CHAPTER 27: A Gentle Push
After Rory and Logan's deep and meaningful, the damage control after their near-kiss, they both managed to put it behind them as life carried on.
Despite how his relationship with Elleigh is flourishing, Logan's work-life has been taking a toll on him due to his enormous workdays. He heads into New York in the early hours of the morning, to be there and get started before the business day begins. He goes to his meetings, takes his phone calls and deals with all the curve-balls of the day, before lunchtime when he takes the two and a half hour trip back home, in order to collect Elle from school at 3:30. Then, after spending the afternoon with his daughter before taking Elle back to Rory, Logan returns home and the phone calls continue well into the night with international affiliates, clients and representatives.
Consequently, after just a few hours of sleep each night, Logan is up again in the very early hours of the morning, to start his day all over again...
Each day, Logan's left feeling a little heavier, a little hazier and a little more like his tiredness is never going to be able to be undone.
However, for Logan, it's all worth it. Burning the candle at both ends and the tired feeling that he's become used to living his life with is all worth it to make his relationship with Elle work...
The father and daughter have made another step in the right direction after Elleigh mentioned to Rory that she'd like to try and have her first sleepover at Logan's house. Rory relayed that information back to Logan who invited his daughter to sleepover at his house for the first time that Saturday. Before now, Elle has been happier to just hang out with her father after school, on the weekends or with Rory and then return to her childhood home to be with her mother for the evenings.
So, tonight marks another first in Logan and Elleigh's lives together...
#
After spending most of the day with her mother, Elle is dropped off at her father's house by Rory who leaves not long after arriving, leaving the two alone to get settled.
As Logan carries Elle's overnight bag upstairs to her bedroom -the room beside his- his daughter strolls along behind him.
Her room at Logan's is still quite simple and plain. He'd just bought her some basic furniture, allowing her to decorate and modify her room how she pleases. So, apart from a small jewellery tree, a big teddy bear and a pink and purple mandala-style elephant wall canvas that she had chosen out, her room is still quite bare.
"It's weird. I can't remember the last time that I slept in a different bed to my one at mom's house" Elle muses as Logan places her bag and pillow down onto her freshly made bed. Rory suggested that she bring her own pillow just as some familiarity and comfort in what is a new room, new bed and relatively new house for the child.
"If you can't settle or if you wake up at all during the night, feel free to wake me. We can watch a movie or something and chill" Logan says with a smile to reassure his daughter.
Elle smiles back as she begins to pull the few items that she has brought out of her overnight bag, trying to get herself sorted and settled in before she can go back to hanging out with her dad.
"It feels weird, but I've been really excited about it" she says as she tucks her pyjamas under the pillow of her bed.
He grins at her admission, standing and watching for a few moments as she unpacks her stuff –placing a book and pink notebook on her bedside table along with her clothes for tomorrow in the very big and very empty chest of drawers- before he finds a new purpose than lingering and watching her.
"Hey, I might go downstairs and order some pizza. Then when you're ready, we can play a game, watch a movie, whatever you want..."
"Sounds good – make sure you get garlic bread, too!"
Listening to Elle's request, Logan chuckles to himself at the reminder that Rory is most definitely the mother of his child.
He turns away and begins to walk off, out of his daughter's room before she grabs his attention and stops him in his tracks.
"Hey dad... I'm really glad I know you now. I wish I always did."
Logan gives Elle a sad smile. It breaks his heart and fills it with love, all at the same time. He re-enters the room, headed straight for his daughter, wrapping his arms around her as they hug for a few moments.
"I'm really, really glad I know you too, my girl."
A smile erupts over Elleigh's face at Logan's response and the embrace, before they pull away from each other. While he continues on course to getting dinner organised, she turns back to her bag, her face freshly lit up at the moment with her father.
#
Over the evening, Logan and Elleigh begin with watching a movie on Netflix as they eat their pizza (and garlic bread!), having a picnic in front of the TV. After dinner, they moved onto the games. They started off with a game of Cluedo before trading the board game for the TV and moving onto Mario Kart.
After Elle well and truly beat Logan at his own game (he didn't even have to try to lose), the two watched one more movie before they each headed to bed at around 10:30.
Despite his tiredness from his collection of early mornings from commuting and his late nights with phone calls for work, Logan keeps tossing and turning, listening out for every noise that he hears in the night.
Normally, Logan would be out like a light as soon as his head hits the pillow, but knowing he has precious cargo in the room next door to his, the father in training is acutely aware of every noise and every movement. Not to mention, he's been up and checked that she's still alive and safe in her room several times too... This parenting gig is exhausting business...
When Logan hears a creak from the bed in the room next door, as well as a little trail of small footsteps, he throws the quilt off of himself, getting up and following the noise too.
With her eyes open wide in fright, Elleigh freezes instantly when she sees her father leaving his room too, as she walks out of hers.
"Nance, are you okay sweetie?"
"You scared me" she giggles nervously, a hand clapped over her chest. After the fright, she walks over towards him. "I'm okay. I can't sleep..."
Logan nods with understanding, placing an arm around her shoulders comfortingly as he guides her towards the staircase and they move from the second-story to the first.
"That's not good...Want a hot chocolate? Now I know you're your mother's daughter, but I'm putting my foot down. No coffee till morning. Your mom will have my head if you get no sleep tonight" Logan smiles, not showing quite enough conviction to pull off strict-dad.
"Yes please... Do you have marshmallows?"
Logan's face scrunches up as he thinks about his daughter's question. "I'll have to check. I actually think I might... I have a feeling that your Uncle Colin bought me a stack of marshmallows along with a whole lot of other random stuff he got at Doose's the last time that he was here."
"Ooh, then yes please" Elle says with a hopeful grin as the father and daughter walk through the lounge room and into the kitchen. She takes a seat at the counter-top, watching Logan as he flicks the kettle on and starts rummaging through his pantry that is far bigger than a bachelor needs.
Resurfacing from and leaving his pantry successful with a bag of marshmallows in-hand, Logan gives his daughter his trademark smirk, planning to invite her to join him as a partner-in-crime for the late-night hot chocolate.
"Want to up the ante? It's not for the faint-hearted, my girl..."
Elleigh nods enthusiastically, watching with keen anticipation as she waits for Logan to impress her with his 'loaded' hot chocolate.
"Now, one night when I was a freshman in college, your uncles and I had a loaded hot chocolate competition. It was a really long time ago now so I'm not perfectly clear on the concoctions, but I'm going off of what I can remember..."
Barely ten minutes later, the two have made and had their amped-up hot chocolates.
Going off of his memory, Logan thought that in college, he had added peanut butter to his hot chocolates, Finn would add macadamia nuts (despite threatening Vegemite), Colin topped his with crushed Oreo crumbs and Robert was declared the winner for adding Nutella.
Condensing all the boy's ideas into one sickening beverage, Logan groans dramatically a few minutes later after just a couple of mouthfuls, before looking over to his daughter's near-empty cup.
"Man, Elle... I'm impressed. I could barely get through a third of mine."
"I'm a Gilmore" his daughter simply states with a shrug. "We've been in training for times like this my whole life."
Logan chuckles at her succinct response, knowing the complete truth of it.
"Reckon you're ready for bed now?"
Elle nods at her father's question, yawning on cue.
"Yeah I think so. Night dad... Thanks for everything tonight."
"Thank you for being my little partner in crime."
The father and daughter share a smile and a hug before heading up the same stairs that they had come down together nearly half an hour earlier.
#
After dropping Elle back off at Rory's the following day, Logan has just returned home, parking himself on the lounge with a newspaper and coffee in hand as he enjoys a few minutes of silence and solitude, as much as he loved having his daughter stay with him over the night. As he shuffles in his seat and molds his body deeper into his lounge to get comfy, Logan feels the side of his leg come into contact with something hard, something digging out of the lounge.
His hand reaches into the tan leather in an attempt to retrieve whatever his leg has just felt out and then with something in his grasp, he pulls out the hardcover, spiral bound pink notebook from between the cushion and the arm of the lounge chair just seconds later.
Not only does Logan know that the pink notebook is not his, he can have a pretty safe bet as to whose it is. After all, he's seen Elle pull it out and scrawl in it a number of times, the most recently being last night. However, although he recognises the notebook and he's seen her using it, he doesn't quite know what the content of that notebook is. He doesn't know if it's for school, if it's a diary or if it's just a notebook that she keeps on her for whatever she needs.
Holding the pink notebook in his hands, Logan hesitates opening it and flicking through it. It feels intrusive to look through her stuff, but fathers do that sort of thing, right? You know, check his daughter's not planning a siege, running off to Tibet or looking into joining a bikers gang... Right?
He reasons with himself that he should at least flick through it to work out whether it's important and whether there's any chance he may need to get the notebook to her urgently, before the next time he sees her, which is after school tomorrow afternoon. So, thumbing through the pages to a random page that is approximately in the middle of the notebook, Logan briefly glances over his daughter's diary entry from a few weeks back; the night after Rory had gone to kiss him.
Last night, mom and I had dad over to our place. We just watched movies and had dinner, but I had such a good time!
... It felt like we were a family.
Before I knew that my dad was my dad, I always wondered what it felt like to have a proper family, not just me and mom... So, I think that was my best day in a long time 'cause that night I found out what that feels like.
I love both of them and I love spending time with mom or dad, but I LOVED doing it all together.
... I wish I had a normal family. Like Steve and Kwan.
Logan shuts the quick so quickly that it makes a clap of noise. He throws the notebook down on the lounge, out of his hands, instantly feeling guilty for looking through his daughter's diary... Or is he guiltier for what is inside that diary?
Seeing those words, seeing them coming from his daughter is just the push that Logan needs.
#
After having the night to think about what he briefly read in his daughter's diary, Logan set out with one resolve the following day.
He knocks at the door and after hearing the "I'll be there in a second!" from inside the home, Logan patiently waits until who he's waiting to see opens the door from the other side.
There's no greetings, no small talk. They've wasted enough time as it is.
Rather, as soon as he sees his ex-girlfriend open the door that's standing between them from the other side of it, Logan takes a long deep breath, his brown eyes staring at her intently, fixed with his focus and purpose for the reason why he is there.
"I want to give us a shot... I want to learn to trust you again... I want us to be a family."
So, Elle's first sleepover at Logan's! And it turns out that Elle gave her dad just the push he needed with Rory. I hope you enjoyed just a little bit of fluff as things are going to get a little more serious over the following chapters.
Thank you so much to everyone who read and reviewed the last chapter. As always, I appreciate the support and the time that you take joining myself, Rory, Logan and Elle on this journey. I hope you continue to enjoy it!
Next chapter: Logan and Rory talk it out and she gives him an answer to his proposition. Then, someone receives some devastating news. Whose life is on the line?