Title: When She Cries
Book: III
Chapter: Two
Chapter Title: Just What You Need
Rating: R.
Coupling: Right now? A/F, K/L, D/A and D/S.
Disclaimer: Aye, captain. I hold no deeds to Gilmore Girls. And I don’t
own John Mayer’s Sucker.
Time Frame: Like a week after the last chapter. I
don’t go into a lot of detail about it though.
Author’s Note: This one goes to Jess, because with out her there would
be no Sierra. And to Katie, because without her I just would take longer to
write more. And to Kait, should there be more said?
*
I see your world with
rosy colored glasses on/
What a right would I see wrong/
I could never have that power over you.
A cloud of sugar fogged Dallie’s vision. Very funny. Really. What had ever happened to the old way of getting someone's attention by smacking him or her? He missed those days.
"Graduated onto the hard stuff, did
you?" He took the gum cigarette away from his girlfriend of the past seven
months, Sierra Parke.
Sierra laughed and fell into step beside him.
"While you were off turning twenty, Kait and I took a road trip up to
Kittery."
Yummie's. Of course. "Bring me back
anything?"
"Yes," she took the gum back and
unwrapped it. "So don't be surprised if your birthday gift turns out to be
the entire ten thousand tons of candy that use to inhabit Yummie's."
"I'll try to contain my shock."
Sierra popped the gum into her mouth.
"That's all I ask for."
Dallie wrapped an arm around her shoulders.
"Well that, and more."
"Naturally."
He didn’t doubt it. “What else did you and Kait
do while I was away?” He was almost afraid to ask.
“Forget about that,” Sierra leaned into him.
“Tell me about your birthday.”
“It wasn’t anything exciting,” he began, and it
was the truth. “Family dinner. Devon brought Ashley, Aggie didn’t bring Fin…
almost entirely like a normal family gathering.”
“Except their baby is no longer a teenager,” she
looped her arm around his waist and squeezed.
“It was enough to bring my mother to tears,”
Dallie said in a mock solemn tone.
Even so, Sierra shuddered, she could believe it.
Her meetings with Paris Gellar-Mariano hadn’t been on the pleasant side. “I can
see that.”
Dallie could believe the tone of his
girlfriend’s voice. “So where is Kait?” It was a very rare occurrence, indeed, to
see one without the other.
“Well,” she unwittingly snapped her
gum on that word. “That came at the end of the road trip. We ended up at
Bennett, where Kait proceeded to make up for lost time with the Jerk. So I left
her there when I remembered that I had my own boyfriend to make up lost time
with.”
He knew that Kait and Sierra’s
nickname for the latter’s boyfriend was “the Jerk”, and he wasn’t sure if he
should feel more sorry for Kait or for Atticus, who had to live with the
nickname. But since it was usually said with such affection, Dallie decided it
was just best that he stayed out of it.
“How sweet.”
“I thought so,” Sierra returned with
a grin before leaving his embrace to grab his hand and tug him forward. “But
you’re missing the sweetest thing of all.”
Dallie stopped. “And what is that?”
She brushed the hair out of her face
as she came to a stop. “That I have a very empty dorm room.”
Then Sierra tugged him forward
again, and he followed. College was so very nice.
*
Stars Hollow, while wonderful,
wasn’t very convenient when one was looking to shop. Seriously shop, that is.
Sure, it was fine when you just wanted a little something. But if you needed
something serious, like a birthday gift for your best friend, then you really
had to go all out and drive the thirty minutes to Hartford. Especially since
your best friend had been severely down because not one, but both of her
children had left for college. Maybe Rory should just board a plane onto
Seattle and visit Lane as part of her gift. She was in between stories and
there was really nothing keeping her in the Connecticut area, any way. With her
daughter in college, and her husband…divorced from her.
“Those must be some very important
watches,” came a voice from behind her. One she immediately recognized.
But she still started, all the same.
“Lane’s birthday takes a lot of consideration.” It was weird; they’d hardly
talked since Lola had gone off to college. There was no reason for the to talk,
or for her to come over. And she’d taken herself out of temptation’s way.
“And concentration,” Tristan added,
coming around to the other side of the display. “How have you been?”
“Good,” she set down the watch she
had been looking at. If she fiddled with it any more it’d end up broke, with
her paying for it. “I’ve heard you’ve been good as well.” And then Rory wanted
to smack herself for sounding like a jealous twit.
Tristan ran his hands through his
mussed blonde hair. “I thought you didn’t read the Society pages.”
“I don’t,” she pulled on her ring
finger. “Lola mentioned Carrie during our last phone conversation.” Three weeks
ago. “Sounds serious.”
He looked down at the watches. “Not
so serious.”
“More serious than in the pass.”
Rory had always been amazed at his never-ending ability to move on, in a very
short period of time. From one woman to the next.
Her ex-husband shrugged. “I’m just
letting things happen.”
And that was the problem. Right
there. Tristan always just let things happen. He never worked for anything in
his life, with the possible exception of her affection. And even that was won
probably more easily than it should have been in college. He never worked for
anything, and why should he when everything was given so freely to him? Tristan
had all the essentials he’d ever need. Power, money, reputation and good looks,
all given to him at conception. Rory felt like she was always fighting for
something. A good name in the journalistic world, her sanity and even her own
daughter’s love. The last was something that was always freely given to
Tristan, for “Daddy” could do no bad. And Rory was just so tired of fighting.
She was at a point in her career
where she didn’t have to scratch and claw to get her work published. A story
told the way she wanted it to be told, and not the way some aloof, out-of-touch
editor in New York wanted it told. She was finally out of a marriage and a
relationship where she seemed to do nothing but lose. She’d lost her sanity,
her heart and ultimately her self. There had been a point in her life where she
just hated herself and every move she made. Being stuck in a relationship where
they did nothing but fight or fuck, and if that wasn’t bad enough, in between
the two they had to raise a daughter. To raise a daughter in a world that was
corrupt and just full of lies and deceit. How did one raise a child to be
decent when you were beginning to epitomize everything you didn’t want her to
be? And Rory wasn’t sure that despite the measures she had taken to accomplish
that task that she had succeeded. In fact the more she took a closer look at
her life, she was quite sure she had failed.
Rory couldn’t get her daughter to return
her phone calls, even when she left multiple messages in one day. And on the
rare occasion Lola did answer the phone, the only excuse her daughter would
offer is that things were quite hectic and she had been playing to return the
call. But she never did.
She sighed, “I wish you all the
luck.”
And then she walked away. She was
always walking away from him.