faye_dartmouth | GG Fic: Sometimes You Do 36/40

A/N: Review replies are behind but if I didn't post now, I'd be late, so I'll do replies this weekend. As for this chapter, major plot point ahead. And Madbyme, your speculation a bit ago was uncanny--you'll see :) Thanks all! Previous stuff here.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Rory figured she could probably spend a good couple of weeks, months maybe, killing time. Letting life happen. There would be plenty to do: breakfast with Lane, work at the paper, lunch at Luke’s. Plenty that didn’t involve defining where she was with Dean. Plenty that didn’t involve figuring out what to do with a twenty grand stepping stone to whatever great thing lay beyond the horizon.

Because she needed to live today, she decided. Just like Lane. Like her mother and Luke and even Dean. They were all living where they were at and they were making it work and Rory had chased the horizon enough in her life.

Too bad fate didn’t feel like listening to her.

When she let herself in the house, she could hear her mother scurrying in the kitchen. “Rory?”

Shutting the door, Rory went in. “I thought you had to work.”

“I’m a little late today,” Lorelai said, stuffing the remnant of a scone into her mouth. “Michel likes to do mornings on his own sometimes so sometimes I let him, you know, so he can be all anal retentive and rude without me there to hinder his anal retentive rudeness.”

“It’s nearly eleven.”

“I know,” her mother said. “I sort of lost track of time.”

“What were you doing?”

“It’s not important.”

“You’re not watching One Life to Live again, are you?”

Her mother’s face fell. “Maybe.”

Rory shook her head. “You’re impossible.”

“Yeah, well,” her mother said. “I need to get going before Michel notices that I’m late at least once a week and that it’s not just to indulge his eccentricities.”

“Good luck with that,” Rory said. “I have to write an article about the renovations of the historic drinking fountain downtown.”

“We have a historic drinking fountain?”

“Apparently. Built in 1915, though with surprisingly gothic design.”

“A gothic drinking fountain?”

“Flying buttresses and all.”

“Where?”

“You know, right down the street for Doose’s, built into the sidewalk right next to that stationery shop.”

“Really?”

“I went to see it,” Rory confirmed.

“Huh.”

“It’s very historic.”

“Well, you write your article then,” her mother said, riffling through her purse. “Oh!”

“Oh?”

“Oh, there’s a message for you," her mom said.

"If it's Ned, he should know I told him I'd have the piece done by tomorrow."

"It's not Ned," her mother said, and her voice sounded different. Quieter. More serious. Grown up.

This made Rory pause. She didn't exactly have an active social life and Dean would have called her cell phone and it wasn't like Luke called her and Lane was too busy and-- "Then who?" she asked.

Lorelai held out a napkin, upon which was scrawled a number. "I don't think who is really the right question," she said. "How about why?"

Rory got it, she did, but she almost couldn't believe it. Her chest tightened a little. "A job offer?"

Her mother nodded.

Her mind raced. She'd sent out a plethora of applications, near and far. Some of the bigger papers. Some international organizations. She'd covered the full gamut--after all, she had nothing to lose. She'd already survived leaving one job, not to mention the disappointments of her first job search all those years ago, so a little rejection really wouldn't kill her.

But she was getting a call back.

"Really?" she asked, because it seemed too good to be true. Too simple. A call back from any of those applications was too big to be real. It was like a pipe dream. It was like holding her acceptance letter to Yale, like getting that call about the job on the campaign trail, like having the editor-in-chief of the Detroit Free Press shake her hand and say welcome to the team. Big things, important things, and this time she just couldn't believe it.

She'd been waiting for it, though. This was what she said she'd wanted. The next great opportunity. And it was happening. And she didn't have a clue what to do.

"Really," her mom said, pushing the napkin closer to her.

Rory took it, looking numbly down at the number, at her mother's handwriting scrawling her future down. "Well," she said.

Lorelai rolled her eyes. "Very poignant," she said. "I'm so glad we spent all that money for you to go to Yale and say well."

Glaring up at her mother, she just shook her head. "I'm going to my room."

As she was leaving, she could hear her mother complaining, going on as only her mother could, but for once Rory actually didn't hear her. Couldn't. She couldn't hear anything. There was just the phone number and the idea that it was all coming true.

-o-

Decisions.

Hard ones, easy ones, meaningless ones, life-altering ones. Decisions.

Life, in so many ways, was nothing more than a string of decisions, one choice right after another, built upon one another. A choice here, an action there, and suddenly that was all there was, all she could be reduced to.

She chose to go to Chilton. She chose to go to Yale. She chose to go on the campaign trail, she chose the Detroit Free Press. She even chose to come home again in all the ways that mattered.

She chose Jess. She chose Logan. But it occurred to her that she’d never really chosen Dean. He’d always chosen her, and she’d just gone along for the ride.

That said something about her. It said she was ambitious, never satisfied. Always climbing, always ascending to something greater, something more. She never settled—not for public school, not for her first boyfriend. She wanted more.

She usually got more.

Now, back home, there was a history of choices behind her and twenty thousand dollars and the world at her fingertips. So why was the only thing she really wanted the one thing that money couldn’t buy? Why was the one thing she wanted so close to her and yet so impossible to attain?

Twenty thousand dollars to make her dreams come true. To pack her stuff up and move halfway around the world and do what other people only dreamed about.

Rory could picture herself. Jet-setting, seasoned, well-traveled. Bylined with some of the most important stories of her time. Meeting new people, seeing new places. Stars Hollow would be aglow with her success. Their golden child. She didn’t doubt her send off would be even grander than before—more food, more people, more pomp and circumstance.

Her fingers hesitated over her cell phone, hovering right over the numbers. She could still hear the offer. Ms. Gilmore, we'd be thrilled to have you as a member of the New York Times. We've read your work. Your portfolio is impressive. We can offer you more opportunities than you've had before. A traveling position. Possible correspondence work internationally. And we need you immediately.

A dream come true.

It was her fantasy. That one thing she had wanted all those years ago, the one thing she had wanted but been denied. A place at the New York Times. Rubbing shoulders with the journalists she salivated over, living it, feeling it, being a part of it.

Immediately.

Possible correspondence work internationally. Away from home. Away from Stars Hollow, from her mother, from Luke. From Dean.

She'd done it before. She could do it again. In style. twenty thousand dollars to uproot and make a new place for herself.

It was everything. Everything she’d wanted and aspired to. The job of all jobs, the one she had always wanted, the one she had never imagined even hesitating about. Everything.

Everything except that one thing. That one thing she'd found by coming back here. It wasn't as simple as home or as family or even as Dean. It was something inside of her. Something she hadn’t known she needed or wanted.

Something like stability. Something like connection. Something like love.

And she knew what she needed to do.

-o-

The first person she wanted to tell—the only person she needed to tell—was Dean.

She found him at the stereo shop. Going straight to the counter, Rory felt flushed and her heart fluttered. Dean was working, he was always working, and it took all her self-control not to blurt it right then.

He looked up and smiled at her. “You look happy,” he said.

“I am,” she said. “I am happy. Very happy. Hey! Happy Gilmore!”

Dean looked confused. “What?”

“Never mind. The point is I need to talk to you.”

He quirked his head to the side. “Is this one of those Gilmore moments where you simply need to express the unabashed joy you seem to be feeling in some spontaneously random way?”

“Not exactly,” Rory said. “I need to express it in a very, very specific way.”

“Which is?”

She glanced around. A pair of teenagers were talking over by the surround sound display and Gilbert was stocking the batteries. “Can we get out of here? Just for a minute,” she assured him quickly. “I know you have to work and all and so I don’t really mean to take up all your time but I need to talk to you so I guess I kind of do mean to take up your time but I promise it’s for a very good reason.”

He raised his eyebrows. “There’s not a book sale or something that we’re missing, is there?” he asked. “I don’t usually see you quite so excessively verbose unless there’s an election coming up or something.”

“Better,” she said.

“Better than politics? Or better than a book sale?”

“Better than anything,” she said.

He looked surprised and impressed and a little frightened, which Rory figured was kind of to be expected, since she was nearly vibrating with the anticipation. “Okay,” he said.

By the time Dean had entrusted the store to Gilbert, Rory was already at the edge of her patience. She knew Dean liked to be responsible and all, but she was pretty sure that Gilbert knew about how to open the cash register in case the printer balled up. And though Gilbert was certainly not of the technological generation, she was also fairly confident that he knew the ins and outs of the credit card scanner.

There was thorough but this was ridiculous. Clearly, May’s obsessive tendencies had rubbed off a bit on Dean or maybe it was the fastidious rules that everyone had been harping on him about since his flare up with the ulcer. Whatever it was, Rory didn’t care. Normally she would be all for Dean’s careful ways, but right now, she needed to talk to him. She needed to tell him. Now.

Finally on the street, Rory realized she didn’t know quite how to say it. At all. There were a million ways to actually say it of course, but this was big, important, and--

“Do you think he’ll be okay?”

Dean was glancing behind him, looking a bit forlornly at the store.

Was he really still worried about Gilbert? “I’m sure he’s fine.”

“I just haven’t left him in charge that often,” Dean said. “I mean, a little, sure, but with the bills being the way they are, I’ve just been putting even more time in there to try to turn the numbers around.”

“I know,” Rory said. She had been missing him because of it. But that wasn’t the point. It wasn’t. She didn’t drag him away to make him worry.

“He’s worked there for years, though.”

“And years,” Rory said. “So it’s good. Really. And you know you’re not supposed to be worrying about things like that. It’s not good for you.”

That wasn’t what she wanted to say. Not at all. If she could just think, if Dean could just give her two seconds to get her words together, because this wasn’t the time to ramble, it wasn’t the time to babble or to beat around the bush.

Dean looked a little chagrined, which seemed to also make him a little annoyed as he stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I’m taking the meds just fine, mother.”

“Hey!” Rory protested. “Bite your tongue.”

“You’re the one lecturing me.”

“Because you won’t stop worrying for five minutes so I can talk to you.”

“Well, you’re the one coming in the middle of the day. I wasn’t ready.”

“Dean--”

“Things are busy,” he said. “I mean, we’re getting an entirely new shipment of speakers and I have to phase out the old ones, but I’m not sure how to do it. We’ve got too many in inventory to just let them sit there, but the technology’s just not comparable--”

She reached out and grabbed his arm, effectively pulling him to a halt. "Dean, just--just listen," she said, her voice hinging on desperation.

He fell silent, his brow furrowed. "Okay," he replied slowly.

She took a deep breath, tucking her hair behind her ears obsessively. "I was offered a job at the New York Times.”

His face went blank for a moment before realization set in. “Oh,” he said. Then he smiled. “That’s great. It’s what you wanted, right? I mean, what, you’d get to live in New York? You love New York, and it’s a big paper, it’s like the paper--”

She just shook her head. “You don’t understand. I'm not taking the job."

Carefully, he raised his eyebrows, his face taking on the innocent look of a five-year-old. "You’re not?"

"No," Rory said. "I mean, I was going to. It was everything I wanted, everything I could have hoped for and more. I mean, it was perfect, like, surreally perfect and I was sitting there thinking about it, thinking about my life on the road and all the things I'd get to see, the things I'd get to write and I kept thinking about how happy I should be, but..."

"But what?"

She sighed, her shoulder sagging as she looked at him. "But I wasn't. I wasn't happy at all. Because no matter what that life held, what that life was all about, you weren't there."

He swallowed a little, looking almost afraid.

But she'd come this far. She couldn't turn back. She wouldn't. She needed to say it, even more than he needed to hear it. "And I was sitting there, and all I could hear was my mother telling me that love wasn't about what you got out of it, but it was about what you put into it. She was telling me about sacrifice and about giving things up for someone else and I realized that I'd never lived like that before. I'd never tried. But you--I mean, that's completely you. You are like the prime example of how to love. And I've never appreciated that. Never even came close. But I get it now. I get why you're staying, I get why you're content with that. And I love that about you. I love everything about you. Dean, I love you. I mean, I totally, completely love you and I would give up everything to be with you."

He was watching her, almost staring at her, his eyes wide and confused and just plain uncertain. "Rory, I--"

"You shouldn't believe me, I know," she continued quickly. "I mean, I've given you no reason at all to trust me, to give me a chance or anything. And you don't have to. You don't ever have to. I've said sorry to you before, but I'm not sure I ever really got just how badly I treated you. How you loved me and I was more than content just to let you give your love while giving so little in return. You are so right to just ignore me, to never give me another chance, but--but, I can't change how I feel. Just...let me be your friend."

His mouth opened and closed, then opened again. "I can't ask you to do that."

"You don't have to ask me," she said quickly. "That's the thing. I'm not asking for anything. Anything except your friendship, okay? I get why you didn't want to date me. I mean, the more I think about it, I wonder why anyone would ever want to date me, which is why I'm doing this."

Dean shook his head. "Doing what? Rory, you can't possibly be happy working as a reporter for the Stars Hollow Gazette. I can't let you--"

"Yes," she said, strongly now. "You can. You don't really have a choice. Besides, I'm not just a reporter at the Stars Hollow Gazette."

He cocked his head. "You're...not?"

She grinned, holding out a piece of paper. "Nope," she said. "Take it. I want you to see just how serious I am."

Tentatively, he took it, unfolding the paper. She could see him doubt in his eyes, remembering past letters, past things she'd given to him like this--never good things, never things that made him happy. And it was like he was eighteen reading the note about why the car he'd made was wrecked. Why his heart was going to be broken.

But this was different. This was different.

He looked back up at her. Blank. "You--are you serious?"

She shrugged a little. "I had to spend the money some way," she said.

"So, you--you--"

"Bought the paper," she confirmed with a nod.

"You bought the paper?"

She nodded readily. "I mean, maybe it was a little impulsive but there's nothing else I wanted. Nothing else I could ever want as much as being here near you. I mean, this way at least I can decide what I want to write and I can finally change that horrifically outdated mast head, but the thing is, the real thing is, that even if I had to work as a reporter, it'd be worth it. You're worth it. And I'm sorry I never saw that before."

He looked at her, then the paper again. "Rory. I mean. I don't know what to say."

She wanted him to say that he loved her to, that they could be together, that they could have their happily ever after, now that Rory finally realized she wanted. But she had to remember--love wasn't about what she got out of it. And she'd hurt Dean more than she could ever imagine. She'd broken his heart, ruined his self-esteem, and she had no right to expect him back. Ever.

"You don't have to say anything," she said. "I mean, since I'm not going anywhere, there's plenty of time for that."

He looked up at her again, more steadily this time. "You promise me that you'd stay either way," he said. "That it doesn't matter what I say now."

She tried to smile, to look sure of herself. "Yes," she said. "I mean, I do hold the deed to the paper, so no matter what, I've got quite a project to undertake."

"I just--I mean, I can't believe it. That you're staying."

He sounded shocked, that much was true. There was something else there, too, but she just couldn't tell what it was. "And that's a...good thing?" she asked, hopefully.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean, I think so. I just--I don't really know what to say."

She reached out and took his hand in hers, smiling up at him. "That's okay," she said, noticing how the light seemed to dance in his eyes, feeling like she could look at them forever and not get tired. "I'll be here when you do."

He swallowed a little, and then nodded. "Okay," he said. "Okay."

It wasn't a declaration of love. It wasn't a promise of a future. It wasn't even a reciprocation of the sacrifice Rory had made.

But for now, it was a start. And for now, it was enough. She may never win him back, but it was enough.

That was the thing about sacrifice. It wasn't about her. It was about the other person. And all she could do was wait and see.

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