I do not own Gilmore Girls or anything else.
I have imagined hundreds of different scenarios with a hundred different great last parting lines.
It's in the small hotel room halfway across the world, when she first lets her mind wander. She should be thinking about the fun things that are happening in her life, how tomorrow her and her mom get to eat biscotti with breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Instead, she's left thinking about the last pages of books.
Out of all the amazing and widely known pieces of literature she has read, there should be one that sticks out. A writing she wished she put down on a pad of paper. On a normal night, before leather and baskets, she could recite hundreds of last lines. When the man has to go to support his family, but leaves the woman with a set of words that will replay in a loop to keep her going. Or, the less romantic ones, like a father leaving his son with a fortune. Either way, she can not remember a one.
What would Jess say now? If he saw her standing in the streets of Rome in her red dress with her hair curled, would he pretend she never existed? Or would he apologize for not saying anything on the phone when she let everything out there?
I think I may of loved you but I just need to let it go
Why didn't he say something? Even a simple, "Rory" would've sufficed. Instead Rory is left with this dread of not knowing what she should do. She said she was going to Europe, and she did. She is in Europe. She is doing everything her and her mom talked about doing for years. But she can still hear his voice mixed in with the body of people in the streets of Italy, feel his touch when a stranger brushes up against her in the train station. Her mom can tell she's not all in, but ignores it because Lorelai doesn't like Jess and doesn't like her daughter mourning the boy who stole garden gnomes before he was even in Stars Hollow a week.
Next she said she was going to Yale. Rory is going to Yale. Her grandparents dreams are coming true but are hers? Rory's dream right now involves running into Jess at the campus, he would say he changed his mind, about everything. He would say, 'Everywhere I went, everything I saw, meant nothing without you.' Then it would fade to black, say the end. But Rory knows that it isn't possible. Just like her mom said in the jeep that night, Jess is gone. He is not coming back. And if he does, it would be nothing short of a miracle.
Rory is looking out the window now, at the stars. The stars are all the same, but they feel different when you're heartbroken. When you're heartbroken, everything seems bigger, more important because, when you lose something you love, you appreciate the little things. That's why Rory feels tears slowly fall from her eyes. She thinks if she ignores them long enough, they'll go away without ever having to think of them.
Eventually she wipes them away and goes to bed, dreaming of the countries she's going to see and the boy she isn't.
I'm sorry I always fought with your mom.
It wasn't a football that gave me the black eye. It was a swan.
I shouldn't have done what I did at the party.
Shane has nothing on you.
Sookie's wedding was the best night of my life.
When you came to see me in New York, I felt something inside of me flip.
Huh. You cut your hair.
Months go by and Rory is well into her first year at Yale. Every night she has a different dream about Jess. Different things he would say if he saw her again. She knows that none of them are realistic because Jess doesn't use that many words in a sentence unless it's about Hemingway and why he's better than Rand.
Ernest only has lovely words to say about you.
Jess doesn't have any words to say about Rory.
But maybe he does. Maybe he comes to Stars Hollow to get his dumpy, crappy car and sees her everywhere. In forms of memories and human flesh. Maybe he repeats the words, I think I may of loved you, in his head over and over again until they all bleed into a silent prayer of desperation.
And maybe when Rory demands to hear what he has to say after leaving, when she needs to hear which possibility she dreamed about is right, he says something she never thought was possible.
What do you have to say about me?
I love you.
Then maybe Jess gets in his car to drive away before Rory even has a chance to say I love you, too.
At least she knows what the last words are of this chapter of her life.
Wow I have not wrote Fanfiction in a long time! This is my first Gilmore Girls story and it's really short. But I love the scene between Jess and Rory in "Nag Hammadi Is Where They Found the Gnostic Gospels" and always wondered about what went through Rory's head during this part of the show.
I hope you liked it! Let me know what you thought! Also, if you know of any other fics like this, comment them please. I love this time period for Rory and Jess.