It's been a month of torment since Rory left for Washington, and nothing. Not even your basic "Rory says hey," from Lane. And there would be a lot left unsaid in a delivered "hey" from a best friend, but at least that would mean she was alive and she cared, and she wasn't banging her head with regret against every kind of national monument.
The afternoon that Rory was supposed to leave, he spotted Dean from across the square going into Doose's and felt like the subway was rushing through his stomach. He'd been the last person to kiss Rory, and Dean had no idea. Then he realized that of course she would have kissed Dean goodbye at the airport, but still. He felt like Superman anyway.
He gave her two days to get there and figure herself out before he even started seriously hoping for anything. She did skip school to see him in New York, so she was capable of putting in a little effort.
On Day 3 the phone rang when he was upstairs in the apartment, and he almost missed it since he had the Sex Pistols on loud. He banged his knee into the table diving for it since by then it was probably on the fourth ring, and what if she felt weird about leaving a message and couldn't call back right away?
He would hear her go, "Hey, how are you? What are you reading?" and the throbbing burn in his knee would be the sweetest pain in the world, a small price to pay for getting to picture her on some camp bed in a suit jacket with a flag pin on it, smiling into the phone because of him.
But it was somebody asking for Luke on the other end, so he snapped, "He's not here," hung up and lobbed the phone in the general direction of his pillow, where it bounced off onto the floor and skidded under the bed. He left it.
On Day 4 he decided it had been long enough for a letter to make its way there, but that was only if she wrote one on her first full day and maybe that was being optimistic. Still, when Luke tossed the pile of mail onto the kitchen table he had to count to five before getting up.
"You in the market for some discount flip-flops, or somethin'?" Luke said, eyeing him as he flipped past the seasonal coupons and the credit card offers.
"You know me, I'm a regular Hasselhoff," he said, not looking up until he got to the phone bill. So Day 5, then. By then there had to be something.
But there wasn't, so that gave him plenty of time to replay what happened at the wedding. He didn't remember what he said because really, everything that came afterwards superseded it, but he did recall her wrenching away and going, "Oh my God."
Okay. So "oh my God" like, "Wow Jess, Dean sucks at kissing and I just figured out why"? Or "oh my God" like, "Well, that was a mistake"? The second one. It was the second one, and she told him not to say anything because even though she hated what she'd done, she was still sweet enough to not want him murdered at the hands of her boyfriend.
When he went to bed that night, he thought his brain deserved a change of pace so he went through The Clash's discography one album at a time, to see if he could name all the tracks in the right order.
He's sitting next to Rory at one of the counter stools in the diner, and there are people around but none of them notice when he runs his hand up her outer thigh and under her school skirt, and there's only smooth skin where the elastic of her underwear would be and she looks at him with this innocent smile that makes him want to forget his own name and says, "Don't I get extra credit?"
When he jolted awake at 3 a.m. on Day 6, he had to lock himself in the bathroom for a while before he could fall back asleep.
On and off throughout Week 2, he tried to make a list of all of her worst traits. She'd done him the courtesy of reading A Farewell to Arms, only to have the audacity to suggest that Hemingway should've stuck to journalism. So, a failure to appreciate genius. That was sort of annoying. And he was positive she wasn't as pretty as he remembered, like a damn fairy princess.
Well, she sucked at telling him what she wanted. There was that. One second she was letting him drive her car and trying to keep him from living under a bridge after high school, and the next she was blowing him off, leaving him standing under an oak tree like a moron with his lips tingling while she went to slow-dance with her boyfriend.
That Wednesday they ran out of burger buns during the lunch rush and he tried to pawn the job off on Caesar, but Luke went, "Dammit Jess, the market's ten feet away," and since Luke would have a conniption if he wasn't back in 90 seconds, he was forced to get in Dean's line, which was shortest.
"No school to skip, and Rory's in Washington. What could have possibly dragged you back to Stars Hollow?" Dean sneered.
"Shut up." He slammed a crumpled five on the counter.
"Oh wow, something sure took the wind out of your sails." Dean kept the buns aloft, holding them hostage.
Jess thrust his hands into his pockets. "Take the money or next time I'll just swipe 'em."
"Well if you're wondering, she's great. Hasn't said a word about you. Thanks for coming. Don't forget the coupons on the back." Dean put the receipt on top of the buns and slid them over. Jess grabbed them and pushed past Taylor in the doorway on his way out ("Would it kill you to show a little decorum, for once?").
Dean was the one getting obscene amounts of Lincoln Memorial postcards with her perfect handwriting on the back, and when she was falling asleep with the phone in between her head and the pillow Dean got to hear her get progressively more exhausted so by the time she said, "Love you too, good night," her voice was all hushed and slow.
The buns in one corner of the package got so smashed on his walk back to the diner that Luke had to throw them out.
Sometime in Week 3 he had trouble remembering what she sounded like, and out of pure curiosity (not because he missed her) he went and sat on the bridge one late afternoon and read Othello, and found he could recall the cadence of her voice with near-perfect clarity:
"I saw Othello's visage in his mind,/And to his honour and his valiant parts/Did I my soul and fortunes consecrate." Jess, watch the road.
That didn't sound like iambic pentameter.
I think I'm allowed to break character when our lives are in danger.
Shakespeare's meant to be performed, right?
I guess so.
So? I'm just being your captive audience.
Halfway through Week 4, a blonde girl in a denim jacket came into the diner a couple minutes before 10.
"Make it quick, we're closin' up." Luke pulled the order pad out of his pocket.
He was the only guy left in the place when Luke went to check if they still had strawberry ice cream, but he knew even if there were fifty others he could still get her to come over. Casey Bergstrom in eighth grade, sophomore year with Sarah McKnight, and now here: the once-over, the cocked eyebrow, the look away. If necessary then he faked like he had an itch above his ear. Girls (fine, most girls) liked his hands, and yeah, for good reason.
"Hey," she said. "What are you reading?" It was right on the cover, but he gave her that one. He had his methods, and she had hers.
"One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Guy works in a nuthouse." He turned a page and pretended like he was still reading it.
"That sounds cool," she said. There was no way it did, not to her. She put her forearms on the counter and leaned in, a fold of singles under her hand. He kept his eyes on the book but she was close enough that he could smell the floral perfume on her.
She lowered her voice a couple decibels. "So, I'm new around here. I could use somebody to show me around." That might even be true. She was good.
"That so. What's your name?"
"Shane." She ran a hand through her hair, making her charm bracelet jingle.
"Jess."
"Sorry, we're out," said Luke, coming back in from the kitchen. "We get shipments every Thursday though, so you can keep tryin'." Customer having been served, he retreated to the register to start closing it out.
"Guess you'll have to come back tomorrow," he said.
"Guess I will." On her way out the door she slipped the cash she'd been holding into her back pocket, and even though it was a move older than time he supported her use of a visual aid.
Tonight means Week 4 is almost done, even though by now he's stopped keeping track. When closing time comes around again with no reappearances from the blonde, he decides maybe he has to face the facts: all his moves are for shit.
"Go ahead and lock up after you do the trash, alright?" Luke says. "I'm headin' up."
The night is humid, which only makes the dumpster more fragrant. Old frying oil is settled under the thick rotting smell from everything else like a greasy bass note.
There's someone sitting on the curb in the shadows, in a pink tank top and some cutoffs. Someone blonde.
"Hey," she says, turning when the steel kitchen door slams shut. "I'm glad it's you, I thought you might be that old guy."
"Who, Luke?" He hoists the trash bag into the dumpster, where it clinks into all the others.
"I guess. The guy in the hat. Is he your dad?"
"No." He sits down next to her on the curb.
"Oh. Well, he frowns like you." He decides not to follow the thread. When she plunks down a six-pack of wine coolers between them, he doesn't question it. He twists the cap off one of them and it goes down burning, tasting like lighter fluid with the faint suggestion of sour, underripe peaches, and like nothing anyone should put in their mouth with any regularity. A dog barks and it echoes against the siding of the diner.
She pulls her own bottle away from her lips with a smacking sound. She's got some kind of sticky pink lip stuff on, and it's catching the streetlights.
"So," she says. "What now?" She looks like a reject from The Real World. The last book she read was probably half of a SparkNotes, and her cleavage is all kinds of incredible. She's perfect.
He puts his bottle behind him on the concrete and braces himself against the curb with his hands so he can inch closer. He gets the floral scent again, only now it's heavier since it's layered with the sweat on her neck.
"I don't know, what do you wanna do?" He runs a couple fingers over the back of her hand and up her right arm.
Now he knows it's not him. Normal girls still know how to make out without ditching you five seconds later. Shannon/Shelley/Shhh-something pulls at the front of his shirt in a choreographed kind of way, but it's better than going upstairs and plotting how to burn his copy of The Fountainhead on Rory's porch.
Not long after that, her tongue is in his mouth and she has acidic peach breath at the back of her throat, and when he goes to feel her up she pulls down a bra strap to help him out. The six-pack gets jostled in the activity, making the remaining bottles clatter in their cardboard slots. Over the girl's heavy breathing he hears a screen door slam from next door. Sweat starts to collect between his shoulder blades.
Whatever Rory's off doing, he hopes it's making her miserable, because if she doesn't care, then fine. Neither does he.