Disclaimer: None of it belongs to me. The characters and half the dialogue belongs to Amy Sherman-Palladino. The rest of the words belong to Shakespeare and Noah Webster.
Author's Note: If there were a way to reply to reviews individually, I'd probably do a better job of thanking people for them. Sorry.
At any rate...this chapter cough is a little more Literati than I mean to be. And I really don't mean these to be all of Dean. But, as I've never seen Season 3, I've never seen Rory with anyone else who deserves to be dumped... so...yeah. This chapter is for OnLoveInSadness, because her yay happy review made my three days in a row in such a way that I had to watch another episode and write another chapter. And, as generally, reviews are pretty play-toys that do things like make me write more...
Sixty Ways to Ditch a Bag-Boy
3: Tell Him You'd Rather Be Doing Laundry
She follows him inside the house, sighing angrily. She understands that Dean, as her boyfriend, has every right to be jealous of her and time she spends with anyone else. To be honest, she likes that he's so overprotective: she knows he loves her. But...it can be a little scary when Dean gets mad. And, for some reason she doesn't understand yet, she wants to spend time with Jess. Dean can be upset about it, but he's going to have to deal.
She wonders how in the world she can tell him that. He's going to be mad enough already without her insinuating he's too controlling. That'll make him really mad.
"What the hell is going on?" he demands. He's loud. And angry. Rory understands; he has perfect reason to be angry.
She ignores the seed of anger his words ignite and fights to keep everything normal. She doesn't want to be fighting with her boyfriend. Really, she doesn't. "Dean, you remember Paris, right?"
He's not listening; he's examining the scene of the crime. Paris quietly disappears into the other room with a mumbled "I was just...going."
"You told me you were doing laundry tonight," Dean says.
"I was."
"And now you're here with Jess."
The little piece of Rory that's frustrated and angry shoots back a So what? She ignores it. "And Paris," she points out.
"Jess, Rory!"
"I know it was Jess, okay? I swear, I didn't--"
"You didn't what? You didn't know he was coming over?"
Why would it have been so bad if she did? She likes spending time with Jess. She likes being free and choosing who to visit on the spur of the moment. When she was about six or seven--before Mrs. Kim decided she was a corrupting influence--she used to drop by Lane's house whenever she got home from school and finished her homework before Lorelai got home. When she was eleven or twelve, she used to visit Miss Patty and Babette and listen to the gossip; she got her sex ed that way. Now, she plans her visits to friends around Dean, so he won't be mad.
"Well he was...and the diner, the diner was...and I..." Rory tries. The niggling doubts she has about her relationship with Dean are jouncing her stomach, making it hard to concentrate. Hard to explain.
"And you what? What? Say something!"
She snaps--"Stop yelling!"--then immediately cowers. She didn't want to start an argument; she wanted Dean to be happy again. Dean who is her boyfriend, who loves her.
But Dean's saying she lied to him, and...if he doesn't trust her...she can't think. Every romance novel she's read on the sly clammers inside her head, dripping insipid, overwrought prose, reminding her that trust is the foundation of love.
"It's complicated!" she begs. "I'm trying to explain it to you!"
"Ugh, that's crap!"
"No, Dean, it's true!"
"Fine," he snaps. Fine. The way he ends all his arguments. He'll stomp off, and she'll apologize tomorrow when he's not so angry and frightening, and once Lorelai's given her good advice on how to craft her words ever-so-carefully...everything will be okay again. It'll be good again.
And then she finds herself yelling back, "No, it's not fine! You accuse me of lying to you, and you say everything's 'fine?' It may look fine from up there, Mary Poppins, but I haven't started laughing yet!"
"Fine," Dean says again. "Explain it to me, please." Rory has never understood the word "sneer," but she thinks she's seeing one now. A novel experience.
"Luke wanted me to have food. Jess brought it over. It was a nice gesture."
"And the staying?" He still doesn't believe her.
"You know, it really isn't your business who I'm having dinner with! It wasn't like I planned a massive make-out session on the couch in the middle of Dawson's Creek reruns!"
"I told you to stay away from him, Rory!"
"And I told you that I knew you didn't like him, but you'd have to live with him!"
Dean's face changes abruptly, and his voice drops ten decibels. "That's it, isn't it?" He sounds defeated. "You like him, don't you? Not me."
"What?" Rory is genuinely confused. "That's crazy! You're my boyfriend, Dean!"
"I'm your boyfriend, but you don't want to spend any time with me. I'm your boyfriend, but you don't respect my wishes. I'm your boyfriend, but you send me away on a Friday night so you can spend time with a tramp from your snotty little private club and a delinquent sent away to his uncle's reform school. Yeah, Rory, I'm your boyfriend."
Something shifts in Rory's head--she's not sure what--and she finds herself staring at Dean Forrester as if at a stranger. "You know what?" she says quietly. "You're not my boyfriend." She turns, leaving him gaping in front of the refrigerator, walks to her room, and locks the door behind her.
It's at least three minutes before she hears the sound of furniture being thrown around and the crack of shattered china. Two minutes after that, the kitchen door slams shut. Rory huddles between her bed and her dresser until long after she's sure he's gone.
"You're not my boyfriend," she whispers to the air. She plugs her fingers in her ears and rocks, trying to drown out the hurt. Then she unlocks the door and wanders to the living room, letting her fingers scrape against the furniture and the walls along the way. The textures--smooth varnish, rough cabinet, bumpy wall--are comforting.
She ignores Paris, who, for once, looks sympathetic. She picks up the phone, returns to her bedroom, turns the lock. "Thank you for supper, Paris," she calls through the door. "It was fun. I'll see you tomorrow."
"Are you okay?" Paris calls back. Rory doesn't answer. After a while, she hears rummaging in the living room and then the front door being opened and quietly shut.
She stares at the phone in her hands, huddles back down against the books under her bed. After a long while, she hits "on" and dials the number.
"Jess?" she says. "Come back, please? I need you."
She ignores the words on the other end, because, finally, she breaks down and sobs. When he says he'll be right over, she clicks the phone off.
He comes in through the window and he holds her. He's warm and smells of spice and something lovely, and his hands graze her spine, soothing. He tucks his chin against her hair and murmurs gentle words in a New York drawl. She almost thinks everything will be okay again. Almost.