you & i (entropy)
Summary: Getting over her was never easy, though he's beginning to learn that it probably never will be… and she tells herself she wants him to be happy - while she still has no idea why she can't let the idea of "them" go. Literati, AU, future-ish
Disclaimer: don't judge me for using Kanye West lyrics. They fit.
A/N: So I'm probably working on about 4 or 5 projects (some fanfic related, some not) simultaneously, but this is the idea that just kept growing and seems to be working in a way that keeps me focused. So, yay, for that.
i'm not loving you (the way i wanted to)
"Jess."
She sighed, shaking her head. She gripped his shoulder in a way that must have been painful, had to leave a mark, but he said nothing. He didn't do anything besides pull her face back towards his and kiss her, harder, deeper.
"Jess," she sighed again.
"Rory?"
She blinks, suddenly realizing that her throat has gone dry and her chest is tight, almost painfully constricting, as she tries to force her mind to come back to the present. She blinks again, but the image of Jess, standing maybe ten or twelve feet away from her, doesn't disappear.
He's here.
"You alright?"
Rory shakes her head in an attempt to escape the question but still can't bring herself to look away from him. She rubs the back of her neck, nervously, feeling her palms become moist and clammy. "Yes," she stammers unconvincingly, "I'm fine. Why do you ask?"
"Because you were already a fairly good stand in for Snow White and now you're practically Casper."
"I'm fine," she insists, although 'lies' is probably a more accurate description. Or, it would have been anyway. But she makes the mistake of looking away a little too late and, of course, this doesn't go unnoticed by Lorelai.
"Oh. You knew he was coming right? I mean, I thought everything between the two of you was okay now."
"Of course it was. Is. It's fine."
"Rory, you know you can tell me if—"
"Mom, it's fine, I swear."
And it is—she knew he was coming; she just hadn't realized how unprepared she was to see him. And Rory certainly hadn't been expecting to feel so…overwhelmed when she saw Jess again.
And she also wasn't expecting for him to be here alone.
Her eyes shift to his left side, then to his right, then back to his left again, expecting (but not hoping) to see The Girlfriend, who she has heard about in the snippets of conversations Luke's had with Jess that Rory couldn't resist eavesdropping on. But he's alone. She tells herself that it shouldn't matter at all that he's come here alone.
She's positioned herself in front of the punch bowl (secretly hoping to be the first to see him when he arrives), nervously rotating the ring resting on the chain of her necklace between her fingers. Rory catches sight of him just as he walks toward the gifts table; she watches him as he carefully steps to the side, keeping Miss Patty at a respectable distance, and thoughtfully places a gift bag on the table. He hasn't seen her yet and she wonders if she should take that as her cue to leave.
Rory takes a step back, ready to turn and leave this potentially awkward moment behind before it even has the chance to begin, but as her luck would have it, Jess chooses that moment to look up and locks gazes with her. Rory freezes on the spot, biting down on her bottom lip as she struggles to decide whether or not she wants to be the one to make the first move. She wishes he would, wishes he could make this moment easier on her, on the both of them, by being the one to take that first step. But she realizes as she thinks back to the last time she saw him, that he doesn't have to do that. He doesn't owe her anything. (Not this time.)
Her breath hitches in her throat when he looks back at her, his gaze shifting up, down, and back up again. Her throat constricts and she feels her face flush with heat; nerves and doubt making her palms sweaty.
It shouldn't mean so much to her that he came here alone. It shouldn't.
It's been almost two years since they last saw each other and thinking about what happened between them and what he meant—means—to her shouldn't still affect her. At least, not like this. She looks away when she starts to remember how it feels to kiss him and Rory closes her eyes, startled by the sadness and longing that hits her when she realizes that she will probably never experience that feeling again.
It shouldn't matter that, for whatever reason, he's decided to come here alone. It shouldn't make a difference to her, one way or the other.
(But it does.)
Getting over her was never easy. (He's beginning to learn, though, that it will probably never be easy.)
But, Jess Mariano has always been known for being relentlessly stubborn and his efforts, though they could only be described as hopelessly futile, hadn't exactly steered him towards the path of a monastic lifestyle.
In the end, all he was left with was a string of meaningless non-relationships that were, at best, less than fulfilling but served for their purpose as a momentary distraction. Not that it mattered, he only went to them in an effort to ease the bruise that still remained from the last meaningful relationship he had. (And, yes, Jess knew exactly how pathetic and pitiful that made him.)
There was Cecilia, the girl who stole (forks, mostly); Angela, the girl who lied about everything (even about things that held no consequence, like say, her favorite color or what she had for breakfast); and Julie, the girl who reminded him so much of Rory that it physically hurt (needless to say, they didn't last long). He stumbled through a series of one night stands whose names he couldn't remember until the emptiness of those non-relationships began to feel hollow (and he got sick of them and himself) and so began his self-imposed sabbatical from a relationship—physical or otherwise—with anything remotely female.
So, of course, as his fucked up timing and karma would have it, it was less than a month into his furlough when he met Johanna. But it was hard to be any sort of indifferent to her when he first saw her. She walked into Truncheon mid-afternoon in a business suit—which he would give her crap for later, after they were together for a few months—but, honestly, he didn't even care; he was probably too busy drooling to notice. The suit was cut as if it were made to be worn by her and her alone, a skirt snug and loose in just the right places, its hem ending somewhere above her knees and a pearl-white v-necked camisole underneath her fitted jacket. Her spiked heels made her legs seem endless and set her at a height that was level to his.
He's pretty sure his jaw dropped to the floor the moment he saw her, his eyes glued to her figure as she introduced herself to Matt.
When she reached Jess, she smiled politely, but lingering. She placed her hand in his, squeezing lightly as her lips quirked into a smile.
"Johanna Alvarez," she introduced herself. Her dark brown eyes still held his, her hand still gripped his hand.
"Jess. Mariano," he added as an afterthought.
His "female sabbatical" went out the window the moment she told him and Matt that she'd just left her job because she was tired of being associated with "the literary equivalent of those Jennifer Aniston movies". She wanted originality and heart, she wanted soul, she wanted different.
There was a gleam and a look in her eyes that he recognized: the need for a new start; a second chance. (He knew then that he was hooked and didn't stand a chance at resisting.)
"Jess doesn't have a heart, or a soul, but he's from New York so that isn't entirely his fault," Matt joked.
"Hey, it's a good thing she came here after I'd already vetoed 'Cedar Bar Redux' as the name for this place - which was your idea, by the way."
She laughed at that, and Jess found himself grinning (a rarity) when she asked confidently, "So when do you guys need me to start?"
He showed her the rest of the place and they flirted over stacks of books and rows of magazines. They argued and debated about the merits of self-publishing versus mass marketing. She did most of the talking (for which he was grateful) and he found himself loving the way her lips moved when she said his name. Conversation was easy and light and anything but an angst-filled diatribe. (But he still felt his chest constrict with panic when she murmured "you can tell me anything".) He was the one who made the first move, an open mouthed kiss that quickly morphed into him pressing her against the back of the couch. It was (almost) easy to forget about the last girl who sat there.
("I've never really done this before," Johanna whispered, her lips brushing against his, and, unlike all the others women before her, he believed her.)
Jess wasn't at all prepared for the emotional upheaval and the toll a commitment—a real commitment—would take on him and so he had absolutely no intention of starting a serious relationship and every intention of keeping their tryst as a one night stand. (Not exactly noble, but then again, that's nothing he's ever claimed to be.)
But he woke up the next morning, got some coffee, started fixing a second cup without really thinking about it and then, he just couldn't ask Johanna to leave. He didn't want to ask her to leave. So, she stayed for a weekend. He liked how she looked in his bed, liked how she felt laying next to him, how she looked wearing nothing but his Rhodes Kill T-shirt (or the smug smile she would get after his reaction to her wearing nothing at all). He loved the lilt of her voice, the way her accent made its presence known when she said things like "hello", "it's chilly out", and "I love you". (She said it first, and he was surprised by just how difficult it was for him to say it back, how much he'd tried to convince himself that he could be the one to say it first, without it preceding some emotional upheaval or desperate ultimatum, but when the moment came, he just...couldn't.)
Standing now on the recently manicured lawn of the Dragonfly Inn, locked in a stare with Rory, Jess suddenly realizes how simple and easy his relationship with Johanna has been so far. (He wouldn't say effortless, but it's been pretty damned close.)
Rory looks beautiful, but that's nothing new, and neither is the dull ache Jess feels somewhere in his chest when she meets his gaze. It would be easier to deal with this moment if he wasn't reminded of the last time they were in the same room and where it landed them. (Here.)
He isn't desperate or naïve enough to think that they can be friends after what happened between them during that weekend in Philadelphia. (But he knows their relationship is anything but finished. He doesn't know if and when it ever will be.)
She stands stock still; she doesn't move forward, doesn't say anything, but neither does he.
He tries, but every time he looks at her and opens his mouth, he thinks of the slope of her naked back in the moonlight of his room, her lips brushing against his ear as she whispered good-bye, leaving him bereft of a response while she assumed he was sleeping. The thought, the memory, is enough to make him sick to his stomach, but being in her presence, seeing her is intoxicating enough on its own. It is enough to make him forget, for a moment, that she is capable of hurting him as much as she is capable of bettering him.
There are no rings or talks of wedding plans, but there is a smile on his lips when he speaks of her, The Girlfriend, there's a look in his eyes that Rory can recall only seeing once before. (With her.) She doesn't ask why he didn't bring the woman he speaks so highly of. She doesn't - can't - care. Rory closes her eyes, fiddles with the necklace around her neck until her fingers are cramping with discomfort when she overhears Jess mention that she's in publishing, too, and Rory finds herself wondering if this girl actually likes Hemingway.
Rory wonders if she's pretty (if she's prettier than her); needs to know if she's smart. (And, yes, Rory knows exactly how petty that makes her sound.) And then she insists to herself, of course she is. Jess wouldn't talk about her voluntarily, otherwise.
She bites down on her lip when he tells Luke that they've been together for almost a year. ("Best year he's had lately", apparently.) If it's so easy for him to move on from what happened between them, then why can't she? What's wrong with her?
She twists and turns the necklace around her finger as she tells herself, again, that all she wants is for him to be happy. (But, even to herself, the words sound and feel hollow.) She tells herself that she made the right decision, for both of them, by walking away - Rory simply underestimated how much it would hurt to see him happy, when she had nothing to do with it.
She realizes then that, whether it was her intention or not, she lied to him. Two years ago, she kissed him like there was no more Logan, she let him hold and touch her like tomorrow meant the possibility of more, but not of her leaving. She never wanted to lie to him, she'd always planned on telling Jess the truth, but nothing that happens between the two of them ever goes according to the way she planned them to.
She's looking at him while she gives her toast and feels her body flush with heat when he doesn't look away this time. She isn't drunk, though, so she knows that isn't the reason.
(And neither is he.)
She's been keeping an eye on him since he got here, so she knows he started a beer but never actually finished it. They don't break eye contact as she finishes up her toast with a congratulations and best wishes to her mother and Luke.
It'd be so much easier to blame her actions, her behavior, on inebriation, to be able to say that she wasn't thinking straight, that her mind wasn't in the right place. (But, she figured, the only thing more pathetic than mooning over an old boyfriend at a wedding rehearsal was mooning over an old boyfriend at a wedding rehearsal while simultaneously drinking yourself into a coma. And there are levels, degrees, to being pathetic - some of which even she isn't willing to stoop to.)
So, she isn't drunk (but she still has no idea what the hell she's doing, or why she just can't let it— let the idea of "them"—go).
He nods his head in the direction of the inn, and before she even registers what she's doing, Rory nods her head in agreement. She knows they need to talk, clear the air, but that doesn't make her any less nervous about being in a room alone with him. She looks away, for just a moment, makes up a lie to her mother about the champagne running right through her and she looks up to catch him heading inside. She slips the key to room #9 off its hook and holds her breath as he follows her upstairs.
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