Chapter 13

When Sookie and Emma headed back toward the table with the food, Emma noticed that Lorelai and Rory were sitting in complete silence again. She shot Sookie a mildly confused and concerned look as they neared the table. Emma had to hold back a comment like "What happened? You two were getting along so well before!" It was on the tip of her tongue, but saying it would have made it obvious that they had been watching. Emma knew that neither Lorelai nor Rory would have liked to know they had been set up.

Emma and Sookie sat down, and the four of them began to eat in silence. Emma really wanted to say something, but she didn't know what. The silence gave her a chance to go through the whole situation in her mind. Lorelai and Rory had seemed to be getting along before, and now they were totally silent. They were stubborn, maybe they didn't want Emma and Sookie to know that they had gotten along for a moment. Maybe they were both so set in their ways that they wouldn't admit that they had almost reconciled. Maybe they had had another fight while Emma wasn't looking. Maybe they had just made things worse between the two of them. Emma had to know, but she couldn't ask. How do I ask, how do I ask? she thought desperately. Maybe she'd just break the silence and see what would happen. She broke the silence the best way she knew how. "Okay, it's too quiet. Somebody break the silence." It was a little pathetic, but it worked every time.

Lorelai looked uncomfortable for a moment. It looked like she was going to say something, but she didn't quite want to say it. She finally seemed to gather her thoughts. "Emma," she said, almost as if it were a question.

When she didn't continue, Emma said, "Yea?"

"Um, okay," she said with a bit of a sigh. "Okay, Emma, we know you set us up."

It looked as if Lorelai hadn't wanted to say it, and Emma wished she hadn't with every fiber of her being. "Oh," she said quietly.

"It was a good plan," Lorelai said halfheartedly. "But you should have known it wouldn't work. You can't trick us into getting back together."

"Why not?"

Lorelai seemed at a loss for words, so Rory cut in. "I've told you a million times, Emma. It's been too long."

Lorelai and Rory both looked a little upset, but Emma seemed to reflect the feelings of both of them. She was trying to remain calm, but she could feel her eyes watering. Sookie looked as if she wasn't quite sure what had happened.

Emma sat there for a minute staring at her burrito and fighting back tears. After about five minutes, she gave up. She rooted around in her mom's purse for her car keys. She took her food, threw it in the trash, and headed for Rory's car. She unlocked the door, sat down in the passenger seat, and put the key in the ignition. She could have driven home just then, but she had no interest. The thought crossed her mind only for a second.

The only reason she had wanted the keys was for the radio. Emma loved music. She needed a background track sometimes, no matter whether her mood was good or bad. Now was one of those times. She turned on the radio, and left it on the station that her mom had been listening to. It was a station that played older music. Emma recognized the song; it was one that her mom had listened to a lot, especially when Emma was younger. She thought Rory had the CD, but she wasn't sure. The song was "I Try" by Macy Gray. Emma knew it had been popular long before she was born, but she liked it. Somehow it seemed the ideal background music for her situation.

Emma turned up the volume in the car so that she was surrounded in the music, but she knew it couldn't be heard outside of the car. She had always hated when you could hear the music from somebody's car when you weren't inside it. She reclined the passenger seat as far as it would go and closed her eyes. She completely gave up on holding everything back, and felt the tears stream down her face. Emma hoped that Rory wouldn't come right away, she just wanted to be alone for a moment.

The car ride home passed quickly, as if it were a dream. The next thing Emma knew, she was sitting on her bed in her room. She sat for awhile in a daze, not really realizing where she was or what had just happened. She didn't need music, the Macy Gray song was still playing in her head as clear as if it was on the radio. I try to say goodbye and I choke. Try to walk away and I stumble. Though I try to hide it, it's clear. My world crumbles when you are not near.

The song helped to bring Emma back to the real world. It fit the situation absolutely perfectly. Lorelai and Rory were just like that. They weren't in each other's lives anymore, and both of their worlds had crumbled. They both tried to hide it, but to Emma and themselves, it was clear.

Emma now realized that she had to think about what she had been avoiding. She hadn't wanted to think about what would happen if her plan had failed, and it had. It was time to think about it. I'm sure they both hated being set up like that. I hope they don't hate me. That was a good portion of Emma's fears. She didn't know what she would do if her mother and grandmother both hated her. She knew they both had a talent for holding a grudge.

I probably made it worse between the two of them. Even as she thought it, Emma knew that this was an unreasonable fear. They hadn't talked it twenty years, it couldn't get much worse than that.

Oh, what about Sookie, I almost forgot about her. But even in her pessimistic frame of mind, Emma knew that nothing would change between her and Sookie, or between her and Lane or Paris. They had all been in it together. Emma just hoped that Lorelai and Rory wouldn't be angry with their friends for helping Emma. No, I'll make sure that doesn't happen. Actually, nobody had to know that Lane and Paris were even involved. Lorelai and Rory had known that Sookie was involved, of course, but Emma would make sure that Lorelai's relationship with Sookie wasn't damaged. She didn't know how she would do it, but she would.

Emma needed to do something, but she didn't know what. She looked around her room for inspiration. Her eyes rested on the purple phone on her desk. She had to call someone. She just didn't know who. She thought of calling Sookie, or even Lorelai, but it was too early. She couldn't do it. She thought back to when she was planning the whole mess, and realized who she had to call.

She picked up her phone and dialed a number off of one of the post-its she had stuffed into her desk drawer.

"Hello?" a very familiar voice said on the other end.

"Hi, Lane. It's Emma."

"Hi, Emma! Oh, did you do it yet? Are they talking again?"

Lane didn't need to elaborate, Emma knew exactly what she was talking about. "No. I mean, I did it. I set them up, I did everything exactly like you told me. It just didn't work."

"Really? What happened?"

"It just… I don't know, Lane. It was working perfectly. They were talking and laughing, it was great. Then Sookie and I got back to the table and it was completely silent. Then Lorelai told me they knew."

"Wow. I should have known it wouldn't work. Lorelai's pretty good at tricking people into things like that, I should have known that we couldn't pull one over on her. So, oh well. No big deal, right?"

"I hope not," Emma replied honestly. She could feel the tears stinging the corners of her eyes as she thought about the afternoon. She voiced to Lane her biggest concern. "I hope they don't hate me."

"They don't hate you. Why would they hate you?"

"They don't like to be tricked. I know they didn't like it. I could tell. I haven't talked to either of them since, but I'll bet they're upset with me."

"Oh, I'm sure it'll be okay. They might not be thrilled at this moment, but they will get over it. Trust me."

"Okay."

"Hey, are you okay?" Lane asked. She must have heard the tears in Emma's voice.

"Yea, I'll be fine."

"Okay. Call me if you need to, okay?"

"Yea, I will. Bye, Lane."

"Bye, Emma.

Emma hung up the phone. She felt a little better, but not completely. She didn't know what to do. She thought that maybe she should try again, set something else up, but she didn't know how. The plan she had executed that afternoon was the best she had ever come up with, and it had failed. She knew she couldn't give up, that wasn't something she did much of. She just didn't know how to go about setting Lorelai and Rory up again.

Maybe I should take a break, Emma thought. Just for a few days. Besides, they might be expecting something else soon anyway. And I should definitely make sure that we're okay, Mom and I and Lorelai and I, before I go any further.

Emma needed to do that anyway. She needed to talk to Rory and to Lorelai. She needed to talk to Sookie, too. She had sort of rushed out on the whole thing. She had always hated it when people did that, even in movies. Now she had to fix it, she had to go back and face whatever it was she had rushed away from.

Emma replayed the scene in her mind, to get it fresh. When had she left? She couldn't remember. What was the last thing that was said? Rory's voice cut through Emma's memory like a knife. "It's been too long." Emma remembered the looks on the faces of both Lorelai and Rory. Then she had left.

Emma tried to zero in on Lorelai's and Rory's faces. It didn't work. Emma's memory didn't seem to work like that. She could sometimes rewind, and look at a scene or hear somebody saying something for a second time, but she couldn't zoom in and see a detail more clearly than she had the first time. She couldn't really read somebody's face in a memory, not like she could if they were standing in front of her.

Emma was beginning to hate the sound of those words. "It's been too long." She knew it hadn't. She knew Lorelai and Rory both knew it hadn't. That's what their faces had been saying. But if they knew that, why had they looked so sad after Rory's comment? Emma didn't know. She did know that she had to call Lorelai. She had planned on calling Sookie first, but she thought it would be better to call Lorelai. She picked up the phone and dialed Lorelai's number before she could talk herself out of it.

Lorelai answered the phone after one ring. "Hello?"

"Hi, Lorelai."

"Hi, Emma." Lorelai recognized Emma's voice right away. She didn't sound excited that she was calling, or unhappy about it. She almost sounded as if she had been expecting Emma to call.

Emma didn't quite know what to say. She didn't want to apologize for the set up, she wasn't sorry she did it. She really just wanted to make sure she and Lorelai were okay. Lorelai was waiting for her to say something, so she said nothing. "Um, about what happened earlier…"

"Yea, that was kind of a mess, wasn't it?"

"Yes it was." Emma decided she'd just come right out and ask. "You don't hate me, do you? I mean, you don't sound mad, but you never know about these things. Maybe you're not mad, but you're going to hold some major grudge against me without telling me about it. I don't want that to happen. And…"

Lorelai cut Emma off before she could get any further. "No, Emma. I don't hate you. I'm not mad at you, and I'm not going to hold a grudge against you, or do anything else you were going to say. You shouldn't have tried to set Rory and me up like that, but I understand why you did it."

"Really? Thanks."

"So have you talked to your mom yet?"

"No, just you."

"Okay. Hey, if you don't want to deal with your mom tonight, you could come over my house. We could order pizza or something, hang out a little."

"Oh, that sounds great, but I think I'll pass. I want to make sure she's okay with me and everything too. I really just want to hang here tonight."

"Okay. That's fine. If you ever want to though…"

"I will."

"Good. Okay. Well, we haven't got together in awhile. I mean, besides today, but that really doesn't count. Want to plan for next weekend?"

"Sounds great. I'll talk to you before then."

"Great."

"Okay, I have to go. I'll call later."

"Okay. Talk to you then."

"Bye." Emma hung up the phone and went to go talk to Rory. She found her mother downstairs in the living room. She wasn't on the phone, so Emma went to talk to her. "Hi, Mom."

"Hi, Emma," Rory said, with the same tone of voice Lorelai had used when Emma called.

"About earlier…"

"It's fine, Emma. Just don't do it again, okay?"
"I won't." Emma would have to be insane to try the same thing again. Her next plan would have to be different.

"Good." Rory sounded a little distracted, but it worked as far as Emma was concerned.

Emma knew she should just walk away, but as she was doing so, she added a little comment. "Oh, Mom?" she said, turning back before she got to the door.

"Yes?"

"It hasn't been too long." Before Rory could say anything, Emma walked away.