"I will be grounded for six months."
They both sat at the kitchen table, boxes of Chinese food surrounding them. Jess curiously watched Rory scribble furiously onto a piece of paper that Jess had gotten her earlier. She was so serious and childlike that Jess had to laugh at her.
"Half of a year? Why not just got for the whole thing? Nothing says 'I'm sorry' like hermitage." Jess raised his eyebrows for effect and took a bite out of his egg roll.
"No TV. No stereo. No books. No magazines. Nothing outside designated school assigned readings."
"Whoa, now you are just talking crazy."
"What are some other punishments?" Rory looked up at Jess expecting some answers, her brows knitted together.
"Locking yourself up in a tower and only using your long braided hair to communicate with the outside world." Jess picked up his and Rory's plate and brought it to the sink as he spoke.
"I'm serious," Rory said to his back.
"That's what scares me," Jess said as he scraped food off of the plates glancing at Rory for only the tiniest bit of moments.
"And I will do all the housework. Dishes, laundry, cleaning of all various kinds."
"You have to eat at home once in a while to make dishes so that you can do them as punishment."
"I'll cook. I'll learn somehow, by Emeril or the Food Network, and I'll have dinner ready everyday by 6:30."
"I thought you were being serious?" Jess looked at her rolling his eyes which promted Rory to get up and stand near him in front of his sink.
"Jess, I really want to show her that I am truly and utterly sorry." Her voice revealed her childish nature. Rory really and truly believed that making a list would somehow make her mother feel better about the whole ordeal. So sincere and innocent that Jess was almost suspicious of it.
"Don't you think she would be able to know that anyway?" Jess kept the water running, washing the dishes using soap. Rory picked up a dish towel and began drying them, the conversation flowing easily and fluidly from them.
"But if I have a list, she will know that I put thought and effort into redeeming myself."
"Rory you can't..."
"I can and I will. I really wanted to be at the graduation Jess. You have no idea how much I wanted to watch her walk across the stage in her robe and her hat. I promised her and I blew it. I am a selfish stupid person." Jess noted silently that Rory was talking as if a parent who had missed the kid's graduation, not the other way around.
"No you're not. You're asking to be punished for something that was entirely out of your hands. It wasn't your fault the buses weren't running this afternoon Rory."
"But I was the one who had the stroke outside Chilton and came here, to see you which caused me to be in New York City where I had no ways or means of getting back to her graduation. My fault." Rory placed the dishes on top of each other, not knowing where they went in the kitchen.
"Stroke?"
"That's what I think it was."
"I highly doubt it."
"Well what else do you call something that like explodes in your chest and prevents you from any and all rationale thought?" Rory faced Jess and pounded her fist on her chest for dramatic effect.
"That is what propelled you to see me? An explosion in your chest?" Jess turned and leaned on the counter, his voice serious.
"I can't explain it." Rory looked into the empty sink, avoiding Jess' gaze.
"Do you regret it?"
"What?" Rory looked back up at Jess, surprised and shaken.
"Do you regret coming here?" I know I would be if I were you, thought Jess. I'm not worth this. I am not worth a fight with your mother, or a break up with your boyfriend. I don't even know if I was worth the bus fare.
"No I don't..," Rory said quickly looking directly at Jess, "...and that's why I am a selfish and horrible person that needs to be punished." Jess smiled a small smile without teeth loving this girl in front of him so much, that he felt almost that her words had split him in two.
"Kiss me." Rory smiled curiously and leaned in slowly happy to oblige. His soapy fingers grabbed her dry ones and Rory smiled into the kiss.
"You taste like kung-pow chicken."
"And you taste like egg-roll."
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
Rory was lying in Jess' bed a thousands thoughts moving through her mind so fast that it was impossible to think rationally and even harder to sleep. She was in his bed. She was in his clothes. In his room. In his apartment. In his city.
It was hard to fathom.
There were also noises. Cars, voices, people, a police car somewhere in the distance. She couldn't put them in the background and let her mind peacefully give in to her exhaustion. Rory couldn't imagine ever being able to live with such demanding noise keeping your attention. She reached her arm across her the cool white sheets and imagined Jess sleeping in the bed. Lying next to her peacefully.
Rory wondered about Jess sleeping across the hall. If he was asleep at all and if he wasn't was he thinking about her? Was he thinking about how things were so unsaid between them? If she was really asleep?
She tried to clear her mind and think rationally..........Like this....... Jess lived in New York and she lived in Stars Hollow. She had a boyfriend and Jess did not. No, Jess did not have a girlfriend and she did not. No, she had a significant other and Jess did not. She was Jess' significant other. Wasn't she? What if she wasn't? What if she was just a girl that Jess liked, that Jess tried to hook up with and eventually succeeded? What if this right here, was all that Jess wanted?
It was all terribly confusing for her.
Rory pulled her hand back and sat up suddenly, surveying the room, Jess' room. She slowly and carefully pulled the covers away and swung her feet over the bed. Then she walked slowly to his dresser and opened the first drawer.
Rory knew what she was doing was wrong. She knew that. Her mind was telling her that. But she wanted to know something about this boy whose bed she was sleeping in. She wanted to be able to see and touch something tangible. Something that would explain him. She looked into the drawer and realized that this was obviously Jess' junk drawer. The place where he threw things without purpose.
A baseball, used. Rory picked it up. Did Jess like baseball? She placed it back in the drawer and found a ticket stub. Rory moved it to the window so she could use the light from the street to see that it was Smashing Pumpkins. Rory smiled and placed the ticket stub back where she found it delicately.
She pursed her lips as she looked back at the closed door. She concentrated for a sound, for anything that might be Jess but heard nothing. She looked back at the drawer and told herself to stop. But she couldn't.........she wanted to know more........
Rory picked up an empty pack of cigarettes, Camel Reds, and made a face. In the darkness her thin fingers rustled around, feeling for something of consequence and she found one. A condom.
She picked it up slowly her blood flowing through her veins quicker then stopping suddenly. She put it down and sat down on the bed. Rory wanted to cry.
This was his life. Condoms in the drawer and a different girl every week. It made her feel terribly inadequate. Rory felt like some stupid virgin and Jess this experienced guy who knew so much more than her. Was that how he saw her? She hoped not but found it hard that he would see her otherwise. And besides how many girls were there? How many times had Jess gone out and just slept with someone he met that night?
She went back to the drawer hurt and determined to find more. She fumbled through papers and objects, and felt the familiar smooth touch of developed pictures. She picked up all she could find and moved in front of the window and began to flip through them quickly.
Jess flicking off the camera with Tyler. Tyler's hair was dyed bright yellow and Jess' was longer. Tucked behind his ears. Rory smiled in the darkness at his younger face, not fully developed. They weren't smiling at all and yet the picture seemed posed. As if someone annoying had been taking pictures, and Jess and Tyler had refused to join. So superior even then, Rory thought.
Jess with two girls sitting on a park bench and a guy standing behind them with his arms stretched out looking up. One of the girls had a cigarette in her hand and wore baggy jeans and a lime green short sleeved shirt. Her hair was short and purple with lots of barrettes in it. The other girl was wearing a black skirt and plaid Doc Martens that came up almost to her knees. She was looking at Jess who sat between the girls looking at someone else, not pictured. He was leaning forward but seemed comfortable with the crowd. Rory looked at the group. Was this Jess' group? Had Jess dated these girls? Had Jess slept with these girls? It all seemed to be in a park but Rory couldn't tell which one.
A side angle of Jess looking at something with Tyler next to him laughing though Jess was not. Rory decided that this one was taken more recently. She could see a definite stubble on Jess' face. And she could see his defined cheek bones and a shorter version of his now messy and cute dark locks. She smiled at the seriousness of Jess' expression. She wished she knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Finding anything interesting?" Jess stood in the doorway and Rory gasped suddenly. Ashamed and a bit frightened at what will happen next.
"Oh my God." Rory looked at Jess but could not see his face, it was too dark. She could only make out his form. He took a few steps toward her and Rory could tell even without seeing his face that he was angry.
"Sorry to disturb." Jess looked at Rory holding his pictures, and the open drawer.
"I was just......" Rory put the pictures back and shut the top drawer trying to think of something that would explain herself.
"Going through my stuff," Jess finished for her.
"No I was just........um........" Rory stepped away from the chest of drawers looking at Jess.
"Going through my stuff." His voice was full of hostility. Rory didn't like that he talked to her that way at the same time knowing that she deserved it, and more.
"I couldn't sleep and I just.......I can't........"
"Possibly explain why you would be going through my stuff."
Rory took a deep breath and started talking a mile a minute. "I'm sorry okay. I was just lying in bed staring at the ceiling and then the room thinking a million different thoughts. And I couldn't get my brain to stop and I started thinking about me and you, about us, about how I really don't know that much about you at all. I mean you know everything there is to know about me. I am an open book. But you are so different. So I was looking to see, to find out............something, anything."
"You could have asked." Jess couldn't help but think she was beautiful. Her form illuminated by the light pouring in from the window behind her. Her hair messy and wavy falling around her face almost perfectly. Her voice apologetic and sincere. While still being irritated at her for going through his things, his personal things.
"I know and I'm sorry. I don't want you to think I am a nosey snooping kind of person. Because I'm not."
"I will repeat: Did you find anything interesting?" Jess stepped forward into the light and Rory could see all his features and his dewy dark eyes. She swallowed trying to gain some composure, some sense of self. But found none.
She realized that she wanted Jess, really and truly wanted him. It was odd for Rory, how the moment of shame and embarrassment quickly turned into one of lust and ache. Jess was looking at her curiously and she knew that she had waited too long to answer his rather simple question.
"A baseball. A condom. And some pictures." Rory looked away from Jess, surprised at her honesty.
"Well the baseball is a souvenir from a Yankees game. I scrambled over bleaches and wrestled with a huge guy in the tradition of The Rock, who could have eaten me if he wanted to, for that thing. The condom is well....you know the boy scout thing with always being prepared....." Jess noticed Rory had not turned to look at him yet. "....not that I was ever a boy-scout. And the pictures are random. I don't even know which ones they are." Rory looked up at Jess and nodded.
"Are you mad at me?"
"No. Next time just ask to go through my stuff."
"Next time?"
"Yeah," Jess said stepping toward her, "next time."
They both sat at the kitchen table, boxes of Chinese food surrounding them. Jess curiously watched Rory scribble furiously onto a piece of paper that Jess had gotten her earlier. She was so serious and childlike that Jess had to laugh at her.
"Half of a year? Why not just got for the whole thing? Nothing says 'I'm sorry' like hermitage." Jess raised his eyebrows for effect and took a bite out of his egg roll.
"No TV. No stereo. No books. No magazines. Nothing outside designated school assigned readings."
"Whoa, now you are just talking crazy."
"What are some other punishments?" Rory looked up at Jess expecting some answers, her brows knitted together.
"Locking yourself up in a tower and only using your long braided hair to communicate with the outside world." Jess picked up his and Rory's plate and brought it to the sink as he spoke.
"I'm serious," Rory said to his back.
"That's what scares me," Jess said as he scraped food off of the plates glancing at Rory for only the tiniest bit of moments.
"And I will do all the housework. Dishes, laundry, cleaning of all various kinds."
"You have to eat at home once in a while to make dishes so that you can do them as punishment."
"I'll cook. I'll learn somehow, by Emeril or the Food Network, and I'll have dinner ready everyday by 6:30."
"I thought you were being serious?" Jess looked at her rolling his eyes which promted Rory to get up and stand near him in front of his sink.
"Jess, I really want to show her that I am truly and utterly sorry." Her voice revealed her childish nature. Rory really and truly believed that making a list would somehow make her mother feel better about the whole ordeal. So sincere and innocent that Jess was almost suspicious of it.
"Don't you think she would be able to know that anyway?" Jess kept the water running, washing the dishes using soap. Rory picked up a dish towel and began drying them, the conversation flowing easily and fluidly from them.
"But if I have a list, she will know that I put thought and effort into redeeming myself."
"Rory you can't..."
"I can and I will. I really wanted to be at the graduation Jess. You have no idea how much I wanted to watch her walk across the stage in her robe and her hat. I promised her and I blew it. I am a selfish stupid person." Jess noted silently that Rory was talking as if a parent who had missed the kid's graduation, not the other way around.
"No you're not. You're asking to be punished for something that was entirely out of your hands. It wasn't your fault the buses weren't running this afternoon Rory."
"But I was the one who had the stroke outside Chilton and came here, to see you which caused me to be in New York City where I had no ways or means of getting back to her graduation. My fault." Rory placed the dishes on top of each other, not knowing where they went in the kitchen.
"Stroke?"
"That's what I think it was."
"I highly doubt it."
"Well what else do you call something that like explodes in your chest and prevents you from any and all rationale thought?" Rory faced Jess and pounded her fist on her chest for dramatic effect.
"That is what propelled you to see me? An explosion in your chest?" Jess turned and leaned on the counter, his voice serious.
"I can't explain it." Rory looked into the empty sink, avoiding Jess' gaze.
"Do you regret it?"
"What?" Rory looked back up at Jess, surprised and shaken.
"Do you regret coming here?" I know I would be if I were you, thought Jess. I'm not worth this. I am not worth a fight with your mother, or a break up with your boyfriend. I don't even know if I was worth the bus fare.
"No I don't..," Rory said quickly looking directly at Jess, "...and that's why I am a selfish and horrible person that needs to be punished." Jess smiled a small smile without teeth loving this girl in front of him so much, that he felt almost that her words had split him in two.
"Kiss me." Rory smiled curiously and leaned in slowly happy to oblige. His soapy fingers grabbed her dry ones and Rory smiled into the kiss.
"You taste like kung-pow chicken."
"And you taste like egg-roll."
9999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999999
Rory was lying in Jess' bed a thousands thoughts moving through her mind so fast that it was impossible to think rationally and even harder to sleep. She was in his bed. She was in his clothes. In his room. In his apartment. In his city.
It was hard to fathom.
There were also noises. Cars, voices, people, a police car somewhere in the distance. She couldn't put them in the background and let her mind peacefully give in to her exhaustion. Rory couldn't imagine ever being able to live with such demanding noise keeping your attention. She reached her arm across her the cool white sheets and imagined Jess sleeping in the bed. Lying next to her peacefully.
Rory wondered about Jess sleeping across the hall. If he was asleep at all and if he wasn't was he thinking about her? Was he thinking about how things were so unsaid between them? If she was really asleep?
She tried to clear her mind and think rationally..........Like this....... Jess lived in New York and she lived in Stars Hollow. She had a boyfriend and Jess did not. No, Jess did not have a girlfriend and she did not. No, she had a significant other and Jess did not. She was Jess' significant other. Wasn't she? What if she wasn't? What if she was just a girl that Jess liked, that Jess tried to hook up with and eventually succeeded? What if this right here, was all that Jess wanted?
It was all terribly confusing for her.
Rory pulled her hand back and sat up suddenly, surveying the room, Jess' room. She slowly and carefully pulled the covers away and swung her feet over the bed. Then she walked slowly to his dresser and opened the first drawer.
Rory knew what she was doing was wrong. She knew that. Her mind was telling her that. But she wanted to know something about this boy whose bed she was sleeping in. She wanted to be able to see and touch something tangible. Something that would explain him. She looked into the drawer and realized that this was obviously Jess' junk drawer. The place where he threw things without purpose.
A baseball, used. Rory picked it up. Did Jess like baseball? She placed it back in the drawer and found a ticket stub. Rory moved it to the window so she could use the light from the street to see that it was Smashing Pumpkins. Rory smiled and placed the ticket stub back where she found it delicately.
She pursed her lips as she looked back at the closed door. She concentrated for a sound, for anything that might be Jess but heard nothing. She looked back at the drawer and told herself to stop. But she couldn't.........she wanted to know more........
Rory picked up an empty pack of cigarettes, Camel Reds, and made a face. In the darkness her thin fingers rustled around, feeling for something of consequence and she found one. A condom.
She picked it up slowly her blood flowing through her veins quicker then stopping suddenly. She put it down and sat down on the bed. Rory wanted to cry.
This was his life. Condoms in the drawer and a different girl every week. It made her feel terribly inadequate. Rory felt like some stupid virgin and Jess this experienced guy who knew so much more than her. Was that how he saw her? She hoped not but found it hard that he would see her otherwise. And besides how many girls were there? How many times had Jess gone out and just slept with someone he met that night?
She went back to the drawer hurt and determined to find more. She fumbled through papers and objects, and felt the familiar smooth touch of developed pictures. She picked up all she could find and moved in front of the window and began to flip through them quickly.
Jess flicking off the camera with Tyler. Tyler's hair was dyed bright yellow and Jess' was longer. Tucked behind his ears. Rory smiled in the darkness at his younger face, not fully developed. They weren't smiling at all and yet the picture seemed posed. As if someone annoying had been taking pictures, and Jess and Tyler had refused to join. So superior even then, Rory thought.
Jess with two girls sitting on a park bench and a guy standing behind them with his arms stretched out looking up. One of the girls had a cigarette in her hand and wore baggy jeans and a lime green short sleeved shirt. Her hair was short and purple with lots of barrettes in it. The other girl was wearing a black skirt and plaid Doc Martens that came up almost to her knees. She was looking at Jess who sat between the girls looking at someone else, not pictured. He was leaning forward but seemed comfortable with the crowd. Rory looked at the group. Was this Jess' group? Had Jess dated these girls? Had Jess slept with these girls? It all seemed to be in a park but Rory couldn't tell which one.
A side angle of Jess looking at something with Tyler next to him laughing though Jess was not. Rory decided that this one was taken more recently. She could see a definite stubble on Jess' face. And she could see his defined cheek bones and a shorter version of his now messy and cute dark locks. She smiled at the seriousness of Jess' expression. She wished she knew exactly what he was thinking.
"Finding anything interesting?" Jess stood in the doorway and Rory gasped suddenly. Ashamed and a bit frightened at what will happen next.
"Oh my God." Rory looked at Jess but could not see his face, it was too dark. She could only make out his form. He took a few steps toward her and Rory could tell even without seeing his face that he was angry.
"Sorry to disturb." Jess looked at Rory holding his pictures, and the open drawer.
"I was just......" Rory put the pictures back and shut the top drawer trying to think of something that would explain herself.
"Going through my stuff," Jess finished for her.
"No I was just........um........" Rory stepped away from the chest of drawers looking at Jess.
"Going through my stuff." His voice was full of hostility. Rory didn't like that he talked to her that way at the same time knowing that she deserved it, and more.
"I couldn't sleep and I just.......I can't........"
"Possibly explain why you would be going through my stuff."
Rory took a deep breath and started talking a mile a minute. "I'm sorry okay. I was just lying in bed staring at the ceiling and then the room thinking a million different thoughts. And I couldn't get my brain to stop and I started thinking about me and you, about us, about how I really don't know that much about you at all. I mean you know everything there is to know about me. I am an open book. But you are so different. So I was looking to see, to find out............something, anything."
"You could have asked." Jess couldn't help but think she was beautiful. Her form illuminated by the light pouring in from the window behind her. Her hair messy and wavy falling around her face almost perfectly. Her voice apologetic and sincere. While still being irritated at her for going through his things, his personal things.
"I know and I'm sorry. I don't want you to think I am a nosey snooping kind of person. Because I'm not."
"I will repeat: Did you find anything interesting?" Jess stepped forward into the light and Rory could see all his features and his dewy dark eyes. She swallowed trying to gain some composure, some sense of self. But found none.
She realized that she wanted Jess, really and truly wanted him. It was odd for Rory, how the moment of shame and embarrassment quickly turned into one of lust and ache. Jess was looking at her curiously and she knew that she had waited too long to answer his rather simple question.
"A baseball. A condom. And some pictures." Rory looked away from Jess, surprised at her honesty.
"Well the baseball is a souvenir from a Yankees game. I scrambled over bleaches and wrestled with a huge guy in the tradition of The Rock, who could have eaten me if he wanted to, for that thing. The condom is well....you know the boy scout thing with always being prepared....." Jess noticed Rory had not turned to look at him yet. "....not that I was ever a boy-scout. And the pictures are random. I don't even know which ones they are." Rory looked up at Jess and nodded.
"Are you mad at me?"
"No. Next time just ask to go through my stuff."
"Next time?"
"Yeah," Jess said stepping toward her, "next time."