A.N. Thank you for your patience. I know it's been a long time. I'm sorry that the last chapter was upsetting to some of you! Believe me, I know how serious cancer is. And in a bit of cosmic irony, I ended up having a breast cancer scare of my own after writing the last chapter. However, unlike Liz, I scheduled a mammogram right away, and thankfully it turned out to be nothing. I'm very relieved. Anyway, thank you to those who are still here and still reading, and thank you so much to everyone who left reviews. This is for you!
Previously on The Long and Winding Road…
Rory led Luke to the front door and kept her voice low. "Luke, have you seen Jess?"
"No, not since he stormed out after making his kid sister cry! I swear, the way he's handling this…" Luke shook his head, fuming.
"Luke, that was over an hour ago!"
"I'm sure he's fine. He just needed space to cool off or something." He looked at Rory's distressed face and softened slightly. "I'm sure he's fine, ok? Don't worry about it." He gave her shoulder a brief squeeze of reassurance and then went back to check on TJ.
Rory wanted to believe him, but she couldn't shake her feeling of unease. Luke hadn't heard what Liz said. He didn't know. Following her gut, Rory grabbed her coat from the hall and quietly slipped out the front door, half expecting Jess to be hiding out on the porch, but he wasn't. He wasn't anywhere. Jess was gone.
Rory checked the bridge first, remembering that it used to be Jess's favorite place for thinking and solitude, but it was empty and silent. Where was he? She was worried. She knew he was upset, and now no one knew where he was... She had to make sure he was ok. She kept walking through town, searching for any sign of him, before she finally saw his car, still parked by the curb where he'd left it. She sighed in relief. Well, at least that meant he was still here, somewhere. She walked a few more yards and as the diner came into view, she saw a faint light in the upstairs window. Her heart rate increasing with both anticipation and worry, she jogged across the street and quickly found the key to let herself into the diner. She rushed up the stairs, and from behind the frosted glass window she could see light and hear some music playing softly.
Rory knocked on the apartment door and waited. No answer. She anxiously debated what to do. She didn't want to intrude on his solitude if he wanted to be alone, but what if he wasn't ok? What if he couldn't answer? What if something happened and nobody came to check on him? She'd never forgive herself. Politeness be damned! She tried the doorknob. It turned.
She opened the door cautiously and slowly. "Jess?" she called out. The acrid smell of cigarette smoke filled her nostrils and she coughed.
Jess was hunched at one end of the sofa, his forehead pressed against the heel of one hand while the other took the cigarette from between his lips and smashed it into a saucer on the table in front of him with the remains of three others. He exhaled slowly, and Rory noticed he was shaking. He wouldn't look at her.
"There you are," she said gently. "You had us worried."
"Sorry," he mumbled. His face looked haunted and haggard. He laughed suddenly, but it was a harsh, bitter sound with no joy in it. "The irony, right?" he rasped. "My mom might have cancer, and I respond by upping my own chances. It'd be f***ing poetic if it wasn't so pathetic. I quit years ago."
"Oh, Jess!" she sighed. "Are you ok?" she asked hesitantly, feeling stupid immediately afterwards. What a question.
"Not really," he said, shaking his head.
Rory inched closer, as if she were approaching a wild animal, and tentatively perched on the sofa next to him. "Do you want to talk about it?"
He shook his head again and repeated, "Not really." His jaw was tense and his entire body seemed buzzing with nervous energy. His fingers were locked together in a white-knuckled grip and he was bouncing his leg so rapidly, it looked like it was vibrating.
"Ok," Rory said. When they were younger, she would have pressed him to talk, but she remembered how horribly that had backfired at Kyle's party… She found out the hard way that when Jess was upset, the harder you tried to pry his shell open, the tighter he clamped shut. "Well… I'll leave you alone. I just wanted to make sure… I wanted to see if you were ok. Call me if you need anything, ok?" she murmured, kissing his cheek softly and rising to her feet, but she hadn't taken a step before she was halted by Jess gripping her wrist suddenly, gently. She turned back to look at him, and his eyes were fixed desperately on hers.
He seemed to be struggling to speak, and his breathing grew more and more labored until he finally forced out the word, "Stay."
"Please," he added softly. The last time she had seen him look at her like this had been the night he told her he loved her. (Another lifetime ago.)
"Of course," she whispered tenderly, returning to sit next to him, clasping his hand in both of hers. "Of course I'll stay. If you want me to." She studied his face earnestly.
He closed his eyes and sighed. He nodded. "I probably won't be very good company…" he rasped warningly.
"I didn't come to be entertained," she reassured him. "We can just sit here if you want."
He sighed and nodded again. Rory leaned her head against his shoulder and stroked his hand soothingly, and eventually she could feel some of the tension leaving his body. He had always seemed to crave physical affection when they were together, and it had taken her some time to figure out that it wasn't always sexually motivated. He just wanted, needed to be touched, to feel some human affection. In their adult years, she didn't think she'd ever seen Jess greet Luke except with open arms, roughly masculine and back-slappy though their hugs tended to be, and he was always openly affectionate with Doula.
She was so focused on Jess that it took her several minutes of quiet to really register the music playing softly in the background. She suddenly frowned in confusion.
"Are you... listening to Sufjan Stevens?" she asked incredulously, as she recognized the delicate acoustic guitar and quiet, fragile male voice.
She felt him shrug against her. "I can do mellow, you know. Remember the Great Coldplay Debate of '02?"
She snorted and lifted her head from his shoulder to smile at him. "I don't remember any debate, just you being delusional," she teased. He cracked a small smile in return. "But it's more the fact that banjos are involved that concerns me."
Jess smirked half-heartedly. "My friend Matt was really into him. It kinda grew on me after a while."
"Oh. Ok." They sat in silence for a minute, Rory resting her head against him again, listening to the music. Then she caught some of the lyrics and sat bolt upright.
"Wait, I know what this is!" Rory realized. "This is Carrie and Lowell! Jess, you can't listen to this! He wrote it after his mom died!"
Jess nodded grimly, "She was about as f***ed up as Liz, too."
"Jess!" she cried in distress, moving to snatch up his phone, but he got there first, holding her back.
"Leave it," he said solemnly. "It helps."
"How?"
He shrugged. "I don't know, catharsis, I guess. It just… helps. Helps make sense of this mess in my brain to hear someone else saying it. I gotta face this stuff head-on to deal with it. I'll wind up an alcoholic or worse if I try to drown it out, so…"
"Ok. If it helps you deal, then I'm all for it," she said softly, sitting back again. He released her arm. "Do you like any of his other stuff?" she asked tentatively. She was curious, but didn't know if he was in the mood for conversation right now.
"Eh, some more than others," he shrugged. "Some of it's too folksy or a little too 'grade school music class' for me sometimes, but there's also a sort of demented kind of innocence about it that's strangely appealing. Like The Shaggs."
"The Shaggs? You can't compare Sufjan Stevens to the Florence Foster Jenkins of rock bands!" she protested. "He can actually write! And carry a tune. And keep a decent rhythm."
"All true. But I just mean like… the feel of it."
"I guess I can see what you mean."
"Have you heard Age of Adz?"
"Was that his electronica album?"
"Yeah. That's some weeeird sh**. Like Bjork-level weird."
"Hmm. What do you think of his Christmas albums?"
Jess shrugged. "They're… tolerable."
Rory rolled her eyes and affected a male, British accent, "He is… tolerable, I suppose, but not cynical enough to tempt me."
Jess took a turn rolling his eyes. "Are you ever going to let up on that Mr. Darcy crap?" he whined.
"Maybe if you stopped handing me opportunities on a silver platter, I might!" she teased.
He grunted in response. "Well, considering that most Christmas music makes me want to shoot myself in the head... sorry. Metaphorically," he interjected drily, noticing her look of alarm, "...that's actually fairly high praise coming from me."
"Is there any Christmas music you do like?" she wondered.
Jess thought for a moment before a small smirk tugged at one corner of his mouth and he nodded. "The Kinks. 'Father Christmas,'" he admitted, a devilish glint in his eyes.
"You are such a cliche!" Rory crowed, shaking her head in fond exasperation.
"Yeah," he sighed. "I know."
Rory could feel the mood sobering again.
"So, merry F***ING Christmas, huh?"
"I know. I'm so sorry."
"Though I don't know why that matters, really… I mean, I've never bought into all that 'Christmas magic,' 'nothing bad happens at Christmas' bullsh** anyway, so why not? It's just a day, just as likely to be sh***y as any other day. Maybe even more so 'cause expectations are higher."
Rory's Christmas-loving spirit wanted to protest, but she wouldn't. She squeezed his hand.
"I'm handling this so badly," he said brokenly. "I wasn't expecting this."
"No one expects things like this, Jess."
"No, but I mean… I was fully, fully expecting something to go wrong at some point. I feel like I've spent the past ten years waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for her to start drinking again, or kick TJ out of the house again, or run away and leave Doula with TJ… and for the past ten years I've been determined that, the day one or all of these things happened, I would be ready to be there for my sister, to make sure she always has someone she can rely on. To make sure she never has to feel the way I did. But I wasn't expecting this. And I wasn't expecting to feel... like this. And I completely failed her. The moment came, and I've failed her. I can't… pull myself together."
"What are you talking about? You haven't failed anyone."
"I lost it. You saw the way I lost it in there! I was supposed to be the one she could trust, I was supposed to always be strong for her, but I couldn't hack it. First time I'm tested, and here I am! Cowering in a dark room and relapsing!"
Rory's heart ached for him. "Jess, Liz is your mother too. You're allowed to be upset! You don't have to always be strong, no one is! You're taking on too heavy a burden, and you don't need to. You're not the only family Doula has. She's going to be ok."
"She doesn't even care!"
"What? Who doesn't care?"
"Liz," Jess snarled. "My mother. And she has a right to feel how she wants to, I guess, but…" Jess trailed off.
"But…" Rory said tentatively, "it's like she's decided that you're not allowed to care either?"
Jess exhaled roughly. "Yeah."
"I don't know. Maybe…" Rory hesitated, "maybe she's actually really scared, but she's trying not to be."
"Could be," Jess murmured absently. "Wouldn't be the first time."
"But still. Your feelings matter too, and they should have mattered to her!" Rory's voice was growing more vehement with anger as she talked. "I can't believe she said that to you!"
Jess laughed humorlessly. "Yeah, well… that wouldn't be the first time either. I just… I thought we were… She's been doing ok for a while now and I… Anyway, that's what I get for letting my guard down, I guess."
"This is not on you, don't you dare try to make this your fault!" Rory growled. She was flushed and shaking with righteous fury. "What she said was unbelievably cruel, not to mention ungrateful! I mean, you were doing nothing but trying to help her! And for her to just throw it back in your face like that?! Ugh! No offense, Jess, but I really hate your mother right now."
"I can tell," Jess said drily, gingerly pulling his hand out of her tightly clenched fist and flexing his fingers a few times. "You got a pretty strong grip for a girl, Esther Smith."
"Oh my G-d," Rory gasped, horror-struck. "Oh my G-d, Jess, I am so sorry. Did I hurt you?"
One corner of his lips ticked upwards in a soft smile. "I think I can take it," he said, his eyes roaming her face, full of tenderness.
"I was just… so mad!"
"I know," he murmured, as if the idea was surprising somehow. He was still looking at her like he couldn't quite believe she was real, and then he heaved a sigh and looked down. He reached for her hand again and took it gently, stroking the back with his thumb.
"She's not… malicious, you know," he said quietly after a few moments of silence. "She wasn't a good mom, but she didn't try to hurt me… It's more like she doesn't notice or care. I've never been sure which one it was. I mean, you've met her. She just says whatever the hell she's thinking, whenever she feels like saying it. Though, I dunno... maybe I'm not giving her enough credit, 'cause it always got worse when she'd been drinking or… That's when she got reeeal honest. About how Jimmy had ruined her life because if she hadn't met that bastard, she wouldn't be stuck with this kid that just made her life miserable."
"She said that to you?!"
"To be fair, I'm not sure she was always necessarily aware that I was there, but yeah."
"Oh my G-d."
"Yeah. I mean, it was true… I did make her life miserable, I'm sure. I wasn't an easy kid to raise, looking back on it… I wouldn't wish a kid like me on anyone."
"Jess, don't say that! She shouldn't have said that! You don't say things like that to a kid!"
"Yeah, I know. It definitely… made it harder. Sometimes, when she was in one of her affectionate moods- she'd have them from time to time, when she was sober and things were going well, and she'd feel like 'turning over a new leaf'- she'd hug me and tell me she loved me… call me her 'baby boy'... and I had a real hard time believing that it really meant anything, you know? It felt like just a bunch of bullsh*t when I'd already heard her say she wished I'd never been born. Sometimes I'd just stand there and wait for it to be over, and then she'd get upset with me for being so 'cold and unresponsive,' like I was defective and incapable of feeling love for anyone, including my own mother. Sometimes I wondered if she was right."
"You can't believe that now, Jess."
"No. Sometimes I've wished it were true, though… that I didn't feel anything."
"Really?"
"I don't know. Maybe not. Not as much as I used to."
"Just earlier she was calling you sensitive, though," Rory puzzled.
Jess laughed desperately. "Yeah… Yeah, I know. I never really felt the way she wanted me to feel about things. I couldn't get excited about the things she wanted me to, but I always cared too much about the things she wanted to believe were no big deal. It's like we were constantly out of step, tripping each other up."
Rory hesitated before asking, "Was that other thing she said true? About kicking a hole in the wall?"
Jess's face darkened, and he was silent for a long moment. "Yeah," he said finally. "I mean, the walls in that apartment were paper-thin, but… I did do that. I'd just gotten settled in at the school I was at, was actually making a few friends, and she told me we were moving across the city with her new boyfriend- wait- husband, actually… They'd gone on a bender and gotten married on a whim, so… we had to move."
"And you were upset."
"Yeah. I shut myself in my room and… I wasn't trying to trash the place, I just… I was mad, and I threw some stuff, and then I kicked the wall hard and my foot went through it." Jess's eyes were closed.
"Oh. What happened after that?"
"Shaun happened," he snapped. The words were spat out bitterly, like vomit.
Rory felt a cold lump of dread in her stomach. "What do you mean?"
Jess shook his head. "I really don't want to relive it, Rory."
"I'm sorry!" she said hastily. "I shouldn't have brought it up."
"You didn't. Liz is the one who brought it up. And she's the one who knows-" Jess cut himself off. His voice was starting to shake again, whether with anger or some other emotion, Rory wasn't sure. "The fact that she still thinks that I was the one out of line! Even after…" he cut himself off again. He reached for the carton of cigarettes on the table. "If I smoke, would that bother you?"
"Do what you need to do."
"Thanks."
They were silent for a long time.
"The thing is…" Jess said finally, taking a deep breath. "The thing is… She wasn't a good mom, to me, but… I still love her." His voice cracked, and Rory's heart along with it.
"I know," she said softly.
Rory's phone buzzed in her pocket. She took it out and saw a text from Lorelai.
Where are you?
Rory answered. At the diner. I found Jess. Tell Luke he's physically ok but… He's having a rough time.
Oof. Glad you found him.
"Jess, do you want me to stay?"
"I can't ask you to."
"That doesn't answer my question."
"You have your kid to get back to. I'm a grown man, I can… I can take care of myself."
Rory studied him a moment, his head in his hands. "Hang on just a minute, " Rory said softly. She texted her mom again.
I want to stay. Can you guys look after Richie? I have a few bottles in the fridge.
After a few minutes, the response came through.
Sure thing. Honestly I think the distraction will be good for Luke.
Thanks Mom.
Hope Jess feels better.
"There. It's all taken care of. Mom and Luke are taking care of Richie, and Mom said the distraction will be good for him. I'm free to stay," she murmured softly. "Unless… you want to kick me out?"
Jess grunted from behind his hands. There was a pause, and a long sigh, and then, "No," in a voice so quiet it was almost inaudible.
"Ok. Then I'm staying."
There were long stretches when Jess didn't want to talk, and Rory didn't press him. She entertained herself with her phone or read while Jess listened to his music in silence. But, bit by bit, stories trickled out of him over the course of the night, and Rory collected them like precious objects.
He told her how, starting when he was four, his mom would take him to the library most mornings on her way to work, and then leave him there alone for the day. On the better days, she'd give him something to eat for lunch. On worse days, she'd either forget or run out of time, and tell him to be near the entrance at one o'clock on her lunch break. He learned to read a clock quickly. On the days he got too caught up in a story and lost track of time, he'd miss his window and then he'd go hungry. On the worst days, he remembered but she was the one who forgot.
Jess was more understanding than Rory was, or at least he had become so over the years. "Like, I know it was bad… but at the same time, she didn't have many options, you know? I mean, she was alone. She couldn't afford to pay for childcare… She had no one to help. And I know she should have done something different, but…" Jess shook his head.
Rory supposed she should begrudgingly acknowledge that he had a point, but she was struggling to. Funny how Jess said she always wanted to see the best in everyone, but when it came to Liz, she just couldn't. She could never find it in herself to forgive her. Still, she couldn't help but think about how lucky her mom had been to find Mia. Lorelai hadn't had money either, but she'd had the support of people who rallied around her. She had an employer who let her bring Rory to work with her and access to a fully-staffed kitchen at all hours. Rory had never gone hungry.
"Did anyone ever tell you what happened when my mom found out she was pregnant with Doula?"
"No."
"She came into the diner and told Luke that TJ had left her. But when Luke went to track TJ down, it came out that Liz had kicked him out."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah. Apparently she screamed at him, threw stuff at him, and told him to leave, and then told Luke that he'd 'abandoned' her."
Rory stared, wide-eyed. "What?"
"Yep. But the thing is, when Luke told me about that, I wasn't even surprised, because that wasn't the first time she's pulled crap like that."
"Really?"
"Oh yeah. But see, when it happened before, Luke wasn't there to clean up the mess or sort out fact from fiction. It was just me, and it was happening, and I had to live in it."
"Jess."
"My mom's not stable, Rory. And what gets me is that, as much as my childhood sucked, and as much as a lot of that was because of things she did, I don't even know how much of that was stuff she could even help, you know? But she's doing better now. She's got a better support system here, she's got Luke… And TJ is… The thing about TJ is that he's an idiot, but he's not mean. I can't stand being in the same room with him for more than a few minutes without dissociating just to preserve my own sanity, but… he loves my mom and he loves my sister."
"He doesn't seem to love you…"
Jess shook his head. "He doesn't have to. I really don't care what he thinks of me. But he's not getting my mom drunk or high, he's not gonna hit her, he's not gonna leave her… I'm more worried about him sometimes, to be honest…"
Rory didn't know what to say.
"But… she's doing better. She was doing better, anyway... I don't know… I don't know what's going to happen now."
He told her about their fighting, the times they'd screamed at each other, and Jess had given as good as he got. For all he said that Liz hadn't hurt him intentionally, Jess knew that he had. The older he'd gotten, the more adept he'd grown at knowing exactly what to say to twist the knife just so. But it never felt as good as he thought it would when he made his mother cry. It felt even worse than when he'd done it unintentionally.
Jess had been a precocious and stubborn little boy, and Liz could not keep up with him. When he was seven, he had been obsessed with figuring out how everything worked, and his mother had come home one day to find that he had taken apart every single small appliance they had in the apartment. The toaster. The coffeemaker. Every single clock they had, including his mother's alarm clock (she didn't discover that one until she failed to get up in time for work the next day). They were all completely unusable, because once he'd taken them apart, he couldn't quite figure out how to put them back together again properly. They couldn't afford to replace all of them at once, and after Liz had finished yelling at him, she'd cried herself to sleep. It wouldn't be the last time.
The later it had gotten, the more Jess had seemed unable to stop himself from rambling, but he finally seemed to reach a point of exhaustion long past midnight.
"G-d, I'm so tired," Jess said hoarsely, rubbing his face with his hands.
"Of course," Rory said softly. She reached out tentatively and stroked his back in soothing circles. "It's late, and there's just been so much today."
Jess sighed. "That feels really nice," he murmured, the sound muffled in his palms.
"Good."
They sat in silence for a few moments, the only sound the white-noise friction of Rory's hand making constant circles over the back of his sweater.
"It's so late. You should probably go home," Jess sighed.
"What're you gonna do?" Rory asked.
"Probably just stay here," he said.
"Are you going to be able to sleep?"
Jess shrugged noncommittally.
"Jess! You need to rest!"
"It's not like I'm planning to avoid it on purpose," he grumbled. "I just…"
"Come on," Rory interrupted firmly, grabbing his arm and tugging it towards her.
"What're you doing?" he asked, his body going stiff. He eyed her warily.
"Just lie down," she huffed. She kept pulling at his shoulders gently.
"Rory…"
"Shhhh!" she coaxed, and he grimaced but then reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled down until his head was in her lap. She looked down at him fondly and smoothed his hair back from his forehead. "There. Now just relax."
Jess sighed again, brows furrowed, but his eyes stayed closed. Whether it was from exhaustion or because he didn't want to look at her, it wasn't clear. "You don't have to do this," he whispered.
Rory kept stroking his hair. "Shhh. It's ok."
Jess found her unoccupied right hand with his and lifted it to his mouth, pressing a kiss to her knuckles. "Thank you," he breathed. She could feel the words against her fingers.
"You're welcome. Now shh! No more talking!"
He smiled. He brought her hand back down to his chest, but he didn't let go of it. She could feel the steady beat of his heart under her palm.
She steadily combed her fingers through his hair and eventually, after a long while, she watched his breathing finally even out in sleep.
Rory warred with herself. She was glad to be able to take care of him the way he'd been taking care of her, but she also felt guilty because she was enjoying this. He had had a horrible night, while she got to indulge in touching him and drinking in the beauty of his face, slack with sleep. It felt wrong that she was deriving so much pleasure from his suffering. She tried to focus on his feelings instead of the way his hair felt like silk between her fingers and the way his dark eyelashes brushed against his cheekbones and the curve of his lips parted in sleep, the weight of his head on her thighs and the way his dark hair spilled over them… (Obviously she was very successful in not dwelling on any of those things.) She tried reading on her phone for a while as a distraction, but she kept nodding off. She leaned her head back against the top of the couch and closed her eyes, one hand still clutched against Jess's chest and the other buried in his warm hair. She'd just rest for a few moments.
Rory resurfaced from sleep feeling cold and disoriented, her breasts heavy and aching. Her neck was sore. Ugh, she was getting too old to sleep sitting up on the couch. The couch. The couch? Right, Luke's couch, with Jess. Jess. Even before she opened her eyes, she knew he was gone, bereft of his warm weight. He was gone, and her grief felt as familiar and inevitable as waking. She lifted her head, wincing at the pain in her stiff neck, and felt the clamminess of wet fabric against her breasts as her body shifted. Ugh. Her bra was completely soaked through with milk. She groaned. Well, at least Jess wasn't here to witness this…
"Sorry if I woke you," came Jess's voice, suddenly.
Rory yelped and snatched at her discarded coat, clutching it to her chest.
Jess was sitting at the kitchen table in his coat, a pencil poised over a piece of paper.
"Don't worry about it," she said weakly. She took a moment to let her heart rate return to normal, and then looked at his face, sober and troubled. "Are you ok?"
"Yeah, sorry, I just couldn't decide what to do."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, I couldn't decide what would be worse. Me leaving without saying goodbye again, or me waking you up just to make myself feel better after you already gave up a full night's sleep for my sorry ass."
"Oh."
"So I was writing you a note, but now..."
"Right."
"Rory, I… I have to go."
"Ok."
"I have to go apologize to Doula before I leave."
"Yes, of course. Good. That's good."
"Rory, I don't even know what to say to you…"
"You don't have to say anything, Jess. No balance sheets, remember?"
He smiled. "Right," he said softly, nodding as he rose to his feet. "Still… it ain't much, but I'm better on paper." He walked over and extended the folded note to her.
"Thanks," Rory whispered. She took it.
"Sorry for the redundancies," he said briskly. He avoided her eyes. "I don't know how to say goodbye to you, so I'm just gonna rip off the Band-aid here. I… I'm sorry." Jess walked out the door hurriedly, and Rory sat bewildered on the couch, listening to his footsteps pounding down the stairs.
"Definitely not beating the Darcy allegations this time," she muttered. "Please do me the honor of reading this letter. Jeez."
Rory-
I hope you can forgive me for leaving without saying goodbye again, but I didn't want to wake you. Hopefully this makes up for it. What can I say to you, really? There's nothing that would be enough, and I don't have much time. I need to get back home for work- and to feed the cat, which you know all about now. Chris said he did his time and it's my responsibility to look after the bastard now. Apparently, if you make your roommate take care of a cat they don't even like for 4 months straight, they don't want to help you anymore! Rude… But anyway, I have to go apologize to Doula before I go. I can't leave with that unfinished. So, sweet Rory, sleep well. And thank you. For more than I could ever hope to fit into a hastily scribbled note. You have no idea what your kindness has meant to me. Merry Christmas
-Jess
Rory pressed the letter to her heart and sighed. Well. Maybe there's a little Wentworth in there too, she thought dreamily, before squashing the thought down.
Rory came through the kitchen door of her mother's house quietly, finding her mom nursing a cup of coffee.
"Hey," she said. "Everything go ok here? Where's Richie?"
Lorelai nodded. "Luke fed him his bottle this morning. I think they're hanging out in the living room watching Star Trek reruns."
Rory smiled. "Cute!"
"So. How was your night?"
Rory sighed. "It was hard. I don't think either one of us got much sleep, but I'm glad I could be there with him."
Lorelai nodded again, her face carefully blank. "I hope you remembered you can still get pregnant if you're breastfeeding."
Rory gaped at her. "Mom! It…wasn't like that! It… nothing happened! We just sat on the couch talking and listening to music!"
"You reek of cigarette smoke."
"Yeah, well Jess was smoking like a chimney. I was sitting in the same room as him- on the same couch, even! Shocking, right?"
Lorelai sighed. "I'm sorry, hon. I just… I know you have… feelings about him, and you wanted to help him feel better, and, well…"
"Oh my G-d, mom!"
"Oh Rory, come on. Don't act like it's an unreasonable assumption to make under the circumstances, especially given your track record over the past couple years…"
Rory exhaled a humorless laugh. "Wow. Ok. Tell me what you really think of me."
Lorelai sighed. "That was uncalled for. I'm sorry. And maybe I was projecting a bit, thinking of my own history with your dad… 'Cause I worry you'll make all the same mistakes I did."
"Well, you can stop worrying, because nothing happened!"
"Ok! Fine! I believe you!"
"Great!"
"Fantastic! I'd still shower if I were you, though. I'm serious. You smell like an ashtray."
Rory sighed. "I know. I plan to, believe me. I need to relieve some of the pressure, anyway."
Lorelai grimaced. "Ok, I believe you that you didn't get any last night! You don't have to-"
"Oh my G-d, Mom! Not that!" She opened her coat to reveal two giant wet spots, one over each breast.
Lorelai bent over nearly double, cackling with glee.
"Yeah! I'm feeling pretty miserable right now, and Richie's already had his breakfast, so if you'll excuse me,I need to do something about this so he doesn't feel like he's drinking from a fire hose next time!"
Thank you for reading. I would love to know what you think!