Thanks for the feedback! I can't believe I've been writing this for a year!
Rory wakes later that night and stirs, confused. She is lost for a moment in where she is and then looks down to see Jess beside her, fast asleep. Rory smiles, sitting up, and then feels an odd sensation on her chest. Touching herself, she realises her milk is flowing and she gasps. As she moves Jess wakes and sleepily he asks, "What's up?"
"I'm leaking - my boobs, I mean."
Jess switches on the lamp and Rory sees the milk spilling down herself and onto the sheets.
"I'm sorry," she says, embarrassed. "I didn't think of it happening."
"No big deal," Jess says and Rory adds, "Well, at least it wasn't during sex."
"All part of it, huh?" Jess remarks and Rory smiles, going to the bathroom and letting the rest of the milk flow. The rush of it makes her miss Charlotte and she half wants to call her mother but Rory resists, knowing it wouldn't be appreciated. She stares in the mirror, feeling almost as she did when losing her virginity. She's had sex, an event Rory nearly believed would never happen, and it was more and less than she'd imagined. Washing the milk away, Rory goes back to Jess, who's sitting up and flipping through a magazine.
"Get back here," he says, grinning, and Rory climbs into bed, leaning into the arm he puts around her.
"You okay?"
"Yeah - just sleepy. And thinking."
"What about?"
"Nothing, really. Sorry I woke you."
"I don't mind."
"Hey," Rory says, smiling. "We had sex."
"Yeah, we did," Jess says, cupping her hip with his spare hand. "Pretty amazing, or was that just me?"
"Definitely not just you. Way better than the book made me think."
"What?"
"Forget it."
Jess kisses the top of her head, turns off the light and they both slip back into sleep.
Rory gets up early the next morning. This time she's able to express her milk before it leaks but isn't tired enough to go back to sleep. Jess is sound asleep, snoring, and Rory knows it would keep her up. Instead, she showers, makes a cup of coffee and wanders back over to the bedroom, considering reading in bed. Rory's eyes catch Jess's desk and on it her manuscript, with his notes. In a moment she is over there and sitting, turning the pages and flicking through. Jess's notes jump from the margins and Rory laughs out loud at some of them. Others make her frown, considering, and she bites her lip when, next to her passages about being lonely at Yale, Jess has written this has a Virginia Woolf feel to it and I knew you weren't okay. He knew she wasn't okay? Rory didn't know she wasn't okay. She didn't know how alone she'd felt until she met Logan, and had someone to see and somewhere to go in her free time, next to Stars Hollow. When she lived at home, it hadn't felt bad that she had few friends at Chilton. It didn't matter, because her world was Stars Hollow. She had Lorelai and Lane and the entire universe of fiction. That was still there, of course, when she went to college, but books weren't enough. She needed real people too, and they weren't there. Rory visited, but it wasn't the same. Everyone else made friends, found their place, and she was looking out on the sidelines. Rory silently wondered what was wrong with her. And then she met Logan, and he said she was special, and she went into his world. The elusive world Lorelai so distrusted. Rory was thrilled by it, most of the time, but every so often she'd look up and feel like a stranger. She'd buried it until Jess showed up, when she was living with her grandparents, and said, this isn't you. Rory knew he was right, and wished she'd been a little braver. It was how she'd described herself previously, she locked the doubt in. Rory never enjoyed looking messy and confused.
Sipping her coffee, Rory flicks some of the pages back to before she'd left home. She finds the description of first meeting Jess and laughs and laughs at his note. Her amusement wakes Jess up and he yawns, rubbing his eyes.
"What? What's so funny?"
"Oh - I was reading your notes. I hope that's okay."
"It's your book," Jess shrugs. "I'm not done yet though."
"I know - I'm sorry. I saw it there and couldn't resist."
Jess gets up, stretches and goes over to the desk.
"Care to tell me what all the mirth's about?"
Rory shows him the page where Jess has written, underlined, it did not happen like that!
"It did happen like that!" Rory insists, giggling. "You asked me to bail to try and act tough, and when I was distracted you stole my book."
"I borrowed it, and I was not trying to act tough."
"You did try and impress me with magic tricks," Rory acquiesces. "What were you trying to do then?"
"I was trying something," Jess says with a smirk. "I was hoping we'd make out or something."
"Ha! I knew it!"
"That wasn't acting tough!" Jess protests, putting his hands up. "That was trying to get a little action."
"Which you didn't get."
"Nope, you saw through my plan."
"I don't know about that," Rory says. "I was pretty naïve. I think I really did believe you just wanted to walk around or something."
"Well, that would have happened too. I was going to try and get you to show me the sights."
"Uh huh," Rory remarks, rolling her eyes. "You still succeeded in taking my book."
"Yeah, you call me a scruffy Ginsberg scholar."
"Is that too strong?"
"No, I just never thought of myself like that. I mean, I read everything."
"Including Jane Austen," Rory grins, remembering their dinner with Paris. "Maybe I'll change it to a scholar of all."
"Better," Jess agrees. "You make my magic tricks sound a little pathetic, too."
"Not pathetic. Whimsical!"
"Huh."
Jess turns over more of the pages and Rory says haltingly, "How did you know I was lonely?"
"When?"
"When I went to Yale. How did you know? When I've written about you showing up, my first winter there, and you kept running away, you've said there was a lonely light in my eyes. We barely talked. You told me you loved me and then you left. Do you really remember that?"
Jess pauses for a moment and then says, "I thought you looked sad. It's not totally clear, it's been years, but I remember that. I remember you were walking alone everywhere."
"But I did that anyway," Rory says. "It's not like I was joined at the hip - I mean, Mom and I were super close but I spent a lot of time alone."
"It was different," Jess insists. "Your mom yelled at me, after I was a jerk to Luke, and she brought you up and told me you were very happy, as I recall, and I thought that was crap. I just knew it was crap. I saw you before you saw me, at the festival, and you were waiting in line. There was a kind of loneliness in your face, the way you stood - I don't know," he says quickly. "I didn't have anything to go on. It just seemed that way."
"You were right," Rory says, looking down. "I remember thinking that I was doing Yale wrong. Like there was some kind of test I hadn't passed, or some class no one had told me to go to, but they all knew. They all figured it out, but I hadn't. And I thought about you, a lot. I wondered if you were okay, and then I'd be mad at you, and then I'd be sad, and it was like this kind of cycle in my head."
"I'm sorry."
Jess is staring at her thoughtfully and Rory shakes herself, embarrassed.
"God - it was years ago. We were kids."
But she can't shake the loneliness the memories have flung up and even after she and Jess have had breakfast and gone back to Stars Hollow, Rory is still feeling it as she scoops up Charlotte. She's thirty-two and nineteen all at the same time and, as she kisses her daughter, her mind whispers uncertainty and she doesn't feel ready. She is still moving to what she needs to find.
