Disclaimer: I do not own anyone who you might recognize. Mickey and Elizabeth are owned by Lindsay.
A/N: Sarah has been a kick-ass beta-reader on this, as well as many previous stories. She keeps me honest and on-target and what more could one ask for in a beta-reader? Thanks are due also to Lindsay for being the one who came up with this idea. She's the one who demanded that I write it down and for that I'm very grateful.
For some reason, ignored some of the updates I had made in this chapter before uploading. Here it is again, with fewer misspellings and grammatical errors. Thanks, Sar.
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That afternoon Owen filled Lorelai and Sookie in on Mickey's belief that she'd failed, and the women decided to do what they could to boost her out of her funk. With glum reluctance and much prodding she finally agreed to a Girl's Night later that day.
By six o'clock that evening, Lorelai had assembled the key women of Stars Hollow in her living room in the hope that they could cheer Mickey up.
Miss Patty clutched Davey to her ample breast while Babette helped E suck on an ice cube. Once Mickey had made the teething problem known they had more advice on than she knew what to do with. Rory, Lane and Mickey sat across the couch with a pizza draped over their laps as Lorelai re-entered the living room with a tray of glasses.
Mickey looked exhausted but entertained by the women around her. The dark circles beneath her eyes weren't as pronounced, Lorelai discovered as she passed the drinks around. Her pale skin was almost translucent and it made her dark red curls look like a forest fire. Lorelai hoped that evening would help get her back to normal.
"It's that zsa-zsa-zing!" Babette squealed at Miss Patty, clearly having a conversation of their own.
"Honey, don't I know it?" Patty drawled back.
Sookie looked vaguely disturbed and Lorelai glanced over and quickly addressed the situation. "Hey now. We've got under-agers in the house. Let's keep it clean."
"None of the under-agers speak English. Let's finally get some good girl talk going," Patty simpered as she wriggled her eyebrows and let her red mouth part in a friendly leer.
"That's right, doll," Babette added enthusiastically. "How does that song go? Let's talk about SEX, baby!"
"Babette!" Lorelai admonished, trying to keep a straight face.
"After all," Babette continued as if Lorelai had not said a word, "we've all tried it at this point, why not talk about it?"
"We'll be like those ladies on The View, but less stuck up," Miss Patty put in.
"Not so fast," Sookie interjected. "Not all of us have tried it."
All heads swiveled in Lane's direction.
"Hey!" Lane cried.
"This is ridiculous," Rory said. "You have to have a consensus in order to change the topic so radically. I think I can assure you that there is no consensus."
"But you were going to get the first question!" Babette said with playful indignance.
"What?" Rory croaked with astonishment.
"Rory, honey, you've gotta tell us how Dean was," Patty demanded, still holding Davey.
Rory's face registered horror as she put her hand to her forehead and said, "Oh, God!"
"Well, you didn't think we didn't know, did you?" Babette asked. "The whole town knows and what we want to know is how was it?"
"That's right," Patty added. "Inquiring minds."
Where Lorelai might have once jumped in to save her daughter from this baptism by fire, she held back to see what would happen. Rory was after all an adult and didn't really need her mother's protection.
The silence held until Rory said with exasperation, "I don't know! I don't have anything to compare it to. It was okay, I guess."
"Just okay? How big was it?"
"Okay!" Lorelai said, finally deciding enough was enough. "That'll do. Let's move on."
"All right, Lorelai, your turn," Patty announced.
"My turn?" she repeated with a squeak.
"When are you going to climb into that man's pants?!" Patty asked.
Lorelai felt her knees give and she collapsed on the ottoman near the coffee table. "Excuse me?" she asked weakly.
"You've been making eyes at each other for umpteen years, doll," Babette agreed. "Give the poor guy some action!"
"Time to move on again!" Lorelai practically spit out.
The only ones left were Sookie, Lane and Mickey. Sookie was happily married and no one really wanted to know what the sex was like between she and Jackson, Lane didn't have a sex life that anyone could determine so that meant Mickey was up.
"That Owen is one fine piece of mancake," Babette told her with a knowing nod. "All that blonde hair, big gray eyes, the crooked nose and that mouth! It makes me think of all the things he could do to a gal."
"We're just friends," Mickey told them. Even as she said it, though, she could remember with perfect clarity how she'd felt pressed tight against him while she'd cried on his shoulder. His arms had felt strong, his hands big and capable, and she'd melted into him. "Really," she insisted, with more assurance than she felt.
"Lord, you're as bad as your employer over there," Patty said, with a wave toward Lorelai.
"Hey!" Lorelai said, trying to defend herself.
"Oh, you had your chance," Patty answered with another dismissive wave.
"We really are just friends," Mickey said. "Besides, I'm not ready for anything like that. One kid is enough until I at least turn twenty."
"Oh, honey, that's why God invented the Pill!" Patty trilled.
"So you haven't done anything with him yet?" Rory interrupted.
"We're friends!" Mickey insisted as she avoided everyone's eyes.
"Friends can sometimes turn into something else entirely," Lane suddenly said from her spot next to Mickey.
For the second time that evening all heads swiveled in her direction and Lane found herself under the scrutiny of them all.
"You've been holding out on us!" Babette exclaimed.
"Spill it, sister!" Patty demanded. She was getting so worked up over the possibility of gossip that Sookie took Davey away for fear that he might get dropped.
"Zack and I sort of…you know," Lane said, trailing off with a delicate blush.
"No!" Rory gasped. "You didn't tell me!"
"You're not around much and I don't have any other girl friends so I didn't tell anyone."
"So you're living together as roommates but sleeping together, too?" Lorelai asked.
"It's complicated," Lane admitted.
"And you're definitely using protection, right?" Rory asked, ever the prudent one.
"Of course," Lane said.
"And how is it? That Zach is one hot tamale," Patty said appreciatively.
"It's really good," Lane said, another soft blush stealing across her face. "Better than I thought it would be."
Patty sat back and breathed a sigh of satisfaction. "That's when you know it's something special, especially if you don't have anything to compare it to. Well, Mick, you know how it is."
"Me?" Mickey's squeak sounded like Lorelai's earlier. "Not quite."
"You didn't have a relationship with E's father?" Sookie asked. They were all a little curious, but no one had ever pried into that part of Mickey's life before.
"Not quite. I mean, yeah, we went out a few times but after we had sex, he was gone faster than you could say…" Mickey groped for a word as her eyes settled on her kid "…Elizabeth."
"Does he know? About E?" Lorelai asked.
"He knows I was pregnant," she told them, crossing her arms and feeling exposed and a little raw. The rejection had hurt and retelling it brought up all those old feelings again. "He never tried to contact me after school let out and he never came to the hospital while we were there. It would have taken a phone call to my parents to find out where I was, but he never called."
"And your parents? Where are they?"
"Home," Mickey replied automatically. "Their home," she then corrected herself, holding her arms tighter across her chest.
"Do they know you're here?" Rory asked.
Mickey thought about it. She'd contacted the halfway house with her forwarding information after she'd gotten the job at the Dragonfly. "If they wanted to find me, they could. Trust me, though, we're better off," she finished with a quick nod.
xxx
While the ladies of Stars Hollow gossiped in Lorelai Gilmore's living room, their counterparts lolled on the stools over at Luke's. Jackson, Owen and Zach all sat at the counter while Luke stood behind it.
"Seriously, we're just friends," Owen insisted as Jackson nodded.
"Yeah, Sookie and I were just friends once upon a time," he said. "And Luke's been friends with Lorelai for longer than anyone can remember."
"What are you implying?" Luke asked, suddenly looking alarmed.
"Dude," Zach answered allowing the single word to fully express his utter disbelief of their platonic relationship.
"What exactly does 'dude' mean?" Luke threatened.
"Well, come on," Jackson said.
"Yeah, you're always asking about her or she's asking about you. It's very weird," Owen said.
"She asks about me?" Luke replied far too quickly. The three men on the other side of the counter guffawed at him and Luke quickly regained his upper hand. "What about you jokers?" he asked pointing to Zach and Owen. "No matter how many times you say your just friends I've got my eye on both of you."
"Lane and I aren't just friends anymore," Zach told them with a wink and a nod.
"Dude!" Owen said, putting his hand out for a high-five.
Zach slapped it and Jackson gave him a friendly punch on the shoulder. "Good for you!" he said. "But if you hurt her I'll have to kill you. Just so you know."
"Fair enough," Zach answered.
"That goes double for me," Luke told him.
"How can it go double for you?" Zach asked, always one for a friendly debate. "If I'm dead, I'm dead."
"Jackson and I go back a long ways," Luke said. "If I ask him nicely he'll torture you until I can get there to help him finish the job."
"Understood," Zach nodded.
"And that goes for you, too!" Luke said waving a finger in Owen's face.
"We're friends! That's it, I swear."
"Swear all you like," Jackson told him. "If Lorelai commands that you be gotten rid of, Luke and I are the perfect ones for the job."
"What about you?" Owen said to Luke.
"Me?"
"Yeah, you and your 'just friends' act. If she walked in here right now and told you to follow her home to get some nooky, you'd be all, 'yes, ma'am!'."
Jackson and Zach laughed while Luke waived his hand around as if to say, "yeah, yeah, laugh it up."
"Luke, you know he's right. I will never understand what the deal is between you two," Jackson said.
"There's no deal," Luke insisted.
"Right," Zach scoffed. "Even I know there's a deal."
"All right, Luke's is closed. Get out."
Owen and Zack continue to snicker as they paid up and headed for the door. Jackson lingered and when they were gone said, "Luke…"
"I don't wanna talk about it."
"But, if I were privy to some information that might pertain to one Lorelai Gilmore and someone she might secretly like, would you be interested in hearing about it?"
Luke stared at Jackson for a long minute before answering. "That would depend," he finally hedged.
"What if I told you that Lorelai had a dream about you."
Luke lost all color in his face but quickly regained his composure. "How do you know this?"
"She told Sookie who told me. Now, if this gets out, we'll be roommates 'cause Sook will absolutely throw me out. But, passing on a little information that is never acted upon isn't so terrible is it?"
"Absolutely not," Luke replied as his color returned and then went up a notch.
"Apparently, the only reason Lorelai told Sookie about this dream is because she's so much in denial that the significance was lost on her. Sookie picked up on it immediately, though, and told me about it."
"If you don't get to it in the next five seconds I'm going to hurt you," Luke promised.
"Okay, okay," Jackson agreed. "So the dream started at the Dragonfly. She was having a bad day what with the stress of paying the bills and worrying about everything and she's sitting at her desk and she starts to cry."
Luke's heart constricted a little at the image. "She started to cry in her dream?"
"Yeah," Jackson said. "So, she's sitting at her desk crying when the door opens and she looks up and it's Christopher."
"Christopher," Luke repeated with narrowed eyes.
Jackson nodded and continued. "So Christopher arrives and walks over gives her a hug and tells her it's all going to be okay – typical chick stuff."
"Right," Luke said, on the verge of losing interest.
"And when Lorelai looks up again, it's you," Jackson declared, knowing a dramatic moment when he saw one.
"Me?" Luke faltered, trying to picture it. "Christopher turned into me?"
"Can you believe it? She told Sookie as if it was nothing, but I think it definitely means something."
Luke stared into space for a second. Could it be…?
"Well, I gotta get going," Jackson announced.
Luke waved goodbye in a daze and watched as Jackson left the diner.
