„My girl... shit..." She sighed deeply „... listen Piper that is what I wanted to tell you."
Rory fiddled with her phone in her hand, not looking at Piper.
"You're kidding me, right?" Piper felt so deeply, deeply hurt, not because Rory had a girlfriend and she was jealous, no, not at all. She felt hurt because all these years she had thought she had lost her best friend because she was disgusted by her 'sinful' sexuality and now it turned out she was just really disgusted by the thought of fat little Piper being in love with her. She felt the urge to rip her skin off her face, just to not have to be herself anymore.
„Look Pipes." Piper shoot her a look that could have killed, for using her nickname, she had no right to do this. „I know how this must sound to you."
Piper felt like crying, holing up in her bed and cry but her tear gland was dried out like a desert during a prolonged drought. All was left was bitterness and sarcasm.
„Oh, you think, Miss I'm-not-gay?" Her cold, unhappy laughter rang in her own ears, nearly making her deaf.
Rory outstretched her arm over the dark wooden table to take Piper's hand in her's, it was strange how familiar that felt and Piper closed her eyes, she let her hand linger in Rory's for a moment before she slowly pulled it away, but Rory grabbed for it again and this time Piper let her hold it.
„Piper, I know I've been an asshole. But it's not what you think now, I still know you, you know?"
The blonde had her eyes still closed, not knowing if she should listen or just leave.
She felt the deep cuts, that she had slowly tried to fill up with lies she told herself, rip open one after the other and she was scared that now, when she finally heard the truth she might not be able to heal herself again.
But she needed to hear the truth, she had spent night after night lying awake, asking herself what she had done wrong, what she could have made better. She had to know.
„You just weren't in to me." Piper's voice sounded husky, there was no need to hide her pain, it was obvious after all.
„Like I said, it's not what you think it is. I'm sure I was into you pretty much ever since I was four and saw you falling into that puddle."
Piper almost had to smile slightly at the memory, she had played 'who can jump better into puddles' with Danny, but her puddle had been deeper than expected and suddenly the cold november rainwater was up to her chest. That was when she met Rory, standing in a deep hole filled with cold water and Rory gave her her jacket so that they could go on playing. Piper had been sick for two weeks afterwards.
She opened her eyes, looking up into Rory's face that was warmly smiling at her, their mutual history lay in this familiar look. They smiled at each other for a second before Piper remembered why their history had ended and her smile vanished as fast as it had appeared.
And she stared back at her dark coffee that was slowly getting cold.
„You don't believe me." Rory's thumb was stroking carefully over the back of Piper's hand, her voice was dripping with desperation.
„I've always loved you, Pipes. And I hate myself for being such a damn coward." she breathed in deeply „And an idiot."
Piper had to pull her hand out of Rory's again, her thumb stroking above her hand felt like bees crawling over her skin, wrong and strange.
„You don't have to tell me stories to make me feel better. You have made yourself pretty clear back then. You didn't want me in your life anymore and I had do deal with it on my own. So just stopp, this talk is not necessary."
„Yes, it is." Rory said, fierce. „I left you and it's the one thing I regret the most in my life. Followed directly by writing this kiss into my stupid diary so my parents could find it."
„What?"
Rory was now stroking circles over the table with her thumb where Piper's hand had been seconds before. She was staring at her own fingers as if it was the most interesting thing in the room.
„When you kissed me back then I was so confused and scared but at the same time I was feeling like everything finally made sense. You kissed me and it was like the missing piece of a puzzle, I could finally see clear."
Piper couldn't stay serious, without sarcasm right now, the first girl she had ever loved just confessed that she was feeling the same thing and all Piper felt was anger and bitterness.
„Oh, so that's why you ignored me for a whole week after that kiss?"
„I had to get things clear in my head, Piper. I'm gay and this was a shock at first, and then, somehow I just hoped you were feeling the same thing that I felt and we could be, I don't know, together."
„Hope is a dangerous thing to live with." The cynicism in Piper's voice sounded so unfamiliar to herself, she had no idea who she was becoming, that was not her.
„What a dumb sentence." Rory mumbled. She took a sip of her coffee, grimacing at the coldness of the bitter liquid, she then took another sip before placing the mug at the table again, letting her finger slide over the round edge of the mug, keeping her fingers busy, she had always done that when she was nervous. She could barely ever sit still.
„It was your sentence and I've lived by it for the past three years." Piper knew it sounded like an accusation and it kind of was. She had forbidden herself to hope for such a long time, scared whenever she had to rely on other people, scared when she had no chance of influencing the things that happened around her.
Rory's eyes drowned in sadness and regret, the green becoming blurred by a layer of salty water, an ocean of tears had crossed these eyes over the years and all the emotions behind every single tear were written in those eyes right now.
Her voice was silent, husky.
„Well, I was pretty dumb back then, a silly, naive idiot. You remember my diary?" , it was a rhetorical question and she didn't wait for Piper to answer it „I wrote in it every night. Should have known that my mother was reading it now and then to prevent her daughter from sin.", now Rory's voice sounded a bit sarcastic, too. „Well, she came too late, I had already fallen for a girl. But she was not too late to forbid me seeing you again and sending me to this stupid catholic boarding school."
Piper didn't know what to say, Rory had told her right now that she has been in love with her, that all her self-hating and doubting had been baseless but instead of feeling relieved all she felt was emptiness.
„I should have told you back then." Rory looked up from her coffee. „But like I said, I'm a coward. My mother doesn't even know about Elliot, yet. I hate myself for it"
There was another girl waiting for her girlfriend to come out to her family. Piper felt kind of sorry for this Elliot and at the same time she felt the fear crawling up inside of her. Rory had left her because she had been too afraid to stand up against her family and who know what could have happened if she had been brave enough. Now the same thing was happening with her and Alex.
„Say something." Rory begged. The bitter smell of cold coffee reached Piper's nostrils and she scrunched up her nose, it reminded her of the bitter taste of gall in her mouth.
„You're right, you should have told me." she sighed deeply, the following words being half true half the lie she told herself. „But what does it matter now. You have a girlfriend, so do I, so it seems we both got happy after all."
Only that Piper wasn't happy.
„You have a girlfriend?" Rory sounded surprised, Piper nodded and then they were silent for minutes.
What was there to say if you just were told that the girl you have cried after for years had cried after you as well, that she had loved you the way you have loved her, but now it didn't matter anymore because they both found other people.
The minutes passed in a silence that should have been uncomfortable, but instead Piper suddenly felt relieved, free. She had hated herself, had considered herself guilty and not lovable, but after all it had never been her fault that she had lost the most important person in her life. There she was, sitting in front of her and they had more in common than they had ever realized.
„Are you happy?" Piper whispered, not because she didn't trust her voice, but because she felt like being in a familiar bubble where no loud noises were needed.
Rory looked Piper deep in the eyes and she felt she could see her soul after all these years again.
„Now that I met you." The smile on Rory's lips was like a day in the summer back when they were kids and when she took Piper's hand again, Piper felt no need to pull it away.
Maybe she should have been angry, sad and disappointed for all the lost time for all the lonesome time, but she felt like life had given her something back and she smiled back.
„Wait you told your mother that we had kissed? Haha, would have loved to see that face."
„You remember that one time when we were nine and..."
„Still wanna be a teacher one day?"
„Are you and Polly still friends?"
„Oh my god, Cal must be five by now, is he still that cute?"
"Remember Mr. Brown from elemantary..."
They laughed and talked like they had never done anything else. Eventually Rory had ordered herself something to eat and Piper had wished she were ready to do that too, eat fatty food in the presence of people she knew and not thinking about how she could get secretly rid of it afterwards. And when the waitress brought Rory that plate, she naturally pushed it towards the middle of the table without hesitation and without interupting her own sentence.
Piper smiled, they shared the plate while talking and Piper didn't even have the time to guess the calories that she were cosuming.
Rory hadn't pushed her to eat, she had just assumed they would share like they had done when they were kids and deep down Piper knew eating was a struggle for Rory as well, so when they shared, it felt like they were helping each other to heal.
Was it really three years that they hadn't seen each other?
Two or three times the bitter taste of pain and disappointment and being left crawled up Piper's throat, but she pushed it down. She didn't want to face up to her feelings right now, all she wanted to do was appreciate. She had suffered enough and Rory had, too. Piper realized that more and more as longer as they were talking.
All the fear Rory had inside, all the insecurities that Piper had always thought nobody had but her.
They fell back into their relationship like it was their natural place on earth, like the hollow of an old familiar couch that had been built by sitting on the same spot day by day.
After talking for two hours they got more silent and serious in their topics and Piper was really feeling tired.
They had just decided to meet again, also with Polly sometimes, when they were getting into their jackets and heading for the car.
Piper had offered Rory a ride home and when she parked the car in front of her house that she were living back in ever since the start of the school year, Piper couldn't help herself but remember the day when she had brought Alex home after she had seen her naked in the bathroom.
It felt like that had been years ago, almost in another life. She loved Alex and meeting Rory had reminded her once more why Alex was so so scared of coming out.
They had exchanged numbers and now all that was to do was say goodbye to each other. Hopefully this was no goodbye for another three years. Piper had no idea if she should hug Rory, or if she should go for a handshake, that would have been kind of ridiculous. Maybe she should just tell her goodbye and wait what Rory did.
Before she could even finish her thought, Rory pecked her a kiss on the cheek and she could feel her long lashes scraping her skin.
It didn't feel like in the past. They weren't two best friends anymore, now they were two gay girls with girlfriends who haven't seen each other in three years.
Piper grabbed Rory's skinny wrist, keeping her from exiting the car.
Rory rised her eyebrows, questioning, and Piper regretted stopping her from leaving, but she had to know.
„Did you miss me?"
Rory didn't smile, her face was dead serious when she took Piper's face between her hands.
„Every day." she whispered, nodding her head, and then she opened the door and left, turning her head a last time before she unlocked the front door and disappeared.
It was almost eleven as Piper started the gear and rolled off into another part of the town, she could almost count the few stars shining bright in the sky. Normally in a meaningful night like this the sky must have been covered in stars, shining bright and romantically down on her, but this was no movie, this was reality and most of the sky was covered in clouds.
But the few stars were as beautiful to her as any other nightsky would have been.
She pulled up on the side of the street, fumbling her phone out of her pocket.
She dialed the number that she knew by heart.
„Hey Al, I'm standing in front of your house."
So this is another Rory-chapter that I'm sure not everybody will be fond of (More Vauseman please, I know ;))
And there will be more Vauseman next chapter for those of you who don't wanna read anything else ;)
Still I think this is an important chapter, especially for Piper and her evolvement.
Hope you enjoyed it XXX
(Sorry for deleting the chapter again after posting it the first time, I had forgotten to edit a few things I wanted to edit)