Tea Parties in Boston

26 - Mother of all fights

May 5th, 2017, Stars Hollow, CT

Rory was watching her mother sit and consume the fresh off the printer's copy of Rory's book - 'Gilmore Girls'. Its cover showed a watercolor painting of the gazebo turned into a carouselle - life's wheel that just kept on turning, various characters, none of them drawn out to specifics, shown with various levels of transparency - as they slided and in and out of people's lives. She'd thought of the concept herself and was proud of it. The book itself wasn't terribly long - just 150 pages or so, it having taken a lot of trimming from the original 300. It's font was something Rory didn't particularily agree on - Utopia and in a little larger size than she would've originally liked. All because this was so not supposed to be an entirely serious read and according to the publicist Rory had been working with that was supposed to attract a readership ready for something fresh yet homey, but still light to take on during the weekend or evenings. And in a way they had been right too - it contained a fair amount of quirkiness, humour and pop-culture references, which supposedly set her book part from the rest.

Rory had probably never seen her mother read anything this intensely. But it was almost like she was scanning through it, inspecting it. But there were few people who's opinion she counted on as much as hers.

She wasn't sure what her mother was thinking, to be honest. She knew it was a lot that she'd trusted her to write it in the first place. And it had been Lorelai's own request that she'd never wanted to read it before now. She'd offered the final version to her six weeks ago - but she was like her daughter, wanting to feel, see and smell the book in her hands. She'd sounded so sure, she'd love it.

Rory wished she'd had more time. But her schedule had been pushed since because of her rapidly approaching due date - this way she was still able to do a couple of book readings in the coming weeks. And in that sense she wasn't even sure if she was happy with the book herself - she'd read it from cover to cover dozens of times, but she was getting tunnel vision by now, not really being able to view it from anyone else's perspective. It had happened to her before with some of her longer journalistic pieces too, that was when a fresh pair of eyes came in handy - but there really weren't any that she trusted around. Paris was having some publicity drama with her company a certain celebrity having not loved some of their policies - nothing major but enough to not give her much breathing space. Lane would just praise whatever she wrote, her grandmother would hardly think it was proper to be writing about their family like that at all, and there was no Logan anymore. Jess... well she hadn't wanted to include Jess ever sense she'd sensed he might still be interested in her, even if he hadn't specifically done or said anything - there was just something in the way he'd looked at her during her mom's wedding, that had made her just stayed clear, having too much on her mind already.

"So?" Rory asked, eagerly and hopefully, seeing her mother put down the book, having finished it. Lorelai had fingers between a couple of sections of the book, as if bookmarks.

Lorelai opened her mouth and then closed it again. Then opened it again to say something, but shut it yet again. It was not something that happened a lot.

"What?" Rory frowned, becoming suddenly afraid of her words. And for good reason.

"I just have no words," Lorelai exclaimed, looking a little pale in her face.

"Good astonished or bad astonished?" Rory inquired, still a little hopeful.

"Good? In what scenario could this be considered good!? I mean - had it been written by someone else about someone else then maybe? But for you to analyze me, pinpoint my every flaw like that?" Lorelai stood up and rambled, raising her voice. Rory would never thought her mother would react quite this badly.

"And my own flaws too. There are plenty there, probably more. It was supposed to be realistic - it's non-fiction! I couldn't just lie, could I?" Rory defended herself, feeling like her comfortable seated position with her legs spread out on the couch, hardly any position feeling comfortable in her state for a long time, was not entirely enabling her to sound convincing.