A/N-Sorry this has taken me so long. This story is requiring a lot more thought than Falling Away With You for some reason. I'm trying to put as much emotion into the chapters leading up to 15. I think there will try to be another sequel to chronicle their summers and whatnot. Let me know what you think!

After only a few meager hours of deep sleep, Rory woke up to her mother staring at her with a demonic grin. She groaned and rolled over, throwing her arm over her face, trying to pretend that she wasn't there.

"I hate when you stare at me and pretend like you aren't trying to wake me up," she said, her voice muffled from behind her arm. Lorelai grinned a little more and relinquished the cup of coffee to her daughter.

"I had a dream," Lorelai said. Rory looked at her plainly.

"Do we need to go through this right now?"

"Yes."

"Just checking." Rory tried to sit up better in bed and waited for her mother to begin.

"Well, here's the thing about this 'dream.' I don't really remember what happened or who was in it, but it was important and it might have had something to do with chocolate covered espresso beans. Interpret!" she demanded, waving and pointing a finger at her daughter, who was still curled up in the arms of slumber.

Rory took a long sip from the cup, swallowed, and handed it back to her mother, burrowing back into her blankets. Lorelai stood up and stared at her for another few moments, poking her in the shoulder.

"What?" Rory asked, snappish.

"You-you didn't interpret. I cannot walk out of this room without an interpretation!" Lorelai said, lost without her explanation.

"I suppose it could mean that you spend way too much time thinking about coffee and chocolate. It's about time they fused in your subconscious."

Lorelai shrugged. "That works for me."

It took Rory a few seconds to realize that Lorelai wasn't moving off of her bed and out of her room while she laid there, tucked into her quilt and warmed slightly by the coffee she had just ingested.

"You're not moving, are you?" Rory asked, muffled by sleep and her face-down position.

"Nope," Lorelai said, settling into her spot. Rory sighed melodramatically and flung herself out of her bed.

"It's Sunday, naturally you realize this," Rory said as she pulled a pair of socks on and yawned. Lorelai nodded and grinned some more. Rory was confused. "It's kind of early for you to be up and about, isn't it?"

"My dream got me excited and now I'm having a really hard time calming back down," she explained. Rory nodded in acquiescence.

"Chocolate has that effect on women in this family," she said.

Lorelai sat through the silence for hardly another moment before what she really meant started to permeate her consciousness.

"Did you get your Harvard application in the mail yet?" she finally asked, the words falling without aid from her mouth. She almost regretted asking, just because she knew.

Rory stopped breathing for a second at the comment, wondering if her mother knew about the others she had received to, the stigma behind her applying at those places.

"Uh, yeah, it came yesterday," she covered, running a brush through her hair slowly. Lorelai nodded, unsure.

"Oh, good. That's great," she said, rising to her feet finally and running a hand over her clothes in an attempt to straighten them.

Rory nodded noticeably and Lorelai looked back to find her barely conscious at her window, her head almost limp.

"You're awfully tired," Lorelai noted, sauntering up behind her. "Didn't you sleep well?"

Rory's heart stopped beating for a moment and her eyes snapped open as quickly as her consciousness came to.

"Uh, no, not really," she said shakily, trying desperately to find a good excuse. "I kept waking up. I think I only slept for a few hours." Rory wanted to turn around and see what her mother thought of her excuse but was too afraid that the guilt would be obvious on her face.

"Aw poor baby," Lorelai cooed on her way around the bed, going for the door. "Coffee? I've made gallons," she tempted.

"Please?" Rory pleaded, turning to her mother with a pathetic cock of the head and bags under her eyes.

"Well, since you were so polite and look so pitiful and all," Lorelai trailed off, going for the kitchen.

Rory awkwardly padded into the kitchen with her arms crossed over her chest and her eyes squinted at the sudden invasion of sunlight. She slid into her seat at the table and sat, wondering how much about the last night or so Lorelai could possibly have ascertained due to only her state and the possibility that Rory's stealth skills were few.

"Thank you," she cooed softly when her mother gently set the cup in front of her and sat on the other side of the table.

"What are your big plans for the day?" Lorelai inquired, sipping and grinning at her daughter. Rory shook her head, offhanded.

"Nothing really. Looking at my applications I guess, doing that kind of stuff. You?"

"Probably eating a lot of junk food, drinking a lot of coffee, and seeing how many people I can frustrate to the brink of insanity."

"So the usual then?"

"Pretty much."

They both sat for a little longer in the silence, and Rory was comforted by that void, the comfort that it promised. Lorelai didn't have a clue.

xxx

Jess woke up late to find Luke absent from the apartment and a note pinned to his shirt. Confused and disoriented, Jess slowly lifted his back from the mattress and fingered the piece of paper that he was attached to. With a look of the purest curiosity, he removed it delicately and read:

Come downstairs when you wake up.

Jess left the note lying on his unmade bed and quickly showered and dressed before descending the stairs into the noisy and crowded diner.

Peering curiously again, he looked from face to face, skimming for the one he so desired to see. Slightly let down by the fact that she was not yet there, and appalled that it was already 10 am, his posture fell slightly, his mind heavy at the thought of working all day long.

xxx

Luke spotted Jess come from behind the curtain and immediately halt, in search of the Gilmores. Luke knew that he wouldn't find them. Luke knew how painful it was to have your heart race so hopefully and then stop. He wanted to give him some indication that his search was going to be fruitless, some way to soften the blow of not finding them so handily accessible.

Normally, Luke would have hassled Jess for having woken up so late on a Sunday, for stalling. Luke would have made a spectacle out of Jess's unruly hair and the look in his eye that was anything but hospitable. He didn't though.

Luke nodded to him slightly and went back to the table he was working, keeping one eye on the customer and the other eye on his nephew.

Jess's heart pounded with anticipation as he let his eyes dance surreptitiously across the faces of Stars Hollow, but not one of them made that pounding stop. Instead he just ached, and hoped that all that had been said last night hadn't kept her from coming in. He wished against his own free will that she hadn't rethought everything last night as soon as she was in her warm bed and under the spell of her mother.

"Hey," Luke said genially when Jess walked past him and back behind the counter.

"Hey yourself." Jess let the conversation pause for a second, anticipating that Luke would make a snide or terse comment about how late Jess slept or how off his mood was. When nobody filled the void, they both moved to speak, neither sure of what to say.

They both wanted to say something about the application. What would Jess put on there, and how did he expect to get in? Who would he get recommendations from? How much did that thing cost? Luke's head was flooded constantly with questions regarding that dense white envelope that held the key to either Jess's future or demise.

Jess made the decision and walked away from Luke, picked up his tablet and began to move lazily and lethargically through the Sunday morning haze.

Homework, duty, the weekend catching up with you. Everything smells like a continental breakfast and your pajamas hang heavy on your limbs. Everyone's wearing glasses and sleeping late.

Everybody, however, did not sneak out at two in the morning. That was something for just the two of them this morning. Even though they were so far apart, it bound them unbreakably. It gave him some comfort that morning, as he floated on an unsettling cloud of fried bacon and tacky maple syrup, knowing how bound they were, that she now composed his own private atmosphere. It was the tiniest film of air around him that was nothing but her hair, her voice, her touch.

For the first time in a long time, Jess took the time to breathe deep and take it in, letting his body carefully analyze each molecule.

xxx

"When are we going to get cracking on that Harvard application?" Lorelai asked while she and Rory walked through the chilly yet humid February air on their belated stroll to Luke's.

"Hm?" Rory said, coming out of a daze. These sidewalks had seen her not so long ago, felt her foot falls only hours before, and the clouds left behind from her breath had not yet fallen in anonymity. She looked at Lorelai as she had for most of her life. Innocently. Even though Rory didn't particularly qualify at that moment, it was the same face. It would always be the same face. Rory was never the criminal. She carefully calculated her life so that she was the perfect victim.

Someone unsuspecting and usually dear to her was the equally perfect criminal.

"Your application! The very key to your future! One of the many pieces of paper that, in your lifetime, will decide the succeeding years of your life!" Lorelai enthused, gesticulating wildly. Rory smiled at her widely.

"You've gone cuckoo," Rory said, grinning disapprovingly at her mother's antics.

"This is epic! Important! It's our best shot at a Scorsese movie!" Lorelai continued, ignoring her daughter.

"It's a piece of paper with some blanks," Rory said.

"Really thick, Ivy League, rich people paper though!" Lorelai justified as they reached the door. Rory shook her head with the funny smile still lingering on her face and opened the door for them both.

"And really big blanks," she continued, once inside. "Like, twenty-two letters per name. That's long."

"She's crazy, I don't recommend giving her coffee or food this morning," Rory said, referring to her mother as Luke wandered by.

Luke grinned at them, relieved at their presence.

"Psst! Sparky!" Lorelai called to him. Luke dragged himself over, coffee pot in hand, and stood before her.

"Don't call me Sparky. And can I help you?" he said, sounding bored. Lorelai responded by grabbing the front of his shirt and pulling him down so she could whisper into his ear indiscreetly.

"You'd be straight out of your mind to deny me, and you know why," she said, winking just as visibly. Luke flushed momentarily and nodded. She planted a quick kiss on him before he took himself back behind the counter and to fill their mugs. Rory glared at her mother insincerely.

"It's almost disturbing how much you're able to command that man."

"I know, how cool?" Lorelai said, smiling uncontrollably. Jess wandered over with mugs in hand and set them in front of the women. His posture indicated that he was uncomfortable but his smile seemed true, so only Rory was privy to his embarrassment.

"Hello, diner nephew," Lorelai said, her goofiness still not slowing down.

"Morning," he said to her, looking down as he replaced an empty ketchup bottle. "Food?" he asked, somewhat more pleasant.

"Waffles," Lorelai declared as she lifted her mug skyward.

"Eggs," Rory said, smiling at him brightly. He grinned at her a little and she snuck her arm into the inside of his elbow before he could back away with their orders. "And this," she said, kissing him. It had started out as an innocent peck of reassurance, but quickly it became apparent that their lips were lingering a little longer and their nerve endings were almost glowing, even to the naked eye.

"Annnnd break!" Lorelai exclaimed as the two parted unwillingly and Jess swaggered all the way back to the kitchen.

Rory blushed visibly when she saw Lorelai's face and knew that somewhere behind her absurdity, there was a shred of honesty. She had an unmistakable talent at gently pushing an unfavorable truth. She lied with an ease that was supernatural. She was business casual. As much as she hated it and as much as she tried to pull away, so much of it was engrained in her DNA, in her blood. It coursed through her system undeniably and she could hardly stand it.

"Tell me something interesting," Lorelai said a few moments later, when the blush on Rory's face had subsided into her signature porcelain and the silence built around them for a couple of seconds. Rory grinned at her mother, but knew for certain that she daren't go too far.

"I was on the internet yesterday and I found out that Jess's old high school had a wildcat cub as its mascot," Rory said, smiling to herself and to her mother. Carefully sidestepping, Rory hoped that she could make her mother laugh her way into liking Jess. There could not be any pushing, no shoving, no telling anybody what to do. Rory had already tried that.

Lorelai laughed heartily and buckled over her coffee mug, her hand up as to signify that soon enough, she would be able to catch her breath.

"Okay, it was funny, not that funny," Rory said, narrowing her eyes slightly at her mother's hysterics.

"Rowr," Lorelai said mockingly, which again pitched her right back into her previous laughing fit.

From across the room, Luke spotted her and promptly rolled his eyes in an alloy of exasperation and adoration. He wanted to mirror her silliness, add to the repartee. Suddenly he was moving, and disapproval was drawn on his face subconsciously.

Lorelai saw him move from behind the counter and start toward them. She knew that he would stand there for a few seconds, waiting for her to catch her breath and explain the insanity. She was sure that he'd make a comment about her coffee-induced psychosis and be off again, to do his thing and make her feel as unique as she was.

Which is exactly why he took her coffee cup and kept on moving.

"Hey!" she screeched to him while Jess and Rory watched the situation, their eyes goose eggs.

"I'd rather have you obstinate than psycho."

xxx

Back at home, as Lorelai shuffled through Rory's desk, in search of her Motley Crue biography, she felt her blood stop running as she laid her hand over the top of the four other applications that Rory had sent away for.

xxx

His hand was sliding just above the waistband of her jeans and her head was lolled back in complete and total submission while they spent their Sunday afternoon on that couch upstairs. Her hair was relaxed down and his was strewn about his eyes, ungelled and incredibly sexy.

The stonewashed strip of fabric that Jess had been toying with for the last few minutes was taunting him unendingly. He knew that only a matter of inches below it was something that he had been after for a long, long time.

But then again, they only had ten minutes.

Rory was the first to hear the egg timer that they had set up behind the couch. She slowly brought her head up and looked Jess in the eye for a few seconds, hoping that she could stare him out of his focus. Both eyes were dilated and fixated entirely on the strip of skin that he had been obsessing about for the past seven minutes.

"Jess," she finally said, her voice thick with passion and sadness at their fun being put on hold, just long enough for their nerves to cool and their heart rates to return to normal.

"Hmm?" he said, slowly looking back up at her. Her eyelashes were thick over her eyes as she looked down at him and he slowly began to hear the ringing, faint from the other side of him.

"Thirty second warning," she said, gesturing behind her. With unimaginable agility, he jumped off of the couch, crouched behind it to retrieve their notebooks and to turn off the egg timer, and came back to the couch. He laid their things on the coffee table and watched in awe as Luke wandered in just as their countdown ended, rummaged through the other side of the room while mumbling his explanation, and returned to the diner, one rubber ducky richer.

When he left and their incredulity had the time to fade, Jess pulled her back to him. Mid-kiss he managed to remember what he had been meaning to ask her.

"Do you plan on telling Lorelai about the other applications?"

She cocked her head at him oddly. "What do you mean?" she wondered.

"Are you going to tell her or wait until you know what you've gotten into?" he asked again, more elaborate. Their positions were still compromising, though neither seemed to notice.

Rory let the words slide around in her head for a second and marry with her intentions. "I guess so.I never really intended to keep it from her. Why?"

"You know she's going to find out eventually, right? I mean, it's Lorelai. Sooner or later, she figures out everything," he said, all-knowing.

"Let's hope later rather than sooner then, huh?" Rory said, trying to joke him out of his rationality.

"I'm just saying that it might be better for you to come out and tell her than for her to just find out," he tried to explain, sighing the rest of his breath.

"What exactly are you insinuating?"

"Nothing. I'm just talking," he said, shrugging at her.

"Does Luke already know about Yale?" she asked, incredulous.

"It's not like I get the mail. He figured it out," he explained.

"Are you saying that I should just come out and tell my mom that I don't know if I want to go to Harvard anymore?" she said, her voice shaking and rising.

"No. I'm saying that she's going to think that way if you don't just tell her that you sent away for more applications just in case."

"I somehow don't think she'll see it that way," she argued.

"You don't need her permission to explore other options," Jess fired back.

"You do know that you're talking about my mom, right?"

"I'm applying other places."

"That's not the problem. It's not just the applying. It's the confidence. My mom is dead-set on my getting into Harvard. I've been working for this since I can remember. If I start to doubt myself, she might feel like a failure."

"Rory, you're allowed to do whatever you want. She's going to be pissed at first, but it's you two, come on. She'll get over it, she usually does," he tried to reconcile. Rory pulled her bottom lip into her mouth and felt the slippery feeling of worry slide through her slowly.

"Do you think I should tell her today?" she wondered quietly.

"Couldn't hurt," Jess finished, hugging her to him comfortingly.

xxx

Rory walked home, her feet heavy and her neck too weak to support all of the worst-case scenarios she was envisioning. In her mind, Lorelai screamed, she argued, she came to the verge of tears. She threatened to tear up the other applications, yelled at her grandparents for brainwashing her into wanting to go anywhere other than Harvard. She called the school and cursed them for demanding that Rory apply to more than 3 schools.

"Home," Rory called, walking through the house, searching for her mom.

"Mom?" she called, walking through the kitchen and into her room.

Lorelai was sitting on her bed, holding the other envelopes in her hands. Her eyes were wide, maybe a little hurt, but at terms with the decision.

"Mom," Rory tried to apologize. Lorelai shook her head.

"I get it. It's okay. I was angry, I screamed some, threw one of your books, cried for a second there, but it's okay. I understand."

"Mom, please don't be upset," she begged as her mother stood and left the envelopes on her dresser.

"Baby, I'm not upset. I told you, I understand."

"I don't think you do," Rory countered.

"You want choices, and that's okay. I like choices. That's why they have a million different flavors of Pop-Tarts and a bazillion kinds of Post-It notes."

"I think you're trying too hard to be all right with this."

Lorelai turned around and took Rory by the shoulders, looking her in the eye, seeming far less vacant than only moments before.

"Rory, you're going to be great, no matter what you do or where you go to college. Princeton, Yale, Harvard, whatever. Any other parent would kill to be able to say that their kid could get into any of these schools without a problem. Whatever you decide, I'm going to back you, even if it isn't Harvard."

"Thanks," Rory said, blushing and smiling shyly at Lorelai.

"Now," she said, letting her hands off of her shoulders and dropping them at her sides, "we have got a pile of movies over there, and I have a secret stash of Red Vines hidden in the oven."

"Tricky, tricky," Rory said, moving for the oven and removing the candy. Lorelai returned with the movies in her hands.

"We've got Raging Bull, The Wizard of Oz, Forrest Gump, Platoon, and Star Wars. Ideas?"

"Oldest to newest," Rory provided, chewing the Red Vine that was now clenched tightly and defensively in her hand.

"I agree," Lorelai said, moving for the living room. Together they piled onto the couch, and Rory silently began wondering how to come out and say that she wanted to go to Yale more than just about anything.

Love me please….