Chapter 4: Gilmore Versus Danes
The sun flickered through the window, the birds chirped, bathing the two young people naked and sweaty and wrapped in each other's arms.
Against Marty's chest, Rory stirred, to find her lover gazing down at her with a smile.
"Good morning," she purred. Marty just chuckled and bent down to kiss her. "We made love last night."
"Yes, we did," he chuckled, sounding far too smug for her liking, and she was just about to tackle him for another round when...
She sat bolt upright. "We made love last night." And she was still in Virginia Beach. Oh, god...
As if on cue, a phone lit up and beeped on the nightstand, barely placed there with care the night before. Rory dove for it, falling off the bed in the process, so that she barely missed the call. "Oh hell!"
Flipping through her notifications, Rory saw no less than seven missed calls from Lorelai, each voicemail gradually rising in its panic, followed by a clipped voicemail from her stepfather, Luke, the one she had just missed: "Come Home. NOW."
The couple flitted about the bedroom heater-skelter, quickly redressing. Rory raced out the door, but not before grabbing Marty and giving him the fiercest kiss imaginable. "I'll call you when I get in," she promised.
It was dark by the time she reached Stars Hollow. At Number 37, Maple Street, only a single light was on: emanating from the living room, it seemed.
Entering the house as quietly as possible, Rory noted that the source was the lamp over her stepfather's favorite easy chair...
Which Luke Danes was now perched in, a newspaper in his lap, his reading glasses pushed down to the bridge of his nose. Lorelai had given him quite a needling for that, when Luke had first taken to wearing them. "We're getting old, Butch," was all she said about it.
Now, however, the reading glasses could not mask the fact that Luke was not happy, as he finally met his stepdaughter's eyes.
"Where the hell have you been?" he asked shortly.
Rory winced. Far better would it be to just admit the truth now; she was clearly in enough trouble as it was. She felt like she was 16 again, only back then it would have been Lorelai taking on the role of both mother and father in reaming her out. "Virginia Beach. I went to see a friend. I'm... I'm seeing someone."
Luke quirked an eyebrow, his lips in a tight frown. "Ah. And evidently this tryst was just so important, you left your daughter here for an entire night with no notice!"
And here it comes... Rory thought, even if the sight of a Luke Danes thoroughly pissed off at her was a rather new concept. Sure, he had been gruff with her before, but never... mad...
"No note! No phone call!" Luke worked himself up into one of his world-famous rants. "Laurie was crying for you the whole night! We only just got her down an hour ago. What the hell were you thinking, Rory? You can't just put your kid on the back burner, call a time-out for a few hours! Whatever this... distraction is down in Virginia Beach, you are ending it now!"
Rory gawked at him, his words tripping a wire somewhere deep within her. Anger roared to life. "You're not my father! And don't you dare lecture me on how to parent my kid! You don't know what it's like to be one!"
That got him. Luke stumbled back, almost as if he was physically hurt. Rory's shot had gone home, and they both knew it. Stepfather and stepdaughter regarded each other in a strange tableau, and for the first time seemed to become aware of their own behavior.
Then, the mask came on. That emotional mask that Luke sometimes put up to guard against the deep hurt going on inside him. For if there was one thing Luke refused to do, it was cry in front of others. He stalked out of the Gilmore house, barely remembering not to slam the door shut in his pain, lest he wake Laurie sleeping in the next room.
Sagging slightly, Rory turned towards the stairs and bed... only to find her mother on the banister, an unrecognizable look of fury on her face. She only pointed a shaking finger towards the door.
"Get. Out."
Shaken at her mother's wrath, Rory stumbled out the door, little caring where her feet might take her. She somehow ended up at the Gazebo in the town square, which didn't surprise her in the slightest. She had come here often in her youth to think or shake off a round of emotional torment. Unable to choke back a sob, Rory put her head in her arms and wept. There she remained for an untold amount of minutes, kicking herself for how she had neglected her daughter. Treated Luke. She pined for Marty, wishing he could hold her in his arms.
Refusing to recognize Luke's influence as her stepfather had been bad enough. To deny his parental status as April's father was a particularly low blow. It would have been the sort of petty tactic her grandmother would have used, once upon a time, and Rory hated herself all the more for it. She knew that Luke not being in her stepsister's life for her first twelve years was still a sore spot for him, and probably always would be.
Rory finally raised her head. Across the way, she could the Diner's lights were on. Luke. Shakily standing on unsteady feet, she willed herself to approach the front door. Her stepfather was inside, flitting about the Diner almost aimlessly, with inconsistent bursts of energy, as if he was looking for something - anything - to do with which to ease his mind. And he probably was. Rory found it within herself to knock.
Luke froze when he saw who it was. Stiffened. Slowly, over what seemed like an eternity, he crossed to the front door, the bell jingling as he opened it. Rory braced herself for his signature, gruff "We're Closed" - it was the middle of the night - but none came.
"Can I come in?" Her whisper was submissive, meek, but even so, Rory half-expected Luke to say No. And she couldn't exactly blame him if he did. But instead, he held the door open wider, allowing his stepdaughter to sashay uncomfortably past him.
Rory took her usual seat at the counter. As soon as she sat down, she heard - or thought she heard - what sounded like faint music coming from close by. A few yards down, Luke wiped down the counter, not speaking. Cocking her ears, Rory strained to listen to whatever tune was percolating into her head. At last, she identified the source:
It was an old, battered TV, resting against the backside of the counter, against the order window where Caesar would place his perfected masterpieces. The device came complete with antenna, a Panavision make; Rory recalled sometimes seeing it up in her stepfather's old loft, where he had once lived before marrying her mother. And now, on its screen, she saw old grainy footage, clearly captured from a decent distance away. A single shaft of light beamed down onto the stage... and a figure sporting a red wig.
Rory dared to smile. It was her 7th grade musical, Stars Hollow Middle School's production of The Little Mermaid. She had been 13 then. Luke had filmed it himself, at Lorelai's insistence, even though videography was clearly prohibited. Rory, of course, had been cast as Ariel, and she now watched the scarcely-teenage version of herself sing:
"What would I give if I could live out of these waters? What would I pay to spend a day warm on the sand? Betcha on land, they understand. Bet they don't reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimming, ready to stand..."
The particular bridge of the song moved Rory, considering its now-poetic context. She dared herself to steal a glance at Luke, down the counter, and then, deeply ashamed, she turned away.
The sniffles came of almost their own accord, and through her wet eyelashes, Rory could see her stepfather turn almost instinctively at the sound. The gaze he sent her way was so undeservingly sympathetic, Rory's sniffles only grew louder. The way she cried, she felt like a child, and her memory took her back almost two decades earlier...
She had taken the corner just beyond the Diner too fast and too hard on her bike, spilling into the street and scraping her knee. As she sat there, sniffling on the pavement, a rather large man in a backwards baseball cap approached her and held out his hand. Gingerly taking it, Rory had allowed him to lead her into the Diner, where he promptly presented her with a fresh apple pie, a Bandaid and an understanding ear. So it had been, the first time future stepparent and stepchild had met...
Back in the present, Rory blinked through her salty tears to watch Luke present her with a similar slice of pie. He said nothing as he now stood across from her, the dish rag limp in his hand. He was merely there, as he always had been, proud and silent but also secretly a softie at heart. Waiting.
"I'm sorry!" Rory wept, deeply ashamed for how she had denied him. "What I said was... unspeakable. You... you have always been more of a father to me than my own Dad! Can you ever forgive me?" The words seemed foreign, even to her own ears, and it made her wonder if she had ever needed to apologize to Luke for anything. She supposed crashing her car with Jess counted, but she had done so by insisting up and down that it wasn't his fault.
Luke took a special interest in the limestone of the countertop. A pregnant beat and then: "You're forgiven." But his relaxed countenance did not quite reach up to his eyes, and by that Rory knew it would take more words, a lot of actions and a lot of time before she was truly forgiven. Circling the counter, he rubbed a soothing hand over her shoulder. "Let's go home."
They headed back to Maple Street, and even though so much still hung unsaid between them, they barely spoke. Lorelai was waiting for them on the front porch, in her nightgown, but she stiffened when Rory came trailing into the light behind Luke:
"I'm sorry, we don't accept ungrateful wretches in this house."
The words stung like a sharp slap to the face, but Luke was mounting the stairs before Rory could even begin to think of a reply. "Lorelai," he murmured gently. "Let it go. It's over."
Lorelai blinked, looking like she wanted to object, so Luke kissed her goodnight deeply before she had the chance. He staggered up to bed. Rory made to awkwardly follow, slip in after him, half-expecting Lorelai to throw out her arm against the doorjamb and block her path. But no, Rory was nearly to the stairs when she was halted by a very different impediment: a sharp clearing of the throat. She turned, steeling herself.
"You will never speak to my husband that way again, as long as you live in this house. Otherwise, you won't be living here anymore. Am I understood?"
Rory nodded. "Yes," she whispered.
Lorelai cocked an eyebrow. "Yes what?"
Rory openly cringed. "Yes ma'am." Rare was the moment when Lorelai insisted on such deference; the demand was more characteristic of someone like Emily. The daughter took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I know it's not enough, but right now, I don't know what else to say."
Lorelai shook her head curtly. "Don't apologize to me," she deflected coldly. "You save it for your stepfather." She stepped closer, her voice dropping to a whisper. "He doesn't sleep when you're gone. He didn't sleep through a single night of your press tour, did you know that? Did you?" she pressed.
Struck dumb, Rory shook her head.
"I haven't seen him like that since April's first semester at MIT," Lorelai waxed on, almost half to herself. "I had to hold him every night that fall. He worries about you - both of you." Sighing, deflated, too exhausted to even talk anymore (a rare thing for Lorelai Gilmore indeed), she jerked her head towards the stairs. "Go to bed. I can't stand to look at you right now."
Rory scrambled to obey. But before she retired for the night, she approached her parents' room and tentatively knocked.
"Everyone's decent," Luke called shortly, probably expecting his wife. So he was surprised when Rory ran into his arms.
"I love you, Daddy," she whispered, her breath hot against the stubble on his cheek. It was the first time she had addressed him as such.