Starting Over
Summary: All new beginnings had to start somewhere, right? Jess leaves New York sometime after the end of season 4.
He always knew this was not really any way to live. At least not if he wanted to live past 30.
It had been a solution for a while when he just moved back to New York and had nowhere to live following his cross country trip after leaving California.
And then that fateful visit to Stars Hollow to retrieve his car.
When he drove out of town after his admission to Rory the only thought on his mind had been that he was an idiot. But he hadn't had the courage to turn around and he didn't think it would have made any difference if he had.
He didn't think he deserved better and so he had made sure he didn't get it. And that was how he ended up continuing to live in his dump of an apartment with three other guys, sleeping on a mattress on the floor and with barely any possessions what so ever.
And that was why he took the first job he could find and never bothered looking for a new one even after he realized he hated it and that it paid just barely enough for him to survive.
And that was why he stayed in the apartment, why he spent every day crisscrossing Manhattan, no matter what weather it was.
He knew perfectly well what state the apartment was in. He knew he didn't eat enough and was too thin. He knew he needed a better job if he ever wanted any money left after rent.
He knew he wanted more than this.
But then he went to his mother's wedding, and that visit to Yale, and after that he had been too angry, too hurt, to care. He had just gone on like before, trying not to see the problems.
If he didn't see them, they didn't exist.
But as the summer went by things got worse.
The apartment that hadn't been clean to begin with took a turn for the worse in the heat. The leftover food that none of them had the energy to throw out lay around collecting mold and flies and started emitting a sickly smell.
One of the occupants moved out, or possibly died, and he had to pay more in rent and soon he didn't even eat every other day. In the beginning he didn't really notice, but then he had to make a new hole in his belt.
And then one morning he woke up and just knew he had to do something.
He couldn't go on like this forever; working a barely paying job, living in this dump, barely having enough money to eat.
Sooner or later it just wouldn't work anymore and he didn't want to be there when that happened.
It wasn't a hard decision when he finally made it. It wasn't like he was attached to New York to the hip. Not anymore anyway.
So he moved.
All new beginnings had to start somewhere, right?