Escaping Her
By Sempiternus
Summary: Oneshot. Alternate universe. Post episode 4.21. Jess centric. He could only find one way to escape her . . . and himself.
Author's Note: This takes place right after episode 4.21, "Last Week Fights, This Week Tights" after Jess asks Rory to come with him. I hope that you enjoy.
Disclaimer: I do not own nor am I trying to get profits off of Gilmore Girls.
Tjakatagritz ches pakhchi
You can't escape from destiny.
– Armenian proverb
The kaleidoscopic twilight caught his eye as he sat, one knee up, dangling a cigarette between his fore and middle finger. The moist, assuaging ocean breeze made him shiver a bit, but he made no movement to warm himself. His eyes had not blinked in a while, as he was daydreaming. He did almost every time he let his intransigent mind wander, which was not often. However, this moment money was short, and he could not escape the present. The constant reminder of all of his fuck-ups hung over his head as if to curse him, if for only right now.
He had only been a teenager—nineteen—but it seemed he matured a bit since the last encounter he had with her. Now that was the biggest screw-up he has probably ever made with her; with anybody. As a result of that he may have screwed up her mind for weeks, and that was even worse, because she was at an Ivy League college, and she needed her concentration.
The selfishness of what he had asked of her hit him a while later after the incident—not in the car ride home, though. He was steaming fucking infuriated while he drove home that night. It was a miracle he did not get in a crash on the highway. No, it was after he had gone to sleep. Well, in the middle of his sleeping. If you could call tossing and turning in on his bare mattress sleeping. The situation was on an instant replay with the button stuck on 'play.'
At first, he was as enraged as he had been in the car. She had turned him down! After all of the connections they had made with each other while they were together, she had declined. He supposed that in the back of his mind, he knew that it would never work. She would never go with him, though, he was not sure he would if he were in her place. All of the emotional distress he had caused, blowing a tornado through her perfect life and then leaving, how could he expect her to? The realisations and reasons as to why she would not leave kept on building and building up on his list. And they were all opposed to him. It was an example of one of those "Pro/Con" lists she used to make in high school. Vaguely, he wondered if she was making one right at that moment; wondering if she was going through what had happened while she was supposed to be sleeping.
All of a sudden, he had stopped, and sat straight up in his bed. What the hell was he doing? He surely did not believe in regrets, as he had told her multiple times. So, it did not matter if she turned him down, right? No worries were needed, he could just forget about it and move on with his life. At least, that is what he had always done in the past.
That, however, did not get him to sleep that night. He was trying eminently hard to get that damned girl out of his mind, but could not. He tried everything, listening to music, but that reminded him of her—all the bands they liked and their common tastes in music. Reading was fired down as soon as the suggestion was thought up. Finally, he just did what he always did when something was bothering him—got drunk. Alcohol is the miracle worker of solving one's mind problems, if only for a while. Even longer than that, maybe, since the hangover can be so intense that one may be only able to focus on the pain.
Grabbing his jacket off of the floor where it had flown when he threw it onto the floor upon entering the apartment, he sped out of the door, locking it behind him. He walked slower once he got outside, alert for any people trying to jump him, and went into the nearest bar. The door closed behind him, though nobody could hear it, and he walked up to the counter and ordered a beer. The bartender sized him up, and then went to get the drink, taking obviously every pit stop for other people orders and conversation as possible. He guessed he had not made a promising impression. He was only about five feet, eight inches, with scraggly, dark, ignoble hair that needed a haircut, a band name which he guessed nobody out of the "punk" scene knew who they were, and a beat-up black leather jacket that looked like he could have picked it up out a trash can. He was still waiting when a seemingly young woman came up to him—this was supposed to be a twenty-one-and-over bar, but nobody checked for identification on him when he entered, so he guessed they did not do that for anybody.
"Hey, cutie, what's your name?" she asked him, obviously drunk from the reeking smell coming from her mouth. He was going to just push her away, not nauseated, just not in the mood.
Instead, he told her a sham name, and she smiled—she looked decent when she did that, she could not have been more than just out of her teenage years.
"Mine is C-O-R-T-N . . . "—she appeared to have lost her train of thought for a bit before continuing—". . . Y!" He thought she was trying to spell "Courtney," but could not say that for a fact. "So, how 'bout you buy me a drink?" Her words were incredibly slurred, but he did not care anymore. All he could think about was getting her out of his mind. This would an excellent way to accomplish that. He nodded, and, out of sheer fortuitousness, the bartender gave that moment to come back with his beer. He ordered another one for her and opened his. Before he could take a swig of it, though, she grabbed it, quite forcefully, out of his hands and drank a quarter of it straight. When she had enough, she slammed the bottle down onto the wooden counter top and wiped her mouth off on her hand. Then, looking at him, her lips pounced onto his, almost knocking him off of his bar stool. Not having an immediate response, the young woman tried to nibble on his lower lip, but ended up biting hard instead, drawing a bit of blood. He grimaced, but did not break the kiss, as neither did she. She allowed access, and he took it willingly. By this time, she was practically atop of him while he still sat on the barstool.
They were suddenly interrupted by a slamming of the bottle hard on the bar in front of him. She broke the contact, and took another swig of the first beer. He was not drunk yet. As he opened the beer, his hand cut on the lid, but he did not care. She was beginning to enter his thoughts again. How she would disapprove of this behavior. Frantically, the beer was put at his mouth and swallowed at such a rapid pace, he almost choked. And the lump in his throat did not help matters, either. Turning to his mate, who had just drunk the last of the first beer he ordered, she said his false name seductively, and asked if he would like to go back to her place, as she had more beer there. He agreed in a semi-stupor, and she took his hand seductively and lead him away out the door and onto the street . . .
When he awoke, he only had a vague remembrance of the previous night. It came back in a few flashbacks . . . going to the bar . . . meeting Courtney. . . . His mind trailed off as he Courtney's name was being replaced by hers. Holy shit, he thought, panicking, what the hell did I do? Looking across from where he lay on his back, he stared at the woman in front of him. She seemed . . . younger and more youthful while she was sleeping. Maybe he had misjudged her before—she could not be more than sixteen or seventeen.
Standing up, he felt dizzy, but, nevertheless, collected his discarded clothes throughout the room and put them on haphazardly and as quietly as possible. While he was pulling his band tee-shirt over his head, he accidently knocked over something made of glass. Panicked that he may have awoken her, he stayed still for a few moments, as if she could not see him if he did not move. Breathing a sigh of relief, he did not hear her wake, and looked to see what happened. It turns out that there were more than a few dozen bottles of beer, vodka, and other alcohol substances littered throughout the apartment. He subconsciously put his hand onto his aching head—which made him feel like he may faint at any second—and realized why it was the worst hangover he could remember having in a while. Not since . . . he met her. Wow, why the fuck did he have to think that now? Silently, he kicked himself and blocked out his memories by just focusing on what happened last night and how mechanically alive he had felt.
Sighing heavily at his inability to do so, he walked out of the apartment door and maneuvered his way out of the unknown building. Once out on the street, he decided to go to the drugstore for some aspirin. He accomplished that, and went to his home—if you could call a ragged, old apartment with dirtied sheets that probably had not been cleaned since this place became a whore house, a home. The hangover still in effect, he was not thinking quite clearly. As it always happened as an aftereffect of heavy drinking or-slash-and drug use, he felt himself falling. Now, he did not consider himself an "Emo" sort of guy. He did not bitch about shit going on in the world assertively, and about the only time he would get in a heated argument was either over people trying to take over his life, or defending Ernest Hemingway's classic novels. The latter mostly only applied to her, as she never did warm up to Hemingway's books—she preferred Ayn Rand's, or so she had said before. Great, you piece of shit, he thought to himself, go ahead and focus on her some more, you have not done enough damage to yourself yet.
Sighing, he came to the conclusion that had been brewing in the back of his mind all along. He really did love this girl—he was never one to say "love," it seemed to him that people just toss that important word around too much—however, he had said it to her—and meant it. She had not said anything back, but he figured that she did. Just the way that she had tried to help him be better than he was. As he lay there on the bed that had probably seen too much done to women and children, he dug under his bed with one hand while still laying still, this time on his back, looking for the prized possession. Upon finding it, he lit it up, and fell into a different universe where she did not exist, everything forgotten until the next fix was needed. It was the only way to escape her.
Completed 29 October 2005