By Stew Pid

Rating: Should be okay.

Disclaimer: I only own the Stew Pid stuff

Fimiliar words from a familiar voice. Rory turns around and is startled even further by the familiar face. He hadn't changed much at all, and seeing him there at the corner of Washington Square Park, hearing those words spoken once before, made her realize how much she hadn't really changed either, how much nothing had changed.

"Oh my God."

He smirked.

"Now that's someone I've never been mistaken for before. But go ahead. Worship me if you want."

She was still too shocked to sort out any other words, thoughts, or feelings. Finally, she stammered out,

"Wha--what happened to you? Where have you been? You just picked up and left and no one ever heard from you again."

"Thanks for the recap. So you do remember me."

"Of cour—what happened, I asked you."

"What are you doing here?"

"Hello. Do you not hear me or something?"

"Go to school here?"

"No. I was just visiting Lane. I go to Yale—hey! I asked you a question."

"Not Harvard? So you're not going to do the whole overseas correspondent thing."

"Yes, I am. You don't have to go to Harvard to do that."

"I know. It's just Harvard was your dream. I say you were borderline obsessed with it. Heck, I would even have called it a psychosis."

"Yeah, well, things change. You still haven't answered my question."

"I guess some things never change."

"Jess!"

"Wow. You even remember my name."

"Where have you been?"

"About."

"About?"

"Hey, you went to fulfill your plans. I went to fulfill my plan. I left Stars Hollow. I live where I live, work when I need money. And here I am."

Rory looked at him, puzzled. Staring into his eyes, she saw he had, in fact, changed, but she realized for the first time the change wasn't recent. She had seen the change in his eyes long before, when she returned from Washington, but she hadn't really noticed it, never stopped to pinpoint it. At that time, she was too busy trying to avoid those eyes. Now she was able to analyze them. They were weary.

"So where are you going?" Jess disrupted her musing.

"Oh, uh, I'm trying to catch a cab."

"That's not what I asked."

"I'm going back to my hotel room. I'm trying to catch a cab in order to get there."

"Where are you staying?"

"Why do you ask?"

"I plan on breaking into your hotel room to steal your credit cards. Come on, I'll give you a ride."

"Hmm. I seem to remember the last time I was in a car with you."

"I finally took that driver's ed class."

"So where's your car?"

"Down the block."

Walking down the corner of Washington Square Park with Jess brought back memories she had spent four years trying to forget. She realized now how unsuccessful her efforts were. She remembered everything down to the shirt he wore and the book he carried underneath his arm.

"So, you still with Frankenstein?"

""No. We broke up before graduation. We're still friends though. He's getting married."

"Huh."

"You didn't even say goodbye to Shane, to anyone."

"I doubt she or anyone else missed me."

"That's not true," she whispered. He pretended not to hear.

"So what's the new boyfriend like?"

"Oh, he's great. Smart, sweet, funny, kind, invisible."

"Sounds like a great guy. So what is it? You crawled into a shell after Dean or are all the Yale guys jerks."

"I'd have to go with the latter. The latest jerk was this guy Nick Carraway."

"So you date invisible men and fictional characters from Fitzgerald novels. Got it."

Rory smiled, remembering Lane's comment from earlier.

"No. Nick was real."

"So what did he do?'

"It turned out he was only after one thing and when I wouldn't give, he immediately went to someone who would."

"Jerk."

"Yea. It was all right, though. I lost interest in him before then."

"So why didn't you break it off?"

"I didn't know how. I mean, I really didn't have a reason before that point. I just wasn't into him. So what about you?"

"What about me?"

"What's the new girlfriend like?"

"Here's your ride."

"What?"

"My car."

"It's a gypsy cab."

"You were looking for a cab."

"I was praying for a cab."

"Well, then. I guess I am God. Get in."

He opens the door for her and walks over to the other side to get in. Once inside, he looks into the mirror, sighs inaudibly, and looks over to Rory.

"Could've done more?"

Rory looks down at her hands nervously. She meant those words to encourage, not to disparage.

"It's just for extra cash," he justifies, "It's not a living or anything."

"What? I don't care. This was your plan. As long as it makes you happy."

Was he happy? She looked into his weary eyes. He looked at her through the rear-view mirror.

"What about you, Gilmore. Are you happy?"

She looked into the mirror, suddenly conscious of the weariness in her own eyes. Jess started up the car and pulled out. His question was rather rhetorical. Of course she was happy. Happiness was a word Webster defined while looking at Stars Hollow. Never had Jess seen a town so uncomplicated, so peaceful, so happy. He was glad when he left. He didn't belong there. He just complicated things, got in the way of other people's happiness.

"So where are we going?" he asked.

"Huh?"

"Where are you staying?"

"Brooklyn Marriott."

"Keeping up with the Jones's, aren't we?"

"My grandparents refused to have me stay in any hotel that wasn't a Marriott."

"How are the Warbucks doing?"

"Strange."

"I agree, but I'm surprised you'd talk about your grandparents that way."

"No. I find it strange that you ask about people you never even met before you ask about the person you lived with for over a year and haven't seen for four, if you were planning to ask about him at all."

"What's there to know about Luke?"

"You wouldn't know, would you?"

"I would know that he finally worked up the guts to ask your mom out, that they've been driving each other up the walls for two years, that the diner is still in one piece and that he still lives upstairs though he had to invest in a bigger bed. I know he is still partial to flannel and baseball caps and that he now allows for one decoration to be put up in the diner for the town's stupid festivals, something I;m sure your mom put him up to and I have to say I respected him more before."

"Well, he put up a tough fight and it's really hard to strike a compromise with my mom, but he did it. How did you know all of that?"

"I have my sources."

"You left everyone without a word, but you still keep in touch with Miss Patty."

"That's right."

You always did have a thing for her."

"That's not funny."

"Struck a tender cord, did I?"

"All right. Go ahead. Have your fun."

"No. Seriously, how did you know?"

"Reverse psychology always works."

"Jess."

"Look, I hear things. It's not that hard."

"But how is it that you hear things and no one's heard of you?"

"One way taps."

"Fine. I don't care. I don't want to know."

"Fine by me."

Reverse psychology didn't work on Jess.

"So you do care."

"What?"

"About Luke. About Stars Hollow. You looked to find out about them. You must care."

"Why is it so important to you that I care?"

"It's not."

"So what if I tell you I don't?"

"I wouldn't believe you."

"What if I tell you the only reason I knew those things was because I finally went back to Stars Hollow, unnoticed, just to get back my stuff, and saw all the new happenings?"

"Oh," she didn't understand why that hurt her, but then a thought occurred to her and she grabbed onto hope again. "Then why didn't you take your stuff."

"I did. I didn't come back for all of it. Just some stuff I needed. It would have been impossible to be inconspicuous lugging all the rest of my stuff out."

"That's right." Again she felt the bitter pang of disappointment, but it quickly shifted into a burn of anger. "Why don't you care? I mean, Luke went through a lot for youand you never made it easier. The only time you were doing what you were supposed to turned out to be because you were planning to just high-tail quietly out. You never told anyone you were leaving. You should have at least told the people you cared about, but I guess you don't care about anyone."

"What are you getting on me for? I thought silent exits and no correspondence were two things we had in common."

It hit her all too sharply and they both had to suffer Consequence, coming in the guise of awkward silence. He had remembered after all this time. She left for Washington without telling him and he never heard from her the six weeks she was gone.

"I guess it's different though," he finally broke the silence. "You told the people you cared about."

"Not everyone I cared about."

They were already approaching the Brooklyn Bridge.

"Wow." The sight of the Bridge always impressed Rory. Jess stopped the car and parked. "What are you doing?"

"Come on."

They got out of the car and Rory and Jess walked the pedestrian pass of the Bridge, stopping in the middle to look out over New York. Gentle reader, the hours they passed on the Bridge that night were too special for both of them to be repeated here. Some words are meant to remain only between the two people who exchanged them. It is the stuff of inside jokes, private journal entries, knowing glares and smiles that go unnoticed or over heads. The privacy adds to the beauty of the recollection. I will only give, in terse description with my own words, the recap they gave of all that had elapsed in those nearly four years. Rory graduated Chilton with honors but did not get accepted into Harvard. She was accepted into Yale with a scholarship, and was still pursuing journalism. She visited home often the first two years, and while she still remained very close to her mother, she spent breaks her junior year doing internships in New York, Chicago, Washington, and Boston. While in Boston, she spent a great deal of time with her younger brother David, having officially come to terms with her father. Jess, packed a copy of John Gunther's Inside the U.S.A. and Kerouac's On the Road, and traveled throughout the US in an old car he bought before he left Stars Hollow. He took some college courses here and there in different states, but never formally enrolled in any college. He waited tables, drove cabs, cut hair, fixed mechanical appliances, or sold short pieces of fiction to small-time literary magazines, whatever to make a buck. He had seen a lot, and that pretty much summed it all up.

For the sake of closure I will repeat the last part of their conversation, after Jess had told his story.

"Then I just got tired of wandering around. I wanted to come home. Not sure exactly where that is anymore, or if it is anymore, but for a long time it was here, so here I am."

"Wow. You've done a lot in four years."

"Could've done more." It wasn't a question anymore as he stood next to her, once again conversing with her on a bridge.

"We both could've done more," she affirmed, also feeling that same "what if" question that hung above the two, breathing memories of four years ago that suspend like dreams over the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge. A truck roared over the bridge, and the suspended dreams fell to the concrete and shattered. Rory and Jess woke from their daze.

"We better get back to the car."

"Yeah, it's late, and I'm sure Lane has called my hotel room a dozen times and is probably calling the police right about now."

"Don't worry. They won't start the search 'til next week."

They walked back to the car, and drove on and away from the Bridge. In our youth, we dream fresh dreams and some endure by becoming viable reality, some die instantly, and some linger in the dormancy of practical minds, grow old and eventually die. As we ourselves grow, our minds carry the tombstones of those deceased dreams, and presume to be wiser, stronger because of them, but our hearts are ever "immature" enough to dream again.

A/N: This was a long chapter, a messy chapter. I hope to clear it up in the following chapters. We shall see. It's a little sad, also, but it'll get brighter, otherwise it's completely useless to me. =)