THREE

Rory would say that she was working diligently on this week's Gazette to get the layout finished early, but instead, her mind was a million places and none of them were the Gazette.

Can I have coffee while I'm pregnant?

Should I start taking vitamins? Pregnant people always go on and on about something-or-other vitamins.

I need a job that actually pays me something because, my god, there are so many things I'll need to buy for the baby.

When do I tell people in the town?

Should I drive out to Hartford to get this stuff? If I go in town, people will know that I'm pregnant. I mean, they'll know, and it's just because Ms. Patty will make sure that everyone knows.

Maybe I should just call Mom.

But she's on her honeymoon. She won't want me to call.

Also, I have no money to buy any of this. I can't even afford to buy myself new underwear.

I don't have a car either, and my license is expired. God help me.

Maybe I could ask Jess . . . no, no, no.

Wait—Luke knows. I mean, he has to know. Mom wouldn't be able to keep something like this from him. What if he told Jess? Even if it was an accident?

Calm down, Rory. Breathe. Breathe. Now finish putting together this damn paper, then you can go home.

So she did.

She took a breath. Then another. Wiping away the cobwebs in her mind and shoving everything pregnancy related into a little box, for now, she finally started working on the Gazette. Around midday, a majority of the paper was finished, and the file at the forefront of Rory's laptop was the Gilmore Girls document. Keys were furiously forming the words to chapter four, which was proving difficult to really get into. She was frustrated with stupid decisions she'd made, and all she wanted to do was to go back and change them.

The thought had come into her head when first starting to go Ferrante-style on the book. Change everyone's names, change slight details, and give herself a pseudonym. But then it wouldn't be Gilmore Girls, and it wouldn't really be her story if she changed little facts here and there to make herself or others more likable. They weren't characters. They were, they are, people.

To go back and to fix every relationship, to tie them off with pretty bows, to gloss over the fact that Dean got really possessive of her at the end of their relationship, to change the fact that she had ended Dean's first marriage. Yes, now he's happily married with kids and another on the way, and without Lindsay, he never would have found Jenny. Putting all of that aside, it was a wretched thing, and she's always wanted to reach back into her life and tweak it.

Well, not always but definitely more recently.

By the time Jess had closed the diner and gotten back to the Gilmore house last night, Rory was asleep. Her door was open, Troubling Love open next to her, and there was an empty bag of tater tots at the top of the trash and a box of Pop Tarts open on the kitchen table. So tonight, he had Caesar prepare extras of all the classic Gilmore foods and grabbed some things from the back, loading them all into a box to take over to her.

"Hey Caesar, can you close tonight?" Jess walked back to the kitchen. The diner was relatively empty, only a few people eating dinner and some chatting while deciding what to order.

There was another cook in the back, so Caesar turned, his hair flipping around with him. Jess bit back a laugh as he said, "No problem! I got this!"

"See you tomorrow, then," Jess rounded out of the kitchen and out of the diner, picking up the box on his way.

He made the trip an extra couple of minutes longer to walk past the Gazette, peaking in to see if Rory had indeed gone home for the day, and it appeared as such because she wasn't at her desk. But when he got back to the house, it was empty. He called for her, no answer, so he put the food on the table and turned to her door. He knocked, no answer, and he opened it, no Rory. He called out again, louder, still no answer.

If he had her number, he would have called her. So much for convenient.

Briefly, he looked around the kitchen and the living room for a note, but there was nothing. Her laptop was sitting, closed, on the coffee table. She'd been home.

He paused for a moment, just a moment, and then he was out of the house, walking through town as fast as he could without looking crazy. He knew exactly where she was. The lake. If he knew Rory like he thought he did, that's where she'd be. She'd been off recently, not quite herself. It wasn't that she was different from who she was ten years ago, it was that she was different from the person she'd been when he'd visited briefly over the summer and when he'd stayed at the Gilmore house for the few days before the wedding.

"Rory," she was sitting with her legs crossed underneath her at the side of the bridge; it never had been repaired.

"Jess," she looked up but didn't stand, "how did you find me?"

"Lucky guess." Jess sat down next to her, his feet dangling off the edge. "What's up?"

Nothing. Silence hung between them for a few minutes as Rory stared into the lake and Jess stared at Rory, watching her fiddle with the ends of her shirt.

He'd think she was crazy. He'd get overwhelmed and then it would be awkward.

No. No, it wouldn't. It'd never been awkward, not even when it was.

"I'm a horrible person." Way to start off easy, Rory.

"No, you're not, you're-"

"No, Jess, I am. I'm horrible. Up until a month ago, I've been sleeping with Logan, who by the way is engaged to a perfectly lovely and boring, but very respectable lady from France. I spent the entirety of my relationship with Paul forgetting about him and cheating on him with another man. And now," Rory bent her head to her chest to let out a laugh to distract herself from the tears that were welling up in her eyes, "and now, I'm pregnant with Logan's child, and I'm too scared to tell him because I'm worried that I'm going to ruin a perfectly fine marriage before it even starts. What's worse, I can't even muster up the courage to call my mom and ask her about any of this because she's on her honeymoon, and she shouldn't be worrying about me and how clueless I am about everything when she should be having the time of her life with Luke."

Rory caught her breath. "And that's enough to drive a person crazy, but there's more because I still don't have a real job with a salary so I can't pay for any of the stuff that I probably will need for the baby, not to mention the hospital visits. If I told Logan, he'd just toss money at me and pay for all of it, but I don't want that. And I don't want Mom to feel like she has to pay for this because this is my baby and I should be paying for the expenses that go along with it. I'm 32 goddammit and I should be paying for my own things, but I can't."

When she stopped to breathe normally for a few seconds and then bite her lip, Jess figured she was done and piped in, "Did Longbottom get paid?"

"Who?"

"Gazette guy, Longbottom, Flatbottom, something-bottom. Before he died and you took over, did he get paid?"

"I think so, why?"

Jess raised an eyebrow at her when she turned to him, "Really?" Rory shrugged. "Have you thought of asking Taylor about getting paid?"

"Oh," Rory's shoulders slumped as she said it. Clearly, this was never a thought that had crossed her mind. Jess rolled his eyes at her naiveté, stopping the shaking of his head with a hand on his forehead.

"Bring it up to him. With all the money that he's probably saved from not paying you for this long, he should be more than able to afford it."

"So not only am I horrible, but I'm also an idiot."

"You're not an idiot," Jess stood up and offered Rory a hand to help her stand up, should she want it. She did. "Just overwhelmed. Now c'mon, I brought real food back from the diner. I think all you've eaten in the last 24 hours has been tater-tots and Pop Tarts."

A/N: Whew. That took a bit longer to get up, but it's the end of the semester so everything is really starting to pile up. I have finals starting next week, so sorry if updates are a little slow. Just bear with me for a couple more weeks before Winter Break, when I'm sure there will be updates far more often. Again, I want to thank all of you for the incredible responses you've given me. That and my playlist of Literati edits on YouTube have really been pushing me through this chapter. I'm struggling with writing Rory a bit. She's difficult. There's still more to get into with Jess, but it didn't feel right yet.

As always, I hope you enjoyed this chapter. Review, favorite, and follow if ya want!

Talk to you soon.

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