A/N: Well folks, here's chapter 2: hope everybody likes it! For this chapter I thought I should explore some of the issues between Rory and Christopher, which I never felt were addressed well on the show. That being said, this is of course my interpretation of their relationship. Feel free to disagree or agree at will. In addition, I must confess I believe that I borrowed the idea of Rory and Lorelei waiting at a truck stop for Christopher from someone else. I can't for the life of me remember where, and I did add more details and a different context than I remember from the original source, but I thought I should still give credit where credit is due.
To halfadash: in response to your review, I believe you are mistaken. Custody can be awarded to either parent, regardless of whether the parents were ever married. Commonly, mothers do get more of the benefit of the doubt in custody cases, but it is by no means written in stone. And if someone had full custody of a child (be it grandparent, legal guardian, or parent) and they die, they may leave that custody to another party. The non-custodial parent may then challenge custody, but again, no guarantee that they'll win. I did look that part of the legal proceedings up, but again, the procedure may be completely unrealistic as portrayed in the last chapter.
One more thing, and then I'll let you all read the chapter: I am going out of town this weekend, and thus the everyday updates will slow until Monday when I get back to work. (I answer phones, leaves me plenty of time to get chapters done during the lulls).
Disclaimer: I don't own this, or Rory never would have said No.
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We're staying at Logan's apartment in the city for now. My classes have finished and my exams have either been taken or my professors know the situation and are giving me extensions, so I don't really have to be in New Haven anyway. My mother wanted me to come and stay with her, but with Gigi I thought it would be easier just to stay with Logan—after all, we're all going to be living with each other now, we may as well get used to it sooner rather than later.
While Logan puts Gigi to bed in his guest room, I sit on the couch and mentally prepare myself for the discussion we're going to have. I've decided that I need for Logan's and my plans to be firm. I need at least that part of my life to be as steady as possible for now, because I don't think I can take one more uncertainty at this point.
Logan comes into the living room and sits on the couch, taking one look at me and pulling me into his embrace.
"Logan…we need to…"
"Just a minute, Ace. Just take a second and slow down, alright?"
"Slow down you die." Logan chuckles at the reference to one of our first meetings.
"Well, you've got to in this particular case, Rory. I'm worried about you."
"I know you are, but I don't know how else to handle this, Logan." He rubs my back in slow circles and kisses my forehead. I can feel myself relaxing slowly for the first time since I heard the news.
"Tell me what you're thinking." The command was quiet, and I knew it was coming. Over the past few months, when Logan was stuck in London and we were doing the long-distance thing, he and I really worked on the communication part of our relationship.
Over the phone, there's no way you can read body language or distract someone with kisses, so we were pretty much forced to figure out how to talk to each other. We'd always been good at the banter, but the heavy stuff neither of us had had much experience with. Well, we've got experience now—more experience than I thought either of us would ever need.
"I'm scared I'm not going to be able to do this."
"You will be. You're fantastic with her, you know."
"You're fantastic with her."
"I have no experience with kids. My childhood consisted of an ever-revolving door of nannies, each with a completely different set of rules and systems—I have no idea what stability as a child is supposed to look like."
"Doesn't matter. She adores you."
"Yeah, but will she still like me when she's 14 and I don't know how to impress her?" And here it is: what I'm really petrified of. That he won't want to stick around long enough to see her turn 14. That he didn't sign on for a girl who's got a little sister as baggage. He feels me tensing up and hugs me a little tighter to his chest. "Tell me what you're thinking, Rory. We've gotten so good at this—don't shut me out now."
"Are you still planning on doing that—being here when she's 14?" My voice is quiet and stressed sounding, even to my ears.
"What? Of course I plan on still being here! Rory, what's wrong?" He pulls me away from his collarbone, where I've been hiding my face, and looks at me straight on.
"I just, well, you didn't sign up for this. Me, maybe, but not me and a kid. Not me and crazy family issues that are compounded for all eternity by the death of the guy holding all the cards. Not me and the mess I've become here—"
"Rory, stop. Look at me." His quiet voice stops my rambling and forces me to look into his eyes. His warm, brown, caring eyes. His eyes that I've looked into every time I see him since we started dating, and they haven't changed a bit.
"Yeah?" My voice is still quiet, but it sounds less like I'm going to burst into tears, so there's improvement, I guess.
"I signed up for you. All of you. Little sisters, crazy families, the biggest mess you could possible imagine and all. I am not going anywhere. I am here for as long as you'll have me. I love you. I love you enough to stand by you when your dad dies, I love you enough to be there when you have to deal with your little sister, I love you enough to deal with you nutty family. So please stop stressing about this. I am here to help." His face got the same look on it that he had when he was trying to get me to give him a second chance after the Thanksgiving Fiasco—it has a quality of desperation and certainty that I've come to associate with Logan telling me the absolute truth.
"Thank you." My simple reply is really all I can think to say, but he doesn't seem disappointed. Instead, he pulls me back to his chest and I resume my position on his collarbone. He's still rubbing those comforting circles on my back and I'm about to fall asleep when he asks me a question.
"Tell me about your dad."
"What? Why?" I'm confused not just at the subject change but also at the question itself. No one's ever asked me to tell them about him—most people get the impression it is not a subject I want to talk about and stay away from the topic. Even Logan hasn't ever pushed before—not even at the hospital when he sat with me in the hallway with Gigi asleep on my lap.
"Because I think it'll help you to talk about him, at least a little. So tell me about him."
"What do you want to know?"
"What's your earliest memory of him, what was he like, how was he when you were growing up, what was his favorite food—I don't know, anything." I sigh and close my eyes. Logan's right, I've been thinking about all of that since I got the news and I've been practically itching to talk to someone. Leave it to Logan to volunteer for something I hadn't yet articulated I wanted.
"My earliest memory of him is when I was about 5—he came to take my mom out for her birthday. She was turning 21 and he called and said he wanted to take her out, and she convinced him to spend the day with us too. He brought me a doll and we went on a picnic."
"Sounds fun, Ace."
"It was. My mom had gotten some new fabric for the occasion and my new dress matched her skirt. It had polka dots on it. And my dad showed up on his motorcycle, but my mom wouldn't let me ride it." I frowned. "He showed up late—later I think than even my mom thought he'd be. I remember staring out the window all morning—I didn't want to miss him." Logan makes a comforting noise. "He eventually showed up, but it was late-afternoon, I think, and I had skipped lunch because he's said he wanted to go on a picnic with us."
"But he came in the end, right?"
"Yeah, and we had fun. Then I stayed with Mia—"
"That's the owner of the Inn, right? The one whose wedding you went to?"
"Yeah. Sometimes she would baby sit me, when my mom really needed a break. And He left with my mom on his motorcycle—I remember waving at them."
"Do you know if she had a good time?"
"I don't know the details, but I'm pretty sure not. She came back crying not even two hours later."
"Oh." Logan's tone lets me know he's trying hard not to bring up bad memories—he wants me to remember good things.
"All my childhood memories were like that. He'd promise something and then show up late or not at all, and Mom was usually left crying. When I got older I realized what they were doing every time he came into town."
"Which was?" Logan's voice has this quality to it, one I can't quite name but have come to associate with him wanting to know something he's afraid will hurt someone else. He had the same tone when he spoke to Honor about their parents and her wedding when she was in the planning stages. Like the curiosity was killing him but he didn't want to hurt her by making her relive the whole argument.
"They were false starting at relationships. Every time he'd breeze back into town, my mom would let him in. I suppose she'd probably sleep with him, he'd propose, she'd say no, and then he would leave in a huff, never to be heard from again. Or at least until he got the urge to try his hand at "happy family" again."
My voice was matter-of-fact and dull sounding, but even I knew that it was really just hiding bitterness that threatened to overwhelm me.
"I'm sorry." Logan's voice has taken on this helpless tone—like he's opened a can of worms he didn't know existed.
"Don't be. It's not your fault. Did you know once when I was eight he wanted Mom and me to meet him at a truck stop outside of Hartford? He was making one of his bi-annual pilgrimages to the Hayden Household and he wanted to see us. Mom said no at first, but I made her call him back and tell him yes, because I really wanted to see him. It was maybe August, and I hadn't seen him since my birthday the year before."
"Yeah?"
"Yeah. So Mom and I went out there and he never showed. We waited three hours at this grimy, concrete building with God only knows what kind of sketchy clientele. Mom got hit on, repeatedly, but she didn't want to leave until I said we could. I sat on her lap in the parking lot, leaning up against this gross building on the ground and we waited until the sun went down."
"What did he say?"
"When he called a week later he said he'd gotten stuck in traffic. I think that was when I started taking everything he said with a healthy dose of salt."
"I hate that that happened to you." Logan's voice is pained and I can actually feel him muscles clinching a little at the thought of someone leaving me and my mom, alone and disappointed, at a truck stop for three hours.
"I know you do. But it wasn't all bad."
"No?"
"No. When I was in high school Grandma asked me to do the debutante ball with the DAR—he came to that. And he convinced Dean to wear a tux for the whole thing. He didn't stay for very long, but he bought me my dictionary on that visit, and we had fun."
"What was so fun about that?" Logan seems to think the concept of me enjoying a debutante ball is crazy—and to be honest, most of the time he'd be right.
"Well, my Dad was always just as witty as my Mom—I'm pretty sure that's what first attracted her to him. They've always been friends; they were kind of like you and Colin. I've seen pictures of them as teenagers, before I was born, and they were really close. They always seemed to be in the middle of some kind of elaborate fantasy and escape drama—there are literally hundreds of stories my Mom could tell you about them wearing something completely inappropriate and sneaking out of some function or another."
"Yeah, I know they type." I can feel him grinning cheekily, even though I can't see him from my position lying on top of him. "But why would they have fun at a cotillion?"
"The mocking, of course. Think of the mocking opportunities!" My giggly outburst interjected some levity into the admittedly heavy conversation.
"Ah, yes. The mocking—a pre-requisite to any event in which a Gilmore Girl is in attendance," Logan chuckles.
"Yeah. And Mom and Dad both were in fine form that night-trust me. I'm pretty sure Dean was frightened at the speed we were all bantering back and forth." I feel Logan tense a little at the mention of my ex-boyfriend, but I guess he recognizes that now is not the time to go all He-man on me, and I feel the tension dissipate again.
"Well, I guess it's not for the weak of heart."
"No. Plus there was the dictionary."
"Ah, the dictionary. Would this be the ridiculously huge dictionary that you keep in your room as if to worship it?"
"Yes. That would be the one. It was the first thing I really remember him buying that I had asked for specifically. He went with me once before to the bookstore, but his credit card was declined. He brought it on his next trip—I remember being really excited that he had remembered the exact one I wanted. Logan squeezes my shoulders again and we lapse into a comfortable silence together.
"How old were you when Gigi was born? You must have been, what? A junior?"
"I was a senior. I remember being so angry with him—angrier than I'd ever been before. And disappointed."
"Why?"
"He found out Gigi was going to be born at Sookie's wedding—right after he'd gotten together with Mom and promised me he was in for good this time. He left right away, before the ceremony, even, and Mom was crushed. I don't think she'd let herself get that attached to one of his promises in a long time."
"What about you? Were you crushed too?"
"A little, but he was literally in the middle of telling me about it when his phone rang and he found out about Gigi. I didn't have time to really get attached to the idea. What I was really upset about was his excuse for leaving."
"What was that?"
"That he missed it the first time around and he didn't want to miss it again."
"Ouch, I'm sorry."
"Again, Logan, not your fault. Besides—as much as it hurt at the time, I mean I wasn't exactly done being a kid quite yet then, I understand him wanting to be there for Gigi."
"Was he? There for her? Do you know?"
"Well, Sherry really wanted to make an effort to include me, and bizarrely Mom, in everything, so I was invited to the baby shower. Mom ended up being dragged in there as well when she went to drop me off in Boston, and I was there when Gigi was born."
"Really? Weren't you in school?"
"Yeah—this is actually a funny story. Sherry had scheduled a C-Section." I can feel Logan's incredulousness.
"She scheduled a C-section? They let you do that?"
"Yep, apparently. Anyway, she had it all scheduled and I was invited to that. But then she went into labor early." I pull back a little to look at Logan's face—this story is just too wacky to miss his reaction. "I was at the newspaper with Paris—she was having a melt-down over Jamie, her boyfriend at Princeton that she had before Asher—" He nods at the background info. "and I get a call on my cell from one of Sherry's friends. She's panicking, telling me that Sherry screwed up and no one can be there—they all have to work. My dad wasn't there yet, and the friend had to leave too. She wanted me to get to the hospital in Boston and be there. So I took a train into Boston, and then a bus to the hospital, and then when I got there I find out that all of Sherry's workaholic friends had ditched her at the hospital, and Sherry wanted me in the delivery room with her if Dad didn't make it."
"You? You who actually get queasy at the sight of blood? Who have to cover your eyes during the surgery scenes on Grey's Anatomy?"
"Yes me." I'm smiling at his joking, and I poke him gently in the side.
"So what did you do? Pass out in the delivery room? Did your Dad get there in time?"
"Well, first I panicked and called Mom—who left Friday Night Dinner to come and rescue me. When she showed up she kind of calmed Sherry down. She was freaking out and basically running an office out of her hospital room—getting me to run copies, and faxes, and making phone calls to re-arrange her schedule—it was a little crazy. Mom came in and made her stop acting like a business woman and start acting like she was having a baby."
"Did it work?"
"Well, yeah, but it sort of foreshadowed things to come, you know? She was freaking out about Dad not being there—he did get there, by the way, right as they were wheeling her into delivery—and Mom was standing there, having delivered me without any help from anyone, Dad included. It's just sort of surreal now, looking back, that Mom and I watched the woman who actually confessed to me when I first met her that she was considering getting artificially inseminated and doing it completely on her own need someone to hold her hand. She actually needed someone to tell her that scheduling everything from her baby's birth to whether Dad was going to actually do what he said he was going to do when he said he was going to do it wasn't possible. She really had a lot of trouble handling it."
"She lives in Paris now, right?"
"Yeah. She took off when Gigi was about fourteen months old. Apparently she got sick of Dad never really being there. I don't know what she was expecting. She had watched Dad with me—she saw how drive-by his methods of parenting were before she even got pregnant. I mean, through most of high school I had exactly one conversation a week with him, Wednesday mornings at 6:30, for twenty minutes. I hardly ever saw him, not even after he moved to Boston!" I bury my face in Logan's collarbone again, regret washing over me in waves.
He seems to understand, and he begins the comforting circles again on my back.
"Hey, hey, don't worry about it, alright? You don't have to be perfect. You're allowed to be angry at him."
"You know, when Sherry was pregnant with Gigi, Dad ambushed us at Grandma's once. Just barged in on Friday Night Dinner and started yelling at Mom for not letting me talk to him. I hadn't told her I'd been avoiding his calls and e-mails, so I ran into the foyer where they were arguing and yelled at him. I told him that he had hurt me for the last time and I didn't want to talk to him. I told him to go be somebody else's dad." I'm crying now and Logan is making nonsense noises into my ear, trying to clam me down from the sobbing I'm doing now.
"He knew you didn't mean it, Ace. He knew you loved him. I know he did."
"That's the thing, though, Logan. I'm not sure did."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean when I yelled at him, I wasn't just yelling irrationally. I really did want him to just leave me alone. And I know I didn't love him the same way I love Mom, or Grandma and Grandpa, or you, or Luke. I couldn't ever be sure that he would really come through, and I'm not sure how I felt about it. I mean, I said I love you back when he said it first, but until I was sitting in the hospital hallway looking at his door, I hadn't really thought about whether or not I really meant it."
"Do you think you did?" Logan's voice is careful, and he has a very strong grip on me, almost like he's afraid I'll get up and run away if I admit my feelings to him.
"I don't know. I never really reached a conclusion." My answer is quiet, and I'm more than a little ashamed that I can't decide whether I actually loved my own father. I snuggle deeper into his chest.
"It's ok, you know, either way." I nod my head, even though I don't quite believe him.
"You know, It's been a really long day and I think I just want to go to bed now, if that's alright." I peel myself away from him at his nod and stand up from the couch. "You coming?" I hold out my hand to him and he takes it. I'm leading us back to our room and he kisses my shoulder.
"Well, you certainly don't have to ask me twice," he chuckles slightly as he shuts the bedroom door, closing us in for an early night.