Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls or any of the characters associated with the show.
Author's Note: Sorry this chapter is a little short. There will be much more to come this week!
Chapter Six: Blowouts
Rory fumed. She fumed the whole train ride home. She fumed as she ranted to Lorelai. She fumed all day Tuesday as she sent out the vapid tweets she had been assigned. She almost quit, twice, but her mother stopped her. By Wednesday morning her anger towards Tristan had quieted to a simmer. She simmered on the train into the city. She simmered on her walk to the Imagesoffices. She simmered the entire elevator ride up. And then she saw Carly and felt the fuming come back around.
And so she fumed the entire three hour meeting. Logically, she knew that none of this was Carly's fault. Carly had no idea that Tristan was running around being a deceptive cad. But Rory couldn't help staring at her across the table. About fifteen minutes into the meeting, Carly's face started to blur in Rory's mind until eventually it was so warped she saw Lindsay sitting across from her. Dean's Lindsay. Pathetic little Lindsay who couldn't hold on to Dean.
At this thought Rory blushed. She felt the warmth spread across her cheeks. She couldn't believe that after all of these years she still could think such an ugly thought about Lindsay. Poor, innocent Lindsay.
Poor Carly.
By the end of the meeting, Rory had convinced herself that Carly was a victim of Tristan's playboy ways. How many times had he cheated, and how many times had she turned a blind eye?
"Hey, so Rory, I was thinking. I have an appointment to go get a blowout right now. It's all for an article I'm doing next month on blowouts for every budget. I was thinking you should come along. You can tweet out a picture of the process as a teaser. And we can have girl talk while I'm stuck in the chair. You know, get to know each other since I missed lunch on Monday?"
Rory looked up at Carly who was standing next to her seat at the conference table. "Uh, sure," she answered reluctantly. Watch poor Carly get a blowout?
Carly smiled a genuine, pearly white smile. "Excellent. I just need my bag."
A half hour later the two were seated in a salon on the Upper West Side. Carly was in the salon chair, an Italian man buzzing around her as he juggled an array of hair products and appliances. Rory sat in the empty hair station next to Carly. The salon was upscale. There were marble floors and ivy growing up trellises on the walls. Most of the other chairs were full of clients getting a mid-day makeover. The receptionists stood at the front desk, all business.
"So then what happened?" Carly asked, a smile spread across her pretty face.
Rory laughed a little. "Well, I buckled that seat belt around my waist, grabbed the umbrella and Logan's hand, and jumped."
Carly's smile grew. "And to think, my first piece in the school paper was on Spring handbag trends. That's so cool. So then you and this Logan guy…"
Rory took a sip of her cucumber water. "We dated for a couple of years. It ended after college."
"And you're single now?" she asked, lightly, not really prying, just making conversation.
"Oh yes."
"Well that's no fun," she said.
"It's okay. I've been moving around a lot. It's no big deal, really."
"Have you dated a lot since the college guy?"
"Not really," Rory said. She took another sip of her cucumber water to try to hide her discomfort.
"I'll have to introduce you to some of Tristan's friends," Carly said, settling back into her seat. "He has plenty of cute ones. All of them know how to clean up to be introduced to Mom."
"I bet," Rory said sarcastically.
"That had a bite."
"Sorry," Rory said. "It's just that after Logan I swore of the society guy. And I'm assuming most of Tristan's friends are that type."
"Well that's no fun," Carly said, brushing off the way Rory blew off her idea. "Hey, take a picture of this for Twitter."
Rory stood up and captured a picture of Carly. Her hair was streaked with a myriad of products and sectioned off into pieces and pinned to her head with huge, plastic clips. Rory tweeted it out, adding it to the first few steps she had already posted.
"So what's it like, dating?" she asked Rory. "I don't mean to pry or sound like one of those girls. You know those awful ones who don't have any clue what it's really like and they try for sympathy and just end up sounding like a bitch?"
"I've come across a few in my day," Rory answered.
"But what's it like? Is it really as awful as people make it out to be?"
"Well, I mean, I wouldn't really know. I feel like people don't really date. Unless you go online, and I so haven't tried that yet."
"Why not?"
"I'm just not there yet."
"Girls, I must turn on the blowdryer now."
"Go ahead, Alessandro," Carly said.
As Alessandro worked on drying the sections of Carly's hair, Rory mulled over her lack of a dating life. Things had been slow lately. Not even slow. Dead. Rory hadn't had sex with anyone since she had broken up with Logan. No one. Not that she felt like that was out of character. She had never really done the casual sex thing. She had tried with Logan, and that had ultimately ended with an engagement that she could not accept. Far from casual.
Her mind drifted to Logan and his new wife. Somehow, irrationally, it made her burn that he went to bed with her every night. It was like in the universal game that all exes compete in, Logan was winning. And having lots of sex. And she? She was just drying up.
"Get this, Rory!"
Rory took another picture of Carly as Alessandro captured her hair between the dryer and his round brush. Carly. She was an initiated one, part of that club of girls who live with their boyfriends. Who have fabulous sex, and fabulous shoes, and fabulous jobs. Fabulous Carly. Having fabulous sex with Tristan. Le sigh.
And that feeling of Carly's fabulousness continued to grow as Rory sat across from her at lunch an hour later. The two young women were eating overpriced salads, dressing on the side. Rory couldn't help but think how her mother would shudder at her menu choice. She knew she was being one of those girls. But she wasn't eighteen anymore. She was a little more aware of her eating habits than her mother had ever been.
Lunch with Carly had been, well, fabulous. Carly entertained Rory with stories about growing up in Los Angeles.
"Well, the valley, really," Carly had confessed as she sipped her water with lemon. "About ten miles from downtown. It is anything but fabulous. Just a sleepy little suburb that somehow has stayed in some sort of bubble."
"And Tristan told me you met at USC?" Rory asked as she picked at some of the feta cheese on her salad.
"Did he tell you how we met?"
"Something about your sorority and his fraternity?"
Carly laughed. "He never tells the story. I think it embarasses him." She chewed delicately on a forkful of craisins. "We met after his frat house burned down. Sophomore year."
"Burned down?"
"He swears he had nothing to do with it. Especially now. I think he has fraternity amnesia. When he went off to military school, he really cleaned up his act. But then college happened and he fell off the wagon pretty hard."
"So you don't believe him?"
"I didn't say that," she said, but it was in a playful tone. "Anyway, he moved into our sorority house and lived on our couch for the rest of the semester. We made him our houseboy and subjected him to all sorts of humiliating tasks. Buying us tampons, cleaning the bathroom, baking us cupcakes...that sort of thing."
Rory laughed, thinking about Tristan doing all of these tasks, probably protesting at each one of them, but loving the attention from all of the girls.
"We started hooking up by the end of the semester. To be honest, he kind of followed me around like a puppy dog until I caved finals week. But then junior year rolled around and he was back living with the boys in the new frat house so he started acting like a dick. We didn't actually officially start dating until senior year when I gave him an ultimatum."
"Typical guy."
"Typical," Carly agreed. "I don't know," she said at length. "It's been a great few years, but I think we had the most fun back in the early days, before we were official. Everything was so exciting, every text made my heart jump. Every night together was memorable." She sighed.
Rory pushed her salad around on her plate. "So things with you guys are…"
"Oh, we're fine," Carly answered quickly. "Things are wonderful. We really balance each other well. It's just fun to remember the early days."
The waiter came by, cleared away their plates, and dropped off their bill. Carly took it, Rory protested, and she insisted that she could put it on the Image card as a business lunch.
As the two parted ways on the sidewalk, Carly put her hand on Rory's arm, stopping her. "Today was really fun, " she said.
"Yeah, it was."
"I know you don't want me to play matchmaker," Carly said, "and I'm not. But Tristan and I are having people over on Friday. I want you to come. I like getting to know Tristan's friends from high school."
"I don't know," Rory said. "I'm not exactly local…"
"We have two bedrooms. You can crash. Just bring a bag when you come in for work. You can spend the day in the city and come hang out at our place. Or even better! I have my second blowout appointment Friday. I'll change the appointment so that it is for two. Are you in?"
Rory thought about it for a moment. What else was she going to do?
"Count me in."