Author's Note: A series of notes will be at the very bottom of this chapter. Feel free to read those first. I hope you're all taking care of yourselves.
Friday, 12.18.2009
The massive gold star balloon was making it hard to see through the front windshield. It wasn't as if it would be any better to throw it in the back, then Eartha wouldn't be able to see anything going on behind her. Plus, Rory didn't particularly need to see where they were going, she trusted that Eartha had been to the apartment enough times to be able to find it.
"You doing okay under there?" Eartha asked, glancing at Rory. "You look like you're suffering."
"Not suffering," Rory sighed, trying again to maneuver one of the spokes of the star between her knees. It just wasn't going to happen, not with the rest of her things stuffed around her feet. She didn't realize how much she kept in her desk until she had to ask for a second box to move everything out. With all of the 'Good Luck in New York!' cards and little farewell gifts, she was surprised that she only needed two boxes.
It really was bittersweet to leave after almost a full year of setting down roots, but she knew that New York was the right move for her future. Philadelphia is a gorgeous city and she would miss a lot of its people, but her dream job was right in front of her. If she didn't run after it the bittersweet feelings she had about leaving would turn to bitter feelings about staying. That didn't mean goodbyes weren't hard.
Eartha parked her lavender Acura Integra in front of Rory's apartment building and came around to open Rory's door and peel the balloon off of her cheek.
"Thanks," Rory smiled, unbuckling and climbing out herself. She picked up her laptop bag and the first box before hitting the door shut with her hip. "Do you think you could hand me the last box?" She asked, wrapping the balloon string around her finger tips.
"Are you sure you don't want me to come up with you? I can carry a box," Eartha offered, popping open the trunk to fish out the heavier box.
"Yeah, I'm sure," Rory nodded, adjusting her grip so that Eartha could lay the second box on top of the first. 'Geez,' Rory thought, trying to mask her reaction to the weight. "Jess is working toward a deadline and I don't want to bother him. He gets testy when he has things to do."
"He seems to get testy a lot lately," Eartha pointed out, shutting her trunk and carefully guiding Rory through the snow and toward the door of the building.
Rory didn't bother commenting on that, not wanting to talk more about Jess's attitude. He was definitely easier to irritate lately, though Rory didn't think it was a mystery why. It was already a little weird between them before Rory sprung her move on him and Jess usually reacted badly to change. He wouldn't say it, but Rory knew it made him nervous.
"Well," Eartha sighed, opening the building's door for Rory and letting her slide in sideways with the boxes. "If you need me, just text me and I'll run up."
"I really won't be too long, I promise. I laid everything out before I even left for the offices this morning," Rory nodded, heading for the stairs.
By the time Rory hit her floor she was sure that her arms were going to fall off. She was probably more fit than she had been eight months ago just because of the stairs, but by no means did she have an ounce of upper body strength. The boxes were dropped by the front door with a loud thump so that Rory could fish in her bag for her keys. A second later and she made the wise decision to leave her office boxes by the coatrack.
Just like when she'd left for work, more likely with added chaos, there were papers scattered along every flat surface. Everything had notes in the margins, everything had red circles and lines and arrows that seemed, at a glance, to be absolutely nonsensical. In the middle the aftermath of the tornado sat Jess, nose deep in the scattered manuscript. If she attempted to carry her boxes through this, she'd most definitely disturb the organized mess with her steps.
He always got a little sensitive when he was doing the final edit of a manuscript, but this was the most substantial story that he had been responsible for to date. It was somewhere around 450 pages long and he was... well, it was best not to ask him what he was. Avoiding direct eye contact was safer. With the added stress of Rory moving out, Jess had a tendency to be downright unpleasant while he was working.
Other times it was very much up in the air.
"Hey," she nodded, slipping out of her work shoes to more carefully navigate through scattered papers. He didn't seem to hear her. She tiptoed around to the back of the couch and toward the open french doors to her bedroom.
Once she'd almost gotten inside and shut the doors she heard a mumbled "hey" in response. She smiled in spite of her irritation with him, shutting the curtained doors behind herself and immediately starting to strip down. Eartha kept her car's heat pretty high but she didn't want to make her friend wait for very long.
Quickly, Rory pulled her hair out of the tight ponytail she'd kept it in all day and started to brush it out to lay in waves around her shoulders. Once that was finished, she picked up the thick black stockings that she'd laid across her bed and slid into them. Over that she was wearing a bottle green dress and a soft black infinity scarf that looked great with her overcoat.
After she slid into her comfy ankle boots, Rory turned back to the long mirror that was propped against the wall. Her make up was fine for the casual night out she was dressed for but she refreshed her mascara and lip gloss before addressing her hair. Carefully she pulled back the hair that used to be her bangs and wrapped it into a low ponytail.
A final once over and she was satisfied with her look. She picked up her purse from the ground by her bed and transferred her things from her work bag before walking back out into the living room. From behind she could see that Jess looked more disheveled than she'd thought. On top of the bed head, she saw that he was still wearing his pajama pants. There were two pens behind his right ear in addition to the one he was writing with and she wondered if he felt them there.
"I'll be back around eleven," Rory said, once again making sure not to step on any of the scattered papers.
Jess grunted in acknowledgement but didn't look up at her. For a moment she felt a pang of regret that she didn't invite him to her going away party. But if she was realistic, she knew that he wouldn't have enjoyed it. She would have been the only person he knew and he didn't exactly thrive in those situations.
'Either way,' she thought, 'it would have been nice.'
The door shut behind her and once she locked it, Rory jogged down the stairs. It felt as though she was moving at warp speed after the way she'd trudged up with her boxes. She wondered idly if the balloon would bother Jess's concentration. Probably not, he barely even noticed she was home.
"Wow, that really was quick," Eartha nodded, giving Rory a quick once-over when she got into the car. "Very efficient."
"Well, that's my middle name: Lorelai 'Efficiency' Gilmore. It's a real burden to be this good," she teased, buckling up and slapping the dashboard. "Onward!"
Eartha snorted but pulled away from the curb nonetheless while Rory fiddled with the radio knobs, looking for something she enjoyed. It wasn't hard to get Eartha to bob her head along to the music, they could sit listening to music
"Is Jess going to show up at some point?" Eartha asked once they were cruising down Walnut street, about seven songs later. She turned down the music so that they could talk. "You never said whether he was coming or not."
"Yeah, well he said he could tell me closer to the date but he never did. I figured he was too busy to come, I didn't ask again," Rory shrugged.
"Why not? It's not like it's too much to ask for," Eartha laughed, "Don't you go to all of those open houses for his job? It's not hard to come to a farewell party for you. You're leaving in... what, five or six days?"
Rory pursed her lips, hiding it by looking out the passenger window. "Yeah, well, it's not like I'm saying goodbye to him. I'll see him for Christmas anyway."
Eartha, clearly noticing the finality of Rory's tone, sighed a quick 'alright' before turning the music back up.
Rory had a knack for making the best friends. She didn't know how she did it but she managed to fool enough people into thinking she was someone worth being around that she felt like her heart was breaking into smaller pieces every time she had to move to a new place.
By the time she and Eartha got to the bar, the rest of their work group was there. Liam even brought his wife, Georgina, who was deep in conversation with Louis and Gen, two people that she hadn't met before but was pleasant enough to immediately win over. Beside the four of them, Jerry and Tim were playing an intense game of 5x5 tic-tac-toe on a bar napkin. That was everyone she was expecting to see, her Philly friends.
She didn't expect to see Paris and Doyle weave through the crowd to meet them at the table with drinks. According to Doyle, his grandmother lived in West Chester and they were staying with her so that they could surprise Rory for the party. From what Rory had previously heard about this grandmother, she was surprised that Paris was able to be in the same house as her. Presumably, it worked out purely because of the size of the house.
Another thing she didn't expect was to receive so many parting gifts.
From Eartha, she got a beautiful scarf that was knit from Eartha's favorite electric green color. The accent color was the midnight blue that she said reminded her of Rory.
Liam and Georgina got her a little succulent for her New York desk, the painted name on the side reading "Franklin Jr." Under his impressive moustache, Liam blushed when Georgina told her that it was a propagation of his favorite desk plant, Franklin Sr.
Jerry gave her a fairly expensive bottle of scotch with a messily tied ribbon because "that's what you keep in your desk for when you want to look extra professional."
Gen gave her a small assortment of iron-on patches, all of them both related to rebellion and literature. This was a direct callback to that one time she'd said she thought Rory's jean jacket could use some 'sprucing up'.
Paris and Doyle, despite the fact that they were not actually saying goodbye to Rory in any way, shape, or form, were not to be outdone. They got her a fancy leather briefcase with her initials in the handle.
The best gift, though, was from Louis and Tim. They made her a scrapbook with all of the articles she'd written for the online Inquirer, each printed out on newsprint. She bet that Tim had been the one to organize the clippings, he was the more artistically talented one of the couple, but she could recognize Louis's handwriting in some places. In the back pages, there were handwritten 'good luck' messages from everyone Rory had worked with at the Inquirer, like it was a yearbook. Their gift was presented last and, because Rory was a few drinks deep, made her eyes water.
Leaving was officially the worst.
Tuesday, 12.22.2009
Rory's fingers held her second mug of coffee close, warming her cold fingers while she watched two men carry out the desk she was bringing home. After that, they'd only need to make one more trip for the last handful of boxes and be on their way to Hartford, Connecticut.
Once all the boxes were gone, the only thing that Rory would have left in the apartment would be her two outfits for the day, pajamas for that night, her comfortable driving clothes for the next morning, a hair brush, a toothbrush, and a pillow. For her last night in Jess's apartment, she was sleeping on the same Sound of Music sheets she'd slept on for her first night.
"Rory? Are you still there?" her grandmother's voice called from the cell phone on the kitchen peninsula counter.
"Yes, Grandma," Rory responded, turning back toward the kitchen and taking her phone off of loudspeaker. "I'm still here."
"Your grandfather is still on the phone with the driver. That man can't seem to convey any sort of concrete arrival time, all he keeps repeating is that the delivery will happen some time between ten and noon! As if we have the time to wait all morning for them to show up."
Rory wanted to point out that, firstly, two hours was not 'all morning' and that, secondly, if they had the furniture to the Manhattan apartment like Rory had suggested in the first place, she wouldn't be so stressed out. But Emily Gilmore was already bristled and pointing out any of that would not serve the situation.
"I'm sure that they can call you with an updated time when they get through New York. You know how the traffic is," Rory offered, making a mental note to add to her cash tip envelope on the counter. These movers were saintly with the way they were dealing with the Gilmore temper.
"I'll have your grandfather ask about that," Emily agreed. "It seems a reasonable enough thing to ask for. I'd like to be able to actually go about my day at some point."
"You don't actually have to watch them unload everything, you know," Rory pointed out. "They're perfectly professional enough to move boxes without supervision."
"Rory Gilmore, you know that is not the way things are done. What if one of them tries to unload your desk without help? That is a three thousand dollar desk, Rory."
"I'm watching them move the desk now, Grandma. And before you ask, they covered it in moving pads, there won't be a scratch on it that I didn't put there."
"Good, good," Emily murmured, clearly distracted. "Well, suppose that I could leave your grandfather in charge of supervising the delivery."
"That sounds like a fantastic idea," Rory agreed. "You should give yourself the break you deserve. You've been making this the easiest move of my entire life."
Gratitude went a long way with Emily Gilmore.
"You just have so much to deal with all at once with a new job and a new city and the holidays all at once!" Emily insisted.
"I'll be okay, I promise. I don't take on more than I can handle." Not knowingly, at least.
Behind her, Rory heard the squeak of a door from down the hall. She glanced back over her shoulder in time to catch a sleep-ruffled Jess Mariano padding down the hallway. It was about fifteen minutes before his alarm was set to go off, which was probably the cause of his grumpy expression. She mouthed 'sorry' to him but was waved off with a grunt.
"Grandma, how about I call you back? I think the movers are leaving now."
"Oh, okay. Make sure you give them the money I sent you, it's the first half of their tip."
"Yes, alright. I'll see you soon."
"I'll see you soon, Rory. Goodbye."
"Bye, Grandma."
She dropped her phone onto the counter and took a lengthy sip of her coffee. Meanwhile, Jess was shuffling around the kitchen to gather what he wanted for breakfast. He clearly couldn't find whatever it was.
"What are you looking for?" She asked, raising a quizzical eyebrow.
"Jelly," he muttered. "Blueberry kind."
"I can do that, you go gather your papers," Rory offered, standing.
Jess blinked at her, clearly unconvinced.
"Go!" Rory shooed him. "I've got this. I can do your toast, you just go do what you need to do for work. Take a shower, get dressed. I've got nothing else to do, I swear."
The gears in Jess's head were almost visible, but after a few seconds of concentration he decided to agree with her plan. "Thanks," he said quietly before shuffling out of the kitchen, through the living room, and back down the hall.
Rory wanted to laugh at his zombie-like movements, but she knew that he'd been up late finalizing his summary of his manuscript suggestions. She'd seen the living room light on when she finally passed out, around midnight.
Just before she turned back to the kitchen to start a new pot of coffee and his toast, Rory's phone rang again. A glance at the caller ID told her that it was not yet another call from Emily, but her mother.
"Hey mom," Rory greeted, sandwiching the phone between her shoulder and her ear so that she could flit around the kitchen.
Her mother was just as nervous as her grandmother for some reason. If Rory had to guess why, she would probably predict it was because this was the first time she would be driving in real snow. When she'd come down to Philadelphia there was still snow on the ground, but it'd been a warm enough February that most of it was leftover slush.
While she made the coffee and toasted the toast, they went through the list of what stuff is going where - furniture to her grandparents' house, clothing and work things to her mother's house. Yes, Mom, they're organizing the truck based on what's getting moved out first, Rory made them an inventory list.
She had to take a momentary break from her mother to thank the movers for their patience and slide them their fattened tip envelope.
By the time she was winding down the conversation, Jess was already out of the shower and mostly dressed. When he appeared back in the kitchen, his hair was still damp and he had a towel hanging around his neck. He wore his nice grey slacks, a belt, and an a-shirt, clearly waiting to put his nice button up on until he was done with breakfast.
Rory slid his toast, spread first with cream cheese and then with blueberry jelly, across the peninsula to him and then poured him a new cup of coffee. All the while, she was not thinking about how nice his arms looked. No, that was definitely not the reason that she took that moment to walk back to her now empty bedroom. The only things left on the wall-to-wall bookshelves were Jess's books and CDs. She'd been tempted to take a few of his collection to add to her own, but she'd made a list of what to buy instead. She'd gotten so used to having some things at her fingertips that she didn't think about buying her own copies until she was packing.
When she finally finished the call Rory emerged from her room with a "Mom and Luke say 'hi', Will says 'egg'". She was just in time to see Jess sliding his left foot into his right shoe.
After correcting him, she sat in his space at the counter and drained her own mug of the last dregs of coffee.
"Good luck with your meeting," Rory says, watching him toss his damp towel in the general direction of his bedroom door. She glanced at the clock and saw that it was still considerably earlier than he'd planned on leaving. Maybe he was anxious to get where he was going. It was better than him being anxious to leave where he was.
"Thanks," Jess nodded, tucking his shirt into his slacks. "Good luck with your exit interview."
"I'll see you later tonight, right? Christmas trivia?"
"See you."
Jess grabbed his nice jacket and his satchel before whipping out the door and leaving Rory alone.
Rory fumbled in her oversized gloves to pull her scarf up over her freezing nose. She wasn't the most graceful person in most circumstances, but the slush covered sidewalk was not exactly helping things. She was so focused on balance that she wasn't sure she looked up until she was face-to-face with the door she was meant to walk through.
As soon as she was inside, Rory peeled off her gloves and her hat. She shoved both into her pockets before starting to unwind her scarf and scan the trivia crowd for her team. The holidays obviously drew a larger crowd seeing as Rory could barely push through the initial crowd of college kids celebrating the end of tests. She managed to brave the wave of binge drinkers to find her regular two-team-group all crowded together around one table. It looked like there wasn't enough space for them to spread out like they usually did, but she wasn't upset about merging the teams for her last night.
"Hey! Now we've got at least one of our ringers!" Gen grinned, pulling out the chair to her left for Rory to sit in. They'd managed to nab one of the larger tables, but it was definitely going to be a snug fit with eight players. There were still four empty seats shoved into the leftover space.
Rory opened her mouth to ask about the leftover seats but instead was interrupted with half of her answer. To her immense surprise, cutting through the crowd of Temple University sweaters like a shark in bloody waters, was Paris Geller. Struggling to follow his girlfriend, like a water skier that was struggling to stay with the boat, was Doyle McMaster and a large tray of drinks.
Rory locked eyes with her old roommate and Paris, possibly already a few drinks deep, grinned and threw her hands up in recognition. She circumvented the rest of the table to wrap her arms around Rory's shoulders, rocking her side to side in her chair and launching into the long and very detailed tale of how they got to Philadelphia.
Apparently, Eartha had invited Paris to the party after Rory connected them for a piece that Eartha was doing on Ivy League students. She and Doyle were spending their Christmas with his grandparents over in West Chester to make it easier, but she'd sent Nanny to Italy for the holidays so she didn't have plans anyway.
With the extraneous details and sidetracks into people she found frustratingly incompetent in Harvard's medical school, it was almost time to start the game when she was done. Rory had barely spoken to anyone but Paris, but if she was totally honest... Paris was making her actually feel normal.
Looking at the rest of the faces at the table, Rory felt pangs that reminded her that this was the last time they'd all be together, at least for a long while. Paris, however, was an inescapable pillar of her life. If there was one thing she'd learned over the many years of touch-and-go friendship status it was that they had a bond that was unaffected by distance.
Even if she tried to get away from Paris, it was physically impossible to hide for long. So it's a good thing she didn't want to anymore.
Paris gave Rory a random drink and sent Doyle back to the bar for a replacement. Apparently they'd offered to buy the first two rounds - a specifically calculated move on Paris's part, the goal being to integrate into the established group as quickly as possible.
The only other person that she was guaranteed to see within the next year, Jess, was still missing by the time the waiters were passing out the answer sheets for the first round.
"Has anyone heard from Kerouac?" Rory asked casually, gesturing to the empty seats.
"He's already here," Chris called from across the table. "Outside with the smokers, probably freezing to death."
The smokers? Jess was "outside with the smokers" in December? That's a very coy way to say he was smoking again... Her lips pursed like she was sucking on a lemon but she hid her reaction behind the rim of her drink. She was under the impression that he hadn't been smoking since high school. She remembered giving him a little gift bag as a one-month celebration of quitting.
Maybe that's why she took the backslide so personally.
As though he was an aggravating moth being drawn to the flame of her irritation, Jess appeared at the table only seconds later. Everyone greeted him and Rory offered her own half-hearted 'hey' before she saw Nadia slide into the empty space next to him. In her hands was a fancy-looking lighter.
Instead of joining in with the newest round of greetings, Rory took her moment to write her name on the team's answer sheet. While, externally, she appeared to be focused very carefully on keeping her handwriting neat, internally she was attempting to manage the hornets' nest of outrage that was thrumming in her head.
How dare he? How dare Jess bring her to Rory's party? How dare he invite her without telling anyone? How dare he drop the whole "I'm smoking again" news on the last night she's in town? How dare he reach out to her for her pen when she finished writing her name? Maybe that last one wasn't particularly relevant, but the pen was her favorite and she made a point of carrying it in her purse. What level of audacity did he feel entitled to when he made the decisions that he made?
With great reluctance, Rory dropped her pen onto the sheet of paper and slid it to her left, inviting Paris to sign her name. Maybe it was petty and childish, but Rory was pleased to know that there would be two names - Paris and Doyle's - buffering "Rory Gilmore" and "Jess Mariano" on the team sheet.
She pointedly did not watch while the rest of the team signed the sheet, instead just simply accepting her pen back and wiping it off with a single-use wet wipe before replacing it back in her bag. It was probably the anal-retentive thing she had ever done, but her internal reasoning was that she didn't want cigarette residue in her purse.
The minutes between Chris turning in their team sheet and the first round starting were near-entirely occupied by Louis, Gen, and the tale of the extremely bold barista. Apparently some guy that took their order had written '(XXX)-XXX-XXX: for you or your friend" on Gen's coffee mug after brazenly and awkwardly flirting with both of them at the same time. Rory tried to laugh like everyone else, but her focus kept traveling across the table. Every time she couldn't stop herself from glancing at Jess and Nadia's private conversation, Rory couldn't help but feel indignantly angry.
Did she rationally agree that she had no right to be upset about this? Yeah, of course she did. She had no real claim over Jess and she even knew that he was seeing Nadia before this... even if he had tried to hide it. Plus, Jess was a fully grown adult and had every right to knowingly bake his lungs in carcinogens. But did that rational voice in her head overpower the irrational anger that she felt? No, it didn't. It actually made it worse.
Instead of forgiving Jess in order to enjoy this last night together, Rory made the far-less-rational decision to enjoy her night specifically in order to spite him. Which, surprisingly, worked pretty damn well.
Judging only based on the first round of trivia questions, the bar had clearly expected the vast increase in players. Usually there were a few questions that stumped even the extreme cinephiles of the group but now it seemed that the game was being run for the inexperienced. That's partially why it felt so damn good to correct Nadia twice within the first twenty minutes.
The first time, Nadia was more excited than confident when she answered. The question was "What was the first rule in the Code of the Elves in the 2003 comedy Elf?" and her answer, "The best way to spread Christmas cheer is singing loud, for all to hear" was actually rule number three. Now, Rory wasn't the only person that knew that, but she was the first to point it out and the one that provided the correct answer ("Treat everyday like Christmas"). This time, when Rory answered, it was clearly taken as a good-natured team effort to get the right answer.
The second time that Rory corrected Nadia, it was... well, it was less civil. It was also in the third round when everyone had had more time to soak in their liquor.
The question was: What did Ralphie want for Christmas in A Christmas Story?
Nadia's answer: a Red Ryder Carbine-Action, 100-shot, range-model air rifle.
The correct answer (aka Rory's answer): a Red Ryder Carbine-Action, 200-shot, range-model air rifle.
The ensuing argument: unreasonably intense.
That last bit was probably due to the fact that three-drink-Rory laughed at Nadia's answer like she'd said the sky was the color '45'.
In a few hours, Rory would admit that she was an asshole. For the time being she felt particularly good about proving herself to be Nadia's better... in trivia, at least.
At that point in the game, they hadn't gotten a single question wrong and were most likely trouncing the rest of the teams. It didn't matter whether or not they got the exact right answer, it clearly wasn't going to hurt their position. But, to win the argument, Rory took out her wallet and laid her card down on the table. She bet $200 on the "200-shot" portion of the answer, $200 that she probably shouldn't spend at the moment. Sure, she had an inheritance coming to her in two years, but that didn't mean very much when she was moving alone to Manhattan in less than a month.
Either way, she was right. They got the point and Rory refused to take Nadia's $200, trying to pass off the bet as a joke she made to get her point across. She looked, for the moment, like a gracious winner. At least... she looked that way to eight out of the ten players.
After round three, Nadia didn't offer any more answers to the group. Instead, when she was pretty sure she had something right, she would whisper it to Jess to confirm and then let him offer it to the rest of the players.
That's not to say that Rory knew what the two of them were doing, she only noticed that considerable uptrend in whispering through the final seven rounds. It didn't significantly improve her mood, but the friends-and-booze cushion stopped it from significantly worsening her last night.
Wednesday, 12.23.2009
By the time that she was wobbling out into the icy tundra of late-December-Pennsylvania, Rory was hanging off of Chris and laughing like he'd told more than a mid-tier Santa joke. If she wasn't still a little drunk, she probably wouldn't have laughed at all - what was his excuse? After all, he was her DD. After the first drink he didn't have anything but virgin Malibu Sunsets, thus giving everyone the chance to practice their cherry stem skills.
Rory was pretty sure she barely needed the DD, she'd had three drinks all night and the last one was finished... maybe two hours ago? Though, she wasn't exactly looking to get a DUI; driving in the snow was hard enough with her poor reflexes. Plus, it gave her more time with the friends that were still left.
Matt had caught a sober ride home with Eartha, who needed to be up early for some left over editing work. He was the resident lightweight, though he had outlasted Doyle. Paris had to take him home before round seven was even over so that he didn't pass out at the table. The last lightweight of the group, who wasn't even really a member of the group, was Nadia. As soon as the game was over, Jess announced that he was driving her home and they peeled off like they were on fire.
Probably wanted to smoke before anyone got out there. At least he was trying to hide the habit this time.
Gen, Louis, and Tim all followed Chris and Rory onto the sidewalk, Carefully shuffling their shoes through the newly fallen snow. Tim and Louis were within walking distance of their apartment, and after two very warm bear hugs Rory watched them walk away hand-in-hand. Tim was whistling something very out of tune. Gen, on the other hand, was also getting a ride home from Chris.
The three of them walked together, Gen and Chris framing Rory, to Chris's car. With very light begging, the women of the car convinced Chris to buy them some fast food before dropping them at their respective home. However, by the time they had their hands on an adequate number of chicken nuggets, Gen was passed out cold. When the car pulled up to Rory's apartment, she magnanimously took the excess nuggets in for Jess.
He probably didn't eat with Nadia, she was a vegetarian. She probably didn't eat things from chains on principle.
Rory rolled into the apartment only to find it still dark. Jess's shoes weren't by the door and his coat wasn't on the hook, so he must still be out. She set his nuggets on the counter and then set about pulling the remaining blankets on her bed out into the living room in order to make a movie-watching nest. Rory didn't want to go to bed without knowing that Jess made it home safe, even if she was annoyed that he didn't spend any of their last night together with Rory. Nadia wasn't exactly leaving in the morning.
He finally came in about half an hour later, at 1:32 AM.
"Hey, since when did you start driving like Luke?" Rory asked, which she thought was rather funny. Jess didn't seem to feel the same. He ignored her completely while he took off his winter gear, though it was possible that he hadn't heard her over the TV. She unearthed an arm from her blanket cocoon and snatched up the remote so that she could pause the Grinch.
"I got you some chicken nuggets. They're on the counter," she pointed toward the counter with the bag. "You might want to heat them up, though."
"Yeah, thanks."
Jess crossed to the fridge like he was on a mission and pulled out a little box of leftover pasta like she hadn't just pointed out a perfectly good meal. Well, maybe not perfectly good, but it was tastier than that.
"It's the brown bag," Rory reminded him, pointing again.
He didn't look up from his task. "Yeah. I know that, Rory."
The tone of his voice made her eyebrows shoot up. He was acting like she was doing something wrong and all she did was offer him a snack. She rolled her eyebrows at his back and then settled back to watch the tv.
"Then act like it, maybe," she muttered, unpausing the movie in front of her.
The microwave door shut so fast that it made Rory jump a little,
"What is your problem tonight?" Jess demanded. Rory glanced at him and found that he was standing in the doorway of the kitchen, clearly waiting for an answer.
"What do you mean, 'what's your problem'? I'm not the one that walked in with an attitude," Rory retorted, turning back to the TV.
"An attitude? Are you kidding me?" He laughed at her and turned on his heel to go back to the microwave and punch in the numbers. "You've had an attitude all night, Rory. And that's putting it nicely."
"What are you even talking about?" Rory exclaimed, "I talked to you, like, three times tonight! And two of those times were 'Hi' and 'Bye'!"
"You didn't even say 'Hi', Rory. You-"
"Fine then, two times," She grumbled.
"The amount of times is not the point, Rory. The point is that you were acting kind of-"
Jess faltered for a moment and Rory jumped on the end of his sentence like it was a chink in whatever stupid armor he was wearing.
"I'm acting kind of what, Jess?" She asked, making a point to extricate herself from the blankets so that she could stare him down. It didn't help that she was a little unbalanced.
"Like a child, Rory. You were acting like a kid that wasn't getting what she wanted."
"Oh, whatever. You, out of all the people that I know, do not get to tell me that I'm acting like a kid, Jess. The hypocrisy in this room is breathtaking."
"Hypocrisy? What the-"
"Yes, hypocrisy!" Rory interrupted him, shocked that he wasn't understanding why he was the last person to lecture her on her behavior. Between the two of them, one had made a handful of bad decisions and the other had made a handful of good ones. She knew that she wasn't the latter. "You're the one that ignored me all night! You decide to bring some random girl to my party and then you get all uppity about no one has anything to say to you about it!"
"First off," Jess said, making a concerted effort to keep his tone even, "Nadia isn't 'some random girl', she's my friend." Rory scoffed but said nothing more after a scolding look from Jess. "Secondly, it was barely your party; We were already all going to be there tonight, you just happen to be leaving. And, finally, nothing you pointed out makes me hypocritical, it only proves my point that you wanted to control everything and threw a tantrum when not everyone wanted to pay attention to Rory."
"I didn't want everyone's attention!" Rory shouted.
"Then what do you want? Why'd you act like that?"
"I didn't act like anything." She protested, gathering her blankets off of the couch. Clearly, she wasn't going to watch the rest of the Grinch in peace. "I had a good night. If you andyour friend had a shitty night, don't blame that on me."
"I am going to blame you, Rory. I'm blaming you because you are the direct cause of me having a shitty night. You and whatever you decided was worth taking out on me." Jess was managing a much steadier voice than Rory was, but the speed with which he was pushing out his words gave away his irritation. "So, I'll ask you again. What do you want?"
Rory glared at Jess, her arms full of her blankets. She had something to say lounging around on her tongue, though she wasn't sure what that was. If she opened her mouth she was sure that it would dart out, but she knew better than to let her tongue speak for her. Jess didn't deserve the vulnerability that came with that level of honesty.
"I want to go to bed," she declared, turning and walking toward her bedroom.
"No, of course. Go to bed. Why be honest when you can just ignore the problem until it goes away?"
Rory froze.
She dropped her blankets in the doorway of her room.
And she turned around to stare at Jess with unsheathed rage burning in her eyes.
"Excuse me?"
Jess hardened his expression. "You heard what I said."
Rory blinked a few times, physically fighting the fire that was roaring in her chest. Maybe if she wasn't still intoxicated, Rory would have left the apartment. She probably could have gone and slept in he car. Instead, her tongue overpowered her better judgement.
"You're the one that left."
She could see the physical impact of her words in the slump of Jess's shoulders. The effect was such that he smoothly dropped from guarded and morally sure to discomfited confusion.
"That was years ago," he insisted, trying to hold steady in their argument. "You can't use that as an excuse forever."
"Then it's a good thing that this is the first time I'm using it," Rory spit, advancing toward him. They were on either side of the small living room now, with only the couch between them.
"You left, Jess. You left and you didn't say a single damned thing to me. You didn't tell me that you were skipping class, that you had a job, that you were in trouble, that you got expelled - you're the reason that I never went to Prom. You're the reason that I did a lot of things I shouldn't have done, Jess.
"You decided that you were going to clock-out in Stars Hollow and never talk to me again. But you couldn't even commit to that, could you? No, you decide to call me at my graduation ceremony and ruin that. And then you ruin the Firelight Festival by popping up out of no where and shouting 'I love you' before driving out of my life for... what, three or four months? I haven't gone to that festival since that, by the way. Then you decide that you want to ask me to run away with you.
"Now, I can admit that you got your shit together after that, Jess. I can say that the whole getting-your-GED-and-a-real-job thing is great for you. And like I said before, I always knew you could do it and I always knew you're a fantastic writer. You're one of the smartest people I have ever known and one of the only people that I ever loved in my entire life. But you are also the reason that every single one of my relationships ended."
That last bit wasn't supposed to come out.
That was a mistake.
That was her tongue's decision.
Fuck.
Hey, so I wrote this in many installments because of the way the world is. So, there are notes from various points of the writing process.
(1) Author's Note: Thanks all to all of you for waiting! The world is crazy right now and I've been... stressed. I just want to address a few things before we go on:
- I will be including LGBTQ+ characters in this story. If you can't handle that then there are other things for you to read.
- J.K. Rowling is a troll.
- Economy Lives, Morals
Also, I love reading the analytics that these fanfic websites give me about y'all! It's so cool to see people on the other side of the world reading this thing that I started writing on a road trip two years ago.
Comments really make my day and I'd love to hear from you and get your feedback! I try to respond to every comment.
(2) Author's Note: I just wanted to do a PSA. I was going to use the word "niggling", which means "bothersome or persistent especially in a petty or tiresome way" in the context of "a niggling thought". This is grammatically correct and a very convenient word for the way I was using it. HOWEVER, I had a thought about the etymology (formation, history) of the word and did a quick Google search. This word comes from N****r or N***ardly and was born out of the belief in the inferiority of African/Black people. So, I will not be using it and apologize for using it beforehand if it has appeared in this story. I thought I'd tell y'all about this for future reference. While I do not know the individual race of my readers, I don't think that African/Black people should be forced to see such casual racism in fiction.
(3) Author's Note: Disclaimer! Rory's acting like a little bit of an asshole here on purpose. I don't have strong feelings about smokers, vegetarians, or trivia and I am of the opinion that Rory doesn't like corporations. Thank you.
(4) Author's Note: Thank you for your patience. This story is being written to prove a point to myself and as petty revenge against a very unkind person in my life. So, I have 2 reasons to finish it. I plan on finishing it. I have a skeletal structure for everything that will happen until 2023, though I am weighing whether or not to include the Pandemic in this story.
If you have thoughts about that, please let me know.
Again, the comments are what really fuels me. Thank you for all of them!
if there are any grammar issues lmk