soon."

"I'll ask him if he wants to accompany me this weekend. Happy?"

"Ecstatic."

"Yippee."

"So, yes, it's a yes?"

"Yes, William."

"Shut up."

"My mistake. I meant to say Emily."

"I'm electively choosing to disregard your disdainful tone and take that as a compliment. Don't be late."

"Yeah, yeah."

"This weekend!"

"This weekend. Got it the first few hundred times. Bye."

"What was that about?" Jack asked as Immy hung up on her sister.

"Um, well …"

"Yes?"

"Are you particularly busy this weekend?"

"I'm not sure. Are you?"

"Huh?"

"I mean, I was planning on being busy with my girlfriend this weekend."

"Cute."

"So?"

"So?"

"Why do you need to know if I'm particularly busy this weekend?"

"You remember how we've been exclusive for a while now, right?"

"I'm aware, considering that I'm the one who suggested our exclusivity in the first place."

"And, well, it's not an uncommon occurrence for boyfriends to meet their girlfriend's families."

"I assume it's time to meet the parents?"

"Only if you feel comfortable with it."

"Hey, I'm game."

"It won't just be my mom and dad, though."

"Brothers and half-sister?"

"Plus the extended family."

"Wow."

"It's going to be a reunion, of sorts."

"Can't wait to show off the hottie you bagged?"

"Kinda a biggie, actually."

"Or not."

"Actually, 'some sorts' isn't exactly a good way to describe it. Big and official, is more like it."

"Are you trying to convince me to go or fend me off?"

"If you don't want to, I totally understand."

"Because it really sounds like the latter."

"Are you sure you'll be OK with this?"

"Hey, come on. It won't be so bad."

"If you're sure …"

"I'm sure."

"How do you feel about surprises?"

"You know me. Ready for anything."

"Even Scarface on a football field?"

"Huh?"

"Remind me to pack lots and lots of frozen peas."

"Why would you need to bring frozen peas?"

"They're not for me. They're for you."

"You lost me," said Jack.

Immy looked serious. "Just … trust me. If you really intend on coming, you'll need them."


"I remember my first time here. Intimidating. I'm … A family friend. I've known everyone here almost all my life."

"Jack. Nice to meet you. And yes on the intimidating front. I feel like Trump daring to tread Tinseltown in twenty-sixteen."

"Oh, don't fret. Everyone's cool, man. I'd steer clear of Brandt, though."

"Wha―"

Jack was interrupted by Liam blowing a whistle hanging around his neck while Andy threw a football at them.

"So?" said Andy.

"Who's up for some touch football?" enthused Liam.

"And there's you're proof, dude. Let's go!"


"You ladies ready to rock?" grinned Dick.

The boys and Immy were playing touch football. Liam hadn't been allowed to play since he was drafted in the NFL after college. He was wearing a whistle around his neck. The only involvement he was permitted with these days was refereeing.

"Hey, Baby Boy! Go deep, bro!"

Andy caught the ball, ran with it for a few fleet steps and then passed it back to Jack.

"I'm sixteen years old!" whined Andy. "Would everyone please stop calling me that?"

Everyone exchanged amused glances before poorly humouring him with barely placating smiles.

"Whatever …"

Immy had just slammed Jack to the ground to get the football.

"What the hell was that, Gilmore?" Jack was astonishment. "I know you said 'Scarface on a football field,' but you have boobs and this is football." He was shocked, really.

"And you have a pair of gonads – but I bet you'll have fun if those get hit," she smiled sweetly.

Sweetly! How was it that she still managed to look so sweet and innocent?

"Unbelievable. There's no penalty?"

"You want Liam to call that?" teased Immy.

Jack crossed his arms. "I thought this was touch, not rugby."

"Tough, superficial space cadet. You wanna quit?" she taunted, smirking.

He scoffed. "As if."

Jack smirked back and Immy laughed because he got her reference.

"I hoped you packed some frozen peas, Cher."

"Let's play, Cap Rooney."

"Wait, shouldn't that be you?"

Jack 'Cap' Rooney. Huh. Well, she wasn't wrong.

A van der Bilt, Jack was pretty sure, came up to him and patted him on the shoulder after Dick tackled him to get the ball that was just thrown to him.

"Don't worry, man. You'll pick up on how the van der Bilt clan likes to play touch football quick enough."