Glimpses

Chapter 16

April 27th, 2002

Rory was asleep. Or very nearly so, sort of slipping in and out of sleep, I guess. Her childhood bedroom was dark. It was without a doubt it was in the middle of the night. Her wrist ached, but it was a dull ache by now. If she didn't move it around, it wasn't really enough to keep her up.

But mostly it was just worry about Jess that kept her mind awake. Was he okay? Had Luke been too hard on him? Besides her thoughts, there was the sound of someone else breathing. She knew her mother was sleeping in the armchair, having been unsuccessful at convince her to sleep in her bed upstairs. But there was almost like another presence too, she couldn't quite put her finger on it. She didn't want to move, knowing it was best to keep her arm steady.

But it was her mother's voice that alerted her, thankfully shedding at least some of her worrisome thoughts.

"Chris?" she heard her mother's voice ask in whisper, answering Rory's question. She almost felt like she couldn't hold her excitement.

She couldn't believe it. It had been months since she'd seen him.

But as if frozen, she continued to pretend to lay there, her eyes closed.

"What? Lor... is everything...," his father's disoriented voice asked.

"Shh... Come on," Lorelai said.

Footsteps. They were leaving the room. If she was quiet enough, didn't try to turn her side - even her pillow sounded loud right now, and her mother didn't put the coffee machine on right away, she might still hear them, somehow that conversation becoming her prime interest.

"Hey, what are you doing here?" Lorelai asked, her voice being just audible through the closed bedroom door.

"Uh, I have a really crappy mattress at home," her father replied.

"Chris," Lorelai scolded him, not buying his words.

"I drove here as fast as I could and I went to the hospital but you guys had already left... so I tried your cell phone but all I got was voice mail," Chris began to explain. "So I came here but the place looked dark, so I got the key out of the turtle and came in but you guys were already asleep so I just grabbed a chair and apparently my evil plan worked exactly as I anticipated," he added, speaking quickly.

Rory had missed his humour. It was nothing like her mother's - it was so much 'less', more understated - but she'd missed it. She missed him. She missed seeing him and her together. She'd even missed just hearing them.

"I'm so glad you're here," Lorelai confessed, and it made Rory feel a little better too. She knew how worried her mother was, despite not really knowing what it felt like to worry about a child, but she was glad her mother had someone to share that with. Even a partially absent co-parent was better than none, right?

"Me too. How's she doing?" Christopher asked.

"She's in a cast," Lorelai said, like it was a huge deal, making Rory roll her eyes alone in her room.

"I know," Christopher replied.

"The doctor said she'll be fine, he'll take it off in a couple of weeks. The car is totally gone and I have to call the insurance guy tomorrow and... I don't know," Lorelai fretted.

"Did you find that kid?" Christopher asked.

Rory suddenly became feisty in her thoughts - she didn't like the way he'd said that. Jess wasn't just some kid. Frankly, anyone her age was a little offended if anyone called him or her a kid, herself included. But more specifically she just wanted her mother to believe her that it hadn't been Jess' fault. It was her car, she'd wanted to go for ice cream too, she'd said they could drive around for a bit before heading back. Hell - she'd probably distracted him too. She knew Jess liked her, even if he had a funny way of showing it, she wasn't that oblivious. It was her fault that she was flattered and enjoyed that different kind of attention compared to Dean who'd recently begun to call 16 times a day, and made her feel like she was suffocating. She almost thought it was a rightful punishment for her - the fractured wrist - for indulding in that kind of attention that she wasn't supposed to be enjoying.