Chapter 6
Gigi surged to the surface of the water and took a breath of air as she wiped off her face. Her heart pounded from having held her breath for so long. She squinted in the bright sunlight and looked out at the sparkling water. She lifted herself up to sit on the side of the pool, her thighs warm on the concrete while her calves still hung in the water. She sat for a few minutes before getting up to towel off. When she was sure she wasn't going to drip all over, she went through the patio doors, immediately hit by the cold from the air conditioner. She tied her towel at her waist as she walked into the kitchen to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
The door to the garage opened and her dad walked in. He sat his briefcase on the counter before he peeked over her shoulder. "Hey kid, could you make me one of those?"
She sighed heavily, like it would be a big inconvenience, but grabbed another plate and two more slices of bread. She slid the plates across the counter and poured him a glass of milk before taking her seat next to him.
"Are you ever going to stop calling me that?" she asked as she licked some strawberry jam off her finger.
"What, kid?" he asked.
"Yeah. I'm not a kid."
"You're only 21, you're a kid. And you'll always be my kid." Chris looked at his sandwich with a frown. "This tastes kind of funny."
"I used natural peanut butter. And I made the jam, it was really easy. Just frozen berries with a little water and natural sweetener."
"That's the problem, there's no sugar."
"I'm going vegan." When he dropped his head with a pained noise, she added, "Just for a year, to see if I can do it."
"A whole year without any sugar?"
"Or animal products. Sugar isn't good for you anyway." She gestured to his sandwich. "You get used to it."
Somewhat miserably, he took another bite.
She gave her father a sidelong glance. She knew he'd spent some years meandering, and lived in California for a time before returning to the east coast in his 30's. She finished chewing, then asked, "How did you manage to get a decent job when you couldn't hold one down for so long?"
Chris frowned, not expecting the blunt question. "What do you mean? I applied and interviewed."
Skeptical, she asked, "Your bad track record and sketchy resume didn't hold you back?"
He relented, "Okay, I called in a favor from a teacher from one of the prep schools I went to."
"The one school that didn't kick you out?" she guessed.
Ruefully, he said, "Yes, as a matter of fact."
"I'm not judging you," she said. She meant it too. He'd been young and confused. He was a 17 year old kid who wanted to do the right thing with a girlfriend who didn't want help with anything. Lorelai assumed Chris wasn't grown up enough and decided for everyone what to do. Maybe he could have risen to the occasion if he had been included in the special bubble. But what happened, happened. And here they were.
Whatever his failings in life, Gigi knew her dad provided for her, made sure she had what she needed, and sent her to good schools. He wanted to spend time with her when he got the chance. He wanted her life to be better than his. Gigi didn't mind that he wasn't the perfect dad, she wasn't the perfect daughter. Still, it did take him an awfully long time to lead an adult life.
"Why didn't you want to go to college and get a job when you were my age?"
He glanced at her, frowning slightly. He didn't answer immediately, thinking back to a younger version of himself. Then he lifted a shoulder. "I had my whole life in front of me, I didn't want to be trapped in a corner office, just some corporate stiff having the life sucked out of me. That was my dad's thing, not mine. There's a big world out there and I wanted to see it." Chris chewed the last bite of his first sandwich half. "And I don't know what your grandma has been telling you, but I wouldn't have made it through Princeton, even if I had gone." He shook his head. "I wasn't cut out for Ivy like you and Rory."
Was she really cut out for it though? She had worked hard and crossed her fingers when she sent in her application. She didn't go around talking like it was a given that she'd get in. That would have been an embarrassing disappointment if she didn't. She supposed it didn't matter at this point. She did get into Princeton. She was attending, and she liked it there. It wasn't the worst thing in the world, to go to the best school in the country.
"I've been thinking," she said slowly, stalling by eating another bite of her sandwich. "I'm going to do another internship."
"Oh yeah, where?"
"At an insurance company," she said nervously.
"Insurance?" Chris said, an amused smile turning to a chuckle.
Gigi felt her face flush and she tossed him a brief scowl. "Remember how mad you were at Jennifer Stiles when you thought she made me feel bad about my career choice?"
"Yeah."
"Well right now you're making me feel bad." She could only imagine how people would react if Rory had the same idea. She's surely be praised for making such a brilliantly practical life choice. There would be proclamations that she'd be running the place in no time. "I used to say I wanted to be a ballerina and no one thought anything was wrong with that."
"You were six. It was cute."
"Well I'm not six anymore. It isn't cute, or realistic."
He lifted his hands in surrender. "Hey, I'm sorry. No, if that's what you want to do, then go for it. It's just . . . weird."
"Really? We live in Connecticut. Insurance is kind of our thing." She went on, "I know it isn't sexy and glamorous like some other jobs, but I could make a living. I want to try it out, see how it goes."
"Money isn't an issue," he reminded her. "I want you to do what makes your happy."
"I don't think 'follow your passion' has to be career advice. I want to get a good job, and earn a living, not live off your money." She added, "It would make me happy to be a contributing member of society before I'm 35."
She said it more pointedly than she'd intended, and he noticed. "You're saying you don't want to be me."
"Well. Kind of. No offense."
He nodded down at his plate. "That's . . . not the worst idea."
She got up to put her plate in the dishwasher and was about to go up to her room to change, when she turned. "I'm thinking of joining the Junior League, too."
He lifted his head to look at her like she was crazy. "The Junior League?" Dryly, he asked, "Do I need to get you some pearls?"
Gigi rolled her eyes. "I knew you would see this as a negative. It's weird, sometimes it's like you think it's the 1960's," she said. "Look around Dad, it's not."
Before she escaped the room, he said, "Hey, you really want to stay in Connecticut?"
She stopped to face him again. "Where else would I go?"
"I don't know, I just wanted to get as far away from my parents as I could get when I was younger." He asked, "You aren't trying to get away from me?"
She lifted a shoulder and shook her head. "No."
XXX
It was evening in the office, and it was just Gigi and Sloan Stiles manning the phones. There was usually someone else around to supervise, but sometimes it was just the two of them. Sloan wasn't very chatty, only talking to Gigi to answer an occasional question. The other girl had been working here for a year already, so she knew more. Gigi used all her down time to read up on the company's different product lines so she could competently answer questions.
Without a word, Sloan got up and left the office. When the phone at her desk started ringing a minute later, Gigi picked hers up and pressed a button so she could take the call. "This is Gigi Hayden."
There was a long pause on the line. "Who?"
"Gigi Hayden."
"As in, Georgia Hayden?"
"Uh, yeah."
"How?" he asked slowly. "I'm not sure what happened. My dad transferred me to Sloan." He added, "Thank you, Dad."
"Oh, Xavier," Gigi said, recognizing his voice with a little thrill. "Sloan stepped out—I'm not sure where. She doesn't tell me her whereabouts. Her phone rang, so I took the call. I thought it was a client. Sorry."
"No, no, it's okay," he said. "What are you doing there?"
"Working."
"Working?"
"Yeah. I'm trying out insurance. It was either this or Vegas showgirl. This seemed like a more viable option."
"I bet the costume isn't as good though," he said.
She grinned. "That's what you think. I happen to be wearing a headpiece right now," she said. "If they like me I could get a job here after I graduate next spring."
"The headpiece should get you bonus points," he said. It sounded like he was smiling. "So you're Sloan's new trainee she told me about. I had no idea it was you."
"I am not her trainee." Gigi shook her head and glancing at the door where Sloan disappeared. "I ask her questions sometimes when there's no one else around. She's basically indifferent to me—a lot like my cat." She added, "Then again, I never gave my cat a name, so maybe I set the tone there."
"Like the mascot," Xavier said approvingly.
"Mm-hmm." It was confirmation that Princeton was the right school for her, when she found out they never got around to naming their pet cat either. Her dad thought she needed to make pro/con lists to be sure she chose to the right place. Gigi wasn't going to let a list dictate where to go to college when she already knew where she was going. It was no problem, she just made sure the lists gave her the outcome she wanted. She wondered if Rory ever did the same, or if she really couldn't make decisions. Then again, perhaps poor choices could be blamed on the lists.
Xavier said, "Sloanie just likes to think she's in charge of something, or someone."
"Well she isn't in charge of me." Then she asked, "How is Seattle?"
"It's good, things are good. I like it here, and my job is awesome," he said. "Hey, what's your email address?"
"Gahayden at yahoo."
"The abbreviation for Georgia, clever."
"No, Georgia Ann."
"Oh, in my mind your middle name is Rose."
"Yeah, I've wished it was."
Under his breath, he sang, "And we danced all night to the best song ever." Then he said, "Gmail is better, by the way. You should think about switching."
"I'll get right on that," she said, smiling. She clicked over to her email when an alert popped up. "So you're perfectly happy way over there in Washington? I guess you have no reason to come back east very often."
"I have some reason. Family beckons, so I oblige a couple times a year."
"Really?"
"Really."
"How lucky for Connecticut." He sent her a YouTube link. "It's a cat video?" she deadpanned, pressing play.
"No, better. It's Kitten Academy."
Gigi watched for a moment. "It's just a room with cats playing?"
"Yeah, playing, sleeping. Live streamed 24 hours a day."
"I had no idea there was such a thing." She watched for a minute. "Well, now my life is complete." She giggled. She typed in the YouTube search bar and copied the link into a reply message.
"What's this?" he asked upon receiving it. Then a moment later, he hissed, "What is this? Is that you?"
"Yes. I, uh, started dancing again. Last year." She added, "I tried out for one of the dance teams at school. And I made it somehow."
"You're a ballerina," he argued. "This doesn't look like ballet."
"I know, and that's not Tchaikovsky in the background, either. But a lot of technique was transferrable. It's been fun."
"That is really fantastic to hear," he said, seemingly still engrossed with the video. "Are you wearing a cat suit?"
"No. Just all black."
"You look like Black Widow."
"Is that goo—" The other blond girl returned to the office then. Gigi glanced up and stopped mid sentence, immediately guilty for goofing off. "Oh, here she is. I'll transfer you."
"Wha—?"
She pressed a button and hung up her phone. Sloan glanced at Gigi suspiciously before picking up after a single ring. "Sloan Stiles." She grinned at the sound of her brother's voice as she sank back down in her swivel chair. "I'm glad you called. My laptop has been running a little sluggish, so I just need you to come take a look at it. Next weekend works for me." She pouted at the answer. "I don't need the Geek Squad when I have you." She clicked a few times on her computer. "I've been saving some emails I wasn't sure about. Like this one from the FBI. It's the Monetary Crimes Division and they want me to confirm an inheritance. What should I do, in your professional opinion?" After a pause, she argued, "But it says I'm the beneficiary of millions of dollars . . . Fine, I'll delete it, but don't try to hit me up for money later. Now this one is from royalty. He's from Nigeria."
Gigi listened to Sloan pester her brother with the contents of her spam folder, wondering what Rory would do if Gigi ever tried to annoy her on purpose.
"Okay, but wait," Sloan said, smiling. "This one has a link! Should I click it?"
She talked for a little while longer, sharing a snippet of family gossip before ending the call. Jason appeared at the door shortly thereafter. "Are you ready to go?" he asked his daughter, holding out car keys.
"Yes."
"Did you get to talk to Xavier?"
"Yeah. He said he was at work, but it sounded like someone was playing a video game in the background."
Jason nodded. "He was at work."
Sloan sighed as she tidied her workspace before she got up. "Must be nice." She accepted the keys and passed her dad out the door.
"Bye, Gigi. See you tomorrow?" Jason asked.
"Yeah, good night."
XXX
Gigi carefully swiped mascara on her lashes and then smeared some light pink gloss on her lips. Her makeup boycott ended some time when she was 18. Some pointless teenage rebellions couldn't last forever. She was just careful to only invest in American made cosmetics. When she was finished, she checked her image in the mirror. Jean skirt with black leggings and a black top. She reached for an orange scarf from her dresser and put it on. It had capital P's printed all over. It was festive.
She had a date tonight. It was a big football weekend at Princeton, homecoming, and one alumnus was persuaded by his uncle to come home for the festivities. It was a good a time as any for Gigi to suspend her hiatus from boys. She was putting her shoes on when there was a knock at the door. She came face to face with Xavier when she opened it. He grinned at her as she let him in.
"Hi."
"Hi."
They'd continued their cross country flirtation through sporadic phone calls at work over the summer, and the occasional email. Let's go out for dinner tonight, she'd read with a grin as she walked to class. Pick me up at 8, she'd respond.
Her cat lazily walked into the room, looking at Xavier with disinterest.
"That's my roommate." Gigi had been friendly with everyone on her floor back in the dorms, but she wasn't close enough to anyone in particular to make housing plans. So she got an apartment near campus and brought her cat to live with her.
"He's neutered," she said. "It's college, so I want him to have fun, but be safe."
Xavier chuckled.
She pulled on her jacket. "Are you ready?"
He looked at her intently. "Almost." He tilted his head and leaned in toward her until their lips met for a moment. When he pulled away, he said, "Sorry, I've been thinking about that for a while."
"Oh, well then." She lifted herself to her toes and pressed her lips to his again, sliding her hands to the back of his neck.
His hands were at her hips when they stopped to look at each other. "Okay, dinner?"
"How was the game from your seats?" she asked when they were at a table at one of his favorite restaurants near campus a short while later.
"It was exciting. We have very good seats."
"I was with the dance team, I sat next to one of the girls who could explain why the game kept stopping." She asked, "Did your whole family come?"
He shook his head. "It was just my uncle Tristan's family. And they brought my grandpa." Xavier looked up from his menu. "Tristan met his wife, Savannah, at Princeton. He came back from military school in North Carolina and wooed the first southern girl he could find."
Gigi grinned.
"She's a Rhodes Scholar, so we don't always know what she sees in him." He added, "I used to have a crush on her."
Her smiled widened. "I didn't know people really sent their kids to military school."
"They do in my family—two uncles and four cousins. Tristan's daughter, EllaMae, is probably safe, but she's only nine, so we'll see. I think he had Knox and Yates on the waiting list since they were in preschool."
The waiter brought them drinks then, and she took a sip. "My grandma knows the Dugrays from alumni events," Gigi said. "I come from a very long line of Princeton men, except my dad."
"I do too," Xavier said with a nod. "Although I come from more lines of Yale men, except my dad."
"Mine didn't go to college at all."
"Oh yeah, mine too."
She frowned at him in open disbelief. "Really?"
"Well, no, Harvard. But, same difference."
She made a sound in her throat and shook her head with a half smile. "My dad has perfected the art of disappointing his parents."
"Does he have siblings?"
"No, why?"
Xavier shrugged. "Multiply it by four. My mom had a baby out of wedlock, my uncles Spencer and Tristan got into so much trouble they were shipped off to military school, and my uncle Brody never went back to Princeton for his senior year. Three of those things happened in the same year."
She shook her head. "Amateurs, all of them. And your mom married your dad—successfully."
"Yeah, and Tristan and Spencer made it through Princeton, and Brody made a fortune in Silicon Valley. So everything turned out fine." Xavier added, "Your dad raised you, and you turned out okay."
"That has yet to be determined."
They went to a movie after dinner, and ended the night strolling through their college town. When their knuckles brushed together as they walked, Xavier took her hand, his fingers lacing into hers. She felt a dopey grin on her face form, as though she was in middle school and holding a boy's hand for the first time.
"You must not go on many second dates," she said as they walked up to her building at the end of the night. He'd taken her to a cemetery.
"We have Aaron Burr buried out there. That's cool," he said. "Talk less, smile more."
"You're a dork."
He smirked. "Earnestly."
She smiled up at him.
They had a goodnight kiss in front of her door, and then another, until they were making out, her arms around his neck and his hands circling her rib cage. "Well, I guess this is goodnight," Xavier said, though he did not let her go. He kissed her.
She pressed herself back to him. She held on to stop him from letting her go. "Wait. Have you ever seen Swan Lake?"
"No."
"Well, there are these two swans," Gigi said. "Princess Odette is the perfect one—good and caring and innocent. She's under a spell that turns her into the white swan."
"Okay."
"And Odile is the evil witch, or evil sister, depending on the production. She's the uninhibited, mysterious seductress, and pretends to be Odette in the third act. She's the black swan."
"Sure."
"I tried so hard for a long time to be the good little white swan everyone wants. But I was pretending. That isn't who I really am."
"You're not?"
"No. I'm the other one."
"The mysterious seductress?" he asked hopefully.
She nodded. "Do you want to come inside?"
"Oh." He blinked. "Yes." As she led him inside her apartment, he said, "I need to see more ballet."
XXX
"And this is Nassau Hall," Gigi said, stopping with her mother in front of the large ivy covered building. She paused for a moment, then slowly started to move along. It was a pretty spring day, nice for an outdoor ceremony.
"Now wait a minute," Sherry said. "You've been rushing through the whole tour. Slow down and tell me some things about the building. I want to know all about it."
"It's Nassau Hall, it's . . . old."
"Georgia, I'm serious," she said impatiently.
Gigi sighed. "Fine, it's the oldest building on campus. A couple cannonballs hit it during the Battle of Princeton. Legend says Alexander Hamilton shot a cannon through the window and it decapitated the portrait of King George II." She pulled her cellphone out to peek at the time. "We should really move on, there's a lot. And I have to be there, in my cap and gown in two hours."
There'd be more time for this if her mom hadn't waited until the last minute to come see her school. But here they were, taking a tour at the eleventh hour. She'd gone to school and lived here for four years and this was the first time her mom made it across to pond to see it. Gigi hadn't exactly extended an invitation though. She didn't want to ask Sherry to do anything she didn't want to do.
"You're always in such a hurry. Ever since you were born," Sherry said. "Your dad said Rory told him the history of all the buildings and benches when she gave him a tour of Yale."
"Then go to New Haven and have Rory give you a tour of Yale, if that's what you want," Gigi snapped. "This is my tour of my school."
Sherry focused in on Gigi, a frown forming. "I came a long way for today," she scolded. "I'd appreciate it if you adjusted your attitude."
Gigi couldn't believe her. She knew exactly how long the trip was, she'd made it several times to visit her mom in Paris. She was always the one who went there. Sherry may have wanted a ballerina, but couldn't be bothered to come to the recitals. She made a point of making sure Chris recorded them all, sure. That wasn't the same as being there.
Gigi exhaled heavily and turned away, shaking her head. She glanced over to FitzRandolph gate. She walked in as a freshman and would finally get to walk out of it later that day.
"Let's move on. I'm not going to be late for the ceremony. I wrote it down," she sneered. The time for a long languid tour was four years in the past. Now was too late. Gigi was finished.