Glimpses

Chapter 61

AN: trigger warning - topic of abortion is about to come up.

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February 26th, 2022

Rory and Gigi returned downstairs perhaps 10-15 minutes later. They hadn't talked much, Gigi having been too upset. But Rory had worked her magic on Gigi's eyes so they wouldn't look so red. She had a plan, at least a preliminary plan.

After those minutes that she'd spent upstairs, suddenly small talk and catching up with friends no longer seemed like the priority. Rory hadn't really gotten a lot of chances to mingle, and now she was pretty sure she couldn't even though she realized she'd probably still had to, and she truly tried her hardest.

"Hey, we're out of juice for the kids, should I go grab some?" Lorelai caught Rory just as she was about to step into the living room. Gigi managed to slip onwards, her cell phone, glued to her hand, providing a good diversion.

"Um... there should be some in the pantry, did you check there?" Rory suggested. While the topic would've been right up Lorelai's alley, at this point it was crystal clear that they didn't need hurricane Lorelai on the topic.

"Look at you, sounding like Emily Gilmore by the second," Lorelai teased, the idea that Rory had an actual separate pantry on top of her sizable kitchen sounding like such a over the top luxury to have. "I'll go check," she added, having not thought to look for any separate room.

"Yeah, just down the hall, just next to the laundry room," Rory explained, and made her way onwards into the crowd, seeing Gigi already waiting for her. The mission was to talk to their dad and ask if Gigi could stay the night for starters.

"Hey, where did you two disappear?" Christopher inquired, seeing Rory and Gigi. "These mushroom caps are delicious by the way," he commented, joyously.

"Oh, just, girl talk," Rory replied, swiftly. "Hey, dad, we were actually thinking - maybe Gigi could stick around for a few days, stay overnight. Logan and I could talk about Yale, we could go shopping tomorrow," she suggested.

So much she'd understood from Gigi was that she was in shock and just needed a moment to think and that without her father, who was 'mister positive' and especially eager to chat during road trips, that would just lead her to hold it in and lie to him. This really wouldn't have helped her the way she was feeling now. Rory knew they'd need to tell him, but there was a right time and a wrong time for it, and right now Rory felt it was time for her to help her little sister. Whether that included just holding her hand when she told Christopher, or something else, was yet to be determined.

"Sure, that sounds like fun. It's been a while since you two hung out," Christopher replied. The truth was it was probably more like two years since they'd hung out, Rory recalling a festival of some sort and a movie night they'd had over at Stars Hollow - all the Gilmore women together.

Rory promised Christopher they'd make sure Gigi would get home safely in time for school on Monday.

The rest of the evening Rory felt she was in some sort of a trance, mostly just keeping an eye on Gigi, chatting casually about nothing too deep as if on auto-pilot. She even had a large glass of wine, even her personal anxiety level being higher than usual due to the unexpected news.

Gigi looked so young to her, despite looking very much like a woman in her high-waisted ⅞ length dark jeans and her chunky but cropped sweater that only barely came down to the waist of her jeans. She could've been any one of her seniors at Chilton, except she wasn't wearing her uniform. Hell - she was a senior. Rory saw herself in her, her aspiration of going to a good college, but also her mother disappointing her parents - the whole monologue by Straub that she'd had to listen to when she was 16 coming rushing back to her. She knew that Gigi's situation was different - it was a different time, she was 18 - not 16 and her father had least had some perspective on making a mistake like that though he sure wasn't going to be happy when he found out. But if anything - there was only really Francine to truly disappoint. Considering how old and frail the woman was the news actually might kill her, Rory realized.