12 – I Never Meant Any Harm To You
"So," Rory started, a little too casually, as the Lorelais left the Kims' house, "why didn't Dad come with you?"
"If he had," Lorelai said, linking arms with her daughter, "Tristan would have been dead by now."
"Tristan left before you came."
"That wouldn't have made any difference."
"So how much trouble am I in?" Rory asked, glancing sidelong at her mother.
"Right now, everyone is too relieved that you're alive and unhurt for that to be considered," Lorelai said, putting her arm around her daughter's shoulders, "but I have decided on a pink leopard print for your house arrest bracelet."
"That'll match my Chilton uniform and set me apart from the crowd," Rory grimaced. "If I buy you breakfast, can I at least negotiate a nice paisley pattern?"
"As long as it's pink," Lorelai agreed and looked around her for a suitable eatery. The sky was fading from pale purple to blue as dawn faded into morning and bathed the picturesque town in soft light. "Hey, why don't we go there for breakfast?"
Rory squinted at the building Lorelai pointed out. "That looks like a hardware store, Mom."
"Nonsense, it's got a yellow coffee cup hanging over the door."
"That doesn't mean they sell coffee."
"It had better," Lorelai said, walking inside the building and sniffing. "See? Tables, coffee machines and donuts. Throw in Kevin Bacon and this is close to my idea of heaven."
"We're not open yet, Kirk," a gruff voice shouted from the kitchen. "And I'm not letting you in here with that damn musket of yours."
"I'm neither Kirk nor armed," Lorelai yelled back. "Does that mean I can get coffee?"
A rugged man in plaid, wearing a baseball cap and wiping his hands on a striped dish cloth, walked out of the kitchen. As his eyes met Lorelai's, a shock of recognition passed through her. The air between them crackled, as though a stray thunder bolt had knocked down a power line.
Surely, I've met him before …
"Oh," Rory interrupted, sounding surprised. "This is my knight from last night. Mom, this is the guy with the baseball cap I told you about."
Lorelai stretched out a hand. "Hi, I'm Lorelai Hayden. Thank you for taking such good care of my kid earlier."
"Luke Danes," the man said automatically, shaking Lorelai's hand. His eyebrows snapped together in a frown. "You really should reconsider who you let your daughter date."
"Believe me," Lorelai answered, "there'll be a lot of reconsidering in the Hayden house after last night."
"Well, then you'll need your coffee." Luke lined up two red mugs on the counter and grabbed the coffee pot. Lorelai sipped at her mug appreciatively. "Bless you," she said. "Wow, this is good coffee."
"You want anything to go with your good coffee?" Luke asked, the faintest traces of a smile crinkling around his eyes.
"Eggs, bacon, pancakes, hash brown and a donut with sprinkles," Lorelai promptly replied and smiled at Rory. "Wow, staying up all night and worrying about your kid gives the appetite a mean edge. Anything for you, babe?"
"French toast, please."
"Good," Lorelai grinned. "Your grandmother is placing you on gruel and water until your first grandchild is born. Which is a highly unlikely possibility, because your grandfather is locking you up in the highest tower he can find. So stock up on the grease while you can."
"My French toast isn't greasy," Luke interjected, sounded offended. "And there's a converted windmill in Litchfield that has a pretty high tower, in case your father needs ideas."
"I'll let him know he has a location scout," Lorelai said.
"Hey, Luke. I'm running to Doose's for ham and bacon. Caesar forgot to put the order in again," a raven-haired woman in jeans and a striped red shirt said as she came in from what Lorelai assumed was the storeroom. She leaned over the counter to kiss Luke quickly, waved at the Lorelais and hurriedly walked out of the diner. Despite her evident rush, her movements were lithe and graceful, her body moving like a dancer to unheard music. Lorelai watched Luke watching the woman, a faint smile softening the lines around his eyes.
"You are being surprisingly calm," Rory interrupted her train of thought.
Lorelai frowned and steered her daughter to one of the tables. "I think I used my quota of worry last night. And then some."
"I'm sorry I made everyone worry so much," Rory mumbled guiltily, tracing a pattern on the table top with a listless finger. "I left my cell phone in the bathroom at Chilton during the dance or I would have called you sooner."
Lorelai placed her hand over Rory's. "You're a teenager, kid," she said, not unkindly. "Getting into trouble, staying out late, dating the wrong boys … well, it's all part of the package. I'm not saying I'm okay with what happened last night, but at the moment I'm very happy that you are alive and that your father isn't in jail for murdering Tristan."
Rory sighed. "It's not Tristan's fault, Mom."
"When my daughter stays out all night," Lorelai said firmly, "I get to dislike the boy she stayed out with."
"I agree," Luke murmured, dropping the plates on the table.
"See?" Lorelai grinned at Rory. "Majority rules."
"Democracy sure is swell," Rory grumbled.
"And I don't think you should see Tristan anymore, kid."
Rory's eyes flashed with angry rebellion. "What happened to trusting me, Mom? What happened to letting me keep myself safe from boys?"
"You getting in a car with a boy after curfew and crashing a group of Civil War re-enactors is what happened." Lorelai speared a pancake with her fork. "Now, I know how this happened with me and my mother. Emily tried to keep me in a gilded cage and tried to force every single detail of my love life from me. And nine months later, you were born."
"You can't blame Grandma for getting pregnant."
Lorelai shook her head. "I'm don't. Not entirely. But I sometimes think that, if I had more space to breathe, I wouldn't have gotten pregnant."
"Breathing doesn't make you pregnant," Luke said, pouring more coffee.
"Hi, stranger, mind butting out of a private conversation between myself and my daughter?"
"Mind not having private conversations between yourself and your daughter in my diner," Luke replied, walking off.
Lorelai glared at his retreating back, then turned her attention to Rory. "So, I don't think forbidding you from seeing Tristan is going to be good for this hip mother-daughter-best-friends-vibe we've got. But you have got to understand why I am worried about you spending any more time with him. He's got you skipping school, staying out after curfew and crashing Civil War parties. I don't want to be worried about my daughter while she's out with her boyfriend."
"Mom, you can't have it both ways," Rory said firmly. "Either you trust me to make up my own mind about who I date and we have a hip mother-daughter-best-friends vibe or you don't trust me and you and I end up like you and grandmother."
xxxxxxxxxx
"Thanks for the clothes," Rory said, handing Lane a neatly wrapped parcel. "I think the 'Trust God' T-shirt helped to calm my grandmother down when I got home on Saturday."
Lane tucked the parcel into her backpack as the girls walked into Chilton Academy. "How did that go?"
Rory winced at the memory. Richard's frosted fury had been the worst. "D-Day seems like a picnic in the park in comparison."
Lane made a sympathetic face. "Grounded for life, I assume?"
Rory nodded. "With a possible dispensation to go the doctor if I'm bleeding from the head. But then only if all the tourniquets are dirty. By the way, your mom was surprisingly cool about having two strange teenagers show up at four in the morning."
"Well, she didn't know that you've been drinking. You hid that pretty well," Lane pointed out. "Plus, I talk to her about school and stuff. She knows that I had a rough time adjusting and the fact that you were the first friendly face I saw at this school goes a long way with Mama Kim."
"Oh."
"Besides, we had an emergency town meeting yesterday to discuss how to re-enact the Civil War next year without vehicular damage. The first town meeting to be held on a Sunday since Taylor Doose wanted to pass a bylaw punishing littering with death."
"That seems harsh," Rory said, wondering if Lane was pulling her leg.
"No, that's just Taylor. He gets a little intense sometimes, especially when the Firelight Festival is around the corner, and when he does, it's very entertaining," Lane grinned. "So what about Tristan?"
"What about Tristan?" Tristan asked as he walked towards them, draping his arm around Rory's shoulders. Rory peeped at him with a smile. "I'm just telling Lane that you are less welcome at my house than a radical Afghani insurgent."
"Nothing new there," Tristan shrugged. "Hopefully your grandparents have cooled down by the time they have their Christmas shindig. I like those apple tarts too much to stay away."
"You and my mother both," Rory replied. "Hey, how badly did your parents react?"
"They didn't. Weren't home when I got there. Off to Marseilles or Rome or somewhere on a second honeymoon slash business trip."
"Aren't you lucky," Rory said wryly.
"Although I'm sure words like 'family name' and 'discipline' and 'military school' will be bandied about once they get back," Tristan sighed. "I think the episode with the liberated ducklings got on my dad's last nerve."
"That wasn't as bad as sabotaging the senior class's yearbook pictures," Rory argued.
"How do you sabotage an entire class's yearbook pictures?" Lane wondered.
"He rigged up a water cannon to spray them with scarlet dye when the photographer stepped forward to take the picture," Rory explained.
Lane whistled. "How very McGuyver of you."
"Thanks," Tristan grinned as the three took their seats in Monday morning calculus. "Unfortunately, my dad didn't quite see it that way. I'm forever amazed by the many ways he can say 'Tristan, you are a disappointment'."
Rory smiled, a little spasm of unease in her stomach. Tristan's pranks were always entertaining and she always viewed them as proof of his ingenuity and intelligence.
But he doesn't care about the trouble he causes for other people. People who had to wash scarlet dye from school uniforms or paint from the banisters where the ducklings walked. People who got sick from the meat he snuck into the vegetarian options in the cafeteria. Or drunk from the punch at the dance. Oh, God, at least Lorelai didn't pick up that I had been drinking. Life would have been an entirely different ballgame then.
Rory slumped in her seat and pulled her calculus book closer to her. A thought began to niggle at her.
Maybe I wouldn't like it if my teenage daughter dated someone like Tristan either.
