Disclaimer: I don't own Gilmore Girls. And I borrowed my story title and chapter titles from a Keith Urban song.
Summary: 6.22, picks up after Luke and Lorelai's big fight. She walks away, but doesn't get too far.
A/N: Thanks for the reviews.
A/N: Extra special thanks to gilmore77 for the beta read.
Chapter 7: Turn These Tempers into Trust
"Hey, doc, can you please tell him that I am allowed to have coffee while I'm pregnant!" Lorelai demanded as the doctor walked back into the exam room that she and Luke were sitting in.
Lorelai had gone to Luke's for lunch, and was upset when he refused her coffee. She hadn't made a scene at the diner, not wanting to alert the townspeople; but as soon as they'd gotten in the car she'd started nagging him. He'd managed to change the subject and had successfully kept her distracted from the coffee topic since they'd gotten to the doctor's office. The doctor had come in and talked to them, Lorelai had had some blood drawn, and left them waiting for the "official" results. As soon as they were left alone in the exam room, Lorelai had started up again about the coffee.
"Well, the results are in, and congratulations, you're pregnant." Dr. Evans had been Lorelai's doctor for years, and was used to her impatience.
"Great, thanks. We kinda already knew that, but confirmation's good. Now, about the coffee," Lorelai smiled hopefully at him.
"I'm not going to have you getting my kid addicted to caffeine before it's even born," Luke interjected.
"Do you honestly expect me to go nine months without coffee?"
"It's not good for you," Luke said. "And it wouldn't hurt you to just give it up all together." He turned toward the doctor. "Can you just settle this?"
"Alright you two, calm down," he chuckled at little as Lorelai stuck her tongue out at Luke before quickly turning to smile at him. "Lorelai, I know you need coffee like air, but you're going to have to cut back. Too much caffeine isn't good for the baby."
Luke smirked at her and she swatted him on the arm.
"But," the doctor continued. "You don't have to cut it out completely. I am surprised though, that you want it at all. Most women can't even stand the smell of it during these early stages of pregnancy."
"Well, doc, with the morning sickness and everything, I haven't been able to stomach it in the morning, but by early afternoon, that caffeine craving is too strong. I've just been steering clear of it early in the morning. So far, the morning sickness has actually kept to the mornings."
"Well, that's good."
"You said she had to cut back," Luke brought up. "For her, cutting back would be drinking only 8 cups a day instead of 12. Isn't that still way too much?"
"Yes," Dr. Evans replied as Lorelai's swatted Luke again.
"You're trying to kill me aren't you?" Lorelai asked Luke.
"No, I'm trying to prolong your life. And seriously, it's for the baby. I don't want anything to go wrong." He kept his tone soothing and ran his hand along her arm.
"Lorelai," the doctor said, "I know this will be hard for you, but try to cut back to 3 cups a day for the next few days, then go down to 2. I wouldn't be surprised if you started getting headaches because your body's so used to the caffeine. But after a week or so, the 2 cups a day should be fine."
"Ha! I win!" Lorelai threw her arms in the air in triumph.
"How do you win?" Luke asked. "You'll only be drinking like 1/10th the amount you normally do."
"Yeah," she shrugged. "But you weren't going to let me have any. So this is a win for me." She smirked deviously at him, and he just shook his head.
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That night, the phone rang just as Luke walked in the door, having left Caesar to close up the diner. Lorelai was lounging on the couch watching a movie.
"Hey, babe," she called from the couch when she heard him close the door.
"Hey," he returned as he dropped his keys on the table. The phone continued to ring, and he could tell she wasn't about to move. "I'll get it," he walked into the kitchen and grabbed the phone from the counter.
"Hello," he said gruffly into the receiver.
"Luke, hey, I called the diner but Caesar said that you'd left early, and he gave me this number."
"Oh, Anna, hi. What's going on? Is April ok?"
"Luke, April's fine. It's just, I've got a favor to ask. I just got a call about my mother, she lives in New Mexico, and I've got to get out there right away. My flight leaves Friday morning. But, Friday is April's last day of school, and she really doesn't want to miss it." Luke listened as Anna took a deep breath and let it out in a heavy sigh. "Is there any way she can stay with you? It'll probably just be for the weekend. April actually suggested this, and I'm thinking this way, she won't have to miss her last day, and I won't have to drag her around while I'm dealing with whatever's going on with my mom."
"Um, yeah. It should be ok. Hang on." He moved the phone away from his mouth. Lorelai had wandered into the kitchen and gotten herself a glass of water. She paused as he turned to her. "Hey, would it be ok if April stayed with us for a few days? Anna's gotta go out of town."
"Yeah, sure," she smiled. "You know, I think Rory's staying at school this weekend, since she's taking summer classes to catch up. April could stay in Rory's room."
"Luke, wait, no." Anna spoke up to get his attention. "Hey! No. I was asking if she could stay with you, not with your girlfriend," she said harshly.
"ANNA STOP!" Luke yelled into the phone. He was sick of Anna trying to control everything, and he figured now was the perfect time to straighten things out. "Look, she's not just my girlfriend, we're getting married. Lorelai is part of my life, and I'm part of April's life, so that means that you had better get used to the fact that Lorelai's gonna be around!"
Suddenly the line went dead. The annoying beeping sound coming through the phone signaled the fact that Anna was no longer listening to Luke's rant.
"She hung up on me," Luke said in surprise as he turned to Lorelai. Luke held the phone in his hand for a moment, before clicking the button to hang it up.
"She can't keep doing this," Luke said to Lorelai as he turned the phone on again, and started furiously punching the buttons. "We've got to figure this out, and we've got to do it now. I can't keep playing these games with her." Lorelai said nothing, only nodded her head and rubbed his back soothingly. After a second, he set the phone back down. "It's not even ringing, I think she unplugged the phone."
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Suddenly the line went dead.
Anna looked at the phone in her hand in surprise. Luke had been in the middle of a rant, she didn't really think he'd hang up before he got his point across.
"What is your problem, Mother?"
Anna turned around to see April holding the unplugged phone cord in her hands.
"April, I thought you were upstairs." Anna really didn't know what else to say. She knew that April had heard her talking to Luke, and, with how loud Luke had been yelling, April had probably heard all Luke had said too.
"You said you were going to call Dad and ask if I could stay with him while you're out of town." The usually passive girl spoke with a bitterness in her voice that Anna was not accustomed to.
"Hey, young lady. Watch the tone!" April was pissed, and Anna was desperate to take control of this situation.
"I thought you were ok with me staying with Dad! You said it would be ok." Standing with her hands on her hips, April stared down her mother, holding her gaze firmly, determined not to back down.
"I did," Anna said through clenched teeth. "I said you could stay with Luke, not with his girlfriend."
"Mom, Lorelai is not just his girlfriend. They're getting married."
"April-"
"No, stop," April said forcefully. "You kept me away from him for years, for 12 years! You kept me from knowing my father, you kept him from knowing me. And that's just not fair. Now, you claim you had your reasons, ok, whatever. But I went looking for him, and I found him. And whatever reasons you claim you had for not ever even telling Dad that I existed, well, I'm pretty sure he's proved you wrong on that. He is a good man. He's a great father. He WANTS to be a part of my life, and I want him to be. Why can't you let me have that?" April had worked herself up so much with her rant that she was pacing across the floor. She stopped suddenly and turned to her mother, waiting for an answer.
Anna was shocked. April had never talked to her like that. Never in 13 years had her daughter yelled at her and questioned her decisions like she just had. She didn't know what to say. She didn't have an answer to April's question, at least, not a reasonable one. She was jealous. Things had been just fine for so long. They had a great life, just the two of them. Yes, 13 years ago, Anna had kept April's existence from Luke because she honestly believed that he wouldn't want anything to do with a child. But now, as April had pointed out, Luke did want to be in his daughter's life, and that should be a good thing.
"You know, for a while, I thought he was ashamed of me," April said softly. She continued on, her voice growing in confidence as she explained, "I kept hearing people in the diner whispering about Lorelai. Whispering about Dad's life outside of me. At first, I thought that maybe Dad had told Lorelai about me, and she just didn't want to know me. Then I thought that maybe he was embarrassed by me. I kept wondering…" April was near tears, and her voice broke a little, but she held her mother's gaze. "He said he wanted to be a part of my life, but I didn't understand why he was keeping me out of this important part of his life. But it was you," her voice was barely a whisper. "It was your fault."
"Oh, so he blamed this on me, is that it? You're standing here crying over a man you barely even know, April this is crazy!" Anna knew that there was substance to April's accusations, but she couldn't give in.
"No, Mom. I'm not crying over some man. He's my father! And he didn't blame you. I asked him about it, and he blamed himself. But I just heard you! I heard you tell him you didn't want me staying with him if it meant staying with Lorelai. Why does that matter?"
"I don't want you spending so much time with some strange woman."
"Oh my god! MOM! Lorelai is a part of Dad's life. An important part. They're getting married, she's going to be my step-mother! She's in Dad's life and that means she's in my life too! WHY is that such a big deal?"
Again, Anna didn't know how to answer. Before April had unplugged the phone, Luke had said basically the same thing. It was unnerving, and she almost wondered if they had planned this. But she knew that they were both right. If Luke married this woman, she would become April's stepmother. As Luke was becoming more of a permanent fixture in April's life, so would Lorelai. Anna couldn't decide which bothered her more, the fact that April was already so attached to Luke, or knowing that she would soon become just as attached to Lorelai. She didn't let her mind go there, she wasn't a jealous person, she knew that she would never be the only important person in April's life. But she had been for so long, and she feared that this infringement on their lives would somehow lessen her importance to her daughter.
April stood there, waiting for an answer. Anna could see that this was important to her. Luke had become important to April, and there was nothing she could do about that now. Fighting it was doing no good. Fighting it was the reason why April was standing there looking at her with tears streaming down her face. She was the reason for those tears. And she had to do something to fix it.
Her cell phone on the counter started ringing.
"Mom, we're not done here."
"I know, just hang on." April glared at her as she went to answer it, but Anna just held up her hand to stop April from saying anything else.
"Hello?" It was the travel agent who had booked her the flight to New Mexico. "Yes. Oh really? Wow, that's early. Well, I guess if that's the only way. Ok then. Thanks for letting me know."
April stood there listening to her mother's end of the conversation. Anna hung up the phone and turned toward her daughter, letting out a heavy sigh.
"Look, that was about the flight. The time changed, and it leaves at 6:30 in the morning now instead of 10. I won't be able to drop you off at school before I go."
"Am I staying with Dad or what?"
Shaking her head, Anna picked her cell phone back up, and dialed the number that Caesar had given her earlier.
To be continued…
A/N: I hope you liked it. Please review. I'd really like to know what you think of it. Is it good, bad, crappy? I just want to know.