When I headed home for the day, I was focused on the hot shower that I didn't get to take that morning. On my way in I stopped to grab my mail and the paper that I had to skip earlier. When I got in my apartment I hung my coat on the hook by the door, dropped the mail and my bag on the table and headed straight for that shower.

I stood under the water for a while, trying to let the last couple of days wash away. After my shower I pulled on some sweats and was thinking about curling up with some popcorn and an old movie when my cell phone rang… Mom.

"Hey, how's my first born doing?"

I could hear Landon crying in the background… the terrible twos had obviously set in.

"At the moment, it sounds like better than your second born… barely."

"Uh oh. New developments in the drama saga?"

"While I appreciate the alliteration, I'm not exactly in the mood to joke about it yet."

"Fine, no jokes. Want to talk about it, at least?"

"I guess… Hey, shouldn't you be on your way to Friday night dinner?"

"Ah! I figured you might need some support, so I told Emily that Landon wasn't feeling well and I didn't want to risk making it worse by taking him out... and then hung up before she could protest. I'm sure I'll pay for it later, but desperate times call for desperate measures… Now, ready to spill?"

"First of all, I resent the implication that I am desperate… Honestly, I don't need any help feeling that way... But fine… Are you sitting down?"

"Oh boy… Let me call Luke and see if he can handle Landon at the diner for a while. I'll call you back to get all the juicy details."

She hung up before I could respond. In the meantime I got a text from Les, checking in, making sure I wasn't wallowing or something else equally pathetic along those lines. I am not wallowing. I told her I was "dealing". She wanted to know if I needed reinforcements for the night, but I told her I was too tired, and had decided on staying in for the night.

Twenty minutes later I hadn't heard back from my mom, but there was a knock at my door. I had no idea who would be here, but a look through the peep hole had me staring at a pizza delivery guy. I smiled. Mom knew me well. I grabbed my wallet and opened the door, but I was informed that it had already been paid for by a Lorelei Gilmore. The same for the Chinese delivery that showed up five minutes later and the Indian take-out another ten minutes after that. She was really on top of this.

Practically as soon as I closed the door, on my way back to the couch with the last round of take-out, my phone was ringing with Mom finally calling me back.

"You really called in the cavalry, huh?"

"Believe it or not, it was Luke's idea. He figured that even long distance we could have some of our traditional mother daughter time."

"Wow. You've trained him well."

"Yea, I guess he's a keeper... and to make it really authentic, I took the liberty of ordering a matching spread for myself. I got Landon settled with him at the diner, so now you have my full attention."

"Alright, well, I stuck to my word yesterday and avoided watching the press conference. Leslie still insisted that we go out last night, and it started out well, a good distraction, but…"

I filled her in on what transpired at the end of the night, and about the coffee delivery this morning.

"Who does he think he is, Logan Gatsby trying to impress Rory Buchanan into coming back into his life?"

"I would hardly call running into each other and sending a cup of coffee to Jay building an empire and an empty, extravagant life in an ill-fated attempt to woo a married woman."

"I dunno, Ror… He has the beginnings of an empire built, and how much do you really know about his life these days?"

"Mom really, give it a rest. I don't know anything about his life. That's the point, we have gone four years without even speaking, why should he assume he gets to try and be a part of my life now?"

"Well, he maybe he's not. Maybe he was just trying to be nice after an awkward encounter. He was raised in the world of propriety and manners, after all."

"I really hope that's all it is. I'm not sure I could handle anything else…"

"You should give yourself more credit, Hun. You're not the same person you were back then. You've grown a lot over the last few years. You're a big, bad city girl now. You're stronger than you think."

Not when it comes to Logan… "Okay."

"Hey, you're never going to guess what's on TV."

"Don't tell me you've been channel surfing this whole time..."

"To be fair, it's Friday night and we each have mountains of junk food in front of us. It's just like old times… except with abut 140 miles between us… a movie was the only thing we were missing."

"Alright... what did you find?"

"Grease 2!" I could almost hear her smiling through the phone at the thought of watching a so-bad-its-good movie.

"What channel?"

We stayed on the phone the whole movie, imputing our usual commentary. It did feel like old times, temporarily care-free and happy. After we hung up I tried to hang on to that, and I was feeling a little better thinking about what she had said about me not being the same person I was when he left, being stronger.

I went to bed that night with a new sense of commitment. I was going to lock that little box back up, I had done it before, and I couldn't let the fact that we were now in the same city change that; I was stronger than that. I think. Besides, I have work to focus on. I think that new assignment I started today was really promising. It was a little outside the wheelhouse of the Features column of The Post, more political than Gerry would probably like, but that's always what I was really interested in writing about. Leslie is definitely going to give me a bad time about going into the office on a Saturday, but I had a couple of leads I wanted to follow up on.

** I do not own any characters or content relating to Gilmore Girls **