Chapter 193

June 16th, 2022

Logan and Rory were both getting ready in their bedroom. However, they weren't going to the same place. Rory was essentially going to work, though definitely looking more like she was going to the elder Gilmore's Friday Night dinner, and Logan's work for the day consisted mainly of signing a pile of papers as far as Rory knew. For that he had dressed up likewise, thought thanks to it being summer - a business casual look would do.

"Is this too weird? I can't tell whether it's also too small from my back," Rory asked, as she turned around, having opted for a light yellow blazer to compliment her blue sundress. The Chilton graduation, and also her last graduation for a while, was a formal event but there was a fine line considering it wasn't really her day and she was to just blend into the canvas. She wasn't even part of the dignified senior faculty that would sit up on the podium.

"You look fine, great in fact," Logan assured, looking her over. The blazer was definitely small from the front due to her bump but as she didn't aim to wear it closed from the front it didn't really matter. But Rory could tell from the way he was fidgeting with his own fairly simple outfit, consisting of a slim-fit polo shirt and a pair of chinos, that he was pretty nervous himself.

"You look nervous," Rory pointed out.

"Do I?" Logan exhaled, sounding concerned. He'd had this look, and sound, about him before. It was the way he got when he was about to sign a deal with the devil or give his father a finger only so he could take his entire hand, both of these being pretty much the same thing.

Though what puzzled Rory now was that while there was no 'devil' to sign a deal with this time, he still fretted. Logan was going to accept what was always meant to be his, what pretty much had been his already, that day.

"Uh-uh," she reflected.

Logan sighed, and continued to put on his watch.

"Are you sure you're fine with this? All of this?" Logan asked. While he had accepted what this would mean - working again at the HPG, trying to hold his work-hours low as much as he could while still knowing the business involved a lot more than just office hours. It'd be always on his mind, there'd be calls any hour of the day, there'd be emergencies and travel involved. "I mean if you told me… if you told me you couldn't do this… I…," Logan began, sighing again. What he was the most worried about was the finality of it. If he did this he would be right back where he was five years ago. The media attention, the appearances he was expected to make, even if there'd probably be a few less on this side of the pond.

"No-no… don't Logan," Rory pleaded urgently. She'd heard this before, and many times she'd known it without him really saying it. "It's my problem, it's me who needs to accept this. You've accepted me as I am, I just need to swallow my fears, pride... you name it," Rory explained. She was seeing now how she had been selfish, despite telling herself for years how she was the one making the sacrifices by not reaching out to him or telling him what she wanted.

"I can still avoid this from becoming this constant thing between us…," Logan said, struggling to express himself. "We've always been at our best when I've been on my own… I can't help thinking there's a connection there," Logan explained along with a shrug. He was definitely having cold feet.

"This is all my fault," Rory confessed, shaking her head and sighed. She stepped closed to him, her hands resting on his neck. "But you know I can't let you do that," she said, looking him in the eyes.

"But if you think it'd help…," Logan didn't quite bury the thought yet. He was thinking of all types of scenarios - just helping Honor out more, postponing signing those papers by a year or so, or sticking to what he'd been building on his own. Putting his own business, that he'd started and that had become fairly successful for a small business that didn't really aim to grow into anything huge, on hold left him feeling a little guilty too - it felt like giving up on it. It was not a feeling he particularly liked either. He also sometimes wondered whether he could be doing something else - consult, like Hugo did, for example. The HPG wasn't his only option and he knew it. But getting out of it later on would be tricky without bringing down thousands of people with him.

"Logan - you're so smart, so talented - you should be doing great things. And it's not that you can't do those things elsewhere, but this is what is yours. This is where you are needed and it's being handed to you. Put all those things you have in that notebook of yours to action, turn things around. Instead of thinking about it like being 'pushed through one door' think of it like cutting your own door hole and leaving it open behind you," Rory explained. She felt it was her job to give him that pep-talk, pushing any shred of her own insecurities down. She just needed to do this - for him and for them.

"Now why can't you give yourself pep-talks like that?" Logan asked in return, indeed feeling better.

Rory shrugged humbly, and continued to put on her earrings.

"But you do look hot," he said, slipping his hand around her ass, appreciatively, and kissed her on her temple.

Rory knew there were conflicting aspects to this, but she did believe every word she'd just said - Logan was incredibly smart, he was supposed to be doing great things, and maybe it was the particular part in what she'd been just writing this past week - how Emily Gilmore was the great woman behind her husband, that had given her some insight into what it was like. There were women that hid behind the men or lived for being shown in their limelight, depending on the situation, and then there were those who held the men up. Shira Huntzberger and Emily Gilmore were prime examples of the two extremes.

"Okay, I'm going," Logan exhaled, taking a final deep breath before heading downstairs. "I'll keep my phone on just in case you change your mind, because I meant it. I don't want to do any of it without you," Logan said, half-jolkingly.

"I won't," Rory replied, pulling him back to her for another quick kiss.

"It's going to be a good day, trust me," he said, delaying his departure, feeling like the day was harder for her too than she was showing.

Rory nodded, but struggled to really get his deeper meaning beyond it truly being the last day of work before her holiday began. She was still not used to the idea that she was going to have a very long holiday indeed.

"Bye," she said, before she continued to put on her lipstick.

"See you," Logan said, and headed off down the hall.

Logan drove to Downtown Hartford and headed up the elevator in one of the few real skyrises the city had. He was nervous - Rory had been right about that, but it was beginning to feel kind of good too. There wasn't more he could get from Rory than support and assurance - a promise to not flee, and with that as background knowledge - almost like knowing one had a working parachute, he was beginning to feel the adrenaline of doing this as well. Like jumping out of a plane. And whether one crashed or glided down beautifully, was now all up to carefully chosen actions and a dash of luck. His days of jumping out of planes or off cliffs were through, but this was pretty similar if one really thought about it.

"Mr. Huntzberger, welcome," the Legally Blonde look-alike secretary greeted him from behind the dark-wooden front desk. The place was exactly to his father's tastes - heavy dark mahagony furniture, definitely classical. It smelled of old books and peonies, the huge vase on the counter symbolizing perfectly that this place did nothing half way. A scent of freshly grinded coffee tickled his nostrils.

"Hi," he replied, realizing that he was going to have to get used to being recognized again.

"Please, take a seat. Mr. Hollis will be with you in a moment," the blonde spoke, as she walked around her desk and showed him towards a conference room where he could wait. "Would you like something to drink?" she offered.

"No, thanks, I'm fine," Logan replied.

He could sense a hint of flirt in her tone - that was certainly something he hadn't missed - people wanting his attention just for his money and position of power.

"Let me know if you need anything," she added with a shrug, and closed the conference room door behind him. Logan had been in this office before, a few times just going along with his father when he'd been younger to learn how things were done. Once he'd been here to accept his first bunch of shares to the company - start them off small - his father had said, talking to the lawyer like he wasn't in the room. But that was decades ago.

"Logan? Goodto see you," Charles Hollis, Mitchum personal lawyer, entered, bringing along a colleague as well, both shaking his hand.

"Glad to be here," he replied, not knowing really what else to say. He certainly didn't want to go into the details of why he'd delayed this so long. In a way this was caving, he supposed - but then again it had the deeper meaning of overcoming his fears too.

They went over all the documents, reading out the details of Mitchum's will. Some of these he knew of, but there were also some surprises. He knew about the stocks and everything to do with the company, of course. There was a cabin in Lake Tahoe, some vintage cars, a guarded storage facility where he apparently kept the art he'd managed to hide away from the IRS and a yacht on the coast of Croatia. There were also sillier things - his golf clubs, some shares at a small winery in New Zealand, a retirement fund he hadn't even touched and a few office spaces Mitchum had clearly been hoping to make a flip on at some point but had never gotten around to, in a sketchy part of London.

"There's one more thing, however..," Mr. Hollis began, and shed light into a matter that not so much as shocked Logan, but definitely surprised him, putting him in a new type of position he hadn't realized he'd be putting himself in. It was nothing that was going to change his mind, but it would certainly take some careful navigation. Just another thing for him to worry about.

After Rory had finished getting ready, and grabbed a quick snack with her blood pressure pilles, she'd headed over to Chilton.

The place was full of teenagers dressed to the nines, another good show of what was trendy and what was not, some of the students already in their graduation gowns, proud parents and relieved teacher, much like herself, and a parking lot that was filled with brand new cars with bows on it. It was like this every year. And considering this year, Rory had also been to Gigi's graduation a couple of days ago - she knew the scenario to be the same anywhere.

Rory went through the motions this year, knowing what her tasks were by heart. She smiled at everyone who made eye contact, applauded at the speeches and when each of the graduates got their diploma, congratulating many that she knew more personally. She'd been happy to hear that many of her students had gotten into great colleges, Marion, the girl she'd accompanied to Yale for that speech competition in the fall, even to Yale, which had been quite a surprise. But better than ever she also knew how graduation was just something to give people hope. Hope that they could achieve a goal, a fairly generic one, that they'd set for themselves. And life was divided up into these little goals that most people were expected to cross. But it was the ones that came after formal education that were the tricky ones - finding love and making it work, having kids, making career choices, and often those choices also involved admitting one had been wrong.

The shoes she'd worn were hard on her feet, making her realize the time for heels was really beginning to be over until she was back to her more-or-less normal weight. So she didn't stand around too long, not really craving for a line of sappy goodbyes, but left right after saying goodbye to Max. It was him she felt most guilty towards when leaving.

She'd driven home with Em's crocs that she'd found from the trunk of her car on her toes, the heels hurting too much by the end of the day. So she climbed out of her car, with the crocs in her hand, a handful of flowers a couple of students had brought her to show gratitude, and her handbag over her shoulder, ready to just wallow on the couch with a bucket of ice cream. The last day on the job was wallow-worthy, wasn't it?

But it was as she looked for her keys by the door, when she suddenly winched from pain at the side of her stomach.

"Auch," she noted, and rubbed the spot.

Suddenly it hit her, and it helped that the pain repeated itself, that what she was feeling were some pretty strong kicks and nothign more serious.

"Hey, there you are!" Rory spoke fondly to her bump. There had been little flutters for weeks, more frequently but never quite an actual kick that had hurt. It had even made her worry a little. There was another kick, delaying her from getting the key in the lock. "Easy there, but if you feel you need to… by all means… just keep it to the daytime, okay?" Rory lectured her unborn child, smilingly.

This part of pregnancy she really had missed, and it gave her some new direction. Suddenly the freedom she had in front of her didn't sound half bad, a holiday was certainly something she'd earned. And with that positive attitude, and excited to share these little kicks with Logan, she opened the door, only to be greeted with a loud blast of Alice Cooper's 'School's out," along with a loud cheer.

Almost everyone was there - Logan and Em, of course, but also her mother, Gigi, even Luke was there, as well as Lane, Zach and their kids. She was truly surprised to even see Paris, her bump already quite prominent. There was Colin with Rosie and Tristan, surprisingly still with that girlfriend of his, and his son. It wasn't everyone she longed to see after a busy semester, but it was still way more than she'd expected.

Logan had decorated the house in summer holiday thematics, having bowls of ice with popsicles in them for everyone, a broad selection of non-alcoholic beverages, snacks for all ages and compiled a fun playlist composing of Weezer's 'Island in the sun', Imagine Dragons 'It's time', Sherly Crow's 'Soak up the sun' amongst others.

"Oh my God, I can't believe you did this!" Rory exclaimed as Logan enveloped her in his arms.

"Of course I did," Logan replied, as if it had been obvious, smiling smugly. "It's a big day for you, and you have to admit - it kind of feels good too, doesn't it?" he encouraged her. He was actually feeling pretty good himself - relieved. The decision was made for him too, papers were signes. He felt lighter.

Rory nodded, smilingly, getting a little emotional from the love she was feeling.

"It's a big day for you too," Rory commented.

"Ah..," Logan shrugged, like it was no big deal.

Rory had expected him to say that, but as she felt another kick, she decided to turn this around.

"I meant this!" Rory said, speaking loudly over the crowd, placing his hand against the side of her stomach.

Logan's face lit up even more, having not known it was possible to smile so much that his cheeks hurt. "Yup, I told you today was going to be a great day," he added, laughingly, and soon enough also many others formed a circle around her, wanting to feel the baby too, and for once - in this circle, she had no problem sharing any of her happiness with.