When Rory woke up, the first thing she noticed was that she wasn't alone.
The second thing she noticed was that Jess was awake. The third thing she
noticed was that he was watching her.
"Morning," he said quietly as he noticed her eyelids fluttering opened.
"Morning. How long have you been there?"
"All night."
"No, I mean, how long have you been watching me."
All night. "Uh, a few minutes." Jess climbed out of the bed the two had been sharing. "Breakfast?"
"Yeah." Rory followed him out of bed.
"Great hair by the way," Jess said, walking in the direction of the kitchen.
Rory reached up for her hair. The neat ponytail she had done the night before had become disheveled and was now on the side of her head, half of her hair in, half out. She pulled the hair tie out of her hair and flipped her head over, pulling her hair into another ponytail. She followed Jess into the kitchen.
"Better?" she asked.
"Hey, I wasn't judging." He opened a cabinet. "God, Lizzie, do you ever clean when I'm not here?" he muttered. He rummaged around and finally pulled a frying pan out. He looked at it for a moment, and then began to run it under the tap.
"Eggs OK?" he asked.
"Sure. And coffee."
"Sorry Charlie," Jess said with a smile, putting the pan on the stove and walking to the fridge to get the eggs out. "Lizzie's a strictly vodka in the morning kind of gal." He cracked two eggs into the pan. He then took two slices of wonder bread and put them in the toaster.
"Then what's with the Mr. Coffee over there?"
Jess looked over to where Rory was pointing. "Huh. Well, look at that. Looks like someone's conformed to the rest of America."
"What are you ranting about, Jessie?" Liz asked, coming into the kitchen. Rory suddenly felt self-conscious in her pajamas.
"Nothing, just your decision to replace morning alchohol with caffeine."
"Oh. That." Liz walked over to the coffee pot and poured herself a cup. "Jess?"
"Nope," he said, walking to the fridge and taking out the orange juice, pouring himself a glass.
"Rory?" Liz asked.
"Yes, please. But I'll get it."
"Nonsense." Liz poured a second cup of coffee. "Milk? Sugar? Sweet 'n Low?"
"Uh, no thanks. Just black."
"You sure?"
"She just drinks it black, Liz," Jess said from the corner where he was frying the eggs.
"Oh, alright."
"Thank you," Rory said, accepting her coffee quietly.
The three sat in the kitchen in awkward silence. "So, uh, you cook now, Jess?" Liz asked in an attempt to break the awkwardness.
"Yeah. Luke taught me. You kind of have to in order to work in a diner."
"Oh. Of course. What are you making."
"Fried eggs." He paused. "Want one?"
"Oh, sure."
Jess reached into the pink egg carton and pulled out another egg, cracked it into the pan, and flipped one of the eggs already in the pan onto a plate. He took one of the pieces of toast, swiped it with butter, and put it on the plate with the egg. He walked over to the table and put it down in front of Rory.
"Thank you."
"No problem."
Rory sat at the table staring at her food, remembering something her grandmother had once told her about waiting until everyone was served before she began eating.
"Well go ahead, start!" Liz said.
"Oh, that's OK. I'll wait until yours are done."
"Nonsense."
"They're done," Jess said, sliding a plate in front of his mother and walking back to put another piece of bread in the toaster.
Rory waited one more moment for Jess to sit down with his plate, and Liz mimicked her. Jess finally sat down with his plate, and they all began to eat. Rory noticed that the smile he had been wearing when they had entered had disappeared when Liz had come in, being replaced by the guarded look he wore around people he didn't know well. Rory found it odd that this would be the expression he would take out around his mother, with whom he had lived for the majority of his eighteen years.
"So, what are you two doing today?" Liz asked in an attempt to make conversation.
"I'm just gonna show her around. Maybe we'll head downtown. Hit the Strand?" he asked, directing his question at Rory, not at his mother.
"Sure. Sounds like fun," Rory answered.
"All right, well have fun you two."
"OK," Jess answered. Liz sat at the table for a few more moments before she stood and walked out, leaving her dirty plate on the table. Rory and Jess finished their breakfast in silence and then Jess swept all three plates away without allowing Rory to help him. He rinsed them in the sink and then loaded them into the dishwasher.
"You can take a shower if you want, and then we can head out when you're ready. Just use one of the towels on the door."
"OK," Rory said, and she went in to take a shower. As she shampooed her hair, she thought about the tense relationship she had been observing between Jess and his mother. She had never seen anything like it. Of course her relationship with Lorelai wasn't like that, but even between Lorelai and Emily, or Lane and Mrs. Kim, it wasn't the same. Then she realized the difference: with Emily and Mrs. Kim, there were fights involved. Emotion. Between Jess and Liz, there was nothing. Like they were strangers.
Rory stepped out of the shower and towel-dried her hair. She put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and then walked back to the room, still rubbing her wet hair with the towel. Jess was in the room, showered and dressed, reading a book on his bed. She layed the towel on his desk chair and then walked over to him, sliding her hand behind his head and leaning down to kiss him. He layed the book down beside him and pulled her down on top of him.
"Hey," he said, and smiled, like he had that morning before he had seen his mother in the kitchen.
"Hey." She smiled down at him and pushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead. It was still wet from his shower. She kissed him again, this time a longer kiss, tongues exploring. A desperate kiss, though desperate for what Rory didn't know. After they kissed, Rory rolled off Jess and lay down beside him. A few moments passed, and then Jess asked, "So, you wanna go downtown?"
"Sure," Rory said, standing. "I'll just get my purse." Rory grabbed it off Jess' desk and then slipped on her sneakers. "Let's go."
Jess stood and took his wallet from his desk, slipping it into the pocket of his khaki cargos. He placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her out of the room, taking the key from the keyhole and shutting the door behind him. He locked the door from the outside and then slipped the key in his pocket. Rory wanted to ask the obvious, but she wanted his smile to remain. They walked to the front door, and Jess opened it for her.
"Shouldn't you tell your mom where we're going?"
"We're leaving!" Jess called, and then closed the door behind him, taking the key she had seen him hide over the door the night before with them. They stepped onto the elevator and rode down. They talked as they walked to the subway stop.
"You aren't taking your car?"
"People don't drive in the city. They walk. Or take the subway." He swiped his Metrocard twice, once for him and once for her.
"Two dollars. Wow, things have changed since I've been gone," Jess muttered under his breath as they stepped on and the doors closed behind them.
"What?"
"They raised the price of a subway ride from one fifty to two dollars. Damn Bloomberg."
"Who?"
"He's the mayor." The subway jerked to a start and Rory felt herself lose her footing. Jess caught her around the waist and held her with one hand, the other holding the metal bar. Rory reached for the pole as well, but Jess still didn't let go of her. Not until they reached the Union Station stop and got off.
They walked towards the Strand, but stopped in a small CD store. It wasn't the same one as they had been in the last time she was here, but it was filled with CDs and records just as obscure. They were flipping through records across from each other when Rory finally built up the courage to ask the question she had been dying to ask all day.
"Jess?"
"Hmm?" he said, not looking up from the records. Rory continued to flip, but she wasn't looking at the records she was touching anymore.
"Why are you so guarded around your mom?"
"What?"
"You wear your brick wall face around her. The one you wear around strangers."
"It's complicated." He still hadn't looked up.
It was one of those moments when Rory knew she shouldn't press, but she couldn't help it. "Explain it to me."
"Rory. I don't want to talk about it."
"Please Jess? I won't judge."
"It's not about that." He left the stack he had been flipping through and walked to a different section of the store. Rory followed him against her better judgement: he didn't want to be followed.
"Then what?"
"Rory! Just drop it. Please." He shouted.
She stopped where she was and felt hot salt migrate to her eyes. She knew she shouldn't be upset: it was her own fault. She should know by now when to stop pressing when it came to Jess. Now he had put up his brick wall face for her too. The whole purpose of this conversation was supposed to be about him letting go of it, not putting it on more often.
She took a breath and then walked over to where he was. She saw him tense when he heard her footsteps.
"Rory. . ."
"No, it's OK. I'm sorry. Let's just drop it. Forget I said anything."
Jess nodded, but he didn't look up. He still had on his guarded face. She tried again.
"It's none of my business. It's between you and your mom. Not me."
"Don't worry about it."
Rory wanted to keep going. She didn't know what she could say to make that face melt away, but she had learned her lesson for the day about pressing Jess, so she began to sort through some records near Jess. When both of them had looked and Jess had bought a vintage single of some band Rory had never heard of, they walked out of the store towards the Strand.
Jess had his arm around Rory, but he looked distracted. Instead of bringing it up, Rory began to summarize a book she had been reading. When they got to the store, Jess walked straight to a section of rare signed classics.
"I'm going back to fiction, Come find me there when you're done," she said.
"OK," he replied, already involved in searching for a book. Rory walked back to fiction and began to browse, pulling things off the shelf at random and either replacing them or adding them to a small stack she had going on the floor. As she was pulling a book with a bright green cover off the shelf, she felt an arm wrap around her. Her heart leapt to her throat. She whirled around. It was Jess. She put her hand to her chest and caught her breath.
"Jesus Christ! You scared me!"
"Sorry," Jess said, with half a smile. A smile. Rory grinned. She reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him.
"Find anything?" she asked.
"Not what I was looking for in classics, but I'll come back some other time and see. You?"
Rory gestured to the stack on the floor. Jess scoffed. "Figures. Junkie."
"I am not!"
"You have a problem."
"I do not!"
"You ready to go?"
"Sure," she said. She reached for her books and added the bright green one she had dropped to the stack.
They walked up to the counter and paid for the books, and then they walked out, Rory with her very own oversized Strand bag.
They walked in silence for a little bit, and then Rory heard Jess take a huge breath and say, "It's because she is a stranger."
"What?"
"My mom."
"I told you not to worry about it."
"I know," he said, "But that's why."
Rory didn't want to ask for clarification, but she was confused. Jess must have noticed, because he said, "That's why I wear the stranger face around her. Because she is a stranger." He took a breath. "Look, when you were little, Lorelai probably played with you, read you books, stuff like that, right?"
"I think she got more out of it than I did."
"OK, so, when I was little, my mom should have done those things, right?" Rory didn't answer.
Jess continued. "When I was really little, we had a housekeeper. Her name was Beatrice, and she was always around. Liz wasn't. Then we ran out of money and had to get rid of her. So I would get on the bus every morning by myself and take it home at night. Sometimes Liz would be there, sometimes not. If she was, she might eat dinner with me, if she wasn't I called for takeout or put something in the microwave. Then I met the guys, and well, I guess you know the rest of the story."
Rory was pretty sure of the general details, so she nodded.
"Now, you'll notice, she's trying to be all nice and sweet and motherly, but I would just prefer if she stayed how she was. She was like that for 18 years. I'm grown now. I don't need a mother anymore. She lost her chance at that."
Rory stared at her shoes and then wrapped her arms around Jess and planted a kiss on his cheek. She smiled at him and then turned back so that the two could continue on their way to the subway.
"Morning," he said quietly as he noticed her eyelids fluttering opened.
"Morning. How long have you been there?"
"All night."
"No, I mean, how long have you been watching me."
All night. "Uh, a few minutes." Jess climbed out of the bed the two had been sharing. "Breakfast?"
"Yeah." Rory followed him out of bed.
"Great hair by the way," Jess said, walking in the direction of the kitchen.
Rory reached up for her hair. The neat ponytail she had done the night before had become disheveled and was now on the side of her head, half of her hair in, half out. She pulled the hair tie out of her hair and flipped her head over, pulling her hair into another ponytail. She followed Jess into the kitchen.
"Better?" she asked.
"Hey, I wasn't judging." He opened a cabinet. "God, Lizzie, do you ever clean when I'm not here?" he muttered. He rummaged around and finally pulled a frying pan out. He looked at it for a moment, and then began to run it under the tap.
"Eggs OK?" he asked.
"Sure. And coffee."
"Sorry Charlie," Jess said with a smile, putting the pan on the stove and walking to the fridge to get the eggs out. "Lizzie's a strictly vodka in the morning kind of gal." He cracked two eggs into the pan. He then took two slices of wonder bread and put them in the toaster.
"Then what's with the Mr. Coffee over there?"
Jess looked over to where Rory was pointing. "Huh. Well, look at that. Looks like someone's conformed to the rest of America."
"What are you ranting about, Jessie?" Liz asked, coming into the kitchen. Rory suddenly felt self-conscious in her pajamas.
"Nothing, just your decision to replace morning alchohol with caffeine."
"Oh. That." Liz walked over to the coffee pot and poured herself a cup. "Jess?"
"Nope," he said, walking to the fridge and taking out the orange juice, pouring himself a glass.
"Rory?" Liz asked.
"Yes, please. But I'll get it."
"Nonsense." Liz poured a second cup of coffee. "Milk? Sugar? Sweet 'n Low?"
"Uh, no thanks. Just black."
"You sure?"
"She just drinks it black, Liz," Jess said from the corner where he was frying the eggs.
"Oh, alright."
"Thank you," Rory said, accepting her coffee quietly.
The three sat in the kitchen in awkward silence. "So, uh, you cook now, Jess?" Liz asked in an attempt to break the awkwardness.
"Yeah. Luke taught me. You kind of have to in order to work in a diner."
"Oh. Of course. What are you making."
"Fried eggs." He paused. "Want one?"
"Oh, sure."
Jess reached into the pink egg carton and pulled out another egg, cracked it into the pan, and flipped one of the eggs already in the pan onto a plate. He took one of the pieces of toast, swiped it with butter, and put it on the plate with the egg. He walked over to the table and put it down in front of Rory.
"Thank you."
"No problem."
Rory sat at the table staring at her food, remembering something her grandmother had once told her about waiting until everyone was served before she began eating.
"Well go ahead, start!" Liz said.
"Oh, that's OK. I'll wait until yours are done."
"Nonsense."
"They're done," Jess said, sliding a plate in front of his mother and walking back to put another piece of bread in the toaster.
Rory waited one more moment for Jess to sit down with his plate, and Liz mimicked her. Jess finally sat down with his plate, and they all began to eat. Rory noticed that the smile he had been wearing when they had entered had disappeared when Liz had come in, being replaced by the guarded look he wore around people he didn't know well. Rory found it odd that this would be the expression he would take out around his mother, with whom he had lived for the majority of his eighteen years.
"So, what are you two doing today?" Liz asked in an attempt to make conversation.
"I'm just gonna show her around. Maybe we'll head downtown. Hit the Strand?" he asked, directing his question at Rory, not at his mother.
"Sure. Sounds like fun," Rory answered.
"All right, well have fun you two."
"OK," Jess answered. Liz sat at the table for a few more moments before she stood and walked out, leaving her dirty plate on the table. Rory and Jess finished their breakfast in silence and then Jess swept all three plates away without allowing Rory to help him. He rinsed them in the sink and then loaded them into the dishwasher.
"You can take a shower if you want, and then we can head out when you're ready. Just use one of the towels on the door."
"OK," Rory said, and she went in to take a shower. As she shampooed her hair, she thought about the tense relationship she had been observing between Jess and his mother. She had never seen anything like it. Of course her relationship with Lorelai wasn't like that, but even between Lorelai and Emily, or Lane and Mrs. Kim, it wasn't the same. Then she realized the difference: with Emily and Mrs. Kim, there were fights involved. Emotion. Between Jess and Liz, there was nothing. Like they were strangers.
Rory stepped out of the shower and towel-dried her hair. She put on a pair of jeans and a t-shirt and then walked back to the room, still rubbing her wet hair with the towel. Jess was in the room, showered and dressed, reading a book on his bed. She layed the towel on his desk chair and then walked over to him, sliding her hand behind his head and leaning down to kiss him. He layed the book down beside him and pulled her down on top of him.
"Hey," he said, and smiled, like he had that morning before he had seen his mother in the kitchen.
"Hey." She smiled down at him and pushed a stray lock of hair off his forehead. It was still wet from his shower. She kissed him again, this time a longer kiss, tongues exploring. A desperate kiss, though desperate for what Rory didn't know. After they kissed, Rory rolled off Jess and lay down beside him. A few moments passed, and then Jess asked, "So, you wanna go downtown?"
"Sure," Rory said, standing. "I'll just get my purse." Rory grabbed it off Jess' desk and then slipped on her sneakers. "Let's go."
Jess stood and took his wallet from his desk, slipping it into the pocket of his khaki cargos. He placed his hand on the small of her back and guided her out of the room, taking the key from the keyhole and shutting the door behind him. He locked the door from the outside and then slipped the key in his pocket. Rory wanted to ask the obvious, but she wanted his smile to remain. They walked to the front door, and Jess opened it for her.
"Shouldn't you tell your mom where we're going?"
"We're leaving!" Jess called, and then closed the door behind him, taking the key she had seen him hide over the door the night before with them. They stepped onto the elevator and rode down. They talked as they walked to the subway stop.
"You aren't taking your car?"
"People don't drive in the city. They walk. Or take the subway." He swiped his Metrocard twice, once for him and once for her.
"Two dollars. Wow, things have changed since I've been gone," Jess muttered under his breath as they stepped on and the doors closed behind them.
"What?"
"They raised the price of a subway ride from one fifty to two dollars. Damn Bloomberg."
"Who?"
"He's the mayor." The subway jerked to a start and Rory felt herself lose her footing. Jess caught her around the waist and held her with one hand, the other holding the metal bar. Rory reached for the pole as well, but Jess still didn't let go of her. Not until they reached the Union Station stop and got off.
They walked towards the Strand, but stopped in a small CD store. It wasn't the same one as they had been in the last time she was here, but it was filled with CDs and records just as obscure. They were flipping through records across from each other when Rory finally built up the courage to ask the question she had been dying to ask all day.
"Jess?"
"Hmm?" he said, not looking up from the records. Rory continued to flip, but she wasn't looking at the records she was touching anymore.
"Why are you so guarded around your mom?"
"What?"
"You wear your brick wall face around her. The one you wear around strangers."
"It's complicated." He still hadn't looked up.
It was one of those moments when Rory knew she shouldn't press, but she couldn't help it. "Explain it to me."
"Rory. I don't want to talk about it."
"Please Jess? I won't judge."
"It's not about that." He left the stack he had been flipping through and walked to a different section of the store. Rory followed him against her better judgement: he didn't want to be followed.
"Then what?"
"Rory! Just drop it. Please." He shouted.
She stopped where she was and felt hot salt migrate to her eyes. She knew she shouldn't be upset: it was her own fault. She should know by now when to stop pressing when it came to Jess. Now he had put up his brick wall face for her too. The whole purpose of this conversation was supposed to be about him letting go of it, not putting it on more often.
She took a breath and then walked over to where he was. She saw him tense when he heard her footsteps.
"Rory. . ."
"No, it's OK. I'm sorry. Let's just drop it. Forget I said anything."
Jess nodded, but he didn't look up. He still had on his guarded face. She tried again.
"It's none of my business. It's between you and your mom. Not me."
"Don't worry about it."
Rory wanted to keep going. She didn't know what she could say to make that face melt away, but she had learned her lesson for the day about pressing Jess, so she began to sort through some records near Jess. When both of them had looked and Jess had bought a vintage single of some band Rory had never heard of, they walked out of the store towards the Strand.
Jess had his arm around Rory, but he looked distracted. Instead of bringing it up, Rory began to summarize a book she had been reading. When they got to the store, Jess walked straight to a section of rare signed classics.
"I'm going back to fiction, Come find me there when you're done," she said.
"OK," he replied, already involved in searching for a book. Rory walked back to fiction and began to browse, pulling things off the shelf at random and either replacing them or adding them to a small stack she had going on the floor. As she was pulling a book with a bright green cover off the shelf, she felt an arm wrap around her. Her heart leapt to her throat. She whirled around. It was Jess. She put her hand to her chest and caught her breath.
"Jesus Christ! You scared me!"
"Sorry," Jess said, with half a smile. A smile. Rory grinned. She reached out and wrapped her arms around his waist and kissed him.
"Find anything?" she asked.
"Not what I was looking for in classics, but I'll come back some other time and see. You?"
Rory gestured to the stack on the floor. Jess scoffed. "Figures. Junkie."
"I am not!"
"You have a problem."
"I do not!"
"You ready to go?"
"Sure," she said. She reached for her books and added the bright green one she had dropped to the stack.
They walked up to the counter and paid for the books, and then they walked out, Rory with her very own oversized Strand bag.
They walked in silence for a little bit, and then Rory heard Jess take a huge breath and say, "It's because she is a stranger."
"What?"
"My mom."
"I told you not to worry about it."
"I know," he said, "But that's why."
Rory didn't want to ask for clarification, but she was confused. Jess must have noticed, because he said, "That's why I wear the stranger face around her. Because she is a stranger." He took a breath. "Look, when you were little, Lorelai probably played with you, read you books, stuff like that, right?"
"I think she got more out of it than I did."
"OK, so, when I was little, my mom should have done those things, right?" Rory didn't answer.
Jess continued. "When I was really little, we had a housekeeper. Her name was Beatrice, and she was always around. Liz wasn't. Then we ran out of money and had to get rid of her. So I would get on the bus every morning by myself and take it home at night. Sometimes Liz would be there, sometimes not. If she was, she might eat dinner with me, if she wasn't I called for takeout or put something in the microwave. Then I met the guys, and well, I guess you know the rest of the story."
Rory was pretty sure of the general details, so she nodded.
"Now, you'll notice, she's trying to be all nice and sweet and motherly, but I would just prefer if she stayed how she was. She was like that for 18 years. I'm grown now. I don't need a mother anymore. She lost her chance at that."
Rory stared at her shoes and then wrapped her arms around Jess and planted a kiss on his cheek. She smiled at him and then turned back so that the two could continue on their way to the subway.