A/N: Finally got an update out! I hope you like it :) Please let me know either way. This section was only meant to be half of a chapter but it just got bigger and bigger and bigger!
Chapter Seven
"Okay, okay let me take one more," begged Lorelai, her phone in hand. "Just one more, I promise."
"You've already taken fifty-seven thousand three hundred and eighty-one," groaned Rory, with a reluctant smile. She was in a forest green woollen jumper dress with black tights, and a Santa hat on her head and her hand on her hip whilst her mother made her pose for photos.
"I know, but it's Christmas and you're glowing and you've got a cute little Christmas bump," gushed Lorelai. "I regret that I have pretty much zero photos of me pregnant with you, you will not regret thousands of pics of you and the bump. Jess, give me your Santa hat!"
Jess immediately handed over the Santa hat, having very unenthusiastically been wearing it in the first place. Lorelai took a moment arranging the hat on Rory's bump, keeping the top of it upright by nestling it in between her now larger chest and leaning Rory back slightly so it was balanced.
"Mum, what are you doing?"
"We should have done this earlier and sent it as our Christmas card," exclaimed Lorelai, taking pictures on her phone. "If you smile this will be over faster. Just a couple more…. Done. I'm going to go show your Grandmother, she's out on the deck."
"Interesting look," smirked Jess, sipping from his bottle of beer, he smiled at Lorelai as she passed him through the patio door.
Rory rolled her eyes and removed both Santa hats. "Thanks. It's Christmas, I've got to let her have her fun."
"She's right you know, you're glowing," said Jess, softly. "Pregnancy suits you."
Rory smiled and sat down on the big leather couch and Jess joined her. "You should have seen me a few weeks ago, most of my day my head was stuck in a toilet. It's weird as well, I could swear last week I didn't have a bump at all, and it's just sort of appeared. Anyway, I don't want to talk about me, I want to talk about you, how are you? I feel like whenever we message each other it's only about the book."
"Yeah, I agree it's only been about the book," said Jess, seriously. "Why didn't you ever mention you were pregnant?"
"I knew that Luke had told you and April about the baby," said Rory, nervously fiddling with her sleeves. "And then when I knew you knew it felt awkward. And you didn't mention it either when you knew!"
"Yeah because it was weird that you'd not mentioned it!"
"I'm sorry," said Rory, scrunching her face. "This whole thing has been weird."
"You could have talked to me about it, you know? You still can."
"I think I was scared to tell you because you saw me at my lowest with my lack of underwear and no permanent home, and then you inspired me to write this book and I felt I was on the rise again and then now I'm lower. I didn't want to disappoint you."
"You surprised me; you didn't disappoint me. You're still a contender," grinned Jess.
Rory threw a cushion at him. "Yeah, I really feel it."
"Tell me, honestly, how are you feeling? I got here so late I only managed to get out a 'Congratulations' before Christmas dinner."
"I was never really that girl who fantasised about having kids," admitted Rory, swinging her feet up onto the sofa. "Probably because I was keenly aware of how young my mum had me and how much drama it caused. I was a career girl. Now I'm the career girl without a career, having a baby."
"You're a writer, Rory."
"I know, and although I halted progressive and now it's slow going, I can write, but it's not what I thought I'd be doing ten-fifteen years ago," stated Rory. "I'm going to be responsible for another human being and I can barely look after myself. I'm going to have to raise it in my childhood bedroom on a trundle bed. That's not even the complicated bit. How much did Luke tell you about the baby's father?"
"He said it was Logan's and that it's complicated and he'd probably get it wrong if he tried to explain it," answered Jess, with a small laugh. "Which I agree, the man is not a talker at the best of times let alone about an emotive topic, he would have messed it up somehow. So, Logan?"
"Do you hate me?"
"Because it's a Huntzberger you're spawning or because I did some googling and know about someone called Odette? I don't hate you, Rory," said Jess, squeezing her foot. "How did it happen?"
"We bumped into each other in Europe a few years ago and hit it off," explained Rory honestly. "We had an arrangement – 'when we're together, we're together when we're not, we're not' – it was a what happens in Vegas kind of thing. Whenever I had to go to London, I stayed with him and we'd explore London together and just generally be together. It was only really secret on my part; his close friends knew about us but no one in my life did. That's guilt, I knew how wrong it was. He knew about Paul; I knew about his engagement, but they didn't matter when we were together. At least that's what I told myself."
"How did he get you to agree with that?"
Rory let out a bitter laugh. "Everyone always assumes it was his idea. I don't know why people have such a low opinion of him and such a high one of me."
"Because for the most part, you deserve the high opinion."
"I don't but I think you always turn up at the right times in my life to remind me of your high opinion and it inspires me to try to earn it," said Rory, grabbing his hand and squeezing it. "I mean it, Jess, you're the one that pushed me to go back to Yale, you're the one who gave me the book idea."
"Clearly I'm your fairy godmother," chuckled Jess, stroking his thumb across her knuckles. "So why did you come up with the idea?"
"Comfort, I guess," surmised Rory. "I enjoy being with him, it's easy, we're good together. He's the most serious relationship I've had, and he was definitely the port in the storm of my life. I turned down a full life with him at twenty-two and his life is still the same, so I took the bits that I wanted. It was so selfish."
"You want to hear something sad? I'm fairly sure you're the most serious relationship I've had, and that was when I was eighteen," admitted Jess, running a hand through his chin-length raven hair.
"I remember when I first started getting feelings for you and I thought it was the most dramatic thing I would ever go through," laughed Rory. "Poor Dean, we weren't meant to be, but he did not deserve your arrogance at wooing me and the pure ignorance of my own feelings."
"You've not run into him and starting a secret relationship with him as well?" asked Jess, cheekily. "If you say yes, I will feel like I'm missing out."
"No, but I did bump into him and he's happily married with kids," smiled Rory.
"Good for him," said Jess, sincerely. "What happens next? Is Vegas still a thing?"
"We'd actually ended Vegas before I found out I was pregnant," revealed Rory. "His fiancée had moved into his apartment finally and it changed it for me. I couldn't stay there anymore; I know it was always wrong, but it suddenly felt really wrong. We had a night of fun with his friends and I asked him outright if he was marrying her. He said it was the dynastic plan. He always had to fulfil the dynastic plan and I'm not part of that. I said goodbye. And then this baby said hello. He knows about the baby, we're going to co-parent, what that looks like I have no idea. I'm not marrying him, Jess."
"I'm glad," admitted Jess.
"You are?"
"You deserve to get married because you are hopelessly in love with someone and they are with you," said Jess softly. "The baby will be loved either way. I will help any way I can, Rory, I mean it. I don't want you to think you're ever alone. Or because I used to think Huntzberger is a douche that you can't talk to me honestly about it."
"Oh, so you only 'used' to think that about him?" asked Rory, her eyebrow raised.
"I think he's just an idiot now," divulged Jess. "He didn't fight to have all of you and he still hasn't. I used to think he was an egotistical, spoiled brat with a silver spoon in his mouth who didn't know what hard work was but I have to admit that being in the publishing business I know he's good at what he does so I have to respect him for that. Whether he'd be in the same position without the family name, I don't know, but I admire him professionally."
"You grew up good, Jess Mariano," said Rory smiling. She took a moment to really look at him and she truly was proud of the man he'd grown into. She genuinely didn't know why he wasn't in a relationship, he had a good business, he was intelligent, he was charming and the hot-headedness he'd had as a teenager had simpered down. His inability to communicate had been an issue for them whilst they were teenagers, but he didn't seem to have that problem now. He was also ridiculously attractive, the same bad-boy face but with a few new lines and longer swept-back hair. She'd be lying to herself as well if she didn't admit he had also filled out very nicely. The thing that sealed his glow up was the fact that he certainly smiled more than he used to. "Why are you single?"
"Super picky," groaned Jess. "Dating sucks, I'm waiting for something more organic, something real."
"Don't wait too long," warned Rory. "Any girl would be lucky to have you."
"I don't know about that," smirked Jess. "They'd have to put with me having my head in a book most of the time or running off to rescue my mum and TJ from cults."
The sound of a door opening caused Rory to look up and see her mother coming back in the room waving her phone in her hand. She noticed her mum's blue eyes narrow ever so slightly at the sight of her and Jess' clasped hands, and so she pulled her hand free as though his burnt.
"Rory, honey, your baby daddy has messaged you. You left your phone outside when you went out to get air earlier," announced Lorelai, not commenting on the non-subtle hand dropping but giving her a weird look. "Sorry, for interrupting Jess."
Jess held his palms up. "Not a trouble, we were just catching up."
"Sure," said Lorelai, with a bright smile. "Old friends catch up. Here's your phone, kid."
"Thanks, mum," said Rory, standing and grabbing it from her. "I'm going to head up to my room now anyway, it's late and I'm a tired pregnant person. Are grandma and Luke outside still?"
"Yeah, are you going to say goodnight?"
"Yep," replied Rory. "Night Jess."
"Night, Rory, I'll see you in the morning," said Jess, tipping his beer bottle to her.
"Come on, Ror, I'll walk you out," said Lorelai, grabbing a throw from the back of a chair and draping it over her daughter's shoulders leaving her arm wrapped around as they went outside. "Hey guys, this one's calling it a night."
Rory looked at her grandmother and stepdad (that one was still strange to say no matter how father like he had always been in her life) sat outside on the deck around a fire pit. Emily also had a throw wrapped around her, Luke in his usual bodywarmer and a nervous scowl on his face. "It is still so bizarre we spend Christmas this way."
"Why? Because we're enjoying the fresh air?" snapped Emily. "Christmas means family, Rory."
"I know it does, Grandma," smiled Rory, shaking her head. "And you know what I meant; we have always been a family, but we have never spent a Christmas like this. I like it."
"For the record so do I," added Luke. "It's nice out here, thank you for inviting us and letting Jess join as well."
"You're all family," conceded Emily, before frowning. "It's been bothering me all day though, is he the boy that came to Friday night dinner with a black eye?"
Lorelai laughed. "Yes, back in his troublemaker days."
"It was actually a swan," revealed Luke, grinning.
"What?!" shrieked Lorelai and Rory in unison.
"He fought with a swan?" asked Emily, confused, narrowing her eyes over her martini glass.
"More like the swan attacked him," said Luke smugly. "That's why he was so foul-tempered – he was embarrassed."
"He never told me!" exclaimed Rory. "I was so mad at him that night and he was assaulted by a bird."
"In his defence, I would have taken that to my grave too," laughed Lorelai. "I think we shouldn't tell him we know and then if he annoys us, we can squark at him."
"Do swans squark or is that more of a goose?" contemplated Rory. "I think I will ponder on that in bed though, I'm shattered guys."
"Hey, hey hey, before you go through," said Lorelai giddily. "Where do swans invest their cash? In the stork market!"
"Mum," groaned Rory.
"No, I've got a better one! Why did the swan cross the road? To punch Jess in the face!"
