Jess stared into the water, swinging his legs, a million thoughts running through his head. He tried to latch on to one but couldn't concentrate.

Rory saw him, and stopped not far away, watching him sitting there on the dock. She hesitated, wondering if she should just leave him be. She decided against it.

"Hi. Luke said you might be here." she went over and sat next to him.

"Hay."

"Is everything allright? You look... pensive." Rory nodded, satisfied with her word choice.

Jess kept his eyes fixed on the water. "Your mom's taken my sister to the doctor."

"I know. I was looking for her before, but then I remembered that she said she'd probably be gone most of the day." Rory wasn't sure what else to say, so she waited for Jess to speak. He didn't say anything for a long while, and then he sighed. "I'm worried."
Rory stirred from her thoughts. "Worried? About what?"

"About my sister. I'm worried about Allie." muttered Jess.
"Don't be, I'm sure everything will be fine." Rory tried to reassure him.

Jess shifted his gaze upwards. "It's easy enough to say that, but you never know."

"She'll be fine. What's the worst that could happen?"

"The worst? Well... she could... die!"

Rory stared at him incredulously. "Die! Jess, this isn't 1850, the doctors know what they're doing now. She's not gonna die."

"Well... maybe not today, but one day she probably will." snapped Jess irrationally. "Is it a crime to be worried about that?" He frowned and stuck his lower lip out slightly just like a sulking kid. Rory tried to suppress a smile - he was cute when he was upset and unreasonable.

"Well it's not going to be today, so there's no point in thinking about that kind of stuff now." she told him softly. "Anyway, Allie'll be back soon and you'll be able to see for yourself that she's fine, and she'll be able to tell you what an idiot you are for being so unnecessarily worried about her."

"I know. I just wish that I could do more to help. I feel like I haven't done anything for her."

Rory patted his shoulder. "You've done heaps for her! You got her out here, didn't you? You're always there for her and you look out for her... Allie's very lucky to have you as a brother. And I think she knows that."

Jess was slightly embarrassed by Rory's sincere words, and studied his fingernails intensely for a while.

"What are you doing out here anyway?" he questioned gruffly. "You manage to escape from your possessive boyfriend?"

"That's one way to put it." Rory now found her own hands very interesting.

Jess turned to her for the first time since she sat down. "And what's that supposed to mean?" he asked slowly.

Rory shifted uncomfortably. "It means that... well, Dean and I broke up. This morning." she glanced at him quickly to gage his reaction.

He nodded. "Oh. Well... I'm sorry to hear that."

Rory couldn't read his tone. "What?"

"I said I'm sorry to hear that." repeated Jess.

"No snide comment? No gloating remark?" asked Rory, put out.

Jess's forehead crinkled. "No. Your boyfriend of two years just broke up with you, so I'm offering my condolensces."

"I broke up with him." Rory corrected firmly, not sure why it mattered right now. "And why are you sorry? You didn't like him anyway!"

"Yeah, but apparently you did. So I'm just saying, I hope that you're ok." Jess's expression was blank, and Rory was completely disconcerted by his words.

She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times before speaking. "Well, I thought I was, but it turns out that I was very wrong! Excuse me, I have to go." she got up in a rush, and left without a backward glance. It wasn't like she had expectedhim to do avictory danceor propose or anything, but shehad expected a bit more thanempty sympathy.


It was late afternoon when Lorelai bowled into the diner and plonked herself into a seat at the bar.

"Coffee. Now."

Luke was startled at her sudden appearance. "You're back already? Where's Allie?"

"Outside talking to Jess. Where's coffee?" Lorelai motioned at an empty mug.

Luke filled the mug, glancing at her cautiously. "Is everything ok?"

Lorelai raised her eyebrows in contemplation. "Hmm. No. Everything is not ok. Because of your niece, I had to buy a 10kg bulk bag of imported mints. And as if that wasn't bad enough, she made me talk to the shopkeeper about setting up an automatic delivery system so that we never need to worry about running out of pillow mints again. I have a standing order for 10kgs of mints a month, with a special bonus deal of receiving double whatI buy for the first 3 months."

Luke looked amused. "Well it serves you right for making up such a stupid story in the first place."

"Do you know how many mints that is?" Lorelai didn't think Luke fully understood the extent of the situation. "Thousands and millions of mints! If we scooped out the earth and made it all hollow and then poured the mints into it, we could fill the entire thing, and then still have enough left over to fill up every pillow in the world, and still have enough to put a jar of complimentary mints on the inn reception counter so when people pay their bill we can say to them 'thank you, and please, won't you take a mint? They're complimentary."

Luke blinked at her. "Yes. That sounds like a very accurate description of the actual number of mints you have."

Lorelai sighed. "Ok, so maybe the jarbit was a bit of an exagerration, but I'm just still surprised by how persuasive Allie can be - she'd be a very good salesperson, she should look into that as a career. - one minute I was saying, 'oh no, I don't need to get them today' and the next thing I knew, my car is full of mints. Man, I should've told her that I needed to buy shoes instead..." realised Lorelai, shaking her head. "I could've had so many new shoes. But no. So what am I supposed to do with all the mints?"

"Maybe you could put two mints on a pillow instead of just one." suggested Luke. "Anyway, shut up about the mints and tell me how Allie's doing? Did the termination go ok?"

Lorelai sucked in a breath. "Mmm... not really..."

Lukeclutched the edge of the bar, wide-eyed. "What happened?"

"Nothing." Lorelai said unhelpfully.

"Lorelai!"

"Well it didn't! The termination didn't happen... because she's decided to have the baby!" Lorelai announced, clapping her hands excitedly. "Cool, huh!"

Luke narrowed his eyes. "What the hell did you say to her?"

"I didn't say anything!" Lorelai protested. "Well... not really. We just had a chat... I wanted to make sure she was fully aware of all her options, because I don't think she was... and then I took her to the doctor and we all chatted some more, and then Allie decided that she'd changed her mind and that she wanted to have the baby." she explained matter-of-factly.

"Lorelai Gilmore. Advocate of teenage pregnancy." Luke rolled his eyes.

"It's not like that! Anyway, I thought you didn't want her to have the termination."

"I didn't... but, I think this pregnancy will be really hard for her."

"Well, I think that it would've been a lot harder the other way, Luke." Lorelai said seriously, and then continued, brightening. "And it'll be ok because the doctor gave her a list of all these great support services that she can call, and he set her up an appointment with a really good counsellor, and also, he convinced her to call her mom, so she did, while we were there," Lorelai told Luke, getting really into the story.

"And it turns out that Liz has actually been like, really depressed for a while now, and that's how she gets into these destructive relationships coz she'sgot really low self-esteem, and Allie and Jess knew that something was up, but Liz refused to discuss it, but now, she's finally admitted to herself that she needs to get some help, so she's kicked this guy out of her life coz she sick of how he treats her, obviously when Allie told her what had happened she was still really shocked and angry and upset, but they talked it through, and Liz was so supportive, and she wants to do everything she can and be really involved in Allie's pregnancy and she's gonna do up a room for the baby... and ohh, they ended on really good terms, it was just... nice for Allie to finally tell her mom." Lorelai smiled just thinking about it, pleased with the outcomes of the day.

Luke, however, wasn't so pleased. "She's not going back to New York."

"What's that now?" Lorelai's smile faded.

"She can't go back there."
"Of course she can, Luke! It's her home."

"No. Look what happened to her while she was at home. She's not in a safe environment, she can't live in a place like that." Luke crossed his arms firmly.

"She'll be safe. Liz is sorting herself out, and she's totally supportive about the whole thing." argued Lorelai.

Luke frowned. "If Liz hadn't been so self-absorbed, none of this would've happened in the first place."
Lorelai's expression was hard. "She's sick, Luke, this wasn't her fault. And at the end of the day, Liz is still Allie's mother."
"Yeah,but a very good one though."

"Well Allie seems to like her." countered Lorelai. "And anyway, Allie wants to go home. She wants to go back to her life; to her friends; to her mom. So it doesn't matter what you think, because it's not up to you."

"It's a bad idea." snapped Luke.

Lorelai stared at him for a minute. "What did you have in mind? You think she could just stay here?"

He shrugged. "Of course. She'd stay right here. I'd be her guardian, help her out with everything that she needs, and Jess is here too, so we'd look after her. It makes sense."

"It doesn't make any sense." Lorelai told him straight up. "For a start she doesn't want to stay here. She doesn't need a guardian, she has a mother and a home, and she doesn't need to be looked after. It wouldn't work - you live in a one room appartment. You think that you, Jess, Allie and a newborn would be happy living on top of each other? She's trying to put her life back to normal, and as much asshe really appreciates everything that you've done for her and her time here,Stars Hollowis not herkind of normality."

Luke was silent as he understood what Lorelai was telling him. It suddenly seemed totally unreasonable to have expected Allie to stay, and he rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. "Ok. I get it. I just don't want her to go."

Lorelai smiled kindly at him. "Neither do I, I like her. But look on the bright side - at least you get to keep Jess!

Luke groaned. "He's a completely different story."


That's the end of this chapter - sorry about the whole pillow mint thing - I just got a bit carried away!