LitGG1982 - When writing an AU, I tend to slip away from the basic Girls plot, so I frequently throw in 'recyclable characters' to ground myself a little. Tana Shrick, from season 4, is the new nanny, and her boyfriend, Chester Fleet, is her husband. Don't really think he'll be making an appearance, but I thought the hyphen made Tana seem more schoolmarm-y.
"So, I had an idea I wanted to run past you." Rory looked up from The Magician's Nephew to see Jess standing in front of her, looking quite pleased with himself.
"Run it."
"Tana starts this weekend, right? And you're not working this weekend, right?"
"Right on both accounts."
"And it just so happens that I'm not working either. So that's when I got this great idea that I did a little research on, and wanted to run past you."
"And now we've gone full circle. What is your brilliant idea, Jess?" she asked as she marked her page and closed her book, giving him her undivided attention.
"Well, I was thinking about how on-the-fence you are about this therapy thing, and I realized that I'm not too hot on it myself. So then I remembered that fight we had a few years ago, before Jane was born, when Todd and Kyle, er, talked me into going to that Gentlemen's Club with them- do you remember that?"
"Oh yes." She obviously spoke the truth, because her arms crossed as she said this.
"Well, you were pretty pissed off. It wasn't fun. But-miracle of miracles- I was able to talk you into taking a little trip with me."
"To Spain," she said softly.
"Yep. Come to think of it, I'm pretty certain that's where Jane was conceived. But my point is, it worked. I got to spend some time alone with you, grovel properly, win your forgiveness. It was really good for us. And we've been all over the place lately- not really spending much time alone, and the time alone we did have, for the most part, wasn't very long."
"You want to go away?" she asked, frowning. Her facial expression made his confident one waver slightly, but he forged on.
"It can't hurt, right? And it's way preferable to Dr. What's her name." She bit her lip, thinking. "Please, Ror?" He sat down on the coffee table in front of the couch she reclined on, his depreciated position and wide eyes making him look extremely humbled in her eyes.
"Where are we going?" she asked finally, giving in. The thought of a whole weekend with no one but him made her a little uncomfortable, but his carefully thought-out words had a truth she could not deny. His face lit up.
"Wherever you want. We could go to Spain again, or we could go to England...we could hit France...I hear the Caribbean is lovely this time of year." She opened her book again, finding where she'd left off. She resumed reading as he sat in front of her, wondering if she'd say anything else. When he'd finally given up and was on his way out of the living room, her voice carried over to him.
"I've always wanted to go to France with you." He spun around and swept her an exaggerated bow, faking a French accent.
"But of course, Madame." He finished exiting the room, only to have her brush past him on her hurried way upstairs.
"Sorry, gotta pack," she called as an apology.
She reached the landing and jogged from there into her room. After standing on a stepstool to reach her designer luggage from its place on the very top shelf of her closet, she paused.
Exactly what was she supposed to bring? What was Jess thinking as far as this little trip went? Was he thinking lots of long, important conversations? Was he thinking see the sights? Was he thinking romantic? What was going on behind those damn dark eyes of his?
He came into the room, grabbed his wallet, and left (if she'd been paying attention this morning at breakfast, she'd know where to). After a few more minutes of standing stationary, she picked up the phone by their bed, and dialed her mother's number.
"Greetings Earthling," Lorelai said in a funny, metallic voice on the other end. Rory rolled her eyes.
"Most women calm down by your age."
"Aw, it's my little daughter. The one whom I have many embarrassing baby photo albums of," she threatened.
"Well, who'd want one of them for their mother? That's what I'd like to know."
"What's up, Bunny?"
"I'm wondering something. Jess and I are apparently going to France for the weekend, and I don't know what to bring." Silence on the other end. "Mom?"
"You and Jess are going to France? As in I-see-London..."
"One and the same," Rory responded as she rolled her eyes.
"Why?"
"Well, it's basically a last ditch effort to squeak out of having to go into therapy."
"And you're okay with this?"
"Why wouldn't I be?"
"Because it sounds like he's trying to worm his way out of trouble over the Mina thing by taking you some place fancy. I really don't think, under the circumstances, that you should let that fly."
"Can you not say the M-word?" They'd talked on the phone a few days after Mina's departure, and tempers had become very heated between mother and daughter. Rory really just wanted Lorelai's advice, without having to endure another you're-just-going-to-let-it-slide? lecture, and her mother wasn't too keen on hearing its-my-fault-too again.
"Masticate? But what if I had a really good closing remark on the subject?"
"Then use the word chew, like everyone else, including yourself. What am I supposed to bring to France?"
"A passport."
"Other than my passport."
"Pepperspray."
"France has a much lower crime rate than our nation, mother."
"I meant for Jess." Rory sighed.
"I'm not going to get anything useful out of you, am I?"
"I'm rallying Anti-Jess. Look outside your house. I'm the one with the megaphone."
"Well then, I'm going to have to cut this conversation short. It's Wednesday, and I'll assume we're leaving Friday. Lane might be more sympathetic to my plot."
"Meaning you haven't told her Jess is a C-H-E-A-T-E-R yet."
"Even if you spell it, it makes me somewhat upset."
"Then you're right; it's time to cut the talk short. Send me a postcard from France...let me know if Jess hooked up with any nice French girls there."
"Goodbye." It was hard to get angry with Lorelai when she was verbalizing some of Rory's internal rage, but she wouldn't expose herself too long to it. The last thing she needed was to jump on the 'Jess's fault' bandwagon, not when she was carrying his child. And it really wasn't all Jess's fault, despite whatever her mom might believe.
She called Lane, excited at the prospect of talking to her friend for the first time in weeks. Lane was actually home for once, and answered the phone on the fifth ring. After giddy pleasantries, Rory explained the situation.
"So it's good to know you're doing better. The last time I saw you together- at your Mom's, a few months ago- you were kind of harsh with him."
"Just a little spat, you know how it is," Rory lied through her teeth.
"So I still don't get what you need my help for. A weekend with no work, no kids, no distractions? And you're calling me wondering if you should bring solid or see-through underwear?"
"So you're saying he definitely meant it as a romantic thing?"
"Why wouldn't he have?" She wished she could explain the whole situation to Lane, but she didn't want yet another person judging her relationship. Mom and Luke were bad enough, not to mention Kathy and their former nannies.
"Things have just been...weird lately. We haven't been so close, physically and sexually and all that."
"Well, it's obviously not as bad as you make it sound, because you've got baby number three on the way." Lane sounded awed by this last thought, so Rory rambled on for a few minutes about doctor's appointments and her thoughts for making the white guest room into a nursery. Soon, though, she steered them back to the original topic.
"How did he sound when he suggested it?"
"Like he really wanted me to say yes."
"Well then, you're entitled to set the pace for the weekend, so it doesn't matter what he originally thought."
"You think?"
"Of course. By showing how much he wanted you to accept, he implied, consciously or no, that every little detail concerning your getaway is for YOU to decide."
"Does it really work like that?"
"Don't question me, I spend most of my time on a tour bus with three of them. I know them and their ways. Them being men."
"So it's up to me to decide what I want, is what you're saying?"
"100 percent."
"Okay, now tell me what I want."
"No can do, that's for Rory to decide."
"Lane, I don't know what I want to do!"
"Sorry hun. But all decisions concerning your sex life with Jess get made by YOU." They made a few girlish closing remarks, and Rory hung up with still no idea what to take.
She conjured up a scenario in her head to help her, one in which she and Jess were goofy newlyweds going away to get over a stupid, brief offense. It had worked a few years ago, and it worked now; her luxurious suitcase was full of a few practical items, but for the most part all sorts of sexy things. She'd been hesitant at first, but letting herself get wrapped up in the past had helped. When Jess came back from a studio meeting later that night, she met him at the foot of the stairs.
"Can we pretend this weekend?"
XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOX
Picking at her sparkly purple nail polish, bored, Mina Saunders looked around the newsroom she'd found her way to. It wasn't really a newsroom, technically, but the headquarters of a sleazy new tabloid called "Popularity." Most of the office was designated to photographs, but a small section housed two cubicles with four writers. Mina and another young, blonde girl sat on a shabby bench not unlike the one in the office at her high school (Oh, when she'd made out with Mr. Debule in the science lab storage room, that had been rich explaining it to the principal), waiting for one of the reporters to finish the headline they were trying to draft.
One of the writers, an older woman whose gray roots showed from under her fiery red job, finally came up to the younger girl, whose name, Mina soon discovered, was Allison. She claimed to have been propositioned by some famous rapper, but wanted money before she divulged who. Though they were a newer tabloid, Popularity was not so much lacking in substance that it had to resort to stories dangled in front of them as such, and the girl was offered a very small sum before she decided (with a huff) to take her story elsewhere. She wasn't stopped. The woman, whose name Mina soon discovered was Susan, then turned her blue-contact-covered eyes on Mina.
Smiling coyly, she took a photograph out of her knockoff LAMB purse. Doing a double take, Susan called her fellow writers over to take a look.
"I was a nanny in their house. She put me out," she said in explanation when they looked at her.
"Stop the presses!" one of the, a balding man, called out. "What's your name?" he quickly asked her.
"Mina Giselle Saunders."
"Roriano on the rocks! Jess's illicit affair with nanny!" Susan pulled a swivel chair up to Mina's bench to begin a fuller interview, while the balding man pulled out a checkbook for initiative. It would, of course, be lovely to get paid for speaking the truth, but there was another motive here.
Payback's a bitch, Rory Gilmore.
