Story: Breaking the Connection

Author: LitJJAiken

Rating: PG-13

Summary: Jess' take on the phone call in "Those Are Strings, Pinocchio."

Disclaimer: If I owned Gilmore Girls, the scene I transcribe in this story (which is also not mine) never would have happened, because Jess never would have left (but yes, I'm happy for Milo).

A/N: This is a one-parter I wrote after getting off school today. I think a lot of us were wondering what Jess was thinking after hanging up the phone in that call that sealed the coffin on the Lit relationship. So I decided to write it. Hope you like it.

As always, to Joan, Loz, Helen, Katherine, Lauren, and Summer -- y'all are the best.

The phone booth stood in front of him, mocking him. You can't call her; you're too scared. He stared at it. It was his connection back to Stars Hollow, if he wanted it to be. First he had to pick it up. That was the hardest part. It didn't help knowing that no good could come out of this call; he knew the only thing that would probably happen would be that she would give him a blow to his ego and hang up on him.

Jess ran his hand through his hair and sighed. He couldn't do it; he couldn't call her and hear her voice again. He might begin to regret his decision. Or worse yet, he might completely reverse his decision and go back.

But going back would do him no good, he knew that. There was no way in the world that Rory would ever forgive him. He had abandoned her. This was the second time he had abandoned her, in fact, without saying goodbye either time. And he had a feeling that this time, she wouldn't take a bus ride to come see him and say goodbye. He doubted she would even if he weren't all the way across the country.

Jess looked around. He saw a couple walking down the sidewalk, holding hands. They looked content just to be in each other's presence. He wondered if he and Rory had looked like that before things started to go bad. Before he began lying to her and shutting her out.

He had called her a few times since he left. Every time that she picked up and said, "Hello?" in that innocent, sweet voice of hers, he lost his nerve. He always ended up staying connected for a split second, and then hanging up out of fear. Just like their relationship-- connecting with her and then breaking that connection because he was scared of letting her too close.

Jess finally decided to cut his losses. He took a step closer to the phone and picked it up. He dialed the digits he had memorized many months ago.

She picked up after the first ring. "Hello?"

He was silent. Despite his resolve to talk, he couldn't find words.

"Hello?" Jess assumed she got impatient, and she hung up.

He replaced the phone on the cradle. Why couldn't he do this? Today he had even given himself a pre-game pep talk, so to speak. It wasn't as though she could do any physical harm to him from three thousand miles away. The only thing she could do was hurt him with her words. Then again, her words were pretty powerful against him.

That was it. Jess shook his head at himself. He sounded like a typical whipped boyfriend. He was going to call her, and he would either talk or listen to her talk. And that would be the end of that. He grabbed the phone again and dialed the number for the last time.

"Hello?"

Again he said nothing.

"Hello?"

He could tell she was moving around. He suddenly remembered that today was her graduation. Good one, Jess. She was probably moving somewhere private where she could tell him off the way he deserved. Jess braced himself.

"Jess? Is that you?"

Yes, it's me.

"Jess, I'm pretty sure it's you and I'm pretty sure you've been calling and not saying anything but want to say something."

He did want to say something. He couldn't believe this; even he hadn't known the extent of his communication problems. He felt as though he were mute; he had forgotten how to form words.

"Hello? You're not going to talk? Fine."

It wasn't for lack of wanting.

"I'll talk. You didn't handle things right. At all. You could've talked to me, you could've told me that you were having trouble in school and you weren't going to graduate and that your dad had been there, but . . . you didn't."

Right. He, Jess, could've talked to her, Rory, future Yale attendee and top of her class (she may have even been valedictorian, he didn't know), about how he wasn't going to even get his high school diploma. He had no doubt she would've been nice about it, but it would've been a fake nice. Jess knew that Rory couldn't comprehend apathetic feelings toward school; school had been the focus of her life since she was little. She wouldn't understand at all. And his dad . . . Rory thought she knew what it was like to be abandoned. But her dad was simply a couple of hours away from her. Jimmy had left Jess after he was born and never sent so much as a postcard his way. Rory wouldn't understand that. She thought she would understand, but Jess knew she couldn't.

". . . . And you ended up not taking me to my prom and not coming to my graduation and leaving again without saying goodbye again and that's fine, I get it, but . . . that's it for me."

There she went. Jess laughed bitterly on the inside. She had managed to sound shallow and self-centered, which she usually was not, by mentioning prom. Prom was a stupid tradition anyway, and certainly not important enough to include on the list of reasons why your boyfriend shouldn't have left you. Graduation, though -- that was truly important to her, and he had wanted to be there. He felt a quick stab of guilt, the latest in a series since he watched her get off the bus without telling her where he was going.

"I'm going to Europe tomorrow and I'm going to Yale and I'm moving on . . . and . . . I'm not going to pine. I hope you didn't think I was going to pine, okay?"

Of course he hadn't expected her to pine. Well . . . maybe just a little bit. But he hadn't expected her to lose her cool and break down and spend day and night thinking of him. He expected a few sad thoughts, maybe a day or two of irregular moping, and then she would move on. She would go to Europe, she would go to Yale, and she would forget all about him. She would forget their relationship and that connection that neither had ever experienced with anyone else.

"I think . . . I think I may have loved you but I . . . I just need to let it go." He heard her take in a shaky breath, as if she was about to cry. "So . . . that's it, I guess. Um . . . I hope you're good, I want you to be good, and, um . . . okay. So . . . goodbye. That word sounds really lame and stupid right now, but there it is -- goodbye."

The dial tone rung in Jess' ear. He slowly replaced the handset on the cradle and as he started walking slowly away from it, he thought.

Love. He had felt his stomach drop when he heard her use that word. How could she know? Jess surely didn't know -- he may have been in love with her, and he may not have been. He didn't think he had ever loved anyone in his life, and therefore didn't know what it was like. How could he know what it was like if he never felt it before? For him, there was sex, but never love. He tended to stick with things that gave him instant gratification and didn't require much analyzing. Analyzing was for books, not life.

And there was the other word again -- goodbye. It seemed to be such an important word for them, so loaded -- it was the reason Rory came to see him in New York. It was the reason she was mad at him now. And it was what she used to simply end their relationship for good. Goodbye was spoken, and the phone connection was broken.

As he walked further away from the pay phone, he thought about the other thing she had said. "I hope you're good." No matter how mad she was at him, no matter how shallow she was being (he still thought that the prom comment was shallow), she still reminded him that someone actually gave a shit how he was doing.

Jess wasn't good at the moment; he was actually feeling pretty badly. But he knew that eventually, he would be good. Now that he was able to live on his own terms (he knew Jimmy wouldn't impose a lot of rules on him, if any) and unattached to anyone else (such as Rory or Luke), he would be able to really look at himself and maybe figure out something useful to do with his life.

And maybe, just maybe, one day, he and Rory would find each other again, sometime when Jess had himself together. Sometime when the timing was better.

Jess continued down the sidewalk. As he came upon his new favorite bookstore, he went in to enter the worlds of authors around the world, pushing all thoughts and memories of Rory Gilmore and the past year and a half out of his mind.