Authors Name : Iselia Disclaimer: All items unique to the Gilmore Girls are not owned by me. I hold no rights to them. Rating: PG-13 Notes: I'm Australian, and all I know about New York is what I've read, or the snippets my brother has told me. I don't know how much a taxi costs and so forth. Any corrections or advice would be greatly appreciated.

A wad of folded letters, held by an ancient, stiff rubber band sat nestled in the shoebox. Letters from Rory. Letters to him. Jess and Rory had been friends while he lived in Stars Hollow. Even after he moved home to New York, letters and phonecalls had been regular, rather then occasional. But four years of college, girlfriends, boyfriends, mothers and fathers had changed that. Jess was moving. The lease on the miserable apartment was up in three days, and he had the bulk of his belongings packed and in the somewhat decent, even nice, apartment he now called home. Everything except a large drawer he kept memories and things in. Girlie things, really, he thought. Kept letters, cards, photos. Even the occasional ticket stub from a great football game or a particularly breathtaking concert. Good books, the writing in the margin smudged and nearly illegible.

The shoebox had been sitting in the back. Rory's Letters was written neatly on the top. Marissa had packed them up when she lived with him for six months. The second ex-girlfriend. The letters were innocent, deemed harmless, and so they had been allowed to survive. Letters, love letters even, from a girl who had him long before they were there, had been declared safe. And, he supposed, they were. Nothing had ever happened. Innuendo, and tension-filled moments had existed between them, but there were always barriers. Some small, some insurmountable. And then, he'd given up. The letters came, and the more he wanted to write back, the less he had to say. So he stopped writing. Soon, she stopped writing too. The pain lessened gradually, and he started to move on.

The letters he'd sent back weren't nearly as long. But they had as much feeling behind them. Sometimes he just sent back 'Wish you were here' postcards with his name written on the back. Sometimes, he just rang her. He took one of her last letters from the top. It always reminded him of a wife crying at her husbands grave. It was so openly begging for him to write back. His reply, scratched onto book of carbon paper, was tucked next to it.

It was a nothing letter, a crap letter. An emotionless waste of paper. And, worse still, it had felt good. Rory was killing him, torturing him with her letters. He couldn't move past it all when she kept dragging him back into that world. Briefly, he closed his eyes. Took a long breath and returned the lid to the box. The box went into a larger box, taped, its destination and contents written on the top like a flashing sign. And he closed the door on his old life once more.