AN: Oh my gosh you guys! This is it! The epilogue! I just have to thank you all again for sticking with me through this story, through the good moments and bad, through Jess finding out Lilly is his, and through that little while where they weren't talking because of their bad date. I just gotta say, I love y'all, and I'm thankful for all of my readers. I'm really sad that this is over, but it gives me time to focus on Mayday and anything else I plan to write. If you have already read Seeing the Light I recommend that since it's post revival. Anyway, thank you all again so much for sticking with me these past few months. Happy reading, and please write one last review for Gravity is a Bitch.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
I met a girl
She made me smile
She made me wait
She crossed the street
She crossed my heart
She fixed her dress
She bit her lip
She let me up
I met a girl
With crazy shoes
And baby blues
The way she moves
Is changing my whole world
I met a girl
-"I Met a Girl" William Michael Morgan
Lilly walked into the house quietly. So quietly that when the floorboard creaked she nearly jumped out of her skin. She had gotten home much later than expected, and her parents would kill her if she was too loud. She took her duffle bag, and creeped up the staircase checking that she missed all the noisy steps. She stepped into her room, or what she thought was her room, and stood confusedly.
The walls were pink, and there was a kid's bed and a crib next to it. This was not her room. Lilly placed her bag in the hallway and walked down to her parents' room. She unlatched the door quieter than she had ever done before, so she didn't wake her sleeping parents. She stepped over to her dad's side of the bed because if she disturbed her mom, Jess would try and ground her even though she was in college.
"Dad?" She whisper-yelled while poking his side. Jess stirred slightly, but didn't fully wake up. "Dad!" She poked his side a bit harder. That woke him up. He looked at his oldest child completely taken aback.
"Lill?" He asked rubbing sleep from his eyes, and letting go of Rory's waist.
"Dad, what happened to my room?" She asked. Jess still didn't understand what was going on. He sat up a bit more.
"Nothing. It's the same as you left it." He flinched when Rory began to stir. She didn't wake up fully and both father and daughter let out soft breaths. Lilly shook her head, and threw her arms up.
"No, it's pink. And it has kid's beds." She tried to explain. Jess rolled his eyes, wondering how tired, drunk, or high his daughter was.
"Lill, you walked into the nursery again." He ran his hand over his face tiredly. Lilly let that sink in, and nodded slowly. "You need to learn to count." He told her as she finally realized her mistake. She had been messing up on which door went to her room ever since her sister had been born three years previous.
"Oops. My bad. G'night, Daddy!" She hopped up and kissed her father's cheek. Jess rolled his eyes, as she skipped down the hallway oblivious to the fact that she kept forgetting which room was hers. He had started to drift off the sleep when he heard someone coming into his room again.
"Daddy, there's a monster in my room." Emily ran up to his side of the bed. He picked up his younger daughter, and looked at the door that Lilly had just walked out of. "Can I sleep with you and Mommy?" She asked, shining her Gilmore blue eyes. He was a sucker when it came to his girls.
"Sure, but that wasn't a monster. It's something worse: Lilly's home." He realized now that he shouldn't have said that. Now, Emily would never go to sleep because she was too excited to see her sister the next morning. He groaned when his back got kicked by their second soccer player. He envied Rory's sleeping abilities.
XXX
Lilly woke up kind of early the next morning. She had gotten on a schedule while at Yale with all of her early classes. Her senior year was almost all morning classes, so that she would have the afternoons free to do homework or hang out with her friends.
The one thing Lilly loved about coming home was that she knew her kitchen, and she could do whatever she wanted in it. She made a strong batch of coffee for herself, and then began making pancakes. She had them in a perfect stack before she cleaned up her mess. She nearly jumped when her mother came down and hugged her from behind.
"Hey, Mom." Lilly turned around to hug her mother whom she missed dearly. "Why are you up this early?" It was around seven, and she knew that since Emily had been born her parents got really good at sleeping in when they could. Rory sat down at the table and placed a pancake on her own plate.
"Morning sickness. Which went nearly completely away after three months with you and Emily. This one is still going strong at five months." She pointed to her stomach. "And Em slept with us last night, she kicks worse than you ever did." Lilly nodded along as she sat down with her cup of coffee and a few pancakes.
Before Lilly could reply, Emily came running into the kitchen and attached herself to her big sister's legs. "Don't go back to college." She exclaimed when Lilly tried to stand up and hug Jess who had followed Emily closely. Lilly picked up her little sister and placed her in her lap, playing at the brown curls that looked like her own.
"I'm here every weekend, Brontë." She kissed her sister's head using the nickname she had come up minutes after she was born. Her parents claimed they had named her after Great Grandma, but Lilly had a feeling that it was also based on Emily Brontë. She already had a nickname picked out for Amelia, who would go by Mia after the woman who had helped Lorelai so many years ago.
"Lill, you woke up your sister last night." Jess said, coffee in hand. He hadn't gotten much sleep the past night thanks to Lilly's late night confusion. She smirked slightly and shrugged, hugging her sister tighter. "I'm sending her to you next time you wake her up." He threatened. Emily smiled brightly and nodded her head eagerly. Lilly took on a look of horror that her sister couldn't see.
"What time is Lee coming over?" Rory quickly changed the subject before Emily got her little three-year-old heart broken when she realized how neither wanted her to come to them in the middle of the night. Lilly blushed a bright red, and Jess knew he would have to look out for the blond UConn student. Even though Lilly was twenty-two, he still acted like she was sixteen and much too young to date.
"It's seven in the morning, so five this evening." She laughed in reply. Rory smiled and took a sip of her decaf coffee. Being pregnant sucked, but the result was always pretty good. "That gives me the whole day with Brontë." She tickled Emily's stomach, and couldn't contain her laughter when she heard the little girl's giggles. She very much enjoyed coming home for the weekends.
XXX
She was so close to sleep when her father came back into the room. He had been dressed in scrubs, and Lilly stood up immediately waiting his answer. "Amelia Elizabeth Mariano, 7 lbs. 9 oz. 19 ½ inches." He proudly stated hugging his eldest daughter. Lilly smiled brightly, and woke up Emily who had been sleeping on top of a few coats.
"Can we see Mom?" Lilly asked happily. Jess nodded, and picked up Emily to go to see Rory. The eldest Mariano daughter had to keep from squealing when she saw her mom and new baby sister. She came and sat next to her tired looking mother. "Aww, Mama, she's so cute!" Lilly was handed her youngest sister.
Emily came up next to her older sister, and stared intently at the new addition to their family. Rory and Jess smiled at their three girls, and laughed when Emily scrunched up her face in disgust. It would take some time, but she would get used to the idea of being a big sister. "You've already got a nickname don't you?" Rory yawned and smiled when Emily snuggled up to her while Jess held Mia.
"Pond, like Amelia Pond. That or Genovia like from The Princess Diaries. I'm still deciding." She hugged the woman who had raised her. Rory let out a soft chuckle, and then watched her husband with their newest baby. "So like, what is it with our family and extremely large age gaps between kids?" Lilly asked the moment her grandparents walked in.
"Age is but a number, Kid." Lorelai told her eldest grandchild before prying the newest one from Jess's arms. Emily glared at her grandmother, and Lilly held back her laugh at her sister's misfortune. Thankfully, Luke gave some attention to Em so that she didn't feel all left out. "Ooh, this needs a picture." Lorelai told her daughter and son-in-law when she handed the baby back to Rory.
She pulled out her phone, and snapped a picture just in time to see Emily and Lilly making silly faces, and Jess and Rory looking down at Mia lovingly. Lilly grabbed the phone away from her grandmother and smirked. "That's a keeper." She passed the phone around to their family. "We could hang it on the mantel!" She stated.
XXX
Even though Lilly was so much older than her sisters, they still had a great relationship. Every week (not quite as often after Lilly married Lee, and even less when she had kids of her own) the three Mariano girls would go out and get dinner, dessert, then went to Lilly's house (once she had gotten her own) for a sleepover. Usually that was on Saturdays, but the girls' lives got more hectic, and the Saturdays only came once or twice a month.
So Lilly sat in her car waiting for her sisters to get out of school. They had decided for some odd reason to go to Chilton, and their parents had been cool with it. Especially since Jess's book had been a New York Times Bestseller. No one was letting him forget that. Mostly his wife. Lilly smiled back at her own two kids, Fitz and Reilly. Fitz for Fitzwilliam Darcy, and Reilly for Lorelai. The kids were doted upon by their aunts.
Mia and Emily came running to the car, and Lilly jokingly shouted, "Get in losers! We're going shopping!" Eliciting chuckles from her much younger sisters. "So, any mischief at school today?" She asked them, and huffed when both her sisters shook their heads.
"We're more like Mom." Emily stated proudly, and Mia rolled her eyes. Lilly waited for a fight to break out. While she had a great relationship with the two of them, Mia and Emily didn't always get along. Most likely because of how close in age they were, and the fact that Lilly only saw them when it was fun; not when they were able to get on her every nerve.
"Speaking of Mom," She but in to make sure they wouldn't escalate into a fight. "I'm dropping off Fitz and Reilly off at the parents' house, so you two can grab your stuff." She started the car towards Stars Hollow. Lilly looked over and saw Emily fidget in her plaid skirt, and she still wondered how the kid was able to go to such a ritzy private school. Poor kid had totally inherited the Mariano side of things no matter how much she denied it.
Mia though. Mia was practically their mother's reincarnate. She was bookish, and quiet, and much too nice for her own good. She had accidentally accepted someone's promposal her Freshman year, and still went (even though she didn't want to) because it was the nice thing to do. She had been banned from babysitting Fitz and Reilly since she had been too nice to put them to bed and given them too much candy.
They all hopped out of the car as it pulled into the driveway of Crap Shack 2.0. Lilly was surprised and happy to see their father's car in the driveway as well as their mom's. She had barely undone Fitz's seatbelt when he ran into the house before everyone else. He was just like Lee had been at seven. Reilly, though, needed help getting up the stairs since she was only two. She did squeal as soon as she was inside her grandparents' home.
Lilly had heard her sisters head up the stairs to pack, so she followed the sound of insistent giggling to the kitchen where her children were. She smiled when she saw her father with both her kids propped on his knee, and her mother holding a large cup of coffee her way.
"You're the reason they won't listen to me!" Lilly jokingly pointed at her parents. They smiled and continued to dote on her children. Even after thirty-six years, they didn't listen to her. Well, twenty years for her father, but they didn't talk about that. "Mama, Daddy, you need to make sure those two raise a little more hell." She slapped a hand over her mouth when she realized what she had said in front of her very young, very impressionable children.
"We do that with yours." Rory smiled into her coffee mug. "You keep saying Fitz is like Lee, but I remember there being a little blue eyed girl who was much worse than Lee." Lilly grinned brightly at her mother.
"And if Reills is anything like you at sixteen… Good luck!" Jess handed Reilly a cookie. She gobbled on it happily, completely unaware of the situation before her. Lill threw a cookie at her dad's head and giggled.
"Oh please, the worst I did was…" She trailed off and got a worried look in her eyes. "Don't tell her any stories of me." She fake-begged. Her parents laughed, and they continued to sit in a comfortable silence. Lilly rolled her eyes in annoyance, and she started to stand when Emily finally bounded down the stairs.
"Bye, Mom and Dad." Emily hugged and kissed their parents. Mia soon followed suit once she came down the stairs. Lilly was almost out the door when Jess stopped her.
"Good luck, Princess." He smirked and kissed her forehead. Lilly smiled and hugged her father tightly.
"Love you, Daddy." She beamed as she followed her sisters out the door. She saw them waiting by her minivan (Lilly never thought she would own one of those), breaking into a run. She tripped and fell flat into a pile of leaves, giggling loudly. Emily and Mia rolled their eyes before jumping on top of their sister and rolling around in the leaves.
"Hey!" They shot up when they saw their parents shouting through the open window. Each girl caught the others' eye, and they made a run for it.
"You'll never catch us, Coppers!" Lilly screamed in an extremely odd voice while she jumped into the driver's seat.
"No, not the Fuzz!" Emily yelled out the open window.
"You guys used all the good cop nick names!" Mia exclaimed, crossing her arms.
"Dorks!" Was the last thing they heard their parents say before heading to their girls' night.