AN: Hey guys! As I said in my update on The Family Business, I'm once again so sorry for the delay in updates. The past couple weeks have just been insane, and I've been so distracted by the news and the craziness of it all that it's just been very hard for me to get into a writing headspace. However, now it's time for a massive sigh of relief. Focusing on writing should be a lot easier now.
One thing I do want to say that you all might be a bit sad to hear is that now that Ellie has arrived, we are kind of reaching the end of this story. You'll see some pretty significant time jumps for the last few chapters as we wrap things up. However, it has always been my plan (and it still is) to continue this universe in a series. I plan to write a collection of one-shots and maybe even short fics consisting from outtakes from his fic as well as moments before and after it takes place. This won't be the last you see of the BLP crew. I promise. I'm not 100% sure how many official chapters are left, and I hesitate to guess because this fic was originally only supposed to be about twenty chapters, so things change. But, we are definitely on the downhill slide. I also plan to write more fics as well, so I hope you all continue to read my stuff even after this one wraps.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Monday, July 24, 2017
"I kept a ribbon from your hair. A breath of perfume lingers there. It helps to cheer me when I'm blue, anything that's part of you."
"You're gonna wrinkle your suit…"
The voice sounding from behind him startled Logan a bit. Yet, even his natural reflexes weren't enough for him to tear his gaze away from the sight in front of him. For the past few minutes, he'd been so entirely focused that he hadn't been paying attention to much of anything around him. He hadn't even heard the sound of the shower turn off or Rory's footsteps as she walked into the living area behind him.
"Shh! She's gonna do it. She's gonna do it!" he exclaimed before turning his whole attention back to the baby. "Come on, sweetheart. Show Daddy how strong you are."
Ellie was spread out on the floor in front of him underneath her baby gym. She was resting on her tummy with her hands spread out at her sides as her fingers grasped at the fuzzy material of her cushion. Over the last few days, she'd mastered the ability to turn her head from side to side, and Logan was determined to see her lift her head up all on her own for at least one second before he left.
Next to him, Rory started to lower herself to her knees, eventually ending up sitting cross legged on the floor while he lay on his own stomach across from their daughter.
"It's unnatural how much she likes tummy time," she commented as she towel dried the strands of her still wet hair. "If our daughter grows up to be a gym rat, I'm blaming you."
Logan didn't respond to the teasing comment. He was still entirely too engrossed in the baby girl in front of him. Her eyes lifted up toward his face for a moment, and Logan smiled widely in encouragement. His heart jumped up in anticipation, but it fell when instead of craning her neck upwards to lift her head, the baby buried her face into the cushion beneath her and immediately started to let out a series of fussy cries.
"Okay, baby. Come on. Come to Mommy," Rory said, jumping into action to scoop up the little girl off the floor. "Even Olympic champions need a break from their training every now and then."
Rory rose off the floor and rested the baby against her chest. Logan watched while she bounced her gently in her arms and pressed gentle kisses on the top of her head. Ellie nuzzled her face against Rory's sternum and her cries of displeasure started to settle. Logan, however, carried on with a disappointed sigh as he heaved himself off the floor.
"She just turned a month old today," Rory gently reminded. "She's got plenty of time to start lifting her head before we need to start getting concerned."
"I'm not concerned," Logan said as he started brushing off the dust his now wrinkled suit had collected off the floor. "I just…"
He wanted to see it.
Over the past four weeks, tummy time had become Daddy and Ellie time. Even though Rory had been pumping enough to allow Logan to help with some of the feedings, she still handled the majority of them, and being only a few weeks old Ellie spent most of her time asleep. Taking point for tummy time gave him the opportunity for a few moments of one on one boding throughout the day while Rory could take a shower or answer emails and phone calls from her agent.
Today was the first day he was going to miss those moments, and he was struggling with the thought more than he ever thought he would.
Growing up, Logan had never really put much thought into the way having a baby would affect his life. He's always assumed a family would be a part of his future, but for the majority of his life it had been a sort of amorphous abstract concept.
The world he'd grown up in was so entirely different than the world that existed now. By most accounts, he was still a young man. Yet, sometimes he felt like he was a living relic of a lost time. It was just ten years ago when he was picking out Rory's ring that he'd first truly thought about the idea of having family, and the thought of taking a paternity leave hadn't even crossed his mind.
Even more recently when he was thinking about what his life with Odette might have looked like, it still wasn't something that he gave all that much thought to. The assumption was always that she would stay home with the children while he carried on at work. They would hire nannies for the early years and send them off to Eton or Cheltenham for the later ones.
Taking four weeks off of work to help take care of an infant was a twist of fate that he'd never been expecting. Yet, now he wouldn't have it any other way. The idea of missing even a second of Ellie's life after being present for every moment of it was tugging painfully at his heart, and the idea that she might finally lift her head up by herself while he wasn't there to watch it was silently killing him. It felt like it was just the first drop of water slipping out of a crack in a dam, and soon he was going to be drowned in an entire river of missed moments.
"I don't want to miss anything. That's all," he said, scratching the hairs at the back of his neck. Rory looked at him sadly for a moment.
"I thought you were looking forward to getting some work done in your actual office."
She wasn't exactly wrong. He'd been doing a bit of work here and there for the past couple weeks, but adjusting to life in Stars Hollow had been… interesting. He knew it was going to be a trying few months, being in this small apartment with a new baby without much quiet or privacy. It wasn't that he was regretting his choice to move in here for the time being. It was still better than the alternative, but he'd be lying if he didn't admit that he was going a bit crazy.
When he'd first started logging back on to work a couple weeks ago, he'd been naïve enough to think that he would be fine working at the small desk that Luke still kept up in the apartment. He'd quickly realized that wasn't going to work the first time Ellie had made her displeasure very well known in the middle of a conference call with his marketing team.
After that incident, he'd taken some inspiration from his collegiate years. Contrary to popular belief, there were moments during his sojourn at Yale when he did actually have to sit down and get work done, and there had been plenty of times when staying in a dorm room with Manny was not conducive to such activities. The coffee shop just down the street from The Old Campus had become something of a second home to him before he'd moved into his own apartment.
He'd tried to find the same success here, grabbing a table downstairs and setting up a temporary work station during the off hours. It had worked great for a while, until he learned the hard way that there were no family exceptions to Luke's 'no cell phone' rule.
Next, he'd tried The Dragonfly where he'd had a similar goldilocks period of relief until Kirk had decided to introduce himself and stop by every other day to try to get Logan to invest in his newest business venture. The last pitch had been for an app that would provide you information on what breed of cat you were looking at just by taking a picture. Logan had tried to let him down gently by trying to explain to him that he wasn't sure about the market viability potential, but that had only prompted Kirk to return the next day with a manila folder of "market research" consisting mostly of pictures of random cats around Stars Hollow and list of cat breeds printed off of Wikipedia.
When he wasn't dealing with Kirk's business proposals, he was dealing with Taylor sending him passive aggressive hints about purchasing the Stars Hollow Gazette, Miss Patty flirting with him at any given opportunity, Mrs. Kim glaring at him as if he was the devil incarnate for being the man to get Rory pregnant out of wedlock, and Gypsy's ill-concealed hatred of him over his electric car and the fact that 'people like him' were trying to drive her out of business.
And this was all on top of the general sleep deprivation and exhaustion.
Suffice to say he was looking forward to meeting with their contractor while he was in the city today.
"I was," he said. "I am. I just…"
Rory must have been able to hear the conflict in his voice, because she took a step closer to him and placed a gentle hand on his cheek before leaning forward and pressing a kiss on his lips.
"She's not going to start walking, talking, and packing to head off to college in the next twelve hours."
"Don't even joke about that," Logan said. "She's never going off to college. She's going to stay with us forever and just use her spare time to… sell sea shells on the sea shore."
"You know, that tongue twister was actually written about this British woman named Mary Anning. She did sell seashells, but she also sold dinosaur fossils and she's considered one of the first ever paleontologists. She discovered the first full fossilized remains of the ichthyosaur and the plesiosaur," Rory replied in a cheery tone before her face turned suddenly pensive. "Though… now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure she wasn't actually allowed to go to college at the time…"
"There! See!" Logan said with a shrug. "Scientific excellence awaits her, and she never even has to lay eyes on a co-ed."
"Logan…" Rory pleaded with a sympathetic sigh. "You've left this apartment before. She has yet to forget who you are."
"For a couple hours here and there and ten minutes away," he said. "I haven't been gone all day. In an entirely different state."
Rory kissed him again. Logan looked down as she placed a comforting hand against his chest, and his eyes landed on the top of their little girl's head between them. He ran his hand over the fine blonde hairs on her head and smiled sadly as she started to kick her feet and coo against Rory's chest.
"We will be here when you get home," Rory assured. "And in the meantime, I will take videos every time she so much as hiccups."
"Her hiccups are so cute…"
"Go," Rory said firmly, using the hand pressed against his chest to push him gently in the direction of the door.
Logan took the cue, picking up his feet to walk out of the apartment. Rory followed him as he went, Ellie in her arms. She stopped at the top of the stairs as he started walking down, and when he looked back up Rory had shifted the baby in her arms so that she was facing him. She wrapped her hand gently around the baby's forearm and started moving it up and down in a waving motion.
"Say 'Bye, Daddy. I love you,'" Rory cooed into Ellie's ear, and while Logan knew that Ellie had no concept of the fact that he was going to New York for the day, he took the little grunt that came out of her mouth as a farewell.
Rory wasn't exactly sure what to do with an entire day without Logan.
It was already approaching 11:00 AM, and so far she had already cleaned every single dish that he'd left in the sink and picked up every single sock that he'd dropped around the apartment. Now, she was at a loss. Without him here to exist as an infinite well of dirty socks and dishes, half of the day's work was already done.
Logan's habits were annoying. They were born from a childhood filled with maids and kitchen staff, where he didn't have to think at all about keeping his environment clean. In his mind it simply cleaned itself. The clothes laundered themselves, and the dishwasher loaded and unloaded itself. So, naturally there was no reason for him to curb any of his more slovenly tendencies. Yet, as annoying as they were, there was also a part of her that found them strangely endearing.
She'd been a little nervous about living with Logan again after all this time. It had been ten years since they'd lived under the same roof for more than a handful of days. It had been ten years since Rory had lived under the same roof with any man for more than a handful of days. It wasn't that she was worried that they would suddenly realize that they no longer loved each other, it was just that she didn't know quite what to expect.
She wasn't completely sure how different things would be with an entire decade's worth of time stretched out between this apartment and the one in New Haven. She wasn't sure how things might have changed. She didn't know what his habits would be, what new ones he might have picked up in California or London. She wasn't sure what his routine was anymore.
It turned out it was the same. He was still driving her crazy with the dishes and the socks. He still somehow managed to throw underwear anywhere on the closest floor except the laundry basket. He still left an entirely unreasonable amount of water on the bathroom floor after he took a shower. He still watched Colbert every night. And he still left an empty mug for her sitting out on the counter next to a fresh pot of coffee every morning.
Of course, not everything about their routine was the same. In fact, for the past few weeks they didn't have much of a "routine" at all. Their days and, more noticeably, their nights were entirely at the mercy of a very loud and very demanding third party with no concept of time.
"Alright, Ellie, what do you think?" Rory asked as she stood over the changing table and held up a onesie in each of her hands. "Ice cream cones or pineapples?"
The baby apparently wasn't satisfied with either one of her options, because as soon as she asked the question Ellie's face scrunched in on itself and started turning pink. The unhappy cries followed quickly after, and she started kicking her legs to emphasize her point.
"Okay, okay, Miss Fashionista" Rory continued, setting the clothes down on the table next to the baby. "You can wear your watermelon dress again, but I don't want a repeat of the spit up incident from last week..."
Not that she had actually been expecting it to, but the compromise didn't exactly work to get Ellie to settle down. It wasn't all that unusual for her to fuss while waiting to get dressed. She really didn't like to be cold, and she would usually make her discomfort well known until she had some clothes covering her. Right now, however, her cries had gone well past the normal level of discomfort.
"What's wrong, baby?" Rory asked, spreading her hand over the baby's belly. "You don't need to be changed again do you?"
Her cries certainly sounded like dirty diaper cries. Over the past four weeks, Rory had developed a near infallible ear for the different subtleties in her daughter's screams of distress. The only thing that left her second guessing herself was the fact that it had been not thirty seconds since she'd just put her in a fresh diaper.
Rory picked the baby up, lifting her bottom toward her face and sniffed. She broke out in a reflexive grimace as the unmistakable stench wafted through her nostrils, and she set Ellie back down on the changing table.
"Wow, kiddo," she said. "Thirty seconds between diaper changes, this has got to be some kind of new record."
In fairness, the last diaper had merely been a wet one, but she still couldn't help but think it was something of an accomplishment. Ellie, on the other hand, didn't seem to be as impressed with her own natural abilities. All she was concerned with was getting the offending diaper off of herself as quickly as possible.
Rory went to work right away, cleaning her up and then pulling open the drawer of the changing table to pull out the watermelon dress. It had quickly become one of her favorites. It was a sleeveless dress with a ruffled collar and a mint green gingham pattern. A pink and green watermelon with a bite taken out of it was stitched across the chest, and it had come with a matching headband and bow. It was one of the only non-onesie outfits that Ellie looked adorable in and also liked to wear. It was a soft enough cotton that she wasn't uncomfortable and it kept her cool enough when Rory took her outside in the summer heat.
Needless to say she'd already gotten a lot of wear out of this dress. Rory only regretted the fact that she couldn't for the life of her remember who had purchased it.
"There," Rory said as she finished getting her daughter dressed. "That's better."
Ellie's fussing had finally stopped and she was now looking up at her mother with a tiny little smile on her face. Rory's heart burst in her chest, and she broke out in a smile of her own. Ellie had just started smiling a few days ago, and Rory didn't think she had ever seen anything so wonderful in her life. She grabbed at the tiny little feet kicking in the air and bent down to press kisses against her little toes.
"Do you want to go downstairs and see PopPop? Is that what we should do today?" she asked, scooping up the baby and walking her over to the carseat on the coffee table.
For the last week or so, Rory had started to get a bit more comfortable bringing Ellie out in public. She'd made something of a habit of going down to Luke's every once in a while or taking her for a stroll around the Town Square. Her pediatrician had assured her that as long as too many people weren't getting right in the baby's face and sneezing on her, it was actually good for her immune system to be around other people.
It was also good for Rory's mental health. Being cooped up in this very small very brown apartment with no one but her boyfriend and her infant daughter was starting to get to her. She loved them both, of course, but it was nice to remember that other people existed as well. It reminded her that she was actually a living breathing human being with a life and friends and family and not just a walking sleep deprived milk machine.
"Yeah," Rory said, strapping Ellie into her car seat and making sure she was comfortable. "Let's go see PopPop."
With her daughter ready to go, Rory slung her diaper bag over her shoulder and started her journey down the stairs to the diner. The sound of chatter carried all the way up the stairs, but thankfully it didn't sound all that busy. It was still a little bit early for the lunch rush, so hopefully the place wouldn't be packed full of people. Thankfully, her thoughts were confirmed when she stepped past the curtain and saw plenty of empty tables. She grabbed one by the window and set Ellie's car seat down on the chair next to her.
"Rory! Oh my Gooood!"
The voice that called out to her was very familiar, but it wasn't the one that she had been expecting. Luke was nowhere to be found at the moment, probably back in the kitchen grabbing some orders. A handful of similar chromosomes, however, was making her way enthusiastically toward Rory from across the diner.
"Liz," she greeted with a smile. "Hi."
"Hi, hun," said Liz, giving Rory a quick hug in greeting. "I haven't seen you in a couple months. How are you feeling?"
"Oh, you know…" Rory answered. "Exhausted. Jiggly. Kind of dazed."
"Oh, you don't need to tell me," Liz replied. Her voice lowered to a somewhat conspiratorial tone and she started to shake her head back and forth ever so slightly. "One time after I had Doula, I went to Doose's to get some orange juice and when I got home the glasses weren't in the cabinet to the left of the stove like they normally are so I started looking all over the house and freaking out and yelling at TJ about why he changed all the dishes around and then I realized that I had walked right into the wrong house."
"Oh! Uh…" Rory said, entirely at a loss for how exactly to react to that story. "That um… Yeah, that doesn't sound good."
"Baby brain," Liz commiserated, nodding. "It's a real real thing. Is this her?!"
Liz's attention snapped quickly to the car seat below them. Oddly enough, Ellie was still awake. Her eyes were looking up at the face of this new stranger in wonder and she was finding her fingers particularly delicious. She was looking up Liz with interest and happily kicking her feet. One month old and she was already a little social butterfly. Another thing to blame Logan for.
"Yeah," Rory answered with a smile of her own as she watched her happy baby charm the older woman with no effort at all. "This is Ellie."
"Hi, Ellie," Liz greeted, leaning down. When she straightened back up, she looked over at Rory and folded her hands in a pleading gesture."Oh she's beautiful. Can I hold her? It's been so long since I've had a baby to hold…"
"Oh… su - "
"Liz!"
Luke's sharp voice suddenly cut through the air. He was carrying two full plates in his hands and making his way directly toward them with a scowl on his face.
"Get out of my granddaughter's face! She's a month old. She doesn't have an immune system yet!"
"Chill, big brother…" Liz calmed, raising her hands in surrender. "I promise I had a shower this morning, and I don't have any communicable diseases… that I know of. I have bunions. But I don't think bunions are communicable. Unless it's some kind of contagious bone disease. Oh my God, it could be a contagious bone disease that I've been spreading around all this time and I never even knew…"
"Luke, it's fine, really," Rory assured, taking advantage of Liz's momentary sojourn into the strange recesses of her mind.
"You sure?" he asked with a quirked eyebrow.
"I have plenty of hand sanitizer."
Luke seemed placated, at least placated enough to commence serving his customers. It could be slightly frightening at times, but Rory had to admit that there was something undeniably endearing about how protective Luke was over Ellie. At first she'd been surprised at how enamored he was with her. Luke had never really seemed like a baby kind of guy to say the least, but after some reflection she realized that it made more sense than she thought.
Luke had always considered her something of a daughter. He even had a daughter of his own. But, in both cases, he'd entirely missed out on their first years of life. Rory suspected that there was a lot of repressed paternal affection that he was pouring out on to her little girl. But that was hardly something she was going to complain about.
She reached into the side pocket of her diaper bag and pulled out a bottle of Purel. Liz gracefully lathered up her hands without any complaint and reached down into the car seat to pluck Ellie out. She fussed a little bit at first, but Liz quickly calmed her down with a few practiced bounces and pats on her back as she paced around the diner floor.
"I can't believe it's been ten years since my Doula was this little," Liz said as she turned her attention back over to Rory. "People always tell you they grow up in the blink of an eye, and it's really true, you know? One second they're this small and the next ten years have gone by – or worse thirty-three!"
Rory's heart skipped a tiny beat and an uncomfortable feeling settled in the pit of her stomach. It had been a while since she'd thought about Jess. She hadn't heard from or seen him since the day just a few months ago when she'd broken his heart yet again in this very building. She'd tried to call him with the news about her literary agent, but she'd never heard back from him, having to resort to sending an email. Hearing Liz mention him so casually without any idea as to their recent history was slightly disconcerting.
Yet, as disconcerting as it was to hear Liz so casually mention Jess, it was nowhere near as disconcerting as hearing her suddenly speak to him in the same breath.
"Hey, speak of the devil. There he is!" Liz suddenly burst as the chime above Luke's door rang. "My baby!"
In a strange twist of fate, Rory suddenly found herself in a situation that she hadn't been at all prepared to face. She'd come down here expecting to have a quiet lunch while Ellie slept in her car seat, and instead she'd walked head first into drama. It was as if Liz had summoned him with nothing but the briefest of allusions, and the entire course of her day had gone completely off the rails.
Jess' face paled as he stepped into the diner and made eye contact with her. He definitely hadn't been expecting to see her. Rory definitely hadn't been expecting to see him. And judging by the oblivious look on her face, Liz definitely hadn't expected there to be a problem with them seeing each other.
"Hey," he said, slowly. After a couple seconds he seemed to shake himself out of his shock and he started walking over to them.
"Look who's here!" Liz cheered. "It's Rory and the baby! I told you Rory had the baby right?"
"Uh… yeah," Jess answered, running a hand through his hair. "I think I heard something about that."
Jess' eyes flashed toward her again and Rory smiled bashfully at him. She hated that she was so uncomfortable. Up until just a few months ago, Jess had been a major part of her life. She considered him one of her best-friends. He was going to publish her book. She'd even opened herself up to the possibility that he might once again become more than just a friend to her.
Now, things were so different, and it wasn't only the Logan situation. She felt like all she'd done lately was reject him. She rejected his feelings for her. She rejected Truncheon's offer in favor of her upcoming meeting with Penguin. She felt like she was stomping all over him, and now she was sitting here with her brand new baby feeling like she was flaunting the way her life was progressing so quickly after she'd left him behind in the dust.
Worst of all, however, was the fact that she simply missed him. She felt guilty, and she missed him. And she wasn't sure that things would ever be the same again.
"Isn't she gorgeous?" Liz asked, smiling down at Ellie for the hundredth time. "Her name is Ellie."
"Ellie," Jess echoed with a nod.
"Short for Lorelai," Rory peeped. Jess nodded again.
"Of course," he said. "The world is always in need of another Lorelai Gilmore."
"It's… Huntzberger… actually…"
As soon as the words had come out of her mouth, Rory wasn't sure if she should have spoken them. She wasn't sure which was the better option. She either corrected him now and made this moment even more awkward than it already way, or she simply neglected to correct him about her daughter's last name and risked the awkwardness that would inevitably come later when he found out she'd let him believe it was something that it wasn't.
"Right," Jess responded. He pursed his lips and looked down at his shoes for a moment. "Of course…"
Silence settled between them. The tension and discomfort seemed tangible to Rory and Jess. Liz, however, still seemed completely lost in her own world as she bounced and cooed at the baby. She was only brought out of it when Jess suddenly cleared his throat and called out to her.
"Hey, Mom?" he asked. "Do you think you could give Rory and I a second. I've actually been meaning to talk to her about…something…"
"What?" Liz asked, her head popping up from the baby and shifting back and forth between them.
At that moment, it seemed like she finally became aware of the thickness in the atmosphere. The smile on her face faltered and she looked between the two of them awkwardly. Rory wasn't exactly sure how much Liz knew about her and Jess. She knew that Liz was aware that they had dated when they were young, but she didn't know if she was aware of Jess' lingering feelings for her.
If Rory had to put money on it, she would probably guess that she wasn't aware at all. Jess wasn't one to talk much about his feelings, even to the people he was closest to. She doubted that he had confided in his mother when their relationship still wasn't particularly close to this day.
Even so, Liz looked like she was picking up on the fact that something was going on between them.
"Oh, she said. "Sure. Sure. I'll just… go sit back down and finish my coffee. Good bye, Ellie. It was so nice to meet you."
Disappointment spread across the woman's face as she handed the baby back over to Rory. She gave Jess a lingering look as she walked away, one that caused him to let out a massive sigh and a roll of his eyes. Rory, however, was grateful for it. It gave her a reason to smile for the first time since he'd walked in the door.
"I think your mom might start dropping some grandbaby hints..."
"Start?" Jess asked with a raised brow.
Silence settled over them again, and Rory was very grateful to have a baby to keep her occupied. She started to get Ellie settled back into her car seat, and after a few seconds she heard the sound of a chair scraping across the floor. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched Jess sit down in the chair across from her. His attention was focused on the baby, though he tried to hide it by looking down at his folded hands every couple of seconds.
"She is beautiful," he eventually commented.
"Thank you," Rory said as she smiled and popped a pacifier in Ellie's mouth, hoping that it would keep her from fussing long enough for her to drift off.
"She has his hair…"
The small bit of happiness that she had felt at hearing Jess call her child beautiful left as quickly as it came. She was really hoping that they might get through this unexpected meeting without mentioning Logan. She wasn't sure she had the energy to deal with this right now. She hadn't gotten more than two hours of sleep at a time in a month. She was physically and emotionally drained.
"Look, Jess, I - "
"I'm sorry," Jess interrupted, catching her entirely off guard.
"Oh. I…What?" she asked, her brow furrowing in confusion.
"I'm sorry," Jess repeated. "That I never called you back about your book."
"Oh…" Rory replied. She shrugged and started picking at her nails. "That's okay. You emailed. I understand why you were upset."
"I wasn't upset," Jess replied, shaking his head. "I was happy for you. I am happy for you."
A mixture of confusion and relief washed over her at the sound of those words. Hearing that Jess hadn't been upset with her over signing with a new agent was a massive weight off of her shoulders. Jess had been such a major part of this entire project. He was the one who had convinced her to write a book in the first place. He had been there since the beginning, offering encouragement and perspective and advice. Celebrating her newly found success without him had felt strangely hollow. But, if he wasn't upset with her, she didn't quite understand why he'd given her somewhat of a silent treatment over it.
"Oh," she said again. "Okay…"
Jess sighed. Clearly, he could tell that she wasn't quite sure how to process what he was feeling and trying to communicate to her. His knee started bouncing and his eyes drifted away from her as he continued.
"I guess I just…" his jaw clenched. There was a physical struggle on his face as he fought to put his words together. "I was afraid to call you. And then I just kept putting it off. And then it got to the point where too much time had passed and it would have been weird to call you. So I just… took the easy way out I guess."
"Oh."
"I'm not exactly proud of it."
"It's okay."
The words came out as a reflex. Though, in this particular instance, Rory wasn't that upset that she said them. It was okay. She understood. She'd had similar moments in life where the fear of vulnerability had kept her from doing something that she should have done. And she knew Jess well. Vulnerability was not a skill that he was particularly practiced in, and it would probably always be something of a struggle for him.
"I'm sorry too," she said. Jess didn't look like he had been expecting an apology from her at all. His brow furrowed and he twitched his head to the side. "For leading you on as long as I did when I was still in love with…"
"You didn't lead me on, Rory," Jess replied with a sigh.
"Yes," she insisted with a nod. "I did. I wouldn't admit it at the time, but I knew you had feelings for me and I let you - "
"You never said or did anything to make me think that you thought of me as anything other than a friend. I should have been honest with you from the beginning, and I wasn't," said Jess. "I thought if I wedged my way into your life enough that things would just fall into place like they did the first time. But, you were right. Things aren't the same. We're not seventeen years old anymore."
"No…" Rory agreed, quickly looking down at the now sleeping child next to her. "We're not."
"I've been told that I need to get better at this whole… vulnerability...communication… thing…"
"Well…I'm glad that you wanted to talk to me," Rory said with a nod. "Brene Brown would be proud of the way you've decided to brave the wilderness."
"Oh jeez…" Jess replied with an exaggerated roll of his eyes. He slumped back in his chair, and Rory felt a brand new lightness in the air. She couldn't help but smile, genuinely this time.
"So would Karamo," she teased. "Though, I think Tan might have some things to say about your wardrobe choices."
"I'm not French tucking my shirts."
"Aw, come on…" Rory continued. "I think you'd look good in a nice bold print shirt and a pair of cropped khakis."
"I think you're confusing me with your waspy boyfriend."
This time the mention of Logan didn't suck the air out of the room the way it had before. There was still a slight lingering awkwardness, but Jess wasn't showing any sign of running for the hills. In fact, the way that he was settling himself at the table was making her think that he might stay and keep her company.
She didn't mind that at all. She was actually happy about it.
For the first time in a long while, it seemed like things with Jess were on their way to normal.
As Logan pulled into the driveway of Lorelai's house, he found himself overcome with anxious energy.
It had been a long day. He had plenty to distract him, but all day it had felt like the hours were moving by at a glacial pace. All he could think about the entire time he'd been in the office was getting home to his family, and even driving home faster than the state of Connecticut deemed appropriate, it had still taken too long to get back.
The day hadn't been bad. He was able to get more work done in the few hours he was at his desk than he had in the past two weeks. He'd been greeted enthusiastically by the staff as soon as he arrived, and Keisha had even gifted him with a framed photograph of Ellie from her 48 hour photoshoot in the hospital to put on his desk. The shareholder meeting that had brought him there went well, and his meeting with the contractor had gone even better.
Construction on the house was moving along without too many complications. The house already felt brighter and less claustrophobic from the walls they had taken down on the parlor level, and the elevator was almost installed. They hadn't run into too many issues. So far, the only bumps they'd hit were needing to add a beam to the ceiling to make up for the removal of a load bearing wall and finding out that the electrical work was no longer up to code. Both issues had added a few thousand dollars onto the price tag of the renovation, but considering how little Logan had spent on the actual house, he wasn't all that concerned with it.
Really, as far as days went this one had gone extremely well. Still, the entire time he was living it he found himself anxious for it to be over. He wanted to get to this moment. He wanted to see his baby.
He threw his car in park and let out a sigh of contentment at the fact that he was finally home. Rory had texted him a couple hours ago, letting him know that she'd brought Ellie to her mom's and she'd offered to make them both dinner. He was pretty sure that meant either pizza or take out from that weird pancake place, but he wasn't going to complain about it.
When he stepped out of the car and started walking toward the house, he noticed a brown haired figure lying on the wicker sofa beneath the living room windows. At first he wasn't sure which one of them it was, but as he approached he realized that it was Rory.
She was curled up in a slightly awkward position, dressed in a pair of black leggings and a baggy purple tank top. Her hair was tossed up in a ponytail, her lips were parted, and there was an open book resting on her lap, teetering on falling to the ground at any moment.
Logan walked up to her quietly, hoping not to startle her, and gently reached to take the book out of her hands. He marked the page she was on with the sleeve and placed it on the side table.
"Hey…" he said softly while he placed a hand on her shoulder and gently squeezed.
Rory awoke with a deep breath of air and a turn of her head. She stretched slightly in her seat, and when her eyes landed on him standing in front of her she raised her eyebrows in surprise at the sight of him.
"Hey. You're back," she echoed, sitting up and stretching her neck. "What time is it?"
"It's a little after six," Logan answered, looking down at his watch. He placed his briefcase on the porch next to the end table and moved to sit down next to her on the wicker sofa. "Where's Ellie?"
"Mom's watching her. She's asleep," Rory answered, groggily, while she made some space for him. "Or she was… I'm not exactly sure how long I've been out here."
"She probably didn't want to wake you up."
"I guess," Rory replied. "How was your day?"
"It was good," Logan answered. "But I'm happy to be back. How about you?"
"Oh we had a very big day today," said Rory. She shifted in her seat so that she could rest her head against his shoulder, and Logan threw an arm around her. "We had a record number of diaper blowouts. We had lunch with Luke at the diner. We went for a walk. And then we came back here for her one month birthday extravaganza."
Logan smiled. The picture Rory had posted of Ellie fast asleep while dressed up in a tiny little party hat had been one of the highlights of his day.
He and Rory had officially become those parents, and neither one of them could reconcile how it had happened. Before Ellie had been born, they'd promised to never become those people, the kind of people whose social media timelines were entirely overcome with pictures and videos of their children and who would force complete strangers to look at photos of their babies on their phones.
That promise was completely laughable now. Sometime within the last month, both of them had bought tickets for a speeding train into obsessive parent land, and it didn't look like they'd be returning home any time soon.
It was really Ellie's fault. If she wasn't so unbelievably exceptional in every single way, Logan wouldn't feel the need to update everyone in his life on her every move. He thought the social media posts were bad enough, but as soon as Rory had posted that picture this morning, he'd made a point of showing it to every single person within a five foot radius of him.
"We also ran into Jess today…"
Suddenly, the mood shifted. Logan wasn't exactly sure how he was supposed to behave whenever the subject of Jess came up. He'd all but disappeared after the Easter they spent together and Rory had barely mentioned him since. Luke had mentioned him in passing a few times, and Rory hadn't acted like anything was wrong. But, ever since she'd called him with the news about her agent she'd become a bit more tense whenever his name was mentioned.
"Oh yeah?" he asked.
"Yeah…" she said with a sigh. "It was… good."
"That doesn't sound very convincing... "
Rory let out another louder sigh and shifted a little bit in his arms.
"It was," she assured. "We talked. We had lunch. Things were good. But, you know… I've just been so worried that he's upset with me."
"Ace, I told you," said Logan. "If he's upset that you're fielding offers for your book then he can go fuck - "
"He's not," Rory interrupted. "And it's not just about the book thing. The book thing is what made me think he was really mad, but I had been worrying about it before that."
Rory paused for a moment. She started absentmindedly playing with the hem of her tank top, and Logan started stroking his fingers against the exposed skin of her forearm.
"I didn't tell you this because things were still so up in the air between us at the time, and I didn't want or need to complicate things any more than they already were," she started before taking another deep breath. "But, Jess… had feelings for me. And I wasn't exactly doing much to make him think they were unwelcome."
Logan tensed a little bit, but he tried his best not to make it obvious to Rory.
"Okay…" he said with a nod. "I mean… I'll be honest, I picked up on it. I just wasn't sure whether or not they were… reciprocated."
"They weren't," said Rory. "Not really. I guess there was a part of me that thought maybe I might be able to develop feelings for him again. Like… he was there and I knew he loved me so if I could figure out how to love him again then he would help me get over you and move on. But as soon as you walked back into the picture, I knew it wasn't going to happen. I was still in love with you. It always a stupid plan, because in the end you're the one I've always loved. Every time."
"Okay…?"
Logan was confused. In fact, confused didn't quite adequately describe it. He didn't understand why she was acting so upset about the fact that another man had feelings for her during a period of time when they weren't even together.
"I kissed him."
The tension in Logan's body was far more noticeable this time. Instead of his muscles merely tightening, his back went ramrod straight, propelling Rory's head off of his shoulder as he sat forward.
"You kissed him!?" he asked. "You ran into him today, and you kissed him?"
"No!" Rory exclaimed. The color drained out of her face and a look of utter alarm settled on it. She placed a hand on his forearm to try to calm him down, but it wasn't exactly working. "No! Not today. I'm sorry. I… That's not what I meant."
"So, you kissed him before we got back together?"
"No, I…"
Logan's confusion wasn't improving. He didn't understand what she was trying to communicate to him. If she hadn't kissed him today, and she hadn't kissed him months ago, he didn't know what the issue was. He knew they dated in high school. He assumed that they'd kissed at some point during that stretch of time.
"I kissed him when you were in Costa Rica."
"Costa Rica?" Logan asked.
His muddled mind was momentarily at a loss. At first, he wasn't sure what she was talking about at all. But, the moment he was about to open his mouth again to tell her that he hadn't been to Costa Rica since his accident, he felt like a complete and utter moron.
"Oh," he said.
He turned his head away from her as he tried to wrap his mind around what she was saying to him. A complicated mess of emotions was bubbling within him, and he didn't know which one to land on.
First of all, there was the relief. When she'd first said the words, he thought that this was a recent development, and he wasn't sure if his heart would have been able to handle it if it was. After years of heartbreak and turmoil, things between them were finally going well. He wasn't sure he'd be able to handle another setback like this.
Then, there was the betrayal. He supposed that was part and parcel to hearing that your girlfriend had kissed another man while you were together, so nothing out of the ordinary there. The betrayal was also leading to alternating bursts of anger and sadness, but thankfully they were relatively easy to control.
Lastly - and perhaps strangely - there was peace. It was a shock to hear that it had happened, and he was struggling to adjust to the information, but it wasn't exactly like it mattered. Not here. Not now. In the grand scheme of things that they'd overcome together, this seemed so utterly insignificant and irrelevant.
He took a while to calm his mind enough to form a cohesive thought. And, as he did, Rory's discomfort grew with every passing second, eventually boiling to the point where she felt the need to prod him for a reply.
"What are you thinking?" she asked, desperately.
"I'm thinking...what exactly is the statute of limitations for being upset about this?"
"Less than eleven years, I hope," she responded, meekly. "Do you hate me?"
Logan took a deep breath. He wasn't exactly happy about it. He felt a little hurt. A little betrayed. But, mostly he was upset that she'd taken this long to tell him. He felt a little stupid, and yet at the same time he felt a bit vindicated. Because, as it turned out, the jealousy he'd felt toward Jess all those years ago apparently had been warranted.
"Did you sleep with him?"
"No! Logan, no," Rory insisted. She reached out and grabbed one of his hands, pulling it into her lap and clutching it tightly. "I've never slept with him. I swear. I just… After you left, I got an invitation to his open house for Truncheon and I went. I was still hurt, and I was so mad at you. And I guess there was a part of me that thought we weren't going to make it. And he was there, and he still had feelings for me. And I… I wanted to hurt you. It was terrible of me, but I wanted to hurt you like you hurt me. And I wanted to feel like even if I wasn't good enough for you, there was still someone out there who wanted me."
"I wanted you."
"It didn't feel like it at the time," she said. "I wasn't thinking straight. And we were both so angry at each other, and I couldn't handle it. I went there to prove to myself that I didn't need you. But in the end I couldn't go through with it because I did need you. I loved you. And then I did the same thing eleven years later without even realizing it…"
"Right. Okay…"
Logan rubbed at his eyes. He was starting to somewhat understand why she'd brought this up. It seemed like it was a lot more relevant than he realized. But, he still wanted some more information.
"Why are you telling me this?" he asked.
"Because you deserve to know. I should have told you years ago," she answered. "And Jess is Luke's nephew. He's going to be a part of our lives. We can't avoid him. I don't want you to somehow find out about this years down the line and think that I was keeping this a secret from you because I still felt like you needed to worry about him for some reason. You don't."
"Because you don't have feelings for Jess," said Logan.
"Right."
"You kept him around and considered letting him be a surrogate father to our child, but you don't have feelings for him."
Tears started to spring up in Rory's eyes at his last comment. He supposed it was a bit below the belt to throw Ellie in her face, but it wasn't exactly like he was thinking straight at the moment. His emotions were still bouncing around in his mind like a ping pong ball.
"I was scared," she whispered. "I was pregnant and alone. And Jess was familiar and stable and he had a little sister so he knew something about babies. I knew he would be nice to me, and he would be nice to her. I was so terrified to do this alone. I'm not my mom, Logan. I'm just not. I could read War and Peace cover to cover when I was thirteen years old, but the single mom thing? I just felt like I was in over my head..."
Rory wiped at her eyes with the heel of her hand, and as upset as Logan was, he couldn't stand to see her like his. He pulled her back down to him, and she wrapped her arms around him tightly. He was mad, but he didn't want her to think for even a second that this changed anything about the way he felt about her - or them.
He thought about what she'd said, really thought about it. He put himself in her shoes, contemplating what he would have done and what choices he would have made in her circumstances. It made sense that she was scared, that she would cling to whoever she could for support. If it had been Logan, he wasn't sure that he would have the courage to go through with it at all.
"Can I ask you something?" he said, softly. "Not about Jess…"
This time, Rory was the one who stiffened. She sat up again, and looked at him with a concerned and somewhat scared expression on her face. Perhaps he shouldn't have opened with that. The phrase 'can I ask you something' was a distant cousin to 'we need to talk.' There was rarely anything good on the other end.
"Sure," Rory replied, nervously.
Logan took a deep breath as he prepared to ask the question that had popped into his mind, the question that had popped into his mind several times in the last few months but that he had never summoned up the courage to actually ask.
"Why did you um…" he trailed off. "What made you decide to… go through with it?"
Rory didn't answer right away. The stupefied look on her face made it clear that she hadn't been expecting that question from him at all, that she quite possibly hadn't ever expected that question from him. He was just about to apologize for going there, when a response suddenly burst through her lips.
"I don't know," she said.
It was only the start of her answer. That much Logan knew. There had to be a lot going on in her mind, a lot of pain and fear that she had probably worked through a long time ago and was struggling to dive into again. Logan stayed quiet, waiting as long as he needed for her to continue.
"I guess…" she trailed off again. "I guess a part of me just realized that I was thirty-three years old. I wasn't getting any younger. I thought this might have been it. My one chance to have a baby…"
Logan didn't believe that was true at all. He believed that Rory might think it was true, but he knew better. He knew that if none of this had happened it would only be a matter of time before another man would fall head over heels for her. Either Jess or someone entirely different would be there to offer her anything she wanted.
"And then… I guess…"
The pause she took between 'guesses' this time was even longer than the first. She started playing with the hem of her tank top again, and Logan could tell that she was struggling with the emotions her answer was stirring within her.
"When I first took the test I was terrified. And I did think about it. But then I… I thought about you. And I thought about that night in New Hampshire. And for the first time since I left you behind that morning I was so… relieved. Because I realized that even if you were gone, I would have a part of you with me for the rest of my life. And that was enough. A part of you was enough."
Logan's vision started to get blurry with the culmination of his own tears. With that single admission, any concerns he had about Jess had left behind. He wrapped his arms around her, and Rory relaxed against him. She took a deep calming breath, and he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.
"I love you, Ace," he said. "And I'm really glad you decided to go through with it."
"Me too," Rory replied. "Are you mad at me? About the Jess thing?"
Logan sighed.
"Well...you know… I'm not exactly thrilled," he answered. "And I can't guarantee I won't punch the guy in the mouth the next time I see him..."
"Logan…" said Rory in a pleading tone.
"Ace, my girlfriend just told me she kissed another man while we were together, and I think I took it pretty well. Let me have my cathartic jokes about violence."
"Okay. Fair."
They sat there together for a few moments in a peaceful silence. Neither one of them wanted to disrupt the calm as they both came down from their heightened emotional state and enjoyed the stillness of the summer evening around them.
Eventually, however, their momentary reprieve from their own inner turmoils and the outward cries and needs of their infant daughter came to an end. The sound of a window opening suddenly from behind them startled them both out of their respective trances, and they turned around to see Lorelai peeking her head out at them.
"Hey, you guys might want to come in here. We might be on the edge of some major developments…" she said with a smile.
Confused, Logan and Rory both looked at each other and shrugged before walking back into the house. When they turned left into the living room, they saw Ellie stretched out on the floor on one of her blankets. She was on her tummy yet again, and she was turning her head from side to side the same way she'd been doing in the morning before Logan had left for the office. Yet, suddenly, and just as Logan was lowering himself to the ground, Ellie's eyes shifted upward, her head moving with them.
"Oh my God!" he cheered. "She did it! She lifted her head!"
Ellie's head stayed up in the air for about two and a half seconds before falling to the ground, and all three of them burst out into a round of encouraging cheers.
"You did it, baby!" he said as he reached down and scooped her up in his arms. "You're so strong!"
When Logan stood back up with Ellie, Rory walked over to them and pressed a kiss onto the top of their daughter's head and her hand against her back. She was about to step away, but Logan wrapped an arm around her back to keep her close to him before she had the chance. He kissed her on the forehead and reveled at how good it felt to finally have both his girls in his arms while Lorelai walked into the kitchen and muttered something about ordering Chinese food from Al's.
He was happy.
A younger more insecure version of himself might be angry. He might still be seething in jealousy and bitterness over the bombshell Rory had dropped on him just a few minutes ago, but right now he couldn't bring himself to care all that much about it.
It was eleven years ago. It had happened at a moment in time when their relationship was already falling apart at the seams, and they had proven to each other countless times since then how much they loved each other. The only thing that mattered was what he felt right now.
And right now he felt like the luckiest man in the world.
TBC…
AN: There it is guys. This one was really hard for me to write for some reason. I just felt like I never really got into the flow, probably because of what I'd mentioned at the top. Anyway, I hope you all liked it. And I hope the length makes up for the wait.
