Chapter Text
I can’t lie and tell you I don’t wish you had told me, but Rory, to think that I would ever be mad at you for making the decision that was best for you? All I wanted was for you to be happy and to live whatever life it was you wanted to live. We both spent a lot of time back then managing the expectations that other people had for us. I was trying to live up to the person my dad wanted me to be, and you were trying to prove that you could recreate the life your mom didn’t have because of her pregnancy. You and I both deserved to live our own lives, and terminating the pregnancy was the only way either us would have that. I wish we had more time. I wish we had gone through it together and who knows what would have happened. Maybe we would’ve had a summer, or maybe a few years, or maybe we would’ve had a lifetime. But Ace, you taught me about myself, about being true to myself. Those years of your friendship helped me become who I am today.
If I didn’t work up the nerve to ask you to dinner, this is me asking. I’d like to take you to dinner. I’d like to catch up without the grief and the guilt, just as two people who used to know each other and used to bring out the best in each other.
All my love,
Logan
“The best in each other, really?” Rory rolled her eyes as she looked across the table.
Logan laughed and rolled his eyes, he couldn’t quite believe he had laid it on so thick, but it had worked, so he hadn’t embarrassed himself for nothing. “How many years are you going to make me read you that damned letter, Ace? It has been 10 years.”
“Oh I think we’ll continue with this,” Rory popped a piece of watermelon in her mouth before she scanned the kitchen and her eyes settled on her two blonde haired boys sitting at the island.
Logan leaned forward and pressed his lips against hers. He hadn’t shaved and his stubble was darker than it used to be, hell, his hair was darker, but he would take that over greying. They were spending the summer at their house in Hyannis Port. The one they had bought almost a year into their relationship. Before they were even engaged, before Sebastian and Oliver were even a thought - this house was their dream. They had bought the land and developed it with a desire to come back to the place that they had fallen in love as often as they could. “I love you,” he told her with a smile before grabbing the cup of coffee she had been taunting him with in order to force out the annual reading of the letter he knew by heart, the letter he liked to think helped win her back.
“I love you too,” Rory grabbed her own drink and took a sip. “Ollie did you have enough to eat honey?” She asked before she went to sit down beside them. Logan was taking his seat next to Seb and she would sit next to their youngest. Being a mother had not come easy to her. She couldn’t help but think how relieved she was that she hadn’t done it when she was still a child herself. She struggled with her career and her boys, she had been shocked when Logan had suggested that he take a paternity leave, allowing her to go back to work earlier than she had planned, allowing her to feel like herself without being eaten by guilt that strangers were caring for her infants. Sebastian was 6 and Oliver was almost 4. They were the spitting image of their father with one exception - the blue eyes that she had given them. Sebastian Finn was a firecracker. He found mischief wherever he went but he had a way of getting himself out of trouble with his blue eyes and little smile and the promise that he didn’t mean to cause any harm. Oliver, Oliver Richard, Ollie, he was a charmer like his father, but he was much calmer than his brother and Rory would be a liar if she didn’t say there was some relief over the fact that she wasn’t dealing with two carbon copies of her husband. She stayed home with both boys for 6 months. A luxury that so many didn’t have, but she was able to take the unpaid leave once the 18 weeks she got at The Times was up. Logan took another 6 months of ‘leave’, but he was essentially working modified duties from home. No travel, no late night calls, he was called when he was needed but the bulk of the decision making was left to his executives while he was a father.
Rory watched as the kids ate and Logan scanned his newspaper, scrolling e-mails and drinking his coffee as he went. He promised the boys he would take them sailing later in the day and Rory knew that he would keep his promise because above anything else, he was the best father she could have dreamed of for their children. After Sebastian was born, when he was a few months old and Paris had come over to visit, the two women had watched as Logan multi-tasked at his laptop, a newborn on his shoulder napping and a review of quarterly reports running through his brain. She had looked at Rory and quietly asked if Rory had any regrets. For a minute, Rory had considered it - was there a world in which they could’ve had this, only earlier? She had told Paris the truth. The truth was that she had no regrets about the decision she made, maybe she had regrets about how she had gone about it, but she had to believe that right there, in that moment… that was where they were supposed to be. Rory thought about that question from time to time. When she saw families with a child with a larger age gap, when she saw Logan with the boys sailing or at the park, when they went skiing in the winter. But she knew deep down that this life…the one with her husband and their boys and the summers in Hyannis Port, this was the life they were meant to have.
“Mom?” Oliver interrupted her thoughts.
He was 4 and given that he was her second (and last child), she was all to aware of the fact that his little baby voice would soon be gone and she tried to soak up every last moment of those lingering days of toddlerhood that she could. “Hmm?” She smiled at him.
“C’we go swimmin’ today?”
Rory nodded, “the beach or the pool?”
“Pool?”
“I wanna go to the beach,” Sebastian chimed in. At 6 he was always ready to pick the opposite of what his brother wanted.
“You know what,” Logan interrupted, captivating both Oliver and Sebastian’s attention immediately, “why don’t you two convince Mommy that she should come sailing, and we can jump off the boat and swim, hmm?” He could anchor in a quiet inlet and the boys would have a blast.
“Mommy doesn’t like jumping off boats,” Sebastian countered, it was almost as if he was daring his mother, trying to force her to admit that before she became a boring mom, she might’ve been ‘cool’ in another lifetime.
Logan laughed as he stood up, he heard Rory groaning, telling him not to do what they both knew he was about to do. He ignored her, walking into the great room, crouching down and opening the doors to the built in cabinets before he pulled out a photo album that they had purposely stored here, the photo album of all the memories they had managed to gather from those years. Some pictures had come from her grandparents, others from their friends, some had been tucked away on memory cards and rolls of film they had forgotten years earlier. But they had pieced it all together to build a book of those early years. He flipped it open and found the photo he was looking for. A sunny morning that first year he had met Rory, “Mommy loves sailing,” he exclaimed as he plopped the album down in front of his two boys who were clearly in awe of the image of their mother from a lifetime before. “Uncle Finn took this when we were kids.”