Author's Note- Okay, I lied, apparently. I said I wouldn't start another multichapter story until TDIAZ was finished, but have you ever experienced a situation where you're trying to write one story and another one just cuts in line and refuses to let the 'priority story' be written until it's out of the way? Well, that has happened to me with this. However, as it is just a short, probably 5-chapter fic, I figured I could cave and write it rather than getting bent out of shape over the intrusion.

Unfortunately, updates on EVERYTHING are going to be slow, because I've just flown away to school as of the previous Tuesday, and let me tell you, it is hectic! I'm loving my Geology class, though, so it's a fair trade, I'd say.

Away We Go
Chapter 1: Many Happy Returns

"I have too much stuff!" Rory yelled up the stairs.

"What?" her mother's voice echoed from above.

"Stuff!" she repeated. "You inculcated into me a tolerance for rampant consumerism! When did I become one of those girls with dozens of beauty products, none of which are expendable? It used to be a touch of mascara, a dab of Coppertone, and then zip-bam-boom, out the door!"

"I heard 'copper' and 'boom'!" Lorelai called.

"Never mind!" Rory hollered back. She knew her mother well enough to know exactly what the elder Gilmore would say if she were able to hear clearly. She would make very pointed remarks about one Jess Mariano, Rory's boyfriend of nearly eight months now, with probably a handful of Trojan condom references scattered in with the lipstick tube jokes just for good measure (even though everyone involved knew that wasn't necessary... yet).

For awhile there, it had been touch and go with the two of them, she reflected sadly. Less than a month before her high school graduation, Jess had taken off without a word to her. It had been her own personal hell. No one liked Jess. No one but herself, and Luke. Luke quickly became her release valve, the only person around whom she could show a little bit of the devastation she was feeling. It hadn't been okay to let anyone else see what she was going through; it would have been just one more reason for the town of Stars Hollow- her mother in particular- to hate his guts.

And then, on the afternoon of her high school graduation...

Rory threw her arms around her grandparents simultaneously. "Oh thank you, thank you, thank you! I love you guys!" she exclaimed, burying her face in her grandfather's torso in order to disguise the tears in her eyes. The present of a new car couldn't help but make her think of what had happened to her old car... and who it had happened with. Once she had composed herself, she stepped back from her grandparents, who were trying not to look too pleased with themselves.

After a brief reminder about insurance and the resumption of Friday Night Dinners when they returned from Europe, she bid Richard and Emily farewell and turned back to her mother.

"Explain the win-win-win thing again," Lorelai said, the mention of the FND making the hair on the back of her neck stand on end.

"Everybody wins, that's what it is," Rory said plainly, rolling her eyes at her mother's overreaction.

Lorelai hummed dubiously. "Listen, I'm gonna go let Sookie and Jackson know we're headed back to the Hollow, and then we can go, alright?"

Rory nodded. "Okay. I'll take the Prius." She held up the keys her grandfather had just presented to her.

Smiling, Lorelai said, "I'll meet you at home then." They hesitated, then, moving simultaneously, threw their arms around each other in a spontaneous, joyful hug. "You did it, kid!" Lorelai whispered into her progeny's hair. "I'm so proud of you."

"Thanks, Mom," Rory whispered back.

They parted ways, and Lorelai made a beeline for the reception hall, where they had last seen Sookie bouncing excitedly. Rory smiled at her mother's retreating form, happy that everything was finally coming together for her. She was free from her obligation to the Gilmores, her Inn dream was coming true, and all the hard work she had put into raising her daughter was coming to fruition before their eyes. If Lorelai was proud of Rory, Rory was every bit as proud of her mother.

And as her thoughts were lingering on all the happiest things in her life, Rory turned away and came face-to-face with the saddest.

He stood there, leaning against the granite Chilton gates, hands in his pockets, looking at her from twenty feet away. "Jess?" she whispered. He ducked his head, staring at the ground in what she could only assume was shame. She knew he only ever avoided eye contact if he was afraid of having someone read what he was feeling in his eyes.

Like a skittish deer, she walked across the ground separating them until she stood just a few feet from him. "Well?" she demanded, harsher than she had intended. Now, with him standing in front of her, the earth-shattering sadness was giving way to anger. "What are you doing here, Jess?"

He shrugged. "It wasn't what I thought it'd be."

"What wasn't?"

"California," he said. "My father... I thought maybe he'd have some answers for me. I thought maybe if I got to know him, it would be some kind of magic bullet to help me get my shit together."

She nodded slowly. "California, huh?"

"Yeah."

Apparently, he didn't have anything else to say. Or more likely, he didn't know how or just plain didn't want to say it. She couldn't handle it. "Why the hell are you here?" she half-shouted. "Why did you come back? Why couldn't you just leave me alone?"

His head dropped again, and he was back to staring at the gravel. "I couldn't stay away," he mumbled.

"No!" she exclaimed. "You don't get to do that! You don't get to just... just run away from your problems like this! You always do this, you always run away! You handled everything so wrong; you could've talked to me! You could've told me you were having trouble in school and you weren't graduating, or that your dad was here, but you didn't! You just left again without saying goodbye, again. And that's fine. Whatever. Go wherever you like. But you can't just keep doing this to me and then keep coming back here and expecting me to just fall into your arms again because I can't, Jess! Maybe somebody else could take your scarily accurate impression of a yo-yo, but I can't. I can't go on wondering if the next time I say 'no' is going to be the time when you run away for good! I can't spend every night crying myself to sleep the way I have the last three weeks! God, Jess, just stop already!"

"I can't!" he yelled. "I can't!"

"Why not!" she shouted back.

"Because I love you, and I don't want to be away from you, because being away from you hurts like hell!"

The wind went out of her anger without warning. She suddenly felt very, very tired. "Sometimes love isn't enough," she said slowly.

He looked like he wanted to cry. "So that's it, then," he responded. Rory wanted nothing more than to kiss him and make him happy again, but her self-protection instincts were screaming against that course of action.

"I don't know," she said sadly. "I've missed you like crazy, Jess. But you hurt me, so badly. I don't know if I can ever trust you again."

She thought for sure that would be enough to drive him away for good, and for a second he looked like he thought so, too. But a resolution seemed to haul itself up from somewhere way down deep inside him quite suddenly, and he nodded. "Then I'll just have to stay until you can," he said quietly, but firmly. "I want to be different, Rory. I want to be better."

Rory wanted to say she didn't believe him. She also wanted to hold him. She settled for a compromise. "Okay," she said. "Then stay." Relief washed over his face. "I'm going to Europe tomorrow," she cautioned him. "But... I'll call you while I'm over there, okay?"

"Big improvement over last summer," he said with a shrug and a little half-smile.

The need to touch him again grew overwhelming at last, and she threw her arms around him so tightly she knew she must be making breathing uncomfortable for him. He didn't complain, though. He held on just as tight.

"I missed you," she whispered in his ear.

He buried his face in her hair, still hugging her a little too tightly. "Me too," he said, just as softly. "I... I love you." It seemed harder for him to get out when it wasn't heat-of-the-moment, but she didn't care. It was sweet anyway, and despite the discrepancy between his words and his actions lately, she knew he meant it. He had a particular look in his eyes when he was being brutally honest and emotional, and it had been on his face throughout the entire conversation.

Still, she needed to set the record straight about something. "I don't know what I feel about you," she said into his shoulder. "Before you left, I was pretty sure I was falling in love with you. But you broke my heart, Jess. That's what you did. I've never felt so awful in my whole life. Now I'm just... confused."

His hold on her didn't loosen in the slightest. "I understand," he said. "I fucked up. I can't promise that I won't keep on fucking up. But I'm gonna try to be better."

"Okay," she said.

Jess leaned back just a little, just enough to brush the softest of chaste kisses against her lips. It only lasted a few moments, but there was so much tenderness in the contact it almost made her cry. She bit her lip to fight back the moisture in her eyes. "I missed you so much," she said again, and buried her head against his neck again.

iIiIiIiIi

They had ended up standing there together outside the gates of the school, just hugging, neither one of them willing to let go, for a good ten minutes. Only a page from Lorelai inquiring what was keeping her drove Rory out of Jess' arms.

For a few days, they had kept their tentative relationship on the down-low. Jess, with the money he had saved from his job at Wal-Mart, plus a few hundred bucks he claimed were from Jimmy in a pathetic attempt to make up for eighteen years of neglect, put down the first month's rent on an apartment in New Haven, and managed to find a job as a stock boy in a Barnes & Noble, which was not his ideal job (not in the least because he hated big chain stores), but it would pay his utility bills, so he was willing to compromise. Once his life was starting to settle into something resembling normality, he had tentatively introduced Luke to the fact that he was back on the Eastern seaboard.

It had not been a good conversation, Jess told her over the phone. There had been a lot of yelling and door-slamming, but ultimately the two were back on friendly terms. The conversation on the subject she'd had with Lorelai in Belgium had been less than pleasant, as well. The Gilmore girls, however, worked it out as they always did, and although Lorelai was still far from accepting Jess back into their lives, she did allow him to pick them up at the airport when they got home four days before.

She was even good enough to look the other way when Rory spotted him and ran, smiling widely, into his arms for a hello kiss. They had spent hours on the phone over the summer, and oddly enough, they seemed to communicate better through the telephone than they ever had before. Issues had been resolved, and though things were far from perfect, Rory was happier than she had been in months.

"What's taking so long?" she yelled after Lorelai.

"I'm looking for the camera!"

"Oi vey, she's looking for the camera," Rory sighed.

"I heard that!"

"That, she hears."

"It is my prerogative as your mother to record any event in my daughter's life that I so chose. It's in the mother's handbook!" Lorelai insisted, finally appearing in the living room.

Rory rolled her eyes and headed for the kitchen. "Hey, does Luke know that you can't drive a stick?"

"Why?"

"Because you asked to borrow his truck, and it's a stick?" Rory asked rhetorically.

"I can drive a stick!" Lorelai defended. Then an evil grin came over her face. "But I don't have to, because we're gonna make your boyfriend drive!" Jess, in addition to his four-days-a-week job at Barnes & Noble, was also picking up weekend shifts at Luke's for the tips.

"No!" Rory exclaimed.

Lorelai's eyes widened melodramatically. "What? Why not?"

"Because! I can't ask Jess to give up a whole day of work just to help me move!"

"Honey, that is the best reason to make your significant other to take time off of work!" Lorelai insisted.

Rory shook her head. "No. He needs the money if that thing called rent is going to keep getting paid."

"A teenage girl not wanting to spend as much time with her boyfriend as possible!" Lorelai gasped. "The relationship must be on the rocks!"

"Fine," Rory capitulated. "I'll ask him. But if he says no, that's it!"

"Sweetie, do the two of you need relationship counseling?"

"You sound like a combination of Tori Spelling and an ADHD-afflicted chipmunk on speed."

"You wound me!"

And then they were on their way to Luke's, with Lorelai backing her mother's truck the entire way. Rory walked ahead, eager to see Jess and unable to stop grinning.

A/N2- And that's that. Chapter 2 will be posted... um... sometime.