Disclaimer: It would be kinda cool if I owned anything, but I DON'T...
Summary: Rory Gilmore has been running her grandfather's publishing house for a year now. She is surprised when she gets a phone call by her mother's ex-boyfriend Luke who asks her a certain favor. Starting from there, her life starts to alter rapidly. AU
Thank you, LitLove, for inspiring this! And to my wonderful beta - Ara May, YOU ROCK!
A/N: That point I've been talking about, well, think it gets clearer in this chapter.
I always hope you enjoy.
Jess was staring at the picture hanging from the wall that lead the way to Richard Gilmore's former office. Rory's grandfather came to visit next to never, but she never let it become anyone else's office.
'That's her,' Matt stopped by Jess, holding a cup of coffee. 'Lorelai Gilmore,' he elaborated. 'There's something like a cult for her on the upper floors... It's like the family made missing her a religion or something. There's even a festival in her honor.'
'Huh?' Jess asked absentmindedly, his eyes never leaving the blue ones in the photo.
'You know, with snobby music and photographers, cocktails and stuff,' Matt explained readily, 'It's actually more of a PR campaign, I think.'
The woman in the photo was young. Thirty something. She was laughing, her chin resting in her palms. Her look was directed slightly to the side, she was looking at someone who was standing next to the photographer.
'She plays her mother's CDs. She locks her office and plays them, sometimes so loudly you can hear them even through the isolation glass. And she pours herself a drink, Bloody Mary, her favorite. And then she...'
'Matt?' Jess turned to face him abruptly, making the other man wince.
'Eh?' Matt blinked.
'Shut up.'
'Oh. Okay.'
'Come on, Stacy. Look, I know you're mad but... Fine, I deserve it, okay? Talk to me, don't talk to me, I just... Gah, I could really use someone with good taste to share those tickets with...'
Click of a door unlocking.
'Hey,' Rory straightened up.
A hand coming out behind the door, palm up. Rory put the tickets in the hand and it disappeared behind the door almost immediately. She waited for a moment, then another. Nothing happened.
'Stace?' Rory stepped from one foot to the other uneasily. Hanging in front of a locked door in a block of flats wasn't her favorite thing to do, especially on a Friday evening. 'Okay, then. Tonight, instead of watching Les Mis on their US tour with you, I'll just have to carry those Tiffanies away with me, back to my lonely apartment where...' Rory began deliberately slowly and her heart jumped up with hope as she heard a chain lock cling against the door frame.
A sulky, yoga pants and tank top clad Stacy appeared at the door, one hand stretched out, the other akimbo.
Rory couldn't hold her grin. She met Stacy's expectant, serious look.
'Here,' Rory handed her the jewellery box and kept Stacy's hand between hers for a brief moment. 'And I'm sorry.'
'How much do we have?' Stacy sighed with forced irritation, but Rory could tell her features had warmed up.
Loud music, coming from her office made him stop in his track on his way to the library. He had made it a habit of his to sneak into the Gilmore library after work time, when most of the employees had left. Her Highness was rarely working late in her office, so Olympus territory was usually clean at this hour.
Jess stopped and his gaze wandered round the room, going through the glass walls of her office to find her sitting on her beige leather swivel, hands resting on its armrests, eyes closed. There was a certain difference between a sleeping person and his boss right now. He couldn't pick it in a particular detail. Maybe it was the occasional flutter of her eyelids, or maybe it was at the corners of her mouth where a smile was slowly tugging its way up. Her finger pads were tapping a beat against the leather of the armrests.
I am done with my graceless heart, so tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart...
Florence and the Machine? Yup. Huh. Somehow it suited her. His hands stuck deeper in his pockets.
And given half the chance would I take any of it back...
Jess stood planted to the spot, both aware he was invading someone's personal space and finding himself unable to move away. The song changed.
I would like to leave this city, this old town don't smell too pretty. I can feel the warning signs running around my mind...
She sunk deeper in her chair, swiveling from side to side in time with the beat. He was nodding unconsciously, following the easy rhythm.
Another change of song. Guitars. Gentle rock.
I hung your picture on the wall...
The Goo Goos. His foot was tapping the floor, hands still in his pockets.
Cuz everything's wrong, but it's alright... Everything's wrong. Well, it's alright...
Her lips parted and she took a deep breath before letting it out slowly. Like something passing through her and then going away. And suddenly a picture of a seventeen year old girl with blue eyes and a black dress emerged in his mind.
I hung your picture on the wall, but that's all it is...
Jess frowned. He wasn't close enough to tell for sure, but her eyelids squeezed slightly and she bit her lip, as a person crying.
Jess shook his head and walked away, his visit to the library completely forgotten.
...
You know, I had a bus ride today. Some old woman with crazy blue hair sat on the seat next to me. How does this hair color even exist, eh? She also had those thick-lens dark-rimmed glasses on, ones that surely allowed her to see life on Mars, if any, perked behind the hump of her thin sharp nose. I can't really imagine what she looked like when she was younger, but now her features appeared so sharp, skin dry and wrinkled, that I thought she could maybe feature for a Hansel and Gretel movie, and surely not casting as Gretel. She smelled like some old-fashioned cologne, strong and sharp.
Looking at her made growing old look... natural, I guess. Or real. It looked like the normal thing to do - grow old and start looking like a dried fig. Jesus...
And right there, at that moment, I thought of you.
How I'll never know what you'll look like thirty years from now. How I'll never know if I'd still find you beautiful when your features sharpened and you dyed your hair with blue rinse...
Then I felt something over my hand. She was freaking holding my hand and she was smiling at me... Her smile was nice, tender in a way, it made her thin sharp nose look less humped. She looked at me, her look traced by pity. Her eyes were blue.
Right there, at this very moment, I thought I was gonna choke. And for a moment I did. Then it was over and I just stood there, holding the hand of an elderly hump-nosed lady with wrinkled skin that hung loose round her blue eyes.
...
'She from Stars Hollow?'
'Huh?'
Queen Bee coming to his cubicle past working time, that had to be fun.
'She is, isn't she?' Rory insisted, lifting the book up in the air. Aah, the book. His book. Jess' shoulders stiffened.
'Whatever,' he shook his head in a 'Yeah, and Santa may come down through the chimney' fashion and continued scribbling in the margins of a manuscript.
Rory narrowed her eyes and stepped closer into the cubicle, leaning over Jess' shoulder.
'King of sarcasm, Jess Mariano, fell in love with a small town girl. She loved you back?' she tried. 'Yes, she did!' she exclaimed as she saw the shift in his expression.
There was a soulmate even for anthropophobic loners like him, after all. Understanding women was rocket science.
'What do you know, someone really felt for you, after all,' her smile grew warmer and she leaned back against his desk so that she faced him, hands crossed before her chest expectantly. 'Come on, Jess, it's not the worst thing that could happen to a man,' she continued wisely.
'If you're so desperate to know, it wasn't me, it was a...' he paused and met her scrutinizing gaze.
'It was a friend,' he huffed frustratedly.
For once, can't you just drop it, Gilmore?
'Sure.' Rory grinned. 'And who did your friend fall for?'
'Believe me, you don't wanna know,' he scoffed.
'Oh, I know her, don't I?' Rory exclaimed, her thoughts rushing. She had been right. So right.
'She got blue eyes? Those blue motives that kept reappearing in the book, it's her, isn't it?' she tried, biting back a smile.
His jaw tightened. Her heart thumped faster. Oh, she was so gonna get to the bottom of this! But for this to happen, she had to change tactics.
'She was stunning, mesmerizing, even,' she teased, her voice turning sweet, dreamy, trying to get him to confide.
'She swept you off your feet,' she continued hypnotizingly, 'But you'd well rather die than admit it, cause admitting love is like pinning your heart on a dirty shirt pocket. Even though, somehow she knew... and she loved you back. My God, she really loved you back!'
Jess bit his lip with a stoic grimace and breathed out through his nose.
Rory watched him closely. She was getting close. Real close. It rose her adrenaline and she continued exasperatedly.
'She loved you but for some reason it didn't work and you were broken. And oh so stubborn. And proud. She left and you'd never admit just how much you missed her. Why didn't you call her? If you cared so much, why didn't you...'
'Drop it, Rory.'
'I just can't wrap my mind round...'
'It was Luke, okay?' he breathed out, jerking his head to the side so that brown met blue. 'The man in the book isn't me, it's Luke,' he repeated quietly.
And the girl he loved was your mom.
Rory's jaw felt stiff. Her eyes started to prick.
'You're right. I don't wanna know. Excuse me.'
'It's a story about a man...' Jess said quietly as he entered her office, some time later, '... a lonely man,' he added, his hand moving up to rub the back of his neck.
She was sitting in her swivel turned towards the window and Jess couldn't see her face.
'It's not a story about your mom,' he continued, his voice gentle, soothing.
'I never erased her voice from the answering machine,' Rory said, sounding a bit scratchy. 'I played it over and over, so... so that...' her voice wavered and she took a sharp breath.
'And we hold those stupid winter festivals,' she continued after a beat, 'With snowman contests and cocktails. But it's so not her. She would've mocked it, all the way through. But without her it's just... it's...' she trailed off and shook her head before she took another breath. 'I need to be alone. Please.'
He gave her a nod she couldn't see and hesitated for just a second before leaving the room.
'I met a girl.' Tristan said, keeping her hand from getting to the button line of his shirt and holding it in his. His eyes escaped hers, fixed over their holding hands.
Rory stepped back, but he kept her hand in his.
'I wanna date her.' He admitted even quieter.
Rory tried to sneak her hand out but his grip tightened round her fingers. 'And I'll miss you,' his voice was a bit scratchy.
Rory took a breath and let it out quickly. He lifted his head, his eyes seeking. She tried to force her lips into a smile but failed. Then she opened her mouth to say the words she had promised him for this moment when the time came, but, instead, heard herself say,
'Will you hold me?... Just for a while.'
Tristan gave her a gentle nod, leading her towards the bed, pulling her down with him. As they lay down, bed sinking under their weight, he drew her back against his chest and his hands laced with hers over her belly. They had been lying like this for a while when Rory whispered,
'I'm happy for you, Tris.'
Then she slipped out of his embrace, grabbed her purse and left this hotel room and his life.
Two days later, in a room full of important people with prestige university diplomas, an elderly man with grey tie was finishing his speech, surrounded by tense silence.
'The Board of Directors has come up with a decision... Welcome the new Managing Director of Literati Publishing, Mitchum Huntzberger!'
Rory swallowed drily and applauded along with the others, clasps ricocheting like slaps.
Song lyrics used: 'Shake It Out' by Florence and the Machine; 'Half the World Away' by Oasis; 'Two Days In February' by Goo Goo Dolls
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