Disclaimer- Gilmore Girls and the characters associated with the show are not mine.

Chapter Eleven- Saturday, Eleven AM-Jess

The asshole won't bring me Doula. What a prick. Said I was acting weird. Where does he get off saying I'm acting funny? How would he even know? Unless someone told him? Shit! Am I being watched? Are the cops watching the trailer? Reporting back? Maybe somebody wants to steal my supply. Ugghh, my arms itch. I think there was something wrong with the last batch I cooked. I wish I wouldn't have blown Bart off. I miss him.

Sitting in his office, Jess waited. At some point, today probably, there would be a knock on the door, and Rory would show someone in. And he'd listen. He wasn't sure what he wanted to hear, he had a feeling there wasn't going to be an Ah Hah! moment, but he'd try. It seemed like weeks ago, instead of two days, he'd been sitting on the steps at Lorelai's listening to Rory say what was missing from his story was his mom. Her life.

Rory was right. He'd written around Liz, referencing her and her actions, but not writing about her. Opening his laptop, Jess stared at the keys, and then he began to type.

My first memory of my mother-I remember a sweet warmth as she held me against her soft, pale yellow sweater. I remember tracing the weave of the knit down her arm with my finger. I remember her humming what I now know was a Fleetwood Mac song called Dreams. She was rocking me back and forth in the chair. I reached up and curled her long blondish-red hair around my fingers. It was soft. As soft as her sweater. I must have been very young, because she stood and carried me to the couch. She took the back cushions off, and laid me down on a pillow, tucking a blanket in around me. I remember wishing she wouldn't prop the cushions up against the couch to box me in. I thought they smelled funny. After she shut off the lights, and left, I pushed the cushions down so I could breath. The couch was big enough, I wasn't worried about falling off.

Jess stopped, trying to clear the smell of smoke and sweat from his nose. He knew it wasn't real, but he swore he could taste it on the back of his tongue. His memories were complicated, multilayered. It's one of the reasons he put them aside. He tried to think past the memory. Did he know what happened the next morning? Not finding the answer, he delved into the inside of his head. The walls he'd built. The systems he'd created to lock his past down tight. Some people mention opening doors to their recollections. For him, it was a brick wall. Some of the bricks were loose, the memories easier to access. Just grab the brick, wiggle and pull. Like the one with Liz being a real mother. Some bricks were mortared in tight, and then slathered over with plaster and paint. Staring at the wall in his head, he pictured the bricks being completely covered for most of the wall, only a few memories left in the natural red. There was a side which was freshly built, re-mortared, left unpainted. They were the memories he had accessed for his own story last winter. Memories he'd come to terms with, accepted. He wasn't sure about the best way to do this. To think about the memories with Liz, a logical method. His own story had definitive breaks, a progression. Liz though, her story seemed all over the place. A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts.

"Come in," he called, thinking it would be Rory, who was walking on eggshells around him, or Garret, who was worried about the atmosphere in the house. He was wrong. Leaning back in his chair, he gestured for his mom's old friend, who Luke called Crazy Carrie, to have a seat.

"So, Kirk told me I should come and tell you about your mom as a girl. I was her best friend, so if anyone knows how great she was, it'd be me," Carrie said, sitting down, letting her short skirt hike up even farther. Jess ignored her legs and kept his eyes on her face. He didn't want to risk accidently looking down her low cut shirt.

"I'm not sure I want to know how great she was," Jess said. "I want to know about the real Liz. Her true personality. I mean, she was flamboyant and outgoing, but she could also be mean, and she had an addictive personality. So tell me something true. Not embellished, or whitewashed." Carrie sat in the chair for a few minutes, looking out the window at the leaves dropping from the trees in the back yard.

"Like I said, I was her best friend. Which wasn't always easy. We had tons of fun together, drinking, chasing boys, smoking pot on her dad's roof and trying to hide it from Luke. We were young, and she was a lot of fun when she was mellowed out by a joint or a beer. You're right though, sometimes she could be mean. I remember this time when Joe's source dried up, no-one in Stars Hollow could get any pot, and your grandpa had locked his whiskey up in the gun safe. Liz had been sober for a couple of months and it was like winter was really getting to her. She was stir crazy, what's it called? Cabin fever? Yeah, she got cabin fever. Real bad. She stole money from Luke, and hitched to Litchfield. She walked all over that town looking for a hit of something, anything. She didn't realize Joe was the dealer there too. She trashed a store which wouldn't sell alcohol to her and came home in a police car. Her dad grounded her, which made her furious, but she laughed at Luke when he asked for the money back. Then she snuck out that very night, and did it with my boyfriend at a party. I was there, they disappeared looking for a drink, but I found them. She'd left the door open for me. So I could see them having sex. She was pissed because I hadn't gone to Litchfield with her. So she fucked my boyfriend of four months on the bathroom floor. I forgave her. I mean, he was her boyfriend first anyway," Carrie shrugged her shoulders at Jess's look. "No, he's the one who went for seconds. And she worked real hard to gain my friendship back. She could be so sweet, and then vicious. You never knew who you were going to get with Liz, but give her a drink or a hit and she was great."

"So wait, if I'm understanding you correctly, if she was stoned or drunk she was nice?" Jess asked, scoffing.

"Not wacked out of her gourd, just a little buzzed, you know? Enough to take the edge off," Carrie replied, shrugging her shoulders again, and letting her shirt fall off the side. She didn't make a move to fix it, and Jess wanted nothing more than to end this little talk. Everything about it was pissing him off.

"The edge off? What edge did she have to take off here in Stars Hollow?"

"Well, there were always rumors, hell, she started them herself, but I don't know if they were true or not."

"What rumors?" Jess asked, leaning forward, feeling as if they were finally getting somewhere.

"You'll have to ask someone else about those, I need to head out. Got my hubby to please, he ain't much, but he's better than nothing. Your mom, your mom was special, you know? But she was like the little girl with the curl," Carrie said, standing and flipping her hair over her shoulder, tugging at her bangs, wrapping a section around her fingers.

"I don't think I know about the little girl with the curl," Jess said.

"You know? The nursery rhyme? There was a little girl with a little curl, in the middle of her forehead, and when she was good, she was very very good, and when she was bad, she was horrid."

"Yeah, I guess I do know it. It's originally from a Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. Thank you for your time," Jess said as Carrie left the room. Staring at the door, he thought about what he'd heard. He didn't see answers, just more questions. Turning he began to type Carrie's story. He could see Luke, glowering, demanding his money back. He could see Liz laughing. Hell, he'd seen her do the exact same thing to a john she'd rolled. Tabbing down, he started a new paragraph.

The door opened, slamming against the wall, and the couple fell into the apartment. My mother had her legs wrapped around the man's waist, grinding her hips against him. The guy, so drunk he could barely balance, was pulling her shirt off as they moved toward the couch I was sitting on. Jumping up out of their way, I ran to my room.

"What was that, is there someone else here?" the drunk slurred.

"No, no, baby, just the neighbors. You got the money?" Liz used the pause in action to seal the deal. The john nodded, pulling out his wallet, and showing Liz the cash. "Then do me, baby," Liz said, pulling the man down on top of her. I closed my door and hid under my cot, hands clamped over my ears, trying to drown out the sounds. I hated it when the men came and I had to hide. I knew what was happening, because our old apartment only had the one room, and I'd been able to see the couch from under the bed. Liz always used the couch for the one-nighters. She said she didn't want to soil her sheets. I thought soiling meant not making it to the toilet on time, but there was never poop on the couch. Just other stuff, and I didn't know what it was, so I always sat as far away from it as I could. I hated the way we lived.

As the man began moving, Liz opened the wallet, and took everything, except the twenty he was supposed to pay her with, and shoved it under the couch cushion. I knew she'd done it because she'd told me as she retrieved the money, laughing the whole time. She rolled johns. It was her thing, and sometimes it ended badly with blood and flashing lights. After he finished, the man started shouting and Liz laughed, saying "Prove it baby. All I saw was the twenty. Now pay me and get the fuck out." Opening the door to my room, I peeked out and said "Mommy?" just like I was supposed to. My presence in the apartment helped hurry the angry john out the door, with Liz laughing. At six, I was old enough to feel used.

"Um, Jess? I don't want to interrupt you, but Rory's trying to cook lunch, and I really like your kitchen," Garret said, leaning against the door jam. He didn't know what happened overnight, but the atmosphere in the house was tense. Even Paul Anka sensed it and was currently hiding in the closet of one of the designated children rooms.

"We better get to the kitchen then, before she burns it down. Did your bio-mom turn tricks?" Jess asked, and Garret paused mid step in the hallway. Looking back at Jess, he shook his head, slowly, unsure where Jess was going with the question.

"I don't think so, if she did, she hid it. But before she really got into dealing, she had a job where she talked dirty on the phone. I didn't get a lot of sleep because the phone always rang in the middle of the night and sometimes she'd scream and moan. It was embarrassing," Garret added.

"Yeah, at least it was fake though. Hearing it live really sucked," Jess said.

"Is that why you have to play music to sleep?"

"Part of it, I'm sure," Jess said, meeting Rory's sad eyes in the kitchen. She was getting ready to add noodles to water, which wasn't quite boiling.

"Wait, let me do it, I don't want you to burn yourself."

"I can cook, Jess," she said, looking away. Taking the bag of pasta from her, he set it on the counter and lifted her chin, forcing her to look at him. He didn't want them to dwell on what happened, he wanted to put it aside till it was time to talk about it again. He wanted their lives to go on as usual in the meantime.

"I know you could if you needed to, but why do it when I'm here? We have a system. I cook, and you do the clean up, because I hate the cleanup," Jess added. Rory slid her arm around his waist and leaned her head against the warmth of his chest, grateful he wasn't holding a grudge.

"Yes, but you subscribe to the 'clean as you go' method, so cleanup is pretty nonexistent. It doesn't seem fair."

"It's fair as far as I'm concerned," Jess said, brushing his lips across her hair. Garret watched from the door, feeling the tension begin to fade away. He didn't know what happened, and had a feeling it wasn't fixed, but they were making an effort. Maybe it was the main difference between his old life and his new. Making an effort to fix things, instead of walking or running away.

"I'm hungry. Can someone cook?" he asked. Rory laughed.

"Bottomless pits, the lot of you. Rory, set the table. Garret, make the three of us salads. Use the baby spinach," Jess added.

"Three salads! Why? I don't want a spinach salad," Rory said. Jess shook his head.

"I expect you to start eating healthier."

"What? No way! Why would you think I'd ever eat healthier? It's against the Gilmore Co-"

"Because you're the one who wants to have children sooner than later, and your body needs time to be ready for it. You should exercise a bit too. We'll start taking more walks," Jess replied, not glancing at Rory, but keeping his eyes on the pasta.

"You're going to have a baby?" Garret asked, looking from Jess, calmly cooking, to Rory, her mouth dropped open in surprise.

"No, not yet. Maybe not ever. But Rory says she wants to, so maybe she should be doing everything she can to prepare for it." Jess froze as Rory wrapped her arms around his waist.

"You're right. As always, and especially this time. It isn't something I should do without some planning and preparation. I should be taking vitamins and eating healthier beforehand. I should have discussed it with you in depth. You're right, and I'm sorry." Jess leaned back against her, and tugged her closer with the arm not stirring the pasta.

"Well, I wouldn't want your body to go into shock if you quit coffee cold turkey, and from what I've heard, it takes some strength to have a baby. Just, talk to me Rory. Talk to me, even if I don't talk back," Jess said, raising her hand up and brushing his lips across her knuckles. "Now let me cook, so Garret doesn't wither away." Rory nodded and began setting the table. It was still an issue, but at least now she knew he was thinking about the idea. And he was right, logical. She did need to eat healthier, and think ahead. And she needed to prove to him she was serious, and ready. Which meant cutting down on her coffee intake. Yikes.