- -
She thought of how he would react when she brought his world crashing
down on him, as hers had done on herself. All because the stick turned
blue.
Blue as the Connecticut summer sky, painted with white puffs of
clouds like shredded cotton balls, on the day when Rory finally awoke
with a headache not so severe. Dean had taken to sleeping in her desk
chair, set to face her at the end of her bed. His limbs rigid, body
without the comfort of blanket or pillow, he slept now, as he'd slept
for a week. As if he was keeping an eye on her, even with those riveting
eyes closed.
After examining the dark circles rimming her haunted eyes in the
vanity mirror, Rory glided over to the chair at the end of her bed and
looked down on Dean with a sigh. Of all the comforts absent from her
nightmares, he was the one she missed the most.
She grieved for the state of his joints, with the position he'd been
sleeping in for so many nights now. The chair was not nearly comfortable
enough to serve as a bed. He might as well be sleeping on a prison cot.
Her heart broke wide open as he furrowed his brow in sleep, just
slightly, and even as she waited, the frown didn't relax. Morbidly, she
let herself wonder what it was that he was seeing in dreams; morbidly,
she worried that what he saw rivaled her own tormented visions.
"No..." he grunted vaguely in his sleep, his voice so slight, as if
he were out of breath. His head, positioned haphazardly on his left
shoulder, slumped down a micro-inch further toward his chest. His
beautiful bronze chest that called to Rory's fingers, sending the pads
of them to tingling, calling her skin to touch his. She so hesitated to
wake him up, knowing that he should get rest while he could, for
whatever she was going through, it seemed he was continually plunging
right down with her. Following her into the hell that was building with
every fresh closure of the eyes.
She couldn't resist it, and she did touch him, with just her humming
finger pads. She pressed them gently to his collarbone, and dragged them
lightly over the span of his pecs, down his chest that rose and fell in
soft unconscious breaths. Her eyes inhaled his beauty while she soaked
up his body's warmth. His spider eyelashes rested peacefully on his
chiseled cheeks; the lashes trembled as Rory's own breath crept too
close. She couldn't help it; suddenly she was magnetized by him, the
idea of looking at him when he wasn't seeing her; when he couldn't look
into her eyes and know how vulnerable she was to his face, his chest --
the downy treasure trail, the cheeks with hints of dried tear streaks,
and those long lashes below the smooth eyebrows.
He radiated sex, even in slumber; he radiated love, without having to
speak its name. He was her beautiful broken boyfriend, and she had
exhausted him with her drama that was dragging them both through the
mud.
She traced the sexy grooves in his abdomen, her tongue sneaking out
to wet her lips gone dry. Her throat felt as though it had been clawed
as she swallowed the saliva growing in her mouth, and she moaned
slightly from the pain.
And then his lashes fluttered of their own volition. "Rory?" he
asked, somewhere between reality and dreams. "Are you there?"
"Shh," she silenced him, immediately regretting the bother she'd now
brought to him. She should know when to stay away. "I'm sorry," she
whispered, "please go back to sleep?"
"Baby...?"
Her heart stopped at that epithet, loving it instantly, knowing that
she would hate to hear it from anyone else. She wasn't one for pet
names, and in wakefulness, neither was he. Some part of her loved being
called what they had created together. She wanted him to say it in lieu
of her name, again and then once more.
A sleepy sigh escaped his lips, and he changed positions slightly,
letting his head roll to his other shoulder. Slumping back into slumber,
his lips formed a slight pout that begged to be kissed. But she was
intent, now, of leaving him be.
She really was.
So it was much to her consternation that five minutes later her
bottom was placed gently in the space of the chair between his spread
legs. She could find no other place in the bedroom where she could be
near enough to him to concentrate on anything but him. Anything
that was happening to them both. She needed to feel the skin of his
inner thighs touching her outer thighs just slightly, giving her
goosebumps in the way their skin only ghosted together in her need to
not disturb his slumber.
Finally, having his body so near, she could concentrate on the laptop
she had set on the mattress before her. She was investigating Google and
its knowledge of any sort of correspondence classes offered at Yale.
Life was doing its best to drag her backwards, making it as difficult as
possible for her to stay in one place, let alone move forward. This
Google search was her effort today. Her "maternity leave" from the
school grounds didn't have to mean she left the school entirely... this
she hoped.
"Come on..." she mouthed at the computer screen, willing this to be
possible. Come on...
Dean's breath exhaled deeply, and suddenly arms slid around Rory's
waist from behind. She exhaled herself, closing her eyes in
gratification she could not deny. "Baby?" she whispered, liking the
sound come from her lips just the same.
"Mm." His lips pressed against the side of her neck in a sensual kiss
that revealed the gentleness in him that was always displayed for her --
from his lips, from his hands, from his eyes that looked on with those
fluttering eyelashes.
"I'm sorry I woke you up." Her voice was nothing more than a breathy
whisper, louder tones held captive by the strong arms encircling her,
body and soul. Despite her heart's throbbing protests, she began to rise
from the seat they shared. "I'll let you get back to..."
"Don't you dare," was his whisper to match hers, and without letting
go, he pulled her in to his body more snugly. He settled his face on the
back of her neck, kissing the bone that marked the top of her spine. He
then rested his face on that very spot, eyes closed, slipping back into
dreams.
She loved it, being held onto this way. She loved it.
--
"Hi, Mom," Rory said monotonously as she emerged from her bedroom,
decked out in rubber-ducky-spotted PJs and Stewie Griffin slippers.
"Nice shoe accessories," Lorelai noted from the breakfast table where
she held a full pot of coffee hostage. "Hoping they'll aid you in
birthing the baby from hell?"
"You got a problem with Stewie?"
"He's... a mean baby. And downright rude."
"Could've been Cartman slippers."
"Cartman is my hero."
Rory nodded, knowing these things, or at the very least, knowing to
expect them. "You only like Cartman because you didn't have to raise him
yourself."
"S'what I say to people about you."
"Mmm." Rory nodded in the affirmative, comprehending little other
than the way her skin was still tingling from the touch of his.
Though she did notice the self-indulgent way her mother was coveting the
entire stash of rich brown liquid. "Gimme some coffee."
"But it's mine..."
"Gimme it."
"People would be saddened to see our intellect in the waking hours."
"I am devoid of coffee. They would understand my side. And on your
side, there'd be... Cartman."
"And Luke."
"If you say so." Rory grabbed herself a large mug of garish
decoration and dared to touch the coffee pot. When Lorelai allowed this
action without a fight, Rory smiled smugly and drenched the inside of
the mug, to the top until almost overflowing. "I have a theory."
"Only one? Me thinks the fetus inside of you is slowly draining your
brain matter and making it its own."
"Kind of like I did to you?"
Lorelai chewed on this thought for a moment, along with her
cream-cheesed bagel. She thought it best to back down and remain
buddy-buddy. "Let's hear this theory. Dazzle me, and snuff out 'The Big
Bang'."
Rory sat beside her mother at the table, loving up the mug of coffee
with every single finger wrapped around it. Long sips, and then, "These
headaches I'm having? I think part of their cause is coffee withdrawal."
"Well, I'm no doctor. But I'd have to say you're completely right."
"So, what are we going to do about that? Whenever either of the boys
are around, I'm denied this liquid that overpowers the number of blood
cells in my body."
Lorelai nodded, knowing the way Luke and Dean had of snatching Rory's
mugs from her mourning hands. "We could sneak it in through an I.V."
"Needles? Ew. I mean, ow." Dean entered the kitchen, sighed at what
he saw, and gingerly took the half-full mug from Rory's hands. "I mean,
now," she amended, winking conspiratorially at her mother.
Lorelai giggled good-naturedly. "We will defeat them yet." She
ignored the sarcastic "puh!" that came from Dean as he poured the
remaining coffee in the mug down the drain.
"What are you doing?" Lorelai demanded, springing to her feet. "Are
you crazy?"
Dean thought about it as the coffee continued to pour down, past the
sink, into the sewers. He regarded Lorelai with a humorous tinge in his
eyes. "After living here the last few weeks? I'm not going to deny it
without some psychological testing."
And the coffee from the mug was gone.
"I would've drank it!" Lorelai grouched.
"You should cut back on it, too," Dean said mildly, then left with
the same wink she'd just seen from her daughter. Dear God, this kid was
becoming a part of the Gilmore insanity more and more by the day.
"Rue the day we made you one of us," Lorelai grumbled as Dean smirked
and headed toward the bathroom for a shave and a shower.
There was a short silence in mourning for the coffee that was lost.
"Anyway," Rory started eventually, body language slouched in defeat,
"the headache does remain. Without coffee to help, I'm going to need
some serious medication to get me through the day. Where's the Tylenol?"
"No taking Tylenol! Or any other drug you have to swallow, for that
matter."
Rory looked at Lorelai strangely.
Lorelai widened her eyes. "Do you not remember the choking incident?
Do I have to rehash it? Aah, what a vivid memory."
Rory's look remained the same.
Lorelai started coughing in an exaggerated way. "It's a real memory"
-- cough, helluva cough -- "it's gotta be remembered."
"The trick is to swallow," Rory explained calmly, unmoved by such
dramatics.
A few more coughs, real ones this time, after the strain placed on
the throat, and then Lorelai relented. "You are absolutely no fun. Fine,
endanger your life."
"Gladly."
Lorelai sneered at Rory's joking tone, and set off in search of the
medication.
--
Under caffeinated and unshowered, Rory walked into the bathroom to
find Dean in a swarm of lingering steam. He turned quickly to ensure the
room's invader wasn't someone who shouldn't see him with only a single
towel swathed about his wet hips. His expression changed from shocked to
soothed in two seconds flat. Smiling sweetly, he beckoned Rory closer so
that he could stroke her face and look into her eyes, assessing her
strength for the day ahead.
She met the warmth of his smile. "Nice towel," she commented. "It was
my favorite when I was six."
Dean blushed. "It was the last one clean, and... I like cats."
"Hello Kitty is the cat you like even if you don't ordinarily like
other cats. My boyfriend has good taste. And I kinda always wondered
what you'd look like in pink."
Dean's eyes were averted now in embarrassment. "Uh... now you know."
"How's my hair?"
Dean glanced at her uneasily. "It's looked better." Rory awaited a
description. "You've got kind of a 'There's Something About Mary' thing
going on..."
So said, Rory was now bathed in the same humiliation, and their twin
blushes burned like brush fires of the face. Rory's thoughts seconds ago
of offering to help dry Dean's glistening body were now clouded over by
her desperation to hide every strand of hair on her head. Frantically,
she tried to smooth it down with her hands, afraid to de-steam the
mirror and see the horror that must be causing all of those half-giggles
coming from the body beside her.
"You're a great big help, you know!" she informed him, trying in vain
not to be won over by his smile that kept melting every block of ice she
tried to shove between herself and her tormentor. "I'll bet your hair
looks this bad all the time!"
His giggles rose to full-out laughter. "And you're forgetting the
worst part," Dean reminded her.
"The worst part being?" she asked in a whine.
"This really was the last clean towel."
--
"For the last time, you look fine. Now, do you mind sitting in the
back seat?"
Rory paused just slightly. "What? Why?"
"Well, I'd rather not be seen with you in public at this time," was
Lorelai's dig.
Rory seethed as she climbed into the passenger seat in front
and slapped a baseball cap on her head.
"So, you're wearing Dean's clothes now, are you?" Lorelai teased.
"Oh, keep it up, and I'll give Dean back his hat and you can be
accused of having the daughter with the atrocious 'fro until the memory
of this day goes out of existence."
"What happened anyway, did a camel spit in your hair?"
"Mom..." Rory's eyelids drooped. "You know what would make me feel
better?"
"Standing next to a picture of my hair in the '80's?"
"If a camel spat in your hair."
Lorelai dug through her purse for the car keys, now that they were
both seated in the vehicle, and Rory was fuming so outwardly that air
conditioning was becoming a necessity. "Hun?" she said, as she found the
keys, and slid them into the ignition. "You've got to start putting up
road signs when your emotions change. 'Warning: Optimism Ahead' would be
nice sometimes. ...Just as, 'Warning: Will Breathe Fire Even When Not
Provoked' would be appreciated by those of us with hair for kindling."
"That last one was so provoked," Rory argued.
"So not the point."
Rory sighed. "I didn't realize I was so lethal. I thought you always
knew I was kidding."
"I know that you're not always kidding. So, what do you say?
The road signs strategy a go?"
"I hate hormones."
"Well. Take it out on them once in a while, how's that?"
"Oh, that's right, because they're perfectly tangible."
"'Atta girl." Revving the engine, Lorelai floored the gas, and away
the Gilmore girls drove from that house where Rory had been caged since
the nightmares began, the nightmares that had yet to end.
--
The Paradise Boutique in Hartford loomed high and flush with the
prettiest of pink tones. Rory stared in a mixture of awe and
reminiscence as Lorelai parallel parked in front of the store and fed
the parking meter. The store's name was displayed in the most feminine
scrawl, the cursive of a refined hand. Ponytail low and hidden, baseball
cap protruding past her face, Rory followed her mother inside the store.
"It seems smaller, somehow," Rory said, visibly turning her head to
look at the training bras section as she passed it by.
"Nope, you've just gotten bigger. Way bigger."
Rory rubbed her belly that had begun to swell, stopping by the tiny
pieces of underwear, the bras with cup sizes so miniscule, it was a
wonder they existed. Truly, she preferred the immaturity of the patterns
to many of the bras she wore nowadays. The bras in negative cup sizes
with cows jumping over moons set in dark blue and starry skies; the
yellow ones with "Superstar" written to settle across each
underdeveloped nipple; most of all, the ones with the unabashed design
of the American flag. Ah, to be naive and therefore still believe in
your country.
"Maternity bras are over here, babe," Lorelai sang, just loud enough
for the cashier and several customers to overhear and stare in Rory's
humiliated direction.
She trekked over to her mother, wishing she had added sunglasses to
her disguise. Big, clunky ones, with wide rims to make her look like an
alien or a bug. Glasses with which to hide the sun and the stinging
clarity of embarrassment in her eyes. Rory never was one for buying
underwear, lingerie, or other such unmentionables. If it weren't for the
fact that no two bras fit the same, she would buy any and all
undergarments online.
"Mkay, this one's a nice one that you'll appreciate after a week full
of roughly a thousand breast feedings. It has a small clip that you can
unsnap to bear, you know, the breast. And then it can easily be snapped
again, and off you are until the next diaper changing, after which the
scream machine will be ready to eat again."
Rory stared as her mother dispensed such experience, stuffing her
hands under her arms uncomfortably and looking around at the lack of
variance in this particular bra section. Blah, beige, and more blah, all
around.
Lorelai held a bra about three sizes too large up to the front of
Rory's shirt, and though this bra was eggshell white and had a nice
edging of lace, pressing it up to her body that way was making
everything too close for comfort. Rory felt like everyone was still
staring, and all were knowing that her boobs were going to inflate like
pool toys.
"I have never been so... embarrassed," she announced, her voice low
so that it would only reach her mother's ears.
Lorelai continued to press bras of very little variance in design up
to Rory's chest. "I beg to differ, darling dear. Remember the first time
I brought you here, and made the suggestion that, at twelve, it might be
time to wear a bra like the big girls?"
Rory made a face. "I don't want to recall that memory."
"Mean Melissa from the sixth grade walked in and laughed at you
because she'd been shopping for training bras 'three times now'."
"I was mature in response."
"You were mortified."
"Maybe I was mortified because you kept humming that spy music that
was 'in your head' the entire time I was in the changing rooms."
Lorelai draped one bra over her purse, designating it a keeper, and
continued to "fit" different designs to Rory's chest, estimating the
sizes she might reach in a pregnancy that had just begun. "You said you
didn't want anyone to know you were shopping for bras; I thought
it might make you feel better if I gave the spy vibe. Like we were
spies, to be unseen and unridiculed in our invisibility."
"I think that made the idea of growing breasts even more
uncomfortable, Mom. Everyone within reach of the changing rooms was
disturbed by your 'Mission: Impossible' theme song humming."
"Go ahead and deny the fact that by taking the focus off of you, I
saved you some of the shame of growing orbs out of your chest." Lorelai
gave her daughter a leveling eye. "And here I am choosing your maternity
bras for you, estimating your future size very badly, rather than
forcing you to swallow your 'pride' and go talk to the sales lady about
it yourself. See what I do for you?"
Rory rubbed her lips together, smearing the chapstick all over her
naturally plumped puckers. "So do we have what we need?"
Setting one more bra in the "positive" pile, Lorelai nodded. "Yeah,
we can go."
After paying, the girls walked out together. "You sure have a lot of
confidence in my boobs' ability to grow," Rory said.
"Consider it a compliment," Lorelai told her.
Rory nodded amicably, now that she was out of the store that so
bothered her with burdens of memories and uncertain futures. "I do."
--
Back in the car again, arguments of a strange nature ensued.
"You're never going to be a grown up if you can't just grow up about
these things, babe."
"Mom, can you not lecture? I just stood in a lingerie store with you
for more than ten minutes, I feel deflated enough."
"I'm just saying, honey. Having a baby means growing up fast. You've
always been mature for your age when it came to books, academics, witty
and worldly comments. But you've got to learn to be okay with your body
and its needs before you can be okay for another body and all that it's
going to need from you."
"I'm growing up. I'm very grown. More mature every day -- hey,
there's the new Disney Store!" Rory's face brightened into a huge smile,
which she threw Lorelai's way. "We've been waiting for one of those to
come to this state for how long now?"
"Longer than you've been born," Lorelai agreed, and promptly looked
for a parking spot. Nothing better to cover the sour of this shopping
trip with some sweet honey to soothe it away.
"Ooooh!" cried Rory as the doors slid open and revealed all the
beauty of Disney and being a kid yourself, for all your life through.
Lorelai echoed her sentiments, and both girls set off in a frenzy,
pressing lots of buttons on the display models and contemplating how
many toys they could make it out of here with that they wouldn't have to
share entirely with the coming baby.
Lorelai smiled with a sheen of true happiness to witness a happy
Rory, and her fascinating obsession with the giant stuffed animal pile,
which she threw herself into, creating a perfect photograph opportunity.
Rory adored being swallowed up in the plush softness, seeing the beast's
Belle to her left, and Buzz Lightyear to her right, along with so many
other memorable characters, preserved in toys you could hug to your
chest forever and ever.
Climbing up and out of the plushy pit, Rory soared into it once
again, this time face first. She loved to inhale the fabric of every
stuffed plush and to hug it all whole, like children, to her bosom that
swelled further with each passing day.
She was sitting in between Jasmine and Ariel when she pressed a
familiar number into the keypad of her cell phone.
"I thought you were shopping," came the answer on the other end of
the line.
"Dean! Oh, I am. I'm at the Disney Store. I've been inspired, and I
think it's time we revisit the idea of baby names."
"While you're at the Disney store. No good can come of this."
"What do you think of Cinderella?"
"I think she had dainty feet."
"As a name, silly."
"I think she had dainty feet. And what if the baby's a boy?"
Rory processed this information, drunk on the idea of giving birth to
a fairy princess or her fair love, the handsome prince. "Cinder," she
offered at last. "The masculine Cinderella."
"Yes, Rory, I'll be so happy to introduce Cinder, my son, the cooled
lava."
"Your sarcasm is not lost on me, mister. I think the idea's just
fabulous."
She could hear in Dean's voice that he was amused. "Can I ask you
something? What are you on?"
"Coffee withdrawal. See what you stealing my morning beverage brings
out in me?"
Dean's smile widened from across the phone line. "I kind of like it."
"Then Cinder it is!" Rory announced triumphantly, and gave a giggle
as she ended the conversation.
--
Shopping trip over, Rory came home to find that her boyfriend had
stuck some towels into the washing machine, and then the dryer. He was
truly becoming domestic. Or perhaps he always had been, but had been
good at hiding it. She would have joked that he made a good housewife,
but she was too touched by his aid in helping her to undo the 'fro that
wouldn't go away without a good back-to-back shampoo scrubbing. The
perils of tossing and turning surfacing in bed head are quite the
frightening phenomenon.
She was so free with the kisses that warmed his lips and his eyelids
and his jawbone before she whisked herself away to the bathroom where
finally she could bathe and at least look like herself again. Lather,
rinse, repeat, were the directions, which on this day she followed
five times in a row. There was no such thing as a cleansing overkill
after the way her hair had behaved due to the shock of so many tosses
and turns on a pillow soaked through to its core with her miserable cold
sweat.
Emerging clean and a vision of beauty unfathomed, she headed straight
to the kitchen, where she bumped into Dean.
"How do I look?" she asked him, leaning against the counter and
wishing for compliments.
"Clean," he told her. Then, stepping closer, he dared, "Maybe a
little too clean." Placing his large hands on the bones of her hips, he
inched her close to his body and sprinkled migrating hot breaths all
along her face, finally planting his lips on her dainty little nose.
Rory smiled at such intimate attentions, but then her stomach
rumbled. "Dean? Is there anything edible in the house?"
A bit disappointed that his charm hadn't won her over, Dean pouted
just slightly. "Oh, right, of course. You're Rory; you're always
hungry."
"I resent that," said Rory in as haughty a manner as she could
conjure.
"Why?"
"Because it's true," she admitted with an impish grin.
Dean studied her face, his eyes bearing into hers intensely. "You're
capturing this moment, aren't you?"
Playfully, Rory wrapped her slight arms around his bronzed neck.
"What ever do you mean?"
"You're gonna write this down in your journal, you're gonna make it
one of your lists: 'Top Ten Stupid Things Dean Said Today'." He could
see in her eyes that she was shocked, surprised... and that he had her
nailed. "I thought so."
"Stop reading my mind!" was Rory's only defense. "You're like
Chlorine!"
"Excuse me?"
"Chlorine. The persona Mom takes on when she wants to be my personal
fortune teller."
"Is she good at it?"
"No, no. That's part of her charm."
Dean answered affectionately, "That's all of her charm."
Rory grinned. "True."
"So do you..." Dean lovingly tucked a strand of Rory's hair away.
Their eyes that locked shared a tender moment that could have lasted for
long minutes uninterrupted, but a very pregnant Rory burst the bubble.
"Food first; kisses later."
Dean was smiling, enjoying having this again. "You are becoming such
a tease."
"I know. Aren't I good at it?"
"Not really. But... it's part of your charm."
"What are you saying?" Roy asked, her voice a bit weary.
"...I like it." There came a rumble deep in Dean's throat that
morphed into a growl.
Rory more than noticed this. "Feisty, are we?"
"Very."
Despite it all, Rory groaned impatiently. "Fooooood."
Playing along, Dean remarked, "Look at you, you're wasting away!"
Dean attacked her with tickles until she giggled away all her oxygen
supply.
Rory found a breath of air in one of her involuntary gasps.
"Seriously! Me: dying of depravation."
Dean pouted his lip like he'd never pouted before. "No fun here."
"We'll have fun later."
Dean's eyelids flickered as he trained his eyes on her face,
searching for truth. "You promise?"
"Depends on what we eat..."
He laughed, but maintained: "Promise?"
Rory bit her bottom lip and nodded. She whispered, "Promise."
Just then, Lorelai intruded on the moment and the sensual stare,
making her way to the fridge. Examining its bare-as-bones contents, she
turned her head to look at the two teens crowding her kitchen. "Did you
take the last soda?" she asked of them both.
As Dean was much taller than Rory, she could not see the accusatory
finger he jabbed over the top of her head. "She drank the last three,"
he insisted.
Rory gasped. "Dean!"
"The truth hurts, baby." And there it was again, that pet name that
melted her into a puddle on the floor. But the puddle, nonetheless, was
still hungry.
"So, there is a half-filled salt container and a bag of rice in the
cupboard that's probably been living here longer than Rory," Lorelai
announced. "Off to Luke's we go!"
--
The way Luke's face lit up upon seeing Lorelai emerge from the street
in through the door with its jingling bell that announced her presence
was not lost on Rory. Nothing of Luke's expressions around her mother
was lost on her anymore. She longed for the kind of serenity those two
had undoubtedly found in one another.
"So there are tacos on your menu now," Lorelai stated, as if Luke
hadn't the faintest clue of the content of his own menus.
"Thought you said you wanted them. So I honored your request."
"Lukie Snookie, you are fantabulous."
"Use real words, please, and only my name, no who-haw to mangle it."
Luke's tone insinuated a lecture, but the glow in his eyes showed
something else. Showed, perhaps, that this argument was only a means to
keep Lorelai interacting with him, as he hadn't seen her in at least a
day.
"Aww..." Rory sighed, cooing at the adorableness of them.
"So, it'll be those tacos for me."
"Okay." Luke jotted it down on his order pad. "One or two?"
"Six."
Sighing, and not even ready to touch that one, Luke turned to Dean.
"What about you?"
"Oh, uh, I'll just have a burger, I guess."
"And for you," Luke said, turning to Rory with the "are you okay?"
eyes that she'd of late grown accustomed to. "Burgers or tacos?"
"Yes." She grinned.
"For starters, anyway," Lorelai made sure to add.
"People who use entrees as mere appetizers clog arteries until hearts
stop beating," Luke informed them all before turning away. "Just so you
know."
"Keep saying it, hun," Lorelai said to his retreating form. "Someday
we've promised to pretend to listen."
Now behind the well-worn counter, Luke had something more to say:
"You order enough for an army of men larger than he is." (And here he
jutted his head toward Dean, who he rarely addressed personally.) "You'd
be my best customers if you ever paid."
Lorelai giggled. To Rory and Dean, she declared, "See, and he's
funny, too!"
--
"I love the person who invented the idea of ketchup, mustard, relish,
and sautéed onions all on one burger," Lorelai announced as she stabbed
at bits of hamburger that had dropped to the plate as she so gracefully
inhaled her six tacos, professing to still "have room".
"Yeah," Rory agreed. "Some random guy, he sure made a great
discovery."
"That's my favorite person in the whole wide world. Today, anyway."
"As opposed to the whole narrow world?" Rory challenged. "Why do
people say things like that?"
"I think it's time you took your brain in for a tune-up," Dean
offered, munching on a fry gone cold after all of the girls'
conversation that spanned on into eternity.
Lorelai was quick to answer with her, "Thanks. That would be so sweet
in the narrow world."
"Is that where you want to live?" Rory enquired, stealing more than a
few of Dean's fries, for all of hers were gone.
"Totally. It is so narrow. No fat people, anywhere!"
"What happens when women get pregnant?"
"Actually, the men get pregnant in this universe."
"Nice!" exclaimed Rory and her morning sickness that lasted
throughout the day. "So what happens to the men when they get pregnant?"
"I'm suddenly wishing I didn't have ears..." Dean pushed his plate
toward Rory for her to continue to devour and placed his forehead down
on the pillow of his forearms resting atop the table.
Lorelai ignored the boy, as if he and his reproductive qualities did
not matter, even in the wide world. "They explode."
Rory nodded. "Even better."
--
Rory slept nightmare-less for the first time in several nights. Dean
held her in his arms the whole time, willing them away; more than that,
willing them to be gone forever.
--
The next morning, there were plenty of clean towels, and Rory's hair
was washed and fresh before lunchtime. She'd been alone, revising her
well worn copy of 'Portrait of a Lady', lonely without Dean who was at
Doose's, and needing the comfort of physical companionship in a way that
she hadn't before. A strange thing it was, how she could feel so alone,
when within the very depths of her body lie another.
She set off in search of some company. The kitchen was empty, as was
the bathroom. Lazy and easily frustrated this day, she randomly yelled
out, "Mom, where are you?"
"In here!"
"Where is here?"
"Where I am!"
"Can you describe your surroundings a bit?"
"Nope, sorry," said Lorelai from a room not far away. "Don't want to
see you that much."
Rory found her mother, at last, in the bedroom upstairs. "Let me just
say that I adore your sarcasm and refuse to believe it to be anything
else," she said to Lorelai, plainly and openly. She looked around the
disheveled bedroom. "What are you doing? Ransacking your own private
space for something you should know is placed where you put it?"
"Say something unscholarly, I dare you."
Rory cocked her head and met the challenge. "'Sup?"
"Good enough. So, homie. What I have been looking for, it has been
found. Oh yeah."
Interested, Rory stepped further into the room. "You're holding it
behind your back. Show it to me."
And out came the treasure: a 20 year-old cabbage patch.
"Remember this?" Lorelai asked, waving the doll from side to side in
order to allow it to invade even Rory's peripheral vision. "I've found
it at last! For experimental purposes."
"Oh, God," Rory intoned. "I thought I threw that thing away."
"You did. You were the villain, I was the hero. I saved her."
"That poor thing," said Rory. "What is that doll going to be
subjected to, after all it's been through?"
"It's simple. It will be my model, as I show you how to properly put
on a diaper."
Rory wrinkled her nose. "Mom... it's a doll. And that diaper you have
on the bed? Will cover it from butt to neck."
"Do you want to learn or not?"
"Is it really that difficult?"
"We'll see."
"I think the term 'put on a diaper' is pretty self explanatory,
thanks."
Nonetheless, Rory stood patiently by the bed while she watched her
mother attach the diaper to the doll's tiny signature-decorated butt,
listening to the warnings that it can't be "too loose, or it will fall
right off", and that it "can't be too tight, or it will restrict
breathing or provoke screams of discomfort". As Lorelai applied the
sticky tabs in a way that gave the unliving doll room enough to
"breathe" comfortably, Rory nodded along as if any of this information
was vital in that it wasn't already known.
"What would I do without your cabbage patch models to display your
expertise?" she asked her mother fondly.
"Now: to take the diaper off." Lorelai looked pointedly at her
daughter. "A much messier and more serious matter." She displayed the
trick of lifting the little butt after undoing the Velcro tabs, and
wiping before removing the dirty diaper from beneath the baby, in order
to catch every bit of "goop" before placing a fresh diaper in the old
one's place.
Rory tried her best to stifle the yawn of boredom. This was supposed
to be bonding time, right? She really was supposed to be riveted? What
was wrong with her? At the moment, she didn't care to look into the
psyche of it all. She stood and held her eyes open, even though the lids
were heavy and begging for sleep.
Lorelai had fashioned up a special garbage can labeled "toxic waste".
She moved to throw the cabbage patch's diaper away.
"What are you doing?" Rory asked.
Lorelai dumped the crumbled up wad into the "toxic waste" bin. "This
diaper has been used."
"Not technically."
Lorelai pointed to the doll, now naked as the day its fabric was
conceived and sewn together. "Do you know where this thing has been?"
Rory thought. She had taken the doll everywhere in her imaginary
world -- to the pyramids of Egypt, to Babette's yard next door, to Cloud
9 (as well as clouds 1-8). And then one day, the doll, which had never
been named, was thrown away, and attempted to be forgotten. It had
gathered so many germs, the eight year-old in Rory had reasoned, and
after being left outside in the midst of a spring storm, it seemed the
doll's cloth body would never dry, and it was of no use to squeeze it
tightly when all that would come of it would be squirts of dirty water
to forever remind Rory that she had left her "child" out in the rain.
She cried that day, when she dropped her doll into the bathroom
wastebasket. But soon afterward, the doll was replaced by a stuffed
turkey that came to reign supreme, and take the place that it had seemed
impossible to fill.
Lorelai bought the doll for Rory before she was born, knowing
that Rory was going to be a girl. ("This thing is older than you. And
wise, very wise," often she would say.) She knew Rory would be a girl,
for if she were a boy, or anything else but a unicorn, Lorelai would
have given her back, she'd said in the past.
"To whom?" Rory asked her once.
"Who cares?" Lorelai had said bluntly. "I was drugged."
--
Disturbed by her mother's teaching methods, Rory retreated back to
her room, and was surprised to find Dean there, home early from work.
Her voice was soft and shaky, overtired and with a hint of a smoker's
scratch. "Will you hold me?" she asked, in that way of weak girls that
before she'd so often despised. Suddenly it wasn't so important to be so
strong all the time. Not all the time. Not always.
"In a minute," he said. "Come here," he told her. When she reached
his body, her fingers sought to touch his skin, any part of his skin,
but he gently backed her away. "Just... stand there."
Rory stood still on her long legs. Her eyes soaked in the peculiarity
of Dean crawling beneath her body until he was looking straight up her
skirt and gazing at the crotch of her panties.
"You need a release?" he asked, and his voice sounded husky from so
far down below.
Rory tried to swallow the self consciousness of him looking there, so
intently. "Yes..." she admitted.
He reached a substantial arm up beneath her skirt until his hand
touched her folds, blocked only by the zebra striped silk of her
panties, and the last words he whispered were, "Okay."
With skilled fingers, he rubbed her through the material, stroking
her into wetness that soaked through to his fingers that continued to
tease. She gave a breathy sound, a whisper-like exhalation that betrayed
the ecstasy she received from his singular touch. His touch that was
barely there; the finger smoothly exploring the slit between her folds,
coaxing it to drench the panties that were all that were there to
separate his finger from her core that was screaming for him, calling to
him, needing him like a drug.
Boldly, he slipped the finger inside the bottom lining of her
panties, and found her clit, which he rubbed with the pad of a single
thumb, slowly, agonizingly, lovingly.
Trembling with cold and heat mixed into a temperature unfathomed, she
fought to keep her legs from crumbling; to stay on her feet. Until his
finger exited her very special throbbing place, and with both hands he
urged her hips to descend further towards his mouth, until she was
practically sitting on his face. And there, he let his tongue lave her
through her panties, loving the way that she trembled, loving the
whimpers that escaped her mouth and throat because of him. Loving the
way that she finally collapsed on top of him, hugging his waist and
smooching at what lay beneath his own clothes at the crotch.
And then it was his turn to tremble and shake, until both of them
were quaking and falling into an oblivion where they could be alone
together. When they both stopped fighting the urge to give in, the
ecstasy was all the greater for having been fought against. He felt it
in his bones and knew that she had felt it in hers as she orgasmed,
leaving the taste of her juices to rest on his starving tongue.
- -
to be continued...
