A/N: There will be a second chapter to this one, maybe more than that. I haven't decided. My plan was to write the entire thing and then post it, but I decided to post the first part now. So, yes. Read on.
Somewhere between the stairway and that dark, abandoned bedroom, I came unhinged. I snapped and this had been building the entire day. I had been poised on the edge of this for hours and it happened then. Maybe while I was climbing the stairs or maybe when I turned the doorknob and looked in to see if it was empty or maybe when I walked away from her with a slight glance to make sure she didn't notice. Whenever it happened, I was left completely out of my mind. Of course, on the outside I remained stoic and indifferent. I had become so good at not letting my exterior give away my interior.
I sat down in a chair by the window and didn't bother turning any of the lights on. I wanted to think and I wanted to be alone. I felt that ever present anger beginning to rise inside of me, welling up in my stomach and climbing up the back of my throat. I felt disappointment somewhere in my chest and an overwhelming sadness throughout my entire body. I had never felt sadness quite like this before. It was all encompassing and it took my body over completely. I closed my eyes tightly, trying to determine the real factor behind these emotions. Was it just that I wasn't graduating? No. Was it just that I would disappoint her? No. It was this: Since I came to that town, I had been a different person. I had been a person I liked. I hadn't hated myself and I hadn't been angry. Now, it was coming back. I was reverting back to who I was when I was living in the city, when I had to numb myself to the neglect of my mother.
The fact was that Luke would send me back to her. I did not want to go back to her. The fact was that Rory would almost definitely break up with me before the summer was through. The fact was I would probably end up leaving without a word. Again.
She found me. I heard her footsteps first and knew it was her. She came through the door and smiled only slightly when she saw me sitting there. She walked over to me and I turned away from her, shielding myself.
She said, "I've been looking all over for you."
I glanced out the window, wanting to be anywhere besides here with her. I was afraid of what I might say to her, what I might do in the state I was currently in. I said, "I just got tired of everything down there." A half truth that slid easily between my lips.
She sat down on the bed across from me and studied my face. I kept it firm and expressionless. I avoided her eyes, because I knew mine would give me away. It was the only flaw in my stony exterior. She got up and came over to the chair, sitting on the arm and touching my face gently. I let myself turn into her palm, her smooth skin against the roughness of my cheek. She smelled clean and I tried to take in as much of that scent as I could before she removed her hand.
"What's going on? You've been weird all night."
I hesitated, took in a breath and contemplated what lie to give her. I opted for the easy lie, "It's nothing."
It didn't work. "Something's wrong. What is it? Tell me." Her voice was thick with a naïve sort of concern. She wasn't begging me to tell her, she was simply gently pleading for me to open up to her.
I bit down on the inside of my cheek and finally let my eyes meet hers. They were wide and intent, staring at my face, trying to read something, anything. I said, "I…It's…" I hated this, stumbling over my words, stuttering to begin sentences. They all seemed like this when I talked to her. I decided to just get it out and get it over with, "I'm not going to graduate this year." When she said nothing in response at first, I added, "I missed too much. Sorry." The apology was anything but sincere. It was there to make her feel better about this.
"Oh." This was the only syllable that fell from her mouth and I watched as her lips formed their circular shape and remained that way long after the word had disappeared into the air. She was no longer looking at me. In fact, her eyes were now distant and staring out the window as mine had been before she came up here.
"I'm…" I stopped and sighed heavily. My hand found her knee and rested on it. I glanced up at her face to gauge her reaction to my touch, but it was still distant. I allowed my thumb to run over her knee, gently grazing over the soft material of her jeans. "I'm probably not going to stay…" She tensed at this and I felt it through her leg. "I mean, Luke's going to kick me out."
She stood up and went back to the bed. I could tell she was going to cry. It was in her eyes and the lines in her forehead and the way she kept looking down at her hands with her mouth slightly open. I hated it. She looked back up and bit her lip lightly as a few tears fell from behind her eyes. The question was simple but it rattled me like a storm. "Jess…Do you…Do you love me?"
I stopped breathing altogether then. My arms and my hands started to tingle like they were falling asleep and soon they felt numb. I wasn't sure why this was happening, but it began occurring throughout my entire body. I could still feel my lips, though, and I said with a slightly shaking voice, "Yes. I love…Shit." This last obscenity tumbled out of my mouth because I started to cry. It just happened. I was suddenly weeping uncontrollably into my hands.
She was back at my side. Her hands were in my hair, massaging my scalp softly. I removed my hands from my face long enough to pull her into my lap. She put her face in the crook of my neck and when I felt the warmth of her breath against my skin, I was sent into another fit of tears. They weren't all for her. They were for my mother, for my father, for myself, for Luke, for the things I did that got me sent here in the first place, for my callousness, for the disappointment I caused everyone I encountered. All of this had been locked up somewhere inside of me and it was now being freed.
I felt her lips press against my neck and shuddered at the wet feeling of it. She lifted her head and placed her hands on either side of my face. She forced me to look at her, but I was so ashamed of the way I was acting that I fought her until she relented and let my face fall back towards my lap. She bent her head down and pressed the top of her head against mine. She said to me in the softest whisper, "It's okay." It didn't mean anything to me at the time. It was just a attempt at calming me down. An attempt that failed as the sound of her voice only sent me further into oblivion.
She resorted to kissing the crown of my head softly, over and over again until I was no longer crying out loud. I was still crying, but they were silent sort of tears. I finally lifted my head to look at her and she kissed me on the mouth. I pulled her against me harder, because it felt good, better than crying, better than being angry, better than all of it.
She pulled back with a smile forming on her lips. "It felt good didn't it?"
"God yes," I said with a low, rough voice, before leaning in to kiss her again.
She stopped me as my lips were reaching out for hers. "No, I meant getting it all out. All of those emotions. Just letting yourself feel…What are you feeling right now?"
I shrugged, even though I knew what I was feeling. I felt, "Relieved." Relieved that I was still capable of feeling something. Relieved that she was still here. Relieved that I was not fucking this up. Relieved that all of those things, those demons from my past that were haunting me were finally out.
She nodded and was about to kiss me again when she stopped short and let a finger rest on my chin saying, "I love you, too, you know."
When she kissed me this time, I was thinking back to before. I was thinking about last year when I came back for her. I was remembering this: The way she looked in that dress as she was backing away from me and I was thinking somewhere in the back of my mind that this could be love.
My lips moved from her mouth to her neck. I could not tell her the intense mixture of arousal and affection I felt when she moaned lightly and the vibrations were sent through her throat and against my lips. I could not tell her that I liked to keep my eyes open as I did this to watch her face as her eyes moved beneath their lids and her mouth parted and her cheeks turned an impossible shade of crimson.
I stopped because I couldn't control myself for much longer. When her eyes opened, I asked her, "You're not disappointed? I'm not letting you down?"
She stared at me and I saw the question being turned over in her mind a few times. She was shaking her head slowly and then she closed her eyes tightly for a second before opening them and saying, "Jess, I just think- no, I know- that you are smarter than anyone. You should've been going to school. You should've been passing." She paused to consider her words. "I'm disappointed, but you're not letting me down."
"That doesn't make any sense."
"I'm disappointed that you aren't going to graduate. I'm disappointed that you weren't going to school. But, I also sort of knew…that this would happen."
"So, you just expected me to let you down?" I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the chair. I wanted to stand up, but she was still on my lap and I didn't want to lose contact with her. I wanted to keep her warmth and her weight against me.
"That's not what I mean. I knew you were going to do what you do…I just…I want you to be happy. I don't think you are happy." She pressed her lips against my cheek and let them drag across my skin. "Do I make you happy?"
I was looking at her mouth when she asked me this. "Yes." I kissed her hard then, harder than I'd ever kissed her. I was usually gentle, because I thought she wanted me to be that way. I always allowed her to set the pace. This time I took control. I pulled her up from the chair and walked her over to the bed without removing my mouth from hers.
When her legs hit the side of the bed, she stopped suddenly. She looked me in the eyes as she slipped off her jacket and said, "I didn't make a mistake."
She meant that choosing me was not a mistake. It was right. At some point, I had myself convinced that she regretted the entire thing. I was so sure she looked at me and thought she was wasting her time.
She was the one to push me down on the bed. She was the one to take the initiative. She was the one to place her hand on my belt buckle.
I was the one to stop her. I was the one to raise a cautious hand. I was the one to grab her wrist as she touched the metal of my belt lightly and hesitantly. I was the one to say, "Rory…Here? Right now?"
She nodded emphatically and took off my belt. "You said you were probably going to leave soon." I didn't know if this was a joke. She noticed my puzzled look and said, "I want this. I promise. I talked to my mom about it a couple of weeks ago…Just…" She kissed me softly and slowly and her tongue slid across my teeth.
"We could go back to the apartment. Luke's with Nicole tonight…" I could tell by the way she was kissing me that she wouldn't want to relocate now. I didn't want to either, but it seemed like the appropriate thing to do. She didn't let her mouth relent, it was working its way along my jaw line. "This shouldn't happen here in some random bedroom. Come on." I tried to pull her up, taking her hand and moving my face away from her mouth.
She moaned in protest and tried to kiss me again. "Here is fine. Please.."
"Here is not fine. Here, we'll have to be quick and leave afterwards and it won't be…At the apartment, you can stay the night if you want and we won't have to worry about somebody walking in. It will be infinitely better at the apartment."
I was standing by the bed, watching her body which remained stretched out on the bed. Her eyes were closed and her lips were swollen and red. The sight caused something to turn inside of me and I almost lost my resolve. I sat down and leaned down next to her with my head resting on my hand. I whispered into her ear with my lips close enough to her skin that it wasn't touching, but she could feel it, "Come on, beautiful." I took her hand once more and this time she didn't resist.
I pulled her effortlessly from the bed and handed her jacket to her. She took it and mumbled something under her breath. Something impossibly crude. Something that would otherwise have never even formed in her head, much less come out of her mouth. Something along the lines of, "You better be able to turn me on like that in ten minutes."
We walked down the street, not touching. I was rethinking this entire thing. She was focusing on her shoes, possibly rethinking this, but judging by her earlier comment, she was probably trying to retain the spark that had existed at the party. I wanted to hold her hand, but she kept pushing them into her jacket pockets.
We were silent until we got to the door. She said to me as I unlocked the door, "I wanted you back then. Before I even kissed you. When I first met you, or at least shortly after that. You were so…" She stopped and kissed me as I pushed open the door. She pushed my jacket from my shoulders and I did the same for her. We somehow made it up the stairs without breaking contact.
When her hands found places they had been searching for the entire night, I turned off the light by my bed and let her take control. I didn't tell her that I'd only done this once before, and this was years ago, with a girl I barely felt a thing for, but she thought it would be a good cure for boredom. It wasn't and I never touched her again. I didn't tell her as she slowly undressed in front of me (surprisingly, this was the only time throughout the entire night that she seemed at all timid) that I wasn't as experienced as she probably thought I was. I was going to fumble through this just as she was. I was sure she just assumed I knew what I was doing and I didn't want to tell her otherwise for fear that she would lose this edge. For fear that she would suddenly become abashed. I liked her this way, confident and daring.
We didn't fumble at all, though. We moved expertly together, slowly and surely. She only winced in pain once and I immediately stopped moving and said, "Shit. Are you okay?" She nodded and I continued even though her face was still twisted with pain.
In the end, she held me. I felt like I might cry again and I gently nibbled on the skin of her shoulder to stop the tears from forming. She gasped as my teeth met her skin and I murmured a, "Sorry." and let my eyes close. She pulled away from me to look at my face. It was then that I cried again. I didn't know what was wrong with me. I did know that it had started somewhere at the foot of those stairs or somewhere in the pane of that bedroom window.
I told her then, my voice tinged with a shaking desperation, a faltering sense of love, "I'm so goddamn lost, Rory."
I wasn't even sure what that meant, myself. Was I lost literally? Had I been dislocated so severely that I didn't know where to turn? Or was I lost within myself somehow? Lost in my anger and my sadness and my homelessness and my loneliness? I couldn't tell. I had no sense of anything. No sense of home or family. Not even a sense of happiness. I wanted so badly for her to be enough to make it better. She wasn't.
I fell asleep, moaning incomprehensibly against the palm of her hand.
