Exploiting Realities

CHAPTER TWENTY - UNEXPECTED GUEST

Lorelai gasped. "Riley's home!" she exclaimed. "Let's go see her!" She grabbed my wrist and dragged me through the back door, across our backyards, and in through the Bovino's back door. Riley was sitting on a barstool in their kitchen, catching up with her mother and Alec.

"Riley!" Lorelai and I shouted in unison, engulfing her in a hug.

"Hey guys," she said, taken aback by our sudden barge-in.

"We missed you," Lorelai said, squeezing her even harder."

"Well--I can't--I can't--breathe--" she gasped overdramatically. Lorelai laughed and we both let go. "Hey, why haven't I seen Will yet?" Riley asked her mom and Alec.

"Will doesn't associate himself with this family anymore," Mrs. Bovino said, rolling her eyes.

Riley bunched up her eyebrows, confused. "Will?" she shouted, getting up and walking to the bottom of the steps. "Willy? You up there?"

No one answered her.

"Let me go up and talk to him," Alec suggested, climbing the steps.

"He's still acting up?" I whispered to Lorelai.

"Apparently," she answered, shrugging.

Alec emerged from Will's room, looking at a piece of paper in his hand quizzically.

"Apparently he's at Sweet Scoops with Miche," he read, walking down the stairs.

"Miche?" Riley asked, confused.

"I told you to fix this!" Lorelai whisper-yelled at Alec.

"Did you see him leave?" Mrs. Bovino asked Alec, who shook his head. "So he snuck out? Great. Just great! Because I really need this right now."

"I'm sorry, can somebody please tell me what's going on?" Riley asked, still confused.

"Well, Will can't go to math camp so he's rebelling by dating Miche Presley," Alec summarized, irritated at Will.

"Uh, maybe we should go..." Lorelai suggested, leading me towards the door. The Bovino's didn't seem to notice, so we escaped out the back door. We wandered over to Lorelai's bench swing and sat down.

"So. Justin?" Lorelai asked after a while of silence.

I grinned. "It's great, right? Mia's so happy."

"He's gorgeous!" she exclaimed, shocked.

"She did good, didn't she?"

"Hell yeah! Why aren't there people that cute here? Why are they all in Alaska?"

I laughed. "Well, we have Finn," I reminded her.

"And Dillon," she said, bouncing her eyebrows.

"Are you calling my boyfriend hot?" I asked her, acting fakely offended.

She grinned, "Hey," she reminded me, "I liked him first." It was true. When she had first laid eyes on Dillon, before either of us really knew him, she promised me that she would marry him someday. We often looked back and laughed at that moment nowadays.

"Right," I said. "How could I possibly forget?"

"That guy Brady isn't bad looking either," she told me.

I raised an eyebrow. "Brady McCormick?"

She nodded. "I have Geometry with him and we've started talking more lately. He's a pretty decent guy."

"Whoa, does Lorelai have a little crush?" I asked her excitedly.

"No!" she exclaimed defensively. "Gosh, can't I call a guy decent without being accused?"