author's note: Welcome! I just had to get into the Jess-and-Rory-knew-each-other-as-kids type of story… so here's my take on it. Hope you enjoy.
disclaimer: Once, I actually had this dream where I was going to meet Milo Ventimiglia, but then all of these horrible things happened and I didn't get to. It was devastating. If I own him and Gilmore Girls, that obviously wouldn't have happened.
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prologue
"Come on, Jess, put the stools back," a frazzled looking Luke told a small, curly haired boy sitting in front the cash register. His short legs were dangling, feet from the ground.
"What's he up to now?" Lorelai walked into the diner, a three-year-old Rory swinging on her hand.
"He has single-handedly moved all of the customer's stools from the front of the counter to behind it," Luke sighed, rolling his eyes slightly.
"Yeah, so I can serve people! See? I jump back and forth from one to another. 'Cause otherwise I wouldn't be able to see anyone!" a proud Jess exclaimed, demonstrating.
"Ooh, serve me, Jess!" Rory said, clapping her hands together excitedly.
"But Jess, Rory has nowhere to sit, because you put all of the stools back here," Luke pointed out.
"Oh." Jess rested his head in his hands, contemplating. Then he jumped off of his stool. "You can have that one over there. I don't really need it." He attempted to push the end stool around the counter, but struggled because of the stool's size advantage over him. So Lorelai took it from him, placed it in front of the counter, and plopped Rory on top.
Jess wiggled up onto his own stool, behind the counter. "What can I get you, miss?" he asked Rory, completely seriously.
"Coffee!" Rory replied, wiggling her feet around.
"Corruption," Luke muttered.
Lorelai just beamed and ruffled Jess's hair. "So, buddy, you've got a birthday coming up next week, right? The big oh-four?"
Jess nodded, still serious. "Yup."
"What are you asking for?" Lorelai prodded.
"A bike –" he looked pointedly at Luke – "and some new books." This time he looked at Rory.
"More coffee, please!" Rory held out her cup and made her best fawn face for Jess.
"Corruption," Luke muttered again.
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seven years later"Rory… I have something I need to tell you." Rory and Jess were lying on the couch in the apartment above the diner, Jess's arm casually draped over Rory's shoulders.
Rory turned to look at him, a concerned look on her face. "Yeah?"
"My… my dad… called here on Monday," he said, his chocolate eyes containing none of the spark they had just a few minutes ago.
"Did you… did you talk to him?" Rory linked her fingers through his. She knew this was tough for him. Jess's father had never called before, and Jess couldn't even remember what Jimmy Mariano looked like. But Rory knew that Jess wanted to forget.
"No… I'm not even supposed to know. I came home and I heard Luke on the phone, yelling at him, telling him never to call again."
"Oh, Jess…" Rory wrapped her arms around his torso in a sort of half-hug. "I'm so sorry."
"It's okay," he said, shrugging slightly, "I'm just glad Luke was home and I wasn't."
"Yeah," Rory agreed. "Just remember, you'll always have me.
"And you'll always have me," he replied, reciprocating her hug, the fiery spark returning to his eyes.
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Rory would always remember the first time she caught him. They were fourteen, just finishing up the eighth grade. She went down to the bridge to find him, and he was just been sitting there. Smoking. He turned his eyes toward her and she looked away, praying that her eyes were deceiving her. But when she looked back again, he was still there, putting the cigarette up to his mouth. So she ran. She didn't know what hurt most: the fact that he was smoking, or that he didn't follow her.
The worst part was, she had been warned. Lorelai had told her countless times that Jess had changed, he wasn't a good kid anymore, that he stole and drank and smoked.
But Rory had refused to believe it. Jess wouldn't do that, she had told her mother, which only wound up escalating into a fight in which both Gilmore girls had stormed off to their rooms and slammed their doors.
And now, Lorelai was right. Rory fell onto her bed, burying her head in her hands. Jess wasn't a good kid anymore.
When Rory awoke two days later on Saturday, much later than normal because of the late-night movie night she and her mother had had, to the sound of two people in a heated argument. She could make out a few words: hurt… can't… Rory…
It was her mother and Jess, arguing about her. Rory buried her head under her pillow, blocking out the shouting.
Then she heard the front door slam, and her mother stomping up the stairs to her room. Rory ran to her window and saw Jess walking away casually, lighting up a cigarette. She shut the blinds quickly.
Ever since Rory had come home from the bridge two days before, Lorelai had known something was wrong. Rory had refused to talk to her, but Lorelai had put two and two together. She knew it was Jess.
Lorelai was in the kitchen when Rory burst out of her room, pulling a sweater, shoe, and hat on all at the same time.
"What's going on?" Lorelai asked.
"I'll talk to you later!" Rory called, already out the front door and running full speed down the steps.
When Rory arrived at the bridge five minutes later, Jess was sitting there smoking, his legs dangling above the water, just as she had known he would be.
She marched onto the bridge, grabbed the cigarette out of his mouth, and threw it into the water.
"Hey!" he exclaimed, "Those are expensive!"
"What the hell is going on with you?" she demanded, her hands placed haughtily on her hips, her eyes narrowed to slits. Without waiting for him to answer, she spoke again. "You smoke, you drink, you steal… did I miss anything?"
"Rory…"
"Do you gamble, perhaps?"
"Rory…" Jess tried again.
"Oh, maybe you pick girls up off the corner in Hartford. What about that?"
"Rory!"
"What?" she looked irritated at being interrupted in the middle of a rant.
"I went to see my dad."
"Jess! That's not something you can just joke about!"
"I'm not joking, Rory!"
"Jess, come on. What's really going on?"
"That is what's really going on! I went to see my dad!" he shouted, completely pissed at her for being so god damn dense.
This seemed to make Rory come out of her ranting state. "What? When?" She sat down on the bridge.
"When you and your mom took your road trip and Luke was at his conference in New York." He sat next to her.
"That's why you didn't want to come with us," she realized. "So… you've been holding all of this in for… months?"
He nodded.
"Jeez, Jess…" her voice lowered to barely a whisper. "What happened?"
He shrugged, his hands in his pockets and his eyes lifeless. "I went, and… he was so stoned he didn't know who I was."
"Oh, Jess," Rory put her arm around his waist. "You could have told me… you didn't have to start… this!" She waved her arms around vaguely, but he knew what she meant. The smoking and the drinking and the stealing.
"Don't you understand, Rory?" His voice was raising and he shoved away from her, standing up. "It doesn't matter how many fucking people I tell, because that doesn't change the fact that my own fucking father doesn't recognize his own son, does it?"
"Jess, I –" Rory began, but he cut her off.
"No, Rory, don't even start! I'm sick of your pity talks! Yours, and Luke's, and your mom's – everyone's!"
"I'm –"
"You say you understand, but you can't honestly know how this feels! Yeah, your dad isn't around much, but at least he might maybe, just maybe, recognize you if he bumped into you on the street! At least he calls now and again, and remembers your birthday! And at least you live with your fucking mother! Do not tell me you understand, because you don't, okay? No one does!"
Rory stood up, tears welling in her eyes. "You're right. I guess I don't understand," she said, before turning her back and walking away, not looking over her shoulder once.
The fight was the worst one they'd ever had. Rory refused to talk to Lorelai about it, because she knew that there would be no way to regain Jess's trust if she told her mother that he had snuck out to see his father.
Unfortunately, this also meant that there was no way for Rory to help Lorelai understand why Jess had been acting so messed up lately.
Rory was even afraid to tell Lane about the fight, and Lane was her second-best friend – after Jess, of course.
After two weeks of avoiding Luke's (a very difficult talks, involving doing lots of pretend studying and developing a sudden obsession with Al's Pancake World), Rory steeled herself and went in. Her morale perked up when she realized that Jess wasn't even there, and then dropped again when she remembered that she really need to talk to him and end this thing already.
But right as her coffee arrived, Jess walked down from the apartment. He stiffened ever-so-slightly when he noticed her (something that only someone who knew him as well as she did would recognize), but he walked up to her nonetheless.
"Hey," he said, not quite looking her in the eyes.
"Hey." Her grip on her coffee mug tightened.
They stayed like that for what seemed like ages, not quite looking at each other. A thick silence hung over them. Rory sipped her coffee, unable to meet his eyes.
Finally, Jess spoke. "You want some more coffee?" he asked, gesturing at her empty mug.
"Sure," she answered, sliding it toward him.
He took her mug into the back room, and when he returned, handed it to her with a napkin, saying, "Enjoy" before ringing up a customer at the cash register.
Rory dabbed at her mouth with the napkin when something caught her eye. She unfolded it and saw Jess's scrawled handwriting. I'm sorry.
She grabbed a marker off the jar on the counter and wrote back. Me too.
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So, there's chappie one! I hope you liked it. Don't worry, there won't be this much drama in every chapter. I just never like how in other stories like this, it's never explained how or why Jess went "bad," so this is my explanation. There also won't always be this much swearing.
Anyway, next chapter we get to Rory and Jess when they're seventeen.
Remember, reviews equal love, people.