Title: When She Cries
Book: II
Chapter: Two
Chapter Title: The Better Part of Me
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 Cold.
Author’s Note: For Jamie, for the encouragement. For Ashley, for the
bribe.
*
Tell me why you gotta be
so cold/How'd you get so high/
Why you're keeping me low/You don’t know/You don't know/
Tell me how we're gonna make it last/You're ready to fly/
I'm ready to crash/Don't go/Don't go/No.
When it all came down to it, she really only had two choices. This left Aurora Thomas pretty damn depressed. She could either see her father about the guest list for the dinner party he was throwing. Or see her mother. Since her father wasn’t one to spend the entire conversation trying to revert it back to how bright her hair was (please girls would kill for her hair), and how she really should darken or lighten it, like he did (actually her father was blessed with naturally dark hair, but the speech came from her mother, Cressida, who had just lightened her own bright red locks), it looked as if she was going to the study of Jamison Thomas. Spectacular.
The dinner party was just an excuse to
get a bunch of eligible young men, so that Aurora could meet them and think
about which one she thought would be best to marry. Then there were about the
same number of girls so that it didn’t look obvious. But it wasn’t the list of
girls that had her upset, though she could do without Spring Delaney, it was
the guy list. Even then it was only one objection, actually two if you count
for her lack of enthusiasm at seeing Bartholomew Lennox again, but having two
objections was pushing it, so if she wanted her way, she’d stick with the
bigger objection.
She hesitated outside of her father’s
study, really not wanting to speak to him. But judging from all the clauses to
her inheritance she already figured out that you had to do things in life that
you just plain didn’t like, so she knocked on the heavy wooden door. When her
father bid her to enter, she walked in reluctantly.
“Aurora,” Jamison greeted his only
child, taking off his glasses. “Did you get the guest list I left on your
bulletin board?”
Aurora stepped forward, trying hard not
to look down at the somber colored carpet. Her father had this way of making
her feel seven and freckly. “Actually, Father, that’s why I came to speak to
you.”
“You can’t change it,” her father
replied, sitting back in his chair.
“Just one,” she promised, stepping
forward once again.
Jamison sighed, “And what one would
that be, Aurora?”
“Charles van der Ark,” the name came
out in a rush, she paused to slow down her speech. “Really, Daddy, he’s not
even close to being an option. I mean his father is going to insist on a proof
of virginity test.”
Jamison arched an eyebrow and tapped
his pencil against the planner on his desk. “Oh? Is that really going to
be a problem?”
Her parents and her had an unspoken
agreement. She can do whatever she wanted, as long as she didn’t get caught,
and they would pretend that she was a chaste and virtuous daughter, an
upstanding citizen really. So she dare didn’t ruin that nice little deal. “Of course
not, Daddy.” When she was desperate she called him Daddy, a lot. “But it’s just
so violating. It’s really a matter of trust.”
Her father leaned forward in his seat.
“Put it that way, and does seem rather insulting to our family, as if our word
isn’t trustworthy.”
“Absolutely,” Aurora agreed, latching
onto the idea, she was close to getting what she wanted. She wasn’t about to
screw that up. “So couldn’t we replace Charlie?”
Jamison nodded, “Very well. I’ll
replace him with the Delphi’s son. He hasn’t returned to Brown for the fall
semester yet.”
The Delphi’s son, Jason, was a geek,
but not an asshole, so Aurora could live with that. “Very well.” There was one
more matter to discuss. “The bulletin board also said I should tell Pilar to
prepare a room?”
“Ah yes,” Jamison replied, rubbing the
bridge of his nose between two of his fingers. Talking to his family for too
long always seemed to result in a migraine. “Bart Lennox’s daughter, Brigitte
had been going to boarding school in Greenwich but it wasn’t working out.”
(a.k.a. she was kicked out) “And he didn’t like any of the schools in New
Haven, so he asked if we could let her boarder her for the school year while
she tries out Chilton. She comes tomorrow.”
“I thought you said Tolly was the only
heir to the Lennox fortune,” Aurora said, normally she didn’t care. But she
didn’t want another reason to not want to go home at the end of the day for it
had just become tolerable. But the possibility of seeing Bartholomew Lennox
popping up at her house at his pleasure, was enough to make her want to set up
house at the DuGrey’s.
“He is, Bartholomew,” she knew her
father would never call him by that name, “will be the only one who
inherits. Brigitte has a dowry.”
How utterly barbaric.
*
Seven hundred eighty-nine dollars and sixty-three
cents remained in her checking account. That left at least three more stores to
hit, and seventeen more outfits to go. Having money left over of course, this
still needed to get her through the next two days, until she got paid her next
allowance. She flipped through the rack of summer dresses; though she really
had no real need for so many clothes, considering the fact her school required
a uniform. But a uniform was for six hours for five days. You needed to look
good when not in it.
“Aren’t seven bags a little drastic for
back to school shopping?” A voice came from behind her.
“Eight, the school supplies are in the
car,” Lola replied, not looking over at the intruder. She knew who it was. “Browsing
in the woman’s section? Have something you’d like to share, Dallas?”
“If I did, it wouldn’t be with you,” Dallie
answered, “and no that is not an yes.”
Lola shrugged indifferently, “Does that
mean when you saw me from across the department store, and were magnetically
pulled to me. You just couldn’t resist being near me, though you hated yourself
for this insufferable attraction you have for me?”
“Thank you for that theory, Barbara
Dawson Smith.”
“See it’s weird that you know the names
of romance authors that aren’t mainstream.”
“I have a sister and have had a few
girlfriends,” Dallie pointed out.
“A sister who had the romance sucked
out of her by the age of three and don’t get me started on the Virgins of
Chilton,” Lola pointed out, “Dallie, have you been hiding Julia Quinn novels
under your pillow all these years?”
“Does your brain work in hyper speed?
Or do you sit up every night and think of every possible way to twist my words
against me?”
She flashed him a grin, “It’s a mix of
both, I like to believe.”
“Or maybe it’s just from being a
Gilmore,” Dallas brought up; repressing a smile that he knew would be smug. Had
they been ten years younger, that comment would have earned him a black eye.
Now he wasn’t worth the possibility of a broken nail.
As it was, however, he did get flipped
off.
“That’s very charming,” He looked
across the aisle, into the next section. “And appropriate, considering our proximity
to the children’s section.”
Lola flipped her blonde hair over her
shoulder, “Oh please, like they’ve never seen it before.”
“What a wonderful parenting style,”
Dallie replied dryly. “Pass an embraced couple, ‘oh please, like they’ve never
seen it before. They walked in on me and Dante just a few weeks ago.’”
“Um, ‘embraced couple’?” Lola giggled. “Say
sex Dallie. Really. And with a man named Dante? Was it Dante’s inferno then?”
“Did you get drunk when I wasn’t
looking?” He asked, “You just giggled, and made a corny joke.”
“Maybe it’s the Gilmore in me coming
out,” Lola suggested, leaving the dresses alone, and moving deeper into the junior’s
department.
“So being a Gilmore consists of acting
drunk, giggling and making corny jokes?”
She blinked. “Haven’t you met my Grams?
Rory?”
“No I don’t believe I have,” Dallie
rolled his eyes. “I mean, Rory is just my Godmother after all.”
“Big deal. When was the last time you
went to church?” Lola asked, looking through a stack of tee shirts.
“Probably the last time you were a
virgin.”
“See it’s been so long it hardly counts,”
She dropped the shirt she was looking at and moved into the aisle, with Dallie
following. This store blew.