Silence creeps up on you at night, he reasoned, walked gingerly through the town square. He knew that if Luke awoke he would be worried and angry, but he couldn't stand the thick silence in the apartment anymore. He couldn't stand the thoughts whirling around his head, the utter panic, the blind worry. It had been three weeks since he had agreed to take care of, full time, alone, his kid. The thoughts had been growing and growing. They expanded in his mind like an airborne disease, all he could think of was money and his mental sanity, his anti-social ness and general uncommitment. Had he lost his mind? Yes. He thought, he had. But it was his responsibility and if he didn't step up and be a man, here and now, he never would. He sat down on the bridge, the light lapping of water and crickets soothing him. He was lighting a cigarette when he heard a creak on the wood board. He looked up sharply and began to get up, he didn't feel like talking to anyone.

He lifted his head to come eye to eye with Rory.

"I was just leaving."

Her mouth was open, speechless.

"What are you doing here?"

"I live here, now.. Again.. with Luke."

"I know that." She said matter of factly.

He shifted his weight, nervous, old demons still coming back to haunt him. He shrugged.

"I couldn't sleep, I came out here for a smoke. Shouldn't you be at Yale?"

"I came to do laundry."

They both starred at each other wordlessly.

Jess began to walk away, he could feel Rory hesitate as he walked by her.

"Jess?"

He turned around slowly.

"I'm sorry." For what he wanted to ask, he wondered how much she had gotten through the grapevine now that Luke and Lorelai were together. He wanted to run away, he wanted to spit in her face, he didn't want her to try to talk to him, he didn't want to hear her apologies and for what? For not loving him, for turning him down, for breaking his heart, for her sleeping with Dean, or did she just pity him, because he was a certifiable mental case that was taking too much to handle.

"Don't be."

He walked away, but didn't want to go back, to silence, to the never-ending impending night.

Somehow, he didn't know why, he found her at his side. It must be pity, he told himself.

"Why are you following me?"

Her eyes flashed, in sudden panic at having to answer a question she didn't know.

"I don't know." She admitted. "I guess I wanted to know you're okay."

He was silent. "Because I still care about you, I don't know why, but I do."

"No you don't."

She tried to protest, crossing her arms across her chest.

"You turned me down, and that's fine, I didn't deserve a second chance, but you stepped all over me, you couldn't say more than one word to me. Then you go and fuck around with Dean? He doesn't love you, you're just a trophy to him, a little ass on the side. I don't know what happened to you, you're not the girl I knew." He didn't even care that she had been fucking around with Dean, he had after all gotten a 17 year old girl pregnant, he was calling the kettle black. He just wanted a way to break her down, to unnerve her, to make her angry.

He picked up his pace, separating himself from her.

"You're not the boy I met, because people grow up and they change, and its looking like we've both changed for the worse, deal with it. We're different people. I don't know why I'm doing the things I've been doing recently."

He nodded his head absently.

"How much do you know?" He blurted out without a drop of caution, if he was going to talk to her, he had to know.

She bit her lower lip and starred at her shoes. "Most I think. You know, the breakdown beating a man in street thing, followed by the mandatory mental hospital, and the girlfriend-kid thing."

"It sounds like a bad soap opera. Don't you ever feel like you're living in a something corporate song?"

She looked at him questionably.

"I ruined someone's life."

She shook her head. "I'm sure you didn't."

"Maybe I didn't mean to, but I did."

Rory stood frozen in position unsure of what to say, unsure of what she was doing there.

Jess cleared his throat.

"She tried to find me for weeks, and when she really needed me, when she really needed someone to talk to, I was too fucked up to be there for her. So she called her Mom and for the rest of my life, I will regret that I sent her to the place she hated most. If I could have just talked to her, I don't know we could have worked something out." Jess wasn't talking to Rory, he was talking to himself, he had been needing to get the thoughts out of his head for weeks, Rory just happened to be there.

Rory sat down beside him.

"What would you have worked out?" There was disdain in her voice and he knew what she was thinking.

He looked over at her, the water reflection bouncing off her face. "I wouldn't have forced her to get an abortion."

Rory was silent.

"I don't believe in them, neither does she. It wasn't an option." Involuntary his mind drifted back, he was seventeen, his mother and him screaming at each other at the top of their lungs, over what? His drinking, her boyfriends, his staying out late, and her job. When she moved right into his face, and said to him, and he could still hear her words in his head clear as day.

"I sat in the clinic and when they called my name, I left. I wish I hadn't."

He had walked out, and when he returned the next morning, his stuff was in a bag.

"What's her name?" Rory's voice struck him out of his memory, he shook his head in an effort to clear it.

"Astoria."

They sat in silence for a long minutes.

"One day I think you and her will be glad you didn't."

He didn't say anything and without another word, she got up and walked away.

He headed back to Luke's, it was almost three, he had to be at work. He hated work, but he should just be glad they took him back, glad they gave him hours that he could present to a court.

He closed the door silently and snuck across the floor in his socks.

"Where did you go?" Luke's voice was clear and had clearly been awake for quite some time.

"I couldn't sleep, I went for a walk." He climbed into his bed and pretended like he was falling asleep and he knew that across the room Luke was pretending to do the same thing.