Chapter 3: Knocked. Up?!

"That was a great ceremony... Aunt Lorelai," Jess Mariano tried out the new title as Luke helped him load his luggage into his car for a long drive back to Philly.

Lorelai picked up on the deference with a raised eyebrow. "How does that taste coming out of your mouth?"

"Like sweet honey," Jess drawled.

Lorelai smirked. "Good boy." Then, she pulled her step-nephew in for a hug. "Drive safe."

Jess hugged Rory goodbye, too. "Send me those first three chapters as soon as you can! I'd be happy to edit them for you," Jess nodded, pecking her on the cheek platonically.

The Gilmore girls waved goodbye and headed back into the house. Jess turned to face his uncle. "You up for a touchy-feely hug, or will we have to bawl to each other over the phone?"

Luke just smirked and gave a jerk of his head towards the road. "Walk with me."

Jess followed his uncle into the street, matching the older man step for step. They walked in the silence of the fall evening for a time until Luke spoke. "There's going to be a lot of changes in this family over the next several months..." he prefaced as delicately as he could.

"Oh my God, I knew it! Lorelai's pregnant!" Jess gasped.

Luke blinked. "No. But your cousin is."

Now Jess's jaw dropped. "April's pregnant?!"

"No..." Luke drew out slowly, slightly annoyed. "Your other cousin. She's knocked up."

Jess stared gobsmacked at his uncle. The silence along the street was deadly, finally shattered by -

"KNOCKED. UP?!" Jess bellowed in anger, each word punctuated and sharp, like a one-two punching jab to the face. Then, when the understanding that his stepcousin of only a few hours was with child had washed away, it was replaced by a new realization, one delivered with tingling and deadly calmness. "Berger King..."

Jess was a smart lad, Luke knew he would figure it out. But all the same, he tried to leave that information falsely ambiguous, before Jess did something drastic.

"Oh come on, Uncle Luke! She was always hanging around him even after Yale!" And Jess whipped out his phone and began Googling, dialing.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm calling the FBI! With a sexual predator on the loose..."

"Whoa, whoa, whoa! We are not registering Logan Huntzberger as a sex offender!"

"But aren't you mad?" Jess snapped at Luke. "Aren't you enraged after what he did to... to..."

"Yes, I am, as any father would be. But we have to think about Rory first! She's going to need all of us to get through this pregnancy and everything else that poor girl has on her plate! That means you. And April. All hands on deck! Understand? Support Rory, and that means holding off on murdering her baby daddy until we have more information! Am I clear?"

Jess sighed and put away his phone. He would do anything to make Rory happy, and even more to please the uncle he had looked up to as the only father he had ever known. "Crystal."

The two men hugged.


A few weeks later, Jess was in his home office, going over Rory's first bundle of chapters on a phone conference with her. He had annotated the hell out of the margins on her manuscript, and was going over them point by point. Most were praise, with only a criticism here or there.

"I like how the lessons at the end of each chapter really tie the anecdotes together! And if I may say, your aliases for the guilty are quite original. Emmett Woods... I presume that's old Dean?"

"Watch Legally Blonde; you'll get the reference."

"But... why have I been transformed into Shane M. Dodger?"

"Well, M. is for Mariano, Dodger is based on a character in the first book we shared..."

"Which was...?"

"Oliver Twist, remember? And Shane... was the name of that girl you ran around with to make me jealous."

Jess cringed at the memory. "Clever. All right. Shane M. Dodger it is! How's the baby?"

He could hear the smile in Rory's voice. "Making her presence known through cravings still."

"Fair enough. Get some rest, cousin. Love ya," and he said it as he would any member of his family.

"Bye, Jess. Thanks!"