Chapter 4
One box after another Rory's new apartment filled up with things, putting Rory's mind at rest at least on the fact where she was going to live for the foreseeable future. Defining her home as 'where she hung her hat' for years had made her forget how many things she actually had. Now with the help of Zach and Luke doing most of the heavy lifting, the apartment, right upstairs from Steve's flower shop on Cherry Street, conveniently just a block away from Luke's, was transforming into something that was to become her home.
It was a small two bedroom, extending through the building with living room windows opening to the street and the bedrooms to the yard. The walls could use a fresh layer of paint, and hardly any furniture matched, but Rory was actually surprisingly happy with the mismatched result. It was authentic at least, and practical. Rory actually found a lot of her old furniture from her childhood room useful in this place - her old dresser finding its way to her new bedroom, as well as the armchair. Lane had donated her old antique bed with oddly high corner posts from Mrs. Kim's, plus there were a few odd items from Luke's old apartment. The nursery was mostly boxes of books for now, but thankfully there was still time with that. Her grandmother wouldn't have approved, but she wasn't aiming for that, not right now at least.
"It's looking good, kid," Lorelai commented, catching her daughter looking over the apartment that they'd finished moving into. Largely unpacked, but still 'moved in'.
"Yeah," Rory exhaled with relief.
"It's going to be alright, you know? I know it's all big and scary to be going this alone, but you're not. You know that, right?" Lorelai assured.
"Yeah, I know," Rory sighed, feeling a little sentimental.
"Any word from Lo…," Lorelai dared to ask, correcting herself quickly, "...Didi?"
Rory made a face, hating the reminder that she'd ever had to lie about him to her mother like that.
"I'm surprised you made it this long to ask," Rory commented, knowing how her mother must've been dying of curiosity. It had been a busy time at the Inn and they hadn't really had much chance to truly talk with everything with the apartment taking precedence.
"Well?" Lorelai inquired, revealing how she was dying to know.
"He called at New Years Eve. And… I don't know how he took it. He was shocked, I guess. Who wouldn't be?" Rory explained.
"And?" Lorelai continued to probe.
"And - nothing," Rory shrugged. "He knows how things are. He knows I am doing this regardless of…. anything. He at least didn't sound mad, which was a relief," Rory explained, focusing on the superficial part of this. She wasn't naive, she just didn't want to confess her deepest worries to her mother right now.
"Does he want to be involved?" Lorelai inquired.
"He didn't say much," Rory said.
"It would be good to know when you're going to see grandma's lawyer, just saying," Lorelai shrugged.
"Since when are you so pro lawyering-up?" Rory teased.
"All I think is it doesn't hurt to know your rights," Lorelai added.
"And his, you mean?" Rory shot back, finding it a little offencive how little her mother trusted Logan.
"And his," Lorelai reflected, agreeing with her.
"He's not going to make demands. He just got married. I really don't think their PR team would look too kindly on something like this either," Rory added, rolling her eyes, defensively.
"You don't know that. And sure, he's not the demanding type, but once he wraps his head around all of this, he might feel differently about this," Lorelai suggested, shrugging her shoulders.
"We'll cross that bridge when we come to it," Rory said. The truth was, a big part of her was just afraid of getting in touch with Logan again. She wasn't sure what his very brief response of 'Okay' on the topic had actually meant. And if she were to contact him again - she really didn't want to leave the impression that she wanted anything from him. And calling him, being needy for answers, was the opposite of that. As far as she was concerned the ball was in his corner. If he wanted any involvement - updates or anything- he was the one who needed to let it be known.
A part of Rory hoped Logan would have some part in the child's life - but she didn't quite dare to admit it, feeling the regular contact might just be too hard to bear. Mostly she just wanted to move on whilst knowing she had his approval and trust to do this. She wanted to focus on new things, places and people - even if mostly the people around her were just newly discovered, and most importantly - new life…
That night as she was snuggled up in her bed with a book, McEvan's 'Nutshell', expecting to doze off in a couple of pages quite happily, when her phone chimed. She wasn't laced with hope that it'd be Logan, more so she was expecting it to be Lane or her mom, who'd become her daily companions again.
"Does this attract or scare off men?" was Paris' question to her, along with a couple of screenshots of her dating app profile. No 'hello', 'how are you' - just Paris being Paris. Some friendships were just static, not dependent on the time spent on small-talk or catching up on the day-to-day ongoings of either's life.
Rory chuckled to herself, having never really pictured Paris leaning on apps for dating. In fact, she remembered many times when her college-time roommate had made fun of both the apps and the people who used them with very colorful expletives.
"Depends what kind of men you are looking for?" Rory shot back. The question sounded serious, but inside Rory was feeling rather giddy to be helping Paris with something like this, reminding her of that time in Florida when they'd talked 'boys' whilst drinking very strong punch with Louise and Madeline all night.
Naturally, Paris had some strong opinions about why she was doing this in the first place. But largely she confessed how she missed intimacy. Paris was certainly the type of woman who really didn't need a man by her side, managing fine on her own as the strong and independent woman that she was. Besides, after Doyle, she was pretty disappointed in mankind in general. But even someone like Paris craved sex, and while asking for it straight up at a bar might've worked, Paris also liked to make sure every guy she dragged into a hotel room was thoroughly vetted first. She needed a male version of herself whose aim was to remain emotionally unattached while scratching an itch. Or so she claimed.
"Is that Patrick guy still around?" Paris asked, after a lengthy feedback session on her profile.
"Patrick?" Rory asked in return.
"Pete, Phil, Paul…. Whatever his name was," Paris replied.
"Oh, Paul - nope. We broke up," Rory replied. She didn't feel proud of how that whole thing had gone, but in her defense, they hadn't been exclusive on either side of things - they'd never agreed to be at least. Whether Paul had simply been naively attached to her, had always remained a mystery to her, but she most certainly had never really encouraged it.
"Finally!" Paris exclaimed, Rory being able to catch her sentiment even without hearing her voice.
"He wasn't that bad," Rory said, hating to black mouth the guy now.
"You still seeing that boytoy of yours in London?" Paris asked.
"Excuse me?" Rory replied, having not realized Paris knew anything about her seeing anyone in London.
"I read he got married over Christmas," Paris replied.
At that Rory pressed the 'call' button, being unable to keep typing this.
"How did you know?!" Rory asked, not following how she even knew about any of this.
"Oh, come on, Rory. Nobody flies back and forth between London just because of Naomi Shropshire as eagerly as you did," Paris replied.
Rory made a suspicious face at her friend.
"And I may have seen a glimpse of a text from LH. It was really rather easy to connect the dots from here," Paris shared. "So, you still seeing him?" she repeated her question.
"No, I'm not," Rory replied. "I just moved into my new apartment though," she said, showing the camera around the room proudly.
"In Stars Hollow?" Paris asked, disappointedly.
"Yes, in Stars Hollow," Rory replied, not caring for Paris' tone.
"Why?" Paris asked, getting straight to the point.
Rory sighed, finding little point in keeping up the secrecy.
"Because I'm having a baby, Paris," Rory chimed.
"Logan left you with a parting gift, eh? At least I hope it was him, way better genes than that Paul guy," Paris commented.
"Yes, but I'd rather if you didn't say that out loud. It's not something I want to advertise, if you know what I mean," Rory said.
"Yeah-yeah, I get it. It's not like there's anyone around to hear," Paris commented, sitting alone at her kitchen counter with a wine glass.
"Yeah, this is me. A real success at 32, starting from scratch. I'll be happy if I avoid getting sucked into the 30-something gang," Rory chimed, trying to sound optimistic about her new start.
"How far along are you? And I can't believe you didn't tell me or come and see me. I own fertility clinics for god's sake," Paris added.
"I hid it for a while. For obvious reasons, you know. And as for doctors - things are normal, my normal doctor is handling it. There didn't seem any need for a specialist," Rory began to explain, realizing there really was no rationalizing about something like this with Paris. "And I am just about 15 weeks," Rory said, focusing on the easier topic.
"You must be starting to show soon. You're so skinny it must be popping out of you like a balloon," Paris commented.
"Actually, not so much yet," Rory replied.
"Is the nausea gone at least?" Paris inquired.
"Yeah, I'm doing good. Energy levels are good, my appetite is better too," Rory replied.
"How's the blood pressure? Are they running all the proper tests? Maybe you should have me take a look, just to be sure," Paris insisted, in a doctor-like manner.
"It's fine, really," Rory assured.
"God, mostly what I remember about my second trimester is how incredibly horny I was. Doyle was exhausted, and sore," Paris said, causing Rory to grimace from reluctance to hear this.
"Too much information, Paris!" Rory said.
"Oh, don't be such a 'Mary', Rory," Paris teased.
"Ha-ha," Rory chimed sarcastically.
"All I'm saying is, it'd be perfectly normal of you to, you know, maybe want to make good use of that figure of yours while it's still good. Trust me, your body's never going to be the same after this… and there really is only so much a good vibrator can do, believe me," Paris commented, actually sounding like she thought she was giving good advice.
Rory didn't take it as that, at that point at least. But the thought did scare her - was she ever going to feel like herself again? What would sleeping with anyone else be like after she had the baby? Would anyone even want to date her when she came with a daughter in tow? Would she even ever again have the time and energy to think about men? Sure, she knew, mostly this was unnecessary worry, her mother's life being a prime example of how life didn't end with having a child. But then again, she wasn't 16, was she?
