Disclamer: Don't own anything you recognize.
Chapter One: Writing the Pain
Allibaster was drunk as usual. He had gone out with his friends that night. The group of socialites included the always stunning Loreiette, anorexic Julia, fun loving Dinna, snobby Torrance, handsome Rupert, sly Jonathan, and wickedly intelligent Bartly. However their full table included one commoner, Alexia. She was a small town girl with a humble life. Her happenings with the Sticks and Stones, as the group called themselves, was due to her cunning ability to off market Rupert with her shy smile and sparkling blue eyes. Lately however her occurrence with SS was regular as she and Rupert were falling madly in love with each other. It wasn't a lust sort of love, it was real. 'Real frightening' Alexia would say. The feeling was too new for her, too unfamiliar. Her defense mechanism would be to run, and perhaps the reason she didn't run that night was because of the amount of alcohol she had consumed, or perhaps it was because she liked the feeling of exhilaration and adrenaline which can sometimes be called love. The point is, she didn't feel a need to run, at least not without her lovely lover Logan
"Oh damn it!" Lee Waters exclaimed as she began to erase the name and replace it with Rupert. Writing the story of her lost love with one Logan Huntzberger was horrific. She had lost him but gained so much.
Just seeing Logan, even if it was just his name typed out on her laptop, was painful. She took a sharp intake of breath and started to cry. Her hand mindlessly trailed down to stomach. Her delicate fingers traced her scars. She would never forget. She had promised herself to never forget him. And, sometimes, she did.
A cry in the other room interrupted her sad thoughts. She closed her eyes as the crying persisted until finally she got up and wiped away her salty tears.
"It's okay, Mommy's coming." Lee said to the vacant room. She walked into the nursery and picked up her daughter. The only thing she had left of Logan. But it wasn't enough. She wanted him. No, she needed him there to help her raise their daughter.
Lee sat in her antique rocking chair nursing her newborn. She had bought the chair in small boutique outside of her town. It was perfect for passing off as a family heirloom. It was perfect for her to create a lie revolving around the chair. She'd tell her visitors that her husband's great-great-great many greats grandmother had shipped it from England to her new home in the Colonies and was passed down through the generations and eventually ending up in her small town in Arkansas. Her husband. What a fib that was! She wore a simple gold band on her left ring finger to signify how off the market she was. She told her neighbors that her husband was a lieutenant in the army and was currently fighting overseas. She planned to kill him off soon and become a grieving widow.
Lee was an orphan, according to herself. She had never been adopted because she was always ill as a child. She would claim that Blake, her fake husband, had enlightened her about love and kindness and that this world wasn't about power, money, murder and hatred as she had come to see it living in between hospital visits and the cold, dank orphanage which offered no warmth or love. Lee portrayed Blake as a true American hero for introducing her to the truth.
Lee never believed it, though. Blake was naïve and Lee had had it right in the first place. Lee acted as a confused individual who didn't know left from right. The Arkansas people easily believed her. They fell in love with her story and her made up husband, who had blue eyes and blonde hair. She had proudly boasted about how their daughter looked exactly like Blake and would proceed to show pictures of a boy she once knew in high school.
Lee was a writer. It was her job to make up stories and spin the truth. So it was no wonder how believable her act was.
Her baby cooed a little bit in her arms until falling into a sweet slumber. Lee stared at her baby, who looked remarkably like herself, and smiled. Sometimes the pain of losing Logan wasn't so bad when she looked at the product of their love. Suddenly she started to cry. She always did. She couldn't get a handle on her depression. She couldn't control her constant feelings of sadness and loss. And since she was breast feeding she couldn't take any medicine to make her feel better.
Unexplainable Lee did the one thing she promised she'd never do. She walked back into her old shell of a body. She sought comfort and reassurance. She put her baby girl into her crib and then walked out into Blake's study. She picked up her cell phone and dialed the digits that would never escape her memory. After all according to Irish writer George Moore "A man travels the world over in search of what he needs and returns home to find it."
"Hello" A familiar voice answered. It frightened Lee leaving her without words.
"Hello!" The voice was sharp and irritated now. The person was clearly going to hang up if Lee didn't speak up.
"Hi." Lee responded in a quiet, very far away voice. The person on the other end would not be able to recognize Lee's voice.
"Who's this?" The woman asked, her tone clearly stepped down a few notches and was now curious as to who called her.
"It's me mommy. It's Rory." It felt so strange for Lee to say that name. She had constantly introduced herself as Lee Waters for the past 13 months.
"Rory?" Her mother's voice was so sad now. She started second guessing the nature of this call.
"Are you okay, baby?" Her mother asked. It was all too clear to Lee that her mother was now crying.
"I'm okay. I'm okay." Lee had cried into the phone. She wanted to run, to hang up, to disappear. She was contemplating getting a new cell phone now. Or possibly even moving and starting anew, depending on whether she gets the 'I'm going to have the phone company track you down' vibe from her mother.
"How are you?" Lee had barely been able to ask. All this emotion couldn't be good for her depression.
"I'm reassured that you're not lying dead in a ditch somewhere."
"I'm so so sorry, Mommy. I didn't mean to make you worry. I didn't mean to hurt you." Lee was crying so hard that it was now affecting her speech. She wondered if her mother could make out her words.
"Just come home Rory."
"I can't. I… just… can't." She sobbed.
"Can't or won't Rory?" Her mother asked her.
"Both." The answer caused a silence to invade their conversation. To say it was awkward would be a lie. It was tense and unbearable.
"I just called…to say… I love you." She paused. Her mother didn't say anything.
"And to ask, if maybe… you still love me?" On the other end of the phone a heart broke.
"Of course I do. Rory, I never stopped loving you. I could never stop loving you. Baby, I just want you to come home. So I can hold you in my arms and make it all up to you." Her mothers words were filled with just as much raw honesty she could take. She had to run now. She couldn't look back. It was a mistake to ever become Rory Gilmore again. When would she learn that you can't turn back when you're too far into it?
"I have to go." She hung up her phone and turned it off. Her mother would call back, she was sure of it.
Lee contemplated writing again. Writing about the night that changed her life forever. The night that took away her innocence, her love, her naivety and taught her about the true cruel nature of this world. The last night she was known as Rory Gilmore.
She decided to let the depression win that night. She crawled into her bed that she shared with Blake Waters and cried herself into a stupor.
In another state, a woman sat in her bedroom wracked with sobs. Her body heaved back and forth and shivered simply because of her emotions. She took a sharp intake of breath and swallowed hard on the lump in her throat. Her heart lied on the ground in pieces next to the phone that had been thrown to the floor when she received the voicemail of her daughter.
She looked down at her wedding ring and felt even more sorrow. She wanted her daughter, her Rory, to be there when she'd tied the knot. Unfortunately by then, Rory had run. She had postponed the wedding several times. She waited eight months before she finally gave up all hope of her daughter's survival. She had collapsed into the arms of her finance when the police had told her that after this much time missing it was safe to assume two things, one) she didn't want to be found or two) she was dead. It was so much easier for her to believe that Rory was dead.
But now, she knew the truth. And whoever said that the truth hurts was a genius. She was faced with the fact that her daughter had run away, from her. Sure, there were other complicating issues as to why Rory might have wanted to run away. As a mother though, she was forced to blame herself and beat herself up over it.
A man walked into the room, presumably her husband. He stared at his wife for a moment before rushing to her side. He hadn't seen her this worked up since Rory went missing.
"You know I never thought about how my parents felt when I ran away." The women had stated. Her voice was still shaky but she seemed to be in control.
"Is this about Rory?" He asked and racked his brain to see if any important dates were coming up, like birthdays or holidays. They had already conquered the one year anniversary of Rory's disappearance and her birthday. Thanksgiving was later that month and then December would be upon them. He hated December for all the obvious reasons.
"She called. Just now, she called." He looked at her stunned, and maybe to see if she had been drinking. It was too common to come home and find her drunk off her ass laughing about everything. He didn't say anything. He just held her close.
"She called to say she's fine. Double fine, actually." She managed a smile.
"Oh, and she's sorry too. Can you believe that? She's sorry? Yeah, well I'm sorry too. Because I miss her so much that it hurts to breathe. It just plain hurts." She cried away while unleashing some anger.
"Lorelai. Look at me." He paused until she did so.
"Don't you know what this means?" She didn't say anything.
"She's alive." He paused and added triumphantly as an after thought. "We can track her down!" His wife didn't seem excited about his revelation.
"We can star69 her or whatever. Call the phone companies. Call back that Detective Salles. We can get her back." It was no use. Lorelai was not listening. Or was she?
"Don't you think I tried that Luke? She turned her phone off. She doesn't want to be found, okay? She wants to be left well enough alone." Lorelai broke into more tears and held her husband tighter.
"Her voicemail was so generic. Just 'leave a message.' No name, or alias, no details, God! No personality." She ranted about her daughter unwillingness to be found.
"Chances are she'll discard the phone or change the number. I didn't raise my girl to be stupid, Luke." Lorelai smiled obviously reminiscing about the good times. Luke rubbed her back and smiled too. As long as Lorelai was okay, he was okay.
In a strip joint a few towns over from the married couple, three boys sat ogling the naked women on stage. Actually it was only two of the three stooges. The third was lost. He had been in love and had lost her so quickly and easily in an accident. He was unable to attend her funeral due to the accident rendering him in a coma. He hadn't grown the balls to visit her gravestone or give condolences to her family. He couldn't look at her friends when he'd bump into them on campus. He was lost without her. Somehow Rory Gilmore had become his life source. But now, now she was dead.
"Logan mate, look at the pretty topless girls." His friend with an Australian accent cheerfully told him.
"When was the time you had a good fuck?" His other friend piped in.
"The night Rory was killed." He answered then downed his scotch. The mood between the boys suddenly darkened.
"You blame me, don't you mate?" The Aussie asked. "It wasn't entirely my fault. The other man was drunk too." He tried to defend himself to Logan.
"Finn I don't blame you." Logan croaked out. He tried to hold in his tears. He was a man, and men don't cry at least not in front of his friends.
"Then who the hell do you blame?" Colin, his other friend, asked outraged by this. It'd been thirteen months. Logan should be over this.
"No one." His friends gave him a look. "Okay fine. Me! I blame me!" He shouted over the stripping music.
"Col, I know what you're going to say, okay? I should be over this. But I'm not. I still love her. I still love her. We were Bonnie and Clyde for fucks sake. We were eternal. I was going marry her. I can't… I need her… I can't live without her." At this point he didn't care if he was a man or not, he was going to damn well cry his heart out. Rory was the one, he was so sure about it, and now she was dead. Everyday since his parents had told him she had bled to death the night of the accident he had been forced to deal with the gaping hole in his heart that just seemed to get bigger with time. Sometimes he couldn't breathe.
A stripper strutted up to Logan and straddled him. His body reacted and he took a sharp intake of breath. For a moment he forgot what Rory looked like. He grabbed his friends drink and drank it in one sip. He looked up at the brunette women that was giving him a lap job and leaned into her ear.
"Do you have private rooms in the back?" He whispered to the stripper. She looked down at him, at his arousal. She nodded.
"It costs a grand." She replied. Logan nodded. He never thought the day would come when he turned to a hooker for sex. But the resemblance she had with his fallen lover was remarkable. He could pretend that she was Rory. Yeah, pretend. It would eventually lead him further down his depression. He'd sober up and deal with it later.
"Way to go, man!" Finn cheered him as he took the hand of the stripper and was led to the private room.
Thirteen months ago walking down a hospital corridor a man, who had just visited his comatose son, was stopped by a hand grabbing onto his foot. He looked down at a the broken and destroyed young girlfriend of his son. The girlfriend that he and his family didn't approve of. She looked so small leaning up against the wall. She had tears falling down her red and puffy eyes. She looked heart broken.
"Is he okay? Please tell me he's okay." The girl cried and he looked down at her with sympathy. He was going to destroy her. He took a sharp intake of breath and put on a sad face.
"The shard punctured his lung" He said in a tone of authority and power while making his voice seem sad and genuine. "His heart stopped during the operation and they couldn't save him." He paused. A glimmer of doubt entered his mind.
"He's dead" The sinister father announced before yanking his foot out of her hand. He walked away as she grew into hysterics. He gave her props for falling in love with his son. But she just wasn't suited for his son. She was below them.
He kept his head low in case the girl looked up at him. A smile grew on face, then quickly replaced with a frown. How could he follow through with his lie.
The next day, the girl disappeared.
Three weeks later his son woke up. He had walked in to greet the young man, his heir to the family business. The boy was sitting up looking lost. He approached his son and waved a hand in front of his face.
"What are you thinking of son?" That was how Mitchum Huntzberger greeted his newly awakened son. There was no smile, nothing to indicate his happiness of his son's survival.
"Why hasn't she visited? Doesn't she love me?" Logan had asked his father. He looked up and his brown eyes were glistening with tears.
"Who?"
"Rory." Logan answered. He was on the brim of crying in front of his father.
"Oh Logan son." Mitchum gave his son a sympathetic look.
"The glass shard had gone through her abdomen and into your lung. She had bled to death in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. I'm sorry son. She's dead." Mitchum had left the room leaving his son to mourn his girlfriend. Part of him really wanted to tell Logan that she had moved on and didn't love him anymore. But that plan would pose too many complications.
Now in the present the malicious man sat at his desk looking over a file on his son's 'dead' girlfriend. Things were complicated. In a small town in Scott County Arkansas Lee Waters, better known as Rory Gilmore resided. This isn't what Michum was worried about. Lee Waters didn't live alone. Lee Waters had a daughter, his granddaughter. Things were so complicated now.
…her lovely lover Rupert.
Allibaster was laughing about the Sticks latest prank. One Alexia had been apart of. Allibaster and his friends' world had appealed to her. She had grown up not living, the sticks told her. So, tempted by desire and the fear that they were speaking the truth Alexia grabbed Rupert's hand and allowed herself to take part in their games. 'Reindeer games' Alexia's mother, Sandy, had laughed.
Sandy had been born into the world of elites. But she was suffocated by the gag society placed on her. She rebelled in the worst way ever, she had gotten pregnant young. The tabloids were having a field day with Sandy's inability to behave and partake in the civilized event of marriage. But at sixteen, Sandy knew the marriage would fail. She denied the proposals and suggestions to get an abortion and a year after Alexia was born she fled to a small and quaint town. Alexia knew that she was mistake, despite the many times her mother told her she was a miracle because sometimes Alexia would catch the look of longing, the look of what if in her mothers eyes.
"So I said to Officer Brady, how's Marsha? And he looked baffled until he realized that I was talking about the Brady Bunch show. His face grew so red…" Allibaster boasted.
"When I said Marsha Marsha Marsha! He just about took out his whip and beat me into oblivion…" Alexia continued. Times likes these she really felt like part of the group.
"I could hardly keep my laughter in. Then Rupert shows up in an English police uniform, you know with the hat and club. He asks the officer if he was still in Kansas…" Allibaster continued.
"Alli please don't forget my British accent. Anyway, the officer just stood there with his beet red face, he was about to say something when an emergency call came through his walkie -talkie." Rupert laughed. He snaked his arm around Alexia and pulled her into a short kiss.
"Someday I'm going to marry you." He whispered into her ear and she smiled widely. She had never had any desire to marry before, but it just seemed right with Rupert.
"That's where we come in, we were terrorizing the new pledges and had one had been hung by his feet in the trees. Unfortunately the little weasel had his cell phone and called the cops to get him down. But I got word of this first so I cut him down and poured a bottle of whiskey on him. The girls put some cover up on his ankle bruises so when the cops arrived all there was was this drunk fellow talking on and on about some secret society." Torrance concluded. They loved telling stories. This was one of their rather boring stories of tormenting a renowned police officer. They loved belittling others. This was their one downfall, Alexia thought….
After the check had been paid the group dispersed in different directions. Alexia and Rupert foolishly hopped into the front seat of Allibaster's two seat car. Alexia sat on Rupert's lap and twisted her body so she was kissing him.
"Buckle up. Don't want nobody to get hurt." Allibaster slurred. Perhaps if Alexia and Rupert weren't so drunk, or so drunk on each other they would have taken his speech impediment as a warning. But sadly they weren't.
Rupert's fingers traveled down Alexia's pants and were sneaking their way into her undergarments. Alexia was either unnerved by this or she just didn't notice. The car stopped so the two lovers in the shotgun seat could carry on elsewhere. Rupert pushed her up against the red car Sheila, as Alli affectionately named it. Pants were dropped and hands were everywhere. The act or sex was in process in the streets near the university.
Rupert felt a hard tap on his shoulder. He shook it off and concentrated on his release as Alexia had already peaked. The tap persisted and Rupert growled.
"In a sec. I'm busy." His breathing was fast and shallow. And then less then a minute later he took a sharp intake of breath as he climaxed. He turned to look at the intruder who was none other then Officer Brady.
"Move it long Lovebirds." The man chuckled. He hadn't seen two people in so much love before.
"Sure Greg, say hello to Alice for us." Rupert chuckled. He pulled up his pants and assisted Alexia, who was too drunk to do so herself. He waved the watching officer away and got into the convertible. He helped Alexia on his lap and buckled her up. Alli sped away not wanting the officer to ticket him.
"Didn't think you had it in you, reporter girl." Alli laughed.
"At least I wasn't named after a mineral used for carving" Alexia retorted. A blush had escaped when she realized what she had just done and in public with people watching. She was horrified. If only her mother could see her now. Although chances were that Sandy would not have been surprised because lately her little girl was acting rebellious and independent. Her little girl was turning into her, and Sandy reacted by turning into her own mother as well.
Alexia turned back to kiss Rupert. Then she pulled away with a sharp intake of breath. She heard Rupert take in one too. Allibaster screamed like a little girl. Alexia stared into the face of her lover. He had blood trickling down his lips and the blood wasn't his.
Lee broke down into tears. The memory of the accident was all too real for her. No matter how fictionalized she made her life with Logan, the story would always remain non-fiction to her. The scars on her abdomen and back were pulsating in pain. It always did when she wrote that part. And how many times was that. At least five. After every time she would erase it and start over, because then she wouldn't have to write that words Rupert died, to remember Logan died.
