𝔹𝕝𝕦𝕖 𝕁𝕖𝕒𝕟 𝔾𝕚𝕣𝕝

Chapter Twenty-Five

It was snowing again, much to Lorelai and Dani's delight. Freddie wasn't so delighted as they were as he was already suffering from a cold. Nevertheless, he dragged himself along to build a snowman with Dani. They had been working for more than an hour and had so far made a questionable looking snowwoman with a weirdly shaped head.

"She is fat." Freddie shivered, lips as blue as his hair at this point.

"No she isn't, don't you dare body-shame my snow-wife ever again." Dani glared at him, wrapping a red scarf around the non-existent neck of her snow-wife. He laughed. Then he grinned, remembering something.

"Hey, your wife needs to match us." he said, pulling a scraggy blue wig out of his pocket and placing it on the snowwoman's head. Dani laughed and straightened it out.

"Gorgeous."

"Hey Dani, Freddie, coffee?" Rory called to them from where her and Lorelai had made a snowwoman who was now missing a head.

"Right behind you!"

***

"Hey Lor, it's me." Christopher's voice rang down the phone when she answered while at work.

"Oh, hi Chris, how are you?" Lorelai asked, writing something down as she spoke. There was a massive dinner happening at the inn and she was working like crazy to get everything ready.

"Good, good. You, uh, got a minute?" Chris asked. He sounded nervous.

"Uh oh." Lorelai stopped writing.

Chris was quick to answer, "It's not an uh oh, I just wanted to run an idea by you."

"Run it." Lorelai nodded.

"Well, I was wondering if Dani could stay with you." Chris said, hesitantly.

"She is staying with me. Have you hit your head or something?" Lorelai laughed.

"No, I mean.... more permanently." Chris clarified.

"What? Chris, you can't just- the girl doesn't even have a room here!" Lorelai scoffed. "You can't just bunk her off to me when you get fed up!"

"I'm not, I love Dani, so so much. But I've met someone, Sherry and I want this to go well, please Lor. I wouldn't do this if I didn't have to." Chris begged.

"So you're hiding your daughter from your girlfriend? Well done, Chris, real good move." Lorelai spat.

"No, Sherry knows I have daughters, she'll meet them both, I just. Please, Lor, please. She has Jess there now and you and Rory and she'll be better off with you than me. I know I'm not the best father and I leave too much, and with you she won't have that." Chris explained.

"I'd love for her to live here, but you know Dani and she's not going to want to. She sleeps on a mattress in her sister's room and ends up on the floor most nights!" Lorelai exclaimed.

"What about the garage? Can't that be her room, I'll send you her stuff." Chris tried to help.

"It's her choice Chris, she won't stay if she doesn't want to. And yeah, maybe she will be better off here, because I won't send her away for a little while which turns into the rest of her goddam life." Lorelai said, hanging up and sighing.

***

"I've got thirty pounds of aged beef, trays and trays of trout, mountains of pruned tarts. I diced pumpkins until my hands turned orange. I've got pumpkin hands." Sookie pouted. The dinner everyone had worked so hard for had been cancelled because the people coming got snowed it.

"Take a sip." Lorelai handed her coffee. She had decided to leave it for a while before she told Dani, and also consider turning the garage into a room for her, temporary or permanent.