"Sweetie? What's the matter? What happened?" Lorelai returned from the diner to find Rory in a sobbing heap in the lounge. She pulled her baby girl into her lap, rubbing her back and smoothing her hair back out of her face, waiting for her to calm down enough to tell her what was going on.
"Rory, hun, you're making mommy nervous. Is everything okay? Are you hurt? Did you finally watch the end of The Notebook? I told you not to watch it without me. Please talk to me Rory."
"Dean..." Rory tried to speak.
"Dean did this to you?" Lorelai's protective mom radar was screaming in her head.
"No, I...Dean...Jess...it's done now. It's over." Rory choked out between sobs.
"Dean broke up with you?" Lorelai hazarded a guess but couldn't quite imagine it to be true.
"No, me. It was me."
"Okay. I'm going to get you a big glass of water and then you're going to fill in the rest of this story for me hun." Lorelai went into the kitchen coming back with the water as promised and a bag or mallomars. She waited for Rory to drink the water and eat two of the biscuits before probing further.
"So, you broke up with Dean? And somehow Jess is involved?"
Rory nodded, dabbing at her eyes with the end of her sleeve she began to explain.
"Last night at the market, I ran into Jess."
"Yes, that much I know. Last I saw you two were walking toward the gazebo together then you came home and went to bed." Lorelai gently reminded her.
"I gave him the letter." Rory admitted.
"What letter?"
"The letter I wrote to him when I was in Washington."
"Okay, and what exactly did you say in this letter?" Lorelai continued cautiously.
"I asked him why he came back. I told him how he made me feel different when we kissed at Sookie's wedding and that I was confused and didn't know if we were friends anymore or something more. I asked him if he came back for me." Rory finished on a whisper, unable to meet her mother's eye. Too scared of the disapproval she thought she'd find their.
"Is that where you were this morning, with Jess?" Lorelai was trying to piece the last 14 hours together but she didn't have nearly enough details to do so.
"No, I was with Dean. I was breaking up with Dean." A new round of sobbing ensued and Lorelai just sat silently holding her daughter, impatiently waiting to find out how deeply Jess factored into this.
"Jess came over last night. He read my letter and he came here. He knocked on my window and I let him in and he told me he came back for me. He came back for me mom. For me. He broke up with Shane before coming over here and he kissed me but then when he realised I was still with Dean he left."
"Okay, well this is all starting to make more sense now and I guess Jess gets a point or two for not wanting you to cheat on your boyfriend. I have one question, well about 32 actually, so far, but I'll start with this one: are you sad because you broke up with Dean?" Lorelai asked.
"It's just, we were together a really long time and I hated to hurt him that way. You should've seen the way he looked at me! I didn't love him anymore mom. I couldn't keep pretending. I just didn't realise it would hurt this much to let it go." Rory began to sob again.
"Hey, it's okay sweetie. He was an amazing first boyfriend, the best any mother could hope for," Lorelai soothed. "It's okay for you to be sad because that stage in your life is over. Maybe you need to give yourself a bit of time before you jump straight into things with Jess."
"Maybe." Rory considered this for a moment. "I know you don't like Jess but I do mom, I really do. I don't want things to get weird between us if Jess and I do get together."
"I'm not going to make any promises hun, you know how I feel about him, he's a troubled kid, he's far more experienced than you and I'm worried if that chip falls off his shoulder one day and you happen to be in its path you'll never be seen again. What I will agree to do is to try. If two of my favourite people in the world think he's worth their time and energy then I guess I need to give him a chance to show me he's worth mine too." Lorelai conceded.
"Okay." Rory agreed. She ran her fingers through her hair and sat up, checking to see what time it was. "Thanks mom, for everything. There's something else I have to do now."
Lorelai hugged her daughter tight then let her go, she was old enough to make her own mistakes...decisions now, it was time she let her.
"Will you be back for dinner?" Lorelai asked when Rory returned from the bathroom, her face freshly washed and her hair now brushed back into a tidy ponytail.
"I'll bring some home with me," Rory promised before rushing out the door towards Luke's.
A/N more to come as soon as I can get the time to write it. This is already longer than I originally anticipated so I won't put a number on how many more chapter there might be but this is definitely not the last one :) Also, I'm not certain The Notebook was out then but please forgive me for that one lapse in detail if it wasn't. Thanks to everyone who is still reading at this point. I hope you're enjoying it :)