A/N- Hey, guess what? There's Lane! I love Lane! I'm in a very musical mood today (like that's a big change from usual LOL) and so today Lane is my favorite GG character (after Jess, of course, because Jess never gets surpassed).
6. We Don't Work
"True perfection has to be imperfect
I know that that sounds foolish but it's true
The day has come and now you'll have to accept
The life inside your head we gave to you..."
-Oasis
Rory was amazed at how quickly Lane had whirled her across the threshold of the band's ramshackle apartment and ensconced her in one of Brian's therapeutic bean bag chairs. After the initial squeals of delight and exclamations of "thank god you're home!" had subsided, Lane settled into the other chair with a bag of marshmallows.
"So," she said, leaning in intently, "It's been all around town this morning. Babette said she saw you being carried into your house in the middle of the night by a someone tall, dark and from your past. Well, maybe not so tall, but the rest of it applies." After a break which was intended to allow Rory to enumerate, Lane sighed and said, "Do not leave me hanging like this, girl! I need details!"
"Jess found me and brought me home, that's about it," Rory said.
"Where were you? I mean, everybody's been looking for you, Kirk even organized a search party! But nobody could figure out where you'd gone after leaving your grandparent's house and what with the whole legal adult thing it wasn't really possible to call the police unless we suspected foul play and since you left Emily and Richard's voluntarily of your own free will, we didn't really have a leg to stand on and-"
"Lane! Breathe!"
The Korean girl gasped in a breath on Rory's command.
"To answer your question, I was in Hartford. I rented a room at this crappy little motel, spent most of my time just... wandering around. At the time, it seemed like a really good plan."
"Wow. I can't picture you just doing nothing. I mean, you're Rory Gilmore. You're always doing something," Lane said.
Rory shook her head. "I just don't know where my head's been these last few weeks. It feels like I've been living in this haze for months, and after I had this blowup with Logan the dream turned into a nightmare and I just ran for the hills. I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't face Mom, I was too proud to ask you for help, Paris had things of her own to worry about. It all seemed very reasonable at the time. It seems so stupid looking back, it's so embarrassing that I went and fell apart like that, but at the time..."
"At the time it made sense."
The two best friends fell into contemplative silence while they both took the time to digest Rory's sentiment. Then Lane, apparently having processed the information, got a more playful look in her eye and, leaning forward slightly, said, "So... Jess..."
"Jess." Rory nodded slowly.
"He just showed up?"
She shrugged. "That seems to be the extent of it. He found me in this stupid bar and drove me home."
Lane looked at her with an intent expression. "So half of Stars Hollow can be searching for two weeks, but Jess is in town one day and he just stumbles across you?"
Her tone spoke volumes, all of which Rory chose to ignore. "He always was good at getting inside my head," she said off-handedly.
Though she looked like she wanted to say more, Lane elected to let it be for now. Instead, she asked, "So, is it weird? Seeing him again?"
"It should be, shouldn't it?" Rory said. "It's not, though. It just makes sense that he should be here. An old friend, right?"
Lane snorted. "Oh please, Rory, let's be honest here! Jess isn't just an 'old friend'. The last time you saw him he was declaring passionate love for you and begging you to run away with him! An old friend is about the last thing I would call him. Do you think he still-?"
Rory shook her head violently. "No, Lane, don't go there. He doesn't still feel that way about me."
"How do you know that?"
"He seemed very... friends-ish... this morning."
"This morning?"
"We hung out at the bridge this morning. I told him about the yacht and he told me to go back to school and we just... talked. Hung out. Friend stuff."
Lane suppressed a grin. "Rory, that boy has been head over heels for you the entire time I've known him!"
"And it's been almost two years since I last saw him! Liking someone goes away, especially when you don't see them in years. That's how it works."
"You just keep telling yourself that," Lane said knowingly. At Rory's protesting expression, she continued, taking a more serious tone. "Look, I might not be as man-experienced as you, but my artist's soul gives me the right to say that I recognize Jess' type. He's not the kind of guy to give his heart away easily, and he's not the kind of guy to ever get it back once he's given it."
"Think what you want," Rory said shortly. "You don't know him as well as you'd like to think. I don't think anybody really knows Jess."
Lane made the wise decision not to say what she was thinking, which was something along the lines of 'But he wanted you to.' Instead, she asked, "So fine. Have it your way. Jess no longer has any feelings for you beyond, apparently, friendship. But what about you? And I want the real answer, not this evasive stuff you gave me after last time."
"Honestly?"
"Honestly."
"Honestly, I think that a part of me will always have feelings for Jess," Rory admitted quietly. "But it's not something that's ever going to happen. Not for us. We don't work in a relationship setting. It's better for us to just be friends. That works. That, we're really good at."
Lane nodded, showed support, and secretly thought that Cleopatra had nothing on her best friend. Denial had a whole new ruler. "Okay, in that case, I declare a moratorium on the Jess topic until such time as it blows up in your face, at which point I will be here and ready with Red Vines, Rocky Road, and a helpful ear..." Rory shot her a deadly look and Lane changed course quickly. "In the meantime, let's discuss the other men in your life."
"Not much to discuss, then. There are no men in my life."
"So Logan's really out of the picture?"
"Very out of the picture."
"You think for good?"
Rory shrugged. "I may someday pass him on the street and exchange a polite word with him, but other than that, this picture is varnished, framed, and hung, and there is no Logan in sight."
"And how okay are you with that?"
"I'm coming to terms," Rory said. "It was hard the first couple of days... mainly because I was very, very drunk. But I always knew Logan wasn't The One. We had fun, and I loved him, but it wasn't like I was hearing wedding bells or anything. Maybe we'd have gotten there, but maybe not. We'll never know, I guess."
"So, pretty typical break-up?"
"Pretty standard-issue, yes. Once I was sober, I ate mass quantities of cheese puffs and butter brickle ice cream in my motel room and watched a sappy movie on their basic cable and cried some and now I'm okay."
"Ah, the standard-issue female's cure-all."
"Yes. As always, very effective."
Lane smiled. "I bet Lorelai's pleased."
Rory's face fell.
"Lorelai's... not pleased?" Lane asked in confusion.
Rory shrugged. "I haven't worked up the guts to face her yet. She was gone when I woke up this morning and I've been out of the house all day since."
"Oh." Lane looked nervous. "That's probably... probably good. Work up to her, right?"
"I just don't know what to say to her," Rory explained.
Sensing that this was a delicate topic, Lane steered away from it quickly with an anecdote about the band and the antics of Gil's absurd wife and her Fiona Apple impersonations.
Later that afternoon, Luke arrived at the Crap Shack, twisting his baseball cap in his hands as he walked in. He found Lorelai sitting on the sofa and holding the phone, staring at it intently with the attitude of someone who is trying to work up the nerve to make a call they really don't want to make.
"Is everything okay?" he asked, sitting down next to her.
Lorelai jumped. "Oh! Luke! Thank god, have you seen Rory?"
"Yeah, she was going to Lane's last time I saw her."
Lorelai's expression sagged in a combination of relief and hurt. "Oh. Okay. That's good, right? She's... reconnecting with her friends. That's good. She should be catching up with Lane." Luke waited patiently for a few moments before Lorelai burst out, "Why isn't she catching up with me?"
"I dunno," Luke said. "Maybe she's scared. Your opinion matters a lot to her. If you're disappointed with her and mad at her for disappearing on us, that's gonna be hard for her. She might not be ready to own up to all the stupid stuff she's done."
Lorelai shook her head slowly, a small, wondering smile on her face. "You never fail to amaze me," she said softly.
He chuckled nervously. "Yeah, well... Um, listen, Lorelai, I kinda had something I wanted to talk to you about."
The brunette nodded. "Okay, yeah. What?"
His nerve almost deserted him, but he remembered the somber look in his nephew's eyes as Jess had spoken about the pain of losing his Gilmore girl, and Luke knew he had to get this out in the open. As they had agreed just hours after he had found out about April's existence, no more secrets. "Um, something happened a couple of days ago, and I've been trying to figure out how to tell you, 'cause it's kind of a big thing and you've been so worried about Rory and I just didn't know how to say it..."
"Luke, just spit it out!" Lorelai said with confused laughter in her voice.
"I, uh, I have a daughter."
Lorelai's blue eyes blinked rapidly and her mouth dropped open. "A daughter? Like... a daughter?"
He sighed, leaning back heavily against the back of the couch. "Yeah. She's twelve."
"What? How is this possible?"
"Apparently my old girlfriend got pregnant and never bothered to inform me. Of course, she never even bothered to find out if I actually was the father, seeing as she was cheating on me with all these various people, but I guess knowing who fathered your daughter isn't as important to women as it used to be so..." He shrugged, out of words.
Lorelai stared at him, but her gaze was softer now. "Wow," she said. "That's... wow. You've had some tough luck with girlfriends in the past, haven't you? Nicole, then this other woman, this...?"
"Her name's Anna Nardini."
"Yeah. Real classy girls," she grumbled. "I mean, I know my moral compass hasn't always pointed due north, but why would anybody want another man when they've got Butch Danes?"
Luke groaned. "Not an appropriate time for a Butch Danes joke, Lorelai."
"There's never an appropriate time for a Butch Danes joke! That's why you've got to make your own times."
After an appropriate length of silence, Luke said, "So, um, what do you think?"
Lorelai shook her head. "I don't know," she responded. "I still can't even wrap my mind around it. I mean, you have a kid! A whole little person out there who's half you!"
"I don't know so much about that," he said. "I mean, how can she be anything of mine if I never even knew her until she was practically a teenager! I still don't know her!"
"How long ago did you find out about this?"
"April- that's her name, April- came into the diner about a week ago, babbling on about DNA tests and labs and a science fair and Samuel Pilotski-"
"Who?"
"I don't know. Some kid. Anyway, she came in and yanked out my hair and left and then a couple days ago I went down to the science fair thing, and there she was and there was my picture and, well, I'm her father."
"Wow." Lorelai sighed, staring at her hands. "You waited a week to tell me about this?"
"I-"
"What happened to no secrets?"
Luke shook his head. "I was scared. I didn't know how to tell you, and you were so scared because Rory was god knows where and I just didn't want to make everything harder."
Lorelai thought it over and nodded. "Okay. Yeah. So... um. Wow. What do we do?"
"I have no idea. I mean, I don't even know if she actually wants anything to do with me. God knows Anna doesn't."
"Do you want to know her?"
"Of course I do," Luke said. "She's my daughter."
"Then maybe we should go talk to this Anna woman and... and say something, which I hope I'll come up with if I keep talking long enough but right now I really have no clue." Lorelai sighed and leaned her head on her fiance's shoulder. "This is weird."
Luke nodded. "Tell me about it."
Rory stayed late at Lane's house, talking about anything and everything and getting many dirty looks from Brian, whose bean bag chairs they were occupying, in the process. By the time she said her goodbyes, it was closer to midnight than not, and she suddenly felt exhausted. Her past few weeks of living on the edge were catching up to her and she felt like collapsing where she stood. The darkness between the streetlights, however, made her quicken her steps rather than slow down. It might be Stars Hollow, but Rory felt jumpy and afraid.
The outline of a man loomed out of the darkness and Rory shrieked.
"Hey! Hey, it's just me!" Jess exclaimed.
"Oh, thank god, Jess!" she gasped. "You scared the hell out of me!"
"Jeez, are you okay? You're all pale."
Rory shook her head. "I'll be okay. I just... god, I think I know what a heart attack feels like!"
Now that she had stopped walking, she wasn't really sure where she was going anymore. She didn't want to go back to the Crap Shack right now, and she couldn't go back to Lane's. The tiny apartment was cramped enough with the three bandmates living there. No way could she impose on them, even for the night. Rory stood on the sidewalk, looking around in disorientation.
"Earth to Rory!" Jess exclaimed.
"Huh?"
"That's my line, and frankly, you're not doing it justice," he teased. "You sure you're okay? You just went somewhere else."
Rory sighed. "I... I'm not ready to face Mom yet. Consciously, I know that she's my mother and she'll love me no matter what, but... I've never disappointed her like this. I've been horrible to everyone, and I don't know what to say. I don't know how to make it better."
Jess' face was hard to read in the dim radiance of the streetlight, but he seemed to be debating something. Finally, he said, "You can stay at the apartment over the diner tonight, if you like."
Instantly, the guilty relief of procrastination filled her. "Thank you, Jess!" she exclaimed.
"Eh, it's nothing. I'll crash on Luke's bed, you can take my old bed. It's still up there."
Rory smiled. "Okay. Thank you."
"You said that already."
"I know. But you're being way sweeter than I deserve, so I have to say it again."
Jess glanced around conspiratorially. "Don't say that so loud. You'll totally kill my street cred."
Rory shrugged. "I think you already did that. According to Lane, Babette witnessed you bringing me home last night and now the whole town is aware that you more or less saved me. I bet they'll be organizing a festival in your honor any day now."
"Please kill me."
"No can do. I owe you. No homicide until after all debts of honor are repaid."
"Hm, what kind of an installment plan do debts of honor get paid on?"
She shook her head. "I have no idea. Let me think about that when I'm not so exhausted."
"Sleeping. Right. Let's head back to Luke's?"
"Sure."
A/N2- Wow. I can't decide if I love or hate this chapter. And I'm sketchy about some things in that last conversation between Rory and Jess, which I am not going to put down here because then you'll notice them more than you might already have done, and I don't want that because as long as I pretend it's great, maybe you'll actually think that. Meh, I'm having plot bunnies running in different directions and ripping this fic in half. So please review. It'll make me happy.