Chapter 174

December 25th, 1992

Lorelai and Rory stepped off the bus right by the Independence Inn, Lorelai having requested an extra stop from the driver, putting on her best charming self to save them a walk back from the bus stop that was almost a mile away. Besides, it was getting freezing outside. And since it was Christmas, there were hardly any people on the bus and Lorelai knew well how to be convincing when she wanted to be, here they were.

"It looks like it's going to be cold tonight," Lorelai noted, looking up at the clear, starry sky. It had snowed a few days ago, giving them a snowy Christmas. Everything should've been wonderful - and it was - Rory had gotten an A on her poem recital, Lorelai had gotten a decent Christmas bonus which was going to help a lot when she eventually saved up enough to buy them a house of their own. "We could probably sleep in one of the guest rooms tonight, I checked earlier the place is half empty and the room with the broken faucet is vacant anyways," Lorelai suggested, trying to cheer Rory, who'd been quiet the whole way back, up.

That evening Rory didn't look like the girl who'd gotten a Talking Barney and several books, she'd spent the past few months talking about, for Christmas.

"Sure," Rory exhaled, the heaviness she felt evident in her tone.

"You okay, hun?" Lorelai asked, hugging her around her shoulders, as they continued to walk towards the Independence Inn, decorated in wreaths and Christmas lights.

"Uh-uh," she replied, but didn't sound very convincing.

"Your dad really wanted to come, but he just couldn't get away. Sometimes it just happens, you know," Lorelai tried to explain Christopher's absence from the Gilmore's Christmas dinner that night.

He usually showed up this time of year, or at least called. If not for Christmas than Easter or Rory's birthday at least. But now it had already been nine whole months since Rory had seen him. Christophers reasons were mostly work-related. He lived far away, and he didn't make enough money to fly over frequently, and coming by bus or drive just took too long. At least that was how Rory understood it at the time.

"Why doesn't he live closer to us? Doesn't he want to live closer to us?" Rory asked with a sigh.

But what she was really asking was why he didn't want to be around her, why wasn't she a priority for her dad like she'd by now seen other dad's love their daughters, her best friend Lane included, even if he wasn't around much either. He at least was always around when it mattered, Christopher - dad - just was barely enough to remember what she liked and each time he saw her he just went on about how much she'd grown.

Is there something wrong with me? - Rory thought.

Lorelaid could keep telling her the same excuses - how things were complicated with his parents and that was why. But Rory, at age 8, didn't understand those relationships, just like she didn't really get why they didn't interact with grandma and grandpa Gilmore more often.

And while Lorelai managed to cheer the girl up that night, toasting marshmallows on the hotel-room fireplace and watching Home alone 2, this was far from the only time Christopher ended up not showing up, and there was nothing she could do about it as a mother. At this stage she didn't yet know what to say.


March 8th, 2001

"I had no idea that three months was the car anniversary," Rory noted, speaking excitedly. This day was going far better than she'd expected. How had she gotten so lucky?

"Four months - you get a plane," Dean replied, cheekily, playing along.

"Boy, relationships sure have changed since I was a kid," Rory replied, innocently, and leaned back into his arm as he wrapped his arm around her shoulders. They observed the starry sky above them. It had been a very romantic evening so far, and not a cheesy one, the car definitely topping things off in a way which made this verys special.

"I'm having one of those moments right now," Rory said, dreamily.

"What moments?" Dean asked.

"One of those moments that everything is so perfect and so wonderful that you almost feel sad because nothing can ever be this good again," Rory replied. She'd had a few of those moments in her life already.

"So, basically, I'm depressing you," Dean noted, teasingly.

"Yup," Rory replied curtly, looking at him.

"You're very weird," Dean commented, but not in a bad way. He looked at her in the eyes and began to close the space between them.

"And you're wonderful," Rory replied, and let the kissing, that had been so natural to follow, commence. Her stomach fluttered.

"Rory?" Dean began, still holding her close, hesitating a little.

"Yeah?" she replied, sensing something serious was coming.

"I love you," Dean said, clearly nervous. He waited for her response.

A million things went through Rory's mind, not all of them making any sense at all. Something about the car, the constellations, the meatball she had brought along for her mom, that moment she'd had that one night at Christmas when she'd felt sad about her dad not showing up, the way her stomach had just fluttered as he'd kissed her and made her wonder what it'd be like if they never broke that kiss but allowed that flutter to build.

"Rory?" Dean asked, waking her from her haze.

Say something, just say something - Rory repeated to herself but her mind was blank.

"Yeah?" Rory said. It was the most she could manage.

"Did you hear me?" Dean asked.

"Uh-uh," Rory replied, not really being sure she'd heard him right, the message having swept the carpet from under her.

"Well, say something," Dean encouraged, beginning to sound a little annoyed already.

"I… I..," Rory hesitated. The words just wouldn't come.

"Yeah?" Dean said, expectantly-

"I love the car," Rory spit out, and scolded herself internally. I love the car - is that the best I could come up with? - she wondered.

"Uh, and that's it?" Dean said, frustratedly.

"No, I just… I'm surprised. I didn't expect… I don't…," Rory said, shaking her head, her mind being a blunder of words.

"You don't love me," Dean stated, disappointedly.

"No, I just have to think about it for a minute," Rory fretted.

"Think about what?" Dean challenged her.

"Well, saying I love you is a really difficult thing," Rory tried to explain.

"Well I just did it," Dean said.

"And you did it really well," she said, hating how upset he sounded. She'd caused that. Her brain had screwed up. She should've just said it…

"What the hell does that mean?" Dean objected.

"I'm sorry… Please. This totally came as a surprise. I mean, with the dinner, and the car, and then the, I just need a minute to think," Rory begged.

"This is not something that you think about Rory. This is either something that you feel or you don't," Dean stated, making Rory feel like she was dysfunctional somehow.

Maybe she couldn't love? Did she even know what it'd feel like?

"Please, don't be mad," Rory begged.

"Why? Because I say I love you and you wanna think about it? I mean, go home and discuss it with your mother? Make one of your pro/con lists?" Dean exclaimed, sounding now really mad. She'd never seen him this mad.

"Not fair," Rory replied. She'd been obsessed with fairness throughout her school life - and giving people a minute was generally considered fair to her.

"I'm sorry. I'm an idiot. I don't even know what I was thinking," Dean exclaimed again, but there was nothing about that apology that sounded genuine.

"Dean. Please, it's just not that easy for me. I mean, saying I love you means a lot. Think about it from my point of view. I mean, my mom and our life. I mean, my mom said that she loved my dad and then...," Rory began, the concept of love being truly something a lot more complicated to her than to most people who'd see it up close. She'd just heard and read the stories. The big love that had lead to a disaster. Her.

"You don't get pregnant saying I love you," Dean objected.

"I know. I'm just confused. I need to….It's a really big deal," Rory tried to explain further.

"Fine, come on," Dean demanded.

"Dean, please don't be mad," Rory tried to make it alright but nothing seemed to be working.

"I'll take you home," Dean just said. The way his body language had changed told Rory that he was just mad, he was furious and upset. She wasn't sure she would be able to fix this.

"Dean, tonight was amazing. It was perfect. Please, I swear, I just need a minute to. . ." she continued, hopelessly.

"Whatever, it doesn't matter, all right? Let's go," Dean huffed, unable to deal, and climbed out of the vehicle.

Rory followed him, forgetting the meat ball. As Dean took her home, they passed the town square with the Starlight festival in full swing, but neither was in the mood to talk. They didn't even walk side-by-side, and Dean kept rushing his step the minute she would catch up with him. This was definitely not the mood she had expected the mood to change into.

Rory got home, seeing her mother arrive just before her from the distance. But as Dean hadn't wanted to talk to her either, he'd lowered his step.

The breakup had been short, and ruthless.

"We should break up, Rory," he'd said.

Rory had begged some more - repeating everything she'd said before in case he hadn't heard her before, but she could tell from Dean's face that nothing she was saying was making any difference. He just didn't get it. He had a wall around him, none of her words reached him.

Rory was dumb-struck. Was this supposed to go from the best night ever to this so quickly? She hadn't known that was possible. She hadn't known breaking up could be so easy for someone as Dean had just made it seem.

Stepping inside their house a minute later, still in shock, Rory still wasn't registering it. It just felt like a bad dream. She'd caused this. Her inability to utter a few simple words had caused this. She'd driven him away.

"We just broke up," she uttered instead to her mother, who immediately, wordlessly, wrapped her in her arms.


May 26th, 2002

"So what happened with dad?" Rory asked her mother, hesitantly, the day after Sookie's wedding after Lorelai's hangover had dispersed. She hadn't gotten more than 'he had to go' out of her the entire evening but she knew her mother well enough that something was up - something that wasn't good.

She'd seen it in her mother's eyes how good she'd felt about Christopher being back in their lives. But that all had come crashing down. She knew what that could be like now.

"Sherry's pregnant," Lorelai blurted out, hiding her face in the pillow she'd been cradling as she sat on the living room couch, doing nothing.

"She's what?" Rory exclaimed, and sank down next to her mother, forgetting about the coffee cup in her hand. Compared to this, her kissing Jess hardly seemed significant now.

"Bun in the oven, knocked up, expecting, in the family way...," Lorelai listed unenthusiastically, trying to fight her feelings with humour.

"Wait, did he know about that before…? When, how... did you find you?" Rory inquired.

"He got the call when he was at the wedding…," Lorelai exhaled.

"I don't even know what to say...," Rory sighed.

"He did the right thing, you know. He did what a good guy would do…," Lorelai tried to excuse Christopher, despite how much all of this hurt.

"What…?" Rory couldn't believe her ears, but settled, sensing this was something her mother needed to tell herself.

But besides knowing that her mother was hurting, she was offended and hurt too. How could her dad let this happen? Instead of having the dream, having her mom and dad together, her father had abandoned her, them, again for something more important. She could blame herself for being almost grown up, well-adapted and seemingly not needing him at all. But the bottom line was - he had still chosen something, someone, over her and her mother again.


May 22nd, 2003

Rory kept playing the last time she'd seen Jess over in her head over and over again as she stood in line for her cap and gown. Truth be told she hadn't had much time to think about him this past week or so, and perhaps that was a good thing. Keeping busy seemed to work for her. The perfect distraction from everything she was feeling. And while she should've known that avoidance was't a good tactic, this time it seemed to be working, numbing, distancing herself from those emotions. What she felt was more like something she'd seen in a movie or read in a book, not something that had actually happened. Maybe Jess hadn't happened at all? Maybe she'd imagined it? Maybe she'd imagined the way he'd once made her feel all hollow inside?

But the feel of his messy hair between her fingers, the way he smelled, the deep, raspy register of his voice, the feeling in the bottom of her stomach she got around him, that swarm of butterflies - she couldn't have imagined all of this, could she?

"You'll call me?" was the last thing she'd said, and he'd said "Yeah". That was it. No apology, no kiss goodbye, no hug, nothing… not a word about leaving town, not a word about what had happened. And no call.

For a while, before she'd found out he'd actually left, she'd tried to pretend that it was just that Jess was at work, too busy for her, and she had been too busy for him and, truthfully, she had been - she'd had finals and a million other things going on.

And she'd had to hear it from Luke through her mother. How lame was that? She hadn't meant enough to him to have bothered to say goodbye?

She drove everyone away. Nobody wanted to be with her, not the mess that she was. Dean had called her out on having a crush on Jess - he'd bolted. Now Jess. Was it because she hadn't been ready to have sex with him? Or because Dean had been there? Was it because she kept asking him to talk to her more? Was she not rebellious enough for him? Was she not brave enough for him? She was about small towns, college and family, and he was all about the independence, the life on the road, the parties that didn't measure up to small town high school bashes - a lone wolf.

She was just too lame, too inexperienced for him.

But as her turn came up in the line, the cap and gown did lift her mood a little. She'd worked hard for this. She had a speech to give. She had Europe to discover - more distractions coming her way. But it still hurt. The hardest thing she'd had to do that day was put on a brave face when everyone just expected her to be happy about her graduation.


February 10th, 2004

Rory was standing in line for burgers, the crisp winter air already biting her through her tights for which she was scolding herself.

Her gaze drifted and suddenly she saw him. Panic rose, her mind going blank once again. The best she could manage was - "I get to leave first!" she huffed, and ran.

"Rory, wait! Stop!" Jess yelled, and ran after her.

"No, you don't get to walk away!" Rory objected.

"Hold on!" Jess begged.

"My town! I leave!" she demanded, continuging to zig-zag.

"I just wanna…. Where are you going?" Jess exclaimed.

"None of your business!" Rory replied, getting out of breath.

"We look like idiots," Jess argued.

"I don't care," Rory replied.

"Stop running!" Jess yelled again.

"Stop following!" Rory ordered in return.

"Oh, come on!" Jess exclaimed. There was that voice of his again, the voice that always moved something within Rory.

""Go away, I'm leaving!" Rory didn't budge. She couldn't let him get to her, she just couldn't.

"Rory, stop!" Jess didn't tire that easily.

"Why?" Rory asked, breathing heavily.

"Because I wanna talk to you," Jess begged.

"About what?" she asked, sounding all confused. "What do you want to talk to me about?" she replied.

"Where did you learn to run like that?" Jess asked, sounding out of breath.

Rory didn't reply but she did have something to say. "You know, I have actually thought about this moment. A lot. What would Jess say to me if I ever saw him again? I mean, he just took off, no note, no call, nothing - how could he explain that?" Rory huffed, condescending. "And then a year goes by. No word, nothing, so he couldn't possibly have a good excuse for that, right? I have imagined hundreds of different scenarios with a hundred different great last parting lines, and I have to tell you that I am actually very curious to see which way this is going to go," she blabbered angrily.

"Could we sit down?" he asked.

"No! You wanted to talk, so talk. What do you have to say to me?" Rory sounded more angry than she'd probably ever sounded in his presence.

Jess took a deep breath and with an exhale the words slipped over his lips, "I love you."

Those hundred scenarios had not included those words. Not once. And what he did the next second as he saw her look at him with a blank stare had not been included in any of those either. Jess just backed towards his pile-of-metal car and drove off.

The story of my life - they say they love me, but they leave anyway - Rory thought, not that she could've known how to respond to his words anyways.


May 5th, 2004

Rory stormed out of her house, her fold up phone in her hand, full of adrenaline and pulled on a sweater. She'd just been give a talk by her mother on how wrong it had been to sleep with someone else's husband. The only thing she'd figured she'd comment on had been the sex part, but there had been none of that. Everything she'd said stung so bad. She didn't want to hear her.

She dialed the number she knew by heart.

The voice on the other end of the line stopped her in her path, her tone having that sharpness to it that acted as a reality check in that moment.

She hung up the phone, sank to her knees and sobbed. He'd left her. He wasn't hers… he wasn't her Dean. She felt so alone, despite her mother's arms that now embraced her.


November 12th, 2004

Rory stumbled out of the front door of her parent's house on her strappy heels, feeling already a little tipsy. Logan and the guys certainly knew how to let the champagne flow. And honestly a night that had had the most horrible beginning, feeling deceived by her grandparents, had taken a very positive turn. She'd had fun, still feeling a little giggly inside.

Now she felt like she needed to pull back a little down, suppress her good mood. But the fact that the guys had followed her out there to meet Dean, really wasn't helping.

"Dean, hi," she began, not even realizing she was still wearing the tiara. That wasn't helping either. "I'm sorry, have you been waiting long?" she asked. "I didn't have a watch and we were in the pool house. These are some friends," she added, gesturing towards the doorway. "They go to Yale with me and they know my grandparents. The party was boring so we..," she began to explain, but she'd seen this look on Dean before. This did not look good.

"Is that a new shirt?" she tried to focus on something, anything, positive she could think of on the spot like that. "Cause I like it," she added, her voice sounding a little off already.

"What am I doing here, Rory?" Dean asked, almost humbly but there was something accusatory in his voice as well.

"You're picking me up," she replied in a lighter note, but she could tell it hadn't been what he'd asked about.

"I don't belong here, not anymore?" he asked, thoughtfully. "Do I?" he added.

"Dean…," she pleaded.

"You look good," Dean commented, not that it mattered to her anymore.

Tears filled Rory's eyes in an instant. She'd felt this before - three-four times with Dean, in fact. Her loving him didn't matter, her telling him she loved him didn't matter. Her doing everything in her power to come around Stars Hollow and putting up with his inconvenient living arrangements without a single complaint hadn't been enough. He still left. He loved her - she knew he did, but he left anyway.


May 28th, 2007

"I don't want to do that, Rory. I don't want to go backwards If we can't take the next step…," Logan explained, as they stood there on the grass after Rory's graduation, having the most serious conversation they'd had.

"What?" Rory asked, disappointedly. He couldn't be serious, could he?

"I mean…," he began, struggling to put words together.

"Does it have to be all or nothing?" Rory asked, hopefully.

"Yeah, it does," Logan's mouth said, but Rory was by then already hearing a buzz in her ears. This couldn't be happening.

"But we could at least try," she suggested, desperately.

"What's the point?" Logan said, as if it was nothing. As if the discussion had been about the next vacation venue or going out to eat.

"So..," she said, needing him to say.

"So…," he let resonate.

Rory felt like there was nothing else to do but hand him back the box that held his engagement ring. Logan took it, though reluctantly so.

"Goodbye Rory," he said simply, that came out so easily. And then he walked. Love wasn't enough. She hadn't been able to say 'yes'. She hadn't been able to take the leap. Another man had walked out on her.


May 5th, 2022

Rory woke abruptly with her heart pounding in her chest. Her skin was covered in sweat, and she could even feel her hair was damp. She felt relieved only for the fact that her dream that had mixed together a series of events of feeling abandoned from her past hadn't included the worst one - the nicest but the most painful one.

She'd heard people had strange dreams during pregnancy, and she'd even had a share of her own - but this certainly beat them all.

But knowing that still didn't left her with a good feeling. And Logan's absence from her bed, even though that was fairly common considering he usually took Loki out this time in the morning, didn't make it any easier for her.

But with a deep sigh she threw the blanket off of her, soothed over her bump as if checking if it was still there, and cautiously glanced down between her legs to check if there was no bleeding. She often did that, that one night from years ago still burnt to her brain. But thankfully, the sheets were only damp from her own sweat this time. With a sigh, she rose and made her way to she shower to get ready for the day, the heaviness from her dream still weighing on her, already hearing Logan interact with Em downstairs.