Title: Back In Stars Hollow
Chapter 6: Messages
A/N: I'm in a bit of a strange mood. You see… I just finished the fifth Harry Potter book. I'm not a fanatic or anything, they're just fabulous books. The movies are okay. Anyway, just finished the fifth one. Someone dies. One of my favorite characters. And I'm all sad. I've been crying for hours. Well, an hour and a half.
And now I'm going to watch Dawson's Creek. Pacey and Joey just kissed yesterday.
And I'm listening to show tunes.
And this story's gonna be like, half fluff and half mystery. It's very interesting. My mood's weird.
Anyway, no one knows what's gonna happen, least of all me, but I'm writing it for you anyway. Sorry about your wait, I've been busy, and I have a new story. I won't neglect this one too much, though.
Lorelai woke up a few days later to the ringing of the telephone. Not eager to reach it, she groaned, pulled herself from the bed, and dressed slowly. By the time she was ready to face the world—at least all the way to Luke's—and made her way downstairs, the message light on the answering machine was blinking, claiming her tape was full. Sure that the light was lying, she pressed play.
"Mom. Look, I…I wouldn't be surprised if you didn't recognize my voice."
Lorelai pressed next quickly. It was Rory's message from right before she'd shown up a week ago. She shuddered, slightly, remembering how she hadn't seen her daughter for nearly a year, and waited for the next message.
"Uh, Lorelai? Uh, Lorelai Gilmore?"
Lorelai pressed delete. A halting, unfamiliar male voice on her answering machine? Gone. Next message.
"Mom. It's Saturday. Eight in the morning. You promised you'd be up by now, you wanted to spend a few hours with me before my first appointment. Jess and I just got up—I'll wait for you in the lobby for half an hour before I head to Luke's. Love ya."
Lorelai cringed. Rory was right, she'd promised to be up by eight. She checked her watch—half past eleven. Hurriedly she pressed the next button.
"Mom! I'm leaving for Luke's now! Get up!"
Assuming that the rest of the tape was the same, she pressed delete until her inbox read one—the first message—and hurried from the house.
"Lukey, where's my baby?" she asked, running into the diner minutes later and grinding to a halt in between Luke and a customer.
Luke rolled his eyes. "She and Jess went to the doctor's—half an hour late—after waiting for you for three hours. And move, you're in the way."
Lorelai grumbled, but moved to Luke's side, where she proceeded to whine and moan about Rory.
"I'm nervous," Rory admitted, throwing down a four-month-old People magazine and shoving her hands under her thighs.
"Don't be nervous, it's routine," Jess responded from next to her, not looking up from the Parenting magazine he was flipping through idly.
"Look at me when you say that," she moaned.
He rolled his eyes, but obligingly lowered his magazine. "It's a completely routine check-up. You're just meeting a new OB-GYN, since you left the last one in…Seattle."
"Thank you, that was a much better tone," she smiled, referring to his soft tone of voice. He rolled his eyes again.
"You're gonna be really good at this parenting stuff."
"God, I hope so." She pulled her hands from under her thighs and starting shaking them. Without looking up from his magazine, he handed her the People she'd thrown on the table. She took it, not paying attention, and started to flip pages quickly.
"Rory Gilmore?" A pretty blonde woman called in a Southern accent. Rory stiffened, but Jess stood.
"Come on," he said, pulling her from her seat with one hand, and then wrapping it around her. "Everything's gonna be okay."
"I'm bored," Lorelai announced, her chin in her hands and her elbows resting on the counter.
"Lorelai!" Luke hissed, halfway across the diner taking an order.
"Well, I am," she said defensively, twirling around on the stool to face him.
"You don't have to announce it," he murmured as he passed her quickly, heading to the kitchen.
"Yes, I do!" she yelled, just because he'd whispered.
"Go home and watch TV," he implored, breezing past her again.
"There's nothing good on," she complained, watching as he took another order.
"Watch a movie."
"Not in the mood." She once again rested her elbows on the counter, watching as he brewed another cup of coffee. He sighed and faced her.
"Read a book."
"Like what?"
He thought for a second, and then sighed again, frustrated. "Go help Sookie at the Inn." He was getting desperate.
"She and Jackson and the kids all went to Providence for some vegetable convention."
"Go to the Inn!"
"Marlana's got it for the day."
"Shouldn't you help her out?"
She shrugged. "I like Marlana. I think I'm still mispronouncing her name, though."
He nodded. "What do you want to do, then?"
She thought, and then grinned as an idea seized her. She and Luke had been keeping their relationship low-key, so that no one except Rory and Jess knew that they were…anything more than usual.
She leaned across the counter, grabbed the lapels of Luke's flannel shirt, and pulled him towards her, for a mind-bending, earth-shattering kiss, right in the middle of the diner.
As she released him, and slowly settled herself back onto her stool, she grinned wickedly.
Well. Now they would know.
"D'you think we should have asked what the sex is?" Rory asked for the thousandth time, turning to Jess in the ticket line at the airport where they were waiting to get Jess a boarding pass to send him off to California. Baylor had called the day before; apparently, Jess had another movie option, so he was going to meet with the studio.
"Only if you want to," he repeated a bit wearily, having answered a thousand times.
"Okay." She turned back to the front of the line, watching as a perky redhead threw someone's bag onto the conveyer belt and called for the next person. "Oh!" She suddenly turned back to Jess, and threw her arms around him. "Have I mentioned that I'm going to miss you?"
"Why, no, you haven't. I was starting to get worried." Jess leaned down and softly kissed Rory, who deepened the kiss, causing him to drop his carry-on bag and wrap his arms around her.
"A-hem! A-HEM!" The perky redhead cleared her throat extra loudly, and Rory and Jess jumped apart. Her expression changed from one of annoyance to a very cheerful one as they looked at her. "Next?" she called sweetly. They obligingly walked forward.
Lorelai paced in front of the diner—Luke had hissed at her and kicked her out fifteen minutes ago, but not before planting another large kiss on her and proceeding to scold about public displays of affection. She paused in her walk, noticing that Luke was taking the orders of a couple seated in the window. She looked up, and grinned, until he looked down, almost unwillingly. She waved, a large, body-rocking wave, swinging both of her arms back and forth, before throwing him kiss after kiss. He struggled to keep from smiling, and even lost the struggle at one point. She stopped in all of her movements, and just stood there, grinning back, basking in the feelings that she had realized for Luke less than a week ago. He stifled a laugh, and his face practically broke out into a grin, and she realized he was doing the same things, basking in the feelings that were running through his body, making them wish the window and the people were gone, and they were all alone.
The woman in the couple waved her hand in front of Luke's face, and he snapped back, finished taking their order, and then headed down the stairs, out of the diner and right next to her.
"You're distracting me," he murmured, half-reproachingly, half-wondering.
"Can I distract you out of work?" she murmured back, playing with the buttons on his shirt, and leaning into him, wanting to be wrapped in his arms.
"Lorelai," he admonished half-heartedly. "I've been out of work enough this week."
"Oh, you're doing well, you can afford it." She waved her hand dismissively, running her hands over his chest.
"Lorelai," he groaned. "I need to work. Go find something else to do."
She pouted. "Well, then, can I see you later?"
He paused, thinking of the fact that Rory would be alone tonight, and for the next few days, and then sighed again. "Maybe."
"Luke," she whined quietly.
"Lorelai," he whined back, imitating her tone perfectly. He struggled not to laugh at the befuddled expression on her face. "I said maybe. We'll talk about it later." He leaned down and surprised her with a kiss brimming with emotion; she had the strange feeling that they were spewing love everywhere, and if any feuding couples were to walk by, they would be bathed in it, and then be ready to reconcile. She grinned at the thought, and was still grinning when they separated.
"Later," he murmured, pecking her quickly on the lips again before heading back into the diner.
Shocked and feeling as though she was now spewing love, she watched him walk up the stairs, and didn't get her voice back until he reached the front door, at which point she lifted both arms in the air and waved them around again. "Later!" she screamed, her complete love for this man—even after only a few days—utterly readable on her face, she was sure.
Luke shook his head as he walked into the diner, but he was grinning, and she recognized the goofy look as one of an unrequited love that had finally been returned…after many, many years. She waved again, blew him a kiss, and finally walked away, turning around every once in a while to see him turning to see her.
Rory exchanged a long kiss with Jess near the safety check, a kiss full of love and longing, and the sadness of knowing that the week apart would wreak havoc upon their temperaments and sleeping habits.
And then they whispered goodbye, he edged through the metal detector, and she watched as he made his way up the terminal, glancing back every once in a while to see her.
"Mom? Again, I'm talking to your machine." Rory said into her cell-phone minutes later, sitting at a table in an airport café and stirring the rapidly melting marshmallows into her hot chocolate. "I just saw Jess off…he's not gonna be back for at least a week, Baylor said, so I won't have much to do…. He suggested I look up how many more credits I need, and see if I can get into some classes, so I can finally graduate from college. The doctor seemed nice…she's from Tennessee, she said, and she's got the most endearing accent. She says the baby's fine, and if at any point we wish to know the sex, she's glad to oblige." Rory sighed, feeling exhausted. "I think I'm going to putter around Hartford for a while…maybe stop in at Grandma and Grandpa's. I also need some more clothes—I found out yesterday that my overalls are getting tight. I think I'm talking for too long…but just had to check in…I'll probably be home around four or so, hope you can amuse yourself until then. Love ya."
Rory flipped the cell phone closed, and then noticed, for the first time in a week, that she had a message. Curious, she flipped the phone open again, navigated herself to her voicemail, and played it.
"Rory? This is Mark."
She felt as if someone had thrown a large bucket of ice water over her…she shivered at the sound of her ex-boyfriend's voice, speaking as he had only a few months ago, when they'd been happy—or so she'd thought—before this whole dreadful thing with Tristan and France and the CIA. The end of the message mentioned something about coffee in Hartford next week, and she froze, wondering when the message was recorded. Her phone's clock was extremely screwed up, and was telling her it was Wednesday evening, after eleven, when Rory was sure it was Saturday, not long after one in the afternoon. She calculated, quickly, and figured that they had been made Tuesday, the day of the large storm that shook Stars Hollow, and the day after she'd left her cell phone buried in her dresser in her room at Lorelai's house.
Was he here?
Well, not here, Rory thought to herself. It's ridiculous to think that he could even be near the airport!
Even so, she found herself glancing around the tiny café, her eyes lingering on the man in the back corner wearing the New York Mets baseball cap and reading a newspaper.
"One coffee, large, black," a man ordered behind her. She whipped her head around, only to see the back of the man's head. But she'd recognized the voice. Hadn't she?
She watched closely as he walked to the arrangement of sugar and cream and everything else you could ever need with anything from the menu of the small place. Mark had always taken his coffee black—half a cream, two sugars, stirred twenty-five times clockwise, ten times counter-clockwise. He had always been a man of habit, which was one of the things she thrilled at when she first started their relationship. That and the fact that he could keep up with her coffee wise—he wasn't quite a Lorelai, but he was definitely a Lane mixed with a Paris. Her ideal combination.
The man picked up a small package of cream, pulled the lid off halfway, and poured tiny droplets into his cup, before throwing it into the trash can and picking up a packet of sugar. He shook it and flicked it with his middle finger until it was situated the way he liked, and then he ripped it carefully and poured it into the cup. Rory held her breath as he picked up the second packet of sugar, repeated the process with it, and then poured it into his cup.
He glanced around briefly as he threw the empty sugar packets away…too late, Rory realized he was going to look directly into her eyes. He did. There was no sign of hate, love, or anything in his eyes. He glanced blankly over her protruding stomach with indifference as he began to stir his coffee—he somehow managed to finish the thirty-five stirs in a relatively short amount of time, and he threw the coffee stirrer away and sipped as he walked over to Rory.
She slid slowly from her chair as he approached her, knowing that the coming confrontation was inevitable.
"Let's sit," he suggested as he walked past her, to the other side of the table, "and talk."
She nodded, and settled back into her chair; he did the same.