AN: So, I thought that despite my hatred of all things Christmas, Just this once, I'd set my inner Grinch aside and reach instead for my inner Santa and leave you with this update in your inbox for Christmas morning. Hope you enjoy.
PS--smut warning in the second half. Hope you enjoy that especially.
December 1985
The bus pulled slowly through the streets of the small town as snow flurried down around them, coating the pavement with a pretty, but slippery, sheen. It was the first snow of the season, and the fluffy, white flakes had never looked quite so beautiful to Lorelai as they did reflecting the glow of the twinkly lights that hung from every lamp post, eave, and even the gazebo that stood prominently in the downtown square.
Unlike most kids, Lorelai had never been a huge fan of snow. Snow days for her weren't a chance to sleep in, have snowball fights, and then come inside to warm up with a cup of hot cocoa and some homemade chocolate chip cookies. Instead, to Lorelai, snow was a trap. A prison of frosty hydrogen and oxygen atoms that kept her tied to the mansion that had never quite felt like a home. Her father would lock himself in his home office all day and work from there; the stress of some insurance deal snafu rolling off him and infecting the entire house. Her mother would be snipper than usual, with her father at home tying up the phone line so that Emily couldn't call her DAR friends to gossip and plan which canapés they would serve at their next event. Christopher would usually invite Lorelai to go sledding, but her mother would insist that plummeting down a hill in an ugly snow suit was hardly proper for a young lady of her standing. And while Lorelai had no qualms against sneaking out, that was hard to do unnoticed when everyone was confined to the same space.
But there was something about this snow that felt different. In this place, in this town, it felt magical.
She gathered Rory up in her arms—the child sleeping soundly, lulled to sleep by the motion of the bus—and approached the driver. "Excuse me, Sir?" she asked.
"Yeah."
"Is there somewhere to rent a room in this town?" She hadn't been on the road for long—barely more than an hour—but she knew Rory would need to eat soon and it was getting late anyway. She might as well stop and regroup, maybe try to come up with a plan. She probably should have done that before running away from home. But Lorelai always was the impulsive type. And as she had sat in her bedroom that afternoon, studying for her GRE in between bouts of watching her daughter sleep, she had just known her kid deserved more. She deserved a life where she could be a kid. She deserved a life where she could get dirty, be loud, have fun, make mistakes. She deserved a life where she could be everything she wanted to be, and not constantly have to make herself smaller just to fit in. She deserved a life where joy and kindness, trumped image and prestige. And so, Lorelai had just stood up and started throwing things into bags. The diaper bag was already packed with most of what Rory needed; a few extra baby outfits, some necessities for Lorelai, and all the cash she had stored in her piggy bank…plus a few extra bills she'd skimmed off the stash her father kept in the pool house for poker nights, and she was good to go.
The driver glanced at her out of the corner of her eye. "You don't got nowhere to stay?" he asked.
"I'm on my way to visit family, but I got a late start and with the snow…I thought it would be better to call it a night and go the rest of the way in the morning," she lied.
"How old are you?"
"Old enough," Lorelai straightened her shoulders defiantly.
He glanced at her again, and Lorelai got the distinct impression that he wasn't buying her adult act. But he seemed to take pity on her; a fact which she found simultaneously annoying and relieving. Lorelai wasn't naïve to how the world worked. She was the last one on the bus, alone with just her baby and a strange man who drove a bus for a living. There were reactions he could have had to her thinly veiled desperation that were far less benign than pity. "There's an Inn about 15 minutes up the road," he told her. "I can't get the bus up the lane to the parking lot, so you'll have to walk part of the way…not far, maybe a five-minute trek. And it's a straight path up to the place, so you shouldn't get lost." He paused, checking her out again, his eyes lingering on the expensive stroller she had, just for a moment before looking back at the road. "You got money?"
Lorelai gritted her teeth, her stomach churning uncomfortably. There was no safe way to answer that question. "Just drop me off as close as you can, please," she said. She noticed him shrug his compliance as she took Rory back to their seat. She silently bounced the baby in her arms, staring out the window as the nativity scene, Santa's village, and the rest of the town's holiday decorations rolled by, giving way to a couple blocks of Cape Cod and Colonial style homes decked out with Christmas decorations of their own. For most of her life, she'd found the idea of this kind of Norman Rockwell picturesque town to be laughable. Probably just a cover for housewives hopped up on amphetamines, cooking dinner for their blue collar husbands. But as she watched the homes flicker by through the window of the bus, she couldn't help but imagine her and Rory living in one of those houses one day; Rory playing in the yard, making snowmen, swinging on a play-set…
The houses disappeared after a block or two and then, finally, after a few more minutes, the driver pulled the bus to a stop on the side of a dark, tree-lined road. "We're here," he told her. Lorelai started gathering up her things, but it was hard to carry everything along with Rory and the stroller. The driver stood up and came back to help her, grabbing a couple bags off the luggage rack above and helping her out to the street. Lorelai opened up the stroller once they'd made it off the bus, and secured Rory inside before bundling up her own jacket and gathering the rest of her things from the driver. "It's right up this road." He pointed up the tiny lane.
Lorelai could see faint lights in the distance and she nodded in understanding. "Thanks," she told him. He nodded in reply and got back on the bus, closing the doors and driving off, leaving her on the side of the deserted road. Lorelai took a few minutes to compose herself, before following the lights down the lane.
The road was barely paved, and the bumpy terrain woke Rory who started crying and trying to wiggle out of the stroller. "It's alright, Rory," she tried to soothe as she continued to wheel the stroller forward, focusing not on the cold or the feelings of dread, but rather on the crunch of the snow under her feet, the crisp smell of the air in her nostrils, and the twinkle of lights in front of her. "It's alright, we're almost there." She had no idea where there was. She had no idea where they were headed or what was going to come next. She'd avoided thinking too much about the future as she'd fled from the past that was no longer serving her. All she knew was what she didn't want. She didn't want to raise her daughter in that house. She didn't want her to feel as stifled as she had by all the rules and expectations of her parents' world. She didn't want to be worn down until she finally agreed to marry Christopher, just because that's what you did when you had a baby. And right now, she mostly just didn't want to be stuck in the cold with her stomach grumbling from hunger. They had to have food at this place too—right?
She finally made it to the porch and, struggling, she maneuvered the stroller up the steps with Rory fussing the whole way. She opened the door, a bell sounding above her and the dulcet crooning of Bing Crosby singing White Christmas wafting through the air, along with the scent of citrus and warm spice. A few people were milling around in a sitting area chatting. A large, ornately decorated Christmas tree towered up towards the ceiling next to the crackling fireplace. Lorelai walked to the front desk.
"Welcome to the Independence Inn. Can I help you, Dear?" an older woman, chicly dressed in a woolen, hunter green suit and sporting a platinum blonde bob greeted her.
"I, umm…I'd like to get a room."
The woman gave her a discerning look, her eyebrows raised in an expression that appeared somewhere between suspicion and concern. She glanced down at the fussing toddler that accompanied Lorelai.
"Just for the night?" the woman queried.
"Yes," Lorelai said. "We're headed to visit family for Christmas." She stuck with the lie she'd told the bus driver.
"I see. It's a tad early, isn't it? Christmas isn't for a couple more weeks."
"Yes, well, we're staying for a while. My, uh…cousin, wanted us to experience the whole Christmas in Manhattan thing…Seeing the tree, ice skating in Rockefeller Park, seeing the Rockettes."
"How nice," the woman smiled warmly. "It must have been hard to get that much time off work at the holiday. What do you do?"
"I'm…uh…a stay-at-home Mom. My…uh…husband, is working, and he's going to meet us there just before Christmas." Lorelai noted the woman's eyes glance at her ringless left hand. "I don't like to travel with my good jewelry," Lorelai answered the unasked question. The woman's eyebrows rose again, that same expression as before…disbelief mixed with sympathy. "So, uh…how much is the room?" Lorelai reached into the outside pocket of the diaper bag that hung over her shoulder and pulled out a wad of cash, starting to peel off some bills to pay the woman and be done with this conversation.
"What's your name, Dear?" the woman said instead of answering.
Lorelai fiddled uncomfortably, rocking the stroller back and forth as Rory fumbled with the buckle, unable to release herself from the contraption.
"Mama" Rory cooed, reaching up for Lorelai.
"Umm, uh," she said, as she reached down to unlatch her daughter and pick her up. "I'm, uh…Lorelai," she said softly, mumbling so that she assumed the woman wouldn't hear, but she did.
"Lorelai," she repeated mirthfully. "I'm Mia. And your daughter?"
"Rory," she admitted with reluctance. She bounced the child in one arm, still holding her money in the other.
"I'll tell you what, Lorelai, why don't you put that away for now and I'll have Gerald put your bags in storage. You and Rory must be hungry."
"Oh, that's not…." She tried to protest. This woman was kind, but she could see too much. Lorelai felt too exposed; she just wanted to get into a room, feed and change Rory, take a shower, and sleep.
"Really," I insist. "Come, have something to eat while they prepare your room. We can figure out the money later."
Lorelai bit her lip and reluctantly agreed. She really was hungry. And she knew Rory was too.
"Gerald!" Mia beckoned the bellhop over. He came and gathered up Lorelai's things and she felt a faint pang of fear, as though she might not get them back, even though logically she knew she wasn't being robbed or taken captive.
She clutched Rory tighter and followed Mia past the empty dining room and directly into the kitchen area. Lorelai looked around in confusion. There were two men in chef's coats and hats milling around and cleaning up.
"Mark," she greeted. The older man turned to look at her. "Is the grill still on?"
"I was just about to turn it off."
"Is there anything left that we could get this young lady to eat?" Mia asked.
"Umm, I'm all out of the prime rib and duck, but I could throw a burger on the grill real quick before I shut it down."
Mia turned to Lorelai. "Is a hamburger alright?" Lorelai's stomach churned anticipatorily. She almost never got to eat hamburgers. She had them on occasion when she would go out with her friends after school. But that was in the before. She didn't get to go out with friends these days, and Emily would never deign to serve a burger in her house.
"A burger is great," she nodded.
"What about Rory?" Mia asked.
"She can have a little bit of burger too," Lorelai said. She didn't want to be any more of a bother. The cook was already going out of his way to make something for her even though the kitchen was basically closed.
"I've got some apple sauce in the fridge too," he acknowledged.
"Rory would like that," Lorelai nodded in thanks.
"Excellent," Mia said brightly. "Let's go take a seat in the dining room, shall we?" She guided Lorelai and Rory out and they took a seat at a table. Lorelai positioned the baby on her lap, although not much more than a minute later, a highchair appeared and a waiter came over and poured a couple glasses of water. There was quiet for a few minutes as Lorelai set Rory up in her highchair. Mia glanced casually around the dining room, her warm smile never fading, before finally turning her gaze on Lorelai. "Now, Lorelai," she said, her voice kind, "why don't you tell me how you really ended up here."
Lorelai's eyes went wide at the statement. She knew Mia was on to her, but she hadn't expected her to just come right out and say it.
"I, umm…" she stuttered, unsure how to answer.
"Do the two of you have anywhere to go after here?" she asked a slightly less complicated question. Lorelai hesitantly shook her head; there didn't seem to be much point in lying anymore.
"I see," Mia nodded solemnly, her face growing pensive. "Well," she said after a minute, slapping her hands on her legs decisively. "I certainly can't have the two of you going back out in the cold. It may be Christmas time, but this Inn isn't full, and you won't be sleeping in a barn. You'll stay here."
"But, I don't…" Lorelai started to protest. She wasn't sure how much a room cost here, but she only had a couple hundred dollars with her and that would surely only go so far.
"You can work here…in exchange for room and board. I'll set you up with a room for now, but ultimately, we'll have to find another place for you long term. There's a toolshed out back that could work."
"So not a barn behind the Inn, just a shed," Lorelai teased, shocked by the generous offer.
Mia smiled, fortunately not taking offense to Lorelai's seemingly uncontrollable urge to use sarcasm to deal with awkward situations…or really any situations. "Well, to be fair, while it's no manger and it's not heated, it is well insulated, and there's plumbing and electricity and a floor that isn't made out of straw and dirt. I think we could make it into a cozy little place for the two of you."
"Are you sure?" Lorelai asked. "You don't even know me."
"I know enough," she insisted. "And I can always use an extra set of hands. Can you make a bed?"
"Umm," there was usually a maid who made her bed back at home. But she'd watched them do it a lot. How hard could it be? "Sure." Her voice came out as a question, but she nodded her head to try to make it seem more convincing.
"Laundry?" Lorelai gritted her teeth. That one would be harder to fake. Mia most have noticed her expression. "Well, we can train you. That's fine. All I ask is that you work hard and take the best care you can of that little girl of yours."
The waiter walked out and placed a large plate with a burger and fries in front of Lorelai, and a smaller plate with chopped up hamburger meat and apple sauce on the highchair. Lorelai eyed the burger, her mouth filling with saliva as the delicious scent of the food permeated her nose. Rory reached out a greedy hand for her plate, picking up a glob of chopped meat and stuffing it in her mouth. Lorelai smiled at the gleeful expression she made in response to this new food she hadn't ever tried before.
Hard work. That was something Lorelai wasn't used to in her old life. But then again, that was the life she was trying to get away from; that life of privilege and egos and frivolousness. That life where things like burgers and hard work were below them. And honestly, this opportunity that was being handed to her was a pretty sweet deal. At the very least, she and Rory would have a roof over their heads and all the burgers they could eat…maybe some people to help watch Rory while she worked. And Mia was offering her more kindness than even her own mother had ever shown her. It seemed like an offer she couldn't refuse. Maybe, the Independence Inn could finally give her the independence she'd been craving. She looked at the window at the still falling flakes. And maybe instead of making her feel trapped, snow could finally make her feel free.
"I promise," Lorelai nodded, her shoulders straightening with determination. "I can do both of those things."
November 2005
The fingers of his right hand dug into the flesh of her upper thigh, pulling her greedily towards him. He sunk deeper into her; a little too deep. "Logan," she winced, leaning forward into the mattress on her forearms to alleviate some of the pressure as he hit a particularly sensitive spot. She felt his fingers uncurl and release her as he retreated slightly.
"Sorry, Ace" he grunted, letting his hand trace up over her hip to caress her ass before giving it a hard squeeze. "Got carried away." He shifted his angle slightly to adjust the depth of his thrusts but continued his fervent pace. Her pussy quivered in approval. It was amazing the way he could read her body and tell exactly what she needed. Right now, she needed it fast and rough, even if she still wasn't able to tolerate deep penetration. She gripped the muscles of her pussy around him as he slammed into her from behind.
"Fuck," he groaned. He leaned forward, putting one hand on the mattress for support while letting the other run up her back to the nape of her neck, grasping a fist full of hair and pulling. A jolt of something halfway between pleasure and pain coursed through her. She inhaled sharply, not hating the sensation; in fact, she found it unexpectedly titillating. "Fuck, Ace…I…God…you…" He was getting ready to come undone, she could tell; besides the jumble of words and grunts tumbling from his mouth, his thrusts were becoming more jolted and irregular as he tried to hold himself back to make sure he didn't come too soon. But she didn't want him to hold back. She wanted more.
"Don't…slow…" she breathed out. "I…almost…"
He sat back again, reaching between her legs to stimulate her clit. Her breathing sped up; jagged and harsh as the feel of his hand against her numb sent shock waves through her. "Yes…yes…close, so close. More." He took her permission to let go and he plunged into her, faster and faster as his fingers continued their manual stimulation. A few thrusts later Rory felt every muscle in her body convulse as her upper half collapsed face first into the bed. His release followed behind just moment later, as evidenced by the strangled cry that emanated from his lips and the gradual slowing of his movements as he spilled out into her. Neither of them moved right away as they attempted to catch their breath, the rhythm of their labored panting the only sound in the room.
Finally, he pulled out, flopping onto the bed beside her. She still didn't move; moving as a whole wasn't easy to do at this stage in her pregnancy, and her muscles were spent. After another thirty seconds or so, as the endorphins wound down, the omnipresent ache in her back since she'd hit her third trimester returned to her consciousness and staying where she was became no longer a possibility. She slowly shifted onto her side and laid down.
She felt Logan lay a hand on her arm and then his lips pressed against the skin of her shoulder. "You should go pee," he told her. "You don't want to get an infection."
Her face scrunched up in embarrassment. "Can you not do that?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder to look at him.
"What?"
"Talk about peeing and UTIs. It's weird." She hated when he did stuff like that. 'Have a little more dinner, you need the energy.' 'Let's go to bed, you must be tired.' 'You should pee so you don't get an infection.' She was a big girl—uncomfortably big these days—she didn't need him to remind her to do the most basic human tasks. It made her unreasonably irritated.
He seemed to take her admonishment in stride as he chuckled and turned over, relaxing back into the mattress. "Okay."
She laid a hand on her stomach and sighed, realizing he wasn't wrong—she really did have to go. That knowledge only made her more annoyed. She pushed herself slowly up to seated and reached for the hotel bathrobe that had been hastily discarded during their earlier activities, knocking over the bedside lamp and landing so that it hung precariously off the edge of the nightstand, inches away from crumbling into a heap on the floor.
"Where are you going?" Logan asked.
She turned her head to look at him with a scowl. "To the bathroom," she barked. "Just because I don't want to talk about it doesn't mean I don't have to go." His eyebrows rose and his lips pulled tight in what she could tell was an attempt to keep from laughing. She rolled her eyes and turned away, pushing herself the rest of the way off the bed and wrapping the bathrobe around her before crossing the room to the en suite.
She closed the door behind her and pulled up her robe, squatting onto the toilet. As she sat there, peeing, she felt a thump against her stomach.
"You awake, kiddo?" she asked as she rubbed her stomach in circular motions. "You're gonna go easy on Mom, right?" Another kick, this time to her back, indicated that, no, he was not going to go easy on her. He'd become a lot more active over the past month or so and he was unreasonably strong if you asked her. Some days she was amazed he hadn't yet pulled an Alien and busted his way straight out through her, admittedly weak, abdominal wall. She finished her business and washed up as the baby continued to move around. She was halfway back to the bed when he gave her a particularly vigorous kick to her kidney. "Ooof, take it easy, Hunter."
"Hunter?" Logan looked up at her.
She shrugged. "I'm just trying different names on for size."
"Yeah, but…Hunter?" he asked.
"You got a problem with Hunter?" She had no intention of naming the baby Hunter. She'd known it was wrong the second it came out of her mouth. But seeing as he seemed so adamantly against it, she figured she could use this opportunity to mess with him a bit.
"Besides the fact that it's a terrible name?" She studied his face for a moment. He really didn't like the name Hunter.
"What?" she teased. "Did some guy named Hunter steal your girl and spit in your whiskey?"
"It just…it sounds like something you'd name your dog. You can't possibly be thinking of naming him that."
Rory climbed back into bed and laid down, facing him. "I'm not," she finally put him out of his misery. "I just find that saying the names out loud gives me a better sense of what I like. But nothing really seems to jive just yet." That was how she'd been doing it, just throwing random names in there when she talked to the baby to see if it felt right. But so far nothing did.
"It's getting close, you need to pick something soon," he pointed out.
"I know," she sighed. It was coming far quicker than she was comfortable with. There was so much she still didn't have figured out. Honestly, she'd been avoiding thinking about the realities of having an actual baby for far too long, and now it was suddenly just around the corner. She didn't have a name. She could manage a little bit of maternity leave, but she had no plans for childcare after that. And she hadn't even begun to buy diapers, or onesies, or formula, or anything else the baby would need. The old Rory would have been in a complete panic at this point. But honestly, up until just the last week or so, she had barely given the details a second thought. After all, she and plans were in a fight. Her plans had betrayed her, and she had given up relying on them. So why bother making plans for the baby when they would all just blow up in her face anyway? But now, now the anxiety she'd been suppressing for so long was starting to bubble back up to the surface, no matter how hard she tried to push it down. "But it's not an easy decision. I want something normal but also not something that eight other kids in his class are going to have." She felt weird talking about this with Logan, given the circumstances, but if he could give her even just a little bit of perspective on at least one thing…like a name, maybe it would help ease the nerves that were starting to fray.
"Agreed." Logan nodded.
"But nothing really feels right. I'll have a name I think I like and then I'll say it out loud and just want to cringe."
"Well, Hunter is pretty cringeworthy so…" Logan replied with a teasing smile.
"Oh yeah?" she asked huffily, "you think you can come up with something better?"
"Better than Hunter?," he replied with a pointed raise of his eyebrows. "Yeah, I'm pretty sure I could come up with something."
"Okay then, let's hear it, Mr. Big Book of Baby Names …and FYI, 'Logan' is not a legitimate suggestion."
"Hey, Logan is a perfectly good name; strong, manly…virile."
"Wow…" Rory looked at him with a look of awe. "That is impressive, how you just went full on macho man right there. I can almost smell the testosterone."
Logan ignored her snarky reply.
"How about Ashton?"
"As in Kutcher?" Rory asked with a pointed look.
"Yeah, so not Ashton. How about…Tristan?"
Rory felt herself clench up at the mere mention of the name. Logan must have noted her visceral reaction. "No good?" He asked.
"There was this guy at Chilton. He was…well, an ass would be putting it lightly. He tortured me…went around calling me Mary, as in…"
"I know," Logan interrupted her with a chuckle.
Rory rolled her eyes; of course Logan knew about the Biblical insults. "Yeah, well, I'm sure if he could see me now, he'd suggest I name the baby Jesus."
"I can vouch for you if he tries to send three wisemen your way," Logan teased.
"Yeah, that won't be necessary," she informed him with an exasperated role of her eyes.
"Noted," Logan nodded. "Moving on, how about Carter?"
"Oh my god, are you serious?" She was starting to sense a very troubling theme here.
"What? What's so wrong with Carter?"
"Could you choose WASPier names? It's like you're getting them right out of an '80's frat boy movie. What are you going to suggest next, Kip?"
"Ouch, tell me how you really feel," Logan joked.
"Let's think a little less stuck-upish, shall we?" Rory prodded, hoping for a name that wouldn't practically doom her son to a life in hedge-fund management. "How about Josh?"
"As in my sister's super boring fiancé?"
"Oh…right. I forgot about him."
"I know," Logan replied "That's the point. Everyone forgets about him. He's forgettable—and so is his name. You don't want the baby to be forgettable do you?"
"Well, no," she admitted. She didn't want him to be forgettable. He deserved a strong, memorable name. "Thomas?" she suggested.
Logan's head bobbed back a forth. "Maybe."
The baby gave another Pelè power kick and Rory grunted. "Do you think that means he likes it, or he hates it?" Rory questioned as she rubbed the spot he'd just hurled his heel into.
"I'm not sure…here…" Logan reached out and put his hand on her stomach. She immediately tensed with nervous energy and her palms became freakishly sweaty.
"What are you doing?" she asked.
"Breaking out my rusty morse code," he said as though it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Maybe he's trying to tell us something." Logan kept his hand on her stomach, nodding thoughtfully for a moment. "Uh huh," he said, as though he was actually acknowledging something the baby said.
Rory tried to force her body to relax. It was Logan, there was literally no part of her he hadn't touched. And he was just being goofy…it didn't mean anything. Just like it didn't mean anything that he was coming to see her every week, or that he was helping her think of baby names, or that he was concerned with whether or not she got a UTI. None of that meant anything. It couldn't. She just had to keep reminding herself of it. "Well? Did he spell out his name for you yet?"
"Not yet but…" he paused for effect. "Yep," he nodded. "That was definitely an 'S.'"
"An 'S'?" Rory questioned.
"Yep. Three short taps…that's an 'S,' I'm sure of it. As in SOS. It's one of the easiest letters to make out in morse code, that's why they chose it as the distress signal."
"I thought it stood for 'save our ship.'"
"Mmmm," Logan pursed his lips and scrunched up his nose apologetically. "Nope. Common misconception. SOS doesn't actually stand for anything; they just chose it because it was a distinctive sequence."
"That can't be right."
"'Fraid it is." Rory fought the mounting desire to borrow Logan's laptop to look it up. It was a feeling she had become unaccustomed to over the past months…the need for knowledge. The desire to know everything she could, no matter how useless the fact. That wasn't that person she was anymore. So why was this feeling so hard to ignore? It didn't matter though…because she was going to ignore it, nonetheless. Who cared what SOS really stood for? Rory might have, but Leigh surely didn't.
"Okay, then," she relented. "So, you think he's telling us his name starts with an S?"
"That certainly seems like the logical conclusion," Logan played it straight, even though there was nothing logical about a fetus knowing morse code and using it to communicate his name trans-utero.
"Sean?" Rory suggested.
"Sebastian?"
"Sal?"
"Sal?" Logan repeated with a chuckle. "What? you want him to grow up and get a job in waste management with a name like that?"
"Waste management?" Rory asked.
Logan gave her a studious look. "Waste management…" he repeated. "You know…it's a common front for the mob."
"It is?"
Logan laughed. "Yeah."
"Oh…well, I don't want him to swim with the fishes, so maybe not Sal."
He chuckled again. "Maybe not Sal," he repeated.
"Okay, so…" she paused as she tried to come up with more "S" names. "Steve?"
"It has potential." Logan paused. "Or…how about Samuel?" he suggested.
"Samuel?" Rory repeated. "Samuel."
"You like?" Logan asked. She did. It was traditional but not too traditional. Not that common anymore, but also not old fashioned. It was strong, and steady. It felt right.
"Samuel Gilmore." She noticed a strange look cross Logan's face as she said it.
"What?"
He took a second before speaking. "Gilmore?" he asked.
"What else would it be?" Samuel Huntzberger. The name flashed through her mind unbidden. Her heart sped up with an emotion she couldn't quite discern—was it anxiety or excitement?
"I thought, well…wouldn't it be Parker now?"
Oh. Right. Her heart fell again. How had she never even considered that? She wasn't Rory Gilmore anymore. She was Leigh Parker. That meant the baby would have the last name Parker…not Gilmore. She felt strangely hollow at the thought despite the fact that there was a living human being inside of her, crowding out all of her internal organs. This was the choice she'd made…to start a new life, to become a new person. And there were consequences to that decision; her baby wouldn't be a Gilmore. So what? It was just a name. But yet…was this something she could ever come back from? There was going to be a birth certificate…official documentation. Not the faked stuff like she had. Even Lorelai had never gone that far when she'd run away. Rory had always carried the family name…had always been a Gilmore. And when she'd needed that…when she'd needed her family to get into Chilton, to go to Yale, to be there for her…when she'd really needed them, she'd been able to count on that legacy, that bond, her family, to be there for her. Was she denying her child that? Was she removing all chances that one day this baby could be a part of that family? Was she ready to close that door completely? And if she did, could she alone be enough for her child?
"Ace?" She shook herself out of her thoughts and looked at Logan who was looking at her with concern.
"Parker, right." She nodded weakly.
"Do you…I mean…it doesn't have to be, if you…"
"No," Rory shook her head again, pushing down the lump in her throat. "It's Parker. Samuel Parker."
"Okay, but…"
"No," she said again more forcefully. She couldn't talk about this. She'd made her choices, she had to live with them. Besides, when it really came down to it, her family hadn't been there for her. Lorelai hadn't been there for her. She'd kicked her out of her own house; told her she wasn't welcome if she didn't play the good daughter and do exactly what she was told. That wasn't the kind of family her kid needed. It was only natural that she might get sentimental sometimes, but that's all it was…nostalgia for a life that wasn't hers anymore.
"Are you sure, because…"
"Logan," she said warningly.
Logan sighed. "Okay," he relented.
"I'm tired." She was always tired these days but she was suddenly overcome by a new wave of weary exhaustion. "And I have to open at the bookstore tomorrow so…"
"Right." He nodded, starting to push himself up. "I'll get the lights." He turned over, clicking off the bedside lamp that had been illuminating the hotel room. Rory closed her eyes. But despite the darkness, and silence, and bone crushing fatigue, sleep did not come.
AN: Okay, so I hope you enjoyed your Christmas present. (Or belated Chanukah present...or Kwanza present, or winter solstice present...). Anyway, I hope you enjoyed it. Next chapter big stuff is gonna start happening, so stay tuned.
And now, for MY Christmas present, well to paraphrase Mariah Carey...All I want for Christmas is reviews.