Title: Forget December (Chapter 3)

Author: Sirius

"Jess, wait!" She called hopelessly after him.

He paused on the end of the bridge and turned his head around to look at her. She shifted uncomfortably and threw her hands up in defeat.

"I'm sorry." She whispered with finality. He stared at her for a moment with a blank face, blinked, and turned away with a nod. 

"See you later, Ror."

He spent the rest of the evening walking around the town in a freezing cold daze. He was going to lose his best friend; there was no way around it. She was moving across the country to go to college, and he would never see her again. He knew it, she knew it. There was nothing he could do about it. He missed her already. And now, with only a few months left to be best friends, she had to go and make everything even more messed up. They both had thought of each other as more than just best friends but they'd ignored it in order to keep their friendship in tact. Now they'd have to spend their last months together in awkward silence, both trying to forget what had happened.

Suddenly, Jess was overcome with anger. How could she have sprung this on him? None of this was his fault. Sure, he'd withheld the fact that he cared about her more than he'd let on, and sure, he'd said some things that he hadn't really meant during their fight, but really, she was to blame. She was the one moving across the country. She was the one who'd told him that she cared about him. She was the one who changed everything! Furious, Jess walked back the diner in a huff.

After slamming the diner door hard enough for the bell to ring obnoxiously loud and stomping up the stairs to the apartment, Jess flung himself onto his bed. Downstairs, the diner went silent and everyone stared at Luke so see how he would handle the situation.

"Just . . . get back to your meals everyone." He said, before ascending the stairs after his nephew.

"What the hell was that?" He interrogated when Jess ignored his presence in the room.

"What?" Jess snapped back at him.

"What was your little scene down there? What's wrong?"

"Nothing." Jess replied angrily.

"No, no more of this. You're gonna tell me right now. What the hell is wrong with you? You've been stomping around here since this morning. What happened?"

Jess was silent.

"Well . . .?" Luke prodded.

"Rory's leaving." Jess answered in a distant whisper.

Luke took a moment in responding. Hadn't she been leaving the whole time? Wasn't it the plan that she would graduate high school and move away to college? Hadn't Jess been prepared for that?

"I don't get it, hasn't she been planning on leaving for a while . . .?"

"Well yeah," Jess paused, standing up and going over to the kitchen table. "That was the plan. She was gonna leave and go somewhere like Yale or Harvard."

"Okay, so . . ."

"So!" Jess yelled, unable to control his anger. "So! The plan wasn't for her to go all the way to California!"

"California? Wait . . ."

"She got accepted to UCLA, and now she's decided that she wants to go all the way across the country. I can't follow her all the way over there. That's not the plan. The plan was for her to go somewhere close by. Then I could at least see her once a week or something. I won't see her anymore."

"UCLA, wow. Jess, you have to understand if she got into UCLA, you need to be happy for her. This can't be easy for her either, going all the way across the country."

"She doesn't care! If she cared, she wouldn't be going!" Jess exploded.

Trying to calm him down, Luke went over to stand by him in the kitchen. "Jess, no matter how hard this is for you, it's must be just as hard for her, if not more. Leaving everyone behind. Everyone she cares about. Being that brave has to be scary."

"Ha, everyone she cares about." He spat. "You know what else she did? You wanna know what else she said to me? As if it wasn't bad enough that she was leaving, she had to go and tell me that she cares about me. Yeah, she cares about me. More than a friend, she said. And I just stood there like an idiot. I had nothing to say back to her. The only time in my life when it truly mattered, and I couldn't think of a single thing to say back." He was pacing back and forth through the kitchen as he ranted. Just watching him beat himself up was too much for Luke to take.

"Why did it only matter today?" Luke asked tentatively.

"Because today was my chance!" Jess said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world.

"Your chance?"

"I could have had her today. She laid it out right in front of me. I even told her that I thought of her as more than a friend. But then I just walked away. And now she's only got a few months left here and they're gonna be all weird and awkward now."

"Jess. Calm down for just a second. What do you want from Rory."

Jess pulled the kitchen chair out and slumped down into it, resting his elbows on the table in front of him. With his face in his hands, he mumbled, "I don't want her to go."

"Did you try telling her that?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"'Cause I don't want to hold her back."

After letting that last comment sink in, Luke replied, "Jess, she needs you right now. You can't hole yourself up in this room and stay mad at her forever. Go be her friend."

With that said, Luke tuned and headed back downstairs. Jess continued to sit at the kitchen table, his hands still covering his face. After rubbing his eyes a few times to shake his attitude, he stood up and grabbed his coat from the hanger by the door. As he walked through the diner, he nodded to Luke, who acknowledged the teen back.