Author Note: This storyline was adapted in part based off another series, that involves a relationship between three characters that in personality remind me very much of Jess, Lorelai, and Rory. I was thinking - what if the relationship between that boy and mom played out between Jess and Lorelai, instead of how it did in Gilmore Girls canon? And so, this fic was born. I will leave the name of the other work up to your guessing, so as to avoid spoilers. If you really want to know, you can ask at the end!
Jess Mariano stood in the middle of a room that was caught halfway between being an hardware store and a diner, staring up at his uncle, and daring him with his silence to give him any compelling reason to move.
"Come on, Jess. It's just for one … semester … or whatever it's called. Do they have semesters in elementary school? It's just until your mom gets things together and then you'll be going back to your old school in New York. Come on, think of it … like a long visit, a vacation. Except … with school."
Jess shrugged up at his uncle, who stood there scratching his head through the back of his baseball cap, awkwardly holding out the small Power Rangers book bag.
"Okay, um," Luke bent down and slipped the shoulder strap of one side of the bag up over Jess' arm, as Jess let himself be jostled about, passively resisting the whole affair, until Luke realized he'd started putting the bag on backwards. Jess sighed, taking it in his own hands and slipping it on correctly.
"I'll walk you over." Luke said, staring down at his silent nephew looking forlornly back up at him.
Jess stepped out into the bright afternoon among a hoard of other school-age children trampling down the steps, screaming and running after each other, excited to get the rest of the day started. Jess took a deep breath, hands clutching both straps of his bag and tromped down the stairs onto the grassy lawn outside the front of Stars Hollow Elementary School. There were kids running around, wrestling each other to the ground, skipping over to where their parents in pairs waited to pick them up, girls drawing out hopscotch patterns on the nearby playground, and small troops of boys shuffling into carpool minivans. The sun shown high above them and the sky was a bright shade of blue, uninterrupted by a single cloud. Even the weather in Stars Hollow was syrupy sweet and garish.
Jess fixed his eyes to the ground and marched one foot in front of the other, deliberately walking his way out of the crowd of carefree small town grade school kids, his untied shoelaces on one foot slapping against the pavement as he went. He walked home from school in New York City by himself all the time and figured his Uncle Luke didn't have the forethought to know what time to pick him up, much less that he couldn't make it back to the diner by himself in the small minutes it would take his uncle to figure it out. This town was too small and the colors making it up, green and blue and newly Tom Sawyer-tricked white picket fences, too bright. Jess missed the muted and senseless pollution of New York colors and sounds, the smells of anything other than freshly cut and sprinkler'd grass, and the home however empty and unwelcoming that he knew how to make himself disappear into. Unlike the tiny, suffocating apartment-converted-office he now had to go back to, where his broad-shouldered uncle would be awkwardly hovering around and Jess felt like he had to ask permission to pull books down off the shelves and leave the day behind by going into them.
Without taking conscious note of it Jess' footsteps begin to veer to the left, all the while his hands determinedly grasping his shoulder straps and his stare fixed to the ground. To the rhythm of his loose shoelaces first against the perfectly swept pavement and then the dusty dirt road, he walked away from Luke's and towards the edges of Stars Hollow proper.
After about 10 minutes Jess' footsteps gradually began to slow, the length of time between each stride expanding, until he took four small steps forward, three, and two, and one, his tennis shoe scuffing against the dirt path, finally deigning his view to be more than the peripheral hedges and grass around him. Stood in place he looked up and around himself, his eyes taking in the scenery from beneath his shaggy, curly bangs.
He was near a building, or something like a building, with its dilapidated roof and encroaching shrubbery and tree branches. Jess walked over towards the stairs leading up to the porch, testing one foot on the warped wooden surface of the first step. Deciding it wasn't likely to fall out from underneath him, he finally shouldered off his book bag and sat down, placing it between his legs. He let out of huff of air, blowing a stray piece of hair from his cheek, and looked out in front of him. It was almost as if he was in the middle of the woods, if not for the clear dirt path he had come up leading towards this place. There was a field of grass in front of him, with a tree standing off to the side, and wild untamed shrubbery lining the perimeters. The building was clearly abandoned.
Jess looked down again and fiddled with the hook of his bag wondering how long it would be - if it would come to be - that his Uncle Luke would start to worry about where he was. But it was quiet out here and nothing was lined up and squared off proper like it was in the center of town and the colors were more varied and the sunlight less offensive. And he could read.
Jess unzipped his bag and pulled out the one other thing he had in there aside from a red folder with a couple pieces of loose leaf notebook paper inside. He pried open the paperback chapter book, effortlessly landing right on the page where he had left off, and he placed his hand against the crisp, yellowed pages, pressing it open flat against his knees. He hunched over the words, starting to finally, thankfully, breathe a little easily.
Jess didn't know how long he had been there reading but he had turned the pages several times over now, the light and shadows hitting the small print shifting and edging further off the page. It was then that Jess heard the sound of someone walking up the path behind him. He curled up his lips and tucked his tongue inside his cheek, sure that he was going to get it now, for having run off and not come straight back after school. He stared down at his book, the words on the page no longer registering in his mind, waiting for the onslaught of curses or scoldings or waps to the back of the head that were surely about to come.
"Oh," a surprised female voice tickled in his ear and he looked up sharply, seeing a tall, young, dark-haired woman in casual business attire and a pair of heels dangling in her hand looking taken aback by the sight of him. He looked her up and down quickly, her wavy brown hair falling across her shoulder and bare feet in the tangle of grass around the building.
"Well," she said, shifting her shoes from one hand to the other, "What did I find? A nine-year-old squatter?" A thin but sure smile played on her lips and she looked back over at him.
Jess' eyes narrowed and he snapped shut his book. "I'm goin'," he said and started to pick up his bag.
"Hey, whoa, whoa, kiddo," the woman said holding out a hand. "Where'd you come from? What are you doing all the way out here?"
"What are you doing all the way out here?" he shot back, stuffing his book back into his bag. "It's none of your business!" He tried to sound confident as he lisped the last word, his face turning red with anticipation of having to make a quick dash out of here before he got in any trouble that would get back to his uncle.
"Oh my god," the woman said, a twinkling in her eyes. "You're a little punk, aren't you?" She steadied herself on her feet and looked straight at him, his wavy hair sticking up, face scrunched up in brave defiance as best he could make it, and Power Rangers bag dangling in his hand to mirror her heels. "That's adorable."
Jess' whole face turned red. "What'd you mean adorable!" he cried, his indignation making its way up to his reddening ears. "Stop talking to me, old lady! You're not s'pose to talk to little kids you don't know!"
"So cute!" the woman laughed, stumbling over to the stairs and plopping down on them. Jess turned around from where he was standing in the grass to face her, his face still red. She set her heels down on the ground and caught his eye as she sat back up. "I think it's that little kids aren't supposed to talk to strange old ladies they don't know. It's not safe for you to be all the way out here by yourself. Where's your mom, she must be worried?"
Jess took a shuddering mad breath as he stared back at her, hefting his bag up in his hand and letting it fall to the ground with a thud. "My mom's not here!" he said, "She wanted to stay in New York! I don't have to tell you anything!"
"Your dad?" she asked.
"He's not here either!" he said, hands balling into fists at his side, "I don't have to tell you anything an' he's never been here, so who cares!"
The woman paused, her manicured hand resting on the porch step beside her and curls falling against the side of her face. Jess screwed his eyes shut and took two deep breaths, then slowly opened them and saw her still staring back at him. She smiled gently. "That must be lonely."
She reached out to pick up his bag, holding it out to him. Jess stared back at her, his breath evening back out, and uncurled his hand, lifting it and taking the bag back, letting the weight drag his arm down once she let go. "Do you live near here? Do you know how to get home?"
Jess opened his mouth and then closed it again, trying to find his words. His voice was small when he answered. "My uncle's," he said. "I know."
She tucked her brown curls behind her left ear. "What's your name? Mine's Lorelai."
"Um," Jess looked to the side and shifted from one foot to the other, "I don' wanna say."
"Okay, kiddo," she laughed. "Finally being smart about that stranger danger."
Jess slipped his book bag back over his shoulders, looking at her with a furrowed brow. "What are you doing out here?" he asked, wondering if she could give him some sort of hint about this old building.
"I just like to come check this place out now and then. Kinda quiet." She looked up behind her at the ruined building. "I work near here."
Jess popped a silent "oh" with his mouth and darted his eyes out towards the dirt path. It wasn't that he necessarily wanted to leave, but he didn't know what to do next, and he was sure it was getting too late to be out anyway. Uncle Luke was probably furious and rearing up to give him a good wallop.
"Do you need me to help you get home?"
"No," he answered quickly. He looked down and kicked a foot at the ground, tearing up a small clump of weeds and dirt.
"Well, you better get back to your uncle's quick, it's gonna be dark soon."
Jess nodded and swayed on the heels of his feet, looking back up at her. Then he ducked his head down again and turned swiftly walking out towards the road.
"Hey, brat!" she called out. He stopped and looked over his shoulder at her, hands tightening around the straps of his bag and eyes straining to see her in the dimming light and shadows from the porch overhang and trees. "There's an inn up the road from here, Independence Inn. I work there during the day and…" she trailed off, and then plucked a smile onto her face again, "kinda live there during the rest of the time. If you ever don't feel like going straight home again, you can come by there."
Jess raised his eyebrows at her, although he was sure she couldn't see, and took in her appearance one last time. She was young, but looked about the same age and his uncle and mom, so old, too … but sitting there with her bare feet in the grass around a falling apart old house and a sloppy smile on her face, wavy dark curls framing her cheekbones, she looked more like a big sister than a mom-type. Not that he knew much about sisters.
'That must be lonely'
Maybe if he saw her again it wouldn't be so bad. He turned his head back around and dropped his chin to his chest, contemplating the threshold between the grassy field and the dirt path in front of him. Then he lifted one hand, fingers spread out, and tossed it her way in a waving gesture, in the next split second dashing off down the road, shoelaces thwacking against the dirt.
"Bye, kiddo!" he heard her shout from the distance behind him.