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“Tell me again. Why are you flying to London?” Lorelai asked, her eyes steady on the road. They were over halfway to the Hartford airport.
Rory stared out the passenger side window. Rain was coming down but not so hard that her mom couldn’t ask a question that Rory didn’t know how to answer. There were so many factors in choosing London. The windshield wipers steadily thumped to the beat of her heart.
Rory chose the easiest answer. “Logan lives there now.”
Lorelai sighed. “I know that. But why are you going to him? He could just as easily meet you here. You’re pregnant.”
“It’s okay to fly while pregnant. I looked up the stats.” She was already Googling way too many things about pregnancy and babies. She may or may not have filled about ten notebooks full of notes.
“Still.” Lorelai sighed. “Don’t tell me the stats. It’ll just make me more worried about you being in the air.”
Rory huffed. “I’m pregnant. Not frail or incapable.”
“I know that. It’s a mother’s prerogative to worry. We were born to worry. As soon as we have offspring, the worries begin. At first, it’s just whether you’ll get enough to eat and gain enough weight. Whether you’ll poop and pee enough. What color the poop is becomes very important.”
“Gross.”
Lorelai was on a roll now. “Well, get ready. You’ll be experiencing it before you know it. And then, as baby gets older, worries change. They grow. You worry about who they’re becoming friends with or what they’ll see on the internet or when they’ll get their heart broken. And you know that saying about how your heart is walking around outside of your chest when you have a kid?”
Rory pretended not to know to go along with it. “Never heard of it.”
“Huh. Well, it’s true. All true.”
“For parents like you.” Rory didn’t think her dad felt that way. Did he? If he did, he would have been around more.
“Don’t worry. You’ll be like that, too. You’re too tenderhearted and caring to disappear on your kid.”
But Rory had disappeared. She’d lost herself, lost her way. She bookmarked this in her mind for later. She steered the conversation away from baby things and hearts beating outside chests. “He came to me last time. It’s my turn.”
“You take turns?” Lorelai’s tone was carefully neutral. Rory knew her mom was trying not to judge.
“Sort of. W-we have rules.” Rules Rory had carefully laid out for Logan in Las Vegas. There would be no strings attached when they reconnected. She couldn’t let herself get close because it was too painful, and she couldn’t hurt him. Not again. It was easier that way. At least, that’s how she justified it to herself.
“Ah, good for you. Setting those boundaries.”
“It was a way to protect us both.” She studied her hands in her lap, playing with the sleeves of her blouse.
“From what?” Lorelai’s question was gentle.
“Heartbreak.” Rory hadn’t let herself cry since she was sitting in Luke’s diner and confessing that she was pregnant. Now, hot tears fell again, and she wiped them away before they could soak her shirt as if she had been standing in the rain and not riding in a covered vehicle.
“Oh, kiddo.” Lorelai took Rory’s hand in hers and squeezed. “You deserve better than that.”
“Do I?” Rory’s anger with herself roared to the surface. “Logan has a fiancé. I cheated. We cheated.” She paused and repeated more slowly, “I-I cheated. Again.”
Lorelai slowed and turned the blinker on. “Yes, you both cheated. And yes, you deserve better than whatever situation you agreed on. The two are not mutually exclusive.”
“So, I have to see him when I tell him that I’m turning his world upside down again. I can’t do it over the phone. Or by text. Or by carrier pigeon.” She laughed a little at that.
As she turned the corner, her mom didn’t poke at the laugh or the change in direction. “Did you learn nothing in writing that book of yours?”
Rory was startled. “Yes, no. . . .” She frowned. “Maybe?” She was curious what her mom had gleaned.
“People mess up. We’ve all messed up. Made mistakes. Forgotten a period and maybe some commas. You can’t beat yourself up for the past, but you can own it, and you can do something different.” Lorelai was silent for a bit. “And as much as you need to communicate with Logan, I need to communicate better with Luke.” She looked over and gave Rory a rueful smile. “I wasn’t exactly a good role model for that.”
“You communicated with me,” Rory insisted.
Her mom patted her leg. “Mostly. But we didn’t always do so great around some of the big stuff. The personal stuff between you and me.”
Rory was determined to not let her mom beat herself up. “Yes, but sometimes we both needed time. Like, I never ever thought that the times we were upset meant that we would never speak again. And you can’t blame it all on yourself.”
“So, see? Neither can you.”
“But I can own my screw ups.” She tried.
“Right.”
Rory slumped back – as much as one can slump back in the passenger seat. She wrapped her arms around her ribcage. “I messed up with the rules. The rules were stupid.”
“And he went along with them. Don’t forget.”
“I didn’t forget.”
Lorelai passed a car that was going slow, gliding the Jeep around the other vehicle. Once done, she asked, “Why do you think he did? I mean you’re assuming the heartbreak avoidance thing, or maybe that’s just me, but maybe it was something else?”
Rory stared at the glovebox. “I hurt him. He proposed, and I-I turned him down.”
Lorelai continued with compassion. “A lot of time has passed since then. You were both so young. You needed to find your footing out there in the world.”
“Some footing.”
“Just because you’ve been through it lately doesn’t negate what you accomplished before.”
Rory was starting to believe that. “But the rejected proposal was a big thing. You know it was.” Rory knew her mom knew; there were so many almost-married moments and so much confusion around commitment in her mom’s life. “Even if it made sense at the time.”
“Yes. It was.”
“I don’t know how much of the rule insistence is related to his family. They never liked me. And there’s only so much he can do about that.”
Lorelai shrugged. “Trix wasn’t thrilled about Emily. Your grandpa didn’t let that stop him.”
“True. And thank goodness he didn’t.” If he had, Rory and her mom wouldn’t be having this conversation today.
Lorelai’s silence probably meant she agreed. “I have a question.”
One of Rory’s arms came loose from the hold on her ribs, and she punctuated the air with her finger. “Shoot.”
“Do you still love Logan?” It wasn’t a did-you-ever-love-Logan question; her mom knew they’d been in love.
Rory’s eyes filled with tears as soon as her mom asked the question.
Lorelai rubbed her leg. “Oh, hun. You do.”
The lump in her throat was huge – a boulder, but she still managed, “I do. I-I don’t think I ever stopped.”
“You need to tell him that.”
“But what if he tells me to go to hell? Or gets up and walks off? Or goes cliff diving or something equally stupid again? He does impulsive stuff when he’s upset.” Rory swallowed. “What if he still gets married to Odette?” She wanted to hide in a hole thinking that.
“Well, those would all be his choice. Just the same as following the Vegas rules.”
“My stupid rules.” Rory was back to hugging herself again. “I’m scared.”
“All of it is scary,” Lorelai acknowledged. “But you can do this. I believe in you. You’re a Gilmore after all. Speaking of Gilmores, when do you want to tell your grandmother about the baby?”
The shift in direction helped Rory feel less like she was going to fall apart. “Oh, god. Um, can we do that when I come back from London?”
“Together?”
“Together please.”
“She’ll probably be happy. A little Huntzberger.”
Rory rolled her eyes. “Half Gilmore.”
“Be prepared for her to try to marry you off. And plan the baby’s whole future down to the coming out party.” Then, sadness filled Lorelai’s voice. “I wish your grandpa could have been here to know you were having a baby. He’d be so thrilled.”
“In a good way or a bad way?”
“Definitely good.”
Rory pushed up a little. “I could use one of his hugs about now.”
“Me, too.”
They passed an airport sign. They were getting close.
Lorelai shoved her right hand awkwardly into her jeans pocket and pulled out a wrinkled wad of twenty-dollar bills, which she passed to Rory. “Here.”
“What’s this?”
“Buy yourself something fun in the airport.”
“Or maybe in London. I may need it for London,” Rory said, accepting the gift.
“Get yourself a nice souvenir. Or buy something British for the baby?”
Rory laughed. “Okay.”
“I just have one more question.”
“What?”
“Help me understand the carrier pigeon thing? ‘Cause you lost me there.”
“Now that is a funny story. . .”
“Oh?”
“Remember the first time Grandma and Grandpa invited Logan over for dinner?”
“Who could forget?”
The end.
12-16-24
12:30 AM