i am not meant for a world without you in it.
x
she finds zero irony in the fact that she ultimately ends up delving back into her love for academics. literature especially. the realm of pages and the smell of ink runs through her blood. tap a vein and emit words and phrases, delicately cut by commas and trickled adverbial clauses, slow dripping parenthetical citations smeared on her wrist where the tapered off line pools crimson with authors' names.
her classroom is a story in itself. every text of hers lines the shelves, dog eared and noted, the pages yellowed with time, places bookmarked by her fingers in lifetimes past. there are piles of journals artfully teetering on the carpeted floor and chalk dusts the desks in a fine silt. there are multiple copies of certain books that luke had pulled out of his attic, and they too, sit in stacks filled with his cramped handwriting littering the pages.
(luke had looked sheepish when he handed her that box, head ducked down in embarrassment.
no, jess doesn't know I've kept them. he would want you have them.
face so sincere that it was difficult for rory to make eye contact.)
x
he doesn't write another novel.
just the one.
the one about him and her and unfinished sentences.
the lingering gasp between their mouths in the flickering dim of her first collegiate firelight festival. the space that seemed so goddamn vast in the parallel lines of their unconnected figures on a bed in a house when she thought she'd give up the world if it meant she got to keep him. the lines twitching on his wrist in a publishing office in philly yearning to find their muse, readying to jump the page.
(it is the first thing she teaches when they reach the nonfiction unit.
jess mariano, I've heard of him. brooding, tortured, forever in limbo for a girl with crystal eyes and lines of prose inked in her skin, one of her students says, sighing with dreamy eyes at the picture on the back of the book.
rory turns ashen.
me me me me me me. )
x
she works the diner on the weekends. unfortunately being a teacher pays crap and now that mom and luke are in the house and she's in the apartment, it's easy to open with her cup of coffee and book waiting for customers to peek in at the smoke of dawn. she's never up before luke though; he always still makes the coffee for her with a touch of nutmeg and they sit in silence most of time.
some days they talk about mom. some days they talk about april. and some days they talk about jess. but those days are few and far between. usually they're punctuated by slamming doors or double orders of blueberry pancakes that she didn't ask for. she knows he's proud of him, but she also knows that he's so bitter that he didn't get to see it happen. jimmy may be his father but rory knows well enough that biology doesn't dictate the ability to care.
this is what she hears:
he's doing well in philly. the publishing house is making money and by result so is jess.
this is what she understands:
he did so well without me.
this is what she doesn't tell luke:
we wouldn't be having this conversation if you hadn't.
x
(this is what she doesn't tell luke:
i did love him. you know that right?
this is what he understands:
i know you do.)
some things are better left unsaid.
x
rory remembers the day quite distinctly because it's a thursday and on thursdays she has wine and burgers with lane in the diner and she is allowed to close early. they blast music and dance around and slam bottles of whatever is on sale at doosey's between the two of them. so, when the door clangs against the frame, bell rattling in the autumn air, a week before the horn of plenty is placed in the town square, she calls out from her race down the stairs a bottle in each hand, her sweater askew and one foot half in a moccasin.
but when she reaches the threshold, it's not lane.
jess, she forces out, blue eyes agog. and he smirks and it's like she's sixteen again.
x
he runs a hand through his hair, which is raven still and a little longer than she recalls. he's still too beautiful for her to look at first.
sorry, i—luke told me that you always have dinner with lane but i just, and he gestures his fingers in the air. need some help with those? he inquires, brows furrowed, the ghost of a smile on his mouth. he takes one of the bottles out of her hand, inspects the label, burrowing in the drawer closest to the spare change jar and comes out with a corkscrew.
rory, to her credit, barely reacts, just follows his swift movements around the diner. watches with wide eyes as he opens the bottle and reaches into what she thought was a secret cabinet and pulls out two wine glasses. the pinot splashes on the rims and he tentatively holds one out to her, his face open for what she can count on one hand times in her life. she barely registers lane at the door, about to knock before dashing off and shouting as she runs down the block: holy fucking shit, zack you have to see this.
what are you doing here?
jess grazes her up and down with his eyes, takes a sip from his glass and places it on the counter. he sits on one of the stools, ankles wrapping the rungs, and finally meets her gaze head on. he knows he's not playing fair and so does she, but watching him watch her hungrily, the adam's apple bobbing in his throat as he drags over the cut of her collarbone, the graceful column of her neck, skin like porcelain, itching as he returns to the swell of her chest and the harsh twirl of her waist, all the way down to the lines of her calves and back to the flushed center of her face.
just wanted to, leaves his mouth and she staggers in place, gripping a table, her knuckles white. an open wound.
that's mine, he says after a pregnant pause referring to his novel left open and highlighted, marked in the margins like he taught her eons ago, on the counter near the coffee maker.
i'm teaching it, she finally says, finding her footing, lips mouthing her glass. and this time it's all on her as she sees him react. but it's not anger or bitterness; it's disbelief.
what?
and the way that questions leaves his mouth makes her want to cry. he has always had such a great brain, and she knew it the moment that the first word left his mouth under a sky lit with stars and junior year. but his brain is nothing compared to the heart that lies still in wait in his ribcage. locked up and not willing to turn over the key to a single soul, let alone his own. and god she had loved him so much she thought it might eat her up. he still looks at her like she's heaven on fire and she just wishes, god how she wishes how she could put this eloquently.
she stumbles. but the dawn of realization on his features, cut from marble.
it's for my nonfiction unit. we're doing a compare and contrast between your novel and the war of troy, she tells him, locked on the way his pupils are dilated, black encompassing all the cocoa color. kiss as if you were troy and he was made for war, she quotes, lips moving beyond her will.
and it's the way she says he that draws jess from his seat until he is so close that she can count the freckle constellations across the bridge of his nose.
if you're helen, then i'm paris, he finishes, and then he surges forward.
x
the last thing she remembers before clacking teeth and his hands in her hair and the tiny dip that she recalls so well in the small of his back is her conversation with luke from sunday's dinner rush.
how long has it taken you to say his name without flinching? he had asked, scripting kirk's order, not meeting her eyes.
i don't flinch, she had replied snappily, looking indignant at the thought, arms crossing over her chest as she attempted to bus babette and patty's dishes.
luke had snorted and muttered something under his breath. what was it. oh,
leave it in and live or remove it and die.
x
the next day, she teaches a lesson that isn't hers. this is the first time she has ever done so. rory is rory and she has always used creative and rigorous methodology, but rory is rory and rory also has been an unfinished sentence for so long.
she's not anymore.
(helen chose him, she tells her students, light from the window glinting off her cheekbones.
god knows why, one says, incredulous as ever.
she does. it's all that matters, says a voice from behind her desk. a young man, one with barbed raven hair and wild eyes, years of history behind their lids as he never takes his gaze from their teacher, circling the room, kiss of a smirk on his lips.
ms. gilmore flushes deeply, ducking her head.
okay, she continues, clapping her hands, why would helen make such a sacrifice….and class goes on as it always has.)
x
it is what it is, you and me, he tells her, lips stained with pinot and the taste of her still in his mouth.
rory grins against the slant of his grin, feels his own smile growing upon hers.
x
this is what he wrote:
there is no time when it comes to you. you and i, are a place all my own.
this is what she understood:
in the end, it'll always be you and me.
and it was.