At this moment, he isn't thinking about the steering wheel or miles per hour or speed limits. He isn't thinking about the direction of the road or if the mirrors are adjusted properly. He is thinking that, if anything, he is thankful for these New England night skies. He didn't have this in New York, such a clear shade of dark blue. He never had crisp nights when almost every single star would shine as bright as they could. He is experiencing this for one of the first times. He is distracted completely by this sky.
And her. There are stars in her hair, reflecting off of the whites of her eyes, gleaming. The moon, too, is getting caught in every part of her, the shine of her lips after her tongue flicks out across them briefly. Then, she smiles and he thinks that he has to pull the car over right then. He can't focus properly on the road.
Because apparently, taking her for a drive is similar to pumping her full of alcohol. She is incessantly smiling. She is giddy and full of sudden secrets. Things that he is certain her mother doesn't even know. And she is unabashedly flirting with him, a hand on his forearm, a coy glance when she doesn't think he is looking. He thinks about the steering wheel only when his fingers are gripping it tightly to keep himself from touching her.
He has found the definition of beauty. It is her in the incandescence of a galaxy.
When she starts to tell him things about Dean, he freezes, his jaw becomes tight. But, he doesn't stop her. She is being confessional and he is waiting for something to slip. She says, her voice turning soft in contrast to the boisterous laugh that had just come from her lips, "You know, I had to think about it. Whether I loved him or not. Does that mean something?"
He shakes his head, fighting a smile, "It means you're in high school and have no idea what love is yet."
She turns in her seat a bit, turning her face in his direction. She leans her head back against the window and says, "He thought it meant something. He thought it meant that I didn't love him. And he broke up with me. I mean, three months and what? I'm supposed to know for sure what I'm feeling. But, I thought about it and told him that I did love him and we got back together. But…." And his grip on the steering wheel becomes tighter, this is what he has been waiting for. This hesitation, this quiet admission of doubt. "Sometimes I still have to think about it. I don't know. What if I just love him because he loves me? Does that make any sense? Maybe I'm just sticking with him because he's my first and I don't know what I'm doing…" She pauses yet again, pulling her bottom lip into her mouth, looking down at her hands. "What if there's something else out there that I'm just being oblivious to?"
He is thinking about the bench seat. Thinking how easy it would be to have her next to him, to rest his arm along the back of the seat and let his fingers gently touch her shoulder, gauge her reaction. He is thinking she should be close to him now. This is what he wants, he realizes. For weeks, he has been trying to figure out why this town makes him dizzy and frightened, why there is something here that holds him. It is her. It is her eyes and her face and the idea of purity. He sees in her a rebirth for himself. An opportunity to be a different person, to rid himself of history. A new start.
She is shaking her head, her hair falling around her face. "You could care less. You hate Dean…"
He frowns and reaches out to turn the radio down. "Yes, but I don't hate you." He shifts in his seat and sighs. "Look, maybe someday you'll find someone better than Dean, but that's no reason to just break up with him. You don't want to just end it because you think there might possibly at some point be someone else out there that you'd rather be with." He swallows before continuing, "If you know for sure that there's someone else, that's different. If you are constantly second guessing your love for him, then maybe it is time to break up with him. But, if you think you love him and haven't found this other person yet, then…" He pauses, not wanting to say what needs to be said, not wanting to tell her the exact opposite of what he actually wants her to do. "Why mess with something that makes you happy?"
She blinks, looking straight ahead. He watches her for a second. Her jaw clenches as she chews on the inside of her cheek. "Yeah, I guess you're right." And she smiles, turning to him once more. "Wow, dating advice from Jess Mariano. Who would've thought…"
He is quick to mirror her smile. "So. What's the verdict? Dean or no Dean?"
Her eyebrows come together in thought before she says, "Well, I don't know for sure that there's someone else…" Her eyes dart over to him, a sideways glance and a hand brought up quickly to push her hair back behind her ear. He tries to ignore this. "So…I guess, Dean."
When she says this, her voice is flat, devoid of emotion. She almost sounds disappointed and he tries not to laugh. "Don't sound too excited about it…Then again, if I were stuck with Dean, I'd be pretty upset, too."
At this, she smiles broadly and those stars are back, bouncing off of the smooth, shining surface of her teeth. He wishes for clouds. She fights the corners of her mouth, saying, "Stop. Dean is great. You're just too busy hating him to realize."
"Yeah, he's something, that's for sure."
She defeats those damned stars and those damned corners and says, "I tell him the same thing about you."
He can't think of anything to say to this. He keeps his eyes fixated on the lines of the road, on whatever gets caught in the shine of the headlights. A silence fills the car like carbon monoxide and he thinks it might suffocate him. This feeling passes and it becomes a comfortable sort of silence when she shifts slightly in her seat so she is once again turned towards him. She rests her elbow on the back of the seat and leans her head against the palm of her hand. He feels his skin warm under her gaze and a lazy smile spreads across his face.
"Tell me something, a secret about yourself."
He groans, though he doesn't mean it. This is all fake. This sky is making him want to tell her anything. He sees a burst of light, like a far off explosion that illuminates the sky entirely. A shooting star. He wants to laugh, make some remark about how clichéd shooting stars are. He doesn't. He makes a wish and looks at her.
She is staring into the dark blue with a look of astonishment. She turns to meet his eyes. "Did you see that?"
She turns back to the sky. "Yeah. Did you make a wish?"
"It happened too fast. I didn't even think about it."
He smiles at her genuine distress at this missed opportunity and says, "It's not too late. Go ahead. Make a wish."
He watches her close her eyes, her lips parting for a brief second as she makes her wish. And then her eyes fly open, brilliant blue being exposed once again.
"What did you wish for?"
Her smile is light and sad and she says quietly, "It won't come true if I tell you."
"Oh, come on. You really believe that? I don't. Tell me."
She looks away from him, out the window, into the darkness of the night. "I wished….I wished for you to be happy."
He barely hears her, but it hits him like a strong blizzard wind. He wants to pull the car over, but he doesn't know what he'd do once the engine was turned off.
"Come here." This comes out as a hoarse whisper and that frightens him.
"What?" Her eyes are wide, her brow furrowed with worry. He wonders what she's really afraid of: the potential cheating on her boyfriend or that this is what she wants.
He gestures to the seat next to him, the middle seat, and says it again, "Come here. Sit next to me." She stares at the seat with doubt and he adds, "I'll tell you a secret."
She lets out a breath and unbuckles her seatbelt with reluctance, before sliding over next to him.
The first thing he feels is her thigh. It hits his as she's getting situated in her new seat. And the warmth penetrates immediately. She sits still, staring straight ahead as his eyes skim over the side of her face. She is smiling, but trying not to, and her face turns a soft shade of pink. He turns back to the road, being careful to press his side against hers.
"You said you would tell me a secret if I sat here."
He is drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. An idle activity to keep his hands distracted. He taps out a random rhythm as he tries to pick through all the things he could tell her. He settles on a simple truth, "I don't hate it here."
She looks at him finally and he realizes just how close she is. He pretends her warm breath isn't whispering against his neck, when she says her next words, "You don't?"
He shakes his head. "Nope."
There is now something unspoken between them. The mutual acknowledgement that this is happening, that they can no longer ignore it. That there is something better.
And this is when it happens. Her mouth starts to smile as she watches his face. Then, it falls and she screams something along the lines of, "Jess! Watch out for that-"
The sentence is never finished. He hears her scream and swerves the car on instinct, placing his foot hard on the brake.
The impact does nothing to him, nothing but jolt him a bit. She, on the other hand, goes forward with her palm held out to catch her, hitting against the dashboard forcefully.
Seconds go by. Seconds filled with shallow breathing. Seconds fill with staring straight ahead, unblinking. Her warmth is gone and he finally speaks, asking her frantically, "Are you okay?"
She sits next to him with a face that shows no emotion, but she is holding her left arm. At the sound of his voice, she turns slowly to him and nods, barely choking out, "I'm fine."
"No, you're not. You're hurt. Shit." He reaches out for her, but she turns away from him.
"We should probably get out of the car." Her voice is cold.
"Yeah, you're right. Okay."
Out of the car, he watches her take in the scene. Her eyes casting a steady gaze over the damage, her head turning slowly. She starts to cry, softly, silently.
He sees the stars, the moon, that fucking perfect night sky, now reflecting off of the shattered glass of a headlight. He kicks at it with his toe, scattering the stars across the pavement. Hadn't this night been perfect? He had been happy like she wished for him to be. He laughs under his breath, thinking that it's typical for anything he touches to end with destruction.
He walks over to her, touches her shoulder gently. She turns to him and her face folds completely. "My car…Dean's car…." His hand comes to rest on the small of her back, rubbing up and down, trying to soothe her. But, the panicked can't very well calm anyone. His hand is shaking and jittery against her.
He tries to tell her, "It's okay."
This has no effect. "God, the symbolism." She raises her eyes to the sky, the light dancing with her tears. "You destroying Dean's car." And she laughs bitterly.
"Rory.." It's all he can say, her name.
He hears sirens in the distance, the reality of the situation being forced upon him.
When the police ask her about it, he hears her say with her head towards the ground, "No…No, I wasn't wearing my seatbelt. I had, uh, moved…to the middle…"
This is his fault. He is the destroyer.
He rides in the ambulance with her after much arguing with the EMT's. He holds her unbroken hand. He holds it loosely, not wanting to do any more damage. But, she keeps gripping onto it tighter and he keeps apologizing.
At the hospital, they won't let him back with her. She says to him before they wheel her away, "Jess, this isn't your fault." And then as the doors are about to swing closed, "Don't leave."
He sits in the waiting room for an hour, drinking weak coffee and reading five year old issues of Time magazine. He hasn't called Luke. He considers it for a moment, but her last words to him keep echoing in his mind. And that phone call will surely end with him leaving. He wonders where her mother is. Maybe they haven't let her use the phone yet. He wonders if it is his responsibility to call her. His palms are sweating and he realizes this is what it is to care for someone. This panicked feeling that is circulating throughout his entire body.
He leaves. He doesn't want to be there when Lorelai gets there. He doesn't want to be there when she comes out. He doesn't want to see the final amount of damage he's done. More importantly, he needs a cigarette.
So he finds himself sitting on the bridge, his feet dangling above the water. The sky is completely black now, clouds having come in and hidden the stars. He blows the smoke slowly out of his mouth, taking pleasure in watching the results of his lungs mingle with the air. He feels himself calm until he remembers her face just before the impact. He tosses his spent cigarette into the water, watching it float away from him.
He lights another and hears footsteps on the bridge, heavy feet and he knows who it is. He looks up at his uncle and turns back to the water. His voice cracks, "I made sure she was okay."
Luke nods and sits next to him. "I know you did."
"She…They wouldn't let me in the back with her. At the hospital. Do you know…"
"She fractured her wrist."
He closes his eyes. "Oh." And takes a long drag, inhaling the smoke deeply, pocketing it in his lungs, pretending the warmth he feels is hers.
"Jess…."
"Yeah, I know. I have to go." He stands up, dropping the cigarette on the wood and stubbing it out with his toe. "I'll go pack." As he's walking away, he turns back. "You know, she told me not to leave. Just before they took her back." He doesn't wait for a response. He walks off, wondering if she meant the hospital or the town when she said it. It doesn't matter. He's already done one and now he's doing the other.
It's best that she knows this now. That this is what he does. He leaves.
He writes it down when he's done shoving things into his duffel. He sits at the kitchen table with a piece of paper and a pencil. A note to leave for her. It says:
The shooting star: Do you want to know what I wished for? I wished that, of all the good things I've encountered in my life, that I could hold onto you for longer. See, I didn't say it out loud and it didn't come true. Yours came true, though. For a brief moment in that car, I was happy. So, thanks. And, I'm sorry.
He folds it. Over and over. Sharpening the crease with his thumbnail, testing it on his fingertip. And he places it in the pages of a worn paperback, leaving Luke with instructions to give it to her.
Leaning his head against the cool glass of the bus window, it doesn't feel permanent. And as he watches the town disappear, he is struck by the odd sensation that this isn't an end; this is a beginning.