A/N: I probably would have finished this a few days ago but I got distracted by Hart of Dixie. Damn you, Wade Kinsella! This chapter covers an entire week which seems excessive but I have plans for some Thanksgiving action and it occurred to me that I started the story too soon before Thanksgiving. Oh well, you live and learn. And now that this chapter is done there is nothing standing between me and my reading on broadcast media promotion. Hooray...

Rory woke up Monday morning feeling even more nervous than she did around midterms. By the time she got to school she had already downed two cups of coffee, hoping to quell the feeling that some sort of apocalypse was approaching. Even though she'd ended up having a nice dinner with Dean the night before, she knew that actually being at school with both of them was going to be a completely different issue. Rory considered heading straight to class when she got to school, but decided to wait outside for Dean like she always did. She usually liked having a couple of minutes to talk with him before the bell rang, but that morning Dean wasn't the only one to join her. Almost as soon as Rory saw Dean walking down the street, Jess walked out of the diner and started walking toward her.

She felt like she was in a movie as Dean and Jess approached her. The boys studiously ignored each other, even when they were standing side by side. Rory would have laughed at how ridiculous the whole thing was if she wasn't so worried something unpleasant was going to happen. "Hi," she said, looking somewhere in between the two of them instead of making eye contact. Before Jess or Dean could say anything Rory sprung off the bench. "We should go inside. It's cold out."

"Good idea," Dean said, pushing past Jess. He grabbed Rory's hand and started walking toward the building, but Jess just followed them. "Can I help you?" Dean asked when Jess stepped on his heel as they walked up the stairs.

"I thought this was like a group thing," Jess said innocently. "Aren't we all friends now?"

Rory started to attempt to cut the conversation short, but Dean jumped in instead. "No, this is a me and my girlfriend thing. If you're looking for a group thing, maybe check out detention after school. I bet you'd feel right at home." The look on Dean's face took Rory by surprise. He looked like he really and truly hated Jess. Rory had always thought of Dean as friendly and surprisingly sweet for a high school guy, and she did not love that he was being straight up rude to Jess.

She dropped Dean's hand, and then adjusted her backpack to make it look like that's what she had meant to do all along. It was weak, but she wasn't about to get into it with Dean in the middle of the hallway. Defending Jess was also not an option if she wanted to avoid drama, but luckily he didn't need Rory jumping to his defense. "Well, it would sure beat running back and forth bouncing a ball for hours," Jess said.

"Yeah, and being on the varsity basketball team will look horrible on my college transcripts too," Dean said sarcastically.

Jess didn't look fazed, which just seemed to piss Dean off more. Rory sighed, holding up a hand. "Time out," she said, causing both boys to look at her in surprise. "You're both being really annoying right now. And class is going to start, so you should probably just… go away." She had never called anyone annoying to their face before (with the exception of her mother, but that was a common occurrence), and Dean in particular did not seem to appreciate it. Jess actually looked a little impressed, and slipped off down the hall without further comment. Dean lingered though, his eyebrows furrowed.

"Okay, what's wrong?" he asked.

"I just told you," Rory said. If Dean expected her to spill a ton of secret feelings since Jess had walked away, he was mistaken. Rory rarely said exactly what she was thinking, and she was starting to learn that it could feel really good when she did. "You know, I thought after we had dinner last night you would just let things go. I thought we'd kind of reached an understanding."

Dean looked confused. "The understanding is that things with us are good," he said slowly. "I'm still allowed to not like Jess."

"But you don't have to provoke him every chance you get," Rory said. "You know, he's only been here like a week and a half. That's pretty quick to make an enemy out of someone."

"Whatever," Dean said dismissively. "I've got to get to class." Without even saying goodbye he stalked off down the hall. Rory just shook her head and took a gulp of coffee from her travel mug, even though it was slightly cold. It was too early in the morning for fighting. Suddenly Rory was actually looking forward to going to her grandparents for Thanksgiving, because Thanksgiving meant a three day break from school. All she had to do was get through the week ahead of her first.

Getting through that week was a lot easier said than done, though. Every morning Jess joined her and Dean before school, which just irritated Dean more and more each day. Toward the middle of the week Dean had finally started to ignore Jess, but that only made Jess start taking shots at Dean. Rory could always stop him with a dirty look, but it was exhausting. Chemistry class was more of the same. Even when they didn't have lab assignments, Dean scowled at Jess from across the room. When they did have lab assignments Rory did her best to talk to Jess as little as possible, entirely too aware of Dean watching them from the back of the room.

Jess asked her if she wanted to work on their chemistry project every day after school and she always turned him down. She turned Dean down when he wanted to do things, too. Over the weekend she had been so certain that she could date Dean and be friends with Jess, but their animosity toward each other at school completely drained all her energy. On Friday after school she fell asleep on the couch, only waking up when Lorelai got home from work nearly three hours later. "So, what are the plans for the weekend?" Lorelai asked. "I have to go into work tomorrow, but I think I can play hooky on Sunday."

"I don't know," Rory said. She hadn't made her usual plans with Dean for the weekend and she had no intent to see Jess, either. "I don't have much homework this weekend. We could go to the mall or something on Sunday." The mall was only twenty minutes from Stars Hollow, but a trip even five minutes from Stars Hollow would've feel like a relaxing vacation.

"I could use some new shoes," Lorelai said, looking at her feet. She was wearing red flats that she had bought less than a month earlier, and they still looked brand new. "Don't you have that big deal chemistry project with Jess?"

"I worked on it a lot this week," Rory said. That was true. Since she had been avoiding the social scene after school, she had actually made a lot of progress. She would do a million group projects by herself if it meant not being distracted by Jess. "It's almost done, actually."

Lorelai frowned. "Isn't that the project you're working with Jess on?"

"Yes," Rory said simply, not wanting to explain that, academically speaking, all her attempts at actually working with Jess had gone rather poorly. "So, what are we going to do next weekend? Are you going to be stuck at the inn with the Thanksgiving crowd?"

Changing the topic worked, thankfully. "Aside from the unfortunate time spent at your grandparents', yes. We're booked to 100% capacity from Wednesday until Sunday, unless people call and cancel. Sookie is already hyperventilating about cooking dinner for so many people."

"Don't most people spend Thanksgiving with their families though?" Rory asked, confused.

Lorelai nodded. "Don't tell Sookie that, though. She's been planning this dinner for a month. Hopefully that means there will be a lot of leftovers," Lorelai said happily. "We'll have Thanksgiving leftover sandwiches until Christmas!"
"Please, I beg of you, do not try to recreate Ross' Thanksgiving sandwich," Rory pleaded. She and her mom were probably the last people on earth to start watching Friends, and last Thanksgiving they had watched an episode where Monica made Ross a sandwich with a gravy-soaked piece of bread in the middle. At the time they had thought it was a brilliant idea, until they actually made a sandwich like that. Gravy was great, but a soggy piece of gravy bread was not.

Lorelai clapped her hands excitedly. "I was just thinking about that earlier! I think the trick is to toast the bread for the moist maker first, so it doesn't get as wet."

Rory shook her head. "No moist makers," she said firmly. "Even saying it is gross. New topic, please."

She hadn't considered that they were only on the topic of Thanksgiving because she had changed the topic herself. If she had known Lorelai was so eager to get back to the original topic, she would've talked about soggy bread for another hour. "I haven't seen much of your boy toy this week," Lorelai said immediately. "Did you guys have a fight?"

"No fight," Rory said vaguely. There really hadn't been a fight, after all. "I'm just taking a little break right now."

Lorelai looked concerned. "Like, breaking up?" she asked, laying a hand on Rory's shoulder.

"No, of course not," Rory said. "I just decided to take a few days to myself. Sometimes it feels like I'm constantly hanging out with Dean. I like to have some time alone, too."

"Just like Ross and Rachel," Lorelai said gravely. "You know, that didn't work out too well for them."

Rory sighed. "No, not like Ross and Rachel." She never should have brought up Friends. Now her mom was going to compare everything that happened for the rest of the night to something that happened in an episode of the show. "Nothing even happened. I just wanted to take a few days and relax. It's totally normal, and Dean doesn't even mind." That may or may not have been true. She talked to Dean every day at school of course, but she had even been dodging their nightly calls when she could and keeping them short when she couldn't. She had a feeling Dean wasn't thrilled about all this new alone time, but Rory thought it was important. The last couple of weeks had really thrown her off her axis. Meeting Jess had been exciting at first, but as someone with a pretty routine-based life it didn't take long for Rory to feel exhausted.

"Okay," Lorelai said in a singsong voice that made Rory think she didn't believe her. "So are you going to be avoiding him this weekend too? Because if you are, you should throw in a couple of loads of laundry while I'm at work tomorrow."

"I will do laundry," Rory promised. She would have done the laundry even if she did have plans with Dean, because the last time Lorelai had done laundry she put Rory's favorite sweater in with a load of towels and it came out covered in little towel fuzzies. "And I'm not avoiding Dean," she added uselessly. "I'm just keeping my schedule open."

"Right, I forgot you're Miss Flexibility," Lorelai said sarcastically, getting up and heading toward the kitchen. "I'm going to order a pizza. Do you want the usual or are you going to try something new there, too?" Rory requested her usual and Lorelai went to call it in. When she walked back in the living room, she handed the phone to Rory. "Jess called while I was on the phone," she said. "I'm sure it was about that chemistry project he's been working so hard on."

Rory took the phone and dug through her backpack for the notebook she had written Jess' number in. "Thanks," she said, ignoring Lorelai's dig at Jess. Jess picked up the phone just as she walked in her room. Rory could almost sense her mom listening from the living room. "Hey," she said to Jess, closing her bedroom door. "Sorry, my mom was ordering a pizza."

"No big deal," Jess said. "So what's up?"

"Not much. Nothing, really," Rory amended. "I fell asleep on the couch after school and soon I will be having pizza. What's going on with you?"

"I was kind of surprised you even called me back," Jess said. "It kind of seems like you've been avoiding me. You've barely said a word to me all week. Or is this just how being friends works in Stars Hollow?"

Rory sighed. She had really hoped that her aloofness over the last week would go unnoticed, but that would have been underestimating Jess. "I wasn't avoiding you," she said, even though she had been a little. "I just needed a little break from…" she trailed off.

"From what?"

"From you and Dean," Rory said honestly. "Come on, Jess. You guys have been provoking each other all week."

"Hey, I haven't said a word to the guy," Jess argued.

"Well, that's not true," Rory said. "Yes, Dean has said some rude things, but you aren't innocent here either." Dean had certainly been more verbally aggressive, but Jess was showing himself to be quite the master of low-key antagonizing.

"Hey, is it my fault that Dean has a problem with the fact that I exist?"

That was hard to argue with. "I just don't understand why you wouldn't want to make things easier for yourself. Like, if you know Dean is going to be a jerk to you if you walk up to him, why would you walk up to him?"

Jess started to respond, but paused. "Wait, say that again."

"If you know Dean is going to be a jerk to you if you walk up to him, why would you?" Rory asked more slowly, not knowing where he was going with that.

"You just said Dean is a jerk," Jess said. "If you know he's a jerk then why date him?"

Rory rolled her eyes. "Why try to insert yourself into my relationship when it doesn't concern you?" she countered. "And besides, I didn't say Dean is a jerk. I said he was acting like a jerk to you, because you're constantly provoking him. Which is why I spent the week ignoring both you of."

"So you were avoiding me," Jess said. "You're not a very good liar, Rory. And you said he was being a jerk. That implies that he is a jerk in general. It's how words work."

"Okay, do not get patronizing," Rory said. "Is this why you called, to question my relationship for the millionth time since you got here?" She was starting to feel like she shouldn't have bothered calling Jess back. Really, she should have expected this. It almost made her question becoming friends with him in the first place. Almost. Truth be told, she kind of enjoyed how he challenged her. It could be a little annoying, but their arguing was kind of cathartic in a way. She hadn't realized how dull her life could be before he moved to Stars Hollow.

"No, I was going to ask if you wanted to go to the movies tomorrow," Jess said. In spite of herself, Rory smiled. She should have been annoyed with him for calling and being a pest about her and Dean – again – but Jess just made it really easy for her to get over it.

Of course, that didn't mean she was actually going to go to the movies with him. "I've got a lot of laundry to do tomorrow," Rory said. "That's going to take a few hours."

"They're doing a Marx Brothers triple feature," Jess said, trying to convince her. "They're showing Horse Feathers, Duck Soup and A Night at the Opera. I think you'd like them."

"I do like them," Rory said a little wistfully. "But I should get this laundry done." The laundry wasn't a big deal, but she wanted to hold her ground.

"Do it on Wednesday," Jess said easily. "We don't have school and the theater will be showing something different by then, so you won't be missing out on the movies then."
He did have a good point. Rory knew that if she was going to be hanging out with anyone that weekend it should be Dean, but watching a few movies sounded like fun. And she really did like the Marx Brothers. "I'll go to the first movie," she offered, trying to strike up a compromise. "But then I really have other things to do."

"Okay," Jess said. "But I bet after you watch the first one, you'll want to stay for the other two."

"We'll see about that," Rory said. She probably would want to stay for the other movies, but she was going to stay strong. Just as she was about to point out that she could rent the other two movies and watch them while she was doing laundry, she heard a knock on the door. "Hey, I think our pizza is here. I better go."

"That was fast," Jess remarked.

"Well, we're some of their best customers," Rory said proudly, even though that was probably a little bit sad. "What time is the movie tomorrow?"

"The first one starts at two," Jess said. "Or you could come to Luke's before that and we could eat lunch first."

Rory thought about protesting, but agreed instead. And just like that, her hermit weekend was officially no more. She did feel a little bit guilty about making plans with Jess instead of Dean, but one movie wasn't really that big of a deal, and Dean usually had basketball practice Saturday mornings. He would probably be tired anyway. Still, she grabbed an extra pizza at dinner, hoping that the cheese and sauce would cover up the slightly uneasy feeling in her stomach. Boys were just too much work.