Title: When She Cries
Book: II
Chapter: One
Chapter Title: Things We Do Without
Rating: R.
Coupling: Mainly it’s heading a Dallie/Lola route…and you know
Paris/Jess have managed a happily ever after, while Tristan/Rory haven’t. Any
one else really doesn’t matter, now do they?
Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no deeds to Gilmore
Girls. And I don’t own matchbox twenty’s Mad
Season.
Author’s Note: Eek, okay. I erased Book II. Why? Because I was unhappy
with the way things had been going. So good-bye to that draft. This draft will
still contain some of the older scenes, but slightly revised- so still read
them, as well as new storylines and scenes.
*
I need you now/Do you think you can cope?/
You figured me out/I'm a child and I'm hopeless/
Bleeding and broken/Though I've never spoken/
I come undone/In this mad season.
There really was nothing like the feel of waking up
amongst ice blue silk sheets. Well, knowing how you got there might be a step
higher, but at least she knew she was at home, her father’s, and in her own
bed. So either she had walked half asleep up a grand staircase, or someone had
carried her from the drawing room she had come into after arriving from Stars
Hollow. Most likely the latter. Lola felt a new weight on the bed and opened
one eye to see Venus settling on the bed.
She reached down and started rubbing the White Persian’s
head absently. Five more days until summer break was over, and she’d have to
reenter the halls of Chilton Prep again. If only global warming meant an
elongated summer, and summer vacation. Lola sighed as Vennie jumped off the bed
and wandered off to places unknown. She closed her eyes and melted back into
the silk sheets. Or would have been were it not for the annoying ring of her
telephone. Lola groaned and transferred it over to her answering machine. It
was most likely Aurora, after all.
Speaking of which, since everything seemed intent on
keeping her awake, she reached for her night table and came in contact with the
book she was currently reading, The Unabridged Diaries of Sylvia Plath. To coincide, of course with Aurora’s reading of The
Bell Jar. However, probably unlike her friend,
she had only reached page nine. But then again, being around her mother, and
not to mention the Rory-clone, Eadon, was a rather exhausting task. Hardly ever
leaving time for pleasure reading, despite the fact that her mother herself was
an avid reader.
But now there was nothing to do but read since no one was yet in town. Aurora was still
at the beach with her mother, and her father if he’d arrived yet. Marguerite
was across the coast, visiting her father, and new stepmother. Zander Hanes had
been in Wales since July. Pat, for reasons still unknown to her, and his family
had gone to spend the summer in Vermont, of all places. Augusta had gone back
to the City, and Devon to Maine. Even Dallie had left Hartford, for he was also
in the City, just further in the gutter than his sister, choosing to spend the
summer months as a guest in his paternal grandmother’s house and do good in the
world at a camp for inner-city children. She’d never understand him, for there
was charity, which meant giving up your Thursday nights to volunteer to be a
cashier for the Food Project, a grocery
store full of donated groceries that was available to the misfortunate at a
very discounted price. And then there was living in their territory, subjected
to possibilities of muggings and rapings on your person. Dallie was insane;
she’d just leave it at that.
Lola put her book down and rolled over. Well, she
couldn’t just spend the rest of the summer lying in bed reading Plath novels. After all she had lessons and volunteer
work to realign, and phone messages to catch up on.
*
Summer
had to be the worse time of the year; at least it was for Aurora Thomas. Screw
the naysayers to school; they didn’t have to spend their so-called vacations
husband hunting. Speaking of which, it was coming close to the time when she’d
damn her father anyway, considering the fact that he had faxed her mere hours
before with the list of potentials that were in the near vicinity of the beach.
She buried her bare feet into the warm sand, and readjusted her sunglasses. Who
had time for husband hunting when one had a book to read and a mother to hide
from?
She
looked down at the paper at her feet, scrunching her nose in distaste. Damn her
father anyway. Aurora scanned the contents of the letter:
From The Desk of Jamison
J. Thomas
Like she already didn’t know who he
was. Really.
List of Potential Husbands-
updated as of August 21st, 2028.
And that was it. Splendid. The list
was being updated more and more frequently the closer Aurora got to the age of
eighteen. May as well read because she knew her father would quiz her later
that night on the little facts about each potential son-in-law.
Mackenzie Ambrose. 29. Born in Tayside of Scotland, raised in Oxfordshire, England. Twice divorced. First marriage to Anne Shadow, childhood sweetheart. One child of that union, a Rachel Ambrose. Age: 6. Second marriage was to Simone Deveraux of Manhattan. Is in process of divorcing, one child also of that union. Mackenzie Ambrose the second. Age: 4. Financially the best prospect. Downside: he already has his heir apparent.
Robert Foxworth. 19. Has the misfortune of being son to Angelina Dupree, and is doubtful he is a true Foxworth. But his father would shot himself in the head rather than confirm his wife’s liaisons. So his inheritance, if not his bloodlines, is secure.
Bartholomew
Lennox IV. 21. Currently attending Yale, wants to be a corporate lawyer. Only
son (and heir) to Bartholomew Lennox III and Brooke Rivers
Lennox. For some inane reason goes by the name of “Tolly”. One of the top choices,
for his obvious legitimacy and good financial sense shown thus far.
It had been a tradition many years standing that when she
received this list she would wait until the last possible moment until
pretending to seek them out. And when she did it was usually at a social
gathering, where she could only spare a few minutes to chitchat. But could
still honestly tell her father that she had met them. Although it meant that Aurora
was stuck with nothing but the seagulls and Sylvia Plath’s Esther Greenwood for
company.
She had managed to get to Esther’s food poisoning before
a shadow fell over her, and blocked the bright light that had allowed her to
read without any trouble. She tugged at her ponytail, and reluctantly looked up
to see a good looking man, in his early twenties, standing there, a piece of
paper in his hands. Lovely.
“Are you…” He paused looking down at his paper, before
focusing his eyes onto her. Wow, and she had thought the Gilmore blue eyes
striking. “Aurora Thomas?”
She paused to think about it for a moment, did she really
want to be bothered by anyone, even a hot guy, right now? “No.”
He blinked. “Right. So who would that make you then?”
Aurora lowered her sunglasses; really there were
advantages to spending time with Lola DuGrey. “Elly Higginbottom.”
“Really?”
“And you?”
“Well, Elly, I guess I’d be Buddy Willard.”
Damn literate men. “Fine. You caught me- I’m Lola DuGrey.
Just hiding out from the gossips for awhile.”
“Lorelai DuGrey is blonde.”
“I dyed my hair, that’s how far I went to hide myself
from the mock haut ton out there.”
“That could be true, except Lorelai DuGrey doesn’t have
freckles, Aurora, you do. Plus Miss DuGrey, which is technically Gilmore-DuGrey
if I recall correctly spends the summer with her mother.”
Aurora’s hand flew to the bridge of her nose as if she
could feel the wretched things, ignoring the last portion of his comment.
Really, she should not have the blasted spots. “ I do not.” Or at least she
shouldn’t if the foundation she had applied was worth anything. Blue eyes just
arched an eyebrow so she sighed in defeat. “Fine, you have two minutes of my
time.”
“You’re the soul of generosity, Miss Thomas.” Oh, he
didn’t know the half of it.
“At least you know my name, for all I know your parents
could have been Plath-obsessed and really had named you after Buddy
Willard."
“Forgive me,” He said as he tucked the piece of paper
into his back pocket. “I’m Bartholomew Lennox.” He hesitated a moment. “The
fourth.”
Aurora’s eyes widened in recognition understanding, “Oh
no, I take it back. I don’t have two minutes to spare, in fact I don’t even
have two seconds to spare.”
“Is the name Bartholomew truly that frightening?”
“Well yes, though to be honest I’d be slightly more
scared had you introduced yourself as Tolly.”
“Oh so you’re scared because you know why I’m here,”
Tolly nodded, and shoved his hands in his pockets. Really, he wished she’d
stand; it was rather awkward with him standing and her sitting in the sand.
Then again he wasn’t so foolish as to actually consider sitting in the sand
himself.
“No, I’m annoyed because I know why you’re here,” Aurora
corrected him, leaning back on her elbows. “And while you’re undeniably
attractive, I don’t really have any motivation at all to try and live with you
the rest of my life.”
“Well, um, thanks. I’d be flattered had I a lower self
esteem, but you see,” he crouched down, that was about as close to the sand he
was going to get. “I’m being watched.” For effect he looked over his shoulder,
before returning his attention to her. Really she was a bold little baggage; he
wondered why his mother hadn’t listed that as part of her con list. Not that he
considered it such a con, but his mother would.
Aurora looked over his shoulder, as well. “Creepy. Are
you sure you want to endanger the life of a woman? Because my answer’s a
definite no then.”
“No, it means I have about as much interest in marrying
you, as charmingly adorable as you are, as you do me,” Tolly explained. “But as
you can see I am forced to make the rounds.”
“Oh,” Aurora paused, letting his sentence sink in.
“Charmingly adorable?”
He smirked, “Yes, the freckles accentuate it, too.”
She glared at him, the effect mostly ruined due to the
fact she was still wearing her sunglasses. “You’re not seeing any freckles,
Bart.”
“Always Tolly, never Bart,” He warned her, before
reaching out with his index finger to trace the pattern of freckles that were
shown, despite Aurora’s denial of their existence. “And I see them here, here
and here.”
Aurora smacked his hand away, “I think its sun spots.
You’ve been outside too long, you should go away.”
Tolly looked at his watch, “I need at least five more
minutes.”
“I only gave you two, not seven,” she reminded him as her
cell phone ringer began to play Ani DiFranco’s Not A Pretty Girl. Aurora picked it up immediately. “Hello?” She
motioned for Tolly to leave.
“Hello Aurora,” came her father’s reply. Damn. “I hope
you’re not wasting away your day at the beach, reading some novel.” Double
damn, since that’s exactly what she was doing. Reluctantly she motioned Tolly
back over, and he shot her an odd look.
“Of course not, Father,” She said as pleasantly as she
could muster. “In fact I was just having a very nice conversation with
Bartholomew Lennox the fourth.”
“Really?” Disbelief laced her father’s voice; well she
wouldn’t believe her either.
“Yes, in fact he’s absolutely begging me to hand the
phone over to him,” She shrugged at Tolly who was shaking his head.
“Well hand it over to him then, Aurora,” Jamison
instructed her.
Aurora happily handed her compact, green cell phone over
to the glaring Tolly.
“Hello, sir.” Tolly greeted her father.
Aurora grinned and wiggled her toes in the sand before
picking up her copy of The Bell Jar. Her
father really had impeccable timing, he allowed her to kill three birds with
one tiny stone: get rid of Tolly’s unsettling presence, get out of talking to
her father and allowing her to return to her book. When you were clever, life
was good. And to think Dante condemned the cleverest of the race to hell.
She hadn’t gotten very far when her cell phone was
dropped beside her into the sand. Huh. There went that one, oh well she had
wanted a new one anyway. Aurora looked up at Tolly.
“You play dirty,” was Tolly’s only comment.
She gave him a guileless smile. “Well you are my
potential husband, I thought it only fair that you talk to your potential
father-in-law before you go proposing marriage.”
He just grinned at her in return, “Like I said,
charmingly adorable.” With that he tapped her so-called freckles at the bridge
of her nose and walked off.
Aurora glared at his retreating figure; well at least she
now knew why Lola spent so much time complaining about Dallas Mariano. Some men
were just plain insufferable.
*
The gym was cloaked in shadows except for a small section
where a ray of light beamed down from the broken window. But that was off
limits, anyway, a few beat up orange cones blocking it off from anybody that
might accidentally stumble across the shards of broken glass. Despite appearances, it was a relief to have
a portal through which the usual stuffiness of the gym could escape. Dallas
Mariano pulled at the hem of his dark green shirt, and tipped back in the
chair.
“Are we going to read today, or can we forgone all
activities that we cause dehydration?” Damien Jeffries, the only other
counselor that was on for this shift during the hottest hours of the day.
“I’m going to have to go with a no, since it may prove
dangerous to forgo breathing,” Dallie answered him. “Otherwise I’d be glad to
sit here and do nothing.”
“Ah the life of leisure, you’re accustomed to,” Damien
said jokingly, for he couldn’t picture the down-to-earth Dallas Mariano in
possession of a trust fund.
“Oh yes, it’s parties and lounging by the pool all the
time,” Dallie rolled his eyes. “I jest, though I shouldn’t. Because I do know
those people.”
Damien rolled his eyes, “It’s too hot to think.”
“Or breathe. At least in here,” Dallie agreed.
“Too hot to bring them outside.”
“We’d never survive in a place like Arizona,” Dallas commented
as he looked down at the box of used books beside them.
“Good thing we’re in New York then.”
“Good thing,” he looked down at the books again. Really
they should be doing their job.
“I hear books on CDs are all the rage,” Damien brought
up.
“I’ll bring the player tomorrow, if you bring the CDs,”
Dallie propositioned. “But until then we really should be reading them
something.”
“Fine. I’ll keep them in line if you do the reading,”
Damien replied. He wasn’t going to risk dehydration when most of the liquid had
been already drunk during the lunch break.
“Lovely,” he winced as the phrase came out unwittingly.
“I haven’t read Shades of Grey enough in
my lifetime yet.”
*
There really was
nothing better in the world than sitting outside of a New York City café
sipping an espresso, despite the heat wave that had unleashed itself onto
eastern coast. At least that was the case for Augusta Mariano as she sat, doing
just that, while highlighting notes from her observational binder.
“Hey there girlie,” An
Irish-accented voice said from behind her.
Aggie’s highlighter froze in
mid-swipe but she didn’t look up at him. “Just because I broke that…thing off
between us is no reason for you to stalk me, Finvarra.”
“I’m not stalking you. I still have
business here too, y’know?”
Augusta lifted her gaze up to watch
him sit across from her. “Right where I’m sitting?”
“In the city,” Fin brushed back some
black curls from his face. “What’s that there?”
“Notes,” Augusta replied shortly,
before returning to her highlighting.
“On?” He prompted.
“Lola,” she paused for a moment.
“Some on Dallie, too.”
“And she doesn’t mind that you’re
deconstructing her life and putting them into neat little boxes marked
‘motivated by’?”
“That’s psychoanalytical,” Augusta
told him. “How do you know that I’m not into humanistic psychology?”
Fin snorted, “You?”
She glared at him for a moment. “And
to answer your question, of course Lola doesn’t care. Apathy
might as well be her middle name. And it’s not official. It couldn’t be anyway,
since I’m friends with and related to the subjects.”
“That’s not a very nice thing to
say,” Fin pointed out. “Even if I do happen to agree with you.”
“Lola’d agree with me too, and
besides what kind of psychiatrist would I be if I sugar coated everything? Not
a very good one, that’s for sure.”
“What else are you working on?” Fin
asked with a sigh.
“Next I have to start research on
D.I.D.”
“Did?”
“Disassociate Identity Disorder,” Augusta
gave up and put down her highlighter, “You know, multiple personalities?”
“Sybil and all that. Got it.”
“Sybil was a schizophrenic,” Aggie
mumbled, for lack of anything better to say.
“I thought she had like a hundred
personalities.”
“Closer to sixteen,” Aggie informed
him. “All misdiagnosed.”
“That’s screwier than having did in
the first place.”
“D.I.D,” Augusta corrected him with
a sigh. Really, he was doing this just to irritate her. “Is there a point to
your little visit or did you just want a psych lecture?”
“Well I was rather curious about
some of Freud’s theories. Maybe you’d like to read some of them to me?”
She rolled her eyes and leaned back
in the chair. “Harlequin novels are less smutty than those, so I’m going to
have to go with a ‘no’ on that one.”
“You’re just afraid of blushing when
ye get into all that Oedipus Complex and penis envy,” Fin teased. “Though it
might be the Elektra Complex where you get to blushin’.”
Augusta glowered. “I’m giving you
five seconds to vacate that seat. Any longer may or may not lead to
castration.”
He played at being offended. “You
mean you don’t enjoy the immense pleasure of my company?”
She refused to blush, and settled
for awkwardly crossing her arms instead. “No.”
“I’m still staying at the Edison if
you change your mind,” He winked at her as he stood. “Until then, I’ll leave
you as you be.”
Augusta watched as he disappeared
into the mass of people. Now all she had to do was analyze if that was a good
thing or a bad thing.
*
The two worst things in life had to be moving into a new apartment and entering the dreaded friend zone. Unfortunately for Ashley Leese, both things were happening to her at the same time. It wasn't so much the new apartment that actually had a lot of possibilities once she got rid of the unmistakable smell of dog. It was more the lugging of boxes up 4 flights of stairs and a stoop. Which apparently did not count as a flight, though it certainly climbed like one. For this reason alone she was refraining from snapping at her two companions, they didn't deserve it. Although one of them was the cause of the voyage to the friend zone.
“If you don’t yell at us, I’ll buy
you an ice cream when we’re finished,” Chuck told her as he hefted another box
from the trunk of her car.
She snorted, “After this I think
I’ve earned at least a meal at Arby’s.”
“Earned, yes,” Chuck agreed. “Going
to get, no. I only have enough money for mere ice cream.”
“Then you are highly underpaid at Best
Buy.”
“Ah, the nonexistent perks of
minimum wage.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Ashley told him.
“I got a fifty cent raise during the summer.”
Chuck heaved a mock heavy sigh, “And
you put it on me to supply you with supper?”
Ashley didn’t even blink, “Yes, of
course.”
He just shook his head. “So what’re
you up to during the long weekend?”
“I told Dev I’d go play beach bunny
with him at the beach of the tourists,” She wrinkled her nose. “Long Sands
Beach.”
Chuck shrugged, “It’s only York, it
can’t be that bad.”
Ashley sighed, looking back at the
door. “We should make it up the five flight of stairs before Dev comes back
down.”
“Four flights,” Chuck corrected her.
“And why not? Devon’s in the best shape out of all three of us.”
“That’s because Devon’s been actually
going up and down the four and a half flights of stairs,” Devon commented as he
joined them at Ashley’s car. “While you two have been down here…” he stopped
mid-sentence to eye the both of them curiously.
“Talking,” Chuck finished for him.
It wasn’t jealousy, but it was close enough to
give Ashley an idea of how to get over this ‘just friends’ thing. And the beach
might be the perfect place to do it too…
To Be Continued…