Title: Upside Down
Summary: Taking things a little farther in 6.18. Maybe she can't stop. Doesn't she have a right to be confused by now? She didn't think the consequences would be so big. It only takes one time.
Notes: Thanks so much for all of your reviews! It gets a little more dramatic from here on out. Well, a lot more dramatic. Hopefully it doesn't seem completely unrealistic. Because to me this is what should happen and what could happen if this show didn't suck right now. At least I'm not going to give Jess a long lost kid . . . cough . . . Anyway, I hope you like this chapter as much as (or more than) the last one.
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Lately,
I'm not quite myself.
Maybe,
I do need some help.
just my confusion,
trust my delusions.
Don't you
Regret you met me.
go through
These steps to get me
Back to where we start
Before I fall apart.
If I could black out,
It'd become so clear,
Standing face-to-face with everything I fear.
watch so closely,
but still I don't see.
As bad as it seems,
a piece of mind I'd steel,
In ordinary life,
The consequence is real.
I'm past the point of reality.
Sum 41-Open Your Eyes
The house looks big and strange. She hates how it looks that way now, a different color and shape. She hates how it does not feel like the house she grew up in anymore. It feels even stranger to her now as she looks at the spot in which Jess used to stand, trying to call her out of her bedroom in to the unknown dark of the night. She feels even stranger than she usually does, as if the last time she walked out of the door was years ago, and she embarked on an odyssey where her whole world turned upside down. She thinks it's strange that one night, one mistake, could make her feel this different. Walking towards the porch, she brushes off the gnawing feeling in her gut simply as guilt. When she gets to the door, she has to stop herself from knocking. She laughs out loud a little, offset and a little afraid at how removed she feels.
"Mom?" she calls out after entering the house (without knocking), knowing Lorelai is upstairs by a thud of either something falling on the floor or Lorelai running into a cabinet.
"Ror?" her voice carries unsure down the stairs.
"Yeah, it's me. I . . . uh . . . forgot a shirt," she lies lamely. She watches as Lorelai bounds into the hallway, dressed in a short shirt and gray sweatpants. Rory forgot that Luke was out of town.
"Aw, you missed your mommy again? Look, keep this up kid, I might have to pull a restraining order on you," she grins in obvious enjoyment. Rory smiles weakly and, despite her efforts, is unable to come up with a response. Lorelai notices immediately, and frowns.
"What's wrong hon? You've only been gone, like, what? A day?" her forehead furrows, concerned. Rory opens her mouth to come up with another excuse, maybe even a joke, but she feels a tear come down her face instead, burning a clean line as it makes its way down her cheek.
"Oh sweetie!" Lorelai practically jumps down the rest of the stairs, enveloping her daughter in the tightest hug she can manage, trying to form a protective shield around her like a plastic bubble.
"God, Mom, I messed up. I told him . . . I yelled at him . . . and then I went to Philadelphia! Even though I knew what it would be like!" she spits out in between sobs, her back heaving up and down, up and down. Lorelai rubs her back in a motherly way, trying again to pull her closer.
"Philadelphia? What's in Phil-" she tries desperately to understand what distresses her only child. Her eyes widen as she answers her own question.
"Oh, honey." Rory sobs again, louder, her shoulders shaking.
"Did you guys fight or something?" she guesses hopelessly, referring to Jess. Rory wishes with her entire body that she could say yes, that for the umpteenth time she had turned him down. She wishes she could tell her mother she was that same girl, She shakes her head into her mother's shoulder.
"You . . . found out he's actually working at an escort service instead of a publishing company?" Rory laughs weakly at her mother's attempts, her laughter fading into more sobs and more tears.
"I slept with him," she says finally and the back rubbing stops abrubtly. Lorelai had always stuck to the idea that Jess was the bad guy, but she always thought she knew that Rory's goodness outweighed that.
"You . . . he . . . he didn't force you, did he?" Lorelai says, desperate to find an explanation that excuses her daughter of any blame. She pulls back, holding Rory's face tightly, as if trying to squeeze an alibi out of her mouth. She shakes her head again; the sobbing stops but another tear slips down her porcelain skin. Lorelai's face falls as she looks at her broken twenty year old daughter. She wishes she could pick Rory up in her arms, stop her pain with a soft nursery rhyme.
"Oh, kid."
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A door opens almost tentatively; Rory looks up, her ears almost perking like a dog. She hears a suitcase hit the floor, and then silence. Her heart beats quickly in hope.
"Ace?" Logan calls finally, sounding unsure as to whether he wants to know if she's home or not. She gets up off the bed and pads across the hardwood floor in her cotton socks, trying to stop herself from running. She wants to see that golden hair again, those lively eyes. She has missed they way they dance when he smiles. His complacent attitude vigorous expressions will make things better again, make the strange feeling in her heart go away, she is sure of it. She slides into the front hallway and halts to a stop in front of Logan. She looks up at him: the golden boy. He looks at her: afraid and unsure, hopeful and fragile. They stand there like that for several moments, waiting for someone to make the first move, or waiting for the world to fall, whichever comes first.
"I'm glad-"
"I missed-"
They start at the same time, then laugh a little, embarrassed, yet relieved.
"I'm glad you didn't move out," Logan says quietly, smiling his big grin.
"Are you kidding? It's a great apartment," she smiles back, holding her left arm with her right, still uncomfortable. He steps forward slowly, taking her hands into his when he reaches her, kissing her on her forehead lightly and sweetly. Rory closes her eyes, feeling a warmth spread down her face.
"I'm glad you're home," Rory says honestly as she opens her eyes again, glistening with sincerity. She has hated living alone in a large apartment, in a building where none of the neighbors are her friends, waiting for the man she has cheated on to come home. She had almost expected him to call and tell her he has found out, that Jess has called him and told him: she has nightmares about it. It has been a month since the night, since she came back from Lorelai's to find a letter from Logan. "Wait here if you want," it had said, "but if you already know what you want, you can leave your key on the counter, or drop it off later if you want". At the end "I love you" had been erased unsuccessfully, the graphite still on the paper, a ghost of what it had once been.
She has to tell him. She looks at his boyish face and his crinkled smile, and almost backs out. She hopes he'll understand. Tightening her grip on his hands in an attempt to keep him with her, she looks askance from his face.
"Logan . . . while you were gone . . . I . . . made a mistake," she waits for a moment, then looks up again, expecting to see his face angry, hurt or in the least suspicious. Instead, she discovers the same smile still playing on his face. Did she only imagine saying that outloud?
"I . . . did you hear me?" she asks in disbelief. His smile widens.
"I heard you. But, look. Here's what I figure. I made some mistakes, too. And even if you did make a mistake, you're still here. And we can start over. We can move on, Ace. All the way to the top."
He kisses her on the lips, softly and uncharacteristically chaste.
"I'm gonna go lug my stuff into the room, and then we'll have . . . a talk, a proper welcome home party, a staring contest or whatever," he looks at her eyes, his expression happy, "okay?" She nods and smiles. He kisses her forehead again, then heads back to the hallway. She keeps making people happy. She wishes she could say the same for herself. The unhappiness and insecurity is supposed to go away now. She is supposed to feel light and liberated. What is the boulder-like load that has settled so comfortably on her chest?
"I'll tell you some great stories, too," Logan calls from the hallway, "including my personal favorite about Finn and a chipmunk." Rory forces a laugh.
"I can't wait," she says, biting her bottom lip.
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Logan only got home two days ago, a voice says ominously in her head.
"That doesn't matter," she tells it, "I don't know anything yet. I'm sure it's nothing." She looks behind her, the bathroom sink visible through the open door. "It better be nothing," she adds, muttering. What if it isn't? The thought comes up, uninvited but inevitable, in her mind. Always expect the worst. Logan would hate her. He may have be forgiving, but he is not superman. He would probably throw her out onto the streets, yelling angry repercussions at her as she flees the building. She couldn't throw It out, she knew that already: she is sick of doing the wrong thing.
What would he say? She thinks suddenly of him, the other factor. He hates her now, she's sure of it. He has probably burned his sheets, spit on whatever pictures he has left of them, and torn up her invitation he sent her optimistically that she left settled on a coffee table downstairs. How could she tell him something like this? How could she expect anything from her now?
A timer dings loudly and obnoxiously, and Rory gasps in her breath. Her legs freeze, her arms stiff and unmoving. Her eyes open wide and her mind blanks out for a minute or so, until the world fades into her own mind, flashes of memories. A lot were of her mother, selected periods of time. The first time she thought she was her mother's mistake and the resulting reassuring words of love and devotion Lorelai said with such emotion authenticity. Some of the days when she would visit her friends from school or see someone in public and think that it was her fault that Christopher was never around. She remembered her first real kiss, with Dean in an aisle at Dose's. A day when she and Lane were sitting on the floor next to Rory's bed and Rory told her she was sure she and Dean were going to get married. The first time Rory met Jess, and all their firsts from then on. After being pushed to the back of her mind for so long, the memory of the night where Rory felt she would have liked to last forever, the night Jess accidentally and symbolically crashed the car Dean made for Rory, came back to her. The night when she decided she always wanted to be with Jess. Then the next couple months, where her dreams of a Jess-filled life crashed to the ground to the days when it all came back, where they kissed, talked, read, listened and sat, warm by the heat of each other, apart from the world. She remembered the infamous day when he left her and destroyed her fantasy, when he left and took her with him. It was because of his father, was it not? Chasing his father to California. She has chased her father away from her.
When she finally comes back to earth, when the reel of her life finally stops turning, she almost thinks it has all been a horrible dream, from the brides maids to the unexpected sex.
She turns slowly, carefully, until she is facing the bathroom again. The door is still open at the same angle, the light still shining through on the same patch of floor, but maybe that is a coincidence. She walks slowly, ever so slowly, to the room of doom. She closes her eyes as she reaches the door, afraid to see anything too soon. When her anxiety takes the best of her, she decides she can't stay there in the doorway forever, she opens her eyes slowly, one at a time. Her heart sinks: it is still there. It's true: she lives in reality. Before she reaches it, before she picks it up and turns it around, she knows what it's going to say.
"Oh God," she lets out in one breath. Her legs go weak, threatening a fall. Yes, it said. Go ahead and do whatever, I am just going to turn your life upside down, it said. Pregnant, it said.
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Chapter 2 is complete. Yaaaaaay. So there it is: the big twist. And still so much more to come. I really tried not to rush this chapter, so I hope it comes out smooooothly. Obviously, there are more chapters to come. I love writing this story, its fun.