Before a long procession of listening to names of young adults (some older-older some younger), watching them cross the stage to get their degrees, and listening to more speeches from Yale's Dean of Admissions to Yale's graduated Valedictorian and Salutatorians, a celebration was a requirement. According to Grandma Gilmore, in honor of the single granddaughter of their only daughter who graduated with Honors at the Gilmore alma mater.
The 680-occupant room that Emily Gilmore reserved, on Yale campus, glittered with many guests celebrating Rory's graduation. There were friends (both business and Stars Hollow fellows), family (including the Haydens), women from the D.A.R., and Yale alumni families (LDB members). It was just too many people. Too many for Rory's current anxiety.
Rory hadn't been feeling all that well that evening, nor the days before—after taking her last final. She brushed it off as stress with everything that comes with the last month, of the last year, of college.
Even after everything slowed down for the seniors, she was mentally freaking out. The nausea didn't help either. She played it as a stress-inflicted bug from moving out of her college apartment and moving into the real world, but even then, she knew this was too much of a reaction to be a possibility.
Her apartment has been packed up to a couple duffle bags of clothes and shoes and necessities prior to finals and this party. She should in no way be stressed out or freaked out. It just didn't make sense. The sickness she has been feeling has lasted for weeks now.
Still suffering through it, Rory put on her practiced society smile—one that took countless Friday Night dinners and Lorelai-guided-training in the mirror to perfect. This, this was all because her grandparents put together a grand gathering and she didn't want to disappoint by not showing up, this is practically her party. Rory hated disappointing people, there was no helping that.
In attempt to settle her stomach, Rory had plucked a champagne flute from the waiter that swooped around the shimmering crowd and swallowed it, but the bug wouldn't go away. Her stomach rolled in refute to the sparkling drink, so she excused herself from a conversation with a few D.A.R. members to go to the bathroom. They, in turn, easily dismissed her to discuss the upcoming event that Twinkie Bullrush, a new lady joined through marriage of an older Mr. Simmons, was taking charge of. Apparently, everything she decided on was tacky.
Mother of the graduate always kept eyes on her only daughter as she manned the room as a well-versed hostess that she no doubt picked up from Emily Gilmore.
Christopher had found Lorelai and asked her a question while following her line of sight to his daughter. Lorelai didn't answer him, she all but ditched him with her drink as she followed Rory to the women's room. A few eyes had caught her sudden movement and begun to ask questions among themselves.
At the thrash of the door and the steeled click of the bathroom door closing, Lorelai heard retching from one of the stalls of the empty bathroom (that she checked by looking under each door). When she found her daughter's feet, she knocked on the locked stall door.
"Rory, sweets, are you in there?" Lorelai asks.
There was no other sound than gasping breaths, groaning, and dry heaving. There was a pause, large intakes of breaths, and a flush before Lorelai got a response. Lorelai hoped and prayed that her daughter wasn't in a condition that she thought she was. At least Emily withheld fruit from the menu.
"Yeah mom, I'm here." Rory leaned back against the stall wall; the cold soothed the heat flash she was sitting through. She closed her eyes, thoughts flying to Logan who was across the Atlantic. His parents had the audacity to show up on his "behalf".
"Are you okay? Because that doesn't sound pretty." Lorelai tried to make the situation light. Rory appreciated the effort, but it wasn't what she wanted right now. What she wanted was out of reach.
Sighing, she reopens her eyes to look at the beige ceiling. She didn't feel like getting into an inquisition from Lorelai. "I'm fine, but I'm pretty sure when you have your face in a toilet, it's not going to be pretty."
"I've been there, kid. Can you at least open the stall?" Lorelai's intuition kept hyping up her nervous ticks and she was getting impatient.
Rory shakily got up from the tiled floor next to the toilet and made a couple steps to the large stall door to unlock it. She had tear streaks staining her cheeks, looking pale as an ivory sheet.
"Oh, honey. Come here." Lorelai brought Rory into a hug. Rory made no effort to hug back with the lack of energy she had left within her. Her legs were shaky as her weight leaned on her mother for support.
Rory's emotions gave way once Lorelai took her place on the shiny tiles next to her daughter's initial placement, her body shaking in weakness as she let herself fall into her mom's familiar warm embrace. Sobs began to rack Rory's frail body as her mind rushed to make sense of what was happening to her body's systems.
"I don't know what's wrong with me!" Lorelai soothed her daughter's frazzled hair, while murmuring that she was okay as if it wasn't falling on deaf ears. "I've been throwing up all week... and it keeps getting worse!" The tears that streaked down Rory's pained face hurt Lorelai to no end. She didn't know what she was going to do yet, but she had to focus on getting Rory's attention off her pain.
"It's okay honey, it's okay. We'll sort it all out. Your dad was just talking to me earlier. He said Gigi misses you. He gets monthly phone calls now, but Gigi tries to steal a phone to call him every week." Lorelai started to divert Rory's attention, but that didn't stop her from thinking about what was plaguing Rory. She knew something was wrong with her daughter for a while as their conversations were not like they used to. She could see Rory was hiding something, and this something seems to be a thing her daughter doesn't even know about.
Rory's emotional moment subsided as she gathered thoughts on the Gigi topic, wondering if her classes towards her law degree could help her dad at any chance.
When she fully calmed down, she let go of her mom, gathered her strength, and attempted to stand on her legs like a baby giraffe. She wobbled for a moment, grasping the bar on the wall of the large stall to stable herself as she took some deep breaths, waiting for the dizzy spell to pass. Lorelai got up, smoothed out her dress and helped Rory out of the stall to clean her face and fix her hair. Rory bent down to the faucet to gather cold water into her mouth, swish it like mouthwash, and spit. She repeated it a couple times, before eating a few mints. Lorelai pulled out a small brush from her purse and calming brushed her daughter's hair as Rory fixed her light makeup.
"Are you sure you're ready to go back out there? You're still looking a bit pale there, Ror." Lorelai asked concerned.
"I'm fine, mom." Rory states, flicking the water-proof mascara brush on her eyelashes for a touch-up. Her courage was wavering, but she knew the longer she was in here the more prone to Emily crashing in here was to be.
"Now, I better get back out there. You coming?" Rory asks putting the mascara back in her clutch and flickering through a couple makeup bottles until she found her lipstick and gloss.
Rory carefully fixed the pink stain on her lips before glossing it over to give it a shine and comforting flavor. Lorelai watched her daughter pick up the scrambling pieces of her emotional weak moment and go society blank in a minute. "No, no. You go on out, I'll be out in a sec."
"Okay, but don't stay too long or grandma will surely hunt you down with a myriad of questions." Rory says leaving the restroom and her overly concerned mother grasping for answers that may never come.
Lorelai stood there, thinking: My daughter might just be pregnant. She is barely out of college and gets pregnant?! If it's Logan's then the timing of his proposal is dead on. But does he know? Is this why he's proposing so soon? I don't want my daughter to be like me, forced into that position of marrying for the reason of a child and not by choice and love. There's no way she's ready for any of this.
Braving the unknown and a myriad of questions and opinions on the rest of the evening, she bounds her way out of the lady's restroom and almost crashes into an older woman with the door and then herself. Not even a regard of an apology to the woman who strung curses at her before entering the restroom, Lorelai targeted Christopher with a need to disclose her assumptions.
Chris saw her making her way over to him and his mother with a face contorted in unwavering tenseness. A look he knew all too well when she had plenty on her mind and plenty on her tongue ready to fire at any target. "Hey, where did you and Rory go off to?" Chris asks as he puts an arm around her waist as a brief hug in greeting when she stationed herself next to him, bumping hips.
"Oh, well Rory just needed a breather and I had to check on her to make sure she wouldn't run off and steal anything." Lorelai responded jokingly, smiling up at him forcefully.
"Honestly Lorelai! Could you be any more inappropriate? This is your daughter's party and you say such things?!" Lorelai tensed, she turned around to none other than her own mother. The chastising was more than enough proof that there was never a lively moment of intolerance.
"Hi mom." Lorelai spoke dryly, her smile pulled tightly and stopped her eyeroll before she was chastised for that too.
"Oh don't 'hi mom' me. Please be civil, Lorelai." Emily scolded, her eyes moving casually around Lorelai to Christopher, Francine, and various guests she could identify over the shoulders of the not quite united family.
"Yes mom." Lorelai rolled her eyes when Emily wasn't looking; indifference naturally took place on Lorelai's face. Chris chuckled awkwardly and knew he needed to intervene.
"Hello Emily, it's good to see you." Chris says, giving Emily a chaste kiss on the cheek, letting go of Lorelai to give a small embrace to the elder Lady Gilmore.
"Hello Christopher, it's good to see you. Francine, it's been a while." Emily turned to her former closest friend before the tension of their children's choices torn them to sides of certain matters.
"Hello Emily, it certainly has been. I'm so glad these two finally came to their senses and married." Francine says as she motions to the Lorelai and Chris, acknowledging the union as naturally as she could. Knowing that this marital circumstance was anything but the wished upon scenario, Francine took the elopement in stride. To Emily it represented: No party. No celebration. No family memories. No photos. No acknowledgement of consideration in the mail, whatsoever.
On the other side of the room, Rory isolated herself from the crowd. The air was dense with chatter and gossip. Alcohol and food with revolting smells was sending the graduate into a claustrophobic moment of nausea and anxiety.
Leaning against the beige wall she fought the churning of her stomach when a waiter passed her feet away with salmon puffs on a silver tray. It didn't help that men's cologne and thick layers of old woman perfume wafted in the room with the ventilation failing to circulate clean air.
Rory let out a shaky breath and quickly swallowed the feathered trigger of heaving back down. Mouth dry, Rory blinked away any bleary focus and concentrated on the movements of her body to dispel the pins and needles she was feeling throughout her body. Smoothing out her white party dress, her mumbling thoughts of what she needed to do after the graduation ceremony spilled out of her glossed lips:
Lunch with Grandparents and Mom. Call Logan. Take things to the Hollow. Dinner with Dad and Gigi in New Haven. Drinks with the girls. Stay with Grandparents. Meet mom at Luke's by noon...
"Hiding in the shadows, muttering to yourself?" Rory jumped out of her skin, clutching her hands to her chest in her jolt of panic and stumbled back into the wall with a weighted thump. Ears nearby led eyes in her flushed direction. Her eyes trained wide on her sudden companion, mouth agape in gasping breaths. "Should I be worried that you're out to kill someone?" Logan joked with his signature smirk and sparkling brown eyes alight with amusement, but his eyes flickered between curiosity and concern as he took in her body language and her pale appearance. She shouldn't be this pale—this sickly pale.
"Logan? Logan... what? What are you do—when did you...?" Her mind buzzed and her heart pounded heavily as she stared at her hallucination. He was supposed to be in London for a couple more weeks. This wasn't possible.
"I'm not going to miss my girlfriend's graduation. That would make me a bad boyfriend to not show any support for you as you take the next big step in your life." Logan smiled at her; concern still etched in his heart. He loved surprising her, even though she wasn't always partial to it, but she looked scared. As if she wasn't believing he was standing there. He started to feel scared himself, his internal worry not matching his expression.
She watched as he tilted his head slightly like a confused puppy, his brows furrowed, and a slight frown pulled at his lips. "Ace, are you okay?"
The inquiry was adorable, but her focus was more on the fact that he was physically standing before her. His voice was a warm welcome, a resonating sound that woke her from her scattered mind. He was here. In New Haven. With her.
"You're here." It was all she could say as she looked at him with disbelief. Her breathing and heartrate have calmed to semi-normal levels, but the happiness in seeing him brought tears to her eyes. She found herself launching herself at him, holding onto his presence as much as she could. The thought of him disappearing once she let him out of her grip, gave herself even more motive to cling to him as quiet sobs of happiness slipped through her lips. Her tears soaked the collar of his pristine suit. He didn't care.
His body stood steadily with her body pressed tightly against his. Logan wrapped his arms around her, one hand nestled in her brown locks giving her a soft head massage and the other held her waist to help stabilize her trembling body. She felt frail and small. His thumb at her waist rubbed up and down on her side and he picked up on the slight ridges of her ribs. Thoughts circulated his mind at a million miles, but he would get his answers later.
Surroundings forgotten, Rory calmed her escalated emotions and loosened her grip on her boyfriend. Sniffling, she pulled away from him, but with him holding onto her she couldn't put much of a gap between them. Logan's hand that held the back of her head slipped to the side of her face, using his thumb to wipe away rouge tears and lift her head to look at him.
The blue eyes he has missed across the Atlantic were blood shot and tired. Her cheeks were sunken in, but not too much that the rumor mill could tear her apart over a ridiculous claim, only enough for him to tell she wasn't well. His hand left her cheek, and he took a half step back so he could unbutton his suit jacket. When she went to shrink back the arm still around her waist held her still. She waited patiently, hands softly clutching his jacket at the sides of his torso.
Logan reached for the spare handkerchief that wasn't his decorative pocket square—he had gotten caught by his mother and Emily Gilmore when his pocket square was missing because Rory had needed it and had decided to avoid that lecture after the second one and always brought an extra in his inner pocket.
He handed Rory the spare to wipe her nose, it tended to get a little runny when she cried a lot. She took the spare gratefully and bowed her head as she softly blew her nose and dried her damp cheeks and immediately started to swipe the spare on the collar of Logan's jacket where tears and snot had collectively inhabited in her breakdown moment. Unless you looked closely with great focus, you couldn't see that much of a tear-soaked spot where his neck and shoulder met.
Logan pulled her hand away, took the handkerchief from her small hand, and tucked it back into his empty, internal jacket pocket. He then put his hand in the internal pocket above the one holding the spare handkerchief and pulled out an odd shaped clear plastic thing that held clear liquid in a small pocket of air. Rory looked at it in recognition and looked at Logan as if she was going to break out in tears again at the thoughtfulness.
She sniffled before turning to face the wall and tilt her head back enough for Logan to drop the eye drop liquid perpendicularly. Logan silently helped her eyes to open one at a time and quickly drop a drop in before her eyes snapped back and blink furiously in refusal. Rory let out a breath as she blinked continuously until she had clear vision again. Tilting her head back up and faced Logan again, he swiped away the excess eye drop liquid that escaped her eyes and slid down her cheeks. She smiled up at him, her eyes calming down. He smiled back, bringing her into another hug, his chin resting on top of her head and both hands wrapped around her.
"Still pretty?" Rory's voice rasped, her volume just over a whisper. She swallowed, feeling the thick mucus in her throat, and almost acting on the trigger to throw up at the gross feeling.
"Your always pretty, Ace." Logan leaned back, moving his chin off her head so he could kiss the top of her forehead.
Rory went to speak, but her throat clogged. Coking on a cough made her gag and Logan instantly pulled out his jacket flask and unscrewed the lid. Rory shook her head as she tried to clear her throat.
"It's only water. I haven't put alcohol in this flask since I was hospitalized." Logan answered immediately and pushed the flask into her hand, and she gulped down the cold water, relieved. Logan rubbed her back soothingly, watching her move shakily. "If you aren't feeling well, you shouldn't be here Rory."
Rory. He was being serious. It warmed her heart at his caring nature that has slowly been surfacing over the past year and a half. But she knew she couldn't leave. So, she gave him the only answer she could muster and the one that would come with follow up questions.
Relaxing under Logan's warm presence, she handed the flask back to him with a tired: "I'm fine."
"You certainly don't sound nor look fine, Ace. You're sick." Logan's determination in being Rory's caretaker was eloquently showing. If it wasn't for the bejeweled crowd and the familiar shadows of Logan attempting to hide at short distances to eavesdrop, she would have let Logan take her to their apartment and take care of her as he does when she gets a stress fever and/or sickness around finals she's unprepared for.
"I thought I was pretty?" Rory pouted, looking up at her boyfriend of almost three years.
"You are more—and don't change the subject." Logan pointed a finger at her knowingly, his eyes told her he was amused, yet his stubbornness wasn't going to give way.
"It's my party, Logan. I can't leave. Grandma never got to do this for mom, so she has a chance with me, and I don't want to ruin that for her. She's so proud."
"I know," Logan pulled her back into him for her to lean on his shoulder, "I know it's important for you and Emily, but your health comes first."
Rory remained silent, not wanting to think about anything more.
She held him closer, "I don't want to go, yet."
"Okay. That's okay. We can still mingle and do whatever you want. The boys wanted to do an after party, but I told them to wait until tomorrow night so you wouldn't be hungover for the ceremony like I was." Logan tucked a stray ringlet behind her ear, smiling at her in support.
Rory chuckled, "Yeah that worked out so well for you."
"Hey, I'll admit my hand eye coordination still needs work." Logan joked in remembrance: he had clumsily grabbed the dean's jacket instead of his diploma the first try, blaming it on the glare of the sun.
Rory hummed, smiling in amusement. Her eyes flickered over her shoulder to see her mother staring at her weirdly. She blinked and looked back at Logan to find him busy with a strand of her hair.
Clink. Clink. Clink.
"Oh! Time for the speeches! Come on." Rory anxiously pulled her love-struck boyfriend along to the front of the crowd.
Emily and Richard's performance was heartwarming and embarrassing for Rory as she blushed under the attention. The lighting in the room, however, was suffocating. Rory could feel the back of her dress dampening beneath her cropped, Yale-blue camisole. Heat flared beneath her skin as her grandmother announced that Logan had a few words to say. Knowing her grandmother, she made it sound like he volunteered for it when he most likely was badgered into it.
Logan's speech stunned Rory to no end. She felt the emotion in his voice and watched his eyes, trying to read what other messages he was trying to express. He has the most expressive eyes; it was one of the things she most loved about him.
He had turned to the audience and saw Emily and Richard give him glowing smiles and his friends showing him dramatic thumbs up. But doubt was lingering in his thought, shouldn't he do this privately? Without the crowd? Emily had insisted that this was the perfect opportunity.
But his mouth was always faster than his brain in thinking through things. Always spur of the moment.
"Will you marry me?" That came out a lot shakier than he practiced. The heart on his sleeve bled in the silence and the unfocused blue eyes that screamed something he didn't recognize. The hole in his heart grew and sank deeper into the pit of his soul. She wasn't saying yes.
Rory, always the planner, was thrusted a neon sign with a time clock ascending in her arms. It was right there, yet she couldn't comprehend what was happening.
Those four words. She did not expect to hear them to ever come from him. At least, not for a couple more years when she would carefully toe the line. Drop some hints. That's how it worked, right? Test the waters and see if he wouldn't run. Where were the signs? Did she not see clues to what their relationship was heading towards? Did he drop hints that she should have seen?
The heat flash sweltered; she couldn't breathe. Her head spun and no words would escape her, but the words were right there. On the tip of her tongue, just one word.
His nerves were on its last stretch, cursing mentally knowing he should have followed his conscience. His mind went in every direction this was going to go until he saw Rory's deathly pale face.
"Ace?" Panic rose as her body teetered before she fell to the floor.
Many gasps were heard. Logan dropped the ring box on the piano that stood right beside him, so he could reach out to her and catch her. He watched as she fell away from him in a skipped heartbeat. He couldn't catch her fast enough.
Finn and Colin had jumped out of the front crowd. Rory's body crashed, limp against Finn, and Colin jumped to do a First Aid vital check—something he's learned from years of misconduct accidents. Logan catapulted himself off the stage to help his friends lay her on the ground gently.
He held her head in his hands with the care of holding the glass swan his grandmother gave him when he was four—the most precious and priceless thing was in his care, and he didn't know what he'd do if it shattered because he didn't hold onto it with the right care.
"Ace? Ace, please open those eyes. It's not time to slack off," Logan tried to joke while he choked on his fear that gripped his heart in a vice, "Come on, wake up. Rory, please. I'm so sorry. I should have waited. I should have listened to my own ideas." Logan pleaded with the lingering will within himself. I tried to push away the shadowed crowd from this moment. He felt a hand on his shoulder.
"Mate. She's out." Finn watched his best mate crack under the artificial light. He tried to place comfort into words, but it fell on deaf ears while his own heart was being steamrolled. Finn stepped away, dragging a hand over his face to hide the watering edge of his eyes. He had to do something to help.
Colin, the more logical one that tried to dispatch emotion from situations like this, grappled for the strength to lend out to support the man that had been his pillar for years for the sake of the woman that had gave his best friend the purpose he needed in his life. Squeezing his shoulder with reassurance, Colin gave a cliff noted observation: "Logan. She passed out. She'll wake up soon. It's highly likely that it's her body responding to stress, anxiety, and shock."
"She wasn't feeling well. I should've taken her home." Logan voiced regret as he smoothed out her slightly frizzed hair. He loved her long hair.
His moment was broken as the swarm of family crowded down around his Ace's unconscious body.
Lorelai practically ripped her away from him, while she shouted at her daughter's unresponsive form.
Emily cried for Lorelai to stop being so rash towards Rory and worked to usher the party crowd away with the help of Francine.
Richard calls 911 for an ambulance while Christopher called ahead to the closest hospital to reserve a VIP room.
From the back of the room, Mitchum and Shira Huntzberger stood in shock and watched helplessly as their son held his heart on his sleeve and then the girl simply collapsed, wondering what could cause the Gilmore girl to simply faint in front of all her guests.
Honor and Josh, standing amid the guests, held worry not only for Rory but Logan and what he was feeling. So, Honor took her husband by the hand and went to assist Logan and his soon-to-be fiancée to get a list of what t[he]y needed.
REEDITED 3/21/22
13 PAGES