Title: Bookstore
Fandom: Gilmore Girls
Characters: Rory, Jess, OC
Genre: General/Romance
Timeframe: Post-series
Word Count: 1287
Author's Note: This is intended to be the first part of a five-part series, though it's unclear if that'll ever happen. It works fine on its own, as well.
Disclaimer: I do not own Gilmore Girls, nor are the characters of Rory Gilmore and Jess Mariano my creative property. I'm not paid for my personal creative endeavors within that universe.
She was quickly becoming convinced that her hotel room was mocking her. (Incidentally, she also worried a little about channeling her mother that much. Probably just missing home, she concluded.)
The white ceiling stared down at her, giving her no distractions from her ricocheting thoughts. She'd tried watching TV already with no success whatsoever and she'd known all along that reading would be an exercise in futility.
She still wasn't entire sure what had happened, when it came down to it. She remembered walking down the street with Anna, sometimes window-shopping, sometimes doing the real thing. Then they'd been in a bookstore. Maybe they'd talked about going in? Maybe Anna had just walked in, assuming that she herself would follow, reader that she was?
Either way, the two of them had ended up in a bookstore – a charming one, too, she'd been forced to admit, but not until she'd managed to wrap her head around the first half of that thought. It was quiet, with comfortable chairs in corners and a small shelf of staff recommendations near the door. Why she hadn't recognized it on sight, why she hadn't grabbed Anna's arm and pulled her out immediately, she really didn't know. Instead, she'd approached the shelf of recommendations and begun reading.
As she had read, unaware of the passing time, she'd made a mental list of books that looked interesting. How was it, she asked of her ceiling, that she had read so few of them?
Through with the recommendations, she'd turned to find Anna, whom she suspected was quickly finding more books to buy than she could afford.
Lying on her bed, she realized that that moment was when everything had gone to hell in a hand-basket. Maybe if she hadn't stopped to grab that book, or if she'd turned the other way …
Well, she hadn't. She had reached for the book and, as she'd grabbed it, had turned to her left to go find Anna.
She had turned to her left. Why it was, exactly, that she'd turned that way, she really didn't know. (Also, it was becoming increasingly clear that asking her ceiling wasn't going to do any good whatsoever, so she refrained from voicing the question at all.) And once she'd made that turn, there he'd been.
As they made eye contact, he'd smiled wanly and, in lieu of a greeting, had suggested an alternative to the book she was holding. She'd opened her mouth to greet him politely – and perhaps berate him for not having done so – and nothing came out.
That was the point where things started to bother her. There was no reason for words to have failed her. She had no undying love to confess, no apologies to issue, nothing left to scream at him about, or even to thank him for.
Maybe it was that that had thrown her, the simple fact that she didn't have anything left to say to him. It was certainly a situation she'd never been in before. They'd always had things to say to one another; even when they weren't speaking, she'd had things to say to him.
Back at the bookstore, she'd forced a hello out of her mouth, all the while wincing internally at both the tone and the awkward delay before she'd spoken. He'd responded with a hello of his own, and an unspoken question about why she was in his store at all. She'd found herself unable to speak again.
The ceiling continued mocking her. She stared at its aggravatingly white surface and wondered why it was that a man she hadn't had feelings for since high school had had her completely speechless with his mere presence.
But then, just because she didn't have feelings for him didn't mean that she didn't think about him. Her mom's boy-boxes had always worked well, given her a tangible way to put men behind her. Dean and Logan had their boxes, neatly packed away and never to be thought about. The objects they'd given her were out of her line of sight.
The problem was that he just didn't fit into boxes. He'd left marks on her life that she was unwilling to put away and stop thinking about. Instead of giving her new things to associate with him, he'd co-opted bits of her childhood as his own. She couldn't put buildings in boxes, nor could she give up good coffee just to never have to think about him. Her books were annotated; she could no longer read them without remembering late-night phone calls she was never completely honest to her mother about.
Instead of changing her life, he had just claimed bits here and there as his own.
Frankly, his ability to show up at the most inconvenient times was impressive. (His ability to, despite his own incredible intelligence, be incredibly stupid was often even more impressive.) She sighed. Had to give him credit, she supposed, for having once shown up at the right time and even having said the right things.
She remembered his stare that afternoon when she'd been unable to voice an answer to his implied query. Why had she been there? Well, she didn't remember. One minute, she'd been walking down the street and the next, somehow, she'd been in the bookstore. Instead, she'd mumbled indistinctly about how her friend had wandered in and she'd just followed.
He'd been the perfect gentleman – Mr. Darcy at Pemberly perfect. He'd told her she looked good, asked about her mother (and her grandparents), said he was glad to have heard she'd graduated from Yale. After a pause, he'd mentioned how proud Luke was of her for having caught up so quickly. Having exhausted his diplomatic topics, he asked slowly how her boyfriend was doing.
She, at that moment, had worked harder than she thought she ever had before to force her mouth to open and expel words. He hadn't liked Logan, she knew that, and considering what he'd done for her, at least deserved to know that they were no longer together. Of course, those thoughts hadn't made actually speaking the words any easier. There had been yet another awkward delay and then she'd managed – with excruciating difficulty – to force out a few vowel sounds.
If the ceiling had had a face, it would be laughing at her, she decided. After all, she'd always had words for him – frequently not particularly nice ones, either. The only thing she would have been prepared to swear he could not elicit from her was speechlessness.
Shows what she knew, she thought wryly.
Forcing herself back into her recollection of the afternoon, she tried to remember what had come next. She thought she'd managed to shake her head and, after what felt like a few eternities of deep and steadying breaths, squeak out a sentence telling him she was no longer involved with Logan. He'd nodded.
In the solitude of her room, she buried her face in her hands. And she'd see him again soon, that was inevitable – oh god.
At least the rest of the unfortunate bookstore incident hadn't been quite so horrible. She'd forced out another sentence about needing to get back to work, paid for her book and hauled Anna away with whispered promises of filling her in on the story at a later date.
The fact that the whole thing had sucked was the conclusion she inevitably reached. She'd sounded like a complete moron; there was no way around that. He probably thought even less of her than he had after the … incident at her grandparents' house.
Worst of all, she still had no idea how any of it had happened.