A/N- I know, I know, it's taken me forever to get around to this. But hey, guess what, I've built up an awesome little fanbase for this by leaving it for a month! All your reviews/favorites/subscriptions have made me really happy, and since It Is What It Is is winding down (though to all you IIWII fans, there will be a sequel, promise!), I thought I should get a fresh chapter of PM out. Especially since IIWII is probably going to finish and then I'll immediately dive into another Lit fic I've got planned which is going to be totally insane! (I'll give you a hint: Jess. Rory. As roommates. W00t!)

I think there was a point when I started typing that paragraph, but I've forgotten it now. So I'll just say- thanks for your support!

Chapter Two: Panicking

Rory ran pell-mell all the way back up the street, stumbling to her knees more than once when her sneakers hit icy patches concealed beneath the snow. By the time she returned to her room at the Independence Inn, she was breathing hard and she couldn't seem to slow her heart rate down. She told herself that it wasn't because of kissing Jess.

She waited on the lintel for a few moments until her breathing had returned to normal. There was no need for her mother to suspect anything. As far as Rory was concerned, she could blot this night out of her mind and no one else would know. Well, no one but Jess, but she was pretty sure he wouldn't say anything.

Eventually, she deemed she had waited long enough and pushed the door open, stepping into the room and expecting to find Lorelai asleep. However, she was sitting up in bed flicking through a magazine.

"Boy, we Gilmore women seem to have a habit of getting lost in inns, don't we?" she said idly. "It's almost three in the morning. Where'd you go?"

"Oh, just walking around," Rory said quickly. Perhaps too quickly, because Lorelai looked up.

"Uh-huh...?" she said slowly, her tone urging Rory to continue.

The younger Gilmore shrugged. "I just needed some thinking time."

Lorelai examined her daughter, taking in the flushed cheeks, the slightly swollen lips, and the damp places along the hems of her pant legs and on her knees. "Thinking," she said skeptically. "Right. Wanna try again, George Washington?"

"It's the truth!" Rory exclaimed, and her voice squeaked a little, betraying the lie. Lorelai gave her a look, waiting, and though she held out stubbornly for a few seconds, Rory eventually gave a heavy sigh, shoulders slumping in defeat. "I might've done something bad," she said very quietly.

The elder Gilmore's heart iced over in apprehension, but she didn't allow it to show on her face, immediately opening her arms. Rory rushed into her embrace, hugging her tightly the way a small child would. Lorelai stroked her daughter's hair gently. After a few moments, she pulled back a little to look into the miniature version of her own blue eyes. "Okay, now I'm about three seconds from completely panicking here," she said in a tone that was contrived in its lightness. "What happened?"

Rory bit her lip, and her eyes were agonized. "I... kissed Jess," she confessed in a near-whisper.

"Oh Sweetie," Lorelai said, understanding the confused signals she was giving off at last. She hugged her daughter again quickly, then threw the covers off her legs and quickly arranged herself in a cross-legged sitting position, ready to talk through the emotional crisis at hand. "Did you kiss him, or did he kiss you?"

She had been fully prepared to deal with the thought of the town's self-appointed hell-raiser attempting to win Rory away from Dean. It wasn't hard to see that Jess had a pretty enormous crush on her daughter. But when Rory actually gave her answer, it wasn't what Lorelai had expected at all. "It... I kissed him," she admitted. "But he kissed me back."

Lorelai worked very hard to keep her face blank as she nodded. "Okay," she said calmly. "Was it a quick sort of peck-on-the-lips kind of kiss, or was it a sort of long kiss?"

"It was a sort of me-lying-in-the-snow-on-top-of-him kiss," Rory whispered, turning six different shades of red.

If the situation hadn't been so serious, Lorelai suspected she would have found the whole thing quite funny. If there had been no Dean, it would've been hilarious. If Jess weren't... well, Jess, it would be hysterical. But Rory was visibly upset, there was a Dean, and Jess reminded Lorelai far too much of herself at that age for her own peace of mind. "Wow," Lorelai said, allowing her own worry to show through for the first time in the conversation. "I think you're going to have to walk me through this one from the beginning."

"When I went to look for Grandma, I saw him sneaking out, and decided to follow him. Purely for safety reasons, I mean. You know how he can be, with stuff like Pierpont and the fake murder and that kind of thing, and I thought I could make sure he wouldn't get in any more trouble. And then he got to the square and he killed the snowman and then--"

"Wait wait," Lorelai interrupted. "What snowman?"

Rory's panic-stricken expression relaxed for a moment and she giggled. "Oh, that yuppie snowman, remember? Jess and I were talking in the sleigh earlier, and I complained about it. I guess he decided to kill it for us."

"Sleigh?" Lorelai prompted.

"Yes, I was alone, he hopped in, we wound up talking."

"Oh."

"Yeah. And he was destroying the fancy snowman, and he teased me about something or other, or maybe I teased him. I'm not sure. Anyway, I wound up hitting him in the face with a snowball, and then we were just sort of hurling snowballs at each other and then I tripped and we fell down together and I was lying on top of him and he looked at me like... I don't even know what like, but somehow I was just kissing him all of a sudden!"

Lorelai sighed. "Rory," she murmured sadly. She had no idea what else to say.

"Mom, what do I do?" the teenager asked, practically begging for a direction to follow, anything to help her make sense of the situation.

"I can't tell you what's right," Lorelai said, "but I can tell you what I would do. You call your dad in the morning and tell him you've decided to accept his invitation for this Christmas, and you take a few days out of town to calm down. Then, when you come back, you tell Dean what happened."

"What?" Rory exclaimed. "I can't--"

Lorelai cut her off. "Yes, you can! You have to be honest with him, Rory!"

"He'll hate me forever!" Rory moaned. "I don't want him to hate me!"

"If you tell him that it didn't mean anything, that it was just an impulse thing, I'm sure he'll understand." A horrifying thought suddenly occurred to her. "It didn't mean anything, right?" The way Rory stared at her bare feet and didn't respond told Lorelai everything she needed to know. "Oh Sweetie, what's going on?"

Rory chewed on her lip, looking nervous and unhappy. "I think... maybe I like Jess," she admitted. "But it's just a little crush, right? It'll go away."

"I hope so," Lorelai said firmly. "You have a great boyfriend who loves you, and I don't want to see this guy come between you two. Believe me, no one understands the appeal of the bad boy better than I do. That's a very large part of the reason you were born. But Jess is trouble, you know that."

She nodded. "I do. But there's another side to him, too. He doesn't let other people see it very much, but it's there. Mom, he's so smart and he's funny and he knows all these magic tricks and sometimes he does the sweetest things. Like the snowman, and fixing Luke's toaster... there's just more to him, you know?"

"That might be true, but that doesn't mean he's good for you to hang around with!" the elder Gilmore protested. "I just don't wanna see you get hurt. So... take some time away from Stars Hollow. Go see your dad, clear your head. Okay?"

Rory chewed on her lip, then nodded. "Okay. I can do that."

She was in a calmer mood than when she had first entered the room, but Lorelai could see that she was still a little distressed, not having had time to process and analyze the night's events, even with the girl talk. "C'mere," she said, opening her arms to her once more. Rory hugged her tightly, burying her face in her shoulder.

"Thank you, Mom."

Jess would really appreciate it if you reviewed. Do it for him, huh?