Believe Me, I'll Be There
Chapter 8 – We're still alike in at least one way
Disclaimer: I don't own anything to do with Gilmore Girls. I also don't Oliver Twist. Charles Dickens wrote that. I'm not entirely sure whom it belongs to now. I do know that it's a really good book.
A/N: First, I'm sorry this is so short. I thought it needed to be like this. I've already started writing the next chapter, and I promise it will be longer! Second, I'm also sorry if I'm being repetitive about the fight. I just want to make it clear how both Rory and Jess feel about it, and I don't want them to be over it immediately. I'm doing it gradually so it's more realistic. This will get more interesting soon! I actually do like this chapter, so I hope you do! Please review and tell me. Thanks a lot to everyone who's reviewed! I would have had both this chapter and chapter seven up earlier, but my internet connection was screwed up and ff.n wouldn't let me post anything. I hope to write the next chapters faster, I know basically what's gonna happen in the rest of the story. I seem to usually get ideas for how to write it between 10:30 at night and 12:00 in the morning. lol. FYI, Mr. Medina's only role in this story is as Rory's lit. teacher. Enjoy! ~Arianna
So nothing had really changed. Still, I couldn't help, just slightly, feeling better after seeing Jess on the bridge. It meant he wasn't avoiding me. I mean, he had to know I would come to the bridge eventually. Either that or he just couldn't stand being in the apartment with Luke anymore. Knowing Jess, I suspected it was combination of those things.
Now I knew he cared. I'd known that the whole time, subconsciously. But he'd clearly told me that he'd been crying. And even though he was very different than he'd been when he first got here, and even though he was even more different around me, it wasn't like Jess to admit that.
Maybe, possibly, it was his way of saying… Maybe he had wanted to tell me he was sorry? I knew I was trying to make myself believe that. I was still angry about the things Jess had said. But not as angry as I had been.
I immersed myself in my Lit. paper. We had been informed that it would be on a Dickens novel. The one each person would write about would be assigned on Thursday.
I went to school that day a lot more excited than I had been for a while.
I was assigned Oliver Twist.
I went home and drew up a character list.
Oliver, Fagin, Rose, Nancy, the Artful Dodger—Ouch. Why did everything that happened in my life seem to remind me of him?
My mom turned on loud music that night, and I didn't want to ask her to turn it down, especially because I didn't want her to ask me questions about anything right then. I told her I was going out, and then I took my notebook and walked to the bridge.
I had half expected to find what I did find—the same quiet, unmoving silhouette sitting there. I sat down too; once again several feet away form him. I opened my notebook and started writing by the lights along the side of the bridge.
Oliver Twist was a satire of the New Poor Law. But it was in many ways much more…
I felt Jess glance at me, but I didn't look up.
Mr. Medina had said to make this a personal essay. To write things most people wouldn't see and wouldn't think about. Things a regular literary critic wouldn't consider. Dodger, I thought.
Oliver Twist is more than just an incredible novel to me, I wrote quickly. Good characters make you think things and make you feel things. And I won't name any names, but there are situations in my life that remind me, in a milder version, of situations in Oliver's. I know what it is like to think you've lost someone. For instance, in some ways, the Artful Dodger reminds me very much of someone I know…
I sat there on the bridge. And Jess sat there on the bridge. And we both stayed there, both silent. I was writing, Jess was staring quietly at the water.
And at the same time, we seemed both really far apart and closer together than we'd been since the fight on Saturday. And I knew, then—I couldn't find another guy.