MAYBE TOMORROW ... gilmore girls

chapter thirteen

December, 2000

The Juniper Nook, Stars Hollow

13:10

I SHOULD be decorating for Christmas.

I should be placing baubles exactly the same distance apart on the tree, making sure no two colors are next to each other, only using red and gold and white. I should be hanging silver tinsel over the fireplace with two embroidered stockings that will never be filled. I should be changing my candles to specifically winter smells – Christmas cookie, candy cane, red apple wreath, cinnamon stick. 

Instead, I'm hauling boxes into a semi-furnished bungalow on the outskirts of Stars Hollow. It means I am now within walking distance of my sister. (Of Jethro – but that remains silent on my tongue as Evie points out how close we live now). I thought Lorelai would have shuddered at the apartment as we viewed it together, just a little way out of town, just enough to feel as if I'm living in the middle of nowhere. But, she had thrown herself down on the couch that comes with the apartment, looked out of the window and said it was not me at all. Which meant it was perfect. Which means I bought it.

Snow settles around my black boots as I stare up at the house in front of me. My house. All mine. It's a pale green, the color almost non-existent if not for the sunlight just barely filtering through the leafless trees hanging overhead. There are two windows facing me with shutters in a deep green. The shade of the forest. And there's a small porch with a rusty swing. I try to picture myself sitting on it in the summer, enjoying the cicadas chirping away in the grass, iced tea cooling the sweat dripping down my neck. I can't. I've never been able to relax like that.

The porch creaks a little under my weight. It feels lived in. It feels alive.

In one of the windows, my sister bosses around the three other helpers we've roped into lugging heavy boxes from car to house. One hand on her hip, the other pointing, laughing, head thrown back. Luke – who she'd grabbed this morning when Rory had claimed to be busy with a school project – pinches her waist as he walks by and she swats at him. Even from here, I can see her cheeks turning pink.

She twists away from him and catches sight of me standing out in the snow. She waves me in. I hold the last box. Once I take this inside, I am officially moved in. I am officially free of the house on Magnolia Avenue that my parents bought me. I am free of the gray walls and the high white ceilings. Of the loneliness beating like a heart beneath the floorboards. Of the eyes constantly staring down at me as I remember that it never really belonged to me. It was never mine.

I step inside. This house is mine. All mine.

Jethro cheers when I set the last box down in my new living room. Arms circle my waist and I am pulled into a soft, warm chest. His knitted sweater smells of cinnamon and it is better than any candle I could be relaxing with right now. I hug him back and try not to lose myself in the feeling of being touched by him. I was never the type of girl to crave a hug. My family never hugged, they simply didn't care for it and I never grew up with them – except for Lorelai. Always the black sheep. Always hugging me. And then, always pushing me away. But, I would remember the feeling of her arms around me even as I slept, missing her, missing the way she would crawl into my bed in the middle of the night and tell me a ghost story because she knew if I cried the maid would give us cookies.

How I craved ghost stories more than anything.

"You're officially a Stars Hollow resident."

"Welcome to the club!" Evie whirls out of the kitchen, holding a batch of cookies she'd baked last night and wouldn't let me see. She's plated them up – she must have taken a plate from my box of crockery on the kitchen table – and is now swinging them around for everyone to coo at. Luke ruffles her hair as she passes.