Talking Boys

Lorelai woke Rory up with a steaming cup of decaf coffee as a lure. Luke had opened the diner in the end – he had said there was no reason for Rory to do so, since he was already there, but she had a hunch he wanted Lorelai and her to have a private conversation, since they had repressed any serious talk about Logan the night before while in front of him.

"Jeez, hon, get up! I need more info before meeting your grandma or I will explode."

"I don't know much more than what I told you yesterday, and I seriously don't know what to do. I feel like I should call Logan to stop him from showing up with a diamond ring the size of my head."

"OK, that's so not what I wanted to talk about, and you know."

"Oh." She wondered if she had rushed confessing to her mom that there was an it.

"Oh, indeed. You, dear daughter, have an aura."

"A what?"

"A halo, a layer of glow about you that has nothing to do with the pregnancy and a lot with love-making. Gory details are in order now."

"No way in hell."

"A summary."

"Nope."

"A headline, please! Go on, share a bit of that halo, I'd like to forgo foundation today – do it for my skin."

"I… what can I say? You know it when you find it."

Lorelai grinned. "You so do, right?"

"Yeah… It's quite overwhelming."

"Now we're talking – you mean size, right?"

"Mom!"

"I bet he looks super relaxed too, like you've been, what – virgin to each other for 15 years? What a build-up! Perhaps we see a new side of him now and he becomes super chill and goes to catch waves and drink chai tea and knit scarves and salute the sun every morning."

"Your relaxation references disturb me."

"Well, get used to it because that's the new Jess. Whoa, I said his name, I just made this thing real. Jess and Rory, Rory and Jess, all lovey-dovey."

"Mom… my it is Kirk."

"What?!"

"Ha! Eat that, you mean teaser. Now put those all those well endowed-chai drinker-yoga instructor jokes into your Kirk's mental image and repent!"

"My eyes! My mind's eyes! Oh, you're going to pay for this." Lorelai grabbed one of Rory's Yale sweaters and put it on, and then grabbed a stack of books and pranced around the room. "Jess, kiss me, you're such a bad boy, I love your leather jacket, can you sign my book, you're so hot. He's really hot, though, has he told you what he's being doing?"

"I forgot to ask."

"Of course, the muscles dazzled you, it's understandable. Now, seriously: are you happy?"

"I'm… freaking scared."

"Do you know how he fits in the whole picture? Because you, miss, have a very complicated picture, cubist complicated, I'd say."

"I… Well…"

"Go on! You must know – you're Rory Gilmore!" For a moment Rory had felt carefree, as if discussing boys years ago with her mom, but her question felt like a bucket of ice-cold water and she started to cry. "Honey, I'm so sorry, please calm down."

"You're right! I don't have a plan! I just love him and don't want to hurt him by being the mother of Logan's bastard baby and I don't know how to be good to him and be with him at the same time. I want to be good to him, he deserves it, I don't want to mess up! I love him. I've never loved anyone else like this even though I thought I had, and I feel so stupid in the face of love now. I want him. I want to be with him. I fantasize about him reading to the mystery baby. I see him building a crib and teaching the kid to read and cooking and building a house and a thousand other domestic things and I think I don't have the right to want all of this, but I do. I'm so fucked!"

Her mom hugged her and petted her hair. "Rory, calm down. Are you serious about all this?"

"My imaginary crib has a library beside it so he has the children's books readily available. I'm that freaking serious."

"Did you know that I, being a mother, never ever felt that towards anyone while you were growing up, inside or outside of me?"

"No…"

"And, let me break the news to you – unbelievable as this may sound, do you know that it's alright for people who love each other to start a family? Like, it's OK (some would even say respectable) to not raise a kid as a single parent?"

"But… isn't it unfair?"

"It could be, but you're not to make that decision for him. Jess might be many things, but he doesn't strike me as someone who does stuff he doesn't want to do. Why don't you talk about it openly?"

"I want to, but I thought it was too soon."

"He knows, right?"

"Well, I figured he would either think the belly was due to a pregnancy or to my fast food consumption catching up. Of course he does!"

"And do you think he hasn't thought about this already, inside and out? Come on, Rory. He had a tough upbringing. Someone like him definitely thinks about this stuff."

"And what does that mean?"

"That if he knows, he has thought about everything, and if he has and is still giving this a go, it means that there's a very important decision that has been made already."

She hadn't allowed herself to consider that possibility, but her mom made it sound like a very clear thing. "Do you really think so?"

"I'm positive. Do you realize that, on top of being your mother, I'm about to become your step-auntie?"

"Oh jeez. I had always thought that it was weird to love my sort-of cousin, but had never thought about it the other way!"

"We should move to a caravan and start eating road-kill, honey. Your grandma is going to love this."

"Speaking of which, let's get ready."


Breakfast with the elder Gilmore was not so bad, in the end, but she couldn't shake the feeling during the whole morning that there was some impending doom approaching, and that she needed to talk to Jess and tell him about Logan before it was too late. She rang him as soon as her grandmother left for Nantucket.

"Hey."

"Hi, Jess… Did you sleep well?"

"Sort of. Not really, I couldn't stop turning. I missed you beside me."

Her stomach did summersaults. "Yeah, me too. So, can we meet? As soon as possible?"

"We can, but you're not going to like this – I agreed to lunch with Luke, he said he would convince you two Gilmore to join. So I guess we're having a weird double-date."

She cursed poor Luke for trying to push forward what was already a thing, but she mellowed when giving it a second thought. He was the only one who had always wanted them to end together. "That's alright. But tonight it'll just be us spending New Year's Eve, right?"

"Promised. What do you want to do, though? Will it not be weird that you don't spend it with your mom?"

"Nah, I have a feeling she will be alright. I'll take care of the details."

"OK, so I believe Luke will be ringing Lorelai to make this uncomfortable lunch happen. I'll see you soon."