Disclaimer:… nope, sorry yet again -- they're not mine…
Chapter 22
The days passed with a kind of haze and laze. The unusual heat of the summer was wearing off to a cool breeze brought on by the oncoming fall weather, though it was still warm enough to wear tanks and shorts.
Rory built up a nice routine of balancing her class work and still maintaining her temporary job as concierge for the Dragonfly. Least to say, Michel was not pleased by the occurences at all, but after no or little resign from Lorelai and Sookie, he kept his mutterings to himself and faced the outdoors and the guests.
August passed, then September. The only thing really changing were the festivals Taylor Doose kept managing to cook up, and Rory's stomach. She could no longer see her feet, and the baby's kicks were ever abundant, often keeping her awake at night. She would read to it, and by the certain movements it made when she and Dean talked, Rory could tell the baby could distinguish their voices now.
"How come you don't know the sex yet?" Lane asked one afternoon, stopping by to give her their mail. Apparently, Kirk had decided to fill in for the mailman again, completely forgetting the last time and the fiasco he caused, thus recreating the incident all over again. He'd confused the town's mail recipients, and everybody was getting everybody else's mail. Again.
"Well, Dean and I want it to be a surprise," Rory said. "I know it's weird, to keep referring to it as it, but…"
"Well, I hope you have a girl."
"Yeah, Mom's hoping for that, too." Rory shrugged, "I don't know. I guess. It'd be nice to have a girl and hopefully be just as close with her as my Mom was with me."
"I bet Dean wants a boy, huh?"
Rory grinned, "See that's what I thought, but every time I bring it up, he just tells me that he'll be happy to have a healthy baby, no matter what the sex is." She frowned and bit her lip, "Honestly, I think he's scared."
"Of what?" Lane asked.
"Of losing me or the baby. And becoming a dad."
Lane waved her hand dismissively. "Not gonna happen. Losing you and the baby, I mean." Rory looked at her quizzically and she sighed, "Rory, I have known you my entire life. I know when you're truly content and when you're just putting on a show. You love Dean… and not because he was your first boyfriend or the first guy you fell in love with. It's because after all this time - after all the trials, fights, marriages, divorces, and town scandals - you and him managed to find each other again. And as for the baby… well, you've been doing such a good job, what could go wrong?"
"You know me that well, huh?"
Lane nodded.
"Then how do I really feel about everything?" Rory asked, a strange sadness in her eye.
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"Rory?"
Lorelai came down the stairs, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders. The weather had made a turn for the worse as October began to roll in.
Rory was wrapped up in a blanket of her own on the couch, staring out at the dark windows full of frost - one of Lorelai's favorite signs of an oncoming snowfall. She looked up as Lorelai sat at the opposite end of the couch, facing her and mirroring her cross-legged style of sitting.
"What are you doing up? The baby keeping you awake?"
Rory slowly shook her head and let her gaze drift back to the window.
"Rory," Lorelai said in a coaxing tone.
"I can't do this, Mom," Rory finally whispered. She turned back to Lorelai, tears in the corners of her eyes. "I can't do this - I can't have a baby. I can't be a mom."
The look on Rory's face tugged at Lorelai's heart and she let out a sigh of slight relief, having thought something else was wrong. She patted Rory's leg and said, "Aww, kiddo, yes you can. I know you can."
"No, Mom, I can't," she insisted, shaking her head. "It wasn't supposed to happen this way. I was supposed to finish college, get a job at a esteemed paper, then get married, and then have kids."
"Things don't always work out the way we plan them, Rory," Lorelai reasoned. 'Especially between me and Luke,' she thought bitterly to herself.
"I know that, but this is way off," Rory paused, seeming to think about her words before she said them. The tears began to cascade down her cheek as she said, "You know, I love him. I swear, I love Dean with all my heart, but I can't do this. I can't be with him like this."
"What do you mean, 'like this?'" Lorelai asked, her own heart breaking at the sudden news. She felt like she shared some sort of connection with Dean - one where they both loved another person deeply and dearly, but the other person didn't want to be with them, not eternally. "Rory, if you love him…"
"Mom, I want to marry him! I want him to want to marry me! I want us to be a family - me, him, and the baby! That's the only way I can deal with this - the only way it'll keep me confident that this will all work out," Rory's outburst quieted and she turned tear-stained eyes on her mother once more. "Mom, why doesn't he love me? Why doesn't he want to marry me?"
Lorelai reached over and hugged her daughter, giving her a hard kiss on the top of her head. She pulled back and looked Rory in the eyes, brushing her thumb across the stains the tears had made. "I think it'd be better to ask him that yourself," she replied, getting up and motioning to the form of Dean standing just off to the corner of the room, by the staircase.
Lorelai exited the room quietly, patting Dean on the arm, and disappearing back to her and Luke's room.
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Lorelai had wanted to wait and hear what Rory and Dean talked about, but instinct and will won out over desire. She passed the window in the hall and paused. A light snowfall had started to fall, just a couple flakes - small, but not oblivious. She smiled, thinking, 'That is a good sign. Good things happen when it snows.' She stepped inside her and Luke's bedroom, only to gasp.
Luke was awake, kneeling one-knee in the center of the room, wearing a tuxedo. A wedding tuxedo. A small black box was opened to reveal an antique diamond engagement ring.
Now it was Lorelai's eyes to tear up.
"Lorelai Gilmore," Luke said, an awkward yet genuine smile playing across his features, "will you marry me?"
Lorelai was speechless. She nodded and stepped forward, as Luke stood up and placed the ring on her finger.
"Look, I'm sorry for the way everything went with April over the summer. I'm sorry that I made you wait to get married. It's not that I didn't want to marry you, it's just… I, uh, wasn't sure if I could jump off that cliff like that." He smiled and added, "But, uh, with you, I think I'm ready to make that leap."
Lorelai smiled and reached up to kiss him, deeply and passionately on the lips. "I love you," she said, pulling away.
They walked over to the bed, and climbed in together, Lorelai examining the beautiful, unique ring Luke had managed to pick out all on his own. As she lay in his arms, pure ecstasy washed over her as she realized everything was falling into place again. Just before she let sleep overcome her, her eyes fell on the snow falling and delicately dusting the windowsill, and blanketing the town in sweet silence.
'Yup, good things happen when it snows.'
AN: Okay, so I know this chapter was really cheesy, but I kind of like the whole bit at the end. And the whole referring to the baby as an 'it' is sorta getting annoying, but I'm still not sure whether or not to have it be a boy or a girl? What do you guys all think? At the beginning I was thinking of having it be a boy and naming him Sam (or Jared because I can't picture a kid looking like him with any other name, lol -- and any JP fans who watch Supernatural understand the 'Sam' thing, right?) and breaking the 'Lorelai' naming tradition. Then I thought that was lame, and was leaning towards a girl (because I was going to break the two of them up somewhere in the middle and have Rory become Lorelai, thus creating a sequel (cause I can't keep Dean and Rory romantically apart in my stories, sheesh)), but then I don't know what to name her because I have to go along with the whole 'Lorelai' naming tradition. So what do you guys think? Boy or girl, and what should his/her name be?
Well, that was longer than expected, though because I'm on my laptop, it doesn't look that big of a note. Heh. Be grateful there was no Supernatural on tonight so I could finish writing this chapter and editing it. ...pouts... I miss my Jared's face… oh well.
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