Chapter Seven

When Rory stepped back into her room, she found Lily sitting cross-legged on her bed reading an old paperback.

Rory leaned closer to see what she was reading. "Ah, The Bell Jar. Good choice. It's one of my favorites."

"Jess thinks Sylvia Plath is a psychotic nutcase who desperately needs some therapy and a Prozac," Lily said softly, almost a whisper.

Rory hadn't failed to notice that it wasn't only Lily's voice which had softened. The teenager had changed into an old t-shirt and faded pajama pants with embroidered flowers on them. Her light brown hair had been pulled back in a loose ponytail and she smiled a little when she finally looked up.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have snapped at you earlier," she admitted, twisting the book her hands.

Rory sat down beside her on the bed. "It's okay. I knew you were just upset."

Lily nodded. "I did miss Jess. I missed him a lot." She shrugged. "I wouldn't be here if I didn't miss him."

"Is Jimmy really that bad?" Rory bit her lip. "I'm sorry, I shouldn't be asking."

Lily closed the book without bothering to mark her page. "Compared to the way he used to be, he's pretty bad. But he'll only get worse. It's how the disease works."

Rory recognized that Lily had been forced to grow up much faster than most girls her age. The way she spoke so matter-of-factly about Jimmy's disease was both frightening and reassuring to Rory, although she wasn't sure why.

Lily smiled a little and looked around. "I've never been in a real dorm room before," she said shyly.

"As opposed to a fake one?" Rory twisted one side of her mouth into a smile. "It's a little overwhelming at first, but in the end it's just a couple tiny rooms and one psycho roommate."

Lily nodded. "Jess told me some stuff about Paris. She sounds… intense."

"Understatement. But now that she's dating Doyle she has someone new to focus on, so I'm sure she won't bother you."

"Rory?"

"Yeah?"

Lily fingered the book in her hands, looking apprehensive. "Please don't hurt Jess again."

"What?" Rory inhaled sharply.

"He's fragile now." Lily raised her eyes to meet Rory's confused gaze. "He might do something stupid again, like leave, but he needs you."

Suddenly Rory was feeling the urge to flee herself.

Lily continued. "When he first came he wouldn't talk about you. I found a picture in one of his books, the two of you together somewhere. You were smiling and he was scowling. He refused to tell me who you were.

"The day Jimmy told him he had Huntington's he took off. Mom wasn't sure if he was coming back, but around one in the morning he stumbled in, drunk out of his mind. Mom and Jimmy were asleep but I'd been reading. I made him a cup of coffee and he started talking."

"He told you.." Rory swallowed. "He told you about me?"

Lily nodded. "Not at first. At first he just talked about his mom sending him to Stars Hollow to live with Luke, how much he hadn't wanted to be there. Then he told me some about you. Not about how you guys met, or dated, just about those last few weeks when he screwed everything up."

"He didn't screw everything up." Rory felt like crying but wasn't sure there were anymore tears in her.

"Don't tell me, tell him." Lily stared uncompromisingly at Rory. "Him coming here was a really big step. He only stayed for about a week after that night. He was too scared to stay."

"Then why did he come here?" Rory asked her.

Lily shrugged. "I don't know for sure. Maybe he didn't have anywhere else to go. Maybe space aliens were chasing him, I don't know. Just don't hurt him if he trusts you. No matter who my real father was, he's my big brother and I need him."

ooo

Luke was in the diner watching his tiny four-inch television set when Jess walked in. It was nearly two in the morning and Jess was shocked and surprised to find Luke still up.

"Luke?" he asked incredulously, closing the diner's door behind him.

Luke switched off the television and looked up. "You got something to tell me?"

Jess tensed. Dammit, Liz hadn't called, had she? He'd been careful not to let her know where he was, and didn't think she and Luke talked that much since the wedding.

"Sasha called to get the address of the diner. Apparently Lily left her glasses. Sasha's expressing them here for her." Luke spoke softly and steadily. "You mind telling me who the hell Sasha and Lily are?"

Jess tried not to let the relief show on his face. "Sasha is Jimmy's girlfriend."

"And Lily is?"

"Sasha's daughter," Jess told him.

Luke crossed his arms. "Well, if Lily is Sasha's daughter, why am I getting the distinct impression she's not with Sasha?"

"She came to visit." Jess tried to remain as vague as possible. "We get along okay. She likes to read."

Luke nodded and gestured around the empty diner. "And where is this Lily? Shimmying up the drainpipe? Dropping down the chimney?"

"She's at Yale with Rory."

"Rory?" Luke raised his eyebrows. "Since when are you two friends again?"

Jess kicked the table leg softly with his toe. "We aren't."

"Oh, so your non-friend is babysitting your father's girlfriend's kid?" Luke snorted. "Real nice, Jess."

"She's thirteen. She doesn't need babysitting." Jess turned away and headed for the stairs.

"I'm not done talking to you!" Luke called after him.

"I am," Jess muttered. "I am."

ooo

It was one of those conversations he never wanted to have.

"Hmm. Tonight I got into a fight at a strip club with my nephew. A fight. I haven't been in a fight since sixth grade. Vince Williams called me a doodyhead. I took it very personally..,"

Jess stared at Luke as he leaned against a table, arms crossed. He lost track of what Luke was saying as he concentrated on the face in front of him. Jess was about to be reprimanded and he knew it. The strange thing was that he actually was willing to admit that he deserved it.

This whole thing had been a mistake. Wedding or no wedding, Jess should have stayed the hell away from Stars Hollow, Luke, and Liz. He wasn't good for anything anymore, except causing trouble and starting fights.

Luke's voice slowly faded back into his radar. "…I mean, if you really hate your mother that much, then you shouldn't be here, you shouldn't walk her down the aisle, and you shouldn't go to her wedding."

Jess shuddered inwardly and tried not to look too surprised. "I don't… hate my mother."

"You don't?" Luke genuinely looked interested in the answer. "Well then, I don't get it. Why weren't you coming… because of me? You hate me that much?"

"I don't hate you." It was the complete opposite in fact, but Jess wasn't quite ready to admit that much. "I came here because of you."

"Stop that." Luke obviously thought he was kidding.

Pretty much everyone in Jess' life had asked something of him in the past few months. He'd never said yes. "You said it was important to you." Those had been the words that had cut down the barricade around his heart and forced him to feel. "Remember?"

Luke blinked. "I didn't think you were listening."

"I was listening." It was the first time he could bear to listen to anyone at all. Luke had been right to ask this of him. Jess owed Luke more than he'd ever know and if going through all this torture was the way to pay him back, he'd do it.

"So, you don't hate your mom, you don't hate me, so… why weren't you coming?"

The look that flashed across Jess' face said more than it should.

Luke exhaled. "No… Rory still?"

Jess blinked at him. Rory, right. If it hadn't been this than it would have been that. It wasn't like Rory would ever want to see him again, even if he were willing to re-enter her life.

"That's ancient history," Luke continued. "You haven't seen her in over a year."

"I saw here when I was here a few months ago," Jess said, almost feeling guilty that he hadn't confided in Luke before then.

Luke stared. "I didn't know that. "So, what happened?"

"Nothing. I told her, uh," Jess paused.

"What?" Luke leaned forward.

"I told her that I loved her." Jess let out a deep breath. It felt somewhat better telling someone, he found.

"Wow!" Luke's jaw dropped. "What did she say?"

"Nothing." Absolutely nothing.

"What, you just said it and walked away?"

Close. "No. I got in my car and left."

"You just dropped the bomb and left?" Luke asked, still shaking off the aftereffects of the bomb Jess had dropped on him.

"I drove," Jess amended.

"You didn't want to stick around to see what she said?"

Hell no. "No. And she obviously had nothing to say." If he'd even wanted to listen.

"How do you know?"

Jess felt himself getting a little angry. "She could have contacted me anytime in the last three months, but she didn't." Never mind that he hadn't wanted anything to do with her, she could have at least tried.

"What are you talking about?" Luke said incredulously. "You change your phone number weekly."

"The ball was in her court," Jess scoffed.

"Oh Jess, come on. You did this completely wrong." Luke took a deep breath. "Open two-way communication is the foundation of love, and you cut that off."

Jess blinked.

Luke continued. "I had this friend, let's call him Phillip, who thought expressing intimacy was a favor to his partner, but expressions of intimacy should be given freely and frequently. He loved Judy, but he used his love as a bargaining tool."

"Who the hell is Judy?" Jess wondered if Luke had finally lost it.

"Phillips wife. We call her Judy."

We who? Jess wondered, but he didn't ask. "I wasn't bargaining."

"You were bargaining," Luke insisted. "You had expectations out of what you deserve. You don't nurture."

"Where are you getting all this junk?"

"Life." Luke gestured. "I've lived."

Jess stared. "What, in a Bette Midler movie?"

"I'm just trying to help you out."

"Oh please." Jess rolled his eyes. "You are the most dysfunctional person I know."

"Not anymore."

He wondered if that could really be true, if someone could change. "Your marriage to Nicole," he illustrated, "nothing but weird."

"I'm better now."

"Yeah, right. Right. Oh man, we're just a couple of losers."

"Well, things change my friend." Luke had a tone to his voice that puzzled Jess.

"Oh yeah?"

"Stay tuned." Luke began to go upstairs, then turned. "You really told her you loved her?"

Jess sighed and raised his eyebrows. He'd said about all he was going to already.

The conversation with Luke left Jess feeling empty and alone, vulnerable to an extent that he rarely let himself reach. It made him sneak out of the diner silently at that late hour and walk the streets in search of peace.

Stars Hollow had exactly one payphone. Directly in front of Doose's Market, only seventy feet or so from Luke's Diner, it wasn't exactly private.

Jess however, was willing to take what he could get. Even the gleaming phone booth directly under the streetlight was more private than the open space of Luke's apartment.

The number was familiar as he dialed it. He prayed that he wouldn't be home, that no one would be home, that he's only have to talk to the answering machine.

"Hello?"

No such luck. "Jimmy?"

"Yeah? Who's this?" Jimmy sounded irritable, which meant this probably hadn't been a good day.

He swallowed. "It's me, Jess."

"Jess?"

Definitely not a good day. "Liz's son." That usually jogged his memory on a bad day. Jimmy frequently forgot who Jess was, but he never forgot Liz.

"I used to be married to a Liz…"

Jess swallowed. "I know."

"I wasn't a very good husband. I ran out on her and our baby son. I shouldn't have done that." He sounded sad. "I bet she hates me now."

Jess closed his eyes, leaning against the cool metal of the phone booth. "She doesn't hate you, Jimmy."

"How do you know?" Jimmy sounded confused.

"Jimmy? Who're you talkin' to?" Jess could hear Sasha calling him from the other room.

"Someone named Jess." Jimmy called back.

Jess knew exactly the expression that was coming over Sasha's face. He'd seen it many times while he was in Venice Beach, when Jimmy forgot the words for simple things like toast.

"You know Jess, honey," Sasha told him patiently. "He's your son. Liz's boy."

Jess swallowed as he waited for Sasha's words to sink into Jimmy's brain. In fact, she's probably grabbed a picture of him off the table to use as a visual.

"Jess?"

"Yeah?"

Jimmy sounded on the verge of tears. "I didn't forget you Jess, I swear. I just didn't recognize your name."

"I know."

"A father should recognize his own son's name."

Jess sighed. "It's not your fault, Jimmy."

"I didn't forget," Jimmy repeated.

After a moment of silence, Sasha got on the line. "Jess, hun?"

"Hey, Sasha."

"Hi Jess." Sasha sounded her usual bright and cheerful despite the situation she was likely dealing with. "I'm sorry about all that. The doctor tried him on this new medication but all it seems to have done is make his memory worse."

"It's all right." Jess felt a lump rising in his throat. This had been a bad idea to begin with. It was better when he just didn't call. He just made things worse, upsetting Jimmy all the time.

Jess heard the sound of glass breaking in the background.

"Jimmy!" He heard Sasha call. "Jess? I have to go. Aw, Jimmy, not the clown…"

He listened to the dial tone for a few minutes before he hung up.

Jimmy was better off forgetting him.