17 | The Gilmore Girls
The Gilmore Girls
Molly
I'VE BEEN KNOWN to be slightly overdramatic.
Sue me.
But maybe you’d be dramatic too if it sometimes felt like your life was being scripted by someone with a penchant for dramatic irony.
I haven’t seen Jamie in six years.
Before she left me, she was my entire world. She would braid my hair for me, and take me to soccer practice, and made sure I always had a lunchbox packed.
My mother and father were always working. To me, Jamie was not only just my angelic big sister who could do no wrong. She was my hero. She was my world.
There was a time when I was to Jamie, what Lorraine is to me. The only difference is I would never leave my little sister.
She would never have to feel the pain I felt when I realized Jamie wasn’t coming back.
Jamie moved to California, mere months before our family imploded.
It was like after she left, everything fell apart.
Mom officially traded parenting for a permanent seat on the avoidance express, Dad was always working, and Lorraine was just a toddler—a tiny, demanding anchor I wasn't equipped to carry.
I was alone.
She sent emails at first, and called, but within eighteen months she became a stranger who I just happened to share a mother with. I knew why she left—her and Mom were like oil and water, always fighting and exploding on each other—but understanding why didn’t make me feel any better about it.
She still left me.
I hadn’t wanted to move to Ireland, but I was finally, begrudgingly, starting to settle. I’ve made friends. I have a good spot on the team. I was just getting used to waking up in my lavender room. I was just realizing I liked being thousands of miles away from my old problems.
And then Jamie showed up and ruined everything.
For the past two weeks, she’s been occupying the guest room down the hall.
Lorraine, bless her innocent heart, has been over the moon to meet the big sister from the pictures she barely remembered.
But me? I’ve barely given her—or my mother, for that matter—more than three muttered words in passing.
The most infuriating part about it is watching them together.
My mother and Jamie were suddenly acting like the Gilmore Girls, best friends forever, each other's ride or dies.
They made dinner together, giggling over things I wasn't privy to, acting like the last six years of silence hadn't happened.
How does that work? Mom drives her away with her drama, and now they just get to be a perfect, happy family?
It makes my blood simmer watching it all unfold.
Everywhere else besides my house, things are sunny.
We’ve won the first two games of our season so far, and within the team it seems like no one is actively trying to force me out anymore.
They pass to me during scrimmages, they make small talk if we end up beside each other, some even nod in the halls.
Seamus O’Malley mostly just ignores me now, which is a huge plus.
And Claire told me what a ride means here and, gross.
After school I hung out with Claire sometimes, other times with Chloe at her dad’s house in this estate called Oakfield. Chloe and I had a lot in common—she was a dancer, and shared a similar work ethic for her sport as me. Her parents were divorced. She had a complicated relationship with her mom.
At Claire’s house, she’s always coming up with things for us to do. Baking, scrapbooking, you name it. And most of the time when I’m over there, I end up running into Niall.
If I have to make a list of things I refuse to acknowledge, How I Feel About Niall Blue would go right on top, just under My Sister’s Existence. It makes my head spin, worse than anything going on with Jamie and I.
Do I like him? Does he like me? Do I want him to?
I have decided after careful dwelling that, yes, I liked Niall.
But that didn’t tell me whether or not he liked me.
If there was one thing I knew about him, it was that he had walls higher than mine, which was certainly saying something.
He was the kind of guy who would pick me up in celebration one night, and then feel like he was oceans away the next time I saw him.
He was unpredictable, and mysterious, and gorgeous, and I hated him for all of it.
What would Lorelai Gilmore tell me to do in this situation? Probably advise me to stop thinking about him so much.
But I can’t. He’s everywhere I look.
It’s like he’s the ocean—deep, vast, impossible to navigate, and impossible to ignore. And I was sinking.
Fast.