A/N: Sometimes I forget how much I love writing this story, which might explain how this chapter kinda got away from me, but hey, you guys like longer chapters, right? Reviews always welcome, and thank you for those that came before - always appreciated.

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 22

Life had settled into a rhythm. It was very different to how things had been before Rory ran off to New York only to return with a boyfriend and a baby bump. It was different again to the life she and Jess had lived over the summer in the city too. This was a new kind of rhythm, but so far it seemed to be working.

Since both Rory and Jess worked odd shifts instead of regular days, and there were appointments to be kept and things to do all of the time, she had come up with timetables much like she had when she was in school. Colour-coded charts and tables had got her through Chilton and the first year of Yale, so Rory didn't see how they could fail in helping with her pregnancy. She had it all laid out, each month, each week, each day, divided down into boxes of various colours. There was red for when she worked at the book store and yellow for when Jess had a shift at the diner. Walmart was green, and doctor's appointments were blue, with various other events scribbled in other colours that all meant something.

Jess lost track of the codes that Rory used on her lists and charts, but it didn't matter. He knew where he had to be and it made her happy to feel she had at least some control over what was happening. He could understand that. So much of what was going on was out of their hands, the whole pregnancy thing and everybody's reaction to it. It was still a relief that Luke and Lorelai were being so understanding, but almost a month after Emily Gilmore's apology there had still been no Friday night dinners. Rory talked to Richard by phone every week, but simply would not face her grandmother. Since Jess wasn't exactly eager to go back into the dragon's den either, he said nothing about it. Lorelai on the other hand was not so easily silenced.

"I know she hurt you, honey, believe me, I understand that better than anybody else ever could," she told her daughter as they sat across the kitchen table this morning. "But she did apologise, I think she's willing to try."

"Has she talked to you since?" asked Rory with a frown, not liking the idea of Mom and Grandma potentially conspiring against her.

"Only once," Lorelai admitted. "She called me a week or so ago, asking if you were okay and when I thought you might be in touch. She's not always the greatest and most sensitive person, hon, but she's not a monster, and she does love you."

"She loves you too, but you were never thrilled about Friday night dinners," Rory pointed out, fiercely colouring in another box on the next month's planner. "I want things to be okay, I really do, but... but every time I think about the way she reacted I get so mad all over again," she said, her free hand dropping instinctively to her expanding belly.

At almost twenty weeks now, it was pretty obvious to anyone that Rory Gilmore was pregnant. Fastening regular clothes wasn't an issue yet, but some of her tighter things just weren't an option anymore. It was strange to look into the mirror and see a bulge where her ridiculously flat stomach always was before, but it was nice too. Her baby was in there, a little Rory or a little Jess, a perfect combination of the two. Just thinking of that brought a smile back to her lips.

"I'm not saying you have to be best buds with Grandma right now," Lorelai assured her, putting her hand on top of Rory's where the baby was growing. "But I just think maybe it's time to build some bridges, at least give her a chance to be a decent human being for a couple of hours? If she can't be at least civil and polite during one dinner, you run for the hills and I'll be with you the whole way, but she already missed out on so much with me and you. I don't want history to end up repeating."

Rory knew what she meant, she couldn't not. Things had always been strained between Emily and Lorelai, but it all just imploded when Rory came along, the pregnancy had torn the last shreds of their relationship asunder. If Rory let that happen with herself and her Grandma, it wouldn't achieve anything. She ought to try and be the bigger person, and she knew it too.

"Maybe I'll call her soon," she sighed. "Right now we should go get ready. Jess will be home in a half hour and I don't want to be late for our appointment."

Lorelai smiled and got up when her daughter did. Today was the next baby scan and she was just pleased as punch to get to go along and see how the little one was progressing. The truth was she did offer to sit this one out, no matter how badly she kind of wanted to go. It occurred to her that maybe Rory and Jess should be allowed to go about their business with their baby and not have her interfering. It had completely stunned her when Jess had been the one to say she really ought to be there.

"Really?" Lorelai had frowned as his seemingly extreme reaction to her offer of non-attendance. "Why? Why do I have to be there?"

"Because... Rory needs you," he said definitely, even as the young woman herself looked bemusedly between her boyfriend and her mother. "What? You don't think you earned it? You're letting us stay here, on rent that barely covers what we eat never mind the utilities. You raised Rory by yourself, you didn't flip out too badly when she came home pregnant, and after the first ten minutes, you didn't even blame me for what happened. I know what it is to have a crappy set of parents, but you coped alone and you have been everything to Rory. She won't say anything right now, because she's scared that if she asks you to come it'll upset me, but it doesn't. You should be there, Lorelai. You might be the only blood-grandparent this kid is really going to know, but I can't imagine you'll ever let him or her feel like they missed out on anything."

It was quite the impassioned speech and it was hardly surprising that it had made Rory cry. Lorelai had welled up a little herself, teasing Jess that with words like that he really ought to be a writer. He only rolled his eyes and muttered something about going to work as he left the room fast.

Jess worked a lot, and sometimes it seemed like too much, but they needed the money so Rory couldn't exactly complain. Sometimes when he was at the diner or Walmart she was at the book store and time passed quickly. Of course she had to take time to rest and had blown through so much of her book collection recently in a massive re-reading exercise. She actually had a plan to get through the whole lot before the baby came, and yet, it seemed impossible as Andrew allowed her a staff discount and Jess indulged her, so the collection continued to grow.

Still, the savings they needed were piling up. It wasn't enough to call themselves anywhere close to rich, not even entirely comfortable, but they were doing okay. They were going to have to start buying things soon, a crib and a stroller and such, but somehow that hadn't happened yet. Rory guessed they were just so busy trying to figure out what they were doing now, what would occur when the baby came was still a blur. There was no concrete plan regarding Yale or where they would live. There should be, but there never seemed a good time to bring it up, and honestly, Rory was scared to try and plan it only to realise it couldn't work.

Jess was feeling the same and also not saying a word. On his way back from the diner to the Gilmore house, he was crunching numbers in his head, money, distances, logistics. Rory would have to stop work in the next couple of months, he was almost certain. The diner and Walmart were still fine for him, but he would also need to be around when Rory needed him, especially when the baby was actually born. They had from the due date in early March to the start of Yale at the end of August, and then they would have to be ready, organised, and planned. They hadn't even begun, and Jess had no idea how to broach the subject, not with Rory so emotional as she often was with her pregnancy hormones and everything. She was the planner and the list maker, but Jess couldn't help but wonder if the thousand and one timetables and work-shift rostas on the walls of their bedroom were just a distraction, something to keep Rory busy so she wouldn't have to plan further ahead, to a time when things were even more complicated, when there was actually a tiny bundle of joy in their lives to take care of. Of course, now wasn't the time to bring all that up, not when they had their next scan to get to.

"Hey," Rory greeted him with a smile and a kiss just as soon as Jess got in the front door.

"Hey," he replied. "You almost ready to go?"

"Mom's just getting changed and then we're off," she nodded.

Jess leant back against the wall to wait for Lorelai.

"By the way, Lane says she wants to see pictures from today."

"Oh, well, of course. I feel like such a crappy friend lately. You see more of her than I do."

"You're not a crappy anything," Jess assured her the moment she looked sad. "You've been working or tired from working and you have two people at a time to think about," he said, his fingers running lightly over her stomach. "Besides, Lane is so distracted by her whole new romance thing, I'm not sure she's actually noticing anybody but Zach most of the time."

"It's sweet," Rory grinned at that. "I mean, I know they're not an obvious couple, but hey, some people might say that about us," she shrugged.

"And how wrong they would be," he said definitely, dropping a kiss on her lips.

She was still smiling when they parted.

"This is so weird and exciting," she said, holding onto his hand as they waited around in the hallway. "I mean, we saw him or her before but now... our baby is actually going to look like a baby," she smiled.

"I think that's the idea," Jess agreed with some amusement. "You still wanna keep the whole gender thing a surprise?" he checked, already pretty sure he knew the answer to that.

Rory had been so certain that she didn't want to know before, but over the last few weeks her attitude seemed to shift. She hadn't said anything specific, but Jess had noticed things. Lorelai would point out cute baby clothes in a magazine and Rory would sigh saying she wouldn't know whether to buy the pink or the blue. He caught her flipping through a baby names book when he went to meet her at the store a few nights ago, and she rambled on for fully ten minutes about not liking any of the unisex names she found.

Then there was the fact that Kirk was running a book on the gender of the Gilmore-Mariano baby already. It was pretty clear that every time Rory laughed about that particular situation it was fake. She wasn't happy about people making guesses about her child when she was having to guess herself. The longer this pregnancy went on, the more she wanted to know the truth.

"It does seem kind of silly wasting the opportunity to find out," she considered going into Jess' arms. "I mean, the technology has the power to tell us, and it would save on always having to say 'he or she' and 'him or her', plus we could start buying things without worrying about the colours and styles..."

"Rory," said Jess, lifting her chin on his finger until she met his eyes. "You don't have to convince me. I'm fine with us finding out or not. You can make this decision and I promise you I won't care which choice you make."

She smiled widely at that, putting her hand to his cheek then running her fingers back through his hair.

"Have I told you lately that you're wonderful and I love you so much?"

"You might've mentioned it."

They were kissing when Lorelai finally came down the stairs, catching them in a moment of passion so intense they really hadn't noticed she was there until she coughed deliberately loudly.

"Wow, that was a heck of a frog I had there," she dead-panned, even as the young couple parted, with Rory blushing as she was wont to do. "You guys ready to go now?"

"Yes, and we made a decision," her daughter told her. "We want to know the sex of the baby."

"Oh, well, that's cool," Lorelai smiled. "It will make talking about Baby MG a little easier."

"And hopefully it will stop you from calling him or her that too," said Jess hopefully.

Lorelai shook her head; "Oh, I doubt it."

"Hello? Hello? Who is this?" demanded Paris when nobody seemed willing to respond. "Because you sound like a possum or a racoon in distress!"

Rory laughed through her happy tears then and fought in vain to find her voice.

"Paris, it's me," she told her shakily.

"Rory? Is something wrong?" she asked then. "Did James Dean run off like a scared dog? Because I told him I would hunt him down and cut off his..."

"No, everything's fine!" said Rory quickly. "Paris, I'm just happy. It's a pregnancy thing, kind of hard to explain."

"Oh," Paris sighed. "Actually it's fairly simple. Your body is suffering through hormonal changes that affect your levels of neurotransmitters, which are chemical messengers in the brain, plus the broad range of feelings you may have about becoming a parent," she recited like a text book.

Rory smiled even though she couldn't be seen on the other end of a phone.

"Thank you, Paris," she said then. "I just thought I'd call, catch up with you. How are you doing with everything?"

"As well as you would expect," her friend explained. "I'm on top of my classes, coping fairly well with the Asher situation given the circumstances, and I got the religion beat at the Yale Daily News."

"That's really great, Paris, I'm happy for you" Rory assured her.

"Thanks. Well, I would ask how you are but a whole conversation about swollen ankles and puking would probably not be all that stimulating for me."

"How about if I told you I went for my twenty week scan today and found out the sex of the baby?"

Rory didn't really expect Paris to be all that excited about whether she was having a boy or a girl. The truth was, Rory didn't think she cared herself until they finally got the news. Everybody was so happy to know the truth so far, well, except for those who lost out in Kirk's pool, of course.

"Well? C'mon, Gilmore, don't keep me in suspense, boy or girl?" Paris urged her.

"A little boy," Rory admitted at last, grinning from ear to ear.

She really had been undecided on whether she would be more pleased with the news she was having a boy or a girl. A little version of her or of Jess, either would be nice. She was strangely thrilled when the doctor had admitted it was a boy she was carrying. A prince rather than a princess, Miss Patty had said when she heard. Rory's eyes had gone to Jess then. Though nobody was likely to think of him as the Prince Charming type, she certainly did, and she hoped their son looked like his father and grew up to be the same kind of man as him and Luke were already.

"Congratulations, Rory, you are bringing another mysoginistic animal into the world," Paris sighed heavily. "On the other hand, I suppose with the brains and talent he might glean from yourself and Jess, and the strong female influence from Lorelai and myself, he could be the decent kind of man that the world needs, another great mind and a gentleman, like Richard or Asher."

Rory smiled all the more at that and thanked Paris for her eventual kind words. They talked some more about how things were at Yale and how Rory was coping with her pregnancy. She expected to feel jealous during tales of the Yale Daily News and such, and that feeling was there, but it was vastly over-shadowed by the joyous news that her baby was still totally healthy and good, and apparently a boy.

When her call to Paris was over, Rory stepped out of the bedroom to find Jess making dinner. It was just the two of them tonight, since Luke was working and Lorelai had gone straight over to Sookie's place after dropping Rory and Jess at home.

Rory knew Sookie hadn't been feeling right the last few days, because her mom had told her so. When they met up at the doctor's office it wasn't all that surprising, but the news that Sookie announced the second they saw her was a shock - she was pregnant too! She seemed to be ecstatic and terrified all at the same time, and Lorelai had offered to take her home and be there when she told Jackson. Though he had been the one asking for four-in-four at one time, having Davey had shown them both how expensive and time consuming even one baby could be. Another already was going to be a real shock to the system, and Rory sympathised. She sometimes worried how she and Jess were going to cope with just one kid.

"How's our favourite psychopath?" asked Jess with a wicked smirk as Rory sat down at the table.

"Paris is fine," she told him with a look that would have been severe if she could just stop smiling, but she couldn't. "Jess, can I ask you something serious?"
That sure got his full attention. Turning the heat down under the pan on the stove, he wiped his hands and then sat down on the opposite side of the table.

"How serious are we talking?" he checked.

"Well, not life and death serious, but pretty serious," said Rory with some consideration. "It's about Grandma."

Jess wasn't sure if he was relieved about the 'not life and death' part or more nervous because Emily Gilmore's name just came up. Taking a breath, he swallowed hard and nodded for Rory to go on.

"Well, we haven't talked in almost a month, and she did apologise and everything," she consider aloud. "I just... Even when Mom talked to me earlier, I was so sure I wasn't ready to face her, but now... now we're having a little boy, and I have these amazing pictures of that boy, that little man who's you and me, and he's going to be her great grandson and..."

"And you want us to go over to the house and share," Jess finished for her.

"Would you mind?" she asked nervously. "I mean, I'm not talking about reinstating dinner every Friday, but sometimes maybe, to see Grandpa at least, and if things went okay maybe Grandma too?"

Jess didn't want to go. In truth, he didn't want Rory to go either, not if she was going to get upset again. That wasn't good for her or for the baby, which meant it wasn't good for Jess either because it led to him wanting to punch somebody. That phone call a month ago in which Emily apologised had been met with too much acceptance. It was one week later, after an 'I Love Lucy' marathon no less, that the real emotion of it had come out. Rory had cried over some dumb plot point that didn't even matter and later confessed it all tied back to her grandmother. It made Jess want to hate the woman for making Rory shed even a single tear, but he was only going to make matters worse if he made a fuss here. She wanted to build bridges, and he accepted that, even if he didn't understand it.

"Rory, if you want to go to Friday night dinner, you can go to Friday night dinner, I'm not the boss of you," he said definitely, picking up her hand from the table and squeezing it. "And if you want me to come along, I will do that too," he said, kissing the hand he held. "Because I love you, you crazy woman"

"And I love you, you wonderful hoodlum," she replied, giggling through her words even as tears filled her eyes.

The hormonal thing was driving her crazy, but Rory Gilmore was feeling pretty happy right about now. For a situation as complicated and messy as this was, it was mostly working out okay so far.

To Be Continued...