Everything it Wasn't

Disclaimer: Well, the Gilmore Girls characters aren't mine… :\ But Liv, her friends, anyone else that I might decide to add to this story, is. ;)

A\N: Sorry about the last chappy. My Word sucks. =D It's all better now. :$

"Forever Not Yours."

She couldn't wait.

The moment the car came to a stop, Liv opened the door, stepped out and slammed the door shut. Rory, still inside, sighed.

"Liv!" She called as she unfastened her seatbelt and stepped out. Liv was already halfway up the staircase leading to the front entrance of the Gilmore Residence.

Rory was sick of it. She just followed her daughter quietly. She barely even made it pass the staircase before her daughter knocked on the door, impatiently waiting for it to open.

The sound of hectic footsteps was heard from the other side of the door, followed closely by the sound of a twisting doorknob.

"Livi!!"

Liv smiled faintly. Her grandma.

She loved her grandma. She understood her better than her own mother did. She often preferred spending a weekend at Lorelai's house than to have a nice, quiet weekend with her mom.

Rory was aware. She was very aware. But even she had no idea what went wrong between her and her daughter. It was supposed to go right, she always thought. It wasn't supposed to be like this.

Rory snapped out of her thought-trail when she saw Lorelai hugging Liv. She smiles and sighed, before she stepped towards her mom. "Hey, mom." She said, warmly.

Lorelai let go of Liv and embraced her daughter. "Hey, babe." She smiles widely, pecking her on the cheek. She pulled out and examined Rory. "Huh. You're getting all… Wise-looking." She laughed. "I have a wise-looking daughter." She kept laughing. Rory replied with a chuckle, lightly patting her mother's back. "Okay, no more coffee for you." She joked, following her daughter – Which was already seated on the living room couch – Inside.

"So!" Lorelai started, enthusiastically, joining her daughter as she rushed near her. "How's things?"

"Decent." Liv stated, bluntly, reaching for the remote control. Lorelai smiles and nodded, just as Rory chimed in. "I'll agree." She said, sitting on a couch across from her daughter.

"Good, good." Lorelai said, sitting on the inner arm of one of the couches, just between Rory and Liv. She turns to look at Liv, which was pretty much concentrated on the TV screen. "How's school?" She asked, uncomfortably playing with her hands. "Still standing." Liv replied, never taking her eyes off the screen. "Haven't got your hands on it yet, huh?" Lorelai joked, trying to lighten up the mood. Liv simply nodded, leaving Lorelai as clueless as she was before.

"How's work?" Lorelai asks again, looking at Rory, hoping for a more satisfying answer from her. "Pretty good." Rory replied with a small smile.

Lorelai kept sitting, slightly nodding her head, glancing from her desperate-looking daughter to her quiet granddaughter. She sighs, clearing her throat.

"So, Rory." She stands on her feet. "Would I be worthy enough to share a word or two with you in the almighty but rarely used kitchen?" She folded her arms and tilted her head. "Uh… S..ure." Rory mumbled, narrowing her eyes at her mother. She followed Lorelai into the kitchen, leaving Liv behind.

"A word or two?" Rory asked, curious yet confused. "Might be three or four." Lorelai added, pulling back a chair for Rory before sitting down on one of the old wooden chairs. "I'm listening." Rory stated, sitting on the chair her mother pulled for her.

Lorelai looked down at her hands as she fingered the short bright lines of wood on the table's surface. She didn't know what to say, she just knew she had to say it.

"Jess called." She says, in a tone lower than her previous one. "Luke's. He called Luke's."

Jess was always a touchy subject in the Gilmore household. It's not that he was hated, frowned upon or boycotted, but Rory tended to think that after all they've been thought, he both was and felt unwelcome.

"Oh." Rory muttered quietly. Gathering all her thoughts, she took a deep breath. Hearing Jess's name was always weird for her. Not that it didn't constantly played in her mind under situations one or another, but… She never talked about him much. She wasn't sure she wanted to.

"He asked about…" Lorelai sighed, not wanting to hurt her daughter more than she already did. "Liv. He asked about Liv." She said quietly as she glanced at Liv through the doorway.

"Oh." Rory repeated, slowly gulping. "What did he ask?" She asked, fiddling with a piece of a crumpled napkin that she found on the table. "I don't know." Lorelai said, apologizing. "…Oh." Rory muttered again, just before Lorelai cut into her words. "You weren't supposed to know… Jess told Luke not to tell me because then I'd tell you but of course I got it out of him in my own special way, so…" She sighs once again, "I don't know."

The noise of the television in the background has gotten lower. Liv was still holding the remote, still staring at the screen. But her attention was focused nowhere around the "I Dream of Genie" marathon that was aired.

She listened to her mom and Grandma's entire conversation, feeling old sparks of pain and anger building inside of her again. Glancing at the kitchen, she wanted to make sure neither of the women were watching.

She exited the house through its front door and wondered around the porch. She looked through the window of her mother's old room. Unfortunately enough, the fact that the only access to it was from the kitchen, she had to find a way to make do.

She checked to see if the door to the room was shut before she opened the window from outside – A little trick she learned a while ago. She stepped into the room through the currently opened window, careful not to step on anything or not to stumble over anything. She tried not to occupy any attention.

She loved that room. She also hated that room. It held many memories, good and bad. She tiptoed across the room, kicking off her shoes as she ran her finger over the slightly dusty dressers, where her clothes used to be kept in.

She knew where she was headed. She always knew.

It was a bookcase. It was positioned right between her mother's old desk and her old nursery. She set her eyes on a thick book. The book that always rested on the far left of the second shelf.

She ran her finger over its side, before she took it off the shelf and sat quietly on the bed. Page 154. She opened the book to that page, finding what she was looking for.

A letter. A folded, old-looking letter. She rested the book besides her and laid back, unfolding the letter.

Her eyes scanned the well-familiar letter once again:

"Rory.

First of all, I want to say that I'm sorry it had to get to this.

You changed. I don't know why, but you did.

I tried to do everything perfectly. You were always perfect in my eyes, and I wanted to be perfect in yours. I did everything like you wanted me to. I said I'll be there and I said I'll be a father or anything you wanted me to be. But now I see it was all bull.

I don't think you even care if I really wanted this or not. You played me. I never thought you were able to do that. Rory Gilmore, miss Innocents. Miss Grace. Playing the guy that loved her more than anything.

You should be happy now. I'm gone. I left. I don't belong here. You don't want me to belong here.

Enjoy your life. I'll at least tell you to raise my kid well, if you won't let me do it on my own. You can find a way to call me on holidays and birthdays if you want to. If you don't… Whatever.

Jess."

She sighed. This wasn't the first time she read that letter. It wasn't the first, or the second, not the tenth. She read it every week, every Friday, since the day she found it.

She was barely 13. She and her mom got along just fine until then. She listened to all of her mother's crap about how her dad wanted nothing to do with her and her baby and just left. She was fed on backless lies that were only proved wrong to her after she found that letter. Everything changed on her after she did.

She rested the letter down besides her. All she wanted to do was to get things straight, once and for all.

She knew that she could. She knew that she will.