Too Close For Comfort

A/N: I don't know exactly what ASP wrote as far as a past for Luke and his father so if I am directly contradicting anything from the show then sorry. Call this an AU then.

Chapter Three

She felt like the most horrible person in the world. She felt like a coward. Better yet, she knew she was a coward. A yellow-belly. A scaredy cat. She was scum, the kind of scum that you find on the side of a fish bowl that you'd forgotten existed until three years later when all the fish were dead.

She'd broken up with Dean and with that she felt relief. (It's not like breaking up with your boyfriend is against the law.) But that still didn't explain why she was crying or why she felt so horrible.

It was because she'd over thought the situation. It was because she'd left for Washington to think and she'd done too much. She spend her nights thinking about Dean and Jess and Dean and kissing Jess and breaking up with Dean and then kissing Jess again.

She thought about the many different ways to go about breaking up with Dean. She'd even thought about his varied reactions. Sad. Angry. Mad. Furious. Disappointed. Revengeful. Miserable. Maybe even a mixture of all of them at once. And when she thought of all of those things, it seemed that the pit in her stomach got larger and larger until she couldn't take it anymore. She was afraid. She was afraid to see the emotions flash through her boyfriend's eyes as she told him that the last two years didn't matter and that she didn't love him anymore.

And her biggest mistake was rationalizing her actions until she'd justified them in her mind and then picked up the phone. He'd told her that he deserved better and she'd tried to apologize, realizing her mistake much too late.

Because it was much too late to take her words back. Dean knew and all of her fears were realized. Now she was not only a heart-breaker but a disappointment and a coward.

There was no justifying it. It just was. A mistake. The first in a long list of mistakes that she promised herself she would learn from. Because if you run away from your problems, they'll always catch up to you.

Luke was tired and slightly annoyed. He'd spent the last fifteen minutes explaining the new sleeping arrangements and how everything in the cabin worked. For example, drinkable water could only be found outside and had to be brought in from a spring about a mile down the road.

On his way to show Lorelai where the path to get to the spring was located, he'd tripped on a rock and fell flat on his face. Now he was not only hurt but was being mocked incessantly.

Wonderful.

Jess on the other hand, seemed to think the whole situation was hysterical. He just sat there on Rory's cot, (still having not bothered to pull his own out) reading his book and holding back a smirk, as if to say 'I told you so.'

Rory stood off to his right, quietly filing her clothes away into drawers. Her stance was guarded as she tried not to make eye contact or to even acknowledge Jess's existence.

There was only one problem with her carefully knit plan of avoidance. Jess was currently occupying her bed. Briefly she wondered if he was doing it on purpose, just to annoy her, but she thought better of it. As far as she was concerned Jess didn't care about anyone but himself and wouldn't bother to take the time out of his day just to make her miserable. It was simply too much work.

Fully convinced, she placed the last of her clothing into the drawer, shut it quietly and turned towards him. He didn't even look up.

She cleared her throat. "Ah…hmm…Jess?"

"Huh?" He replied, his voice in monotone.

"Could you…you know…move?" She stammered. "Off my bed?"

Jess looked up at her, brown on blue, and she suddenly felt the urge to disappear into the floor. He was still mad at her and it was beginning to grate on her last nerve.

"Why are you mad at me?"

"I never said I was mad at you." He deadpanned as he got off the bed and began to pull his mattress out from under it.

"You don't need to say it. You're acting like I did something horribly wrong. Like I-"

"Kissed me, ran away and went to Washington?" He offered.

"It wasn't like that okay? I was scared. I didn't know what to say and then Dean-"

"And yeah, what about Dean? Are you still with him? 'Cause last time I checked, you were, and I haven't heard anything to the contrary." His insinuation both shocked and angered her. He was supposed to know already and now she was going to have to tell him, a blow to her pride that she sure as hell didn't want to endure.

"That's none of your business." She snapped.

Jess just shrugged as he spread out on his cot. "Whatever."

Rory glared at him, looking for some reason to continue the conversation, for some way to beat him.

"You can't put that there."

He raised an eyebrow. "What?"

"You can't put your bed there. It's too close to mine."

"Why? Worried you'll roll off in the middle of the night and be so surprised by my presence that you'll just have to kiss me? You're right, that could be dangerous. Allow me too move right away." He replied sarcastically. Rory was suddenly filled with overwhelming desire to be able to blame him for everything, to be able to say 'You kissed me!'.

She wanted the upper hand but at the same time she knew that it was a lost cause. She had practically jumped him in a public place with her boyfriend only a few yards away, and now she was paying for it.

"Rory Gilmore speechless? Lorelai would be disappointed." Stated Jess as stared at the ceiling. Rory narrowed her eyes at him but remained silent as she picked up her copy of 1984 and sat down on her bed to read it.

Lorelai was slightly overwhelmed, a fact that she quickly hid by terrorizing Luke. It was embarrassing really, that after only an hour of being stuck there she was already in over her head.

But she didn't really blame herself, she just chalked it up to a classic case of misinterpretation. When she thought of camping she thought of Smores, roasted hotdogs, deer frolicking in an open field, maybe even a butterfly or two.

She did not however, prepare herself for the reality of being alone with three other people in a cabin hundreds of miles away from civilization, with killer raccoons. The silence was deafening, especially for someone who lived off of human interaction.

She sighed as she looked at Luke, who sat next to her in the porch/sun room. It was his fault that she was here. Subconsciously she knew that her reason for being here was her odd need to prove her worth to him but either way, he was the cause.

"So, whatcha thinking about?" She asked suddenly. It was more of a way to break the silence then a legitimate question. Luke seemed to snap out of whatever trance he was in and met her eyes.

"What?"

"I asked what you were thinking about. Anything dirty?"

Luke shook his head and smiled. "I was just...you know, thinking about my Dad. I haven't been here since he died."

"You never told me this was your dad's cabin." She suddenly felt bad, intruding on memories that were obviously dear to him.

Luke nodded. "Yeah, we used to come here every weekend. He'd close the store and we'd just go. He left it to me in his will."

"This must be awkward for you, you know, us being here."

"Nah, it's fine." He replied quickly as he got up and brushed off his pants. "I think I'm going to hit the sack. See you in the morning."

"Yeah, in the morning…" Lorelai trailed off as she watched him head out the door, leaving her to nothing but her thoughts.

A/N: The plot really picks up next chapter. New characters ahead. Oh, If anyone cares, I was born today.