rubykatewriting (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rubykatewriting) wrote2004-01-30 02:45 pm
rubykatewriting) wrote2004-01-30 02:45 pm
Fic: Home - Chapter Six, General (GG)
TITLE: Home
AUTHOR:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rubykatewriting
PAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
He leads her to an empty table in the corner, the one nearest the windows towards the front. For a few painful minutes, they try for idle chitchat, staring at their plates of food, other customers, anything but each other. It is the responsibility of their age: they are grownups now and grownups carry on in the face of uncomfortable situations such as this. But artifice has never been something either excelled at and it falls miserably flat. Both finally succumb to the silence pushing around them, and its like they are in a cocoon, the noise of the lunch crowd heard from far away.
Surprisingly, the tension eases, any awkwardness felt dissipating into the air like vapor, no mist to even mark its absence. As if by sheer force of will, they mutually catch it in their crosshairs, that frightful notion of awkward small talk, and kill it where it stands. They eat together as they have a million times before a million years ago.
Her hair is short; it glides back and forth along her jaw line. He sneaks his glances in small doses, admiring her profile. She is beautiful in the winter sunlight; it streams through the window and bounces off her until she appears to glow. A small smile plays about her mouth as she turns to tell him something, her hand going to his arm. Her palm is warm, a circle of heat, sinking through the layers of cloth. He doesn’t hear a word of what she’s saying. Suddenly, the anxiety of her nearness is back, aching in the pit of his belly, and he thinks it almost funny the effect she still has on him.
The truth is he was never comfortable with her; at least not enough to let her in, to finally feel the relief of letting someone know the real him, in all his myriad sharp-angled pieces. Too often the fear of his own inadequacies would overwhelm everything else and he would find moments gone, his hand outstretched to grab them back. They would disappear into curls of dying smoke right before his eyes and all he was left with was the disappointment in her eyes. How he wanted to love her, to open himself up for her like some box and reveal to her all his secrets. Sometimes, he would smell her perfume, even if they weren’t close, just walking together, and he would forget himself in the scent of her. But eventually, he returned to himself and realized the boy she wanted, the boy she saw with her eyes, was too far from who he was. Not even love could bridge that distance.
His mother told him once he would fall in love. It was spoken like a threat, and in her alcoholic fog, she seemed to find enjoyment in this idea, a funny little snort coming out of her. “You’re gonna fall in love and you’ll know what pathetic is,” she promised, sneering at him. “It don’t take much to get from there to here –" and she pointed at herself right then, as if all roads, at least in love, led to the dead end she found herself trapped in.
As he sat on the bus, the miles growing, ever growing, he realized she was right. His mother had him pegged, and it made him feel closer to her somehow, a strange sort of comfort to think, just maybe, she had been paying attention all those years.
“What are you thinking about?”
He looks up. “Nothing,” he answers quickly and she looks unconvinced, but does not press. “Okay,” she says, staring at her plate.
They lapse into silence again as she eats her hamburger and he fiddles with his sandwich. A customer signals to him with their check, and he feels relieved to leave her company. He takes his time ringing up the customer, Ed Something-or-Other, who is in a particularly chatty mood. All the while, he feels her eyes on him, but he doesn’t look over. He wasn’t expecting this – her, his reaction to her. Since Shelby died (and long before that), he never found himself attracted to other women. The very idea left him uneasy, like a kid stuck against the wall at the eighth grade dance, all sweaty palms, new tie too snug at his throat.
But he feels a familiar tug in the pit of his belly as he meets Rory’s eyes across the diner. She has always been that one unknown variable in his life, as unpredictable as she was constant, forever popping up in the back of his mind, unwanted but persistent. Even twelve years has not cured him of her and he hates himself for it. Guilt slices through him and it’s as if Shelby is standing beside him, watching it all with those eyes of hers.
He maneuvers his way back towards their table with wary steps and barely swallows his sigh as he falls into the chair beside her. He tries to relax, shifting in his seat, and Rory turns to stare at him, a bemused expression on her face, French fry forgotten in between her index finger and thumb. It falls limply, the greasy smell a bit overwhelming, and as he wiggles his butt against the seat once more, he gets a heady whiff of her perfume, a faint trace of it filling his nose. He shakes himself, as if finally awake, and he turns towards her, sitting sideways in the chair, facing away from the crowded dining area. She mimics his action and her face has a secretive glow to it, as if they are old friends finally come together and he is about to impart a particularly juicy piece of scandal.
“Hey,” he says finally, grinning ridiculously. He feels seventeen again, and he realizes that’s not such a terrible thing. They were friends once, before hormones and sex got in the way, and he feels a happy bubble burst in the pit of his belly, overtaking any unwanted longings. He stocks it up to his two and a half years of celibacy and her familiarity.
“Hey,” she says, returning his smile.
-
He tries to tell her as he walks her home, her duffel bag slung over his shoulders. He fiddles with the strap stretched tautly over his chest as he searches for a way to tell her without seeming odd. A small sound bite of what his life has been since he’s left. She seems oblivious, carefree as she lets her other bag swing back and forth at her side, while he struggles to keep up his end of the conversation. Something about this new book she’s reading. He is awkward and fumbling, not having read the book, barely uttering more than a grunt here and there. He constantly runs his fingers through his hair; for the life of him, he can’t figure out what to do with his hands.
“Ror?”
She turns her head to look at him. He feels her study him out of the corner of his eye. “There’s something you should know.”
“Okay.” She sounds unsure, drawing out the word. Her brows crinkle in the middle.
“I was married.”
She is silent for so long he wonders if he’s imagined her all this time. But Luke saw her too, and he shakes his head at his scattered thoughts. The sad thing is he can’t even blame it on sleepless nights. These weeks have proved nearly blissful, idyllic, and he has slept heavy and dreamless.
“How long?”
“Almost six years. She died two years back.” He feels the familiar punch of the words. How can he even think about Rory as he is? Shelby is in his thoughts again and she walks slightly behind them, more interested in her first tour of Stars Hollow than listening to their conversation, her hands tapping lightly against her thighs. He hears her humming as she always did when she walked.
“I’m sorry,” Rory tells him, genuine sympathy creasing her face. “You were happy?”
Jess is surprised by her question; not that she asked it (Rory was always a thoughtful girl), simply the question itself. Not many people asked him if he was happy, concentrating more on the ending to the story than the in-between. “Yes, very much.” He smiles, watching his feet as he walks. Shelby watches him, a mirroring grin on her face. She leans in close, whispering of memories and other things – they are vague, wrapped in the gauze of time, some trivial, weightless with their everyday insignificance, others are heavier, sitting present and aching inside his chest. So much of his life lived within her, colored and tempered with her voice and her hands and her eyes.
“Any kids?”
He looks up at Rory, aware of her again. Memories and the present are getting mixed up in his head. She looks at him expectantly and he tries to remember what she said. Kids, did he have any kids? He smiles, Wren’s face in front of him. “Yes,” he replies softly.
Rory smiles at him as they take the steps up to her mother’s front door. Glancing at his watch, Jess is surprised; nearly two hours have passed. He looks out across the lawn, down the street. Everything is bright, colored with sunlight and the frigid air of late November. The wind picks up and sneaks across the back of his neck. The hair at his nape and along his arms and legs stands up, his skin covered in goose bumps.
“Son or daughter?”
Turning back to Rory, he lifts her bag over his head and hands it to her. “A daughter. Wren.”
“That’s her name, Wren?”
“Yep.”
“Good name.”
“She seems to like it.”
Rory seems to be hinting at something but he stares blankly at her. She fidgets, her knees bouncing, and she lets out this squeak of exasperation. “Don’t you carry any pictures of her?” she asks.
“Oh!” He grins sheepishly as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. Unfolding it, he pulls out the plastic photograph holder and hands it to her. He moves closer, her shoulder brushing his chest. They both freeze for a fraction of an instant and he tries not to breathe. As if by mutual decision, they ignore the moment, but she pulls away, covering the movement by holding up the first picture, clucking her tongue. “Jess, I think it may be time to replace this thing,” she admonishes lightly. Wren’s face is blurry beneath the plastic.
“I would have to buy a whole new wallet,” he tells her, as if this explains everything.
She rolls her eyes. “These are cherished family photos,” she argues, sounding just like her mother.
He relents, knowing it is easier to just let her win. “Point taken.” Grabbing the plastic cover from her hands, he slides the photograph from the first slot. Wren and her friend from down the street ham it for the camera. They wear these ridiculous movie-star sunglasses Shelby found at Wal-Mart; the glasses are big, hiding most of their faces, except for wide, teeth-baring grins. “She’s the blond. That’s her friend Anna.”
Rory’s hair covers her face as she looks at the photo. He has no way to gauge her reaction and he tries not to think too much into why he cares. Her finger trails along Wren’s smiling face and he notices her nail is chewed to the quick, the skin of her fingertips red. This strikes him; the Rory he remembers was always so firmly in possession of herself, suffering none of the physical effects of youthful awkwardness. Part of what drew him to her, how opposite she was from him. Is it only stress? Or something more?
She turns to the next one: a photo of Wren at four, posing in one of Nana’s old pair of heels; she smiles, her face cherubic, a dimple in her right cheek. “She’s beautiful, Jess,” Rory tells him, interrupting his thoughts. She brushes her hair behind her ear. A small smile curves her mouth.
“She looks like her mother,” he says, clearing his throat. He reaches across her and flips the plastic sheath over to reveal the most recent photograph of Wren, this year’s school picture. A ridiculously old autumn motif sits in the background, myriad trees vibrantly colored in hues of gold and red; it looks as if it was made sometime during the 70s, nearly identical to the ones he remembers from his own school days.
But his eyes trail over Wren’s face. His daughter, his baby girl, looks so grown up. He notices it for the first time; all of her adult teeth have come in. Smiling, he remembers her excitement one afternoon. “Dad, look!” she called out, pointing to her new incisors, both longer than the rest of her other teeth, and pointed. “They’re my vampire teeth,” she told him and she hissed, hands by her face, her fingers curled menacingly.
”How old is she?” Rory asks, her voice changed. Raspy, like she isn’t getting enough air.
He glances at Rory as he answers her. A look, fleeting and tremulous, crosses her face as she raises her eyes to meet his. He feels weighted under the intensity of her gaze, his shoulders stooping; it overwhelms him but he doesn’t understand. The silence is unbearable. “Rory?”
“I need to get unpacked,” she replies. She turns on her heel so fast, her bag hits into his thigh. She blurts out a quick apology as she unlocks the door. Without a word further, she slips inside, leaving him alone on the porch.
-
“Honey, I know you are fully prepared with the flogging whips and the hair sweater,” Lorelai says, watching Rory pace back and forth, “but I meant to tell you.”
Rory scoffs at this, pausing long enough to give her mother a look. She folds her arms over her chest and continues pacing.
Lorelai looks offended. “Really,” she emphasizes, her face scrunched up.
“It’s been almost a month, Mom,” Rory points out, her eyes focused elsewhere. She can’t concentrate. Wren’s face, happy, gorgeously happy, keeps spinning around inside her head. A perfect image of another woman (she looks nothing like Jess); Shelby was probably blond and gorgeous. Jealousy, hot and abhorrent, rises up like bile into the back of her throat. She wonders if she’s allowed to hate a child and not go to Hell. Or if she believes in Hell at all. It’s not as if she and Lorelai ever practiced any sort of religion, even casually. The only times she’s been inside a church can be numbered on one hand and those were for weddings and one funeral, never for actual worship.
Lorelai is talking to her and she tries to focus, watches her mother’s mouth move for several seconds before the words register. “...fully planning to tell you before it hit the six month mark. According to all the rules of etiquette, that’s when it turns from awkward to just plain rude. At least in such a situation as this, you know, not telling one’s daughter of her ex-boyfriend’s surprise return. And sit down; you’re making me dizzy. At least at a tennis match I get cute boys in little shorts.”
Pushing aside her own rambling thoughts, Rory falls back onto the sofa with a groan, her butt nearly hanging off the edge of the cushions. Her chin rests on her chest and she stares at her feet for lack of anything else to look at. Angling her feet this way, that way, she realizes she really needs to buy a new pair of Converse. The white rubber at the toes is black and scuffed and the fabric on both sides, where her foot bends, is torn. Four tiny tears reveal her bright red socks.
She doesn’t look up when her mother sits down beside her, but her eyes find Lorelai’s feet. They are clad in a pair of chic leather boots, purple to match her outfit; the heel is so high it is impossible for them to be comfortable. Something so typical of her mother, and she flushes when she thinks about the hoards of shoes lined up in her own closet back in New York. She definitely picked up the shoe gene from her mother.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Lorelai admits softly. They are close, bodies touching. For Rory, it only emphasizes the distance between them. There was a time when she thought she and her mother would never drift apart, they would always remain as close as they were when she younger. But she has only herself to blame. It is quite the pickle, as Lane would say; she avoids coming home because she feels guilty for feeling this way, but it only worsens the longer she stays away. Nearly groaning, she shifts around, suddenly unable to get comfortable. Rory meets her mother’s eyes, scooting up into a sitting position. “It’s okay,” she grumbles, more upset with herself. She tries to shake off her mood.
Lorelai looks nonplussed. “Does that mean it’s really okay? Or it’s okay for now until I do something else and you plan to throw this back in my face, number 1,009 on the list of ways I’ve failed you as a mother?”
Pretending to contemplate, Rory chews her lower lip, index finger at her chin. They always have this, a knee-jerk reaction to banter away the blues or the discomfort of most any circumstance. It’s where their tendency to babble in uncomfortable situations stems from. If they can talk enough, it will magically repair everything, from a botched dinner date to a run-in with an old beau. Lorelai nudges her and she manages a grin, momentarily caught up in the game. “It’s really okay,” Rory answers sincerely, eyes wide, going for her best innocent look. “Anyhow, I threw that list out years ago.”
Lorelai’s eyes narrow, mouth a cute little bow. “Because you realized I am merely human and decided to forgive me?”
Rory shakes her head. “Oh, no, nothing that mature. It grew too long. I couldn’t keep toting it around. It required it’s own luggage.”
“You were using coordinating luggage, I hope?”
“Of course.”
“I have raised you well, my child. I think you may just be complete.”
They settle back against the cushions once more, but again, Rory can’t shake this – this nagging sense that she is out of place here, ill fitting and one too many. Staring at the ceiling, she listens to her mother’s breathing, her own. They are out of sync; her mother inhales just a second or two before she does. She smiles mirthlessly at the ceiling.
Shortly after Lorelai discovered she was pregnant with Emma, Luke and Lorelai decided they needed to buy a new house. There was no question of its necessity. It was impossible as it was in the old house, cramped when Rory came home (she was stuck on the couch). For months they searched, and one day, as they took a walk with Will, they found this place, quite literally stumbling onto it the day the owners placed the “For Sale” sign in the front yard. It was, quite simply, perfect, an everyone-is-happy-here house. Except Rory. How she hated herself for it, but she despised this house the moment Luke and Lorelai brought her here, their faces aglow. But she felt disconnected from everyone, every thing going on around her, viewing it with the eyes of the casual observer, no emotional investment involved. It wasn’t until afterwards, in the car on the way back to her house, she felt it, like a bone fracture, achy and deep – a nearly imperceptible line marking her as separate, and she was suddenly on the outside looking in.
And for the first time in her life, she wanted to be anywhere else, to be anybody else.
“What?”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Rory responds automatically, staring at her knee. “It’s just..." She searches fruitlessly for the words to fully realize her own disappointment. Her eyes lock with her mother’s. “She’s ten, Mom,” she whispers and crumbles.
Lorelai’s arms are around her immediately, squeezing her, bringing back memories of nightmares when she was a child, how soothing it felt to be wrapped up against her mother’s breast. But her mother’s embrace doesn’t hold its usual comfort, only causes the aloneness to grow, spreading through her like melting ice. Pulling away, Rory uses the back of her hand to wipe her running nose and her mother grabs the box of tissues from the end table.
“Babe?”
“I need to get out for awhile,” Rory says, standing too quickly. Her head feels woozy and she stumbles a bit as she tries to get around her mother’s legs and by the coffee table at once. “I’m going for a walk,” she tosses the words over her shoulder as she grabs her coat from the rack near the front door. She pulls it open and hurries out into the rising wind, hair flying across her face.
-
She wanders around town, sticking to the outskirts, walking up and down streets as she pointedly avoids the square. Her face feels strange, skin stretched too tightly across her bones. Arms folded over her chest, she huddles inside her jacket as the afternoon wanes, grows liquid as the sun sinks lower towards the horizon. The temperature has dropped again and the wind bites into her, taking nips of her flesh with it; she hopes there’s nothing left.
She crosses the street and finds herself at the bridge. The trees bow towards the entrance, majestic and old. A hundred memories flicker through her head, like old home movies, and she feels breathless under the onslaught. I don’t want to remember! she screams inside her head, but her feet take her closer, pull her as surely as if she is tied to the end of a rope and someone on the other end is tugging her forward, playing some weird game of tug-of-war.
A girl sits in the middle of the bridge. Her shoulders are hunched inward as she leans over a book. She is tall, her one leg is folded beneath her knee, and still her foot nearly touches the water. It’s the blond hair that gives her away; it’s not typical blond. It is deeply gold, dark like warmed honey, but the fading light catches streaks here and there of pale, nearly white blond, most likely from the sun. Wren is even more beautiful in the flesh.
Rory can’t hate her. There is something so fragile about her. She is all lanky arms and skinny shoulders and Rory wants to wrap her up in her arms, pull her close to her bosom. Protect her.
Something stops her from going any further. She retreats into the lengthening shadows, safe behind a tree. The bark is rough against her palms as she watches her. Wren blows a bubble with her gum, purple and large; she snaps it with her teeth, her concentration never breaking from the book in her hands. Even turning her head to the side, Rory can’t read the cover.
Jess is almost to her when she finally notices him. He approaches her, his plain black Converse soft against the wood planks. As he nears her, a swift smile lights up Wren’s face, even as she stares at her book; it’s as if she can feel him and she turns, the book forgotten, to greet her father. A knot coils in the pit of Rory's belly and it tightens with each footfall. Ridiculously, she wonders if she throws up right here where she stands, should she cover it with dirt or tell someone? Surely she can’t just leave it for some innocent passerby to happen upon.
He squats down beside Wren, his face to Rory, and he reaches out and affectionately tugs on a thick lock of his daughter's hair. A smile, one Rory’s never seen, colors his face and it’s like she is bleeding inside. Every hope, as tiny as they were, cuts her, as if they are tiny shards of glass and as they fall within her, they slice through every organ, every vein and artery. She drops to her haunches, her knees too weak to hold her anymore. Her hands go to the ground and her face feels flushed.
She is not strong enough for this. “I’m not strong enough for this,” she says the words out loud, her voice shaky and she hates herself for it.
-
It is dark when she walks back to her mother’s. Her breath precedes her, but even the cold does not hurry her. She is lazy in her stroll, taking the long way, letting the chill seep into her bones until she is numb throughout.
The house is empty; her mother thoughtfully left on the foyer light. They are all probably up at the diner for dinner, but she doesn’t have the energy or the emotional or mental capacity to handle a big family meal. When she turns on the light in her bedroom, her bags are sitting in the middle of her bed. She shoves them to the floor and lays down, fully clothed. Staring at the ceiling, she shivers for the first time, the tears hot on her cheeks. Rolling onto her belly, she presses her face into her pillow. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.
chapter one | chapter two | chapter three | chapter four
chapter five | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten
AUTHOR:
rubykatewritingPAIRING: This fic features Lorelai and Luke in an established relationship with children; Sookie and Jackson are still doing what they're doing; and Jess is a widower; it will eventually end up Rory/Jess.
RATING: PG
SUMMARY: Now he can’t imagine calling any other place home. Jess returns to Stars Hollow.
DISCLAIMER: Luke Danes, Lorelai Gilmore, Jess Mariano, Sookie St. James, Jackson Belleville, Emily and Richard Gilmore and Rory Gilmore belong to others. I am only borrowing them. No harm intended.
WARNING: Major character death pre-fic, which is discussed and dealt with through remainder of fic.
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Multiple chapters.
He leads her to an empty table in the corner, the one nearest the windows towards the front. For a few painful minutes, they try for idle chitchat, staring at their plates of food, other customers, anything but each other. It is the responsibility of their age: they are grownups now and grownups carry on in the face of uncomfortable situations such as this. But artifice has never been something either excelled at and it falls miserably flat. Both finally succumb to the silence pushing around them, and its like they are in a cocoon, the noise of the lunch crowd heard from far away.
Surprisingly, the tension eases, any awkwardness felt dissipating into the air like vapor, no mist to even mark its absence. As if by sheer force of will, they mutually catch it in their crosshairs, that frightful notion of awkward small talk, and kill it where it stands. They eat together as they have a million times before a million years ago.
Her hair is short; it glides back and forth along her jaw line. He sneaks his glances in small doses, admiring her profile. She is beautiful in the winter sunlight; it streams through the window and bounces off her until she appears to glow. A small smile plays about her mouth as she turns to tell him something, her hand going to his arm. Her palm is warm, a circle of heat, sinking through the layers of cloth. He doesn’t hear a word of what she’s saying. Suddenly, the anxiety of her nearness is back, aching in the pit of his belly, and he thinks it almost funny the effect she still has on him.
The truth is he was never comfortable with her; at least not enough to let her in, to finally feel the relief of letting someone know the real him, in all his myriad sharp-angled pieces. Too often the fear of his own inadequacies would overwhelm everything else and he would find moments gone, his hand outstretched to grab them back. They would disappear into curls of dying smoke right before his eyes and all he was left with was the disappointment in her eyes. How he wanted to love her, to open himself up for her like some box and reveal to her all his secrets. Sometimes, he would smell her perfume, even if they weren’t close, just walking together, and he would forget himself in the scent of her. But eventually, he returned to himself and realized the boy she wanted, the boy she saw with her eyes, was too far from who he was. Not even love could bridge that distance.
His mother told him once he would fall in love. It was spoken like a threat, and in her alcoholic fog, she seemed to find enjoyment in this idea, a funny little snort coming out of her. “You’re gonna fall in love and you’ll know what pathetic is,” she promised, sneering at him. “It don’t take much to get from there to here –" and she pointed at herself right then, as if all roads, at least in love, led to the dead end she found herself trapped in.
As he sat on the bus, the miles growing, ever growing, he realized she was right. His mother had him pegged, and it made him feel closer to her somehow, a strange sort of comfort to think, just maybe, she had been paying attention all those years.
“What are you thinking about?”
He looks up. “Nothing,” he answers quickly and she looks unconvinced, but does not press. “Okay,” she says, staring at her plate.
They lapse into silence again as she eats her hamburger and he fiddles with his sandwich. A customer signals to him with their check, and he feels relieved to leave her company. He takes his time ringing up the customer, Ed Something-or-Other, who is in a particularly chatty mood. All the while, he feels her eyes on him, but he doesn’t look over. He wasn’t expecting this – her, his reaction to her. Since Shelby died (and long before that), he never found himself attracted to other women. The very idea left him uneasy, like a kid stuck against the wall at the eighth grade dance, all sweaty palms, new tie too snug at his throat.
But he feels a familiar tug in the pit of his belly as he meets Rory’s eyes across the diner. She has always been that one unknown variable in his life, as unpredictable as she was constant, forever popping up in the back of his mind, unwanted but persistent. Even twelve years has not cured him of her and he hates himself for it. Guilt slices through him and it’s as if Shelby is standing beside him, watching it all with those eyes of hers.
He maneuvers his way back towards their table with wary steps and barely swallows his sigh as he falls into the chair beside her. He tries to relax, shifting in his seat, and Rory turns to stare at him, a bemused expression on her face, French fry forgotten in between her index finger and thumb. It falls limply, the greasy smell a bit overwhelming, and as he wiggles his butt against the seat once more, he gets a heady whiff of her perfume, a faint trace of it filling his nose. He shakes himself, as if finally awake, and he turns towards her, sitting sideways in the chair, facing away from the crowded dining area. She mimics his action and her face has a secretive glow to it, as if they are old friends finally come together and he is about to impart a particularly juicy piece of scandal.
“Hey,” he says finally, grinning ridiculously. He feels seventeen again, and he realizes that’s not such a terrible thing. They were friends once, before hormones and sex got in the way, and he feels a happy bubble burst in the pit of his belly, overtaking any unwanted longings. He stocks it up to his two and a half years of celibacy and her familiarity.
“Hey,” she says, returning his smile.
-
He tries to tell her as he walks her home, her duffel bag slung over his shoulders. He fiddles with the strap stretched tautly over his chest as he searches for a way to tell her without seeming odd. A small sound bite of what his life has been since he’s left. She seems oblivious, carefree as she lets her other bag swing back and forth at her side, while he struggles to keep up his end of the conversation. Something about this new book she’s reading. He is awkward and fumbling, not having read the book, barely uttering more than a grunt here and there. He constantly runs his fingers through his hair; for the life of him, he can’t figure out what to do with his hands.
“Ror?”
She turns her head to look at him. He feels her study him out of the corner of his eye. “There’s something you should know.”
“Okay.” She sounds unsure, drawing out the word. Her brows crinkle in the middle.
“I was married.”
She is silent for so long he wonders if he’s imagined her all this time. But Luke saw her too, and he shakes his head at his scattered thoughts. The sad thing is he can’t even blame it on sleepless nights. These weeks have proved nearly blissful, idyllic, and he has slept heavy and dreamless.
“How long?”
“Almost six years. She died two years back.” He feels the familiar punch of the words. How can he even think about Rory as he is? Shelby is in his thoughts again and she walks slightly behind them, more interested in her first tour of Stars Hollow than listening to their conversation, her hands tapping lightly against her thighs. He hears her humming as she always did when she walked.
“I’m sorry,” Rory tells him, genuine sympathy creasing her face. “You were happy?”
Jess is surprised by her question; not that she asked it (Rory was always a thoughtful girl), simply the question itself. Not many people asked him if he was happy, concentrating more on the ending to the story than the in-between. “Yes, very much.” He smiles, watching his feet as he walks. Shelby watches him, a mirroring grin on her face. She leans in close, whispering of memories and other things – they are vague, wrapped in the gauze of time, some trivial, weightless with their everyday insignificance, others are heavier, sitting present and aching inside his chest. So much of his life lived within her, colored and tempered with her voice and her hands and her eyes.
“Any kids?”
He looks up at Rory, aware of her again. Memories and the present are getting mixed up in his head. She looks at him expectantly and he tries to remember what she said. Kids, did he have any kids? He smiles, Wren’s face in front of him. “Yes,” he replies softly.
Rory smiles at him as they take the steps up to her mother’s front door. Glancing at his watch, Jess is surprised; nearly two hours have passed. He looks out across the lawn, down the street. Everything is bright, colored with sunlight and the frigid air of late November. The wind picks up and sneaks across the back of his neck. The hair at his nape and along his arms and legs stands up, his skin covered in goose bumps.
“Son or daughter?”
Turning back to Rory, he lifts her bag over his head and hands it to her. “A daughter. Wren.”
“That’s her name, Wren?”
“Yep.”
“Good name.”
“She seems to like it.”
Rory seems to be hinting at something but he stares blankly at her. She fidgets, her knees bouncing, and she lets out this squeak of exasperation. “Don’t you carry any pictures of her?” she asks.
“Oh!” He grins sheepishly as he reaches into his back pocket for his wallet. Unfolding it, he pulls out the plastic photograph holder and hands it to her. He moves closer, her shoulder brushing his chest. They both freeze for a fraction of an instant and he tries not to breathe. As if by mutual decision, they ignore the moment, but she pulls away, covering the movement by holding up the first picture, clucking her tongue. “Jess, I think it may be time to replace this thing,” she admonishes lightly. Wren’s face is blurry beneath the plastic.
“I would have to buy a whole new wallet,” he tells her, as if this explains everything.
She rolls her eyes. “These are cherished family photos,” she argues, sounding just like her mother.
He relents, knowing it is easier to just let her win. “Point taken.” Grabbing the plastic cover from her hands, he slides the photograph from the first slot. Wren and her friend from down the street ham it for the camera. They wear these ridiculous movie-star sunglasses Shelby found at Wal-Mart; the glasses are big, hiding most of their faces, except for wide, teeth-baring grins. “She’s the blond. That’s her friend Anna.”
Rory’s hair covers her face as she looks at the photo. He has no way to gauge her reaction and he tries not to think too much into why he cares. Her finger trails along Wren’s smiling face and he notices her nail is chewed to the quick, the skin of her fingertips red. This strikes him; the Rory he remembers was always so firmly in possession of herself, suffering none of the physical effects of youthful awkwardness. Part of what drew him to her, how opposite she was from him. Is it only stress? Or something more?
She turns to the next one: a photo of Wren at four, posing in one of Nana’s old pair of heels; she smiles, her face cherubic, a dimple in her right cheek. “She’s beautiful, Jess,” Rory tells him, interrupting his thoughts. She brushes her hair behind her ear. A small smile curves her mouth.
“She looks like her mother,” he says, clearing his throat. He reaches across her and flips the plastic sheath over to reveal the most recent photograph of Wren, this year’s school picture. A ridiculously old autumn motif sits in the background, myriad trees vibrantly colored in hues of gold and red; it looks as if it was made sometime during the 70s, nearly identical to the ones he remembers from his own school days.
But his eyes trail over Wren’s face. His daughter, his baby girl, looks so grown up. He notices it for the first time; all of her adult teeth have come in. Smiling, he remembers her excitement one afternoon. “Dad, look!” she called out, pointing to her new incisors, both longer than the rest of her other teeth, and pointed. “They’re my vampire teeth,” she told him and she hissed, hands by her face, her fingers curled menacingly.
”How old is she?” Rory asks, her voice changed. Raspy, like she isn’t getting enough air.
He glances at Rory as he answers her. A look, fleeting and tremulous, crosses her face as she raises her eyes to meet his. He feels weighted under the intensity of her gaze, his shoulders stooping; it overwhelms him but he doesn’t understand. The silence is unbearable. “Rory?”
“I need to get unpacked,” she replies. She turns on her heel so fast, her bag hits into his thigh. She blurts out a quick apology as she unlocks the door. Without a word further, she slips inside, leaving him alone on the porch.
-
“Honey, I know you are fully prepared with the flogging whips and the hair sweater,” Lorelai says, watching Rory pace back and forth, “but I meant to tell you.”
Rory scoffs at this, pausing long enough to give her mother a look. She folds her arms over her chest and continues pacing.
Lorelai looks offended. “Really,” she emphasizes, her face scrunched up.
“It’s been almost a month, Mom,” Rory points out, her eyes focused elsewhere. She can’t concentrate. Wren’s face, happy, gorgeously happy, keeps spinning around inside her head. A perfect image of another woman (she looks nothing like Jess); Shelby was probably blond and gorgeous. Jealousy, hot and abhorrent, rises up like bile into the back of her throat. She wonders if she’s allowed to hate a child and not go to Hell. Or if she believes in Hell at all. It’s not as if she and Lorelai ever practiced any sort of religion, even casually. The only times she’s been inside a church can be numbered on one hand and those were for weddings and one funeral, never for actual worship.
Lorelai is talking to her and she tries to focus, watches her mother’s mouth move for several seconds before the words register. “...fully planning to tell you before it hit the six month mark. According to all the rules of etiquette, that’s when it turns from awkward to just plain rude. At least in such a situation as this, you know, not telling one’s daughter of her ex-boyfriend’s surprise return. And sit down; you’re making me dizzy. At least at a tennis match I get cute boys in little shorts.”
Pushing aside her own rambling thoughts, Rory falls back onto the sofa with a groan, her butt nearly hanging off the edge of the cushions. Her chin rests on her chest and she stares at her feet for lack of anything else to look at. Angling her feet this way, that way, she realizes she really needs to buy a new pair of Converse. The white rubber at the toes is black and scuffed and the fabric on both sides, where her foot bends, is torn. Four tiny tears reveal her bright red socks.
She doesn’t look up when her mother sits down beside her, but her eyes find Lorelai’s feet. They are clad in a pair of chic leather boots, purple to match her outfit; the heel is so high it is impossible for them to be comfortable. Something so typical of her mother, and she flushes when she thinks about the hoards of shoes lined up in her own closet back in New York. She definitely picked up the shoe gene from her mother.
“I’m sorry, babe,” Lorelai admits softly. They are close, bodies touching. For Rory, it only emphasizes the distance between them. There was a time when she thought she and her mother would never drift apart, they would always remain as close as they were when she younger. But she has only herself to blame. It is quite the pickle, as Lane would say; she avoids coming home because she feels guilty for feeling this way, but it only worsens the longer she stays away. Nearly groaning, she shifts around, suddenly unable to get comfortable. Rory meets her mother’s eyes, scooting up into a sitting position. “It’s okay,” she grumbles, more upset with herself. She tries to shake off her mood.
Lorelai looks nonplussed. “Does that mean it’s really okay? Or it’s okay for now until I do something else and you plan to throw this back in my face, number 1,009 on the list of ways I’ve failed you as a mother?”
Pretending to contemplate, Rory chews her lower lip, index finger at her chin. They always have this, a knee-jerk reaction to banter away the blues or the discomfort of most any circumstance. It’s where their tendency to babble in uncomfortable situations stems from. If they can talk enough, it will magically repair everything, from a botched dinner date to a run-in with an old beau. Lorelai nudges her and she manages a grin, momentarily caught up in the game. “It’s really okay,” Rory answers sincerely, eyes wide, going for her best innocent look. “Anyhow, I threw that list out years ago.”
Lorelai’s eyes narrow, mouth a cute little bow. “Because you realized I am merely human and decided to forgive me?”
Rory shakes her head. “Oh, no, nothing that mature. It grew too long. I couldn’t keep toting it around. It required it’s own luggage.”
“You were using coordinating luggage, I hope?”
“Of course.”
“I have raised you well, my child. I think you may just be complete.”
They settle back against the cushions once more, but again, Rory can’t shake this – this nagging sense that she is out of place here, ill fitting and one too many. Staring at the ceiling, she listens to her mother’s breathing, her own. They are out of sync; her mother inhales just a second or two before she does. She smiles mirthlessly at the ceiling.
Shortly after Lorelai discovered she was pregnant with Emma, Luke and Lorelai decided they needed to buy a new house. There was no question of its necessity. It was impossible as it was in the old house, cramped when Rory came home (she was stuck on the couch). For months they searched, and one day, as they took a walk with Will, they found this place, quite literally stumbling onto it the day the owners placed the “For Sale” sign in the front yard. It was, quite simply, perfect, an everyone-is-happy-here house. Except Rory. How she hated herself for it, but she despised this house the moment Luke and Lorelai brought her here, their faces aglow. But she felt disconnected from everyone, every thing going on around her, viewing it with the eyes of the casual observer, no emotional investment involved. It wasn’t until afterwards, in the car on the way back to her house, she felt it, like a bone fracture, achy and deep – a nearly imperceptible line marking her as separate, and she was suddenly on the outside looking in.
And for the first time in her life, she wanted to be anywhere else, to be anybody else.
“What?”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yeah,” Rory responds automatically, staring at her knee. “It’s just..." She searches fruitlessly for the words to fully realize her own disappointment. Her eyes lock with her mother’s. “She’s ten, Mom,” she whispers and crumbles.
Lorelai’s arms are around her immediately, squeezing her, bringing back memories of nightmares when she was a child, how soothing it felt to be wrapped up against her mother’s breast. But her mother’s embrace doesn’t hold its usual comfort, only causes the aloneness to grow, spreading through her like melting ice. Pulling away, Rory uses the back of her hand to wipe her running nose and her mother grabs the box of tissues from the end table.
“Babe?”
“I need to get out for awhile,” Rory says, standing too quickly. Her head feels woozy and she stumbles a bit as she tries to get around her mother’s legs and by the coffee table at once. “I’m going for a walk,” she tosses the words over her shoulder as she grabs her coat from the rack near the front door. She pulls it open and hurries out into the rising wind, hair flying across her face.
-
She wanders around town, sticking to the outskirts, walking up and down streets as she pointedly avoids the square. Her face feels strange, skin stretched too tightly across her bones. Arms folded over her chest, she huddles inside her jacket as the afternoon wanes, grows liquid as the sun sinks lower towards the horizon. The temperature has dropped again and the wind bites into her, taking nips of her flesh with it; she hopes there’s nothing left.
She crosses the street and finds herself at the bridge. The trees bow towards the entrance, majestic and old. A hundred memories flicker through her head, like old home movies, and she feels breathless under the onslaught. I don’t want to remember! she screams inside her head, but her feet take her closer, pull her as surely as if she is tied to the end of a rope and someone on the other end is tugging her forward, playing some weird game of tug-of-war.
A girl sits in the middle of the bridge. Her shoulders are hunched inward as she leans over a book. She is tall, her one leg is folded beneath her knee, and still her foot nearly touches the water. It’s the blond hair that gives her away; it’s not typical blond. It is deeply gold, dark like warmed honey, but the fading light catches streaks here and there of pale, nearly white blond, most likely from the sun. Wren is even more beautiful in the flesh.
Rory can’t hate her. There is something so fragile about her. She is all lanky arms and skinny shoulders and Rory wants to wrap her up in her arms, pull her close to her bosom. Protect her.
Something stops her from going any further. She retreats into the lengthening shadows, safe behind a tree. The bark is rough against her palms as she watches her. Wren blows a bubble with her gum, purple and large; she snaps it with her teeth, her concentration never breaking from the book in her hands. Even turning her head to the side, Rory can’t read the cover.
Jess is almost to her when she finally notices him. He approaches her, his plain black Converse soft against the wood planks. As he nears her, a swift smile lights up Wren’s face, even as she stares at her book; it’s as if she can feel him and she turns, the book forgotten, to greet her father. A knot coils in the pit of Rory's belly and it tightens with each footfall. Ridiculously, she wonders if she throws up right here where she stands, should she cover it with dirt or tell someone? Surely she can’t just leave it for some innocent passerby to happen upon.
He squats down beside Wren, his face to Rory, and he reaches out and affectionately tugs on a thick lock of his daughter's hair. A smile, one Rory’s never seen, colors his face and it’s like she is bleeding inside. Every hope, as tiny as they were, cuts her, as if they are tiny shards of glass and as they fall within her, they slice through every organ, every vein and artery. She drops to her haunches, her knees too weak to hold her anymore. Her hands go to the ground and her face feels flushed.
She is not strong enough for this. “I’m not strong enough for this,” she says the words out loud, her voice shaky and she hates herself for it.
-
It is dark when she walks back to her mother’s. Her breath precedes her, but even the cold does not hurry her. She is lazy in her stroll, taking the long way, letting the chill seep into her bones until she is numb throughout.
The house is empty; her mother thoughtfully left on the foyer light. They are all probably up at the diner for dinner, but she doesn’t have the energy or the emotional or mental capacity to handle a big family meal. When she turns on the light in her bedroom, her bags are sitting in the middle of her bed. She shoves them to the floor and lays down, fully clothed. Staring at the ceiling, she shivers for the first time, the tears hot on her cheeks. Rolling onto her belly, she presses her face into her pillow. She doesn’t remember falling asleep.
chapter five | chapter seven | chapter eight | chapter nine | chapter ten