Other Girls of Gilmore Girls: The Lindsay Lister Story

Chapter 27

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Erica called me to ask if I wanted to help prepare some farmland near Woodbridge for bees. "Bees?"

"The co-op is going to set up some hives to attract bees and grow lots of pollinator-friendly plants. I'll fill you in." So I started going to the farmland with Erica a few days a week. Everything was brown and crisp. Old crops crumbled under our feet, with grass and weeds creeping in. We tried to pull them, but they had stubborn roots. My skin warmed under the sun each day, the path behind me slightly clear, but no matter how hard I worked, the land was as it had been when I started. "I am horrible at this," I confessed to Erica. She shrugged and handed me a tiny glass jar. It was lavender honey, and when I put it on toast at home, I wrote a full two pages about the wonder of honey and bees.

Dean threw the door open, not even putting his keys down, and called out that we had to celebrate. Tom had a huge job and room for him on it.

"Really!" I was in the kitchen, where I had been photographing honey, but I ran to him. He held up a hand to slow me down, turned around, and grabbed a bouquet he had left outside the door. "This is good," he told me. "Real good."

"These flowers!" I said while blushing. I couldn't remember a time he ever brought me flowers, actually, and it was as if the bees and the roast beef were both signs of something good to come. "Can I tell you about bees?" I asked. Dean looked confused, the way anyone would, but not because of bees. He grinned and said, "I haven't seen you excited about anything in a long time. I like this."

***

The new job with Tom had Dean out late again, but it was different this time. He would call or text and tell me when he would be home, and he'd be home at that time. I could clean the dishes without him vanishing. He got a haircut, and I could see his eyes again. They looked at me. They looked at me when he took me back to First and Last Tavern.

"Remember?" he asked. Only I couldn't remember it exactly. I could recall a feeling of security and of his strength, a high school confidence that was so long ago. We sat down and he told me he couldn't wait. "For what?" I asked.

"We can afford the townhouse."

"What?" We hadn't talked about moving in forever. The conversation felt gross with all the fighting and moodiness; I couldn't plan a future with someone who wouldn't talk to me. But now we were here. "Can we start looking? Stars Hollow? Woodbridge? Litchfield?" My mind bounced from corner to corner. I didn't even want to eat; I wanted to get home.

Dean and I raced home and pulled two chairs up to the computer. I hadn't turned it off, and I hoped that my blog wasn't still open anywhere on the screen. I hadn't told Dean about it yet because it had been a secret for so long that it seemed like it had to always be a secret. We stayed up late trying to look up listings on realtors' websites for townhouses. A few didn't even have pictures, but we tried to imagine what they looked like. We stayed up until we got delirious, and then went to bed.

Two weeks later, we found the one for us. A duplex, two stories, ready for the second of our two stories. It had cheerful green siding and tons of natural light. The laundry was in a separate room instead of two feet from the dining table. We ended up staying in Stars Hollow, but that was the only thing that was the same.