Title: The Coffee is Always better at Lukes

Summary: A story about a regular week in Stars Hollow which includes sprained wrists, shattered doors, ditching school, I love yous, fist fights and more. Reoccurring characters include Rory, Jess, Luke, Lorelai, and Dean.

Rating: PG-13 just to be on the safe side, for mild language

Spoilers: not really, perhaps some of season 3

Disclaimer: Oh yeah, forgot about this, we don't own Gilmore Girls, the characters, the actors, the writers, or the town. They all belong to WB or Amy Sherman-Palladino or some other company that we are not at all affiliated with.

A/N: Sorry for the incredibly incredibly long delay. We had written approximately 125 pages that were lost when the site in which they were hosted was hacked. We only managed to salvage a few of the pages and didn't have the heart to re-write most of it for the longest time. But I rediscovered this recently and felt bad for not updating and leaving all our readers out in the cold. So here is Chapter 9, expect almost more updates soon.

Rory woke up and went into the kitchen. She found the note on the kitchen table from her mom. She put on her uniform, grabbed her backpack, and began the short walk to Luke's. She arrived to find Luke and Lorelai talking at the counter and Jess standing by the stairs. "Hi everyone!" Rory yelled as she walked over to the counter.

Jess looked at her like she had just called the cops when he was trying to rob the bank, and debated fleeing up the stairs, but the decision was made when Lorelai and Luke turned to see Rory and then caught a glimpse of Jess on the stairs. He took a breath and continued down the stairs, walked up to Rory kissed her good morning and thought about making an escape out the door, but figured it wasn't a good idea to just abandon her. "Sorry 'bout the door," he muttered to Luke, "I'll pay ya back for it." he glanced over at Lorelai and decided to remain silent.

Rory was confused. "what happened to the door?" She asked frowning.

Jess shot her a "so you want to crucify me too" look and then said, "it, uh, broke." Hoping Luke wouldn't chime in and start ranting again.

Luke huffed loudly while glaring hard at Jess. He saw Lorelai out of the corner of his eye and decided to avoid the Jess-door thing for the moment. "Yeah things just magically break when Jess is around." he muttered, "so Rory how is your arm?" Luke asked knowing that it would drive Jess crazy and it would also maybe get the real answers to his and Lorelai's questions.

Lorelai glared hard at Jess pondering what to say and to whom to say it to.

Rory unconsciously grabbed and cradled her arm. "Oh, it's uh, pretty much the same as yesterday...it feels a little better," Rory answered timidly.

Jess wrapped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her close as if to protect her from Luke and Lorelai. He swallowed once and took a breath, "If you want to know what happened all you have to do is ask." he said bitterly, "and for your information this wouldn't have happened if someone hadn't scared the crap out of me by knocking down the racks in the store room. Rory had slipped earlier and as we were getting up you decided to re-enact Armageddon in the store room, and for some odd reason I was actually concerned for you so I pushed Rory out of the way to get to YOU. Next time I just won't worry about it." Jess practically screamed at Luke. His face felt flushed and he realized he had made yet an even bigger idiot of himself and walked out of the diner heading toward the bridge for some peace and quiet.

Rory's eyes grew big as she realized that he had just confessed to the 'crime.' Her face turned red as she tried to read the expressions on there faces. Lorelai looked pissed and Luke looked furious. She had to get out of there. "I'm gonna um, yeah," She said before running out the door after him. "Jess!" She yelled as she ran after him. "Wait!"

Jess stopped in mid-step waiting for Rory. "Damn," he muttered, 'guess I should have thought about Rory before I ran my mouth off.' he thought silently kicking himself. He stared down at his shoes waiting for her to catch up. She finally arrrived next to him and he opened his mouth to speak but didn't know what to say so closed his mouth and prepared to take whatever yelling and screaming she had in store for him.

'Oh no' Rory thought as she caught up to him 'what the hell are we going to do know...Lorelai...' She got in step with him and they walked silently together. Although neither of them said it, they both knew that they were going to the bridge. Rory finally spoke. "What the hell was that?" She asked as calmly as she could.

"Rory," Jess said softly, and then paused, "maybe," he stopped again. He turned to face her, "It's been a bad morning." he finished lamely with a hint of a 'can we drop this' tone in his voice.

"Well, I'm really sorry if it's been a bad morning, with you and all your door breaking...but you just blew our cover! And now we're both screwed! My mom is going to be pissed! But, I'm REALLY sorry if you had a bad morning!" Rory yelled without thinking.

"Get off it Ror, it's obvious they didn't believe us anyway. I may be a lot of things but I'm a really bad liar and you aren't that much better." Jess could feel himself beginning to yell and tried his best not to. "And as for the door and MY morning, he began at least you didn't spend half the night sleeping outside and the other half sleeping behind the counter of the diner. So maybe you really don't..." but he stopped refusing to say anything else he would regret. And turned to walk away.

Rory would have dropped it at that because she felt bad for him after learning his sleeping arrangements, BUT now she was really mad. "WHAT?" She yelled as she grabbed his arm with her good one. "What were you going to say? That I don't know anything? Well thats nice...thats lovely! I just must be retarded!" She ranted. She knew that she was blowing things out of proportion but she had to some steam off somehow.

"No," Jess yelled back, "I was going to say that maybe you don't realize that it's probably best that we came clean with Luke and Lorelai. He pulled his arm free from Rory's grasp, "See this is what happens when I actually care about someone, everything gets screwed up." He ran his hand over his face and looked at her and bit his lip and prepared to once again walk away.

Rory's face softened as she brought her eyes up from the ground to look into his eyes. Her eyes filled with tears and her chin quivered. She finally spoke. "I'm sorry," She said softly as her eyes returned to her shoes.

Jess sighed, he hated it when she cried, "Rory," he said quietly as he took her hands in his, not sure what to do exactly. "don't cry, it's okay. We'll work something out."

"I'm sorry," She said again, "It's just my mom is-" She broke off, not wanting to think about.

He pulled her close and hugged her. It felt so good having someone to support and to support him. "I don't know what to do about Lorelai...or Luke. But no more lies, it's not helping and I can't do this. Ok?" he asked into her hair.

"Do what?" She asked as she rested her head on his shoulder.

Jess felt so vulnerable around Rory he wanted to be entirely open with her but he wasn't sure how. "I can't continue going around acting like Luke doesn't matter and Lorelai's opininion of me doesn't matter either. Rory, the people who are important to you are important to me and Luke is family but I just, I don't know how to do 'this' " he blew out a breath trying to maintain his composure.

Rory laughed into his shoulder. "Do...you...realize...that...you're...psycho?" She asked slowly.

"Well at least I'm not the one standing here in the middle of a crisis laughing like a hyena," Jess said simply. Trying not to laugh at his own insanity.

"Ah, yes," Rory said in agreement. "The whole 'this' thing." She said smirking..she still didn't understand what 'this' was.

Jess shook his head and rolled his eyes, "Yes 'this', as in Lorelai is going to kill me, if Luke doesn't do that first, and none of this would really make a difference except for the fact that I've gotten used to things the way they are, and in the past twenty four hours it all seems to have gotten way out of control. And you don't seem to have any suggestions on what to do either." he mock chided

"Oh, that...well may i remind you that you," She said poking his cheek with her pointer finger, "dug your own grave...and we should probably widen that grave so that i can fit too."

Jess felt as if his head was spinning, angry yelling replaced with laughter and playful banter, he shook his head trying to make sure he was caught up with everything. And realized Rory probably thought he was saying no to what she said. "Huh," Jess replied with his trademark phrase, "either that or maybe you could help me out of this hole in the ground."

Rory sighed. "I don't think that I can. I really don't know what to do about this...my mom is going to whip her chain saw out and Luke is going to chase you with a frying pan." Rory said seriously, not even joking a little. "I don't have any idea what to do."