A/N: If this part seems familiar to you, it's because originally it was in chapter 4, but after posting it I realized it was too damn long for one chapter. So I split it up and reposted the shorter Chapter 4, but who knows how long the site takes to refresh it. So if you read the long version of chapter 4, go ahead and skip this because it is exactly the same.
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Chapter 5
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The phone rang in Rory and Paris' shared room, interrupting Paris' highly dictator-ish speech on what their leadership project should be. Paris just gave the phone, then Rory, a dirty glare. "You know it's for you. It's not like anyone calls me."
Rory rolled her eyes and walked over to the phone. "They don't know what they're missing."
She picked the phone up, but before she could even say hello, the phone emanated a high pitched whine that sounded a lot like, "Rory!"
Rory smiled. "I'm sorry, Polite Caller, but my phone seems to have an unusually whiny ring."
"Rooooorrrryyyy!"
"There it is again. I think I should notify the proper telephone authorities. Could you please call back in a few minutes?"
"Rory, Mommy is having a crisis. A calamity! Which is quickly becoming a conundrum! A riddle wrapped in an enigma! It's like Calamity Jane and Jim Carrey's Riddler met on a singles cruise and got married and had a baby and then left it on my doorstep!"
"Does this mean I'm not an only child anymore?"
"It means I need you to help me. Help Mummy, Sweetie Darling!"
"Okay. I know it can be confusing, so I'll help you through it: Scott Bakula is a terrible, terrible starship captain. No one knows how or why he got command of the Enterprise. So when you watch the show, and you become confused as to why the stupid man is giving orders to the obviously more qualified Vulcan lady and southern guy, you just have to remind yourself that contrary to all common sense, he's the man in charge."
"I wish I had boobs like the Vulcan lady."
"No you don't, you'd fall over."
"I like that southern guy." Lorelai said, recalling all the times he'd ran around the ship in his little blue skivvies.
"Only because he spends every other episode in his underwear. Now what's your problem?"
"I don't have a what problem, I have a who problem."
"Who's your problem?"
"Who do you think?"
"I don't know who."
"Who else could it be besides that certain who?"
"How am I…arrgh!" Rory exclaimed when she couldn't think of a way to fit 'who' into the sentence.
"Haha, I win."
"I concede victory to you."
"When you left you were but a student, and I was the master. And I still am! I am the Master forever!"
"Didn't the Master have a Who problem?"
"Yes, but the Master was trying to avoid it." Lorelai sighed and got into serious mode. "It's Luke."
"Ah yes, I should have known."
"Especially with the Star Wars reference of three seconds ago."
"But you were doing Darth Vader, not Luke Skywalker," Rory pointed out.
"Someone's anal." Lorelai sighed again. She felt like all she did lately was sigh. Soon she'd be sitting on her porch, fanning herself while she wore a giant hoop dress and swooning and claiming, 'I do declare, I have the vapors!' She shuddered at the thought. "Horrible."
"What's horrible?"
"Oh, just the image of me as a swooning southern belle sitting on the porch and claiming that Babette's gnome- what was his name? Peter Pan?- was looking at me in an ungentlemanly fashion."
"Pierpont…and what?"
"Never mind. I have a Luke problem."
"Still haven't made up?"
"Not completely. This is terrible. The only other people in the world I've had such an awkward relationship for this long with are my parents. Only I'm not getting any Friday night dinners with Luke. So I don't even get food out of this deal!"
"But he said he forgave you, like, a month ago."
"Verbal forgiveness was given, yes, but he forgot to send the complimentary basket of friendship to back up his words."
"Maybe you can't just hand friendship out in a basket, Mom."
"Well then that whole basket festival just got really stupid."
"It was always stupid. But my point is this: What do friends do?"
"They drink a lot of coffee, run willy nilly into each others' apartments, and insinuate that Chandler is gay."
"I meant friends without the capital 'F' and the million dollars per episode paychecks. What do you and Sookie do? Me and Lane? Me and you?"
"Um…hang out. Watch movies. Listen to music. Go shopping. Plan the death of George Lucas so that Episode III will have a chance of not sucking. Eat. Giggle about boys in our pajamas while we braid each other hair."
"We don't do that. We giggle about boys separately from the hair braiding, remember?" Rory reminded her.
"Oh yeah. That whole 'No Giggling About Boys While Braiding Hair Because It Makes Us Look Like a Pre-Teen Girl Product Commercial' Law of 1997. I thought for sure that wouldn't get through the Senate."
"It was close. Good thing Strom Thurman fell asleep and missed the voting."
"Huh huh, that guy's old."
"Mom, Beavis and Butthead have not been cool since I was in single digits."
Lorelai gasped. "Where has the time gone?"
"Contrary to the laws of nature it does not travel linearly. Instead, it swoops and swirls and meanders and never gets to the point, much like this phone call."
"Sorry, babe. It's just…it's really hard. You're not here anymore. At least when you were here I had you."
"Brilliantly deduced," Rory said, the many miles between them failing to dilute the sarcasm.
"Quiet, you. But now you're gone, Sookie's off being newlywed, and I even asked Mrs. Kim but she won't let Lane come out to play. She probably thinks I'll bring Lane back pregnant with Marilyn Manson's child. So with Luke not being friendly that leaves Michel and my mother to socialize with. Which means I spend most of my time talking to the box of baking powder that's been in the fridge since the last episode of Cheers."
"Which brings me to my point. If no one," Rory emphasized the last two words, "interrupts me. If you want Luke to be your friend again, you've got to make him want to be with you. Asking for coffee's a good start, but that still means he's just Coffee Guy. Offer him something that makes him more than that. Ask him if he wants to come over and watch a movie, or go with you to a concert. Better yet, a baseball game."
At Lorelai's retching sound, Rory conceded. "Fine, not a baseball game. But ask him, point blank, if he wants to do something with you. Luke may be gruff but he's not mean. I refuse to believe that he wants nothing to do with you for the rest of your lives. He likes you, Mom, I don't think he can just turn that off."
"I like him," Lorelai replied, in a voice much smaller than usual. It took Rory a second to process this. It took her another second to realize the full implications of what it meant.
"Are you sure?"
"Yes."
"Because you just can't start it up with him and then call it quits. If you just want a fling find some guy on the street."
Lorelai interrupted her. "Kirk did offer me a date."
"Surely you jest."
Lorelai snorted. "Of course I do; but I just thought you'd like to know that since it makes me laugh every time I think about it. It's actually a half amusement, half fear type of laugh."
"Fine. So do your flinging with Kirk, or anyone else. Because you can't with Luke. I don't want you to end up running away because I like Luke, and I like Luke's Diner, and I like Stars Hollow and I don't want to give any of those up!"
"Rory, I know that! Why do you think I said I had a calamity and a conundrum and something about Jim Carrey? I like him and it terrifies me." Lorelai took deep breaths. She heard those were supposed to calm people down. All it did was make her lungs work harder.
"So after all these years, you want to be with Luke. Did you ever think that this is only because he's playing hard to get, in a sense?"
"The distance between us has affected the accuracy of your observational skills, my dear, because the answer is a big resounding NO. Luke's been Mr. Grouchy Pants for two months now, and the Naughty Luke Dream #1 only premiered like, a few weeks ago."
Rory groaned. "Please, please, please no further elaboration," she begged.
"It was Indiana Jones-themed."
"That's an elaboration!"
"No, if I was elaborating then I'd tell you how his flannel shirt had been ripped open while we were escaping the pygmy cannibals, whose leader for some reason was Rosie O'Donnell, and she and the pygmies were shooting koosh-balls at us…"
"Mom!"
"…and then we dove under one of those doors right as it was closing, and his baseball hat got knocked off, and he reached under and snagged it just before the door slammed shut."
"Mom!"
"So he was all sweaty with his chest-exposed, and we were in this little room, and the walls started closing in, which made us get closer and closer until-"
"MOM!"
"See, that was elaborating."
"Point taken. Now was there a point that you were somehow getting to?"
"Frost was wrong. There were three paths in the woods that day. I'm taking the very, very long and very, very windy one. So okay here goes. I went to see Luke tonight, to tell him, you know…." Lorelai trailed off.
"Well, what happened?" Rory prompted.
"I went to tell him that I liked him, but I just couldn't bring myself to do it, to bare my feelings just to have him reject them. I was so scared he would laugh at me, or worse, not say anything at all."
"Mom, I think you can't be afraid. I mean, you can be afraid and that's perfectly okay, but you can't let that stop you. Remember when you were going to tell him the wedding was off, and the whole town followed us there? Everyone thinks Luke's got a thing for you, and I think they're right."
"You sound like Sookie," Lorelai grumbled.
"Well, that should tell you something. I promise he doesn't hate you, he can't hate you, I've seen the way he looks at you." There was dead silence on the other end of the line. "Mom?"
"You just became your grandmother." Lorelai's voice was full of horror, and Rory guessed that only about half of it was of the mock variety.
"Mom, I suggest you get to the point already because Paris is giving me evil looks." Paris wasn't actually in Rory's line of sight, but it was a safe assumption. "I want all the details…but if this story in any way has a line that goes, 'And then we were on the counter,' I urge you to stop right now."
"Dirty child, no! For shame. So I went there, and I walked in and we made up and he kissed me and then I realized that it was all a fantasy, that I was still in the street and I was getting rained on. Your mother is losing her mind, daughter dearest. Soon you'll be feeding me applesauce and telling me to swallow."
"European swallow or African swallow?"
"Aw, my baby sure knows how to cheer me up."
"I'm cool like that. Continue."
"So I go in there and we just kind of stare at each other…"
"Was there anyone else in there? Like Taylor, or Miss Patty?"
"No. All alone."
"Good. Continue again."
"And finally he's like, 'there's no coffee,' about as sweetly as sugar-free pie."
Rory's nose wrinkled involuntarily at the mention of the horrendous bakery product. "Ew."
"Tell me about it. And I manage to eloquently stutter that I'm not there for coffee."
"The eloquent stutter is always the best kind of stutter," Rory supplied, hoping to make her mother feel a little better.
"Then there's more staring, until he practically growls 'If you got something to say, say it' and somehow insults my eating habits while he's at it. And I'm mad at him, and I'm mad at myself for being such a wuss, then I realize I miss Growly Insult Luke because he hasn't criticized my eating or coffee habits since it happened, and before I know it, I run over to him and hug him. Before you say 'ew' it wasn't a naughty hug, it was a clingy 'don't leave me, I'm pathetic!' hug
and I say the stupidest thing ever. I tell him, 'I miss you,' and then I run out the door, come home, and call you. And now here I am, calling you."
"So why are you so worried? It wasn't like you said, 'I love you, marry me!'"
"Because what if he doesn't want my gross burger-eating arms touching him? What if he thinks I have coffee cooties? What if he's mad that I got him all wet when I hugged him since I was soaked from the rain?"
"Did he run screaming away from you?"
"No."
"Did he hug you back?"
"I think so. I think he smelled my hair. I'm not sure. What if he doesn't like apple shampoo? What if it made him nauseous? He probably washes his hair with special shampoo that doesn't pollute the water or kill the fish and is made from pine bark or something. He probably likes his women smelling like they just straggled out of the forest."
"Caddie smelled like trees in the rain," Rory said in her best slow southerner voice.
"Shut the Faulkner up, babe."
Rory giggled. "We're so clever."
"Yes, that is why everyone in the world bows down before us."
"Only without the actual physical bowing part."
"Of course. If they bowed down, their eyes could not partake of our beauty, which is why we allow them to bow down before us in only the figurative sense."
"Aren't we bastions of egalitarianism."
"Too many big words in a teeny sentence, honey."
"Sorry. Throw in Paris, D.C., and this leadership thing and you get Big Word Salad." At the mention of her name, Paris stalked over to Rory.
"What are you saying about me?" she demanded.
Rory turned her head away from the phone to answer her, "It was a compliment to your large vocabulary."
"Fine." Rory could almost see the tiny hairs on Paris' arms and neck settle down, like an angry cat becoming pacified.
Rory returned her attention to her mom. "What are you going to do?"
"In life, for breakfast tomorrow, or for Halloween?"
"About Luke."
"Invite him over to see a movie, I guess. What movie?" Lorelai pleaded for an answer.
"This coming from the woman who is to movies as Webster is to words."
"Roorrryy!" Lorelai whined.
"Ugh, the phone is making that horrible whiny noise again. Here's my opinion. Don't rent something from the video store and then march over to the diner and thrust the viewing option upon him. Just ask him if he maybe wants to come over some night if he's not busy, and watch a movie or something, just to hang out, nothing big. Be as vague as I'm being now. Act like it doesn't really matter to you one way or the other. And if he asks why, just tell him you like being with him. Then he'll feel guilty about disappointing you by saying no."
"Can't go wrong with a compliment. Where did you get all this wisdom?"
"Movies and T.V."
"That's my girl. So…what movie?"
"Mom! You're not totally helpless. Let him pick one out from the stash we have. And make sure to have Luke-Food there so he doesn't starve."
"Rory, we are never going to finish this assignment," Paris screeched.
"Mom, I gotta go. Paris and I have work to do."
"Okay, call me soon to make sure I didn't die of humiliation. I love you and miss you and can't wait until you get back here so I can rub your little tummy and-"
"Mom, I'm not a puppy, don't talk to me like that. I miss and love you too. Now bye."
"Bye."
Rory hung up the phone and turned to Paris. "Happy?"
"Never."
"Bad choice of words. Satisfied?"
"Somewhat. We still have to finish." Rory walked back over to the desk and joined Paris in going over the reading material. Paris looked up at her as she sat down. "I don't know what the big deal is. Luke is the diner guy, right?" Rory nodded. "And what, your mom wants to date him?"
"She doesn't know. Right now, she'd settle for him talking to her in a friendly manner. They got in a fight a few months ago and nothing's been the same."
"What could possibly be so big as to disrupt their lives for months?"
"Remember that cast I had?"
"Yeah, so? Did Luke trip over the throng of boys that are always fighting over you and accidentally knock you to the ground, thereby breaking your arm?"
"No, he didn't. Jess was driving my car and he swerved to avoid a rabbit or a possum or some kind of woodland creature and we went off the road and I got a little fracture in my wrist. So Mom blamed Jess and Luke got defensive then Mom blamed Luke and there apparently was yelling involved, and the whole thing is beyond out of proportion and into the completely absurd category but try telling that to them."
"Your life is like a soap opera."
"Think of what role you've got in it, then." Rory sat down at the desk, reached over and picked up a book on politics. She didn't even want to be in politics, yet somehow she was Chilton's senior class vice president. Part of her was amazed Paris wasn't accusing her of plotting an assassination attempt so that she could assume the presidency. "We should get started."
"I said that an hour ago."
-end ch. 4-
I hate writing phone conversations. Results in pages and pages of dialogue.
Also if you're wondering what Rory did in regards to Dean, keep wondering since I have no answer for you as of yet. It will be addressed at some point. But don't get your hopes up if you like Dean, because I can't stand him. It's partly the character, partly the actor's amazing impersonation of a block of wood. And with that, all you Dean-Lovers can start flaming me *eg*.