Chapter Six
A.N. Just a quick note to Krys33 I was wondering if anyone would pick that up about Jamie. The name just came to me and when I got done with Jamie's character development I was like huh, he's very Instant Star Jamie like but I fell in love with him (probably because I'm in love with Jamie from IS) so I kept him as is. He's going to be slightly different though since he's not greatly in love with music...oh and I hope this chapter clears up Lucy's relationship with her parents I feel like I've kind of misled everyone as to how she feels about her parents.
So when the phone rang last week I didn't think anything of it. I mean in the week prior that I'd been living at Jess and Ing's the phone had rung several times a day, but if I had known what the phone call would bring I would have walked out of the apartment versus picking it up. If I'd known that the phone call would bring the announcement from my mother that she was coming to visit I would have probably been conveniently out of the apartment every time it rang. Curses about Jess and Ing who don't believe in caller ID, it's been around for decades can't they just jump on the bandwagon? Ing says she likes the surprise in not knowing who is going to be on the other line when she picks up the phone. Me? I don't. I don't like picking up the phone and having my mother on the other line. I'd like the freedom of glancing at the caller ID, recognizing the 203 area code and walking out of the room.
But it's set up, I couldn't get out of it. In 22 minutes my parents will invade Jess' apartment. Demand to meet Jamie since I'll be moving in with him in a couple of weeks and to see my jobs and just know everything about everything. But Ing had reminded me a dozen times since that phone call a week ago that they were my parents. They loved me. And, no, I could not feign a horrible coma inducing illness and spend the weekend in the hospital. Jess backed her up so I had no one to stand beside me, even Jamie had an opinion on the matter. An opinion which went right along with everyone else's.
I don't hate my parents. I know that's probably hard to see with the whole running away thing and complaining about seeing them. I mean, growing up with them was interesting. They're so opposite that life in the Danes house was never dull, my mom's a crazy junk food and coffee addict and my dad is serious and rigid. But together they just work. I can't imagine them as two separate people. They've always taken a strong front against or for anything and everything and they fight all the time but never about the important stuff. I'm not saying they don't fight about the important stuff, because I know they do but in the end they always provide a solid front line. Sometimes it's obvious Mom's gotten her way, other's it's obvious that Dad has.
And they're not bad people, they're great people. Successful. Independent. Upstanding citizens. And loving parents. I wouldn't deny them any of this. And I think the problem is this. I'm them. I've got my mother's running away and do it myself streak and both of my parents' hard work ethics. My mom's mocking sarcasm. It's all there. And their personalities were smothering me, or mine and deep down I think they know why I left. But that doesn't mean that they'll make this visit easy on me either.
"That was them," Ingrid walks into the living room to find me hanging upside down from her couch. "They wanted to meet us somewhere with food, apparently your mother is starving. They suggested Herban Kitchen, they figured they could see where you work and get food at the same time."
"Mom's going to want to stop somewhere else and get food afterwards because there's no way she's going to order food from Herban Kitchen."
"You're not going to make this visit easy on anyone, are you?" Ingrid asks looking down on me.
"Of course she isn't," Jess appears in the room to but somewhere out of my eye site. "She's got Gilmore blood in her after all."
I allow my legs to fall over my head and I flip over onto my back with an ungraceful topple, "then let's go."
"You're not going to change out of your clothes from work?" Jess asks.
"When did you become my fashion consultant?" I glare in his direction, it's a general guess because I've got my eyes closed so the world will stop spinning thanks to the head rush I've given myself.
"When I decided I don't want to go to a restaurant and have my cousin get asked to take orders because she's wearing the required uniform." Jess retorts.
"God, picky," I roll my eyes and head for the dresser across the room that mostly held some of Ing's unused art supplies but had been partially cleared our for my clothes. Less then a minute later I reemerge from the bathroom wearing a simple pair of jeans and a black tank top, "happy now?"
"You're going to freeze," is Jess' response.
"One step ahead of you." I states as a I pull an oversized dark blue sweatshirt over my head with white NYC letters stitched into the front.
"Why the hell do you have Jamie's sweatshirt?" Jess demands.
"Oh my God!" My head pokes through the whole of the hoodie sweatshirt, "you're starting to sound like my dad. Jamie left it at work the other day, I borrowed it, I'll give it back to him the next time I see him."
"I do not sound like Luke," Jess almost pouts.
Ing offers her husband a sympathetic look, "you kinda do."
"Let's just go," Jess snaps as he heads for the door, Ing smirks at me from behind Jess' back and I can hardly hold back the giggle that her expression causes.
I'd counted on seeing my parents for the first time after "running away" and having the situation being awkward. But of course they proved me wrong, they were already waiting at the restaurant by the time we'd got there and they were seated in a corner table in the back. "Hey you made it," Mom stands up and Dad follows suit.
"Yeah, we walked," Jess nods.
"How was your trip," hugs are being exchanged between Ing and my parents but I stand just outside of the group, unsure of what I'm supposed to say or how I'm supposed to act.
"The trip was uneventful," Mom answers Ing's question before moving toward me and wrapping me in a hug. "Hey babe."
"Um, hey Mom," I return the hug briefly and if I was unprepared for that I certainly wasn't expecting my father to follow my mother's lead. "Hey Dad."
"Hey kid," Dad looks sad and I feel a pang of guilt for having to put him through that, okay more then a pang more like a lot of pangs.
"So what's good here?" Mom is the first to sit and open her menu.
"Nothing you'll like Lorelai," Jess laughs.
"How do you know that?"
"Because one dish here is more then your yearly consumption of vegetables, Mom." What? Obviously everyone was attempting to keep this meal as simple as possible and I could go along with that, at least I wasn't currently the topic of a famous Luke Danes' lecture.
"Hey I eat vegetables," Mom protests.
"French fries don't count Lorelai," Dad states from behind his menu.
"Hey, sometimes when we're in restaurants and they put vegetables on my plate they sometimes get mixed in with whatever I'm eating," Mom adds laughing.
"Don't you ever leave," Jada, one of the waitresses appears at the table to take our order.
"I dunno, I thought I'd move in," I retort. "Actually my parents are in the city visiting and wanted to see where I work so I thought I'd kill to birds with one stone, besides it'll be nice to be served for once in this place." I respond, Jada and I had hit it off from day one she wasn't much older then I was but she'd come to live in the city as soon as she'd graduated from high school. "Mom, Dad this is Jada, Jada these are my parents."
More greetings go around the table and then everyone places their order with Jada, until she reaches my mom who is still starring at her menu like it's in another language. "Since I think the only thing on this menu that I recognize all of the words is the chile I'll get that." Jada smiles and writes the order down before leaving the table.
"Don't worry Lorelai, Jess has lots of cakes and coffee at the bookstore," Ing assures.
"Those are words I know. So what exactly do you do here Luce, are you waiting tables or what?"
"I'm a prep cook," I respond, already starting to worry about what the rest of the night is going to be like if we're already falling back on information she already knows to keep the conversation going.
"And Martha's engaged," Mom is catching me up on all of the Stars Hollow gossip when we walk into the bookstore, when I'd asked how things were in Stars Hollow to cover the silence that had descended over the five of us on our walk to the bookstore it had led to plenty of conversation.
"She's what?" Sookie's daughter was several years older then me but with our mother's being so close we'd spent our younger years as each other's best friends but once we'd been separated by schools we'd lost the relationship we had.
"Engaged, in a year she's going to be Martha Janice-Lori-Ethan-Rupert-Glenda-Carson-Dasiy-Danny Melville-Larson." Mom grins, she loved to use Martha's whole name whenever possible.
"She's hyphenating the last name too?" I stare at my mother.
"Of course she is, you know Martha she'll make her name as long as possible, if she ever gets divorced and remarried she'll probably keep all of her last names."
"She's insane," Jess comments as he pulls the door open for all of us.
"She's Sookie and Jackson's daughter, of course she's insane," Dad adds.
"Coffee," Mom takes in a deep breath the instant she walks into the shop and immediately hurries over to Jamie, "coffee, please, now I was forced to eat an entirely healthy meal so give me one of those slices of cheesecake too."
"You must be Lorelai," Jamie comments as he sets about to fill my mother's order.
"You've been warned I see," Lorelai observes.
Jamie nods, "I have. Lucy said she'd give me ten dollars not to serve you coffee, but Jess said I'd be putting my life in jeopardy if I refused to serve you coffee. So I figured I wouldn't risk it."
"Smart guy," Mom responds as Jamie hands her the coffee cup and plate containing her cheesecake.
"Hey," Jamie greets the rest of us but when his eyes land on me he says, "hey" again only this time less friendly. "That's my sweatshirt."
Mom shoots me a look that I know is asking if we're dating and I'm sure the look on my father's face mirrors the one Jess had had on his face when I pulled the hoodie over my head. But I just shrug, "you left it here. I was cold. I borrowed it. You can have it back tomorrow."
Jamie rolls his eyes before asking, "can I get anyone anything else?"
I wave Jamie off but Ing and Jess step forward to order. "Luce, can we talk to you?" Mom asks when the other two move away.
I take a breath, bring on the lecture, "yeah. We can use Jess' office." There silence that descends over us the instant the office door closes behind my dad is nerve wracking and I can't let it sit anymore. "Okay, if you're going to yell then just yell."
"We're not here to yell at you," this confession comes from my father and I can't help but laugh.
"Of course you are, you've been dying to yell at me face to face since you yelled at me on the phone."
"We're not here you yell at you," my mom repeats, "we actually wanted to tell you that we're not going to yell at you. Or try to get you to move back home. We really are just here to see what your life is going to be like, we still want to be a part of your life kid. We're hoping that we haven't been such horrible parents that you want to kick us out of your life completely."
"I don't want to kick you out of my life," I sigh sinking onto the couch that lines one of Jess' walls. "That's never been what this is about. I just want to live my own life and life in Stars Hollow just seems so..." I pause I don't want to insult them, or the town they both love.
"So what?" Dad encourages.
I shrug, "small?"
My mom nods, "that's the way I felt growing up. Kind of ironic that I ended up in a small town, I guess it's just a matter of who you are. If New York is where you need to be right now we're not going to stop you."
"Really?" I turn toward my dad searching his face for some sign that he feels differently about all of this then my mom does.
But his face shows nothing of the sort, "like your mom says, we just want you to be happy."
"Thanks," I step forward and hug my dad and the hug from him I receive is almost crushing.
"I'm not sure I like the idea of you living with a boy though," I pull out of the crushing hug at this comment.
"Dad, it's just Jamie, nothing's going on between us. There won't be anything going on between us, besides you sound just like Jess."
"I do not sound like Jess!"
Mom's blue eyes catch mine and I bite my lip to keep from laughing, "now you really sound like him!"
Mom laughs and then Dad glares at her, "don't support her in this!"
Mom shrugs, "you do kind of sound like Jess." At these words though she turns her attention back to me, "can you be persuaded to come with Jess and Ing to Stars Hollow for Christmas?"
I hadn't really given thought to the fact that Christmas was only a couple weeks away, "um yeah. Sure."