"Luke you old softie."
--☆--☆--☆--
The Gilmore Girls were not looking forward to this Friday. Of course they had the entire week before Friday arrived but it was already a source of stress for the twins. This Friday was the twins birthday and of course that meant their birthday would be spent with their grandparents. Now while they normally were fine spending their Fridays with their grandparents the twins were actually looking forward to having a normal Friday night spent in Stars Hollow.
Everyone would come to their house and they'd eat all the delicious food Sookie would make for them. All would be right in the world. But of course Emily doesn't know no for an answer. So they'd be able to have their Stars Hollow gathering but on the Saturday after their birthdays. But what they didn't realize was Emily was planning an entire party for the girls, a party they didn't want.
Cassie Gilmore was innocently walking through the hallways of Chilton with a book in her hand. She was trying to get to the cafeteria but her plan to get there unnoticed didn't go as she planned when she heard Josh running up behind her.
"Hey Gilmore!"
"What?" She quickly turned around, catching him slightly off guard since he had to take a small step backwards.
"I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday," He laughed.
"It's not my birthday," Cassie said confused.
"I'm a couple days early, sue me."
"Wait, how did you know-" Before Cassie could even finish answering her question Josh held up a small letter.
"On Friday, at 4:03 and and 4:14 in the morning, Lorelai Leigh and Cassidy Hayden-"
Cassie grabbed the letter out of his hand, stopping Josh mid sentence. She looked down at the letter or rather the invitation to a birthday party that Cassie didn't know about. She continued reading the letter, growing more and more annoyed by the second.
"When did you get this?"
"It was in my mail," Josh shrugged, not understanding why Cassie was so confused. "I have to say I am honored to receive such an invitation."
"Who else got one?"
"Everybody."
"Oh, now you're kidding," Cassie scoffed, shaking her head as she looked down at the letter again. "I'm keeping this," She told him before walking away.
"That's her," A girl whispered. "It's her and her sister's birthday."
"My parents are forcing me to go."
Cassie quickly walked down the halls, feeling nothing but relief when she saw Rory. Cassie linked her arm with her sisters and at the same time they held up the invitation.
"Emily," Cassie shook her head.
"What do we do?" Rory asked.
"We tell mom and put this whole thing to rest," Cassie told her.
"Deal."
--☆--☆--☆--☆--☆--
The twins walked into Luke's diner with the same frown on their face they've been wearing since they saw the invitation. They hated being the obligation to their students. They weren't friends with the Chilton freaks, all they wanted to do was spend their Friday with their real friends.
"Wow, that's a nice face," Lorelai said when she noticed the look on both her daughter's faces.
"Coffee."
"Fries," The twins said with absolutely no emotion.
"Bad day?"
"I've now used the word sucked so much it's lost all meaning," Rory told her.
"Well this will cheer you up?"
"Is it fries?" Cassie asked her mother.
"Nope."
"What is it?"
"You'll see," Lorelai undid the zipped, pulling out a mountain of tulle.
"What is that?" Rory asked, with very little emotion in her voice.
"That doesn't look good," Cassie said, a concerned look in her eyes as she looked at the tulle.
"These are our party dresses," Lorelai told the twins with a real smile on her face.
"So it's a Halloween Party?" Rory questioned, still sounding unamused.
Listen, you. So I'm shopping today with your grandmother and it's a whole three hours of "Who are you buying that for, Mom? Have you met the twins?" and then finally I talked and she listened and she wound up getting you both something I think you're really going to like.
"Really?"
"Yes, really. And of course she insisted on buying us these dresses but I think I can do something with them to make them better."
"I sure hope so," Cassie muttered, causing Rory to kick her underneath the table.
"Wow. I've never seen you so cheery after spending time with Grandma," Rory said.
"Well it's been a long time since we got together and didn't end up fighting. It was refreshing. It wasn't exactly fun but I didn't get that shooting pain in my eye like I usually do."
"Wow. That's great," Rory looked over at Cassie and they both knew with that one look they couldn't tell Lorelai about the party. For so long they've watched Lorelai wish her relationship with Emily was better, and now they were bonding. The twins couldn't take that away from her.
"Yeah."
Cassie sat up with a smile when she saw Luke walking over with a plate of fries and coffee for their table. She had a huge smile on her face when he set the plate down in front of her.
"God bless you," She said before picking up a fry.
"So I hear you're having a party Saturday."
"Yeah. Mom's famous for her blowouts."
"The best one was their eighth birthday," Lorelai told him.
"Oh, yeah, that was good."
"Core memory, for sure," Cassie added between bites of her fries.
"The cops shut us down."
The cops shut down an eight year old's birthday party?"
"And arrested the clown," Rory added.
"I don't want to hear any more of this," Luke announced to the Gilmores before walking away from their table.
"So, now tell me, why Miss Lemonhead today?" Lorelai asked as she looked at both her twins. Cassie quickly put another fry in her mouth so then Rory would have to answer first.
The oldest Gilmore hesitated for a second, trying to come up with a reasonable lie before saying. "Nothing. I-I'm fine. I just got an A- on a French test that I should have gotten an A on."
"Oh, honey, an A- is awesome," Lorelai assured her.
"Yeah, it's - it's fine."
"What about you?" Lorelai looked down at Cassie who knew she had to come up with a lie too.
"The Yankees lost," Cassie told her, which wasn't true. The Yankees didn't even play a game that day.
"Aw, I'm sorry honey. They'll get 'em next time," Lorelai put her hand on Cassie's arm, trying to comfort her despite not knowing anything about sports. "Let me see. Maybe we should really embrace the whole tulle thing. Go totally modern Cinderella. What do you think? It's your birthdays."
"Yeah. Lucky us."
--☆--☆--☆--☆--☆--
It was approximately 4:15 in the morning when Lorelai walked into the bedroom of her youngest daughter. She had just pulled herself out of Rory's bed and headed back the stairs to continue the ritual that she would do every year.
"Happy birthday baby girl," Lorelai whispered as she placed a light kiss on Cassie's cheek.
Cassie hummed as Lorelai slid into her bed beside her. She rolled over to look at her mom, trying to rub some of the sleep out of her eyes. "Hi." Cassie wrapped her arms around Lorelai's arm, snuggling into her mom the same way she did when she was a little kid.
"I can't believe how fast you and Rory are growing up."
"Doesn't feel fast," Cassie said, her voice still waking up from sleep.
"Mnh-mnh, trust me, it's very fast," Lorelai told her. "What do you think of your life so far?"
"It's pretty good," Cassie smiled as she looked up at Lorelai.
"Any complaints?"
"Well I'd like it if bad hair days went away," Cassie answered.
"Agreed, I'll work on that," Lorelai told her, making Cassie smile. "You wanna know what I think?"
"What?"
"I think you're a smart and fabulous kid, and the best friend a girl could ask for."
"Right back at ya," Cassie whispered.
"And it's so hard to believe that at exactly this time many moons ago, I was laying in exactly the same position-"
"Oh, here we go."
"Only I had a huge fat stomach and big, fat ankles, and I was swearing like a sailor..."
"On leave," Cassie said for her, afterall she's now heard this story sixteen times.
"On leave- right. And there I was..."
"In labor."
"And while some have called it the most meaningful experience of your life, to me, it was something more akin to doing the splits on a crate of dynamite," Lorelai said as she continued her story about the twins' birth.
"Do you think the Kennedy's do stuff like this?" Cassie asked but her question went unanswered.
"And I was screaming and swearing, and being surrounded as I was by a hundred prominent doctors, I just assumed there was an actual use for the cup of ice chips they gave me.
"But there wasn't."
"But pelting the nurses sure was fun, and that's how you got your name," Lorelai told her but Cassie already knew that.
She knew the story of her name, she knew how she was also supposed to be named after her mother. Her name should've been Cassidy Lorelai Gilmore, or at least something like that. Until her stupid father got involved. Which is how she ended up being named Cassidy Hayden Gilmore. At least her middle name wasn't Christopher.
"Are we gonna do this every year?"
"Shh, I'm getting to the part where he sees your head and Rory is screaming in the background," Lorelai told her then she continued the story.
Cassie closed her eyes listening to the story until eventually she fell back asleep and Lorelai went back to her bed and back to sleep. The Gilmores didn't wake up again until their alarms went off. The twins decided to wake up a little bit earlier, giving them time to get a proper breakfast from Luke's.
The girls met up with Lane and began walking towards the diner. "You should not have to go school today," Lane said as they pushed open the door to diner.
"I agree," Cassie announced, following her sister to the counter.
"We have to- Latin test," Rory told her.
"Every day you have a test. When do you learn anything?" Lane asked them.
"Hey, wrong table." Luke told the girls, causing looks of confusion to appear on all three of their faces.
"Since when is there a right table?" Rory asked him
"Since the coffee cake I baked for you and the stupid balloon I blew up are at that table over there," Luke said pointing to the table in the corner. The Gilmore twins smiled as they turned their heads, noticing the table luke prepared for them.
"You blew up balloons for us?" Cassie asked him but he didn't answer, he only frowned.
"Aw, Luke you old softie,"
"I count to three and it's gone," He told them.
"Thank you." Rory said before gathering her CDs and the three of them were heading towards the table.
Cassie sat down beside Lane, and immediately picked up her fork to get into the coffee cake. Rory was still a little quiet, because she was reminded how they would be forced into spending their birthdays with the Chilton freaks. Lane noticed this before Cassie did so she asked, "Hey, you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm just- I'm getting old, Lane," Rory answered as Cassie looked up at her.
"You seem a little quiet this morning," Lane observed.
"That's because we have our executions tonight," Cassie said, referring to the party their grandmother was planning.
"It's bad enough that I've to see these stupid kids from Chilton every day, but tonight, on our birthday? I've never even talked to most of them. We've only been going to this school for a couple months, they're gonna think we're the biggest freaks."
"You got that right," Cassie said, taking another bite from the delicious coffee cake.
"We need our grandma to get people to come to our party."
"We didn't even want this stupid party," Cassie added.
"What did Lorelai say when you told her?" Lane asked.
The twins looked at each other then Rory sighed, answering the question for the two of them. "We didn't."
"Why not?"
Because of the pudding," Cassie told her.
Lane turned her head, looking at the youngest Gilmore with raised eyebrows. "Oh, right, I forgot about the pudding."
"Our Grandmother served us pudding the other night, and then she went shopping with mom, and they didn't fight. I don't know. They're never getting along, and now they're getting along..."
"And we knew if we told Lorelai about the invite then that would be the end of the pudding," Cassie said, finishing Rory's thought.
"You know you can buy pudding."
"It's one night right?" Rory asked.
"Right," Lane nodded.
"One night of hell."
"Not helping," Lane said as she looked over at Cassie.
"Sorry," Cassie went back to eating her coffee cake, doing her best to enjoy the food. She looked up, seeing her smile and so did Lane.
"Why are you smiling?"
"Oh, just thinking about pudding."
Cassie, of course, didn't believe Rory. So she turned around in her seat just in time to see Dean walking away from the diner. Cassie smiled turning back to face Rory but her sister had this pleading look so Cassie didn't say anything and simply took another bite of her coffee cake.