Eight and a Half

By Imagine Backstory

Chapter Twenty-Four – A Bun & An Oven

Rory

Lorelai found me curled up on the couch, buried in a blanket and one of Luke's baggy hoodies, watching TV miserably. She and Luke had returned early, since my illness had rendered me utterly useless to Emerson and Paul Anka. Lane had helped out until they arrived, taking care of the three of us with the kind of patience only a mother of three could have.

I'd thrown up once more since Luke's, and had slept soundly for most of the afternoon. Lorelai and Luke arrived home late at night, and now Lorelai was sitting on the coffee table across from me, gently brushing my forehead with a damp washcloth. "Sick, kiddo?" she asked gently.

I nodded. My eyes were burning. "So it would seem."

"When did this start?" she asked.

I shrugged weakly. "This morning at Luke's. And a little bit before, I guess. I wasn't hungry and then I got nauseated."

"Poor baby," said Lorelai softly. Then her expression shifted. "This morning, huh?"

"That's what I said."

"Rory, um." Lorelai fidgeted, bringing the washcloth back into her lap. "Have you, uh..."

I raised an eyebrow, feeling too crappy to be patient. "Have I what?"

Lorelai took a deep breath, and, with a low voice, dropped the bomb. "Have you considered whether this illness isn't the flu...?"

It was as though an imaginary carpet had been ripped out from under me. My mouth fell open as my eyes grew wide, and I had this strange sort of surreal experience as though I were floating above the living room, watching with horror from the ceiling. "F..." It was all I could muster.

"Have you and Jess been..." Lorelai trailed off, no doubt hoping I'd get what she meant.

"Yes! Yes, we've been safe. Always." I drew in a quivering breath, and I wondered for a fleeting moment if I'd be sick again. It passed, but the panic didn't. "We were always-! How did this happen?!"

"Okay, don't panic," Lorelai urged, keeping her voice low so Luke wouldn't hear from Emerson's room. "Do you want me to go get you a test?"

"No, because that's not what it is," I replied adamantly, hugging the blanket tighter around me. "It's impossible."

"Rory." Lorelai's voice had taken on a motherly tone. "You might as well take a test just to see. To put your mind at ease, even. There's nothing to lose from that."

"Except my mind," I insisted, my voice breaking as tears once again burned behind my eyes.

Lorelai stood up and reached for her purse. I was too weak and tired to stop her. "I'll be back," she said quietly, before she disappeared out the door.

Lying on the sofa, unable to move, and in complete silence, I panicked. I thought of Lorelai going to Doose's market, buying a test, which no doubt would attract the attention of everyone in town, and coming back with it only to haul me off the couch to the bathroom to take it, and then- I couldn't think that far ahead. All I knew was that as soon as Lorelai had put that thought into my head, I couldn't shake the feeling that that was what it was.

I tried to think about it rationally. If it was...that, would it be so bad? Sure, Jess and I had only been together for a month, but as far as I knew we were in for the long haul. We both had steady income at jobs we both loved. We both had apartments and one could move in with the other easily. We both had cars. It wasn't as though a baby wouldn't work logistically.

But emotionally, I felt like too much of a nervous wreck just thinking of the possibility of this happening. And what about Jess? What would Jess say? What would he do? We had just got here, this amazing place where we were together-would a wrench like this be enough to scare him off?

I was in tears by the time Lorelai returned with a small plastic bag dangling from her wrist. She came to kneel in front of me again, and removed the small pink box from the bag. "You ready?"

"No," I moaned, sniffling pathetically.

Lorelai took my hand and guided me up off the couch. I moved like a sloth, partly because I was stiff from lying down all day and partly because I wanted to put this off as long as possible. We climbed the stairs to the bathroom, quietly scooting around Luke, who was putting Emerson down in the nursery, and Lorelai locked the door behind us. She turned to me, her cheeks still pink from her little nighttime walk, and bit her lip. "Do you want me to go, while you..."

"No, stay. Please." Lorelai turned away while I sat and removed the device from its packaging. I squeezed my eyes shut while I peed, my heart racing a million miles per second. I tried to focus on taking deep breaths. In and out. In and out...

Soon, Lorelai and I were both sitting cross-legged in front of the tub, arms folded on the edge, staring at the little stick that stood on the edge between us. This, I was convinced, was surely the longest two minutes of my entire life. My heart hammered around in my rib-cage, and my palms were slick with sweat. Lorelai didn't seem to be in a much better state; if anything, I'd say she was probably more nervous than me. She had just gotten better at internalizing it.

The seconds stretched on. At the one minute-thirty mark, the little "screen" on the test started to turn a different colour. Lorelai reached to grip my hand, hard, and I returned the gesture with equal intensity. We kept our matching eyes trained firmly on the test as the colour spread vertically downward...

Unable to take it any longer, I pushed myself away from the tub and stood, turning my back on the offending object. "I can't look."

Lorelai stood, too, taking the test up with her. When she spoke, her voice was steady, quiet. "Do you want me to tell you?"

Turning halfway towards my mother, I nodded.

Lorelai looked as though she wanted to either laugh or cry as she looked directly into my eyes and said, "It's positive, kiddo. There is a bun in that oven."

Jess

"Great job tonight," I told Rory proudly as she locked the door behind the last of the night's patrons. It had been a hectic night for a Sunday, but Rory had handled it like a champ. "If that's how you operate while you're sick, I think we are gonna do just fine here."

She grinned at me as she headed towards the kitchen to help Dimitri clean up. "I told you, I'm feeling better," she reminded me before disappearing behind the swinging door.

I chuckled. Rory had returned earlier that day from Stars Hollow, claiming her mom and Luke had kicked her out so she wouldn't infect Emerson with whatever bug she had. She claimed she felt alright to work, though, and in the end Dimitri, Matt and I were grateful. We'd been slammed all afternoon due to the pouring rain outside, which had forced the people of SoHo indoors, so the extra pair of hands had been a big help.

Still, it was obvious that Rory was feeling off. She'd barely spoken since she arrived, only speaking up when necessary, and had been very vague with the details of her brief trip. I chalked it up to the fact that she was ill, but I couldn't shake my bout of anxiety from last night. It had kept me up until the wee hours of the morning, my mind racing to process all my feelings and emotions, most of which were not completely foreign but now applied to a different girl. Get a grip, Mariano. Rory needed me to be strong right now, while her body fought whatever it was that was bringing her down. My stress could wait until she was better. Better yet, it could fuck off for good.

Once we'd all finished closing up for the night, Rory found me up in the office finishing up balancing the tills. "Hey," I greeted fondly as she slumped into the chair on the other side of my desk. She only offered a weak smile in response, and then went about fiddling around on her phone. I was counting money, but I chanced a few glances in her direction. Her brow was furrowed, her expression pinched. "Everything okay?"

"Hm, what?" she asked, jerking her head up to look at me. Her blue eyes were distant, distracted.

I tilted my eyes towards her. "You've been quiet tonight."

She shrugged, looking back to her phone. "Yeah, well, I'm still not feeling a hundred percent," she said vaguely.

"You can head out if you want," I told her gently. "I still have to finish up here. I'll see you at my place?"

She put her phone into her pocket and reached for her coat. "Actually, I think I'm just going to go home, if that's okay. I just need to rest."

"If you're worried about getting me sick, don't be," I protested as she gathered her purse and her keys. "I'd be honoured to receive your germs."

She avoided my gaze as she headed for the door. "Sorry. I'll talk to you later?"

"Rory, wait," I said, standing and going to her. She stopped, waiting, but still wouldn't meet my eyes. "What's going on? You've been off all day. And I know it's not just because you're sick." She said nothing. "Ror, we've got to talk to each-other if this is gonna work. Please loop me in. I'm dying here." The last part was hard to spit out. I didn't want to admit my anxiety to Rory, I didn't want her to think I was weak or having second thoughts. Because I wasn't either of those things. I just wanted to be more, to be better, for her.

"It's really nothing, Jess. I'm just tired and I feel like crap and I want to sleep in my own bed tonight." She placed a chaste kiss on my cheek and offered a half-hearted smile. "I'll text you tomorrow." And with that, she was gone.

I finished up my work and reluctantly headed home alone. Home. It was still such a strange concept. This would be my first night alone in my apartment since I'd gotten it back from Nora. I would probably never tell Rory, but I had slept on the couch in the office last night, not being able to stand being alone in the apartment. Every other night before Rory left for Stars Hollow she'd been with me, and her presence next to me in bed every night had been all the reassurance I'd needed. But now, I needed to man up. It was inevitable. I had to spend the night alone in my own house.

I cracked a beer and stood by the wall of windows, looking out at the low-hanging clouds which were streaked with light from the city below. Rain was pattering, ever persistent, against the window pane. I tried to relax, to reassure myself so that I could hopefully shake the night's inevitable insomnia. The beer helped. I had a couple more, just for good measure, and sat on the couch with a few manuscripts I'd been putting off reviewing.

I was just about to call it a night when my phone rang. The caller ID displayed Rory's name, and I picked up immediately. "Hey."

"Hey," she replied, her voice significantly softer than it had been before she'd left the office.

"Everything ok?" I asked when she didn't say anything else.

There was a slight pause before she spoke. "Jess, you know I love you, right?"

My heart swelled and I felt as thought an enormous weight had been lifted off my shoulders. I let an involuntary chuckle slip out my lips. "I love you too."

That seemed to be all she needed to hear. "Night, Jess."

"Night, Rory," I replied. The line went dead and I sat back on the couch, relief pulsing through my veins like a sedative.

That night, alone in the apartment I'd once shared, I had the best sleep that I'd had in a long time.

Rory

I wanted to be absolutely, one hundred percent sure before I told Jess anything. The first thing I'd done when I returned to New York was make an appointment with my doctor, however the soonest available appointment was this Friday morning. That meant I had five whole days to get through without totally freaking Jess out, not to mention totally freaking out myself. There was no way I could avoid sleeping at each-other's places all week without doing so, so I'd have to figure out how to handle my morning sickness without him noticing.

The next couple of days dragged by. Luckily, Jess was opting to stay over at my place as of late as it was closer to the Cafe, which meant he had often left for the day by the time my sickness took over. I also didn't have any in-days at the Times this week, so I remained at home all day every day, working on the blog and struggling with nausea and just trying to remain calm about the whole thing. I even took Lane's advice and did some prenatal yoga, but that only made me sore on top of everything else.

I knew I'd feel a lot better when I could tell Jess.

The more I thought about it, the more my mind seemed to convince myself that there was indeed a tiny human growing inside of me. Sure, the little plus sign had appeared on the pregnancy test, but part of me wouldn't let me believe it yet, while the other part was suddenly hyper aware of my core, as if I could somehow sense a shift in my entire composition as a human being. It made no sense-if I was pregnant, it was no doubt the size of a pea right now, right? Hardly big enough to make a real difference... And yet, it made all the difference in the world. If it existed.

I also couldn't help but wonder how this had happened. Jess and I were being very careful, very safe, so as to avoid this very problem. I'd even set an alarm on my phone so that I would remember to take my pill every day. It took some getting used to, as I'd never been on the pill before, but I hadn't missed a single one since I'd been taking it. Now it felt as though all the money I'd spent on it and all the extra hormones racing through my body were totally for naught.

By Thursday night, I was basically a nervous wreck despite my efforts to remain otherwise. Jess had decided to spend the night again, and he came home from work in as chipper mood as any. He was even whistling. I sat up on the couch, gathering the blanket around me, and raised a quizzical eyebrow at him. "You're in a good mood."

He dropped his keys and took off his satchel bag and leather jacket, then bounded into the living area to kiss me, making a loud suction sound as he did so. He clocked his head to the side and pretended to think for a moment. "I am in a good mood." He headed into the kitchen and washed his hands, no doubt in preparation to make one of the fantastic dinners he'd been graciously making us all week. "But first of all, check in. How are you feeling?"

I tried to be as honest as possible. "Okay. Tired, mostly."

"That flu really took it outta ya, huh?"

"Yeah. It sure did." I studied him, noticing he was practically bouncing on the balls of his feet as he dried his hands. "Enough about me... What's got you all riled up?"

Jess reached for the fridge and began taking out ingredients and tossing them onto the counter, his fingers drumming on the fridge door as he spoke. "It's big news, Ror. Big, big news."

"Oh, yeah?" I asked, keeping my voice light and interested. I somehow doubted it could be bigger news than the news I had, but obviously this was not the time or place.

"Okay, so you know how we've been a little short-staffed lately?" he began, tossing the fridge door shut and removing a cutting board from a cupboard. "Totally not a slight at you, by the way," he added. He began chopping celery and onions, the sound of the knife hitting the cutting board punctuating every sentence as he spoke. "But it is true just in general. Well, Matty's been having such a great time up here this week that's he's thinking about making the move here permanent. Now I know that leaves Chris kinda out in the cold, in Philly all by himself. So today, the three of us sat down for a Skype session and discussed the possibility of shutting down the Philly branch and moving all our business here, to Truncheon Manhattan."

I blinked, surprised. "This is good news? Won't that lose you guys business?"

"Chris and Matt are confident they can keep their clients from Philly if they move here. Besides, they only had a tiny handful to begin with, and we can easily still publish their stuff from here. Plus, New York is just a better city to publish stuff anyway. There's more going on, more scouts, more critics, more everything. If anything, it would be expanding our network while not being spread quite so thin. We'd never be short-staffed and I wouldn't have to run the actual publishing company here on my own anymore. And, we'd save money by not having to rent the second space in Philly, and all the equipment and licenses and shit. We'd have one office, one rent check, half the expenses but the same amount of business."

I was listening as intently as I could. He'd begun frying the onions in a pan as he spoke, and the smell was beginning to waft into the rest of my apartment. The scent turned my stomach over in a nasty way. It was all I could do to keep from barfing right then and there. "That sounds great, Jess," I managed to squeak out. "Just-excuse me one sec." Before he could say anything else, I dashed for the bathroom. I tried to be as quiet as possible as I got sick, hoping that the sound of frying and the oven fan would hide any noise.

When I emerged from the bathroom, he was still standing by the stove, humming to himself as he added chicken to the stir fry he was apparently making. I breathed a sigh of relief as I went back to my nest on the couch. "Sorry about that. I've been drinking water all day, so. Nature calls."

"You do have the tiniest bladder of anyone I know," he pointed out. I couldn't see his face from where I was sitting but I could tell he was smirking.

"You know me so well," I cooed with a laugh.

"Anyway, it's gonna take a few months to tie up all the loose ends and we have to wait for the lease to be up in Philly anyway, but it sounds like it's a pretty done deal. Truncheon might be in Manhattan exclusively by the summer." He lifted the pan from the stove and began tossing its contents in the air, catching it all with a pan expertly. "I hope you're hungry. This stir-fry is gonna be kick-ass."

I was about the furthest thing from hungry. "I'll have a bit. I had a late lunch."

"Man, I can't wait till your appetite is back," Jess said as he got plates and utensils out. "It's been weird not having you eat me out of house and home. It's like you're not a real Gilmore anymore."

"You mean eating me out of my house and home?" I pointed out, hauling myself off the couch to sit at the dinner table as he placed a plate of food in front of me.

Jess chuckled as he swung himself into the seat opposite me and tucked into his meal. "Whatever you say."

I managed to eat a few bites of the meal, but my body was too out of whack to handle any more. Under the guise that I was still fighting this bug, Jess forgave my lack of appetite and stored my leftovers in the fridge for future consumption (likely his lunch tomorrow).

Later that night, I tossed and turned as Jess slept soundly next to me. My stomach was not only not taking the smells and tastes of certain foods, it was also full of butterflies. Tomorrow I would find out for sure, and then there would be no avoiding telling Jess the news. I willed myself not to think about his reaction, urging myself to take things one step at a time. First, sleep. Then, throwing up in the morning. Then, getting my shoes and coat on. Then, hailing a cab and going to the doctor's office. Then... Take in from there.

The next morning I did all those things, specifically in the order I listed. I woke up, Jess left for work, I puked, I got ready to go, I hailed a cab, and it dropped me off at the doctor's office, ironically in Brooklyn.

The waiting room was pretty full when I walked in. Families, elderly couples, and a couple of very pregnant women alike all sat around, most of them engrossed in their phones. I took a book out of my purse and took a seat, though the lines on the page didn't quite make it into my brain as I "read". I was far too nervous and distracted about this appointment to process anything else.

It seemed to take an eternity for them to call my name, and when they did, I jumped up so fast I dumped my book to the floor. Flustered, I grabbed it and shoved it into my purse, then hurriedly followed the nurse down the hallway. She walked me through all the tests-urine, blood, all the lovely things-and then left me in the tiny room alone to wait for the doctor.

I glanced around the room, taking in the posters warning about the dangers of drinking while pregnant, the plastic model of a fetus in a womb, the brochures for a woman's "options" regarding her pregnancy. I began to feel woozy, but not in a morning sickness kind of way.

Finally, the door opened and the doctor walked in. "Miss Gilmore," she said brightly, reading my name off my file. She appeared to be in her early forties, with a kind face and red curly hair that she had pinned back. I almost blew a sigh of relief-I felt comfortable with this doctor immediately. Well, as comfortable as I could be under the circumstances.

"Hi, Doctor Pada," I replied quietly as she settled onto a stool opposite me.

"The tests have all come back positive, Rory," said Dr. Pada, glancing up from my file with a smile. "Congratulations."

I wasn't as shocked as I thought I would be, considering I had pretty much already known this. But I still felt the sting of tears behind my eyes, which I blinked away furiously. "Thank you."

"You're a very lucky gal," Dr. Pada continued. "Most women start experiencing morning sickness a lot earlier than you. You've only got a few more weeks of it, rather than a few months."

I blinked. "What?"

"Typically a woman will begin experiencing morning sickness within the first six weeks of her pregnancy, and it will carry on until the end of the first trimester." Dr. Pada looked down at my file again. "It can be different for everyone, of course."

"Dr. Pada," I said slowly, rubbing my sweating palms on my jeans. "What are you saying?"

"I'm merely pointing out that it's a bit unusual to only start experiencing morning sickness after nine weeks, but it can be totally normal. After all, some women don't even experience it at all, so it's nothing to worry about."

The wind was knocked out of me for a moment while my brain rushed to process what she meant. "...Nine weeks?"

"Yes, nine weeks. It's too early to give you an exact due date but we can schedule your first ultrasound today, if you'd like."

"Are you sure it's nine weeks?" My voice was breaking all over the place as the stinging sensation returned to my eyes.

Dr. Pada glanced at me, her demeanour softening as she realized my distress. "I'm quite sure, hon." When I said nothing, she asked, "Do you need a moment...?"

"No, no. It's okay. Just...farther along than I expected. It's all very...fast. Overwhelming."

Dr. Pada smiled and handed me a tissue, which I used to blot at my eyes. "I understand. It's perfectly normal to feel this way. As well, I'm sure you've noticed a surge of very intense emotions in the last couple of months, right?"

I wondered fleetingly if I were to just die right on the spot. I balled the tissue tightly into my fist. "You have no idea," I muttered.

Nine weeks. Over two months.

As I left the doctor's office and went in search of a taxi, I forced myself to be completely numb.

I couldn't think about the fact that nine weeks ago, I'd still been James' fiancé.

A/N: The plot thickens... Please don't kill me. Review instead...? :)