A Definitive Line

Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls.

A/N: This is just a little something I wrote after watching "Rory's Dance" again. Enjoy. Reviews would be nice.

She remembers the first time she knew raising Lorelai wouldn't be easy. Her six year old daughter had come home from school without a coat on a cold day in February. She had gone to school that morning with a coat, but somehow, Lorelai had managed to lose it. Her brand new winter coat. When asked what happened to her coat, the young girl shrugged helplessly and said, "I traded Mindy for this pretty bracelet."

She knows this was only the beginning. As her daughter grew older, the missing coats turned into lies. She remembers the countless times she climbed the stairs to her daughter's bedroom, turning the knob only to find an empty room, the sheets rumpled, and the window wide open, letting in the breeze. She sits on her daughter's bed and wonders why it is impossible to control that girl. She's only fourteen. But that was always the problem. She's fourteen, and has nothing in this house.

Finding her daughter's bedroom empty was almost better than the numerous times she opened the door to find her daughter on her bed, definitely not alone. The two would break apart, disheveled and breathing heavily. They'd stammer excuses, apologies, anything to make the intruder go away. And away she went. She would shut the door behind her, pausing outside of the room until she heard the muffled noise of the window closing, of the real intruder leaving. Only then would she exhale, and make her way downstairs.

She always knew Lorelai had boyfriends. The incidents in Lorelai's bedroom proved this, and as much as she wished it wasn't true, it was. She knew there were several of them, it was never the same prepubescent pimply face that was attached to her daughter's on those fateful intrusive nights. She never questioned her daughter about them, she knew it would be futile, she would receive no answer, but would surely lose her daughter out the window that night.

There was one boy that she recognized as an intruder in her daughter's bedroom several times. He was a gangly blonde boy, undoubtedly the son of one of her unimportant Country Club connections. She realized how sad it was she didn't even know his name until the day she found out he would be the father of her grandchild. She realized she should have talked to Lorelai, tried to be a friend, not just her controlling mother. But they never crossed that line. The line that defined their relationship. To stay on the side they always had was safe, comfortable. A good relationship it did not make, but neither was willing to take the first step over the line.

She remembers that day. The day she learned she would be a grandparent at forty. Some women became mothers at forty, but that was Lorelai, unconventional from the moment of her birth. She had always dreamed of the day when her daughter would give her the good news, but the dream had always entailed a ring on Lorelai's finger and at least twenty years on her birth certificate.

Yet here she was, her raven-haired sixteen year old daughter, her face uncharacteristically solemn, but glowing nonetheless. Truly, it was unfair to use the word "her's" when talking about Lorelai. Lorelai had never been her's. By blood, she was her mother, but by any other way, she was just an annoyance. All because of that damn line.