Title: When She Cries

Book: II
Chapter: Seven
Chapter Title: Lay All Your Troubles Down

Rating: R.
Coupling: Ultimately: Dallie/Lola, Aggie/Fin, Devon/Ashley, Thalia/Ethan, Paris/Jess, Meggie/Zander, Aurora/Tolly. Now aren’t you glad you’ve spoiled yourself in that way?

Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no deeds to Gilmore Girls. And I don’t own matchbox twenty’s Hand Me Down.
Author’s Note: To Ashley, because she’s been begging for this chapter for a very long time.

Author’s Note II: To whoever asked, Thalia is one of Dallie’s best friends, if you reread Book I you’ll see her every once in awhile there. Bit is Tolly’s sister and Aurora’s house guest, she was mentioned at the beginning of Book II, and introduced a few chapters ago. Meggie is one of Lola’s best friend, she’s been mentioned sporadically throughout the story and Zander, her boyfriend, has as well.

 

*

 

Somebody ought to take you in/Try to make you love again/
Try to make you like the way they feel/When they're under your skin/
Never once did think they'd lie when they're holding you/
You wonder why they haven't called/When they said they'd call you/
You start to wonder if you're ever gonna make it by/
You'll start to think you were born blind.

 

            Ashley had forgotten how much she hated the beach scene. It may have been the fact that she had grown up in Augusta, Maine, so she was quite use to Maine’s beach scene. Quite use to meaning, of course, bored with it. Which left there no other choice other than to hate it. Not to mention the fact that Devon had gone out to body surf, an activity to which she saw no point to by the way, two hours ago. He had finished forty-five minutes ago, but had stopped to talk to some people he obviously knew. Either she needed to get a new crush, or get a new way for him to notice her. Because doing nothing was obviously not working.

 

            Going over there might work, for starters. Or she could stay over here and actually try to attract male attention. She wasn’t hideous looking, she was aware of that. Maybe she could actually inspire jealousy into Devon Mariano, and if it didn’t than maybe she’d have a nice guy to rebound with. Either way something needed to change. And quickly, as well.

 

            Actually going over there would be better because then he was guaranteed to be actually paying attention. And there were guys over there, an especially cute one with honey blonde hair, with even lighter blonde highlights in them. Too bad he was way out of her league. But then again, you never knew unless you tried, right? Because right now her options were limited to making googly eyes at Devon, which is a habit she needed to break. Even if Mr. Blonde-and-gorgeous over there turned her down, it’d still show Dev that she was option to dating options and wasn’t just going to wait around for him.

 

            Right, she needed to stop temporizing making her decision. She was going over there. Ashley rolled over onto her stomach and stood up. The other thing she hated about the beach- sunburn. She was quite sure she had begun to burn on her calves. Damn.

 

            “Hey there,” Mr. Blonde-and-gorgeous was the first one to greet her, as he pushed down his sunglasses to look at her. Maybe this would be easier than she thought.

 

            “I’m Ashley,” She introduced herself, kneeling down beside him, ignoring Devon’s look at her. Besides, she had just discovered she was definitely sun burnt.

 

            She thought she saw him squint before he pushed his sunglasses back up the bridge of his nose. Then he opened his mouth, and closed it again. “Leese?”

            Ashley looked at him oddly, did Devon mention her before or something. She stole a glance at him; nope he looked as shocked as she must have. Then she peered closer at his face. Wait a minute… “Underwear boy?”

 

            “Yeah, these days I just go by Zander,” he informed her.

 

            “But it’s still Hanes, right?” Ashley questioned. Wow, he had grown up nice. Very nice.

 

            “Yes, it’s still Hanes,” Zander answered.

 

            She grinned, “Then it’s still underwear boy.”

 

            “Why underwear boy?” Devon spoke up, snapping Ashley back to the future. Wow, she had almost forgotten that he was there.

 

            “Hanes…it was this stupid thing, my cousin, Jessica, and I thought of when we were younger,” Ashley explained, dismissing it with a casual wave of her hand. “His name, Zander Hanes, sounds like an underwear brand.”

 

            “Oh.”

 

            “How is Jessica?” Zander asked. “Still a goddess-in-training?”

 

            “Still attempting to be,” Ashley replied with an exasperated sigh. “Egads, she annoys me sometimes.”

 

            “How old is she?” Devon asked, looking at the two of them suspiciously.

 

            “Sixteen,” Ashley answered absentmindedly before turning back to Zander. “So where did you go after you left Augusta?”

 

            “Hartford,” Zander told her, he gestured towards Devon. “That’s how I know Dev over there.”

            “Are you guys friends?” Ashley scrunched her nose. It’d be a weird combination.

 

            “More like a friend of a friend,” Devon answered her.

 

            “Which friend?”

 

            “Lola DuGrey,” Zander supplied.

 

            “Really?” Lola and Zander. It didn’t make sense in her version of history, but then again she hadn’t seen him since he was thirteen.

 

            “I see you’ve met DuGrey,” Zander commented. “She really is something else.”

            “Uh, yeah,” Ashley agreed. A something else she held no affinity for, but no need to get into that right now.

 

            Devon stood up, “You know I think I’m ready for that lunch you were talking about earlier, Ash. Wanna come?”

 

            Ashley shook her head, “No, I think I’m going to sit here and catch up with Zander.”

 

            Devon looked taken aback at that, and suddenly hesitant to leave. “Uh, okay. I guess I’ll be back then.”

 

            “All right,” Ashley smiled at him before he left. By God, could her plan actually be working?

 

            Zander leaned over and lowered his voice to a whisper, “I think it’s working.”

 

            She started, “What’s working?”

 

            “Making Mariano jealous,” he replied matter of factly.

 

            Ashley resisted putting her head in her hands, she was so transparent. But on the bright side, it was working.

 

*

 

          There was a system at the JAC household (JAC, for Jamie, Augusta and Clay, something Augusta herself had nothing to do with, and was spurned from a moment of cuteness by Clay and Jamie) when it came to phone messages. Clay’s messages went on the dark blue post its (it was a very manly color), Jamie’s on a dark pink, and Augusta’s on the yellow (people were forever complaining about her lack of creativity). So this was how Augusta was able to tell she had three messages- one from Dallie, who she would contact later, one from her mother, who she may contact later, and the last was from Fin, whom she would not contact at all.

 

            She was lying on the couch watching a PBS special on Young Freud when Jamie came in. Just what she needed- romance lecture from the queen of poetry herself. Jamie sat herself on the arm of the couch.

 

            “This show sucks,” Jamie commented, searching for the remote underneath all the magazines on the end table.

 

            “You haven’t been watching it for the past hour,” Augusta pointed out, “so how would you know?”

            “Freud sucks.”

            He did, he really did. But Augusta wasn’t about to insult one of the founders of modern psychology. “You won’t find the remote there.”

 

            Jamie paused in her task. “Why not?”

 

            “Because Clay had it last,” Augusta stated simply.

 

            “Ah hell,” Jamie groaned. If Clay had it last, it wouldn’t be found for another month. And even then it’d be discovered in some odd place like the refrigerator. She stood up and shut the television off.

 

            “I was watching that,” but Augusta made no move to do anything about it.

 

            “Aggie, you already know more than a normal psychologist student should about Freud,” Jamie replied, before taking her seat back on the arm of the couch. “I’m shocked you haven’t started murdering your mother so you can sleep with your father or developed a cocaine addiction yet.”

 

            “I’ll try to work on that, then,” Augusta told her, and then resigned herself to what was going to come. She had heard the phone ring a few minutes ago. “Well?”

 

            “Fin called, again,” her roommate answered. “Honestly Aggie, I’ve dated guys longer than a few months and they didn’t call me as many times as Fin has in the past few days during the course of our relationship.”

            “You’re free to have him,” Augusta muttered, “Can I have the remote, now?”

 

            “Don’t tempt me, I’ve always had a thing for Irish accents,” Jamie replied with a smile. “And no remote for you. You need to broaden your horizons away from psychology. I have some great poetry books for you to read. Might even help you with Fin.”

 

            Augusta shook her head, ignoring Jamie’s last comment. “No, I can’t get into poetry.”

 

            “So you’ve said before, though I’ll never understand why. You’re insulting my life passion.”

 

            “Poetry is too dragged out,” she shrugged. “It’s like, just say it already.”

 

            Jamie sighed melodramatically, “One of these days, Augusta, I’m going to make you pine and long for something. And you’ll be all whimsical about it.”

 

            “Please cease your chimerical thoughts,” Aggie pleaded as she finally made a move to take the remote back.

 

            She was quite content to sit on the couch watching Freud’s life pass before her eyes, thank you very much.

 

 

 

To Be Continued…