It had been three days since the envelope had arrived, and Jess still didn't know when he was going to open it. It wasn't as if he was expecting the pages to be bad. He just needed it to be the right time, which was ridiculous really since he's never had the right timing when it came to Rory.
He sat down on his single arm chair and peeled open the packaging, the manuscript was thick and he planned on reading every single word. He flipped it upside down to ease the script from the way the envelope hugged the pages. A note fell out onto his lap.
'Chapter 6 is where you come in, skip ahead, or skip it entirely I don't mind. – Rory'
He hadn't expected to be included in this book at all; the sudden realisation hit him hard. He didn't know if that scared him, or woke him up completely.
He traced the dedication with the pad of his thumb, thinking about how hard she had worked on this, how she had jumped in without knowing if her mother would approve of the project at all. He didn't know everything that went on between the lethal Mother and Daughter combo, but he did hear bits and pieces from Rory through their emails.
He didn't know what he was waiting for, or if he was just stalling for the sake of putting off that one chapter. It tortured him knowing that Rory had put time and effort into putting him into her story, a story that was supposed to be about her and her mother, the life they shared. He was just a mere footprint she should have wiped off the front porch. Yet here he was set in stone, their story was important enough to send to print.
Against his better judgement, he flicked through the document until he found a chapter entitled 'Notes in the Margins'
A small smile formed across his lips, feeling like his heart had skipped a beat already. It felt cliché as he took a deep breath before his eyes scanned to the first line of text.
'As far as first boyfriends went, Dan was perfect. He just wasn't perfect for me. Judging from previous experiences with my mom I was naive to believe that we'd always see eye to eye when it came to the men in my life, or boys in this case. I didn't know much when it came to love, but I knew that I wasn't wrong to feel it at such a young age. I was already older than my mother was when I was born, but that didn't make me much wiser. The first time I met him, everything changed for me. I had this amazing boyfriend who treated loved me, yet he wasn't the boy I was seeking attention from, Dan wasn't the boy who I wanted to stay up late talking to, or ride off in horse drawn carriages with. It took me a long time to realize why, to figure out that it was okay to fall out of love with somebody even if nothing had gone particularly wrong. He challenged me from the second we met, constantly keeping me on my intellectual toes, but that didn't make for a perfect love story, which is exactly why it felt so real.'
Jess read that first passage over and over until he flicked the page over. Rory never once mentioned him by name, real or pseudonym. He was always referred to as he or him, like maybe she couldn't bring herself to give him an identity, like he was some kind of secret love she really wanted to keep in the past. The sting of that didn't linger though, when he read things that made him smile, quotes he knew that he'd said to her, things that he'd forgotten but she had remembered. It was her side of the story he'd replayed on his end over and over throughout the years.
He's had girlfriends since her, but he's never felt this kind of nostalgia when he recalled memories he's shared with any of them. He's felt love since Rory, he's felt toe tingling love, and given his heart away, but circumstances always set him up for failure. He had recently accepted that it was the universe telling him that he wasn't the kind of man to settle down with the girl of his dreams, he was the kind of person who gave his all for his friends and family, and stuck to books for his romance fix.
The thing that scared him most about that was the fact that he was happier being alone than he was when he was dating. It wasn't the case of him moping around feeling sorry for himself, because he genuinely enjoyed the way he lived his life now.
'It wasn't until one Christmas a few years ago did I find out that it wasn't a sporting injury, nor was it a fight with Dan. It was a swan attack, I never knew swans were so vicious, but my source was reliable and I'm inclined to believe pride was the reason for secrecy all those years ago.'
Jess hadn't planned on talking to Rory until after he had finished the entire novel, but there he was dialling her number and jumping in before she had a chance to finish her hello. "I am going to kill Luke." He said straight away, causing Rory to let out an unexpected chuckle down the line.
"You could have just told me the truth you know. I wouldn't have mocked you forever."
"No but you would have put it in a book..."
"Hey, maybe if you'd told me what actually happened I wouldn't have found it an important part of the story!" She shot back, a smile across her lips as she listened to Jess' voice again.
"I'm sure." He said unimpressed, but he too wore a smile.
"So did you skip ahead or what?" She asked after a small silence, she was dying to hear his thoughts but didn't want to rush him, she wanted his honest feedback, even if he hated every word.
"It's good Rory." He whispered, not answering her question. He didn't need to read everything to know that this book was some of her best work, maybe the best work she's ever done. Even if she had been writing about how terrible he was as a seventeen year old.
"Wait until you finish it before telling me that." She said softly back to him, knowing that Jess had only seen a small part of what she wanted to say. The book was about her life, and her mother's, but it had everything else in between, every relationship she's ever had, starting with Lorelai, and ending with the one she had with herself. Jess was a big part of her journey, and he had no idea.
"I'll let you know the very second I'm finished." He promised.