Believe Me, I'll Be There
Epilogue, Part I
Disclaimer: I do not own (fill in the blank). No sue? No sue. Great.
A/N: I'm far less than proud of the previous writing in this fic. ((shudder)) Really, do not go back and reread, please. ;) But I owe you guys who stuck with this story something…I think you're all absolutely crazy (but in the best way. I appreciated it so much). So…this is it, part II coming soon.
Many many thanks to Christie for the beta…and for everything. A very late Christmas present! D This is for you…and you know it's all your fault.
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This is set the year Rory graduates college. Italics are flashbacks that fit in around (but not right immediately after)the time of the last chapter. All will be clear, I hope. And these last two chapters are PG-13. I didn't want to change the rating (not that anything's that bad here, lol) because of the first 13 chapters…
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"Yes. He's going to college."
"He's not."
"He is! You know he is, you saw the letter."
"He's going," Lorelai said sarcastically. "Getting a letter isn't getting up and buying books and looking at the campus. It's not being interested and signing up for classes and asking you what you think…"
"Stop it." She pauses, trying not to smile at her sudden thoughts. "He's Jess. It's not like I'm the ultimate authority…I don't know what I'm doing either."
"That's the problem." Lorelai sighs, wishing it weren't hopeless. "He said he wouldn't, don't you remember?" It's meant to be irritating; she is a little tired of being nice about this. "You want this. Who's to say he's going to do this for real? It's twice as easy to skip college classes, trust me."
"How would you know?" She stops, knowing that's not fair.
"He had every right to," Rory continues in a low voice. "And you don't want him to!" Her tone rises, and she knows it is an advantage that she tends to sound (and act) angrier than she is. "You don't want it to turn out right, you don't want me to fall in love and get my happily ever after. I know what everyone calls reality, okay?"
"That's all I want," Lorelai answers, trying to be calm. "Happy endings exist without the hot guy on the motorcycle."
She thinks that Rory has no idea what even most people's connotations of reality would be.
Not enough. Not really.
"Yeah," Rory agrees, startling her mother. "But without the guy in the beat-up car who reads as much as I do and won't…" She pauses. "Jess on a motorcycle?"
"You're eighteen years old." She's scared, scared out of her mind that maybe— "He's the one who should be worrying about people giving up."
"Happy doesn't mean forever. It's…" Rory sits down, waving her hands awkwardly and wishing it weren't natural for her to appear so guilty. "Nothing happened, Mom." She pauses. "I don't know what's going to happen in the future…I'm not supposed to put everything on hold to look for something better when I have as close to everything as I'm ever going to get." Again, she stops, nervousness in her expression replaced with calm sensibility, superiority she tends to assume without realizing it. It makes Lorelai feel childish and it's exactly what she doesn't need.
"This is what I want. I can't change that."
"Try harder," Lorelai snaps, losing patience.
The slamming door cuts her off.
-
"Stop," she protests, giggling.
"No way."
"Stop." He's too close for her to fully concentrate.
He doesn't even answer, moving to respond with a kiss.
"Jess, really, you need to stop. I have a party to go to. I'm so not explaining how I looked when I was actually ready to go to an expensive restaurant." She tries and fails to glare at him.
"You graduated. You get one night free of obligation."
"We have more than one," she grins. "Let me go. I promise you."
"What do I get as collateral?" She pouts at him and he smirks, almost grinning at the look on her face and gritting his teeth to keep himself from doing so.
"My books? Are still mine." He opens his mouth. "My CDs too," she grins.
She loves to torture him because she knows she is the only one who can.
"I have copies of all the passable CDs you own," he tells her.
"Fine then, pick something." She raises her eyebrows at him. "Pick anything." She catches a solemn sort of look on his face as she breaks off the last syllable of her teasing, and a confused glance crosses hers before all is back and set to normal.
"Can I get back to you on that?" He takes advantage of the moment she's spent staring into space.
He plays with a free strand of her hair and keeps standing too close; she laughs and smiles the special way she reserves for him. "It's now or never."
-
She's late, entering the diner—she's caught Luke just at the moment between wiping off the tables and locking the door, which he always seems to forget at the right times.
"Hello?"
It comes from the storeroom—where would he be if not reorganizing the ketchup bottles?
"Luke?"
"Please kill me first," a voice answers dryly from the other side of the door. It swings open and she is face to face with a look that could be fatal, were she not immune to sarcasm. He's known it wasn't the Gilmore he knows (loves) from the moment she didn't get the reference; for Lorelai, the appearance of someone other than Luke is a confirmation of the doubts that floated to the surface when she wasn't automatically greeted by name.
"Jess," she states.
"Can I help you?"
"No."
"We're closed." A silent pause and he continues, annoyed. "There is coffee on the stove. Don't ask me how long it's been there." His look hasn't altered in the slightest. If it only softens around Rory (if it does), there must still be quite a possibility of it freezing that way.
"I'll take a raincheck."
"Luke is either upstairs or out." He turns back to the closed door. "So if we're done here…"
"Sorry to disappoint you." She walks behind the counter and slams the door shut herself, jerking his hand away from the doorknob. "So. Working?"
"The point, please?"
"You don't deserve anything less." She shoots her worst glare (at the the tiles on the diner floor). "What's the reason for this, Jess?"
"I thought you were telling me the point," he answers.
His blatantly fake innocence drives her up the wall.
"Are you going to school." It's said so fast it's more like a comment than a question, and he is glad she wasn't looking up to see him wince.
"I'm going."
Going is easy; it's the whole college thing that's hard. She thinks she will be making sure there are no guests at Rory's dorm.
As if that were possible. She's losing control! Dammit, Luke, come out here, I need someone to keep me grounded.
"And because you'll have to leave tomorrow or the next day, you're voluntarily working for Luke?" God, that's pathetic, and it is all she can think of.
He doesn't give a damn what people think of anything he does.
He can't help wondering why what he does every hour of the day appears to be of so much interest to so many people lately. Perhaps if Lorelai had overheard Luke's lecture this morning she'd be wherever he is instead of here now.
Maybe in her place would be someone a little shorter, younger, with lighter brown hair and glittering blue eyes, and maybe she'd be moving toward him, rambling, shutting up when his mouth meets hers.
That will have to be a long goodbye.
He imagines her presence, her pressing against his side, her whining about being bored. He just barely keeps himself from smirking and thinks he's lucky he has practice controlling that.
"Packing."
There is no doubt whose nephew he is, Lorelai thinks.
"Got some insane need for sandwich fillings?" she says skeptically. "Help you adjust to your new home, huh?"
"Rory might want some when she visits," he answers in a clipped tone, turning to open the door again. It meets Lorelai's hand (held out to keep exactly that from happening); he sees her right there, and he hurriedly shuts it.
He doesn't want to prove Rory right either and he doesn't know why. Suddenly the thought of moving from the spot of bad guy to anywhere near the newly emptied role of school-going, rebel-esque nice guy is too much.
But his reaction time is too far off, and he isn't quite fast enough for Lorelai not to see boxes of folded clothes, books, music. Sure, they're messy and they've probably all been thrown in there, but she guesses it is neat for Jess.
Rory would know.
She stares at the floor, angry with her new habit of distrust, and thinks perhaps she has found another reason for Rory to hate her.
-
"They say it is better to be feared than loved," Rory informs him.
"They were cracked," he replies, rolling over to move closer to her.
She laughs. "I got you with a reference, I got you!" She's always crazy early in the morning, like this, and always wide awake. Always, he is struck by how beautiful she is, but he never says anything.
"You got me, all right. School affected your sex life," he tells her. A pause, and then, "Machiavelli. I can't believe you're quoting Machiavelli right now. What did they do to you at this place?"
Rory giggles. "Dangerous," she agrees. "I could recite Beowulf every night…would that freak you out?"
He kisses her in answer, fiercely, and she smiles against him, pretending to pout.
"Fine."
He nods. "I love you."
"I love you," she says softly.
They lie in silence for a few minutes. The air sings with something, anything, about to happen, but it's a constant buzz when they're both here and they have both become accustomed to ignoring it.
"So, any plans yet?"
She pokes his arm. "No planning. None, for at least a week. I've done enough thinking about the future for the rest of my life!" She laughs.
"Oh sure. So what are we going to do for the next forty years?"
"Hard one."
"Clearly."
Another, longer, bout of silence, equally comfortable. She can't remember being this content without anything to worry about in her time range of near-enough-to-consider.
She doesn't notice the insinuation he's made, and when he remembers he looks at her smile and thinks that if she did notice, it's alright.
Damn, this is nice.
Sleepily, she reaches out and presses the button of the stereo on her dresser.
"Rory."
"Jess," she counters.
"You tired?"
"Yes."
"You're playing this why?"
"Because."
"Good answer." This is when he officially gives up; surrenders to the hilarity he so often seems to inflict on her (he'll never figure that one out).
She pauses. "It's really sad that we think Guns of Brixton is a happy song." He smirks in response. "And Child Psychology? Seriously, we need help."
"That's you, not me," he points out. Secretly, he likes the way all her sentences are beginning with 'we'. He wonders if this is an answer to the question he didn't mean to ask. Rory Gilmore is the queen of subtlety, unless of course she doesn't want to be.
He grins as the player makes the clicky noise it always does as it moves to the next song. "Suffragette City," he says, touching his lips to her forehead. She closes her eyes and helplessly tries biting back her smile.
It doesn't work, but that doesn't matter.
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