And thus we begin the real Literati portion of this story.

"So, Gilmore, are you going to let me in or not?"

"Oh, su-sure," I stammered as I nervously stepped ahead of him. Jess wiped the excess moisture from his boots off on the mat outside and stepped inside the foyer.

"You know, it might help to be a little more welcoming to your editor," he chided me as we stepped into the living room.

"Sorry, I just wasn't really expecting anyone right now," I apologized. I gestured to the bar. "Do you want something to drink?"

"Not right now." He raised his eyebrows. "So why don't you show me around your new digs?"

"You've been here before," I reminded him.

"It's been a few years," he replied. "Why don't you show me this place with all of the Rory Gilmore flourishes?"

I chuckled. "Well, here is the living room," and pointed to the fireplace with the chairs removed. "And here is me trying to create the right atmosphere for a Bronte novel, I guess."

"Abandoned estate, crackling fire, I got it," he responded.

I led him into the dining room. "You remember my grandfather," I said, as Jess stumbled before his oversized portrait.

"He does cut an imposing figure," he remarked as he tried to collect himself.

I shook my head. "Anyway," I continued, and led him into Grandpa's office. I gestured to his almost-empty desk where my laptop and spiral notebook now sat. "And this is where I do most of my work."

Jess smiled. He ran his fingers over the side of the desk.

"How's it going?" he asked.

"You mean, since the last time we talked about it, which would be the day before yesterday?" I answered. "The outline's going good. I have some sketches for the first chapter. I'll probably have something for you the week after next."

Jess picked up one of my grandfather's chess pieces as his gaze met mine. "I'm not rushing you," he said softly.

I crossed my arms. "I know," I replied. I smiled as he put the chess piece back in his place. "You remember playing with him," I mused aloud.

Jess shrugged. "I always liked your grandfather," he replied. "April got bored at one of the holiday parties and we found our way in here and started playing. He found us, but he wasn't pissed off, even though he barely knew us. He insisted on joining in. From that point, on if he found that we were stuck out here with your relatives, he made it a point to find some time for us to escape from it all and have a mini tournament."

I laughed, remembering. "I'd always find you guys with the guiltiest look on your faces. And April was usually winning."

Jess nodded. "She was." He paused and stood up. "Rory, I should have gone to the funeral. I'm really sorry. I didn't think –"

I shuffled my feet. "It's okay."

"I talked to April about it and we just –" he shook his head. "I guess we didn't feel it was our place. But I still should have gone to see you when it happened."

"Really, Jess, it's okay," I reassured him. " I mean, you and April only met him a few times and I had my mom here and Luke –" I shrugged. "We did pretty well by ourselves."

"Still," he insisted. "I should have done more than just call you. I should have gone to see you in person at least once."

I shook my head. "I went back to London right after the funeral," I replied. "You didn't really have anywhere to go to, Jess. And I didn't go to April's grandmother's funeral, either."

"That's different," Jess replied. "You never even met her."

"You went," I reminded him.

"Oh, that was interesting," Jess cocked an eyebrow at me, and I felt myself start to blush. "That was truly a legendary experience."

"Mom never told me what happened," I confessed.

"Wow, a family secret that I've learned but you haven't," he replied. "I wonder what I will do with this information."

"Maybe you need some form of liquid intoxicant to get it out of you," I suggested.

Jess pointed back to the way we had come in. "To the bar, milady," he replied.

Chuckling, I led him out of the office and closed the door behind us.

"I can't believe your mom never told you," Jess said ten minutes later, as we sat down on a blanket in front of the fire, clutching identical glasses of Scotch.

"Stop stalling," I begged him. "Out with it!"

"I think April's mom was pissed I was there," he began. "She kept pointing to me. I don't know if she didn't know who I was or if she did and just didn't want me there. I finally walked over and introduced myself to her when we were back at the house. It started to go okay until I mentioned I had lived with Luke for two years before April came around. Then she quickly excused herself, found Luke, led to a corner and started wailing on him –"

I downed a sip of Scotch from my glass.

"Then your mom comes up right behind her and starts to defend Luke," Jess continued. "Something about how Luke didn't know April for all of those years and how dare she get pissed about anything he did before he knew about her. Then April comes up from behind them and starts screaming at them to SHUT UP ALREADY and START ACTING LIKE ADULTS –" He shook his head. "Kid had a point."

"So what happened then?"

"I found her and led her away," Jess replied. "People were starting to scatter. I think she was pretty mortified. Lorelai came and found her a few minutes later and apologized. We got out of there about ten minutes after that. I know Luke talked to April before he left, but we ended up coming back a day early."

"I guess I don't –" I turned to look at him as he drained his glass. "What was Anna angry about in the first place?"

"I'm not sure," Jess admitted. "Grief does funny things to people, but she was fairly wound up to start out with. Luke told me later that he didn't think that she liked being reminded that he had responsibilities before April came into his life. That she was wrong about him, basically."

"I only met her once," I admitted. "That was before Mom and Luke broke up, when he was being so strange about letting Mom spend time with April. I went and scouted out her store just to see what kind of person she was." I shrugged and swallowed the last dregs of my drink. Jess took it from me and hauled himself back to the bar to refill our glasses.

"She seemed like a perfectly nice, decent person," I continued as Jess returned to sit beside me and handed me my glass.

He snorted. "Well, she's not."

"How well do you know her?" I nursed another sip of Scotch and then turned to look at him. "Did you know her from before? From when they were dating?"

Jess shrugged. "I met her once or twice, but I was what, eight, nine? I don't remember much. I just can't respect someone who did what she did. To keep someone's kid away from him for twelve years out of spite? To force him to go to court to even guarantee she'll ever see his kid again? Then there was that tantrum she threw over Luke paying for April's college – I mean, hello, what about just saying thank you? She threatens not to let him come to his kid's graduation and April gets Luke to hightail it out to Alaska to watch whale hunters throw each other up in the air in protest –"

"Whoa," I interrupted Jess. "That's why she didn't attend her high school graduation?"

Jess took another slug from his glass. "That's what Luke said."

I gazed at him crossing and uncrossing his socked feet. "This really bothers you."

He turned to look at me. "It doesn't bother you?"

I shrugged. "It does. I think maybe Anna was embarrassed at first because she didn't know who the father was. All that 'but you hated kids!' stuff was just a smokescreen."

"Maybe," Jess conceded.

"Don't get me wrong, it was wrong of her to let it go on like it did," I reasoned. "But some of the stuff that happened later, well –" I took another sip from my glass. "it's like you said. Grief does funny things to people. And didn't that funeral only happen a year or so before all the graduation stuff came up?"

Jess nodded. "It did. I just don't have a very high opinion of her even before it got to that point."

I stared at my hands. "Me neither." I shifted beside him, starting to feel pleasantly drowsy from the alcohol and his presence. It was a good feeling. I held my glass up to him. "Refill?"

Jess grinned. "Sure." He lifted himself off of the blanket and I let my gaze wander over him. How had I not noticed how well defined and um, jacked he was these days? I tried to force those thoughts to the back of my mind by sheer force of will.

Editor. Ex boyfriend. Sort of but not really related to you.

"Here you go." Jess sprawled down on the blanket next to me, his leg rubbing mine, and I felt a current of electricity travel up my thigh.

Maybe it wasn't the alcohol after all. I shifted nervously next to him.

"Are you okay, Rory?" he asked, his brown eyes turning to meet mine.

"Okay as in –"

"Not just your grandfather. Your career, all this book stuff. Are you doing okay?"

"I guess I've been better," I admitted as I took another sip of Scotch. "It's been hard to really figure stuff out lately. The book's been a lot of help – it's been good to finally have some direction."

Jess nodded. "Good." He drained the last of his second glass and got up for a refill.

"Jess?" I asked tentatively.

"Yeah?" He sat down beside me and began to nurse his drink again.

"Was April really the reason you didn't go the funeral?"

Jess stared into the fire. "No." He took a longer sip from his glass. "There were – complications."

He turned to look at me, and I saw a slightly distant pain bubble up in his gaze.

I looked away. "Celeste."

"Yup," Jess replied tersely.

Celeste. Jess's statuesque, impossibly gorgeous live-in girlfriend of most of the last three years. I'd only met her once, at a science exhibit of April's at M.I.T. that Mom and Luke had dragged me to. However, I was immediately put off by her: here was this incredibly poised, elegant, charming creature that had bonded with April, charmed Luke, and often spoke of Jess in tones that suggested they had been married for twenty years. I'd instantly been madly jealous, not only of her, but of this perfect life that Jess had somehow cobbled together while mine was falling apart.

They had broken up the previous winter, and every time I asked Jess about it he changed the subject.

"She wasn't comfortable with me going alone there," Jess said. "She wasn't comfortable with me going with her. It didn't matter that you and I hadn't seen each other for years. She just got irrationally jealous because it was your grandfather. It ended up causing a huge fight, and that's all we were doing by that point, having one huge fight after another."

He turned to look at me with an intense glint in his eye, and I could feel myself blushing despite my best intentions. "Look, a few months after that we were through anyway. I wish I had fought her more on that one. Being here for you – that was more important."

I took yet another sip from my glass. "I don't think I was a reason to sacrifice your relationship, Jess."

"You weren't," he insisted. 'It was almost over anyway. But knowing what I know now, I wish I had been there."

"I thought that you would have married her," I told him. "Everyone said you were the perfect couple."

"I thought that, too," Jess said in a faraway voice. He guffawed and turned the glass over in his hands. "Well, maybe a long time ago."

I turned to face him, giving him space to continue.

"She changed," Jess said softly. "Things were great between us for the first year or so. We moved in together and we had a great life in Philadelphia. She wasn't getting anywhere at the ballet company – she was stuck being a coryphee –"

"Coryphee?" I interrupted.

"That's one of the lower positions of the corps de ballet," Jess explained. "You know, the ensemble, the back-up dancers. She wasn't getting any solos, and she was getting closer to retirement age. I thought she liked working at the book press, that we could work together full-time and run the company together. But she said she wanted to finish her finance degree and move up in the world."

Jess gulped and drained the last of his glass.

"That's all she cared about," he continued. "Moving up in the world. Up, up, up. She finished her degree and started working at a real estate investment firm here. Everything became a battle because nothing was enough for her. I wasn't doing enough to make the company grow. She wasn't happy with everything staying the same as it was."

"Oh, " I said softly. "I see."

"I didn't judge her, Rory," Jess clarified. "I just don't live my life that way. Sure, if the press grows, that's a great thing, but I don't want to change who we are to make that happen. Me and her – we just didn't have anything in common anymore. So, you and your grandfather – it was just something else she could point at to accuse me of not growing. But I was sick of fighting with her, so I let her win that one. But it was only delaying the inevitable. I shouldn't have let her do it. I should have been there for you."

I shook my head. I was half flattered over his constant need to prove himself to me and half astonished that he found this particular failing to be the one thing that truly mattered as his relationship was crumbling to tatters around him.

How on earth had I earned that kind of devotion from him? From anyone?

"Jess, don't beat yourself up on account of me," I told him. "You had a lot to deal with at the time. I would never hold something like this against you."

He shifted closer to me, and I felt that same bolt of electricity start to move through me. Except this time, it felt a lot stronger, and not nearly as bad of an idea. I held my glass up to him. "Ready for round four?"

"We probably shouldn't," Jess admonished me as he stood up to refill our glasses.

"Nope," I replied, as the gleam in his eye matched mine.

Jess settled down next to me, adjusting himself a little more awkwardly than he had before. We clinked our glasses together, and his hand shifted to rest on my knee.

He removed it a little too quickly and changed his position next to me, putting another inch of personal space between us.

Editor. Ex boyfriend. Sort of but not really related to you. Guy who had his heart broken not that long ago. You're imagining things.

I cleared my throat. "At least you maintained some sort of relationship for a while," I dryly remarked as I took another sip from my glass. "I haven't done gotten anything close to that in a long time."

"What about P?" Jess teasingly asked.

I grinned. "I didn't think you'd remember," I replied. I put down the glass. "He's not my boyfriend."

"If he's not your boyfriend, why do you have to remind yourself to break up with him?"

"We're not exclusive," I tried to explain. "I don't even know how we got to the point where we called each other boyfriend and girlfriend. I think we just keep this going in case we need a date and we can't find one anywhere else. And he has somebody else, anyway. He actually has a girlfriend that lives in his building. I keep hoping they'll send me an engagement announcement and this charade will be done for good."

"When was the last time you saw him?" Jess asked.

"January," I replied. I took another sip of Scotch.

"January!?" Jess exclaimed.

I shot him an angry glare.

"Not judging," Jess insisted. "But I mean, eight months – I would think he would have gotten the hint by now."

"You and me both," I replied.

I stared into the fire, spinning the bottom of the glass around in my hand.

"There was someone else," I said softly.

Jess shifted closer to me, and I could feel his hand graze mine.

"Logan Huntzberger," I said, turning to him.

"Your college boyfriend," Jess said quietly.

I shifted a little to put some space between us. "He's running the empire almost by himself now," I replied. "He was engaged. I knew we shouldn't, I just –" I shrugged. "I guess I just wanted to feel important again. I was just one last stop before he started his real life." I took another sip from my glass. "That's over and done with, though."

Jess put his hand on my knee. "Rory, did you –"

I turned to look at him. I wasn't imagining the look in those eyes. Soft, understanding, needing, imploring me –

Oh, man. Was this the worst idea or the best idea ever? I wasn't sure.

I also didn't care.

"I didn't love him," I whispered.

"I'm glad," Jess whispered back.

Neither of us said another word as he lowered me to the blanket in front of the fire and brought his lips to meet mine.