A/N-The reviews…again, I love you all. Last chapter was mighty fluffy, but we're about to get a little grisly, just so you know…

Someone5: there you go again with the first review! No, I don't think I would very much…LOL. Thanks so much! You made my horrible weekend SO amazing.

Spinaround, Lizzy11120, JanelleRae, Hallon-Thanks so much! Love the reviews.


Bittersweetbloodbaby-Yes, I could see this becoming problematic, but thank you.

Your advice is definitely going to heart, you are my inspiration for this chapter! Hope you like it!

Desert Fox-Yeah, Alan Rickman would be a good one too. But Liam Neeson is one of the many loves of my life, and I could see Jess being into Schindler's List.

Kat461-Oh, my goodness. Thank you for the sweetest review! But I'm not that great, I can't even begin to compare to AS-P. But thank you! I love it!

Soph-Oh, you just wait. There is much, much more to college life. It'll get a little more, realish, as we go on.

October 22nd, 2004 I thinkYaleUniversityNew HavenConnecticut

Jess sat on the end of his bed, holding steadfast to the box of cigarettes in his hands. It had been nearly a year. These were the cigarettes in his hand when he found out. He was about to go on break, and the phone rang.

A year ago minus two days, Jess had gotten the single most important phone call of his life.

"I don't get it," he said, his voice shaking, to no one in particular. He was alone in his room. It was too early for classes but too late for sleep. Something had dragged him awake and he refused to go back to bed feeling this way. "You were horrible to me, and yet I still sit here and wonder why it happened."

Jess stood up and still held to the box, going to his window.

"There was never a moment that I lived with you when I didn't wish I was someplace else. But when they called," he continued. His voice broke noticeably and he paused for a moment, trying to collect himself despite the fact that he was alone. "When they called, I wanted to cry for my mommy."

A year ago, minus two days, Liz had died.

"I can hardly remember calling you mom, let alone mommy. But there it was. I wanted to curl up in your lap and have you tell me that everything was going to turn out fine." Jess threw the cigarettes back into his trunk, disgusted. "It's not like you'd ever even come close to doing that, either. Just makes it harder to understand why I miss you so much," he said, gnashing his teeth together as he spoke angrily at the foggy pane.

He let out a shaky sigh, feeling his eyes fill with tears as he replayed pieces of the phone call in his head. He was coming from behind the counter when the phone rang at Luke's so he ran around to answer it. He remembered hearing something about New York and a hospital and the next thing he knew they wanted him to come because something had happened to Liz.

"Christ Liz," he said, trying to blink away the tears. "It's not like you could've even gone out like yourself. You miscalculated and drove into a ditch. You couldn't have drunk yourself into that early grave? Can't you even leave me the right way?" Jess almost screamed, his body finally giving way to the tears. He fell to a sitting position on his bed, holding his head in his hands, doubled over crying.

He rocked back and forth slightly, trying to lose the images, trying to forget what had happened, praying it was a dream. He calmed a little, regaining pieces of normal breathing.

"It just isn't enough," he mused, shaking his head. "It isn't enough to admit now that I needed you. I didn't, and I don't. I needed a mom, you couldn't be." He paused. "Did you even think about maybe what I needed? Did it occur to you what this would do to me?"

He checked his watch as he wiped away the tears. It was almost time to go to his first class. He looked up, as if she had been there the whole time, listening to him. "We're never going to be even, you know? I got here without you," he chewed over as an afterthought. With that, Jess got up, grabbed his shower stuff, and walked out the door, the box of cigarettes still lying in his open trunk.

xxx

Luke awoke to the sound of his cell phone ringing (he had finally given in and bought one) from the bedside table. He felt around for it and opened it to hear Jess on the other end of the line.

"It's almost been a year," he said, sounding crazed.

"Well, you know how to get a guy up in a good mood," Luke said as he tried to wake up. He rose from the bed and padded out into the hallway to avoid disturbing Lorelai.

"Isn't it a year? It was the…the 24th, wasn't it?"

Luke sighed a little painfully. When Jess had answered the phone, it felt like someone had ripped out Luke's heart and did the tango on it. "Yeah. Yeah, I'd say it was the 24th."

"Oh, I was just, you know, checking," Jess said, seriously rationalizing.

"Jess," Luke started, rubbing his eyes. "You gotta stop thinking about it, kid. You said it yourself, she was practically nobody to you. Get to class, stop worrying, okay?"

"Yeah," Jess said, staring at his feet. "Yeah, you're right. Thanks Luke." Luke hung up the phone and slouched against the wall. Jess had never been the same. Jess would never be the same. But maybe one day he'd stop worrying about things that had already happened.

Lorelai lay in bed, listening to Luke's muffled voice from behind the door. He hadn't gotten a phone call like this from Jess in a while, but she could feel the anniversary sneaking up on them. Rory became a little tenser, Luke got emotional, and Jess got antsy. It was hard time, all too close to Halloween. Lorelai had never thought that she'd see Jess cry, but all the same, she had been there drinking coffee when it happened. And she swore he almost had a full-on breakdown.

And that, my friend, was just too much to handle at seven.

xxx

Rory paced her room, feeling like a trapped animal. She had late start classes, Jess was gone (and in his own world for that matter), and quite frankly, after all of that, being bored wasn't even at the top of her list. Being scared was.

Jess was distant, and for good reason. It'd almost been a year since Liz died. A year. They'd only been together for a little over a year.

And this was why Rory was pacing.

xxx

"It's Friday," Paris stated as she walked out into the common room where Rory had been playing with a deck of cards.

"It is."

"What time is it?"

"Probably around seven."

"You do know what this means?" Rory looked up at Paris with her eyebrows drawn together.

"I actually don't."

"We both had a rough week, and there are all sorts of drunken festivities planned for tonight. We are partying, my friend."

"Paris, I really don't think I'm in the mood nor have the patience to deal with the people in this dorm."

"We can leave the door closed."

"Woah, someone's desperate."

"I'm exhausted. You have been in a mood for the past few days, and your boy toy has understandably been standoffish. If Tawna doesn't stop clucking around here, I'm going to send her to a farm, and Janet…is Janet." Paris took a breath. "So I vote, that we all go out, be a little destructive, and then feel like crap for the rest of the weekend."

"I can only afford to feel like crap tonight. Jess needs me this weekend. He's been really upset lately and I need to be around for him," Rory said as she put the cards back in the box and stood to talk eye to eye with Paris.

"Not a problem," Paris said, grinning ear to ear. "Now for you clothes…," Paris said, disapprovingly.

"What about my clothes?" Rory said, looking down at her jeans and MTV t-shirt.

"We're partying in a dorm. Surely you can't be seriously considering wearing that."

Rory walked away and stalked off into their room. "You're insane."

xxx

Paris and Rory walked into the chaotic hallway. Paris started to immediately immerse herself in the nightlife, while Rory went quietly in search of other people. Though she, in the back of her mind, knew she was looking for Jess, she was more than sure that she wouldn't find him there. Jess not only didn't party, but she imagined he had probably locked himself in his room again. And all that did to Rory was make her remember what had happened. While it made her livid, she tried hard to concentrate on the future, on the present, on the not-so-distant past.

In the midst of her thinking, she grabbed a beer and walked up behind Paris.

"What are we doing?" she asked, trying to sidetrack herself.

"Talking." Paris took a long look at Rory and saw the frailty of her smile and the false content in her eyes. She sighed. "Go find him, but come back later."

Rory let out a breath and put the beer down on a table, jogging out into the Halloween air. If she couldn't save him, she could save herself.

She slowed the jog to a walk as she approached his dorm, quietly assessing the intelligence of her plan. She had experience with this situation, and as much as it pained her to live with it, it was there. And she knew she had a chance of failure by walking into his room and trying to make him feel better. Jess never responded to treatment, not of any kind. If a doctor ever had him under his care, he'd have to let Jess argue himself out of being sick.

Jess could tell from the way his soul seemed to hum that Rory was outside of his door, thinking hard about something. It made him want to break down again, the fact that he had made her question her own judgment. But he couldn't afford any more tears on any subject. Liz was gone, but Rory was here. He wasn't going to sabotage things with her because of someone who was gone.

Finally, Rory took out the key that Jess had made for her and entered the room. He looked up from his computer and gave her a small smile. It exhausted him, being happy. He was happy to see her, no question there. But he for some reason or another, didn't really feel like being happy.

"Hey," she said, smiling and bending down to kiss him. He responded warmly, glad to have genuine interaction for the first time all day.

"Hi," he said when they broke, a smile daring to spread across his face.

"How was your day?" he asked as he lowered the screen of his laptop and swiveled in his chair.

"Any day. Paris was trying to get me to party and I whined until she let me off the hook." Rory paused. "Are you all right Jess?"

He sighed, feeling a little more distraught. "I think I will be." She pulled him to his feet and wrapped him in a hug, playing gently with the hair at the base of his neck.

He sighed again, but much more content this time. "Rory?" he asked softly.

She nodded for him to go on.

"Don't leave." She nodded again.

xxx

"So basically I said to him, 'kid, you gotta stop thinking about it.' I'm just worried, he's never been the type to dwell," Luke said over the phone to Lorelai. He was bussing about the diner, stretching the cord of the receiver (no, he still hasn't invested in a cordless for either floor of the building) to all lengths of the room.

Lorelai twisted her mouth into a shape of confused worry. She didn't know Jess all that well still, but she knew him well enough to know that the fact that he had been calling Luke at all hours of the morning because he wanted to confirm the anniversary of his mother's death wasn't a good sign.

"I guess we gotta let him figure this one out," Lorelai said as she adjusted her phone on her ear.

"I hope he's okay."

"He will be. I'm making Rory drive him here on Monday so that we can keep an eye on him. He just needs to be normal for a while."

"While Rory has that effect on him, Star's Hollow actually doesn't, Lorelai."

"Well, I guess the real plan is to confuse him for a few hours."

"He could use a distraction."

"I kinda figured."

xxx

Rory and Jess stood there for a while, wrapped in the hug, trying to understand what the other meant by it. Rory meant for it to be comforting. Jess, in a way, meant the same thing.

"Let's go," Rory said, reluctantly breaking the hug and wiping a few renegade tears from her eyes.

Jess hesitated. "Where?"

"Soon enough."

(I know! Awful! Horrible grisly painful! But, it's essential to the plot. I promise, this is NOT angsty!)