Chapter 1 : Through My Soul

In the beginning there was comfort. And love. Dean was all that was safe and secure. I enjoyed the mindless routine that my life had become.

Dean. Lane. Luke's coffee. Lorelai. Friday night dinners. Paris.

I knew every bump and pothole on the road of my life intimately and loved them.

It was easy being Rory Gilmore. Nothing could shake the security of her existence. Or so I thought.

And then he came.

The day he stepped off the bus, I felt it in the air. Like a tear in my universe, a hole in the cosmos that was sucking everything out. All day I felt it, keenly. A gnawing sensation in my stomach, like a dreaded visit to the dentist or a flu shot, only worse.

Then, Luke's nephew came to dinner.

At the sound of my mother's voice, I turned around from my work at the computer and fell into a gaping void of uncertainty. It hit me like a thousand knives, all at once. It's him.

"Hey," I said as nonchalantly as possible to the person who literally turned my world askew.

If I had the moment to live over, I wouldn't have been so friendly. Maybe he might have gone away. But it was too late for regrets.

Right from the first minute he taunted me. Challenged me. Questioned me. He was unrelenting. Constantly, he smirked at me, as if he was privy to some secret knowledge about me that I wasn't aware of.

Whenever I did something right, something that was expected of me, he would look at me with barely concealed amusement, as if he knew that wasn't the real Rory Gilmore.

Who is Rory Gilmore?

These days I'm not so sure I know myself. He made me question her secure little existence. Valiantly, I tried to keep up with him and put up defenses around me. But he was always ahead and always aware.

I hated him. I loved him. I needed him.

I had come to crave his taunting words. I was only real with him. Everybody else saw right through me, or saw in me what they wanted to see. To them, I was the safe and predictable Rory Gilmore.

To Jess Mariano, I was his equal.