"So…this kinda brings me back. To when I was in high school, I mean. And I was the one in the bathroom, while my friend Shauna was waiting outside the bathroom door like this." No answer from inside the drugstore bathroom. "Rory? Sweetie, what's the matter? Maybe it's not the right time, but it'll be amazing anyway. A third kid, think about it!"
"Mom, it hasn't registered yet. Please wait until it has for the pep talk."
"It's just bizarre to be here. I mean, I was 16 and unmarried. You're 27, you've got a great job and a house, and two kids already and a nanny to throw them to. What am I forgetting?"
"Jess," Rory mumbled from inside.
"Yea, him. Your husband who loves you even if he can sometimes be a jerk, and who I'm sure is going to be over the moon if he finds out he reproduced again."
"Not helping, Mom."
"Rory, what's wrong? I'm gathering that you and Jess are having problems, but I don't want to lay the blame on anyone." Rory sighed as she looked at her watch. Two more minutes. She sat down on the closed, dirty toilet seat to wait.
"It's my fault. I'm not there for him when he needs me to be."
"Well, maybe having another baby would change that."
"No, I don't think I'm explaining myself very well. I'm working half the time, and when I'm at home, I'm mean to him."
"Okay…why are you mean to him?"
"I don't know, I don't even think I try to be. It's just…uncomfortable."
"What is?"
"Us."
"Rory, you're going to have to narrow it down a little. What's uncomfortable?"
"Nothing. Everything. I don't know, Mom, I didn't want things to end up like this."
"Rory, sweetie, I have no idea what you're saying. You and Jess are fighting?"
"No. We don't fight." She checked her watch again, and stood up with her heart thumping. She missed her mother's next confused comment as she approached the sink, and picked up the little plastic stick perched on its side.
"…maybe you should go to counseling or something. Marriage counseling, I mean. Sookie and Jackson tried it, and they said it did wonders. Isn't that funny? I thought it was, because Sookie and Jackson are so together. But maybe it would work for you and Jess." Lorelai stopped talking for a minute to listen for a response. Luckily, there was almost no one in the drugstore, or her conversation with the bathroom door might not have gone unnoticed. "Rory? You there?"
Silently, Rory opened the heavy door so her mother could come in. Wiping her eyes with the back of her hand, she moved aside to give Lorelai room.
"Rory, what's wrong?" Her daughter didn't answer, and Lorelai saw the cheap plastic test sitting on the sink again. She picked it up carefully, not really wanting to touch something Rory had peed on, and clearly saw the tiny 'pregnant' printed on it. She detested the older style tests, with their colors and shapes and windows…but as she saw her daughter's staggered face, she wished Rory had been able to take the extra 30 seconds to decipher the code before she'd gotten the message that she truly was pregnant.
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Rory lay on the Danes' couch, with her head in her mother's lap. She had succumbed to tears almost an hour ago, and the water works had yet to dry up.
"Luke, just go get us some more ice cream. Please," Lorelai pleaded with her husband. He had other plans, however.
"Jess is hurting her. It's the only explanation."
"Stop jumping to conclusions. We're gonna reach the ice cream stage soon, so go now."
"Lorelai, the first time she was…you know, pregnant, she was ecstatic. I'd never seen her happier. Now look at her- Jess did something."
"Hey, she calmed down a bit with Riley. I wouldn't be thrilled if I found out I had to squeeze yet another watermelon out."
"Lorelai, she's been crying for ages!"
"Thank you, Captain Obvious."
"She didn't want you to call Jess."
"Understandable; she said they were in a rough spot right now."
"She's not wearing her wedding ring." Lorelai's next argument was halted when she looked down at the hand clutching her skirt, and confirmed what Luke had said.
"Oh. I didn't notice that."
"I forgot it today," Rory muttered in between sobs from her horizontal position. "I do that sometimes." She actually was telling the truth. When she remembered, she always made a point of wearing it, as a reminder to herself and others that Jess was the only guy she'd ever have. But after a morning of drinking, or post-drinking, it occasionally would slip her mind. Jess also chose to keep his ring finger adorned unless he was working. And he probably took it off when he was with Mina, but she couldn't be sure.
Luke knelt down beside her as he stroked her cheek lightly with his callused working hands.
"Rory, tell us. Is Jess treating you right?" She let loose another sob into her mother's legs.
"Yes. Yes. Jess is wonderful, as always. It's all my fault."
"No it's not, Bunny," Lorelai soothed. "It's not your fault."
"Yes it is! I push him away, and he has no choice but to go behind my back."
"Behind your…" Lorelai and Luke exchanged a glance. Up until this point, they'd believed that Jess and Rory had a relatively smooth relationship. They didn't expect perfection, being married themselves, but Rory's current state came as a complete shock.
"Mina. God, I hate that slut. I don't see why I have to let her stay in my house." Lorelai gasped as Luke angrily headed for the phone.
"No, don't call him!"
"He's cheating on you, Rory? I'm calling that little bastard." Luke angrily punched numbers on the telephone. Jess still got on his nerves most of the time, but he'd always trusted the punk to take care of Rory. It had always appeared that he did just that, so Luke held a grudging respect for this nephew/stepson-in-law.
"Please stop," she begged, standing up shakily. "It's not a big deal." Lorelai looked appalled.
"I can't believe his nerve. I never would have expected this from him."
"It's my fault. I'm don't give him the attention he deserves."
"Rory, you cannot be the girl who accuses herself of forcing the guy to cheat." Luke slammed down the receiver a few feet away.
"It's busy."
"It's my fault. It really is, Mom. I know when I got pregnant, because it was the only time I treated him like my husband in the past, like, two months."
"Rory, stop it. Nothing is your fault, snap out of it."
"No! Don't tell him anything! Stay out of this!" She nearly ran to the door.
"Rory, wait!" The slamming door answered Lorelai's command. She looked at her husband. "I-I've never seen her like that. She yelled at me. She condoned his behavior."
"I'm calling anyway. He may be the blood relative, but he does not get off treating Rory like that." To his surprise, Lorelai put a hand on his arm.
"Leave it. They're adults; they don't need our interference," she told him sadly.
"Lorelai, Rory's hurting."
"I know. But she told us to stay out of it, so we will." She pulled him away from the phone. "Unless she asks for our help, it's none of our business." Luke sighed.
"If you say so, Lor. But I still hate him."
"Oh yea. Me too."
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Rory slowly creaked the big front door open. Seeing no one around, she entered the house. Catching a glimpse of her tear-stained face in the hall mirror, she made a face. This was big. This was bad. This required close to a whole bottle of Jack Daniels.
She gasped on her way upstairs. She was pregnant. She couldn't drink, what was wrong with her!
"I'm a bad mother!" she screamed suddenly, breaking the silence of the house. From down the hall, where Jess was curled up in Mina's loving arms with a paperback copy of Catch 22 (which the blonde neither understood, nor cared about), he heard his wife's shriek.
Bounding the rest of the way up the stairs, Rory hurled herself into bed. She drank to cope, and she couldn't drink now. So how was she supposed to cope?
When Jess entered the bedroom five minutes later, having gotten worried enough to come looking, he found Rory lying facedown, her body wracked with sobs.
"Ror?" He'd never seen her like this before. She didn't cry anymore, she had found other means to deal. So something must be really, really wrong.
"Jess? Oh God, Jess." Frowning, he climbed onto the bed beside her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders. She didn't shrug him off or push him away, so he chanced to get a little closer.
"I don't know what's wrong, but I'm here. And I'll fix it if you let me."
"I think I'm past fixing, Jess. I think I'm really, really broken."
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Jess rubbed his eyes as he walked into the conference room with his fellow cast members. They were doing a big phone interview today, and he hadn't gotten any sleep last night. Holding Rory while she cried until she had no tears left, and then continuing to hold her while she hiccupped dry sobs had left him completely exhausted. He'd been happy to do it, the only problem was that she hadn't clued him in (as usual) to the reason why she was distressing.
"Good morning, cast of Winter Dreams!" The people around him muttered practiced pleasantries as Jess picked up a pen from the table they sat around. He began to doodle on the only surface he could find- his designer jeans, Kathy would have a fit about that- as the representative from People, or US, or whatever magazine was doing this story droned on.
He'd squeaked by with only answering two questions directed precisely at him, and both times it'd been relatively easy to answer. They were both questions concerning his character and his costars, and he had been working for months with his character and his costars. So he knew his stuff, even if he was half-asleep.
"Now, if you all don't mind, how about a few personal questions before I let you go?" Someone chirped a positive response, and the lady on the phone began to relate the latest rumors back to the actors. They answered calmly, with well-rehearsed non-answers that didn't satisfy the interviewer, but etiquette kept her from complaining.
Zoning out again, Jess went back to his drawing. He drew a dog, then a book, then a star. His brain drifted around leisurely as he scrawled his wife's name in cursive across the star. Rory was definitely on his brain today.
"Jess Mariano! You're so quiet, it's almost like you're not there!"
"Oh, I'm here alright."
"Super. How are Rory and the kids?" He traced the name on his knee again, making it bolder.
"Rory's pretty busy, but she likes work. Riley's a normal, happy toddler, and Jane had her first dream the other night. We bought her a unicorn, apparently."
"Such is with little girls. How is she reacting to the news?"
"What news?" he asked, only half paying attention. He added a peace sign for the hell of it to his sketch.
"I hate to spoil your surprise, but we technically weren't the ones to do it. A tabloid reporter witnessed her and her mother in a New York drugstore yesterday. The pregnancy's out!"
"What?" he asked stupidly, the pen's tip digging into his skin through the denim.
