MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter five

October 2000

19:45

61 South Fairway Drive, Hartford

MOST SINGLE thirty-one-year-old women spend their Friday nights doing one of two things: going out to a club to get drunk and find someone to take home, or eating takeout with their cat while they watch rom-coms and pretending to believe in love.

And yet, here I am, spending my well-deserved Friday night at my niece's sixteenth birthday party.

I gulp down more wine.

I'd arrived just after Lorelai and Rory, having to wait in the kitchen with my sister while Rory changed into her pretty new dress, so we wouldn't be in the way of the multitude of 'staff' rushing about trying to get the place sorted. They're all wearing the same red waistcoats, it's like sitting in a circus tent. Mother had bought us dresses for tonight, and yet Lorelai had somehow found a way to cut hers into something actually quite pretty. Would it be awful for me to call her a bitch for it?

I glance across the living room at my sister. She's wearing navy, the top half crushed velvet and the bottom a flimsy material that was most likely meant to be hidden beneath more velvet. While I'm stuck in a satin dress that swishes around my calves and has oddly puffy sleeves. It's the same colour as the red wine swishing around in my glass. My mother has always found a way to pit Lorelai and me against each other; navy versus burgundy, golden jewellery versus silver, the sun versus the moon. I guess, after a while, we'd started pitting ourselves against each other.

Lorelai meets my eye across the room and gives me an exaggerated eye-roll before going back to her conversation with Mitzi Hollerman. Something warms my chest. Is that heartburn?

"Ms Gilmore, I really have to ask about the last math test."

I take another sip of red wine before I turn to face Paris Geller and her two – clearly bored – cronies, Louise Grant and Madeline Lynn. Their friendship has never made much sense to me, but then again, who am I to speak about friends? Here I am, stuck on a Friday night, at a teenager's sixteenth birthday party surrounded by most of my students.

My parents are my only friends... and I don't even think they like me.

"Paris, you're meant to be enjoying yourself."

"You gave me an A minus! How can I enjoy myself? I'm meant to be studying, yet here I am stuck at the most tedious sixteenth party in the world all because of my parents." Paris' shoulders only tense up more when she lets out a long sigh. I wish this wall would swallow me up. "Sorry. It's your family, right? I just– I need to know how to get a better grade."

Maybe, I never should have been a teacher. Maybe, I should have become an accountant with my father. Maybe, I could have found a research job with the NSA. Maybe, I could have done anything else that doesn't involve me standing listening to my students complain because they didn't get the top grade of the class. She'd feel better if I told her that Rory got a B. But, I keep my mouth shut. I'm not my mother.

"It was a hard test, Paris. Don't feel bad. All your feedback is on the test, and if you want to talk about it further, come to my student hours after class. I'm sorry, but I'm not your teacher twenty-four-seven."

Paris lets out a gruff huff and storms off. Madeline and Louise shrug, obviously having been paying no attention to anything but each other for the past five minutes, and then saunter off after her. I watch, for a moment, as they blow kisses over their shoulder to two boys in my other tenth-grade class who blush bright pink and try to hide their shocked grins in their sodas.