Another new chapter, another appology. This is the third one today. I really suck, I know. Anyway here it is. I'll try to update more often than one chapter ever month or so, but life sucks. shrugs
Oh, and here's a heads up; there's swearing. Its possibly not needed, but I was angry at the world when I wrote this chapter, and though I've read it back when I was less world-angry, I want to leave it there. I think it fits with a seventeen-year-old's thought process. Certainly fits for me, when I was seventeen! Sorry if it offends, but I did warn you.
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Chapter 14
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Sunday 8th October 1985
4:00am
The house was quiet. Nothing and no one was moving, except for the seventeen-year-old single mother in the spare room that guests slept in. This guest, however, wasn't sleeping. She was lying on her back with her arms folded behind her head staring at the illuminated red digits of the alarm clock just beyond her left elbow.
4:01am
She still lay there staring at the clock, counting down from 60 in her head, willing the time to pass both faster and slower at the same time.
4:02am
It was nearly time.
Only 50 seconds to go…
40…
30…
20…
10…
9…
8…
7…
6…
5…
4…
3…
2…
1…
4:03am
It was time.
Shifting slightly, she ran a light finger down the side of her sleeping daughter's face. "Happy birthday, little girl." She whispered before lightly kissing the soft baby skin of her daughter's forehead.
"Today is the beginning of the rest of our lives."
XXX
Emily Gilmore woke with a start. She could have sworn she heard a baby crying. It had happened a lot that past week. She was halfway out of bed before she remembered: Lorelai and Rory didn't live there anymore.
She fell back against her pillows with a groan.
"Emily?"
She turned her head to her husband. "I'm okay. I had that dream again."
Richard nodded in understanding. The only time he had seen her anywhere near getting out of bed was during the night after having a dream. "She'll be okay. They'll be okay. Emily, you know Lorelai's always been able to talk herself out of trouble."
"Yes. And she's always been able to talk herself into that same trouble. That's what worries me."
Richard reached out an arm and pulled her close. He kissed her temple and in a low voice murmured: "She'll come around eventually, Em, you'll see. You're her mother, there's an unbreakable bond there."
Emily nodded and sniffed. "I just… I feel like we've lost her."
Richard pondered her comment for a moment. "Do you remember how lost you felt after you had her? How overwhelmed you were? You had to figure it all out for yourself and I think that's what she's doing now. She's only young; she needs to find herself. Just give it time and she'll come back. They both will."
Emily nodded again and snuggled into Richard's warm embrace. As he watched her drift off to sleep, he idly wondered if everything was really going to be as okay as he said it was.
XXX
She woke with a start and looked at the clock. 8:03. Four hours ago her daughter had officially turned one year old. She rolled her head to the side and looked out the window. The sky was gray and overcast, the kind of sky she would expect to see before…
She breathed deeply and could smell the cold air, though she was in Mia's nice warm house.
It was coming.
Snow was coming.
But she didn't feel the same excitement she'd felt every year since one year when she had been sick. She felt… different. It was weird, like nothing she had ever felt before.
She felt awkward.
Frowning, she tried to think. Why on earth would she be feeling awkward? She had finally gotten out of her mother's grasp. She had a beautiful little girl. She had a job. A hard job, but a decent job all the same. She felt welcomed in the crazy little town, even though she'd only been there a week. And she had the trust of an amazing woman, who Lorelai knew would always be there for her, no matter what.
And then it hit her: she was about to be all on her own, with a year old baby. She'd gone from her parent's house, to Mia's. Though she hated the Hartford life, her mother had almost been helpful with Rory. And Mia was, well, just wonderful.
She realised, while she may have always been able to put out that I-can-do-anything-just-you-watch-me vibe (of course, helped along by the "who-cares?" look in her eye), that maybe, somewhere in the deep, dark, depths of her mind she was scared. Scared that she was going to fuck up more royally than falling pregnant at sixteen.
She was scared about the fact that not only would she fuck up her life more completely than anyone had ever fucked up their life, but she'd fuck up her daughter's life too. And she didn't want that.
She had always been able to play off her own mistakes with an air of confidence, but if she pulled up short now, it wouldn't be like talking her way out of a failed test or skipped class, it would be like proving her mother right.
That she was far too young to have a baby.
That she should have married Christopher.
That they should have lived with her parents until they'd saved enough money for an apartment in Hartford.
That the only life for her (and Rory by extension) was the life of Cotillions, Debutant Balls, Fundraisers and the D.A.R.
She huffed out a breath and dropped her arm to the mattress. She hated this awkward, worried feeling. It was ridiculous. She should be excited for her daughter's first birthday. For the first snow. For the fact that she was moving into her own place today, even if it was an old potting shed.
She narrowed her eyes and pouted at the light-shade on the ceiling. In a few short hours she would be taking her and Rory's small amount of belongings out of this room and putting them in the one-room 'apartment' at the Inn.
This time tomorrow she wouldn't be waking in the comfortable spare bed at Mia's, she'd be waking up in… well, she didn't know how the bed at the Inn was going to feel. She hadn't been up there in a week. Not since the day Mia had shown it to her, asking if she thought it would suit her and Rory.
Next to her, Rory snuffled in her sleep. Lorelai's gaze shifted and her eyes softened as they fell to her daughter. Sometimes she still felt awed by the little person that she had carried inside her for nine months. Sometimes, she still couldn't believe that she had helped produce such an amazing person.
It was even harder to believe that Christopher Hayden was the father.
She wondered idly if Christopher would call for Rory's first birthday. Then she remembered that no one, besides the residence of Stars Hollow, knew where she was. Not her parents, not Chris's parents (though she supposed they were relieved that "the little charlatan" had gone), not any of her girlfriends from school. Not a single person from that Hartford society knew that she was living only half an hour away.
And, as she watched Rory squirm and wriggle in her sleep, she remembered that that's exactly the way she wanted it, and the awkward, worried feeling floated away, like the condensation you breathe in the middle of winter.
Now she could feel excited.