A Gilmore Girls Summer

It starts, as so many poor collegiate decisions do, with Pabst Blue Ribbon on ice, gulped down greedily in a friend's dorm room. Not that Rory Gilmore's doing too much of the drinking herself, but with the end of sophomore year fast approaching, she wants to enjoy a bit of a last hurrah before the run up to finals, which explains why she's cracking open her third beer of the night. The one that, as Morrison so eloquently put it, you drink because it's there, because it can't hurt, and what difference can it make?

It makes a difference when her own roommate, Jenny, cracks a terrible joke and Rory snort-laughs, spilling some of that damned third beer on her teal short-sleeved top.

"Here, lemme help you with that," Dan offers, getting up from his recliner, but Rory declines the assistance, grabbing at paper towels from the dresser next to the futon she was sitting on to dab at the stain--not a big deal, she'll just have to throw her in her hamper once she gets back to her dorm--when her eyes fall to a magazine she hadn't noticed before.

She smirks at Dan and Steve, the gracious roommates-turned-hosts of the evening. "Looks like you guys missed some cleaning."

"Hey, Playboy's high-brow reading material," Steve protests, going for defiance despite his blush, and he tosses the magazine onto Rory's lap. "See, they mention easy dinners and cocktails for two on the front!"

The glossy cover falls open to one of the first few pages and Rory automatically scans it.

"Thanks to all those years of reading," she thinks to herself before she can't think anymore.

It's not that she's scandalized by the woman on page five, since the model is wearing a classic, classy, midnight blue lingerie set: push up bra, lacy thong, thigh-high stockings, and high heel pumps. Nothing too slutty or revealing. Probably the kind of content guys glance by when they're trawling through Playboy to do other things.

No, the problem is that the woman could've passed for...well, not her mom, exactly, but maybe a fictional cousin, with the sharp, attractive contrast between her pale skin and jet-black hair. Not to mention her toned arms, mischievous smirk, and perky tits.

At that realization, Rory's stomach flips the same way it had when Professor Walsh, her Alcohol in American Literature professor and a distinguished novelist already at age 35, laughed at a dirty double entendre in a Hemingway short story. Or like it did last week when she unexpectedly bumped into Mrs. Egnatchik, one of her favorite librarians on campus, out at a restaurant a couple of weekends ago.

She doesn't have a type, exactly: Professor Walsh ("you can call me Aoife, if you like," she'd told the class on the first day, and Rory hasn't done that yet, but the name is awfully pretty) is 5'10, all lithe limbs and long, dark hair in vintage, thrifted dresses, whereas Mrs. Egnatchik is a shorter, bottle blonde who wears no-nonsense blouses and slacks and wouldn't look too out of place in a spin class with some twenty-something college students.

It's the first time in a while that she dims the bright lights in her mind, lets herself loosen up enough to actively acknowledge her bisexuality somewhere other than the lucid suspension between waking and sleeping, when she's in a dream about a date and she's out at a coffee shop or a bookstore with a woman, not a boy.

She'd had an inkling of that recognition with Paris long after they'd become friends, that a latent attraction lay underneath their initial passive aggressiveness and childish "anything you can do, I can do better" competitions. And plenty of her girlfriends and classmates at Yale are attractive, too. Thinking that doesn't have to be weird.

What's weird is considering older women, like the one she saw in Playboy, who looks to be in her mid-thirties, if Rory had to guess, as she sneaks one more peek before closing the magazine and returning it to its resting place on the dresser, joking, "Now that I read some Playboy, I'm ready to cook a roast chicken, so I'll have to have everyone over for a dinner party!"

Her friends' laughter pulls her back into the evening, but her thoughts about Professor Walsh and Mrs. Egnatchik stick with her when she's back in her dorm after the party's wrapped up, trying to sleep.

For a flash of a second, her stray thoughts about her mom's resemblance to that random model resurface, too.

___

Stretching herself thinner over the summer and going for a more ambitious internship than a part-time reporting gig at the Stars Hollow Gazette probably would've been the right move, but she'll have all of junior year and next summer to beef up her resume, and, in any case, she's going to fucking Yale. Doors will open for her.

Like her bedroom door is right now, in mid-June, with her mom announcing, "It's the working girl's first day at the presses!"

Rory yanks the blankets up over her head. "'S too early."

"I have coffee, fresh from Luke's, for you. Unless you want to stay in bed, in which case I'll happily drink it--"

"I'm getting up."

Lorelai's responding grin is the epitome of smug satisfaction. "Thought so."

Rory sleepwalks her way to the kitchen--coffee first, then shower is always the Gilmore girl way.

"Better?" Lorelai asks, almost teasingly, after she's taken a couple deep drinks of her beloved jitter juice.

"Of course. You should know," Rory answers, managing a little sass of her own despite being up at an earlier hour than she'd like. "You gifted me your favorite addiction."

"But imagine if you'd gone to college without such a refined coffee palette," Lorelai counters. "You oughta be thanking me, kid."

Rory lifts her cup toward her in a half-joking, half-heartfelt gesture. "Here's looking at you, mom."

It'll be helpful to get out of the house more often precisely so she can do less looking.

She hardly means to, but her mom's wearing her usual summertime mix of flowy sundresses and t-shirts and cutoff jean shorts, showing off bare arms and collarbones, uncovered legs, sun-kissed shoulders--

"Snap out of it," Rory chastises herself in the shower, shaking her head to try and dislodge her weird thoughts. "She's your mom."

She spends the rest of the morning on autopilot while her mom gets ready to head over to the Dragonfly, pretending everything's fine.

"No need to be nervous about this internship," she rationalizes. "It's just the Stars Hollow Gazette, after all."

The office is a hop, skip, and a jump away from her house--she could honestly bike here if she awoke early enough--but going through the minutiae of driving helps calm her apprehension, as does the routine to her first day--seeing where her computer is, being introduced to everyone around the office, getting the green light to use the coffee maker in the kitchen, etc.

Plus, her first article will be a write-up on Stars Hollow's upcoming 4th of July festival and its history.

"Research," Rory notes under her breath. "Right up my alley."

Conducting interviews isn't exactly her strong suit, given her introverted nature, but she'll have to get used to it to be even a half-decent journalist or reporter, and this is about as low-stakes a story as she could write to start. It takes her about a week to get it done, which feels like too much time, but Diana, the editor, says it's fine, so she relaxes a little.

Her inner perfectionist nags at her as summer continues, though. Insists she should be aiming higher, refusing to settle for the comfort of another three months and change in Stars Hollow.

Take that worry and throw in her weird feelings toward her mom, and it all adds up to Rory not feasting on sweet and sour chicken and crab rangoon on a lazy Friday night in mid-July.

"You okay, Rory?" Lorelai asks, using chopsticks to gesture toward her half-eaten takeout container.

"Sort of," she mumbles, shrugging half-heartedly. "I just--I kind of wonder if I made the right choice, taking an internship here with the local paper. I feel like I could be doing more."

"That's possible," her mom agrees, nodding along to her point. "But also--you're at Yale, Rory. Freakin' Yale. It's not like you have many opportunities to take a break when you're at school, and you're working your butt off there, so I think one quieter summer is much deserved. Plus, you can start planning to take an internship during the school year before you head back. Make it a goal, along with spending as much time as possible in the Sterling Memorial."

Rory chuckles a bit at that. "You know me too well. That's a good plan, though. Thanks." She chews her lip, wondering if she should share the other source of her anxiety, but maybe getting her secret out in the open, at the very least, will help ease some of her mental load.

"There was one other thing I wanted to discuss," she says quickly, before she can chicken out.

"Hmm?" Lorelai hums around a bite of her chicken fried rice.

"I've thought this for a bit of a while, but I've only become more sure of it now." Rory takes a deep breath to steady herself and presses forward. "I'm, um, pretty sure that I like girls about the same as I like boys."

"Okay," Lorelai nods, putting down her food and scooting over to offer a wraparound hug. "First off, I'm so glad you felt comfortable enough to tell me, and I love you, and..." she peters off--a rarity for any Gilmore girl--before continuing, "Sorry, I'm just not sure what else to say. Or if you had anything else to say?" she gestures back toward Rory.

"Kind of," she admits, relaxing in her mother's grasp. "I'm still figuring out how to define myself, and it's a bit up in the air, but I feel pretty confident in saying that I'm bisexual? For now, at least?"

"Got it," Lorelai answers sincerely. "And, you know, if that changes and you want to tell me, or if you don't, or if you want to figure it out on your own--whatever you need," and Rory is sure as anything that her mom means it, "I'm here for you, kid."

Lorelai presses a kiss to her temple, rubs her right forearm with her left hand and her back with her right to soothe her further, and Rory's comfort causes her to slip up.

"There is something I was thinking." She weighs her options: make up a little white lie, or couch the truth.

"I've never really kissed a girl before. I mean, Paris and I did--"

"On spring break!" Lorelai interjects with a whoop.

"That was something," Rory observes dryly. "But it happened so quickly, and it was kind of a joke, and I wasn't exactly paying attention. So I was wondering if I--"

She trails off, uncertain if she should ask what she truly wants to, when her mom asks gently, "What is it, honey?"

"If I could kiss you," she blurts out. "Like, a peck. A barely-there kiss," she explains, almost blabbering. "Just to feel what it's like so I won't be so nervous if I meet a girl at school or something and I get to that point with her."

"...you know it's gonna taste like Chinese, right?"

"Mom," Rory groans. "Can you be serious for once, please?"

"I am serious. And don't call me Shirley," Lorelai deadpans, getting another groan from her daughter for the bad joke. "Really, though," she adds after taking a drink of water, "you can do that, if you want."

"Wait," she's sure that she hasn't heard correctly, "I can?"

"Yep. I did say I'd be here for whatever you need. And this might be a bit unusual," Lorelai admits, "but then again, so are we. If I can help you feel more comfortable with pursuing non-straight romance..." she cringes. "Sorry, not sure what the best terminology is, but that sounded strange as I said it."

"It's okay," Rory answers earnestly. "I get what you meant. If I was pursuing something with a girl."

"Exactly. If I can help you feel more comfortable pursuing something with a girl, I'd be happy to do it."

"Okay, then. So, um..."

She and her mom both laugh awkwardly before Lorelai takes the lead for a second.

"I know I said this already, but I love you no matter what."

"I love you, too," Rory murmurs, and she scooches a bit closer to her mom, leans in, and enjoys her first real kiss with a woman.

The softness of her skin, her lips, the caring gentility of her mom's actions--the fact that she knows her mouth, has seen its owner sip coffee and chow down on burgers and laugh thousands of times--it's all incredibly comfortable.

Almost too comfortable, Rory realizes, because this peck is going to change to an actual kiss if she doesn't pull back, so she does (even if she doesn't want to).

"Did that help?"

Her mom's voice comes out throatier than she's used to hearing it, which will be another problem for her to handle after this whole oddball conversation comes to a close.

"Yeah. Definitely. Since now I'll have a better sense of what to expect. Thanks, mom."

She eats the rest of her meal in silence, looking everywhere but her mother's lips.

___

That kiss may have only been five seconds of summer, but it lingers in the back of Rory's mind for a while after that.

Sure, she's enjoyed kisses before. Had plenty of good ones with Dean and Logan, and done plenty more than kiss with both of them, too.

But the initial kisses hadn't tipped her world off its axis anywhere close to the degree that the one with her mom did.

"Then again, it was my first kiss with a girl. Or woman. Whatever," she waves away the distinctions in her mind. "It was different. Kissing guys was something I'd expected to do since I was fourteen or fifteen. This was new. That's probably the only reason I'm still thinking about it."

Between her internship with the paper, having the library open more with its summer hours, and some of her friends from college being close by (okay, more like forty five minutes away, but that's as close as you can get to Stars Hollow without living on a farm), she manages to stay out of the house more than she'd initially planned to during the summer. Her mom makes a comment or two about it, but not too many, and they still hang out plenty. It's not too weird.

Until a heatwave consumes the town in mid-August, complete with sticky, soul-sucking humidity that knocks the power out in most of the old buildings around town.

Including the Stars Hollow Gazette office.

Which means Rory has a rare Friday off, along with her mom.

"Surprised you're home today," Rory remarks over breakfast.

"What's the point of being the boss if I can't give myself the occasional vacation?" Lorelai answers. "Plus, this is the first weekend in months that we haven't had to host a wedding or a family reunion or something. Figured I should make the most of it. Although, with the weather..."

She wrinkles her nose in disgust, and Rory follows suit, commenting, "It feels like the best thing to do today is nothing."

"I agree with that for the most part. But--" Lorelai looks up at Rory with that small, sly smile, the one she always wears when she's got a surprise up her sleeve, "your grandparents are headed out of town for a vacation this weekend."

"Oh, right--aren't they going to that fancy winery and hotel in New Hampshire?" Rory remembers.

"The Haunting Whisper Vineyard, dah-ling," Lorelai sniffs, affecting a posh, stuck-up accent, breaking it with a laugh. "They're leaving later this afternoon, as a matter of fact. So we could have the mansion's pool all to ourselves to cool off."

"Sounds like a plan."

Purely for the heat relief. That's all.

Rory slips away into Yoknapatawpha County for the next few hours--she's taking a course on Faulkner next semester and wants to refamiliarize herself with As I Lay Dying before then--but the day's sticky heat distracts her eventually, and she's glad when her mom gets off the phone with Emily and announces, "They're heading out now. And they even gave the staff the day off, so it'll be just us."

"Are we fancy enough to have the run of the Gilmore house to ourselves?" Rory jokes.

"Definitely not. But it could use a little break from all the snobbery. Pack your swimsuit, a towel, and whatever you wanna bring with us to read and we can leave in, say, ten minutes?"

"Sure."

Rory goes to her room, digs through her closet, contemplates wearing her usual maroon one-piece bathing suit.

"Then again," she thinks as she holds it up in the mirror, "it's so dark that it's close to black. I don't want it to absorb sunlight and make me even hotter. So..."

She grabs her other option.

"Red and white gingham bikini it is."

"Your curves don't fill this swimsuit out as much as they should," her mind whispers when she puts it on after she and her mom get to the mansion and pop into the boathouse to change. "No wonder so few boys have been after you this summer."

"Who cares? My worth isn't tied to dumb boys and how they might feel about my body," she scoffs.

"No, of course not. But the real reason you don't care about them is because of your not-so-little...crush, shall we say?"

"It's not a crush," she tries to argue back, but seeing her mom when she comes out from the other bathroom annihilates her weak argument.

She's wearing a baby-blue bikini, one that's a near-perfect match for her eyes. One with a halter top, tied up in the back, and Rory wills her gaze to stay away from her mom's bounty of cleavage. Except now she's noticing that her hair is tied up, too, so her neck and the back of her shoulders are almost completely bare. And she's wearing one of those pairs of bottoms with an oversized ring on each side to "sew" the back and the front together.

Rory tries even harder not to gawk, but her eyes keep flickering up from the ground to feast on the gorgeous, expansive canvas of her mother's exposed skin.

Until Lorelai notices, shoots her a mischievous grin, and comments, "I know what you're thinking."

"What?"

She might have answered too quickly, might have given herself away--

"That Emily and Richard would just die if they knew I was wearing something this scandalous in their gaudy mansion!" Lorelai crows triumphantly as she retrieves a glass from the kitchen and pours herself some ice-cold water from the Brita in the fridge.

"Yeah," Rory laughs weakly after a beat. "Exactly."

Lorelai gestures at her with her glass. "You want some? I know we're gonna be in the water, but still. It's really hot."

"Yeah, you're--you're right," Rory corrects herself, just in time.

"And would you mind getting my back?"

Her mom offers her a tube of sunscreen, and of course, it's the rub-in kind.

"Sure. If you don't mind getting mine after."

"Course not," Lorelai answers.

She shouldn't luxuriate in her mom's touch, but it's soft, and the sunscreen chills her skin.

She tilts her head back, lets her shoulders drop.

"That's it," her mom whispers. "Relax, Rory. No need to be tense on our day off."

"No need at all," Rory repeats the lie.

___

Swimming isn't a typical Gilmore girl activity--reading and lounging by the water usually is--but then again, they're not at a typical pool. The one at the Gilmore residence is gated off, private, heated to a perfectly comfortable 82 degrees, maintained with hydrogen peroxide rather than chlorine to avoid causing that nasty eye-stinging sensation for swimmers.

All that helps to explain why Rory's staring, absolutely mesmerized, as her mom makes a graceful leap off the diving board into the deep end.

Emily always says old wealth is better than new because you can't buy the upbringing, the ease in the environment, and damn if her mom isn't the best-looking proof of it, easily swimming laps here and there.

Rory pretends not to stare at her ass as she hauls herself out of the pool via the side ladder, pretends that she can't notice the rivulets of water running down past her collarbones, imagines that she can ignore just how low the bikini bottoms sit on her hips.

All that pretending goes out the window when Lorelai shouts, "Cannonball!" and launches herself high off the diving board, her hands clasped together under her legs and her knees tucked up close to her chest to maximize the splash zone.