Chapter Text
"She's never really had to look after herself before. Sure, she worked in high school and in college and she paid her own bills and saved her money and rented an apartment in Brooklyn for a decade and the world thinks she's an adult now. She bought her own health insurance and car insurance and learned to take her mother's Jeep for its six month service back when she was fourteen because Lorelai would never remember herself.
But she's never made the choice between 'mine' and 'ours'. She's never been there when her daughter's burning up with a fever and her sons screaming bloody murder and Doyle's in California yet again and the Nanny's useless...
I'm just... I'm a little worried that she's not up to the job."
Jess tapped a finger against his ceramic mug and gave Paris another exasperated, blank look. "Paris. Why the hell are you telling me this?"
"Because it was supposed to be you!" Paris slammed her hands on the table so hard the formica shook and the little styrofoam cup in front of her jumped and flipped over. "Don't you get it? You were ALWAYS supposed to be in this with her! I can't believe you're shirking your responsibilities like this!"
"What the fuck?!?" Jess jumped up before her coffee could hit him and started pulling the bottom off a napkin dispenser.
"In case you missed the memo," Jess said with fake sarcasm Paris recognized from her own days as an abandoned child, "I did not get Rory pregnant. That baby inside her -" Jess points a finger out the window - "belongs to your precious Huntzberger. The Yale graduate with the newspaper empire who's richer than God. So go give him this speech and leave me the hell alone."
"I know it's Huntzberger's baby," Paris huffs. "I'm not a moron. She's had the hots for him since W.'s first term."
"So why the hell are you talking to me?" Jess spits through clenched teeth as the coffee soaks another wad of napkins.
"Because you're hers! And she's yours! God, are you blind and deaf on top of being uncoordinated?"
"She is not mine. She has never been mine."
"Oh really? And who's been feeding her pickle addiction?"
Jess kept his attention on the now beige-tinted formica. "She's family."
"And you're such a big family man now, Kerouac?" Paris snips. "Try it on someone who didn't loose high school valedictorian because they spent senior year distracted by your constant eye fucking. The poor-little-emo-me attitude stopped being cute after your facial hair grew in."
"Damn it, Paris, what do you want from me?" Jess stood up and pulled his coat off the chair. "She's not my girlfriend or my baby mama or my lover or any other mine that you've dreamed up in your Xanax-fueled fantasy. She's my ex-girlfriend, and my cousin by marriage, and that is the extent of our relationship. Nothing else."
"She's family," Paris pointed out. "You just said that."
"And she's extended family," Jess admitted. "The kind of family you see once a year for Thanksgiving or Christmas, and then you're done. They're out of your life. And then she goes back to fucking Huntzberger and eating pickles and raising little Lorelai the Third or whatever and I go back to Philly. The end."
"She needs you," Paris said calmly. "You're her Luke."
Jess froze for a second and then went back to buttoning his coat.
"You know you are, Jess," Paris went on. "It was always supposed to be you."
Jess didn't look back as the door slammed behind him. Paris picked up her phone and went through her tasklist.
Fire Claire
Prenup - Doyle
Fix Rory:
1. Jess
2. Trustfund Baby
3. Adolf and Eva Huntzberger