Title: Stuck With Me
Rating: T
Characters: Rory, Jess-centric
Genre: Drama, Angst, Romance

Brief Summary: Adjusting to life in the city and having a permanent father-figure, seventeen year old Rory Gilmore leaves the comfort of Stars Hollow where she inevitably meets a mysterious boy who shows her parts of the world she's only ever read about in her precious books.

(SPOILER Summary): Left recently abandoned by her mother and without many options, Rory Gilmore shows much disinterest in moving into her grandparents' ritzy Hartford home and instead embarks on a new life in New York with the father she hardly knew. Relocated, upset about her mother and unsure of her new found city life, fitting in is easily the least of her worries. Especially when she meets and is forced to work with the intriguing, quiet boy in her new English class. The problem? Neither one seem to enjoy the other's company.

*AU* I know the majority of us all love that strong mother/daughter bond, I love it too. I wanted to try something out, this is for me so if it strikes your fancy, thanks for giving me and my story a chance.

Just an alert: I apologize for any grammatical errors. I'm quite good with catching (and fixing) any typos but I'm not a pro.

Tossing and turning seems to be a regular occurrence for Rory Gilmore these nights. At first, it had begun with the heated arguments she and her mother, Lorelai, would engage in. It wasn't often the mother and daughter duo would fight but when they did, oh boy was it bad. You know you should run far away, run to find cover to keep safe but it's such a sight that you just can't leave it quick enough without getting a little taste. In the beginning, their fights would start over the smallest, most inane reasons but it didn't take long until it escalated and erupted as the months passed.

Fuming and tired of being so worried, Rory couldn't stand this different side of her mother any longer. One o'clock in the morning and Lorelai had yet to come home. No phone call. No note. Her mother's been pulling these stunts for weeks now, blowing off the late hours she'd come home at as 'just another night with the girls' or passing off a barely believable story like 'lost my key in the parking lot; found it two hours later'. Hearing the key jingle in the lock at the front door, Rory quickly climbed to her aching feet after mindlessly pacing back and forth for what felt like hours now. Maybe it was. At this point, Rory couldn't even be sure anymore.

Instead of yelling like her mouth had so badly wanted to, she opted for a sarcastic route. "What's the story now?", Rory rolled her eyes upon seeing her mother's body enter through the threshold.

Lorelai simply brushed past her and headed towards the kitchen. Oh no, Rory wasn't letting this go. Not now, certainly not tonight.

"You don't look hurt. You're not limping, no visible cuts, no twisted ankle. So what happened, you forgot your key again?" Rory scoffed.

Lorelai looked up at her through narrowed eyes after rummaging through her purse. "I'm not in the mood, Rory. Go to bed." When she saw that Rory's feet weren't moving and she crossed her arms over her chest, Lorelai resorted to a method that she came to learn no longer worked on her seventeen year old daughter: yelling. "Now! Go to bed!"

"I could have been in bed if I wasn't worrying about my increasing growing immature mother!" she screamed back. Lorelai wanted to fight, Rory was in the kind of mood to keep up and match her mother word for word. "You never call, you never tell me anything!" Softening her tone just a notch before Lorelai could rebuttal, "mom, what are you really doing? Please. . . Just tell me the truth."

"Kid," she returned to her tender endearments now but the firm tone in her voice remained. "I work, I provide for you and I am the one responsible for putting this roof over your head. It's not much and won't be winning any awards but it's done us just fine all this time. I'm entitled to a life away from this and away from you for a little while."

Rory felt like she had been slapped. Of course Lorelai had never actually laid a hand on her, she'd rather her mother's obnoxious screaming over indirectly being told that her once best friend is getting tired of her. Then the thought hit her. She didn't consider them friends? Since when did it all go wrong? What could she have done to make her mom up and out of the blue feel this way? What did she not do right? Rory wore her heart on her sleeve but she wasn't about to show how hurt her mother had actually made her feel. Maybe Lorelai would get satisfaction from that? How could Rory know for sure? Wordlessly and swiftly, Rory moved aside to let her mother clumsily push past her and headed to her room; the only sound coming from the soft click of her bedroom door being shut.

That fight was two weeks ago. Very little improvement had been made between the Gilmore girls since. Three times. Three times in the last two weeks had they shared a silly joke or smiled at one another. The sad thing was, Rory couldn't even be sure if those all-too-rare moments were entirely genuine on either side. Snapping out of her thoughts and feeling her pulse instantly quicken, she heard a loud crash from outside her bedroom door. Lorelai had taken to throwing a glass or two at the wall in one of her drunken or angered stupors lately and even though Rory had come to expect it, each time it still made her heart race. She truly couldn't place when exactly Lorelai had begun to change so abruptly. That was the funniest thing about it though, in some ways it was subtle; little by little Rory would notice something different, but in other ways it was almost like an over night change. Like heads or tails, an instant flip of the coin. And all Rory had so desperately wanted was to perform a simple flip so that her mother was back the way she used to be before Lorelai would shut her out and disappear to unknown locations at all hours. The problems didn't just end there, she'd come home drunk or call out from work and drink herself into such a numbing haze and in turn, Rory would avoid her like the plague.

As the weeks and months went by, Rory grew more and more agitated. The more she saw her mother change, the more she questioned herself and her own choices. Would Lorelai have been better off if she told her grandparents about their daughter's rapid downward spiral? Would it have done any good to call her practically absent father? Here Rory was, dealing with a closed-off, currently intoxicated, angry woman and all the while constantly having internal battles within herself about whether or not any of this was really her fault. Could she have prevented her mom's rapid changes? Swallowing her fear, she reached for the telephone and began punching in numbers with a shaky hand.

Each ring felt like an eternity. Impatiently, nervously, she began tapping her foot hoping that she wouldn't get the answering machine. Rory knew without a doubt she'd lose her confidence. It was now or never.

Just as she was about to hang up, she heard a greeting as the ringing died. Her breath hitched and her pulse raced. "Dad?"