It Was Never Really Goodbye - Gilmore Girls

Chapter 17

It didn't take long for Rory to start missing Logan. She had been trying to stay professional and keep her distance. Of course, he would do little things to make her smile, like a cup of coffee waiting on her desk in the morning, or a sticky note on top of a file folder that he left her telling her that she looked pretty that day.

She hadn't exactly been liking her counselor, so she was trying to figure who's advice to seek next.  She finally decided to see the last person she had ever expected that she would look for love advice from. 

When she got there, she was let in and shown to his study.  He came in about a minute later.  "Rory!  What a surprise!  Drink?"  She nodded and he set a glass of scotch in front of her a moment later and sat on the other side of the desk.  "So what can I do for you?"

She took a drink from the glass and savored the burn down her throat.  "Well Mitchum, I honestly don't know...it's..."  She was struggling with how to proceed when the door opened and Shira came in.  She poured herself a scotch and then sat down on Mitchum's lap.  Rory just stared at her.

"What?  I assume this has something to do with my son?"

Rory looked at them both, downed her scotch, and spoke, "I'm still in love with him."

Neither looked surprised by her statement.  Mitchum finally answered, "what are you going to do about it?"

Rory's jaw dropped, she was dumbfounded.  "What?"

Shira smiled, "Rory, we have known that you were still in love with him just like he's still in love with you for as long as you've been apart.  Forgive me, but neither of you grew up with healthy relationship role models, so it's no surprise that neither of you have figured out how to make it work. Hell, Mitchum and I are still trying to figure it out!"

Mitchum pulled Shira to him, "Rory, relationships take a hell of a lot of work. I can tell you that it is much easier to neglect it and find other ways to satisfy yourself, but it's never going to make you truly happy. I admire what you're doing...trying to figure out why you keep having problems. I wish I had done it a long time ago."

She sat and stared at them, "what am I missing?  Why do you guys seem ok with all of this?"

Mitchum and Shira looked at each other for a few moments, then she finally spoke, "Rory, when you came into our lives, it was uncharted territory for everyone.  Logan had never had a girlfriend before.  We always assumed that he would play around until he was forty and then he would settle down with a respectable woman of our choosing.  The fact that he was choosing to be with you scared the crap out of us."

Mitchum started talking as soon as Shira stopped, "first, we tried to scare you off.  When that didn't work, we figured that we'd just wait it out.  It seemed that it had worked a few times, but after you turned down his proposal..."

Shira picked up again, "you make Logan want to be better in a way that we never could.  We had no idea what to expect from you, or the relationship, when it started.  For all we knew, you could have been using him to further your career or pull him away from the company and us.  We didn't know you then, but now...watching him love you has been one of the greatest pleasures in our lives."

It was beginning to dawn on her that both of them working for HPG might not be purely for the company.  "Why did you put us back working together?"  She waited and neither answered, "WHY?!?"

"To bring the company and the family into the next generation at its strongest."

"How could you possibly think that was a good idea?!?" She started sobbing.  Shira came over and pulled Rory onto her lap and held her. She couldn't process any of this, for years it had been Logan and Rory against them. Now, they wanted them together???

She didn't know how it happened, but some time later, she was waking up in a strange bedroom.  She looked around very confused until she saw Logan sitting in a chair.