Forget December (Part 4)

Author: Sirius



"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.

Jess walked briskly across the street by the diner as he shrugged into his jacket. His pace was quick, but he was still trying to figure out what to say to Rory when he arrived at her house.

He was surprised when he reached the Gilmore driveway. He had been so deep in thought that he didn't even remember navigating his way there. By now, after so many years of friendship, it was almost like second nature.

Jess raised his head up to look at the house. It looked the same as it always had. Every movie night, every Chinese take-out, every New Year's, every weekend had been spent at this house. Jess couldn't remember a time when he and Rory hadn't been friends. She'd been the first person to approach him when he moved here at the age of 10. They'd grown to be inseparable. Was today going to be the start of the end of their friendship?

Slowly, Jess made his was across the stone pathway to the porch steps. He ascended them mechanically and rang the doorbell. After a moment's pause, he rang again. He could hear shuffling in the background and a faint, "I'm coming!"

Rory opened the door quickly and seemed surprised to see Jess standing before her.

"Hi." She said.

Jess took a deep breath and held it for a second before replying, "Hey."

She politely asked him if he'd like to come in and he followed her back into her bedroom. He stiffly sat down at the chair by her desk and she took a seat on her bed. Jess looked around her room. It too, was exactly the way it'd always been. Rory absently picked at a loose string in her bedspread, while waiting patiently for Jess to say something.

"So," Jess began. "Today was bad."

"No kidding."

"I don't really know what happened."

"You freaked out." She replied, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.

"Hey, that's not fair, you freaked out too."

"What? I didn't freak out! I just told you the truth."

"So did I!"

"No, you lied to me, and then freaked out about how I was leaving you."

"You lied to me too! And I did not freak out about you leaving. I freaked out about you not telling me you were leaving. And I freaked out about you lying to me. Then I got home and freaked out about you leaving."

"I didn't lie about leaving; I just didn't want to hurt you!"

"Well looks like that fell through, doesn't it?"

"What do you want from me?" She countered, desperate.

He paused. He couldn't say it. It wasn't the right way to ask her to stay.

"Nothing. I just wanted you to be honest with me," he said, finally.

"I am being honest with you. Plus, why does it matter so much to you? I was leaving anyway." She spat out hastily.

He stood in stunned silence. Their anger had raised them both to their feet and they had been steadily drawing themselves up to be taller and taller, trying to force the other down with their words. Her last comment, however, made him sag his shoulders and focus his gaze toward the ground.

"Jess . . ." She whispered, cautiously.

He glanced up at her, sadly. "I gotta go."

He turned and walked out of her room, past a shocked Lorelai who had obviously heard the whole thing, and out the front door. As he descended the steps off the porch, he heard Lorelai say, "What happened?"

"I don't know," replied Rory sadly.

Jess couldn't breathe. How could she think that? Of course it mattered more that she was going across the country rather than just to Yale. Of course it mattered! How could she think that after all this time, it didn't mean anything to him? She had made it sound so trivial, so insignificant.

As it had been for practically the entire day, Jess struggled to hang on to a single thought. He just couldn't see it her way. The only thing that occurred to him was that maybe he'd misinterpreted her when she'd said that she didn't think of him as "just a friend anymore." It didn't seem possible for him to go from worried, to ecstatic, to furious, to numb in the matter of hours.

He didn't know where to go. He couldn't go back to Luke's. He didn't feel like trying to explain something he didn't even understand right now. Usually, whenever he didn't want to go home, Jess would go to Rory's. Now, he had nowhere to go.

Jess eventually ended up at the library. He would have gone to the bridge, but Rory would have looked for him there, and he wouldn't have known what to say to her. He sank into one of the overstuffed chairs and stared forward, unseeingly. Occasionally someone would pass before his eyes, but all he saw were blurs. He wasn't crying. He hadn't cried since the day he came to Stars Hollow. He's too cool to cry.

He tilted his head back and stared at the blank ceiling. He crossed his arms over his chest, and folded his legs Indian Style below him. He slammed his eyes shut and tensed his entire body. Without realizing it, he held his breath.

Of course it mattered.

Of course it mattered!

His lungs started to throb and he let out the breath he didn't know he'd been holding. His body relaxed and he lessened the strain on his eyes, but kept them shut. A single tear fell from his right eye and down the side of his face.

He couldn't see it her way.

Of course it mattered.

He wasn't crying.