Chapter 120
February 4th, 2022
It was Friday night and normally Rory would've been hurrying home or to Stars Hollow for Friday Night Dinner. That evening, however, she'd asked Lorelai to pick Em up. Lorelai was going to take Em for dinner at the hospital - with take-away of course - since the girl had been missing Luke. At the hospital setting, taking her to see him didn't make anyone very nervous. Luke was monitored, help was nearby and so forth. Rory had taken her herself a couple of times before. But this evening it was about something as simple as needing to go run some errands without Em tagging along.
It wasn't even that what she was doing was so incredibly boring that it would make a child whine every three minutes "Are we done yet?" but just that she needed her full focus, wanting to get as much done in one evening as possible.
She stood in front of a large furniture store on the outskirts of New Haven, her hands tucked in her coat pockets, looking around the parking lot, hoping to catch Logan, who was supposed to meet her there. Every few minutes her hand pulled out of her pocket with her phone, checking if she had any messages. No messages, just a steady inflow of homework assignments to her e-mail she'd have to deal with over the weekend. It was chilly, and she wished she'd just stayed waiting in her car but was too lazy to head back to her car now.
She was nearly about to do what she always cautioned herself not to do - open one of those e-mails on a Friday evening, certain to ruin any sense of a weekend altogether, when her phone rang.
"Yeah?" Rory answered Logan's call, hoping he'd just stepped out of his car and was hopefully making his way across the vast parking lot looking for her.
"I just got out of the meeting, I'm just leaving. I'm sorry," Logan apologized, his meeting having run late.
Rory sighed. But it was no huge tragedy really, just an inconvenience.
"Well, the store is open for a few more hours," Rory shrugged.
"20 minutes, tops," Logan promised, feeling guilty. He'd hoped work wouldn't get in the way of his life like it once had, more often than not. That there wouldn't be work emergencies and calls he'd just have to take. But it looked more and more like that was an impossible scenario.
"That'd mean you'd have to speed, Logan," Rory scolded him, knowing too well how far Hartford was from where she was.
"Hardly," Logan argued.
"I'd like you here in one piece, thank you very much," Rory replied in a snappy tone, staying firm.
"Alright - alright," Logan relented, not wanting to upset her, but didn't really slow down all that much, but he almost assumed Rory knew this about him. He wasn't being reckless or anything, but he was in his essence still a little cocky just like he'd been when he'd driven back and forth Hartford and New Haven in his early 20s to see her. Of course, this also made him miss his Porsche just a little. But for the death of him, he couldn't quite recall what had happened to that car, there just being that hazy spot in his memory from those times.
"I guess I'll just go in and look while I wait though," Rory sighed, glancing around. There were no coffee shops around, and she didn't really want to go anywhere else to wait either.
"Sure, go… pick your top three, I will come and help with the final decision," Logan suggested, knowing that one of their main goals that evening was to find them a couch set for the living room and hopefully a bed.
"I don't even know where to start…," Rory said, as she stepped through the doors of the shop, and unbuttoned her coat at the woosh of hot air that hit her. She'd had Jess pick out their last couch, being herself just too pregnant to hop from store to store. Sure, she'd had a say, but practicalities such as the fact that the couch folded out into a spare bed and being able to wash the covers with the prospect of a baby had taken priority over her tastes by a long shot.
"Well, what kind of a couch have you always wanted but never had? Or what have you liked?" Logan stayed on the line, keeping her company. It was clear she wasn't too keen on hanging up, having missed him during the week. He still stopped by sometimes in the evenings during his run or brought her lunch sometimes during lunch hour, but the work week generally passed mostly in the form of texts.
"Definitely not a fold-out," Rory replied, pondering about what she wanted. They had enough bedrooms to get real beds for everybody who would frequent. "I guess we'd probably need something a little bigger too, either two couches and an armchair or a sectional, corner couch maybe?" Rory discussed as she walked through various models, the selection hitting her with more options than she would've liked, frankly.
For a moment she considered that perhaps hiring an interior decorator would've been the smart thing to do after all.
"Something more formal or cozier?" Logan tried to lead her thoughts.
Rory sank down onto a brown leather tuxedo couch and was unpleasantly surprised by its firmness. Not what she hoped to experience when she was arriving home after a long day.
"I kind of like the couch you had in London," Rory thought back. There was no need to specify which London apartment she meant.
"A corner couch would probably work, maybe add a few armchairs to match," Logan discussed.
She saw something of interest, not quite like the one at Logan's but sat down onto it to try anyways, finding it to be one of those one just sank into so deeply it was difficult to get back out. Nice color - light teal - but too slouchy.
"But I don't want to copy it either," Rory added, not really wanting a sharp reminder of that place in their new house. Though, then again, she had mixed feelings about those times. While the subtext had been less than admirable at times, without it they wouldn't be where they were not either.
She pulled herself out of the last couch with a sigh.
"How about a Chesterfield?" Logan suggested, thinking back to all the places he'd lived in. He generally liked a deeper sitting depth but also a back that wasn't too high, liking to drape his arm over the back.
"I don't know," Rory mumbled, casting a look across the store, noting a few examples of those, and Logan could read her frown in her tone.
"Fine… Mid-century modern maybe? You know, sort of elevated from the ground," he suggested. He really wasn't all that picky, as long as it passed the 'butt' test.
"They always look so light, like a four-year-old might like to rearrange the furniture while I am not looking," Rory described a very real possibility.
"Ah…," Logan replied with a light chuckle, having truly not thought about such possibilities. The idea of living with a child or children, hopefully, was truly something he'd need to get used to still. But boy was he excited about the prospect.
"Would it be horrible if it was sort of heavy-looking? Maybe a little romantic?" Rory said, noting a couch in the back corner that just drew her towards it.
"How romantic exactly?" Logan inquired, skeptically. "I'd rather not try to impersonate the Sandcastle, or your mother's if possible," he added, honestly. The Sandcastle worked as such, a holiday home, as they'd already discussed that the place would be for them, both loving the lightness the place had about it. It was a very decent replacement to the place in Martha's Vineyard too, Logan having already agreed to sell it. He just needed to take a trip over there that weekend to clear it of any personal items.
"More… formal certainly…," Rory said with pauses in her text as she edged past a few other couches to get to the grayish blue couch. She always pictured having more people over now that she'd have the space.
"Something catch your eye there?" Logan asked, truly wishing he was there already. On one hand he didn't want her getting attached to something flowery and over-the-top cute like pink velvet like the Gilmore Girls sometimes were known to do, but at the same time he was kind of looking forward to that small friendly bickering over couch colors and insignificant details. He always did love arguing with her, it was their way of fun. And frankly if it came to it - he'd probably let her win anyways, even if it had pink ruffles.
Rory sat on the couch in question and tried to really get a feeling of it. She placed her hand on the arm rest, the other across its back, taking turns. What she truly would've wanted to try was to see how comfortably she could pull her legs up onto it, but it was a little challenging with her boots on.
"There's this… cool sky-blue modern...classical… rolled arms with a nailhead trim, wooden legs, but it's pretty comfy," Rory tried to describe it.
"Okay…," Logan exhaled, but didn't really object, wanting to see it himself first.
"Uh… or maybe we should just get one of these leather reclining ones," Rory teased, continuing to move through the vast hall of couches.
"Yeah, sure," Logan chuckled, not taking her too seriously.
"Then there's this one that is labeled 'pet and kid friendly'," Rory added, having not really considered before that they'd need to think of this in a whole other way than she had until now.
"Right… that might be wize," Logan agreed, already picturing the three of them watching a movie on a couch with Loki trying to climb in to cuddle with them with dirty paws or cute handprints of a child decorating one of the pillows.
"But I don't know, the material… is sort of plasticy, I'm not a fan," Rory discussed, already noting a salesman approaching her and nodded in greeting. "Okay, I'm going to talk to the salesman now," Rory replied, realizing she might indeed need some help with all these models and fabrics they had to offer.
"Alright, I'll be there in no time," Logan promised.
Rory exchanged a few words with the salesman, and was offered a catalog of couch types to browse while she waited, not really wanting to try that many couches on her own before Logan got there. She found a comfortable couch that really wasn't her color with the back towards the door, and began to browse, being in no hurry.
She didn't really get very far, before her phone rang again.
"Paris, hey!" Rory greeted her friend cheerily.
"I wouldn't be so cheery if I was you," came a moody response.
"What's up?" Rory asked with genuine concern. By now she knew that Paris was moody mostly when she had a reason for it, even if those reasons were not always similar to her own.
"I've been careful for twenty years, and it only took me one time to really screw up. Oh, I've so definitely screwed up, Rory! It's like my Harvard interview all over again!" Paris exclaimed, speaking very agitatedly.
"What? What happened?" Rory asked, putting the catalog aside for a moment.
"What happend? I'll tell you what happened," Paris huffed and Rory could already hear her pacing back and forth. "I'm pregnant - that's what happened," Paris exclaimed.
"What?!" Rory repeated, not being sure she was hearing her right.
What followed next was a complaint about Rory needing to get her ears checked and a lengthy scientific explanation on how conception happened, making Rory just wish Paris would get to the point, the highlight of the question being evident.
It was, however, Logan who got there before Paris ever got to that part.
"You never guess who just called…," Logan said excitedly, smiling broadly, having not noticed her being on the phone.
