A/N: I'm really sorry. I just started my freshman year of college. Enough said, really.

Chapter Six

It hurt. It really hurt. The steering wheel was cold against the tips of her finger, the side of her mouth. The space between her lips was a block of frozen air, sticky tears pasting together hair, leather, and skin. She wanted nothing more than to pick herself up and drive away, but it hurt too god damn much. Jess had yelled at her, Jess had confused her, and she was crying as if there had been a death in the family. It was too painful for her to make sense of.

There was something buried beneath the blade digging into her spine, wedged in under the anvil weighing on her heart. She was forgetting something, something important, something that warranted a string around her finger, a tight red ribbon, a vibrant color. It was a chord Jess had struck, and she tried to follow it, so she could understand, but it was a path that led nowhere. She did her best to construct a reasonable explanation, picking through memories she hoped would offer clues, but there was nothing.

Her memory was riddled with holes, gaps of time she had never realized were missing. Up until this moment, she had never needed to return to the past as she was perfectly content with the present. But now she found her mind void of reason, things that had happened but couldn't be explained, the who's and why's suddenly absent.

A nearby car kept capturing her attention, invading her moments of quiet sobbing as the night grew darker and her mind grew foggier. It was Jess's, something she hadn't realized earlier, when she had pulled in beside it. It was a mess of a vehicle, nothing more than rusted metal on wheels, but it sang to her as if it held all the answers. Laying her head against the window, she tried to insert the car into her memory; passing it on the way to Luke's early in the morning, sitting in the passenger's seat with the radio turned up. But the images fell flat, two dimensional and lifeless. She had never seen the car before today.

It hurt and she had no idea why. She was too weak and too empty to make herself get out of the car and storm back into the diner, demanding answers. She could only dig for her cell phone, press the speed dial, and wait.

"Hello?"

"Logan?" The second syllable cracked beneath the immense weight of speaking, and she coughed in a weak attempt to cover it up. "Can you meet me at my dorm in an hour?"

"I thought you were in Stars Hollow for the night."

She did her best to block out everything but the sound of his voice. She even turned in her seat, so Jess's car was to her back. "Please? Just meet me?"

"Of course," he said. "I'll see you soon."

-

It was ten minutes before she was okay to drive, twenty before she could gather the strength to turn the key, and thirty before she made it onto the highway. Her mind cleared as the heat of the car filled the interior, but there was nothing to reveal, no helpful hints, nothing solid. When she arrived at Yale, it took her a full minute to remember why she had driven there in the first place.

When she walked in, Logan was sitting on the floor in front of her door. "You beat me here." Her voice was stiff and lifeless, an effort dragged out of her. She didn't know why she was surprised.

"I was worried. You didn't sound right." He pulled her into his arms, dropped a kiss on her forehead. "Did something happen? Are you grandparents okay? Your mom?"

"They're – she – everyone's fine." She pulled away and unlocked her dorm.

He followed her inside, close behind. "Then what's wrong?"

She unbuttoned her coat, so she wouldn't have to meet his eyes. "I don't know. I…" She let the sentence hang as if he could finish it. She wasn't sure why she had run to him in lieu of someone else, like her mother or Lane, but he was so good at talking her out of her problems. He'd give her a new perspective, and suddenly all of her worries would seem so small. She wanted him to explain all of this to her; then he would fix it.

"I don't feel like myself." She wiped her mouth, the chapped rawness of a nervous habit. Her lips tasted metallic, but her confession tasted worse. "I haven't felt like myself in so long, I'm beginning to forget what it was like."

"Did something happen?" A failed class, a fight with her mother, a crisis with her major – these things he could handle. But somehow he knew it was something else, something worse – something he couldn't fix.

"Did I ever tell you what I wanted to do with my life?"

"You want to be a reporter," he said, hoping he was mistaken, that this was college-related, a bleak future he could laugh off. All it would take was a reminder of her brilliance, her talent, and they would be cuddling on the couch, kissing until this was forgotten. "The next Christiane Amanpour."

She thought she might cry again, but once more, the reason would be unclear. "Did you know I wanted to go to Harvard?" He shook his head. "Ever since I was a little kid, I was Harvard bound. I think it was because it seemed like it was the best school possible, and it was away from Stars Hollow."

"Makes sense," he said. "You wanted to go out on your own."

"The funny thing is…" She bit her lip, unsure if she wanted to admit this. It was scary, the ambiguity – the unknown. "I'm not even sure why I chose Yale instead." A blank spot, a black hole. She had the acceptance letter in her hand, suddenly she had a check in the other. "I made a pro and con list, but I don't remember why it won out. Why Yale instead of Harvard? That wasn't who I wanted to be."

"You didn't want to be the girl who chose Yale over Harvard? Or you didn't want to be a Yale student at all?"

"I feel like a part of me is missing. For a while, I thought maybe it was because I had made the wrong choice, maybe I belonged in Boston, but now I'm starting to doubt that too." She was off balance, she wanted to say. There was a skewed element in her life, a tilted axis. She was going to fall.

"Rory, you need to be a little more clear here." He wanted to hold her, hide her face in his chest, rub her back. He thought touching her would make her feel better; he didn't know what else he could do.

"I don't think this is me." There, the big confession; she had blurted it out. It still wasn't clear to Logan, but she had finally gotten it. "All these mistakes I'm making, these things I'm doing… it doesn't feel right."

"Ace," he said quietly. "Everyone makes mistakes."

"You don't understand. I never wanted to end a marriage or run off to Europe because everything was too hard. I never wanted to be part of the Yale elite, be some socialite for my grandmother to show off. I never wanted to attend those fancy dinner parties or have a – " She stopped herself just in time, but by the look on Logan's face he had filled in the blanks.

"A society boyfriend?"

"No." Her throat was dry; the word had to be forced out. "That's not what I meant." She wanted to say something else, explain herself properly, but she realized it was true. This life she was living wasn't what she had imagined for herself. It wasn't that it was bad, it was only that it was different, and she wanted to blame the emptiness on that. But whatever piece was missing was something bigger, something she couldn't fix. It was another hole, a dot she couldn't connect.

"I think I should leave."

"Please don't. I'm sorry. I don't what I'm saying."

"I think you should be alone," he said. "You need to figure this out."

"Logan, please."

The way she said his name, the desperation in her voice almost caught him. But in the end, he slipped an arm around her waist and kissed her briefly on the lips. "We'll talk later."

Once he was gone, Rory sank down on the couch, wishing she had said something else, wishing there had been something else to say.

-

She tore her dorm room apart. It took nearly three hours before everything she owned was strewn about the room, but nothing was answered. She didn't know what she had been looking for, a piece of Jess maybe, a sign of familiarity; an answer, a key. But there was nothing except her alarm clock blurring in front of her eyes, reminding her that it was four AM and she was crying again.

Whatever this was – sharp words, a warm touch, telling eyes – it was eating her up from the inside out, leaving bite marks on her skin. She knew there was something missing, she felt it – like an old song she had forgotten the words to – but that was all it was: a familiar tune too low and too muffled for her to make out.

In the end, she did the only thing she could think to do – she got in her car and headed back to Stars Hollow, just in time for breakfast.

-

Luke was in the midst of taking the chairs down when Rory came in. The bell startled him; he had unlocked the door but had yet to turn the sign.

"Coffee," she said.

"To go?" he asked automatically. He didn't know what else to say.

"Yeah." She dropped her purse on the counter and shoved a hand inside. "Is Jess here?"

"Jess?" Luke set an empty cup on the counter, frowning. "He went back to New York last night. Why?"

"No reason," she mumbled, failing to hide her disappointment. A yearning for answers roared within her, and before she could stop herself, she asked, "Do you talk to Jess about me?"

Luke nearly dropped the coffee pot. He felt cornered even though Rory couldn't possibly understand the weight the question held. "Not really. Why?"

She nodded quickly, waving off the question as ridiculous. "Never mind." She began to remove items from her purse one by one in order to find her wallet. She took out her makeup bag and checkbook, her address book and planner. Luke watched her carefully, hoping she would elaborate on the topic of Jess. He knew something was going on; he had found the half empty mug of coffee left on the counter the night before. Jess had refused to elaborate, but his sour mood had said enough.

"What's that?" Luke asked. She had pulled out a crumpled pink card and was staring at it; she had drifted off.

It took her a moment to recognize it as the note she had stolen from Jess's apartment. She didn't even know why she had taken it, and until now, she had forgotten all about it.

"Rory?"

She set the card down, flattening it against the counter. The wrinkles were still prominent and the ink was smudged, but the words were clear.

Dear Mr. Danes

Rory Gilmore has had Jess Mariano erased from her memory. Please never mention their relationship to –

"Oh." Her gasp was small, weak. Luke didn't hear it; he saw it on her face. "Oh god."

"Rory?" He knew what it was, felt the stiffness of incrimination creeping over him. "Rory…"

"What is this?" She shook the card, showing it to him.

"Rory, look, your mother's upstairs, let me – "

"What relationship? What…" The card slipped from her grasp, but she didn't see it fall. "I met Jess last week. You introduced us right here!"

He held out his hands as if to placate her. "Rory…"

"I met him last week," she repeated. "I…" A sob ripped through her throat and she hid her face, wanting to disappear.

"You dated Jess in your senior year of high school," Luke explained softly.

"No," she whispered.

"He left before graduation, and you were upset."

She shook her head violently. "No!"

"Rory, he kept coming back and you wanted to forget him."

"I met him last week!" She began shoving everything back into her purse, the card trampled beneath her feet.

"Rory, you had a procedure, and – "

"I don't believe you." She tore away from him, heading for the exit. "None of this – "

"There's a letter," Luke said, catching her at the door. "In your mother's closet. There's a letter and a tape."

"What?" The world slipped out before she could stop it.

"All the patients' files were sent out last February, right before they went out of business. Lorelai couldn't bring herself to throw yours away."

-

"When he told me he loved me, his voice cracked, and he gave me this look… this look, and I thought – I knew – this was real. This was it."

A pause, a beat, two deep breaths.

"But then he drove away."

She had found the manila envelope on the highest shelf in Lorelai's closet, hidden behind ten years worth of Cosmopolitan magazines. There had been a brief letter from a girl named Mary (I'm so sorry for taking part in this / I thought you should know…) and there had been a tape, a doctor's voice requesting information about a boy, the reasons why this had to be done, and –

"He asked me to run away with him and I saw it, I saw New York, I saw us. I had seen it since the day I met him." Static, silence, and she choked. "I used to want that with him. And for a moment, when he stood there, when he was just looking at me, I thought – I've made a terrible mistake."

She was crying, shoulders shaking, eyes squeezed shut. What day, what time, what year? She was crying on the tape, but the kitchen table was cold and solid beneath her fingertips.

"I think about it all the time. All the time. I can't move on with him following me around. I see him everywhere – Stars Hollow, Hartford, Yale. He's not here." A breath. "He never really was. The day I met him, he already had his foot out the door."

This voice – her voice. She watched the cassette play, the magnetic tape curl, uncurl, twist and entwine. It was her voice.

"I wish I had never met him. I wish – "

"Rory!" The door slammed behind Lorelai as she flew into the house. "Rory, are you here?"

"I love him," the tape whispered. "And I will do anything to stop."

Lorelai froze in the entrance of the kitchen. "Oh sweetie…"

"What is this?" Rory asked, wiping her eyes. "What did I do?"