Parting Words
A/N the conversation in italics does not belong to me, nor do the characters, I have borrowed these words from S4, Ep 13. The rest is my take on what might have been.
R: "I get to leave first!"
J: "Rory, wait. Stop!"
R: "no, you don't get to walk away."
J: "hold on!"
R: "my town, I leave!"
J: "I just want to...where are you going?"
R: "none of your business!"
J: "we look like idiots."
R: "I don't care."
J: "stop running."
R: "stop following."
J: "come on."
R: "go away! I'm leaving!"
J: "Rory, stop!"
R: "why?"
J: "because I want to talk to you."
R: "about what? What did you want to talk to me about?"
J: "when did you learn to run like that?"
R: "you know, I have actually thought about this moment a lot. What would Jess say to me if I ever saw him again? I mean, he just took off, no not no call, no nothing. How could he explain that? And then a year goes by. No word, nothing. So he couldn't possibly have a good excuse for that right? I have imagined hundreds of different scenarios with a hundred different great last parting lines and I have to tell you that I'm actually very curious to see which way this is going to go."
J: "could we sit down?"
R: "no. You wanted to talk, so talk. What do you have to say to me?"
"Please Rory, could we just go sit down, somewhere, anywhere? I can't talk with the entire freak show watching us," Jess asked, a pleading look in his serious eyes.
"Okay." Rory conceded, glancing back to see that the crowd in the square had its attention on them.
"Okay?" Jess asked, unconcealed shock then relief passing across his face.
"Okay." Rory nodded.
Neither Jess nor Rory led the way. Somehow their feet knew where to take them though. Neither spoke another word until the familiar echo of the wooden boards beneath their feet brought simultaneous sighs from their lungs.
"Awkward?" Jess spoke first, his hands forming anxious fists in his jacket pockets.
"A little," Rory agreed, feeling a little calmer from the walk.
"Shall we?" Jess gestured to the edge of the bridge.
"Don't you think it's a little cold for swimming?" Rory was suddenly wishing they'd stayed back in the square.
"I meant sit, shall we sit." Jess could practically feel her muscles twitching, ready to leave before he'd even got to say what he wanted to say. Whatever the hell that was.
"So, you wanted to talk, so talk." Rory challenged him as she sat on the cold planks, dangling her feet over the side of the bridge.
Jess sat beside her, close but not too close. He looked out across the water, smirking when he remembered the day he'd come here with Luke and that stupid ladle.
After a few minutes contemplating the ripples on the lake's surface, he finally turned to Rory. He found too many questions in her eyes that he knew he'd never be able to answer. Hell, he couldn't answer them for himself let alone her.
"How's Yale?" he looked into her face, waiting for her eyes to meet his.
"It's hard." she admitted aloud for the first time, her eyes still on the water.
"Yeah?" he was surprised by a tone in her voice he didn't recognise. If he didn't know her better he'd have thought it was defeat.
"How was California?" blue irises met brown and they both felt the familiar jolt of energy that ran between them.
"Hot, sandy." he told her. Scary, lonely, he uttered in silence.
Rory just nodded again and began to pull a stray thread from the lining of her winter coat.
"You look nice, been somewhere fancy?" Jess suddenly noticed her clothes.
"Charity dinner," she admitted.
"Good?" he was trying to string out the conversation, buying himself time to calm his nerves and say what he had decided to say the moment he saw he in the bakery yesterday and then again in the bookstore.
"You interrupted my attempt to get some actual dinner so unless you really did chase me all the way across the square just to ask me arbitrary questions about nothing of any importance or consequence to you, I suggest you get to your point." Rory huffed at him.
"Everything about you is of importance and consequence to me," he confessed, his voice barely above a whisper.
Rory didn't know what to say to that so she stayed silent but she met his eyes again, encouraging him to continue.
"So, I guess Luke told you about Jimmy." he began.
Rory simply nodded.
"Timing is everything right? Jimmy showed up just as I found out I was flunking school. Luke kicked me out and I didn't feel like I had anywhere else to go so I got on a bus and went to California." Jess's took a deep breath and sighed.
"Why didn't you tell me? That day, on my school bus, why didn't you just tell me?" Rory refused to let him see the tears that were beginning to form in her eyes.
"I knew you were better off without me. I told myself I was doing you a favour. I've been telling myself every single day since. The truth is Rory, chances are you are better off without me but I missed you. It's a long way from Stars Hollow to California." he knew he needed to be honest with her this time around if there was any chance of starting over.
"3000 miles," Rory's words tumbled out into the cold night air as tears spilled down her cheeks.
"Yeah. I spent almost every single one of those miles thinking about you. I love you Rory. That's what I've been trying to say. I wanted to tell you when you got all your acceptance letters. I wanted to tell you after our fight at the party. I wanted to tell you on the bus that morning. I wanted to tell you when I called you on your graduation day. There were so many times I wanted to tell you but I couldn't make the words come out. You may not have ever received a note from me Rory but I wrote you more letters than I could count and I wrote in the margins of every book I read hoping one day I'd be able to lend it to you and see if you saw it the way I do too or if you were going to open my eyes to an entirely different perspective."
Rory sat in stunned silence. So much could change in a year. Was this really the same Jess, her Jess? He loved her? If he loved her why did he leave?
"You could've told me. You should've told me." Jess turned to look at her as she spoke. "We could've figured it out. I loved you Jess. I loved you and you broke my heart."
"I know Rory, believe me I know, and I am more sorry than you could ever know." a haunted shadow settled in Jess' eyes.
"My last moments with you were at that stupid party and then on the bus, how did you think I would feel? Did you expect me to sit here and wait for you?" she looked deep into his eyes and saw the sadness there.
"I had no right to." Jess couldn't shift his eyes from hers.
"No you didn't." Rory agreed flatly.
"But I did hold onto some foolish hope." Jess admitted.
"Hope? I didn't think you knew the meaning of the word." There was no humour in her retort, only hurt.
"I think I must have learnt it from you." Jess smiled that half smile of his that melted her.
"I didn't wait for you." she told him bluntly.
"Okay."
"I mean, I didn't move on either but it wasn't because I was waiting for you," Rory stumbled over the words.
"Okay."
The two of them sat in silence once more. Jess was so caught up in his thoughts that he jumped when he felt Rory's smooth cold hand reaching for his. Startled, she retracted it quicker than a grapple hook failing to find its purchase on a vertical incline. Before she could hide it away in her coat pocket, Jess reached for her hand. She let him take it. He held it in his lap, studying the pale, silky skin, her perfect crescent nails and the myriad of lines that marked the surface. He lifted her hand to his mouth, placing a tentative kiss into her palm before curling her fingers into a soft fist to hold it there.
"So what now?" Rory asked him, an echo of a question spoken on this same bridge two years earlier.
"I guess that depends on you Rory. I meant what I said. I love you. I know I didn't handle any of this like I should have. If you tell me to leave I'll leave. But if you ask me to stay I promise I will never run away from you again, not like that."
"Okay."
"Okay?"
"Okay."
Jess leaned in to kiss the face that had haunted him for too many long, lonely months. When his lips met hers it was as if they'd finally found their way back to where they were meant to be. Rory felt it too. They both let out identical sighs, quite different from the ones that had escaped them when they had first arrived.
"I love you Rory." Jess told her again.
"We have a lot to sort out." Rory spoke practically.
"I know." He agreed.
"I'm kinda hungry," Rory suddenly remembered she'd been on a quest for food when she'd run into Jess.
"Shall we head back to the festival?" he offered, rising to his feet and holding out his hand to help Rory up.
"Yeah, I'd like that." Rory rose to her feet. Once she was standing Jess pulled her the rest of the way into his arms. They stood there together, each taking in the familiar scent of the other that time and distance had not been able to wipe from their memory banks.
"On a scale of 1-10 how badly does your mother want to use me as an actual dartboard this time around?" Jess queried.
"Um, 32? Don't worry, I'll protect you," Rory assured him.
It suddenly felt like the last year had slipped away and they were right back where they'd left off.
"Hey Jess," Rory felt it too, "I think we should take thinks slowly."
"Right," he agreed, "we've got a lot to sort out don't we?"
"Yes we do."
"Slowly it is then," he smiled at her and kissed her forehead before loosening his arms from around her waist, reaching to hold her hand in his instead as they walked back across the bridge toward the square.
"Hey Jess?"
"Yes Rory?"
"I love you too."
A/N this is just a one shot that I felt compelled to write. Try as I might these two characters wouldn't let me leave them this way. I hope you enjoyed it.