MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter nine

October 2000

13 Apple Cider Lane, Stars Hollow

09:15

THERE IS more noise than I'm used to when I wake up. I stretch, warm for once, in a bed that forces me to sink further and further. It swallows me whole. A mouth with teeth sanded down to nothing and a tongue that floats me back into the dreamless sleep I had been enjoying. I could lie here all day, duck my head beneath the duvet, and surround myself in darkness.

Noise bursts on the other side of the door. I scurry further into the darkness, trying to keep the hazy Fall sunlight from peeking through the peaks my feet make at the other end of the bed. Please, Mother, don't make me get up. It's a Saturday. Let me lay in bed all day, where I am safe and warm and happy. For once, happy. Please, Mother, I don't need to study today. I'll study tomorrow. I'll study all week, just today, let me lay here. Let me be rested.

The door is wrenched open. I whimper, without meaning to, and burrow further into the mattress. Swallow me up. Keep me safe inside your mouth, hidden behind cloud-like teeth, floating on your feather-light tongue. I don't want to get up. I want to sleep for hours. Forever.

Please. Please. Please.

The duvet is very slowly peeled from my head, allowing the sun to seep into my curated darkness. I squeeze my eyes shut, hoping that they will leave me alone, but am instantly met with the tangy bitterness that I have come to adore. One of my eyes slowly opens to see a mug of coffee swimming in front of my vision instead of a person. I sit up, discarding the duvet. Who cares for darkness now? Who cares for sleep? This coffee smells so good. I take it from the outstretched hand and take a sip without caring to blow on it. It burns my tongue and slips right down my throat, burning the inner lining as it goes. It is so sweet. So much sugar and creamer. Is that cinnamon?

A chuckle follows, deep and familiar, and I open both my eyes.

This is not my bedroom. That is not my mother. And I am not sixteen.

Jethro sits at the end of the bed that must be his, hair mussed, faded band t-shirt clinging to the softness of his middle. One of his hands stretches on the expanse of bed between us, keeping himself upright. There is sleep still clinging to the corner of his eyes, but because of his round glasses, I can't lean forward and sweep it out of the way. I take another sip of coffee and smile. This is far better than any coffee I've ever made.

He smiles too and doesn't say anything, allowing me to bask in the coffee he has made specifically for me, and the fact that I have slept, soundly, in a bed that isn't mine, and the fact that I am warm. I am so warm.

I let out a long breath. How long had I been holding that in? Months. Years. My entire life, clutching onto this breath in case I can never get it back, keeping it trapped behind my ribcage where it beats against my bones, screams, rattles shackles that I never realized I had put on it. My chest is so much lighter without it.

My eyes tear away from his to finally look at his room. I never got a look at it during my tour of the house and last night, I had been so exhausted that he had almost had to carry me up here. I had begged him to let me sleep on the couch but he could not have that, so he forced me up here and closed the door on me before I could argue. I wonder where he slept? The couch? He never would have made Evie sleep there. I look around, pick out the clothes he shed quickly last night. His wardrobe is bursting with knitted sweaters and corduroy trousers. There's a desk pushed up against the window with more knitting supplies, magazines, and a sewing machine with a half-finished project still waiting to be handled. He rubs the back of his neck, the skin there blossoming ferociously pink beneath his touch, as my eyes drink in his entire life spread out before me. There are posters on the wall, old ones that are peeling, ones from his college years, ones that he must have picked up at yard sales. There is a messiness to this room that comes from having too much stuff and not enough space. He's a hoarder without having anything in particular to horde, just stuff that he can never bear to be separated from.