"Give me a call back, Ace. I've got an assignment for you, and I need you to start returning my calls, since I'm your boss and all."
The voicemail would have been more convincing if Rory had not been able to hear Marianna in the background, breathing in and out in her awkward pregnant woman heaves. She appreciated her friend caring enough about talking to her to go through all the effort of getting her husband to pretend he needed something, but she was not ready to make nice. It had only been 48 hours after all, hardly enough time for anyone to go crazy, and she was not ready to repair the minor rift with the dear Ms. Huntzberger until she had fixed the larger one with her mother.
She was driving again; that seemed to be much of her life these days, back and forth from assignments to her mom's to her dad's to her grandmother's to the Huntzbergers. Tonight was meant to be one of the fun trips, an evening in Star's Hollow with her mom and Luke at one of the town's fabulously funky festivals. This particular festival was a gourmet cheese tasting with a special performance by Miss Patty's dance students and of course, a guest appearance of the woman's famously strong punch. Normally, Rory thrived on these crazy town events, but tonight, she was gripping the wheel with hands a little white at the knuckle. Though she and Lorelai has fought before, she was not sure she had ever unloaded something so mean on her mother, especially not something so laced in genuine bitterness.
After all, her mother had always meant well when she offered her opinions on things, but in so many ways, she had wanted Rory to be a clone of her, something she genuinely wasn't. Rory loved classic novels, classic furniture, and in her own way, pretty classic men, too. She was not the funky creature her mother had tried to cultivate as her mini-me. She loved those things, too, but she loved them as a part of her mother and a part of a more classic overall life design. And now she had slammed Lorelai with the reality that she was, in fact, a pushy mom, in spite of also being a very cool one. As she pulled up to the first parking space she could find in Star's Hollow, she breathed in deeply and tried to tell herself that there would be no awkwardness, but it seemed unlikely.
The weather was of the briskest autumn kind, and she drew her coat around herself as she stepped out of the car. The smell of snow seemed to flutter in the air, that clean, sharp scent that only a certain kind of cold has. Rory was just glad she had worn warm clothes as she walked towards the center of town. There was laughter, the abrasive sound of Taylor's voice rising above the noises of festivity, and the undeniably bad music that was supposed to sound classy. God, she loved this place.
"Rory! You look so good. Get over here. I am weighed down and cannot get up. Get over here!" Lane's familiar voice called out. The once-slim Korean woman was seated on a chair with a toddler on her lap and three other children sprawled around her. The twins, now in their bratty mid-elementary school phase, were wearing matching The Who skullcaps and munching on cheese. The four-year-old was playing with some sort of handheld video game, and the baby of fifteen months was gnawing on a teething ring. Lane looked like some sort of fertile Asian goddess, overweight and yet somehow still glowing with warmth and womanhood that made her sexy. Rory bit back some strange jealousy in order to remind herself that she would go crazy if she had four boys to call her own. Though some might argue that Lane was always a tad crazy, Rory supposed.
"You are a fat cow, Lane," she teased but then her eyes softened and the smile at the corners of her mouth did too, "Look at you, though, really, you're the one who looks great. These kids become you." She leaned down and wrapped her arms around her best friend from above. For a second, her mind flitted to her other best friend, pregnant enough that she could not see her feet. How did she end up with these child-bearing women all around her? Next thing you knew her mother was going to be pregnant, too, at this rate. Sheesh.
"I look fat, and I know it, and I don't care. Now, I bought your new book, but I haven't – Eddie, don't throw that ring. Kwan, hand that back over here, please – had the time to read it yet. These boys – Steve, let's not go back for more cheese just yet, you're supposed to taste each kind, not eat four pounds of mild cheddar – are not very conducive to – shh, shh, shh, Eddie, Mommy's talking – getting recreational reading done."
Rory felt a little dizzy just watching Lane switch effortlessly from conversing to parenting and back again. "Take your time. It's a little drier than the rock books you usually devour."
"I want to read it – Zack, get over here and help with your sons – but things are crazy right now."
From a few feet away, Zack ambled over, but the shrill sound of Lane's shriek had pierced through the festivities and attracted the attention of another pair of festival-goers: Luke and Lorelai. Rory made conversation with Lane, pretending she didn't notice her dark-haired, attractive parent and stepparent approaching. When pretending stopped working, she tried flashing a completely innocent smile, but Lorelai's stony face greeted her without one. Luke just grunted uncomfortably.
"Hi Rory. Have you had any cheese yet?" Lorelai's voice was light but icy, and Rory debated for a second how to respond. She finally decided to just pretend she didn't notice the coldness.
"No. Lead the way, Captain!" She responded, tucking her arm through her mother's elbow and heading towards the cheese tent. She felt the tension through her mother's shoulders even as she did so.
It was going to be a long night.
X
"Logan…"
"Mr. Huntzberger would be appropriate right now."
"Oh please, you're not really that mad at me."
"Like hell I'm not. You ignore my phone calls for two weeks, miss an assignment I really needed a top reporter on, leave me in the lurch, and miss my wife's water breaking and her placement on bed rest, and you think I'm not mad?"
"It was a false alarm! She just lost control of her bladder for a second. The mucus plug is still firmly in place."
"Don't be disgusting, Rory."
They were seated in the study in the Huntzberger home, both dressed uncharacteristically formally and neither one smiling. Logan was in full suit and tie, just finished with a board meeting, and lines, faint but visible, appeared at the corners of his mouth, the beginnings of laugh wrinkles he would develop in coming years. For some reason, Rory was momentarily taken aback; were they getting old enough to develop such features on their faces? Her upcoming thirtieth birthday seemed like an even bigger deal all of a sudden. She swallowed sharply and looked down at her sensible black slacks and plain metallic flats.
"I'm sorry. It's true, though," she said gently. He massaged his temples.
"I really did have an assignment for you. You may be a family friend, Mari and I may love you, but you are an employee of the Huntzberger group, and you are paid generously to pick up your phone and take assignments, in addition to working on books. You really let me down this time." His expression completely lacked the teasing she was accustomed to, and she looked down in sudden embarrassment. It was rare for her to receive criticism for her performance as an employee – not since the old Mitchum days – so it hurt, but it hurt so much more because she knew Logan was right. She had gotten complacent in her role as the darling of the company, its first authoress and a proven journalist, as well as close family friend, and she had forgotten the most basic truth that ought to never be forgotten: they paid her salary for her to work.
"I'm so sorry, Logan," she replied, "I thought you were just calling me because Mari wanted to talk about our fight."
"No, I was calling because you are my employee."
"I'm sorry."
They looked at each other for a long, tense moment, and even though she was sorry, she refused to back down. Logan had more of the killer instinct than he thought, and she knew all too well that he ate alive the employees who deferred to him too much. So she looked at him squarely and waited. Finally, he sighed.
"Look, Ace," he said calmly, and she knew immediately that he was about to say something she might not like. His voice's eerie 'calm before the storm' quality combined all too well with the soothing, familiar nickname. "I need to suspend you. The board of trustees wanted you to take this assignment, and instead, I had to give it to a much less experienced and much more anonymous writer. They deserve to see you face repercussions for letting us down. So even though I do not like to do it, I am suspending you without pay for a month."
"A month?" Rory gasped. Even with her relative financial conservativism, she was going to feel the hurt of losing a full month's pay for a long time. Her mind immediately raced across the new budgeting that would have to be done and said a silent prayer of gratitude that she was not paying off student loans like so many people her age.
"Yes. A full month." He looked overwhelmed with guilt even as he said it, and Rory felt a warm, soft place on her heart ache like a bruise. Ex though he may be, Logan was still an amazing man who had loved her, and she was touched by how much it bothered him to treat her in this professional, critical way. She reached out to touch his arm.
"I made a mistake, Logan. You're doing the right thing."
He nodded. "I know, and I talked to Mari about it before I talked to you." She ignored the pang of jealousy that shot through her; no one ever talked to her about every aspect of their life in the intimate way partners had. "She is not up to the tension of revisiting your argument, but she wanted to do something for you because she correctly predicted why you were ignoring my calls. She feels guiltier than I do about this, and she rented you a house at the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a couple weeks."
He reached into his suit and pulled out a folded piece of paper, which she took numbly. Mari had rented her a house because she felt guilty? I do not deserve friends like the ones I have, she thought, unfolding the paper. A photograph of a little beach house, complete with sand and stilts, seemed to look back at her.
"I can't accept this gift. Especially not when I just let you down so tremendously."
"It's not from me. I'm furious with you, even though you're an old friend. But it's from Mari, and I will do anything for my wife right now to keep her from feeling unnecessary stress. You will take this gift, and you will go." There was a new ferocity in his tone now, a ferocity that could only be inspired by a perceived threat to his wife, not his business. Rory instantly recognized a fight she could not win; if he had to kidnap her and drag her down South himself, he would make sure she went where his wife wanted her to go. Love made people do crazy things.
"Yes, I will."
"Thank you. Lorelai Leigh Gilmore, I officially suspend you, beginning tomorrow and ending in thirty days," he said, smacking his fist against the wooden arm of his chair and smiling a relieved smile to have it over.
Rory could not quite manage a smile; she just nodded and rose slowly to leave, clutching the brochure about her rental home as if it were a death sentence.
X
Besides a text to her still-estranged mother that said "Does Paul Anka want to spend a month at the beach?", there was little that Rory said to anyone about the whole affair before she loaded up her Prius and started the drive to North Carolina. She had never spent much time below the Mason-Dixon line, and the idea of spending a whole month in the off-season Carolinas with locals and no job sounded horrible. She adjusted her sunglasses, cut up "Barbie Girl" by Aqua (the song she just couldn't make herself change), and tried to imagine this trip as a lovely vacation. But even her fertile imagination couldn't quite manage that. As she crossed the bridge onto the Outer Banks, she suppressed a chuckle at a sign that said "Beach Stuffies for Sale, Next Right." She was not sure what "stuffies" were, but she was pretty sure she was not going to need any, judging by the temperature meter on her dashboard that boasted a charming 49 degrees.
She wondered if this is what people in novels were talking about when they talked about hitting some sort of emotional low; she did not really feel sad, but she felt like she should. She was suspended without pay, exiled from her home state, and without even her sibling-dog, Paul Anka, to keep her company. It was a perfect beginning for a novel about self-growth and self-discovery and all that jazz. With that thought in mind, she realized that she didn't have much interest in those things. She really just wanted to go back to Huntzberger morning breakfast and too-frequent phone calls with her mother, and it would be at least a month before she returned to those routines, maybe longer.
If that had not been enough, she was having the weirdest feeling that she didn't truly have a life; what woman about to meet her thirties could pack up and leave for a month without any obligations or ties to stop her from doing so? She could not think of any of her friends who would be able to do such a thing. They had jobs beyond their jobs, but she didn't. She had no significant other, no children, no pet, and no volunteer work she had dedicated her heart and time to.
The idea that she was perhaps a pathetic person was too upsetting for her to dwell on, so she cut up the music and drove on until she turned onto Old Beach Road and found the 911 address she was looking for. The driveway was gravel and sand, hardly practical, and the little house somehow looked smaller than it had in the photograph. Some of the paint was peeling, and one shutter hung crooked, but it was beautiful. She got out of her car, just her purse in hand, and walked towards the stairs. But the stilts caught her eye, and she walked over to them. The stilts were carved with memoirs, some up so high that she could imagine tall men standing on tiptoes just to reach. Great week here! Love you guys. Summer 2009…. Chris&Molly. 6/12/04… Baby's first beach trip! Momma… Each little carving boasted some story, however small, and she felt her throat constrict for reasons she couldn't understand. It had all probably started so innocently, just a person or two carving their names into the wood, but once it had caught on, it seemed to spiral out of control until even the most mild-mannered, non-graffitist would have joined in the tradition upon seeing these works of art. Rory tried to imagine what she could put on the stilts after a month in this house; would anything sweet and sentimental happen, or would she simply have the words "Rory was here" to carve in?
Even after unloading her bags into the house, she felt no more cheerful. The inside was clean and bright, and the view of the rolling ocean waves and soft sands was amazing, even in the chilly autumn weather. Yet she was frowning and curling her feet up on the couch and thinking, What do I do now? And truly she had no idea. She cut on the TV. You've Got Mail was on a network channel, halfway through, and she managed a smile. This movie had always made her happy; Meg Ryan's character was sincere, genuine, relatable, and she ultimately found love, even during life's worst knocks. Plus it talked about books a great deal. What was not to love? Rory let herself get lost in the familiar story of AIM and bouquets of freshly sharpened pencils. When Tom Hanks emotionally delivered the line "Hey, how about... oh, how about some coffee or, you know, drinks or dinner or a movie... for as long as we both shall live?", she started to cry softly, touched as always by the well-acted modern love confession, just in time to hear a knock on the door.
It was common for house owners to come by and meet their renters, particularly renters who were settling in for a whole month. She put her feet down on the carpet, wiggling her toes and stretched. Then she glanced over at the mirror hanging on the wall and wiped her cheeks and eyes quickly. Her eyes were a little red rimmed, but her hair was straight and she didn't look totally pathetic. She strolled to the front door and pulled it open, forgetting as always to peep through the peephole.
And just like that, she felt the blood seem to rush out of her head, and she felt dizzy. There stood Tristan DuGrey. He was wearing a grey sweater, khakis, and a shocked expression. Her eyes darted to the pinned up sleeve where an arm had once been, and then back to his face, to the surprise emerging from and reflected in his eyes.
"Rory, what are you doing here?"
"Tristan?"
Their words tumbled out at the same time, and they both laughed awkwardly. Why was he here? She shuffled her bare feet on the door mat, preparing to think, but the answer came to her instantly. Mari. Of course, Mari had done this on purpose. Perhaps this was a property owned by the DuGreys, perhaps she had somehow arranged for him to simply be here, but whatever this was, it was not a coincidence. It was the diabolical plan of a pregnant society wife who had obviously watched Fiddler on the Roof and Millionaire Matchmaker too many times. Rory lifted a hand to her forehead, unable to believe the level of meddling she was now forced to deal with. It gave her a good excuse to avoid thinking about the last time they had met, though.
"I can't believe this," she muttered, and he looked at her blankly, still stonewalled by his surprise. She cleared her throat and tried to explain, the words rambling out of their own accord, "I wrote a book, with collections from my interviews from overseas, and it got published, and my best friend, Marianna Huntzberger, of the Huntzbergers, read it, and there was a part about you, and she got this crazy idea that we were like characters from some made-for-TV movie who were going to end up together, and she rented me this beach house for the month, and I came down here, but it was obviously a matchmaking attempt on her part, and I am so sorry."
He stared at her still, for a good thirty seconds, and then he started to laugh, a strangely booming laugh, that confused Rory immensely. "Does she read a lot of Nicholas Sparks?" He managed, still chuckling.
"She… I… she… she might…" Rory stammered out, confused by the laughter. Tristan continued to laugh, putting up on broad hand on the side of the doorway to support himself. Rory watched him draw in some deep breaths to stop the laughing and finally it was his turn to explain.
"He bases a lot of his books in this part of North Carolina, and we sometimes get people coming down here thinking it is this amazing romantic place because of that. I just never thought that anyone would be trying to rope me into one of his silly plots," Tristan grinned, a crooked smirk-like grin that made Rory's breath catch for a just a second before she reminded herself that there was no romance here and that this was not a fairy tale.
"You're not… I mean, at least, I'm not trying to rope you into one…" Rory did not understand how Mari could have done this to her, but she was definitely going to kill her for it, kill her and then marry her husband and gloatingly pretend that Logan had always loved her best anyway. That would show the meddling bitch who should be messed with and who shouldn't be.
"Well then, I guess I'll just say what I came to say…" He said, eyes twinkling. "Hi, I'm Tristan DuGrey, and I'm one of the owners of this property. I manage all of the DuGrey properties here, and if you have any problems, you can call me any time, and I would be happy to help you."
Now she laughed. "I'm Lorelai Gilmore, but please, call me Rory. I'll be here for a month," she extended her hand theatrically, and he accepted it. The sight of him shaking her hand with the only one he had rattled her a little, and she felt ashamed of herself. What kind of person was she that she was finding it hard not to stare?
"It's nice to meet you, Rory. What brings you to the Outer Banks?" Still the twinkle in those eyes.
"A month's vacation, paid for by a gracious friend."
"How wonderful. Well, I hope that if you will be here for a whole month, in the off-season, you have plans already made. Most of the tourist places are not open this time of year," he replied, still acting the role of welcoming, professional manager. She frowned at his words, though. It sounded like she was indeed going to have a very hard time occupying herself this month. He must have noticed the hesitation on her face because he dropped the professional charade. "No? Hey, Rory, that's okay. I'm stuck down here anyway, managing the properties, and I'd be happy to have you spend some time with me. It can get kinda lonely in the off-season."
He did not seem awkward at all, still surprised that she was here, but not awkward. She wondered if he did not remember the strange and intimate way they had spoken so many months ago in the Middle East; perhaps he had been on painkillers and could not remember, or worse, perhaps she had simply blown the whole thing out of proportion in her mind. That idea was unpalatable.
"Won't it be awkward?" She finally asked, voice a little weak. Suddenly, the twinkle left his eyes, and they hardened to steely blue.
"No. We're old friends, basically, and there is nothing between us that could be awkward," he replied. His voice had changed just like his eyes, from congenial to clipped and final. She looked straight at him and again wondered what he was thinking about that last meeting. Whatever he was thinking, it was clear he did not want to talk about it with her.
She managed a smile. "If there's no awkwardness, then I'm in. We'll have to get together some."
He nodded but uncomfortable silence had already settled in on them. The chilly breeze kicked up and his empty sleeve flapped against his body a little; she shuddered from both the physical cold and the sudden chill between them. She waited him out though, waiting for the rigidity in his body to soften and the twinkle to return. Finally, slowly, it did.
"How about tonight? I'm getting together with some friends, and you would be welcome. After all, if we're going to be stuck in a romance novel together, we might as well play along," he even chuckled.
"That sounds nice. I'd be happy to come along."
"I'll come pick you up at six. See you then, Rory."
When she shut the door behind him, she leaned against it and closed her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest like a teenager who had just been asked to homecoming, but she sensed that this was not the same sort of awkward invitation at all. There was too much unspoken, too much being thought. It had none of the ease of old friends, and she suddenly very much wished she had declined his offer. Likely, he had only even asked her out of pity that she was trapped in the offseason Outer Banks with no plans.
Damn Mari. Damn her to hell. Rory did not need her life to get this complicated. She did not need to be leaned against a door, heart pounding, thinking about Tristan DuGrey. She was nearly thirty, damn it; it was time to leave behind sweaty palms and the burning question of "Could this be my fairy tale?" that every woman secretly has.
"I am going to kill everyone." She said out loud, shaking her head. "At least then my patheticosity could be peaceful."
AN: And you thought this story was abandoned. But no, really, I am sorry for the rather lengthy delay in writing the second chapter. I stay busy, and I do not always stay inspired. With that said, however, I already know EXACTLY what I want do with the next chapter of this one, so it should be up much, much, much faster than this one. Please let me know what you're thinking, what you do like, what you don't like. I value your feedback!