This chapter starts right after "They Shoot Gilmores, Don't They?". Some Season 3 spoilers.

Pop-Tarts and the Diner Jesus

Two years prior…

"What was that?" Luke asked.

"You just saw Episode One of 'Rory and Jess: The Early Years'," Lorelai replied, standing against the counter.

"What're you talking about?"

"Rory and Jess are…together now."

"Wow."

Paris guffawed. "You and the heathen? Not possible. What happened to the Jolly Green Smock Giant?" she asked as they hurried across the courtyard to the bus stop. Rory's breath caught in her chest as she struggled to keep up with Paris's power-walk off campus.

"Dean and I-," she started, trying to find the words. Broke up seemed mild for what had conspired between them in the Stars Hollow High gym. "shattered," she finished on a sigh. Paris looked over at her, completely lost.

"Come again?" she said, pausing for a moment, her books held tight to her chest.

"It was beyond breakup. It was an explosion." She sighed again. "It was terrible." Paris had a moment of sympathy fleet across her face, and then was replaced with stoic reasoning.

"What about?" she said, with a mild caring. Rory gave her a knowing look and then started walking again.

Paris stood in shock for a second or two, watching as Rory walked away in a huff. She caught up with her. "Please don't go all 'politically correct' on me with this, Paris," Rory demanded. "Jess is not a heathen. Nor is he a hoodlum or thug."

"I wasn't going to mention his mannerisms. Just, wow," she said, shaking her head, probably in awe for the first time since the Chanukah Bush incident. "You and the….well, Jess."

"Jess and I," she said, dropping her bag, loaded inevitably with books, onto the pavement beside the bench.

"So," Dave Rygalski said, trying desperately to start up a conversation with Jess Mariano and not get his nose broken. "You and Rory are…together," he commented, sitting at the counter as Jess poured him coffee.

Jess's usual scowl had been replaced by a pleasantly disorganized serenity that came off sometimes as creepy and other times as casual. Both were unusual. Dave and Lane had stopped in and Lane had since left to await Rory's arrival at Lorelai's, anticipating the big news.

"For lack of better term, yes," he said, replacing the coffee pot and ringing up a customer.

"How is Lorelai taking it?" Dave asked, taken aback.

"Like any other mother of a teenager daughter who dated me did," Jess said, wiping down a part of the counter. He paused, looking off. "Minus kitchen knives."

"Wait for it," Dave warned, picking absent-mindedly as a French-fry, leftover on his plate from a long past lunch. "In the meantime, walk on eggshells."

"Got my Flak vest," Jess said, not noticing as he rose from his seat, threw down a few bills, and walked out of the diner. When he looked up, Luke was studying him curiously from the kitchen, wiping his hands on his apron.

"Take a picture," Jess said as he undid his own apron and threw it under the counter. "Breaking," he called out as he walked out the door.

"Jess-," Luke protested halfheartedly as he watched him walk out the front door, a paperback folded in his back pocket. Luke sighed under his breath and came out into the diner to work.

"How was I not the first person you called?" Lane asked the minute Rory walked through the door, looking anxious.

"Lane!" she said, stopping as she let her bag hit the floor.

"Look, I know I've said some bad things about Jess in the past, but I trust you, one hundred percent. One hundred and twenty percent. I did let you dye my hair twice in the same day-," Lane rambled, at a loss for words.

"Lane," Rory said, more calmly this time, taking her best friend by the shoulders and spinning them around in the direction of the kitchen. "Pop-Tarts, before your head spins off."

"We better tell the Surgeon General about this Pop-Tart remedy," Lane said as she sat in one of the chairs while Rory slid a package of frosted strawberry Pop-Tarts into the toaster and gave her friend a glass of water.

"I'll call him, first thing tomorrow morning," Rory promised as she sat down across from Lane, who looked a little disheveled.

"So…Jess," Lane said simply. Rory was starting to dislike the name. She contemplated a code name for Jess, but Dodger was already a nickname.

"Jess," Rory replied, upbeat. She wasn't sure why she was uneasy. Maybe it was the fact that she had the same conversation for the fourth time that day. Maybe it was that she was yet to have her second cup of coffee for the day.

"Oh Sweet Child of Mine!" Lorelai called loudly from the front door.

"I forgot to hide her Guns n' Roses CD," she said to Lane under her breath. "Kitchen!" Rory called back.

"Ah, offspring and offspring's companion," Lorelai noted. "Coffee-less!" she indicated, eyes wide, pointing to their water glasses. "Blasphemy," Lorelai said in a hushed tone. Rory nodded solemnly, not making eye contact to avoid diner-talk.

Lorelai spun around with the finger that had just been pointing held high in the air. "To the diner!"

Rory glared, horrified, at the back of her mother's head, but knowing that she was incorrigible, stood and dragged Lane along behind her, obligingly.

"Dry Pop-Tarts and water turn into burgers and coffee," Lane said thoughtfully as they rushed out the front door. "Luke is kind of like Jesus."

"Oh, he is so hearing that from me," Lorelai said as she slowed down a bit to let them catch up. "May I?"

"Steal away," Lane said.

Rory stopped walking for a moment, noticing Jess reading on a bench in town square, running hand reflexively through his hair, filled with gel. She noticed the look on his face change, too. It had been that way since they ran into each other that morning and had a nervous greeting fit.

Rory broke away from her mother and Lane and they stopped to look at her, puzzled. "I'll catch up," she said, not stopping to further explain. Lorelai shrugged and she and Lane walked off toward food.

Jess was slouched on the bench, reading a beat-up paperback. 'Probably Hemingway,' Rory thought to herself. He was wearing his green, army drab jacket and a pair of well-worn jeans with an equally well worn black leather belt. He, she noticed for the first time, was bow-legged. She smiled a little at the thought, the only innocent looking part of Jess were his legs.

He felt his eyes on her, familiar as his own skin. There was no way that eyes that blue didn't emit a radiation when they perused your body, and he was sure it was a scientific fact. He pretended harder to be absorbed in his book. 'She knows what I'm reading,' he thought as he hid a smile and reread the same line in A Farewell to Arms for the fourth or fifth time. He wouldn't look up until he was dead sure that she wouldn't run. Too far to make the first move but too close to turn away.

Rory noticed him fidget a little with the corner of a page, itching to turn it, to read whatever notes he had surely put in the margin. He looked up; making eye contact so startlingly immediate that she lost her breath. His plan had worked out perfectly. She couldn't decide whether to root down to the spot and stare back, turn around and pretend that she hadn't seen him, or walk straight forward and kiss him so vividly he'd loose the bow in his legs. She decided to walk up to him. They were together now, after all, there was no reason to be afraid of her…person.

His breath caught a little in his chest too, he realized, as she walked over to him, pretending to be casual. He smirked and closed the book, placing it beside him on the bench as he stood to greet her.

"Hi," she said with a small smile.

"Hi," Jess replied with his usual simplistic air.

"So…," she said, fiddling with the hem of her blue plaid skirt.

"Do you want coffee?" he asked, gesturing to the diner. Rory smiled.

"I'd love some," she said as she waited for him to grab the book and walk beside her, straight and steadfast toward Luke's.

"So," he said, "how was school?" he asked, relaxed as ever. 'If she any idea,' Jess thought to himself, 'how unnerved she had me, she'd feel heroic in comparison.'

"It was, alright I guess," she said, glancing over for a moment to study his face. Rory couldn't tell exactly what he was thinking, but she could tell something had thrown him out of his element. "Yours?"

"Peachy," he said, stuffing his hands in his pockets. He felt her look over at him.

"What'd you do today?" she asked, mockingly exasperated.

"Actually, nothing. I got there on time, went to class, took a few tests, turned in my homework. Turning into Dirk Squarejaw right before your very eyes," he said while he smirked.

"Let's hope not," she said as they stood, waiting to cross the street where an unusual number of cars were cruising. He raised his eyebrows at her, wondering about her comment. 'Let's hope not,' he replayed in his mind.

"What I mean is, well we just-you're just so-um," she said, searching for the words that she could actually speak. 'You're perfect, you're all we've ever needed here. We don't need another Dean,' she wanted to say, as her head screamed it, loud and clear.

"It's okay, no need to analyze," Jess said, relieving her of trying to find the right words and inevitably disappointing him. She smiled at him appreciatively and he opened the door to the diner for her. He followed in behind her as she took a seat at a table with Lorelai and Lane.

"You're back on time?" Luke asked incredulously as Caeser handed him an order.

"I live for punctuality," Jess said as he grabbed the coffee pot and a mug to go and serve Rory.

"Wrong," Luke stated. "You live for vandalism, tobacco, and weird music."

"One in the same," Jess said over his shoulder as he approached the table.

"What would you call the nephew of the Diner Jesus?" Lorelai asked Rory. Lorelai and Lane had been having an in depth discussion/argument on the topic since Luke walked away, horrified.

"Confused?" Rory said as she watched Jess fill the mug.

"Lorelai, Lane," he acknowledged and then walked away, hiding the urge to shake his head.

"I'd call him Surly," Lorelai said as she sipped her coffee.

Rory glared at her. "Be nice, or I'll have you banned from Jesus' Diner." Lorelai shook her head at her daughter, disbelieving.

"You can't do that, you aren't the Diner Jesus," Lorelai said. Rory gave her a look.

"But I'm dating Surly, the Diner Jesus' nephew. Which gives me power over you…Diner Bible Thumpers."

"You just called me a Diner Bible Thumper!" Lane said through a mouthful of her burger.

"Are you three really still carrying on about the Jesus thing?" Luke asked as he set a to-go box in front of Lorelai.

"Question-," Lorelai chimed in, "is the Diner Jesus allowed to say mean things and wear flannel and backward baseball caps?"

"Out!" Luke said, pointing to the door as she rose and snickered. Luke glared so she hurried backwards out the door. "Work!" she called as the door chimed and she sauntered out.

Luke looked to Lane and then pointed to the clock. Her eyes grew to goose-egg size and she shoved the remainder of her burger down her throat. "Cheerleading!" she yelled, muffled by her food. Rory smiled and waved and Lane ran clumsily out the door and down the street to school.