Don't own Gilmore Girls.
The Pain Beneath the Surface
Prologue
He laid still next to her naked body. He watched the gentle rise and fall of her chest. Her back was to him, but not in anger. He was leaning slightly over her, tracing his hand up and down her side caressing her hip to her breast. He softly placed kisses on the surface of her ivory skin. They didn't need sex to be intimate.
He loved watching her sleep. She was always so beautiful in her peaceful state. It was an added bonus that she couldn't talk back to him. And every once in awhile a smile would grace her lips and he would know that it was because of him.
She turned her head to him, looking over her shoulder. Her eyes half closed but half open. Her sapphire eyes were glowing in the moonlight coming through her window. He loved her eyes. He loved her.
"What are you doing?" She asked him. She didn't bother to wipe the sleep out of her eyes. Nor did she stop smiling at him. He wondered how he had been so lucky to find her.
"Memorizing you." He whispered into her ear. Her diamond stud earrings sparkling in the soft glow from the moon. He wondered who had given them to her. Was it an old boyfriend? Her mother? Her grandparents? He wished he could have given them to her. She wore them all the time. She hardly ever took them out. They were so precious to her, he knew. He wished he had given something to her that was equally precious.
"Oh." She smiled bigger.
Her smiled started to fade and he would do anything to make her smile again. But the underlying meaning in his words had already reached her sleepy mind. He knew his words wouldn't be lost on her.
"Oh." She let out, her eyes pained and wide. She wanted to cry. But not in front of him. Not in front of the man that meant everything to her.
"Get out." She seethed at him. He tried to hold onto her for a little longer. Tell her he didn't want to, it wasn't his choice. But she was smarter than that. She knew he was just being scummy, getting a quick lay in before breaking her.
"Rory." She ignored him and wrapped the blanket closer around her body. She made sure he couldn't get one last look at her.
"I love you." He pleading with her. He dropped to his knees, exposing his nakedness. He clasped his hands together like he was praying to god. He was, in a sense, he was praying, begging, pleading for her to listen to him. But it was futile, he knew. He couldn't be with her, he made the wrong choice and couldn't take it back. He knew she wouldn't let him.
"You love your money." She hissed at him. Her words burned his skin and struck oil. His heart was bleeding. How could she think he was choosing money over her? Oh, right. Because he was. His evil father had told him to choose, money or love. And all he had ever known was money.
"Get out!" Tears were stubbornly falling from her eyes. The eyes he loved so much. It pained him to think the last time he'll ever see those eyes were with tears spilling out of them. Never mind he caused those tears.
"Please." She cried. His shoulders sank. He grabbed his pants and pulled them on quickly like a man on the run from a one night stand. He searched the dark room for other articles of clothing that belonged to him. He left the room listening to her sobbing. He wished he could hold her and make it all better. He wished he could kill the guy that made her cry. Right, he thought, that's me.
He got into his car and quickly drove away from the Gilmore pool house. He pulled into a Seven Eleven parking lot and cried. Lone tears fell from his face and he tasted the salty substance which was so unfamiliar to him. He turned his sadness into anger and pounded his fist on the steering wheel. The horn blared out symbolizing that something bad was going to happen. But what could be worse?
The horn simply embedded itself into his brain and every time he was with a girl he would hear it telling him he was going to hurt this one too. That summer was unbearable. He could sleep with thousands of girls, women even, but the vision of Rory crying naked in her sheets wouldn't stop haunting him.
He returned to Yale in the fall. He hoped school would help take his mind off her and since she had dropped out to do some thinking he wouldn't have to worry about running into her. But the whole campus reminded him of her, Branford dorm, his dorm, the library, the Yale Daily News office, the pub, the classrooms, the coffee kiosks, etc. And just today as he was walking around the corner to get coffee, the far one that she never went to because the coffee was just ok, but he could have sworn he saw her standing there in line for the just ok coffee.
She had wallowed immensely after that night. But she didn't do it right. She wasn't on speaking terms with her mom, Lane was out of town on a tour, Paris had heard about her recent decision to drop out and was furious, she thought about Stephanie but she was Logan friend, and Marty had offered but he was a guy. Her grandparents had left town for Martha's Vineyard the week before so they weren't an option.
She ended up losing thirty pounds. She didn't leave the pool house to eat, to stock up on food, or even for coffee. She didn't order in either. She only starved for the first week. After that she became numb. By the end of July she couldn't fit into her clothes and she was so frail a sneeze could break her bones. She was living off water and whatever coffee she had stocked in her pseudo apartment. She started to eat, just whatever she already had. She started to develop an appetite for stale cheetos.
One day she motivated herself enough to take a shower and was hit with a dizzy spell that lasted forever. She had to sit down in the tub for fear she'd fall. She knew something was wrong. When the room stopped spinning she slowly stood up and stepped out of the scale. She figured she would have to deduct a few pounds because of the water. When she looked down and the scale read 99 pounds she almost fainted. She stepped off and looked into the mirror. She looked almost dead. She wanted to hit herself for becoming the kind a girl that couldn't survive without a boyfriend.
That's what she told her mother's voicemail when she called later that day. She rambled on about how she was that girl and that she hated herself for it. She whimpered into the phone "I need you now so much. I'm scared." She must have sounded really pathetic because a half hour later her mom was knocking at the door. She was too weak to get up, too weak to yell for her mother to come in at all. Her mother, she knew, wouldn't just walk away.
The door slid open and she heard her mother shout for her. When her mom did find her she was on the bathroom floor, still naked and still wet. Her mom helped her up, giving a look of surprise or shock at how light she was. But nevertheless her mom helped to her bed and grabbed a blanket while wincing at the sight of her daughters rib bones. "What happened to you?" She asked Rory. All she got was a slight shrug of the shoulders and some waterworks.
As a mother Lorelai did the only thing she could. She nursed her baby back to health. She ordered pizza and salad and chips and coffee and ice cream. Just about anything Luke could deliver. She clothed her daughter and when Rory fell asleep she began to straighten up the pool house. She wondered what had happened to Rory. She could barely understand her voicemail message. At first she thought Rory was doing some drunk dialing since they hadn't spoken since mid May. But then she heard the pathetic whimper of her daughter needing her and being scared. It reminded her so much of how she felt when Luke broke up with her. She sped all the way until she was at her daughter's current residence. It frightened her when there was no answer.
"Oh god." She sat down on the couch reliving the moment when she thought her daughter was lying somewhere dead. She looked at the mess, the half eaten bag of cheetos the countess numbers of water bottles. The half empty, half full glasses of water spread about the room. She wondered how things had gotten this bad.
Luke arrived with tons of food. He had many questions, most went unanswered. He caught a glimpse of Rory when she came out the room for some water. Her clothes were too big and she looked like she barely slept. She also looked like she had been crying.
"I brought cheese fries. I know you like them." Luke softly said, but the room was so quiet to begin with it sounded like he was yelling. Rory smiled and wanted to tell him she wasn't really hungry. But she had to eat. So she came closer, avoiding Luke the best she could. Men are evil, she thought.
Lorelai caught the drift and told Luke to leave, that she could handle it now. He was relieved and left. Lorelai put all the food and coffee on the table and told Rory to dig in. It took awhile but eventually they had eaten all the food and had re-bonded. Rory asked if it was too late to go back to Yale.
Lorelai knew Rory was running. She was never one to deal with things head on. But since this was what she wanted, she couldn't deny her daughter. She said she'd get her registered no matter what. Many jokes about sleeping with the dean came her way but she was happy.
"Hun. You deserve better than him." Lorelai told her daughter the day Rory moved into her dorm. She was living in a single this time. She didn't want a crazy Paris anymore.
"What if he's the best I can do?" Rory responded. The thought pained them both.
A week after school started Rory had mapped out a routine that avoided Logan and all his friends. It also helped that she was still underweight and therefore unrecognizable. It wasn't easy to gain weight when you had to, she noted. When you didn't want the extra pounds you'd get them, she bitterly thought. It was hard enough convincing her mom she would eat three meals a day at least, but now she had to convince herself. The urge to not eat was still embedded into her brain. Her stomach was still numb.
After getting her coffee from the just okay kiosk she turned around and saw Logan. She dropped her coffee. Instead of running she bent down to pick it up. He probably forgot who she was by now.
He didn't. He saw the Rory look alike turn around and sucked in his breath. It couldn't be her, she was too thin. But then her eyes met his and he knew it was her. What she was doing at Yale, he didn't know. He saw her recognize him, he couldn't miss that pained expression that plagued her pale face. Then she dropped her coffee, something a Gilmore never did. He reasoned that it couldn't be her and walked away. In the back of his mind he knew it was her on the ground trying to control her tears. He didn't just hurt her, he killed her.
Huntzbergers didn't deal with guilt too well. He got back to his dorm and called Finn, Colin, Robert and Steph out of class to go get drunk with him. Finn easily came. Colin texted a complaint but came anyway. Robert didn't have class right then. Steph was glad for an excuse to get out of lecture so she happily came. On her way to the pub she ran into Rory, spilling her coffee all over Rory. Rory cursed, something Steph knew she didn't do often. She apologized and offered to buy her a new sweater. Rory looked up at Steph and declined the offer. She made up some excuse like needing to wash her hair and left.
Steph couldn't move for a few minutes. Rory looked so unhealthy. She looked so depressed and not in a deeply sad way. Steph knew Huntzberger broke up with her for money. She hated him for that but understood since she too came from money. But having just looked at Rory she lost her grasp on the reasoning. She marched her way to the pub and when she spotted Logan she waltzed up to him and smacked him in the jaw. Her ruby ring broke into pieces but it was worth it seeing Logan's blood drip from his face.
"I'm sure I deserved that. But what for?" He solemnly asked the blonde.
"Have you seen Rory, lately. She looks like death. And I'm not exaggerating." She screamed at the big blonde bully. Logan let out a long breath but didn't say anything. He drank his scotch and left the bar just as Finn strolled in.
"Hey mate, where you going?" Finn shrugged his shoulders after getting no response and ordered a drink.
Logan strolled the campus looking for her. He needed to see her. He went to everyplace she could be, then changed gears and checked everywhere she wouldn't normally be. He found her reading a book at the soccer field. He walked up to her and sat down next to her. She didn't look up, either because she knew it was him or didn't care who it was.
"Ace." He stated.
"What? Didn't do a good enough job and want to do it again." She never looked up at him. Her words hurt him. Like he would ever want to hurt her again.
"Rory no." He paused. She had looked up at him and he could see her tears.
"I just wanted to see how you were doing."
"Look at me, Logan. Do I look okay?" He shook his head no. He looked down. He watched her pick up her purse. He watched her feet walk away from him. He didn't have the balls to look up and watch her walk away the normal way.
"You deserve better than me." He whispered into the air. If only the wind could carry words.
He never saw her after that. He heard she was dating a nice man. Todd was his name, he thinks. Todd was a commoner, had no money tied to his name. He always thought Rory could better than him and he figured a man with no money would treat her better.
If only he knew how wrong he was…