Thanks to all of you that has reviewed! It feels great hearing your opinions!
After Rory got dressed and poured them some coffee while asking about Paris' nanny, the girls had placed themselves out on the porch steps, as Paris claimed that fresh air had a good effect on depression. Rory couldn't quite master the energy to argue with her and thought she should at least be thankful Paris wasn't trying to shove pills down her throat.
"So why'd you do it?" Paris bluntly asks. "Did he cheat on you again? Yes, I'm saying again, 'cause I never bought that whole 'we were broken up' bit of his. So what was it this time? Couldn't have been bridesmaids, 'cause if we're talking plural, which seems to be his M.O, I would have been involved and I can't remember ever being that drunk. Let me see…strippers at the bachelor party? Sounds like a typical Huntzberger move."
Rory sighs.
"He didn't do anything." She hesitates, but then quickly decides to tell Paris the truth, after all it was Paris, sooner or later she would drag it out of her. "I got a letter the night before the wedding."
"A letter? Was it from the Center for Disease Control?"
"Paris!" She shots her a glare and Paris shrugs her shoulders.
"Okay, sorry. Who was the letter from?"
"Jess."
"Jess?" Paris looks confused. "Jess. I've heard that name before…was he the guy who punched Tristan in high school?"
"No, that was Dean. " She sighs. "Jess is the guy I kind of left Dean for. You've met him. We were studying here, he brought dinner, Dean got angry and you told Dean Jess came over because you had a crush on him. Remember?"
"Yeah, I remember. So he sent you a letter?"
"Yeah. He sent a letter and a copy of his latest book, he's a writer, and I kind of realized I still love him."
"Okay, let me see if I got this right; you receive a letter, and a book, from your long-lost high school boyfriend, realize you still love him and Huntzberger's history?"
"Yeah, kind of." Rory grimaces, it sounded so harsh when put that way.
"So where is he?"
"Logan?" She shrugs her shoulders. "Probably out drinking with Colin and Finn."
"No, not Logan, his brain isn't that big of a mystery, I could probably have figured out on my own he was drowning his sorrows somewhere with dumb and dumber cheering him on. Where's Jess?"
"He's not here."
Paris raises her eyebrows.
"Sorry, but isn't the point of leaving your groom at the altar to be with another man, kind of you actually being with the other man?"
"Yes. I guess it is. But he doesn't want to."
"He doesn't want to be with you? So why did he send you a letter and a book saying so?" Paris sounds confused.
"The letter didn't really say he wanted to be with me, quite the opposite actually."
"It rarely happens, but I have to admit I'm confused." Paris states, looking at her.
Rory hands her the letter.
"Here, read it yourself."
Paris takes the letter and starts reading, Rory sits quietly next to her, watching her.
"I can't read with you watching me like that." Paris puts the letter down and looks at Rory.
"Like what?" Rory pulls back with a guilty look on her face.
"Like you're expecting me to stand up and yell 'Eureka!' any second." Paris ponders for a second, looking suspiciously at Rory before going back to reading the letter. Rory bites her lip and tries to focus her eyes on a spot on the lawn before her instead of staring at Paris and the letter.
When finished reading Paris puts the letter down and looks up at Rory.
"How do you know?"
"How do I know what?" Rory looks confused.
"How do you know that you love him? Don't get me wrong, I never cared much for Logan, but you haven't seen this guy since high school, right? People change you know, how can you be so sure you love him?"
Rory shrugs her shoulders.
"I have seen him a few times since high school, but it's…I just know. I have asked myself that same question a million times these last couple of days. I guess that in some sort of subconscious, selfish way that I'm not proud of, I thought he'd always be there, that I'd always have the choice of being with him, now that that's taken away I guess I realized how much I wanted it, how much I needed it."
Paris nods.
"Classic case of 'you don't know what you've got 'til it's gone'"
"Yeah, I guess it is." Rory looks sad.
"So what're you gonna do about it?"
"Nothing." Rory shakes her head. "He doesn't want me to come look for him. He has moved on."
"So you're just gonna be a martyr for the rest of your life? Sit around and pine for him, alone and miserable for the next, what – 60 years, 'til you get senile enough to forget all about him?"
"I-I don't know." She looks unsure. "I haven't thought that far ahead."
"Why don't you go to him, tell him how you feel?"
"Because he said…"
"I know what he said.." Paris interrupts. "…you've already told me that. Just never figured you were a quitter Gilmore."
"I'm not, but I can't force him to be with me if he doesn't want to." Rory answers in a hostile tone, growing tired of Paris insisting questions.
"But the circumstances has changed, you're not getting married. He sent that letter to the future Mrs. Logan Huntzberger, and well, she doesn't exist anymore. What does the book tell you? 'Cause from what I snapped up from the letter the book is about the two of you, so what does it tell you?"
Rory sounds tired when she answers; tired and a little bit angry.
"I don't know. I don't know what the book tells me. He says it's just memories, something for me to look back on at old age."
"Where in his letter does he say it's just memories? 'Cause I sure didn't see that part." Paris asks and Rory's starting to feel like she's being interrogated.
"It doesn't really say that – but it's obvious that's what he meant, that's what the book is to him."
"Okay." Paris snorts. "But what is the book to you?"
Rory hesitates before answering.
"Memories I guess…"
"But…"
"But what Paris?" Rory interrupts, now angry and irritated. "What do you want me to say? Do you want me to say that the book reminded me of how Jess got me in a way that Logan, and probably every other guy out there as well, never did? Or that when reading the book I missed him and what we had so bad that I cried 'til I ran out of tears several hours later? Or that I realized exactly how badly I hurt him when I went to see him in Philadelphia two years ago? That's right, I never told you, but I went there and I let him kiss me and for a few seconds I let him think that maybe we had a future together, I let myself think that, and then I went back to Logan, 'cause I thought that was what I wanted. And when I came back Logan was hurt, he was in a hospital. You know why Paris? Do you know why Logan was in the hospital? 'Cause I didn't care, 'cause I was angry and hurt and because of that he was angry and hurt, and that made him careless and reckless and he ended up in the hospital because I couldn't forgive him. He almost died! While I was kissing my ex-boyfriend in Philadelphia, Logan almost died!"
Paris pats on the porch steps next to her, motioning to Rory to sit down, which she slowly does, still breathing heavily after her outburst.
"First of all…" Paris begins, looking at Rory, making sure she's listening. "…you can't blame yourself 'cause Logan's stupid enough to go jump out of a plane with those imbecile friends of his in that childish, immature, 'I'm rich and privileged and bored and therefore I have to go search for adrenaline kicks to feel that I'm alive' brigade."
She takes a breath and smiles as she continues.
"Second of all, that's exactly what I wanted you to say. Not what Jess wrote, or what he told you the book was, but what it was to you – what you felt while reading it."
Rory sighs.
"Don't you see that that doesn't matter? I want to go to him, I want to yell at him for moving on before I realized how much I love him and how badly I need to be with him, I want to beg him to change his mind, I want to…but I can't because he told me not to, and I've already hurt him so much." Her voice is resigned, and that's exactly how she feels; resigned, she has given up.
Paris doesn't say anything, instead she leans in and gives Rory a hug.
When released from the hug, Rory sighs and bites her lip.
"And believe me, if the 'I left my fiancé at the altar 'cause I'm in love with a guy who doesn't want to be with me' part isn't pathetic enough, I have also read that letter about a thousand times trying to find a hidden meaning, a secret message or whatever telling me to come. 'Cause apparently my pathetic heart can't quite seem to accept what he's writing."
"A secret message." Paris looks intrigued.
"Yeah, but there is none, believe me, I've looked at it enough times, I should have found it by now if there was one."
Paris picks up the letter and starts reading it a second time.
"Paris, there isn't anything there." Rory sighs and shakes her head.
Paris looks at her.
"Rory, I know you're smart. I'm not saying I'm smarter than you; I'm simply saying that my judgment doesn't as easily get clouded by emotions as yours."
Rory sighs while Paris picks up the letter again and starts looking at it more closely. She hems and haws while doing so. Rory doesn't believe she'll actually find something, but she doesn't say anything. It could never hurt letting Paris have a look at it.
Not to let herself get to exited while Paris looks through the letter again Rory tries to find the same spot on the lawn that she was staring at the first time Paris read the letter.
"Hmm…maybe…with that spelling, it could very well be." Paris suddenly mumbles to herself.
"Could be what Paris?" Rory says and darts her head up.
"Ssch, let me finish my thought." Paris answers and waves her hand as to keep Rory quiet.
Growing more and more impatient and nervous Rory looks at her while she keeps mumbling to herself and reading the letter. After a while Paris smiles and looks up at her.
"At first I thought I recognized the 'when you're old and grey' part, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it." Rory takes the letter out of Paris' hand and looks at the part she's talking about.
I wanted to send you a copy of my latest book, so you would get a chance to read it before it came out in any bookstores. You're a smart girl so there's no use in denying what you'll probably figure out after just a few pages: it's about us. You and me. Our love. Something for you to read and look back on when you're old and grey.
It doesn't sound familiar to Rory. Or does it? She feels like there's something she should remember, but there are too many thoughts running through her mind at the moment. And that stubborn hope that's started to raise again is blocking out almost everything else, even breathing.
"What about it?" She says, staring at a smiling Paris.
"You see, he's clever. The spelling is what got me on the right track." She proudly smiles. "'Grey', with an e. That's not your typical American spelling. You know who spells gray with an e? The Englishmen and the Irish among others."
Rory wrinkles her forehead in confusion.
"Okay…what does that have to do with anything?"
"It's Yeats." Paris says, as if that explains everything.
"Yeats?" Rory questions, still looking confused.
"Yeats. The poet – you've heard of him I assume? 'Something for you to read and look back on when you're old and grey' It's not an exact quote, but it's a pretty obvious allusion once you figure it out."
Rory takes the letter back from Paris and looks at it again.
"When you are old and grey and full of sleep, and nodding by the fire, take down this book and slowly read" While Rory's been staring at the sentence, trying to figure out the meaning of it, scavenging her brain to remember the words of any Yeats poem she's ever read, Paris has found the poem on a website on her phone and is now reading the first lines aloud to Rory.
Rory leans over to watch over Paris' shoulder almost trembling with anxiety as she reads the lines of the poem, pondering on every word.
When you are old and grey and full of sleep,
And nodding by the fire, take down this book,
And slowly read, and dream of the soft look
Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep;
How many loved your moments of glad grace,
And loved your beauty with love false or true,
But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you,
And loved the sorrows of your changing face;
And bending down besides the glowing bars,
Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled
And paced upon the mountains overhead
And hid his face amid a crowd of stars.
When Rory finishes reading the poem for the second time she looks at Paris and smiles. Paris looks back at her with an all-knowing smile and says:
"He wants you to come."
Rory lets out a deep sigh, as if everything that's been piling up inside her the last week has finally let go. She smiles wide.
"He wants me to come." A flash of uncertainty rolls over her face. "That's what the poem says, right? That he wants me to come?" She blurts out, suddenly afraid that she has misread Jess' intentions about alluding to the poem.
As if repeating the words out of a text book Paris reassures her of Jess' intention.
"Well, a common interpretation of this poem is that the narrator wants the object of his affection to act upon the true love he feels for her, or rather he fears that she will not, hence the future the poem alludes to will be her future."
"So I'm guessing that when Jess writes that his book will be something for you to look back on when you're old and grey, what he's really saying is: I love you deeper and truer than your husband-to-be, please acknowledge that and act upon it before it's too late."
So, what do you think? Did Jess intentionally leave an allusion to a Yeats poem, or are the girls just too eager to find something that they made it up in their heads?
I don't know if there's actually such a thing as the Institute for infectious disease control, but that's what the dictionary gave me when I searched for the equivalent of the Swedish word. So if there's not, let's pretend…