Disclaimer: Not mine
Author's Note: Big thanks to the betas: cinefille, iheartbridges, and lulabo, and a special thank you to cinefille for reading a mediocre draft and telling me I could do it better.
The voices slowly draw her out of sleep and Lorelai's mind registers little details mechanically: The clunk of the door latch echoing strangely off the bare walls, the unfamiliar rhythm of his footsteps, the soft weight of the covers across her chest, the muffled squeak of the bedsprings as he slides back into bed.
Christopher slips his arm around her, and she mentally searches for the guilt, the sadness she should be feeling, but there's nothing there. Even as he skims his fingertips across her stomach, she feels nothing.
No, not nothing actually. She can feel the heat of his breath against her shoulder and the light pull of friction between his hand and her skin, but his touch elicits absolutely no desire, no warmth.
She has to wonder what it means that she's naked in bed with a man she has no desire for. How she'd gotten here. She corrects herself, she knows the how, and even a bit of the why. She remembers the desperation, built not on desire but on need – a need to feel, a need to be wanted. She just doesn't know when she became that person who needs so badly to be wanted that she'd fall into bed with the first available person.
But, she realizes, that's not really the right question at all, because the fingers edging ever closer to the swell of her breasts aren't just any fingers, they're his fingers, the hot breath is his breath. She's not sure what it means, and for the moment she just tries to ignore the question. She's a little surprised at how easy it is to disregard his touch, to take comfort, briefly, in the fact that she is unable to react. His hand cups one breast as his lips touch her shoulder. Something – a shift in her breathing perhaps – alerts him that she is awake and he lets out a contented sigh. His thumb brushes her nipple and he whispers, "Good morning," before pressing a trail of kisses across her shoulder.
She closes her eyes, trying to feign sleep, or at the very least ignore his advances. But he is persistent and when he shifts closer to her, she can feel his arousal. She reaches for his hand and moves it off her breast, pushing it back toward his hip.
"Lor?" he asks. His confusion can't mask the hunger in his voice. "What's wrong?" He touches her shoulder with a gesture she suspects is intended to be comforting.
Shaking her head, she shrugs him off before giving a small wave across the bed, and saying dully, "This." She rolls onto her back and gives him a quick glance. She can see the wrinkles between his eyebrows that indicate that he's no longer sure what to make of the situation. Though he's still lying on his side facing her, his head propped up on his hand, he's pulled slightly away to give her a little space. Looking at the ceiling, she continues, her voice lifeless, "This is just one more in a string of my stupid mistakes. Someone could write a book, I think, The Colossal Mistakes of Lorelai Gilmore."
"Why does it have to be a mistake?" he asks, the sting of hurt in his voice.
"Do I really have to explain that to you?" The question should sound incredulous, but it just comes out tired.
"Lorelai, you came here. You kissed me. That has to mean something," he insists softly.
It does mean something, she thinks, though she can hardly bear to admit it. She doesn't want to be the person so weak she needs the affection of someone she doesn't love. She doesn't want to admit that somewhere in her psyche is a woman so needy that she's allowed this man to want her for so long. It's a sickening realization and it brings with it a feeling of revulsion all the more powerful for it being the only emotion she's felt in hours.
She sighs, trying to summon some measure of compassion for the man she carelessly used last night. "It means I was wrong." She pauses for a moment, then meets his eyes, and continues, her voice strangely monotonous, "I thought we were in a safe place. That we could be Rory's parents…and that we could be friends. Just friends. I thought we were there, that everything else was in the past, but I was wrong…"
"Maybe it's not meant to be in the past," he says hopefully.
"It's always been in the past, Christopher," she says, a little sharply. "We just needed to let it stay there."
"But this now," he gestures between them," this isn't in the past." He takes a deep breath and continues, "I love you. I've always loved you. We could do this…" His words trail off expectantly.
She can tell that he believes his words, that he honestly thinks they could possibly be happy together. He reaches as if to brush her hair off her face and she puts her hand up to stop him, letting out a frustrated sigh as her arm drops heavily on the bed between them. "Any chance for us died a long time ago."
"Not for me," he protests.
"But why? Why can't you let go? Why does it always have to come back to this?" She's surprised to feel a hint of anger. The unexpected emotion gives her a tiny bit of strength and she sits up slowly, gathering the covers around her as she pulls her knees against her chest. "Have I not made it clear enough? Have I honestly given you reason to think…?" Her voice slows as she makes sense of the anger – at him for not letting go. And at herself for letting him hold on. She needs not to be that woman anymore. And he needs to not be that man.
He sits himself, leaning on his arm, his words attempting to break her resolve. "Lor, you're the woman I want to be with. We-"
"I don't love you," The harshness of her words takes him by surprise.
He gives her a wounded look. "You did once, you could love me again."
"I love that you gave me Rory," she admits. "That will always be true. The rest…" She pauses to take a determined breath. "There's nothing else there. I'm not sure there ever was." She feels a small measure of guilt for the effect her blunt words are having on him, but she doesn't soften them. Christopher is too used to the way she's always made excuses for him and sugarcoated her criticisms. She can tell from the injured look he gives her that she has broken some sort of unspoken rule, but at the same time she knows that it is a rule that needed to be broken, that should have been broken long ago. He lets out a long, defeated sigh and she watches the hope waver in his eyes.
Before he can bring on another argument, she slips out from under the covers and picks up her scattered clothing from the floor. The fleeting moments of anger have passed and what remains are the dull pain of guilt and a fading self-esteem.
"So that's it? You're just going to leave?" His voice is bitter now, hurt as he watches her pull on her clothes automatically; she's lost any sense of modesty along with the rest of her emotional reactions. "You just come here, kiss me, sleep with me, then wake up and tell me there's nothing between us. And now you're just leaving?"
"I shouldn't have come," she says flatly. "You didn't deserve this, for me to come here like this. It won't happen again." The finality in her words stills both of them for a moment.
"So what does this mean, Lorelai? You're never going to talk to me again? Is that it?" He's blustering angrily, but she can see that it's a cover for the fear in his eyes, the recognition that she's taking a permanent step. That she's finally cutting the line and letting them go their separate ways.
She doesn't answer him, and she thinks it's that confirmation that makes him soften and play his last card. "What about Rory? We're still her parents." He looks at her and she wonders what it was about that helpless look that made her give into it for all those years.
She nodded, "Yeah. We are. But that's all now." It should feel momentous, this redefinition, this ending of a friendship too fraught with emotion to ever fit the true meaning of the word. She wonders if she should be feeling regret over losing this, no matter how twisted and destructive it's always been. Or if she should feel a sense of strength for having managed to move beyond it.
But as she opens the door to leave the room, the only thing left is the hollow knowledge that it's all too little too late.
Author's Note: I had planned for this to be the last chapter of this particular story, but there might be more to tell. I will also continue to work on Broken, which builds on events in this story.