It wasn't that hard to get each other naked and Rory felt this had been years in the offing. She and he were meant for one another and their bodies fit together perfectly. She'd never had many curves but her angles fit with his. The first woman, Lilith, was Adam's equal — his true mate — he took against her. God created Eve as Adam's subservient wife. Rory didn't feel like Eve when Jess' fingers were on her body and her mouth was nipping at his throat. Jess was her parallel, his angles filled her gaps so perfectly. It had never been like this.

She knew she shouldn't compare sex, it was rude and inappropriate but she couldn't help it. Logan had wanted to possess her whereas Jess' touches felt not like worship or reverence or possessive but instead like his fingers belonged. Logan had, after all, once said he wanted her to call him master and commander. It had been a joke but, also, it hadn't been. Jess had never, and would never, want to master her. They were partners, through and through.

Dean had always been too damn big, his body dwarfed hers and his desires had forced her to repress her own. He'd wanted all her time, attention, affection it had been exhausting and he had never viewed her as his equal but instead someone from whom to take. His love was selfish and too many times she'd given into him. Jess' arms didn't feel like a cage, his embrace was not a demand. They kissed, and touched, and held and everything felt right to her.

She shook in his arms, happy and feeling good. When they finally stilled, panting and holding each other close, Rory said, "The first time we kissed, it was amazing and you said, 'Whatever else happens between us, at least we know that part works.'" She was resting on his chest, head on his shoulder, head tucked under his chin.

He laughed, "We're meant to be together."

"Yes," she agreed. She breathed into his neck and moved back, leaning up. "We need a towel and a snack."

"And they say romance is dead," he replied.

Rory laughed and got up and said, "I like cuddling without being damp and sticky."

"And the snack?"

"I like food," she shrugged into her robe. "Stay right there."

"I don't think my legs work," he replied.

She leaned over and kissed him, "I love you, Jess."

"Rory, you're the love of my life."

Smiling she left and quickly cleaned up in the bathroom and brought a towel back to the room. She tossed it to Jess and went into the kitchen. She had been careful not to let him look into the freezer. She'd taken everything from his hands to freeze. Now, she scooped ice cream into cones and brought them back to bed. And when she opened the door he laughed and said, "So romance isn't dead after all." She handed him a cone and he said, "Mint chocolate chip, you remembered."

"I remember everything," said Rory. Rory sat, cross-legged on the bed. "I really like being able to add the visual of you naked to my pile of memories."

He laughed and licked his ice cream cone. "There is a bigger question I'm thinking of asking."

"If AI ever becomes truly self-aware, should computers have human rights?" guessed Rory.

"Home is where your books and my books live together, right?"

"Right," said Rory.

"And is it where your wedding ring falls into the drain, and you freak out, and I laugh inappropriately, and you hit me, and it doesn't hurt, and then I take the pipe apart and then call Luke when I can't make the pipe watertight after I put it back together?" Rory blinked and Jess said, "Don't answer. Write a pros and cons list, I'll do it too. Do a full, honest one, we won't last if there's any poison left in old wounds, so list it all. And if mine's right then I will ask your ring size and if yours is right you can tell me. And if we make the lists, and it turns out we're not ready, your books and my books will still live together. We'll revisit the question in five years?"

Rory nodded, "Okay, sounds like a plan. I've always enjoyed a good pros and cons list."

"I know, I use them now. You showed me how useful they are."

"Really? I schooled you in list making."

"You were a good tutor: you even let me take ice cream breaks." He licked his cone. She nibbled at the top of her cone and he said, "That's going on the cons list: starts to eat the cone way too early in the process."

Rory laughed. "Con: criticizes my eating style." He laughed and leaned forward and kissed her. Her cell phone rang and she said, "Who is calling me? It's almost midnight."

"College kids," said Jess, shrugging.

She looked at her phone, "It's Mom." She answered saying, "Is the house on fire?" Jess raised an eyebrow.

"No, can't sleep, I wanted to hear about your day with Jess."

"My day with Jess hasn't ended," she replied.

"What are you doing? A midnight movie?" guessed her mom.

"No, ice cream in bed. Can I call you tomorrow? I feel awkward talking with you when I'm naked."

"I won't even answer the phone to my mother when I'm naked," her mom agreed. "Say 'hi' to Jess." Before Rory could say anything her mother added, "Try not to spill any ice cream on the sheets, I'm sure they're sticky enough already."

Rory laughed in shock, "Mom, seriously: that's just dirty."

"Yep," agreed her mother.

"Night, Mom."

"Night, sweets."

Hanging up Rory said, "Mom says 'hi.'"

"Why did you tell her we were naked?"

Rory shrugged, "I tell Mom everything. I'm going tell her I'm moving to Philadelphia having spent one day there: she's going to guess that we've gotten naked together."

"You tell her everything?" he asked.

"Well, I'm not going to draw her diagrams or anything," Rory licked ice cream off her fingers.

Jess finished his ice cream cone and then tugged her close to kiss her. She was sinking into the feeling of his mouth on hers, his tongue exploring her mouth when she felt him pluck her seven-eighths done cone from her fingers. Breaking the kiss he said, "It's so sweet of you to give me your last bite." He popped it into his mouth.

"You jerk," she said.

"You telling your mom about it?"

"No, I'm coaxing her onto your team, telling her you stole my ice cream will not help my case." She kissed him slowly. "We're going to spend the rest of our lives together."

"You telling your mom that?"

"Of course," said Rory. "Once she's on your team, I'll probably tell her about my ice cream cone. I tell her everything. As for my sex life: flirtation to UTIs, I give her a pretty broad overview."

"Did you have a long meaningful talk before you lost your virginity?" he asked jokingly.

"I meant to but then things got out of hand and then my mom and I had a fight over it."

"Lorelai Gilmore is against premarital sex?" he asked, eyes wide in mocking shock.

"Well, hypothetically, if someone says their marriage is over, can you sleep with them or is it cheating?"

"Were there papers or lawyers involved?" he asked and she shrugged. "Did he actually say, 'I'm getting a divorce'?" she shook her head. "Was he wearing a ring?"

In a small voice she said the same thing she'd said to her mother all those years ago, "He took it off."

Her mother had reacted with anger, scorn, shock. All Jess said was, "Dean Forrester is a real piece of work. He got you all turned around and then cheated on his poor wife. She deserved better and you did too."

"Yeah, afterwards, I heard Lindsay in the butchers, almost crying because she couldn't cook and she wanted to cook him roast beef. She clearly wanted to save her marriage. I wrote him a letter, gave it to Mom to give it to him, and went to Europe with my grandmother. I said he was married and he needed to figure out his life," Jess nodded. "After his divorce we got back together," she started then she shook her head, "God, you don't want to hear any of this. We're naked, in bed and have promised each other the future: I shouldn't be talking about this."

"Rory," Jess pulled her into his lap. "This is me, you can tell me anything. And, as for Dean," he sighed, "only about twenty percent of my problem with him was that he was dating you. Most of it was the way he treated the person he was dating. He was domineering and dismissive. He hated the person he dated having friends. He hated when someone else had a crush on 'his' girl. And if he'd wanted to be pissed at me then that's cool, but he took it out on you."

"My mom was so disappointed in me," said Rory. Jess sighed and Rory said, "What?"

He shook his head, "I don't want you to think I'm insulting your mom, or trying to say something I'm not."

"Say anything," said Rory.

"Oh, when they make a movie of our epic love story promise we won't let them cast John Cusack as me," said Jess with a laugh.

"Deal, but if they want to cast Ione Skye — circa 1989 — to play me, I'm fine with it."

"So they need to go back in time and get the right version of her to play you?" he joked.

"Yep, and we're holding out for a huge payday: we're not selling our love story for cheap, this is our big sell out." She kissed him slowly and said, "Jess, I promise I won't get pissed."

"Your mother has led a very sheltered life. Her overbearing parents wanted to help her with you. They never exiled her; she chose to leave and she went to Stars Hollow and that nice quiet town embraced her and you. She thinks she's a wild child with a past but really she went from a cold but well-meaning family to warm and insane community. She had a baby at sixteen but she also had an incredible support system. She looks at Dean — a boy who built you a car and held your hand for a long time before kissing you — and she sees a great guy. She looks at the way you lost your virginity and she thinks you both made a mistake. She's wrong."

He tugged Rory more into his lap and she realized he was seeking comfort as he thought about the situation. She curled in closer to him, gently stroking his neck as he spoke, "You got played by a manipulative man. Maybe he was a great first boyfriend, but he isn't a good man. I watched this, so many times, I understood him in a way that your mom doesn't. He's outside of her ken and she wouldn't admit it but it's true: his relationship with you when I got there was abusive in the extreme. I've seen it before, I've watched my mother date a Dean seven or eight times. He was sweet and kind and patient right up until he wasn't, right? He was mean to you by the time I was on the scene and I'm sure it happened gradually — too gradually for you to notice. By the time I got there, he demanded all your time and attention, cajoled you into canceling plans with other people and guilted you for not being a slave for him. When he did things you wanted — like going to the book fair — he wanted you to 'make it up to him.' He acted like doing something that didn't directly benefit him was a favor to you but was pissed when you didn't want to sit through his softball games. He told you it was over with Lindsay, to the best of your knowledge he had never lied to you, and you believed him." He took a deep breath, playing with her hair.

"Your mother should not have blamed you for that. He manipulated you. Your mom sees too much of the kid he was to see the man he is. He had sex with you and then he went home to his wife. And his poor wife was there cooking for her man, because that's what he wanted from his woman. He is a chauvinist who uses people. I can tell you two things right now. One: if you ever attempt to roast meat to try and please me, I am going to choke it down with a smile, because, when someone you love cooks for you, you just eat it and praise them. Two: someday, in the not too distant future, Dean Forrester will hit his partner and afterwards he will apologize and justify it in the same breath, 'I'm so sorry, baby, but you know you shouldn't talk to me when I'm in that mood;' 'I'm so sorry, baby, I just get angry when the football team doesn't win;' 'I'm so sorry, baby, I had one too many drinks.'"

"You really think so?" asked Rory.

"I've seen too many men groom my mother with that path of abuse to have any doubt in my mind about the Dean Forrester lurking under the surface. I could see it clearly in my mind at seventeen and, with what I've gleaned from you and Luke since I left, I have no doubt about it. Dean will end up beating his wife. And, at seventeen, the kid who watched his mom get hit too many times wanted to preemptively break all of Forrester's teeth." Rory stroked his back as he spoke he gave her a small smile. "And, yes, as you tell your mom everything, you can tell her that I said exactly what I said. I don't care if she knows that I understand Dean in a way she never did."

Rory said, "The fact that you're a feminist goes on the pros list."

Jess laughed, "A feminist is someone who believes that women are the equals of men and should be treated as such. I really believe it to be an outmoded term. I think it should be replaced by the phrase 'sane and logical person' and its antonym should be 'moron.' I wasn't a bad boyfriend in high school because I didn't respect women, I was a bad boyfriend because I was a bad boyfriend." Rory laughed and kissed him.

"Does a sane and logical person want to go for round two?"

"I really do," he kissed her slowly. "You're naked in my lap, it really makes round two really appealing." She turned in his lap, straddling his hips and rubbing against him as they kissed. She bit his lip and moaned. "God, you're hot," he muttered against her mouth. They moved together and she was riding him, his head against her chest as she played with his hair. They were both groaning and kissing and Jess said, "We're really good at this." Rory laughed and bit his shoulder as she came. She kept moving with him but he pushed her back onto the bed and hovered over her and he rocked into her body. Stroking his back she pulled him down for a kiss. He came nipping at her ear.

She drew patterns over his back and said, "Our life is going to be amazing."

"Tell me something I don't know," he said, teasing.

"I deviled egged your car when I was seventeen," she said and he laughed.

"You jerk," he said.

"Mom helped. We were both in a bad mood; you were dating Shane and Sherry had just thanked Mom for priming Dad to be a good father."

"Jerk," he replied. "This goes on the cons list."

"Sorry," said Rory.

"I worked at Walmart for that car, Ror," he said.

"It was a jerk move," agreed Rory. "I promise to never deviled egg your car again."

"If both our lists go well, my car will be half yours. If our lists aren't perfect, it'll still be common-law half yours."

She laughed and kissed him slowly. "I'll make it up to you."

"Oh yeah?" he asked.

"There's this really cool little bookstore in town. We'll go tomorrow and I'll buy you a surprise."

"That is really exciting," he said it as a deadpan comment but he smiled and Rory knew it was a little exciting for him. He pulled away and reached for the towel, cleaning them both up. He got rid of the condom and said, "Where are we standing on kids?"

"Anywhere but on their fingers," she replied.

"I'm serious, it's an important question for whether or not there are rings in our future."

"Not in the next ten years," said Rory. "I'd like kids but I need to have my career established first."

He nodded, "Jimmy was such a loser; I know I'd be better than that. A potato would be a better dad than Jimmy. But I want to be an actually good dad and there for them and I couldn't right now, until Truncheon Books can chug along by itself, I couldn't be there for painting school play sets. Ten years sounds good." Then he added, "And how do you feel about adoption?"

"I never thought you'd be the one bringing this up," she said. "I never thought you would talk about painting the sets of a school play."

"I'm not seventeen and really focused on getting you naked… largely because you're already naked."

She laughed, "Adoption?"

"What if your mom hadn't been able to keep you?" he said. "The best part of my childhood was when I lived with Luke and I was seventeen at the time. If my mom had just handed me off as a baby… if we adopt we'd know that at least our kids got good parents."

Rory laughed and then kissed him, "Adoption sounds good, but if a surprise happens too that would be good," she shrugged, "surprises happen."

He nodded, "You were a great surprise for your mom; my mom likes to call me an accident when she's drunk."

"Penicillin, the microwave, playdough, pacemakers and Jess Mariano," said Rory, "lots of wonderful things are accidents."

"Aspartame," added Jess.

Rory shook her head, "Aspartame is disgusting."

"Lots of people would say I'm disgusting," said Jess.

Rory kissed him slowly and said, "We know better. Adoption in ten years and then if we have a surprise we high-five, love our children all the same and move on?"

"Perfect," he agreed.

"We're raising them godless, right?" she asked.

"Oh hell yeah," said Jess. Rory yawned, "It's late," he pulled her close and she turned off the light.

"Are you going to be able to sleep? You've always had trouble when you couldn't hear New York."

"Yeah, Philly is actually louder than New York, which is great but I learned to sleep in Venice Beach — way too quiet — and you've tired me out." He wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her back against him, "Good?"

"Wonderful," said Rory.

"Sorry I snore," he kissed her cheek.

"S'okay, I'm a heavy sleeper."