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dollsomeIt’s quiet for a long time. Maybe the longest time in recorded history.
Then--
“Is it the wookiee’s?” Lorelai asks.
“What?” Rory says.
“The wookiee, the one-night-stand wookiee. Is it the wookiee’s?”
Gross.
“No! That was months ago. If it was the wookiee, you’d know because the little wookiee would have fattened me up by now.”
“Oh yeah,” Lorelai says. “Right. So then it’s ...”
“Logan’s,” Rory confirms, staring down at her hands. This moment feels like a dream. Or maybe a nightmare. On the dream side: the town square looks like a fairytale, even in the daylight. Exactly the kind of beautiful that her mom and Luke have earned. On the nightmare side: this is happening. This is really happening to her. To her . If anyone in the world was supposed to have known better, it was Rory Gilmore. Her whole life was designed around knowing better.
Not designed well enough.
“Have you told him?” says Lorelai.
“No.”
“Are you going to?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, Rory—”
Rory pictures Logan’s face--which is weird, because of course she can’t tell him in person. She can’t just jet off to London to ruin his life with a five minute visit, tea and scones and truth bombs. It would be over the phone. She would have to endure the awful pause after the words were out.
He doesn’t need to know. What’s the point in knowing if you don’t even want the kid, if you can’t be there for them? It will only make him feel guilty when he doesn’t need to. Rory thinks of the way that guilt still shows on her own father’s face. Even when Christopher is kind and chipper around her--and he pretty much always is--she can sense it in the air, how he worries that she’ll never forgive him.
And he’s right. She won’t. She should, but she won’t. Not all the way.
She doesn’t want to do that to Logan. She’s put him through enough. Stopped him from stepping up and committing to his destiny for long enough.
Rory looks at her mother, who doesn’t always know how to fix everything, but at least knows how to try for her daughter. Lorelai’s not trying now. She’s frozen.
Rory looks away.
“I’m sorry,” she says to her hands.
Lorelai snaps back to life. “Why?”
“This was the worst nightmare, wasn’t it? The scenario you and Grandma and Grandpa would have done anything to avoid. I’m not married, and I have no idea what I’m doing with my life, and I’m knocked up. I could at least be an Entertainment Tonight reporter like Katherine Heigl, make something of myself, banter with Ryan Seacrest for a living, but no—”
“Was it Entertainment Tonight or was it E News?”
“Does it matter?”
“Not the moment for Judd Apatow minutiae banter. Got it.” Lorelai knocks her shoulder encouragingly against Rory’s. “You have an idea of what you’re doing with your life. You’re writing your book.”
“But that’s not a grown-up idea. A 401K doesn’t come attached to that idea.”
“Honey, I think a 401K isn’t exactly the same pressing concern when you’re an heiress.”
“Oh yeah,” says Rory. “I always forget about the heiress thing.”
Her mom decided to forsake privilege and raise a kid in a shed, but not Rory. Rory’s an heiress.
She likes to let the money sit in the bank. Pretend it isn’t there. She wants to be on the same playing field as everyone else, to earn what she’s got instead of cheating. Grandpa sat her down more than once and explained the whole deal, introduced her to fancy men in suits and talked about assets and interest and diversifying. She doesn’t remember much of it now; she’d mostly just let Grandpa do that stuff because it made him happy, because he liked the idea of her being in charge of it all on her own.
‘Not that you’ll need it, of course,’ he’d told her one afternoon when they were out to lunch together. ‘You’re a career woman, after all.’ He’d been so tickled, so proud. ‘But it’s good to have something set aside for a rainy day, don’t you think?’
This probably counts as a rainy day.
Thank God he’s not here for this rainy day, she thinks, and then hates herself for thinking it. For getting to this place. For all of it.
“Just a little advice,” says Lorelai. “Don’t say that forgot-I’m-an-heiress thing around people unless you want to make them hate you.”
“Got it.”
Rory looks across the town square. When she was twenty-two and fresh out of college, the whole town had stood here in the rain for her, clapping and cheering. The good kind of rainy day. Everyone’s faces had been so generous with love. They’d given her that weird sash with her name on it.
She doesn’t know if she’d be worthy of the Rory sash today. She hasn’t felt worthy for a long time, but this--this is the worst it’s ever been.
Why is this happening now? She had been able to block it all out yesterday. To focus on the book and the impromptu wedding, these little happy gifts the universe kept slinging her way to distract her. But there’s something about the stale morning light that just makes it impossible to hide from the truth anymore.
“Rory, my love.”
“What?”
“Are you sixteen?”
“No.”
“Do you have seriously terrifying parents?”
“Not unless someone’s standing between said parent and tater tots.”
“Are you penniless, friendless, all alone in the freezing night?”
“No.”
“Honey, you’re going to be fine.” Lorelai presses her hand to Rory’s cheek. “And you’re a girl who had a Planned Parenthood poster on her wall for years; you should be aware that you’ve got options.”
Rory sighs. “I know.”
“Listen. You don’t have to make a decision right now. But this doesn’t change things for you unless you want it to, all right?”
“All right,” Rory says.
Lorelai smiles one of those soft, sure magic mom smiles, and Rory is dangerously tempted to believe that everything might actually be okay.
And then she realizes. “Oh, God.”
“What? Did you just remember a second hook-up with the wookiee? At least Wookiee Jr. will feel at home with Paul Anka, hirsuteness-wise—”
“I can’t believe it. I can’t believe I brought this up. It’s your wedding day.”
Lorelai waves a hand airily. “Just our fake wedding day.”
“But it’s the day when all our family and friends will be here celebrating, and the whole town has been waiting for it for years —November 5th will probably become a Stars Hollow holiday—and I want you to savor every bit of it. I don’t want you to be worrying about me the whole time.”
“Well, then I won’t.”
Rory narrows her eyes. “You’re lying.”
“I’m glad you told me, hon. I wouldn’t want you to keep this bottled up.”
“Even though I told you today?”
“Even though.”
“Promise me you’ll have fun today,” Rory orders, sticking out her pinky finger.
Lorelai stares doubtfully at said finger. “Is this a pinky promise or a pinky threat?”
“Promise!” Rory yelps.
“So, threat then,” Lorelai mutters, but she obediently links her pinky finger with Rory’s.
“And don’t tell Grandma. It will break her.”
“Are you sure? I could believe it of Grandma 1.0, but surely not the Grandma who works at a whaling museum and lives with her maid’s entire extended family. Not the Grandma who quit the DAR because, and I quote, ‘I simply couldn’t tolerate the bullshit anymore, and I told them so’?? I’m embroidering that on a throw pillow and sending it to her for Christmas, by the way.”
“I know she’s evolved,” Rory says, “but there’s no way she’s evolved this much.”
“Grandma has always loved Logan.”
“Logan’s engaged,” Rory grumbles. “I don’t think she’ll love that part.”
“Rory, there is no one who knows this better than me: engaged doesn’t always mean a sure thing. Hell, marriage doesn’t always mean a sure thing.”
“Don’t say that on your wedding day! That has to be a curse or something.”
“Nah,” Lorelai says serenely. “We’re beyond curses, Luke and me.”
Rory wonders how that would feel, being beyond curses. She’s only had that feeling a little while in her life, where everything felt golden and happy, unshakable. Then Logan proposed to her in front of an adoring crowd, so excited by his vision of their future. And Rory had loved the vision too, but not as much as she’d loved the idea of her own path. Her own adventure.
And then came Rory and Logan 2.0: The No Strings Attached Years. ( The Skanky Cheaters Years , a dark or maybe just fair voice in her head supplies.)
She used to lie awake while he drifted off, and she would wonder where they would be right now if she’d said yes. They would still be there, in bed together, but everything else would be so different. Maybe they’d still be in California, with the back yard with the avocado tree. Maybe California Rory would have flourished, with all that structure in her life and all those could-be-futures snuffed out.
When the possibilities are limitless, there’s so much more to fail at. She wishes someone would have told her that back then.
And yet she doesn’t, she can’t regret it. Wouldn’t it have been worse, to marry Logan and always wonder if he’d kept her from her full potential? She couldn’t have done that to him. Even now, after everything that’s happened in this past year, she doesn’t want to resent him.
Still, she hasn’t been able to eat guacamole since 2007 without a momentary bittersweet what if? pang. How sad is that? Guacamole! Is nothing sacred?
“And now,” says Lorelai, murdering the awkward silence with cheer, as is her wont, “it’s time for you and Lane and Sookie and April to dress up in hideous ensembles in order to make my shining beauty even more resplendent.”
Rory tries to match the cheer. “The dresses aren’t hideous.”
“They are compared to what I’m wearing, baby.”
“Fair enough.” They stand up, stretching out sore limbs, then link arms and start ambling down the street. Even though it’s morning now, the town still seems asleep, perfectly empty and still, like an enchantment’s been cast and there’s no one else awake in the world.
It reminds her of that night, this stepping-into-a-fairytale feeling. Robert and Colin and Finn circling around; Logan as the grand finale, holding out that ridiculous hat, all Mad Hatter meets Prince Charming. For just a second she’d thought that this was it , just maybe, maybe--
If only he hadn’t come. If only he’d just let it go, just accepted that it could never work out and it wasn’t his problem to make Rory feel better. Whatever stupid mistake they’d kept making for the past few years, well, it wasn’t worth a grand goodbye. If only he’d just settled for that, pulled a high school Jess or an all-the-time Christopher and done the easy thing and bailed. Doesn’t he know that that’s what guys are supposed to do? It’s kind of the classic guy move.
Somehow, Rory is always the bailer when it comes to Logan. Thanks for the proposal; bye. Thanks for the key to the beach house and maybe your heart; bye. It makes no sense. It’s so not her. Dean left her. Jess left her. Even Paul finally left her via the fine art of text message. Why is it that Logan’s always so ready to stay?
She knows it was the right call, breaking up for good. She can’t be a married guy’s mistress, and that’s all he - Logan Huntzberger, Grand Heir To The Huntzberger Publishing Empire - could offer her. She’d be nothing more than a backup option for when he got bored sleeping with his hot French wife, if that’s even possible. Rory has done enough obsessive, self-loathing googling of Odette Moreau to know that it shouldn’t be possible. Odette Moreau is perfect. It’s a wonder Logan even kept in touch with Rory after their first date.
(He’d called her the next day; they were still in that chatting-all-the-time phase in the months after Hamburg, acting long distance coupley even after they’d agreed that keeping things casual was the way to go this time around.
‘Good date?’ she’d asked.
‘Weird date.’
‘Come on. She’s gorgeous. How weird could it possibly be?’
‘Stilted conversation. She kept pulling out her phone. She said it was because she was expecting a call she couldn’t miss, but I could’ve sworn I saw a Buzzfeed quiz on that screen.’
‘Damn millennials and their phones.’
‘Yeah, well, I think she was about as psyched about the whole family matchmaking situation as I was.’
‘So no second date?’
‘Au contraire. We’re going to a gallery opening on Friday.’
‘Ooh, a gallery opening! So fancy.’
‘The artist’s a friend of her family; the event’s going to be crawling with Moreaus. I think she just wants to show her parents she’s following the rules. Apparently the last guy she dated was a waiter slash aspiring musician. Her folks weren’t too into that.’
‘Yikes,’ she’d said, and bit back, Almost as bad as a bastard daughter slash aspiring journalist. She was thinking like that in those days, trying to remind herself of reasons why it wouldn’t work to really do this, no matter how appealing it felt. ‘You have fun with that.’
‘You know how I love to appease disapproving parents.’
‘It’s what you’re known for.’
‘Hey.’
‘What?’
‘You think she’s gorgeous, huh? How do you know?’
‘I may have looked her up.’
‘You jealous, Ace?’
‘Please. You’re not my boyfriend. And as my friend with benefits on British soil, you’re free to date all the French hotties you want.’
‘Lucky me.’
‘Lucky you.’
The post-date recaps had gone on for awhile--and then gotten less detailed, and then stopped. Sometimes pictures of Logan and Odette looking beautiful and important at swanky events would pop up on Facebook, and Rory would like them to show that she wasn’t a threat or heartbroken. Meanwhile, she’d let Paris sign her up for a dating app as a social experiment, and that’s how she’d found Paul. Paris had hated Paul from the get-go. Rory had just appreciated having someone to tag in Facebook pictures too.)
The point is that here, now, she has to be better than a mistress.
She has to learn how to be single for once, instead of falling back into old patterns just because everything about Logan Huntzberger still makes her heart skip like she’s twenty and perpetually giddy.
It’s probably the feeling you’re supposed to have about the father of your baby.
If this were happening to Avocado Tree Rory, she lets herself think for the first time, it would be happy instead of apocalyptic. She would break the news to him out in their backyard in the sunshine; he’d pick her up and twirl her around, laughing and crying and perfect.
“Rory?” Lorelai asks.
Damn it. This is so not the time to be thinking like this!
Rory waves a stern finger at her mother. “No worrying about me. Remember the pinky promise.”
“I will,” Lorelai says, taken aback.
“You promise?”
“Do I promise about a pinky promise?”
“Humor me.”
“I promise.” Lorelai kisses her daughter’s temple with that easy overflow of love that every child deserves. “Just for you, kid.”
+
Once they’re home and settled into the wedding buzz spirit, it gets a little easier to feel a little less doomed. The sense of overwhelming terror is replaced by a nice exhausted numbness. Rory curls her hair, staring at herself blankly in her bedroom mirror. (April already claimed the bathroom as her getting-ready space. Luke had begged her to lose the nose ring for the day. Rory's not sure what his chances of success are there.)
She’s wearing her bridesmaid dress, which is navy blue with the kind of swishy skirt that makes you want to twirl in circles no matter how old you are. It looks a little like the dress Rory wore to her first dance.
Aw , she would usually think at a time like this, Dean .
Now, she remembers running across wintery Stars Hollow in nylons, her feet aching from the cold. Mom and Grandma in the kitchen shouting at each other. Her lovely, fun, warm mother replaced by this hard stranger, yelling about birth control and mistakes and Rory being so stupid .
Rory finishes her hair. She presses the off button on the curling iron, so hard it hurts a little, and unplugs it too. Her mom always forgets to unplug the curling iron. Rory had gotten in the habit of doing it for her by the time she was five.
Maybe this, this whole life-of-failure thing was inevitable. Maybe there was nowhere for her to go but down after being the world’s most perfect kid.
When she comes out of her room, it’s to find Sookie coming in the front door. She’s dressed in navy blue too, her hair curled and gleaming.
“Hey, fellow bridesmaid!” Sookie says, rushing forward to pull Rory into a hug. When she pulls back, she’s got a discouraging hint of concern in her eyes. “You okay, sweetie?”
“Up all night,” Rory explains. She forces a smile.
Sookie’s expression darkens dangerously. “I heard.”
Uh oh.
But before the wrath of Sookie can get too out of control, Luke comes in. He’s all tuxed up and looking mighty energetic for someone who usually goes to bed at 9 PM.
“Hey, BFOTB!” Luke greets Sookie jovially.
“Luke!” Sookie, momentarily pacified, puts her hands to her heart. “You remembered!”
“I didn’t have much of a choice. You talked about it a lot.”
“Ten years ago!”
“A lot a lot. I’m just grateful you don’t still have the little cake topper guy who has--”
“Your butt?? Oh, don’t I, Luke?” Sookie pulls that very cake topper out of her purse with flourish and waves it in his face. Despite the fact that Rory is currently drowning in a sea of existential dread, it’s impossible not to laugh at that one.
“I shouldn’t have said anything,” Luke says dully, staring at his tiny cake topper doppelganger. “I was tempting fate.”
His misery is interrupted by Lorelai, who chooses that moment to descend the stairs. She’s magnificent in her homemade dress, glowing in cream-colored tulle with her hair in loose curls beneath Emily’s tiara, and Rory feels a surge of pride and love. At least something today is perfect.
“Ack!” says Luke, covering his eyes.
“Uh, hon?” Lorelai says. “Married already. Maybe cool it on the superstition.”
“Oh,” says Luke, uncovering his eyes. “Right.” Once he’s let himself look at Lorelai, his expression goes all googly-eyed with awe. Lorelai starts to grin back.
And that is the exact amount of interaction they’re allowed before Sookie attacks.
“I can’t believe it!” she cries, pushing Luke aside and rushing up to Lorelai. “I can’t believe you eloped without me . Do you know what it was like to wake up to that text message??”
“Sookie,” Lorelai says, grabbing her best friend’s shoulders, “for the millionth time today, I’m sorry, but I told you! I called and Jackson said you were asleep!”
“ So ?”
“So, you were exhausted! You lived in the woods for two years and baked a hundred wedding cakes! I couldn’t just wake you up!”
“Oh, but ya could’ve. And you should’ve!”
“In fact, Jackson tried to wake you up, and he couldn’t. He did everything short of dumping a glass of water over your head! Waking you, it couldn’t be done!”
“Well then, he should have tried harder! Bring on the glass of water! No, better--I’m talking megaphone to the ear. I’m talking fire a cannonball right next to the bed!”
“It was the middle of the night. Where was he supposed to get a canon?”
“In a town full of Revolutionary War reenactors? Gee, I don’t know, that’s a real stumper!”
“Sookie--”
“And now I’ll have to live for the rest of my life with the knowledge that Michel was there and I wasn’t. I’m never forgiving you for this! But also, you look so beautiful and I love you forever! Wow, this is a lot of conflicting emotions. Did you see I found the cake topper?”
“It really is the spitting image of his butt,” Lorelai says, shaking her head in admiration.
“ Right ?” says Sookie. Then she bursts into tears.
While Lorelai and Sookie hug it out in a storm of laughing and crying, Luke gives Rory a ‘Guess we’re the sane ones today’ look of solidarity.
Rory tries to return it, thinking, Don’t count on that, buddy.
+
Emily shows up at the house an hour later. Rory and Lorelai are going over last minute reception plans on the sofa, while Luke throws a light pre-ceremony lunch together in the kitchen with Sookie and April. From what Rory’s overheard, it sounds like it involves a lot of cucumbers. Weirdly, Rory hasn’t been hungry all day. Then again, she usually isn’t for cucumbers.
“Lorelai, I’m so sorry I couldn’t make it sooner,” Emily says as she breezes in, garment bag on hanger in hand. “But I had a shift at the museum, and I didn’t want to leave them hanging--” She falls silent at the sight of her daughter.
“Hi Mom,” Lorelai says, smiling as she stands from the sofa. Rory can tell she’s a little nervous. “What do you think?” She turns in a slow circle, showing off her general bridal splendor.
Emily blinks rapidly for a few seconds before getting ahold of herself. “The tiara looks lovely. Just like I thought it would.”
“Thank you for loaning it.”
“Thank you for wearing it.”
For a moment they just look at each other, seeming disoriented by the pure affection in the moment. Emily presses a hand to her mouth, and can’t quite disguise it as anything besides maternal feeling. Lorelai’s eyes are gleaming. Even Rory’s starting to feel a little verklempt, and that’s with the weight of the most inconvenient news ever wearing on her psyche.
“You’re really going with that necklace?” Emily asks abruptly, breaking the spell.
“Luke gave me this necklace,” Lorelai says, seeming glad for the bickering opportunity. “It was the necklace that marked our great romantic reconciliation of 2007. I’m absolutely wearing the necklace.”
“Well, fine,” says Emily. “It’s your wedding.”
“And yet that sounded so much like ‘It’s your funeral.’”
“As I was saying before,” Emily presses on, “I do apologize for not being here earlier to influence your jewelry decisions while there was still time, but one always needs to make a good impression on their employer in the early days. God knows most of my maids could have used that lesson.” She notices Lorelai’s expression. “What are you smiling at?”
“Nothing,” Lorelai says. “It’s just funny to hear you talking about work. That’s all.”
“I’m glad my life choices are so hilarious to you,” Emily deadpans. She turns to her granddaughter. “Hello Rory. You look wonderful.”
“Thanks Grandma.” Rory gets up to kiss Emily’s cheek. “You too.”
“Oh, don’t be silly. I haven’t even changed yet.”
“No, Mom, you do,” Lorelai says. “So wonderful that I’m just gonna have to show you off.”
“Dare I ask what you mean by that?” says Emily.
“I need someone to walk me down the aisle,” Lorelai announces grandly. “And Emily Gilmore, you’re the lucky winner.”
“Nonsense. Have Rory walk you.”
“Rory didn’t participate in making me. Besides, she’s a bridesmaid. She’s got to be up front with Sookie and Lane and April.”
“Well,” Emily says after a moment’s thought, “all right.”
“Yeah?” Lorelai beams.
“Why not? I expect your father would have gotten a good laugh out of it.”
“That’s the spirit. Hey. You know what Dad would have found extra hilarious?”
“What?” Emily asks warily.
“If we danced our way down the aisle. Nothing fancy, just a little dabbing. It’ll become a YouTube sensation. Especially now that Kirk finally figured out how to upload things on YouTube.”
“Don’t push your luck, Lorelai,” Emily says airily. “Rory, please save me from your mother’s insanity. How’s the book going so far? What else is new?”
Rory feels a stab of panic.
Emily Gilmore knows things. She deduces things, like the Sherlock Holmes of illicit family drama. Not to mention that she’s definitely going to recognize all the signs of an unplanned disaster pregnancy. She’s only spent the last thirty-two years angsting about it.
“Oh no you don’t,” says Lorelai, jumping in front of Rory in a whoosh of fancy fabric. “This is my day, and that means you have to pay attention to my insanity. Rory will still be around tomorrow. Mom, pay very close attention: this is how you dab.” Lorelai goes for it. Steve and Kwan really taught her well the last time she babysat.
“You are without a doubt the most demented bride I’ve ever seen,” Emily pronounces after a moment of appraisal.
‘Thank you,’ Rory mouths to her mother meanwhile.
Lorelai stealthily blows her a kiss, then carries on doing what she does best: driving Emily Gilmore nuts. “And of course, you can never go wrong with a classic hustle--”
