Inside Out
Chapter 6 – So don't you say goodbye to me
Disclaimer: No. No. No.
A/N: I'm very sorry for the wait. Can't believe it's been so insanely long. I'll do better. Special thanks to Green Eve for your reviews—I've kept them in mind over the year.
For Fizzy, for her super!crazy!awesome!fabulousness and beta. For Robin, for all her wonderful help,comments and suggestions. And for Lydia, who made me keep writing.
- -
Weight taken off her shoulders, she is bordering cheerful. It takes even him a moment to spot her bluff.
"This car's not so uncomfortable," she observes, stretching, casting a careful glance at Jess. She keeps doing this, shooting furtive looks his way, as if she expects him to spin the car into a ditch, to confess his deepest secrets in a howl worthy of a Lifetime movie commercial.
Her face is transparent. He can read her eyes. "Glad it meets with your approval."
"It does." She turns on her side and tries to close her eyes again. The car jerks through a pothole and she blinks, pondering whether that was on purpose. "Can we talk?" she wonders aloud. It is comforting, this repeated phrase that no longer means very much.
He snorts. "Talk, again? What d'you want to talk about?"
Her confidence ebbs. "Um, anything."
"It's gonna rain."
"It looks that way."
"That was a stimulating conversation." He presses the cruise control.
"Don't do that."
"What?"
She points to the button, hoping her look is sufficiently full of the irrational worry. "I don't…trust it."
He rolls his eyes. He will be numb to her only for a short amount of time. He ought to take advantage of this. "I had it on for hours and you never complained."
"I was sleeping."
"So?"
"So I didn't know."
"Now you do," he informs her. "This hasn't been a short drive."
"It's like when you go to the dentist, and you're told it's just a sound, so it's okay. And as soon as they tell you what they're doing, it starts to hurt." She nods as if it's a perfect explanation. Wide blue eyes bore into him, saying isn't that right? He declines to answer. She sighs.
"What were you thinking?"
"What was I thinking? When I turned around, like you said?" he asks pointedly. "When I didn't shove you out into the damn parking lot when you tried to come with me? Or when I fucked you in a motel room?" It comes back to this, always, and never is it a surprise. He blames himself, and he wants badly to shove it all off, onto her. Inwardly, maybe, he wants it all out in the open. He wants to understand as much as she does, but he's unconsciously worried about what she will say. I wanted it, thank you: surely these are lies.
"It wasn't a motel."
"Dammit, Rory!" he yells, pulling onto the shoulder. He rests his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, breathing fast, leaning forward, and she is quiet, insignificant, shrinking into her seat. "Okay," he finally mutters, pulling back out onto the empty road.
She is crying, as close to silently as she can. "It was a hotel, and it was wonderful." He looks at her. He suspects she's hysterical, though suddenly he is having trouble caring. It's so liberating. Could he so instantaneously be done, finished? "How do you know I meant that?" she continues. "How come you jump right to talking about that? I could've – could've meant something totally different."
Could he ever be over this, or something relatively like it? His knuckles are white, gripping the fake leather. If it's a possibility, he will guiltlessly drive on.
He ignores this last. "Oh, yeah, it was," he says sarcastically. "You were lonely. Sex helps." She's wiping her eyes. "It was…"
"It was?"
"Stupid," he bites off, bitterness resounding in his voice.
She shakes her head, breaking into uncontrollable laughter. "Then I must have looked so silly."
"What?"
"Calling you, inviting you to dinner, saying I missed you…and you came! I can't believe you came." He is silent, thinking of how serious, how life-or-death it all felt at the time. He took the terror in her voice to heart, then. "My god, I broke down in the middle of dinner, didn't I?" She laughs harder. "Yeah, I did. Oh, god."
Nervously, he glances toward her again. Her face is tear-streaked, eyes bloodshot.
"I'm still scared about that stuff, you know," she says, more seriously. "I don't have anything I can do. I've screwed up my whole life. I don't really want to do anything but be…but be nowhere."
"Nowhere?"
"Not nowhere. I didn't mean it like that." She blushes furiously. "Really, I didn't. I meant…I just wanted to run away with you." She lets that sentence hang in the air. "It would've been good. This could have been…somewhere. It could have been a road trip, or it could have been anything we wanted." She stops, trying to make sense of her thoughts. "I wanted you more than anything else… I told you I wanted to get away, and I wanted to come with you, and I wasn't lying—" She shrugs. "You didn't want it to be. That's okay, I guess."
He doesn't know what to say to this.
"Everyone at home is furious with me by now."
"You think so?"
"Don't you?"
No. "I guess. Whatever."
She's calmed down. "So what were you thinking? Pick whenever. When I called you. When I fell apart. When you kissed me. When we...um." She stares at her shoes, a bit of embarrassment left over. "I'm curious. I'll never find out otherwise," she adds.
Jess smirks a little, her calm rubbing off on him. Whatever, he decides. Whatever.
Maybe a day left together, with the stalling he is allotting himself. Maybe a little more. This is, simply, what they have. "I didn't get worried till you stopped eating," he tells her. She playfully swats at his arm. Her heart twinges as she does so, but she carefully guards against any outward indication.
"Right." She turns her head to the side and coughs.
"You've gone from depressed to hysterical to calm in ten minutes, Rory. Need water or something?"
"Don't change the subject. I want to know what it was like for you."
Thoughtfully, he leans back. He looks like maybe, he'll answer her question. "This is what you don't want me to say—"
"Oh?"
"Yeah: That I'd wanted you for years and I had an opportunity. Afterward, I was gonna run away. I'd had it all. It was over." He emphasizes this last word, taking his eyes off the road to stare at her, meaningfully. Over. Over.
"Liar."
"Yeah, well. You want to drive?" He turns, glancing to the right, over his shoulder, as he says this.
She returns his glare, angrily. "This is all I want to know, Jess. Just tell me, and then you're done." Her lip is trembling, whether by her will or against it, he is not sure.
Suddenly she buries her face in her hands, mumbling through her fingers, "We've tried to talk so many times. Over and over, and it doesn't work. I can't say the important things. You never say anything at all." There is a long, silent break in conversation. She focuses on the weeds and litter on the side of the road; he tries to count the dashes on the broken yellow line. Pass with care. "We're going back, Jess. Remember? It's okay, I gave up. I get it now. I can't be protected, or whatever it was I was going to ask you for, that night we were at that hotel... I wanted to be, but I can't. Or if I can be," she takes a shaky breath, "you can't do it. Jess…" She pinches her leg, wincing at the sudden pain, reveling in it. She needs a distraction. "I want to know what you think happened. Please. I need to know."
Incredulously, he bores his eyes into the lonely foliage at the bend in the road ahead, and he wishes he drove stick shift: he'd have something more to do with his hands.
"You have always taken me away from what hurt. Everything I was scared of, you made it all better. I don't know how you did it! I was always scared to admit how much I wanted you." She swallows. "All those years, I was scared. I wasn't supposed to be with you in the first place, I didn't know how you would react. Maybe you'd be bored with me, if I told you everything, how much I, I…"
"Do not blame your irrational terror on me," he says sharply.
Continuing, she explains, "I thought I wasn't supposed to. Do anything, you know. I was supposed to be perfect—don't deny it—and then all of a sudden…all of a sudden I was grown up and I could make my own choices and I didn't know how to do it… I wanted to be that good, some imitation of something like perfect," she says. "I did!" She's rambling, and hearing this is killing him, and he's listening to every word, attentive. "They say don't take what you want immediately. They say if you want it that badly, it must be wrong. I know my mom told me she wanted me to be happy but I thought I wasn't supposed to be. Or I was and I couldn't be. Not the right way! I didn't know the right way to be happy. And I called you. I was just out of college and terrified and I thought you loved me. What was wrong with that?" Her voice is raspy from talking so much so suddenly. She breathes and chokes and goes on. "I had every reason to think so. I was so confused. I wanted something to count on." She can taste the tang of cliché as these phrases escape her lips.
Again she tries to breathe. "And I thought you were going to calm me down. I just wanted the words I…needed to hear, I guess. Nobody else would tell me. Nobody else would tell me the truth. I needed something normal you could give me. You know, a normal date with you and me. Maybe that could change things. And it didn't! Nothing changed! Nothing we ever do is normal."
"Rory." You don't have to say this, he wants to tell her. I don't need to know.
"You would be brutally honest with me, I knew. I thought I needed that. And you were, I guess…" She thinks back to the look on his face, slamming the dirty car door, to the way his mouth twisted in its different directions, shouting and screaming in her face, trying to say no. Her mind drifts to the pattern of his breathing, hot and heavy, inches from her face. "But you took it all the wrong way. Everything I said. Everything I did. Maybe you were right, what you said when you woke up that morning. Maybe I just wanted you for stupid reasons when I called at first, and I didn't know it till then." She draws her knees to her chest and puts her face in folded arms. She cannot face him now. "But I had no idea it was going to be like that. It was all so sudden. You made it exactly right," she wails. "I didn't know what I was doing."
"Like hell you didn't."
"What?" Rory looks up, startled.
"Don't you try and tell me that," he shakes his head. She swallows.
"Maybe—maybe I…" she begins, her voice rough from all the talking.
"You called me. What was I supposed to do? 'No, Rory, I don't want to see you ever again. There's no reason I back you up into corners when no one is looking. There's no reason I don't come after you all the time when I know you think I shouldn't be there!'" He slams his hand on the dashboard. "And then you were fucking crying and crap and I mean, god, Rory."
"Yeah?" she says, very softly. "Go on."
Jess shakes his head impatiently. "You did all that stupid stuff, waiting for me in the lobby after we ate. Kicking the fountain, for god's sake, you were acting like you were on speed. As if it weren't marble, or something. You kept standing there, kicking it like some kind of nervous habit I know you don't have, and you looked… I couldn't believe it. You called me as if you wanted to go on a date or something classy and weird, and you acted as if I were a long lost…cousin, or something. You looked all strange. Like you needed some reality check." He is trying to justify it to himself. No matter how good, it was wrong, and all this proves it.
Wrong.
Wrong.
Wrong.
She smiles a little as she remembers. "I was nervous. When I called you and when you came."
"Why?"
"Well…" Uncomfortably, she taps her foot against the plastic inside of the car door. "Remember, I wouldn't kiss you in…front of people yet? I started to when you first got there to the restaurant because I was happy to see you and then I just…"
"I remember, Rory. It wasn't a week ago."
"I'd never done that before! I never trusted anyone, and I'd never had anything…permanent, or real, not like that, and I wasn't supposed to trust you, and I'm not good at being hated, okay? I don't do it well."
"You sure don't." He pauses. "You thought people would hate you for being with me." He laughs, a little. "You're probably right. It was pretty obvious."
"It's not simple like that."
"It's not?"
"No!" She sighs, sounding defeated, picking at her nail in anxiousness. "I thought you would hate me. If I told you I wanted it to happen, you and me, that I really wanted everything…I thought you would hate me." He watches her pupils follow the windshield wipers he has just switched on. She imagines them in her eyes, clearing water from them, telling her in their soft, irritating squeaks exactly what she needs to say. He has to understand that she misses his touch and that no one's palms will ever be as perfectly callused as his.
"I thought if I said anything, you would hate me. And then you must have seen right through me, and you put me on such a," her voice lowers, "high—" again she blushes—"and I just went a little crazy… I said what I meant. I said I love you, while… Did you hear?"
Weird time to ask this, he thinks. "I think I already had plenty of reasons to hate you."
Upset, she agrees. "You did."
"But I didn't." She stares at him. "Didn't hate you."
"I know."
"Oh yeah?"
"Mmhmm."
"Clarify."
"Oh, geez. Ten minutes after I say I don't want to go home you're at the desk and getting a room for us? Even then, I didn't guess…guess that you would… You stayed with me. And you told me I'd be fine. I wish you'd stop lying," she adds as an afterthought. "But that was so…so nice." Again, she swallows, harder this time. "You were so nice to me."
Nice? Recalling, he feels harsh and mean and bitter, almost too forceful, confused at her apparent joy.
"What can I say? You're seductive when you wanna be." He turns his eyes back to the road. He is done for the day. He isn't even sure he can deal with too much more of this. What would she do, he wonders, if I told her to shut up? They could return and both be satisfied with never knowing any answers.
Except he wants to hear this. He just doesn't want to hear it, at all.
"I thought you loved me; I thought I loved you back!" Silence. "Don't you hear me? Do you block me out when what I'm saying matters? Do you know that you screw everything up? Every single thing you try you can't do it right?" Her words sting. They draw 'X's in blood on his heart.
"Thanks for letting me know."
"You're pathetic," she accuses.
"I'm pathetic?"
"Yes, you are. The second I brush a wound, you jump back like nothing happened. Like it or not, you were admitting stuff, Jess. What? Don't trust me anymore? Did I touch a nerve? You won't touch me. You won't look at me! Even if you don't care -I know you do. If you didn't care, I wouldn't have to either." A quick breath. "But that's not it, is it? That's not why you act so strangely…you're scared."
Accusation barrages on.
"I wish you'd suck it up and tell me why." Rory curls her arm against the car window and lays her head on it, staring out the windshield, looking out into gray nothing. "You know what the worst part is?" she says. "I miss you. I shouldn't! But I miss you! And I shouldn't! And I want you to…" She blushes. "I want to. I still want to, I still want…everything. Am I allowed to tell you that now it's almost all I think about? I still want you to be taking the longest route. The longest possible. The never-gonna-get-there." She presses her lips into a thin line, controlling herself; continues. "I don't want to get to where we're going, because I don't want to be back there. But you want that, that's the only reason I told you to take me back. You want to take me home and leave me there. I don't know why!"
"'Everything'?" he inquires.
She blushes. "Everything. You and I…you and me...working. You know. Just…everything."
"Huh."
"I don't know why!" she shouts, rejoining her original thought. "Because all these non-reasons of yours for ending this are pointless, okay? Absolute crap."
"For five years, Rory, you have been ashamed of me. Why should it end now?"
"I wasn't—"
"It doesn't matter. I never asked for anything else. I acted as if I were content to hide it. You were, too. We got all we wanted."
"Jess—"
"We weren't meant for the real thing. Everybody saw that. It took me till that one night last week to get it." He raises his eyebrows to emphasize which he means. "I was always slow on the uptake."
"I thought we were," she says plaintively, ignoring his last few sentences.
"You wouldn't let me leave," he tells her. "I would have left with you still sleeping in that room, never seen you again, and you wouldn't let me leave."
"You could have just—"
"Fuck it, Rory. I'm not that cruel."
She is silent.
Then, "I still thought it was real," she tells him. "I still do."
In turn, he ignores the second sentence. "I know you did."
"So what were you thinking?" she persists. "I just want to…want to understand."
He looks at her hard. "I don't think you can."
"Jess, this is all nonsense. There's no way you…you…stayed just because I was upset, because of the way I looked…or any of that stuff you said. You didn't stay because you thought I needed help. After years of hiding and lying and concealing you came when I called and held my hand and asked no questions and slept with me? I know that's not true. You wouldn't have tried to leave like you did if that were why. If you did it for me, you would have wanted to stay longer. If you did it for me, we wouldn't be here right now," she adds, very quietly. "None of this you're telling me can be true. It can't be, and it doesn't make sense. You don't make sense. I don't know if I make sense!"
"God damn!" he yells, frustrated.
"But you're no more mature than me," she says finally.
"Than I," he corrects. "Oh, damn. What d'you think I was thinking? Holy shit: you have no reason to be upset. Holy shit: guess it's all up to me tonight. Holy shit, and we were…" He motions between them, unsure of which phrase to pick in front of her. "'Course I wanted you. Who wouldn't? You don't see what exactly it is about me and you, what it is that you say you loved about these past five years. It's nothing, it's worthless, Rory. You'll see that. You're screwing yourself over right now; this whole thing is a backward mess. You'll go start over," he tells her, more gently than she deserves. "Fix what you screwed up. It won't take long."
"I have nothing to fix."
She turns away, ending the conversation.
"And that's all I have to say," she sniffs.
"I got that."
-
"No!" Her eyes snap open in sudden panic.
"Calm down. This is a rest stop. I'm exhausted."
Embarrassed, she nods and turns over to stare into the dark outside. Time is passing quickly. "How far away?" she whispers to the glass, once she thinks he is asleep.
"Don't know," he replies, more loudly than is needed.
"Oh."
She stares at the ceiling of the car and then her dirty shoes, squirming at the crick in her neck. She rolls the seat back, twisting the knob at the side of the chair with abrupt jerks of her wrist, and tries to curl up more comfortably.
She is shivering. There is ice in her stomach, then all over her, slipping and sliding over her skin. There is a thin film of condensation on her face. Her whole body trembles. "It's so cold," she wails, feeling helpless, saying it aloud just because she can. She opens her eyes to finally see his hands silently moving around her. She is mortified, but deep-down grateful.
She doesn't ask. He is there; she can tell he wants to be.
Fuck the rules, he is thinking. Nothing matters now.
His mouth is harsh and welcoming; she doesn't have to consider giving in. Air streams through the crack at the top of her window; it's no longer noticeable. She is warm, now, his body covering hers. "Mm," she mutters. Questioningly, she pulls back and tilts her head toward the back of the car.
"Holy," he says. "No."
She stretches, uncomfortable from hours in the car, and she thinks she feels him shake, just a little, touching her all over.
He kisses her again. Again.
Again.
He is all over her, silent and dark. He is night, wrapping himself around the moon, and she writhes in his embrace. He is cold at first, and his hands are invasive, frightening her as he grasps her arm and pulls her too close. He still terrifies her, his shirt half off and his eyes bright, but she thinks she enjoys it.
"Maybe you're right," he mutters, nodding slightly toward the back.
It happens quickly.
He half lifts her over her chair's armrest to the backseat. Practiced hands on cloth and buttons and she does not ask. Sneakers kicked off and thrown beneath the dashboard and his tongue brushing her neck. Denim against her bare skin, and then nothing. She would lie and tell him she's fine, it's fine, to convince herself, but she cannot speak. The steaming cold leather sticks to her and hurts when she peels her arm away, tangles her hand in his hair, trying to replicate the first time. She thinks she hears him say something. Maybe it is only her imagination. She murmurs nonsense words into his cold shoulder.
"Jess," she says quietly, to see how it will sound. "Are we…" she whispers.
"If you don't stop me."
Sweat is freezing on her face. He brushes what might be a tear away with his bottom lip. They kiss faster, more urgently. She is exhausted, she is exhilarated for those few seconds.
She sleeps in the backseat, alone and still half naked. He was willing to give up dignity to get back in the driver's seat, get away from her, once they were done. Nothing was said when they pulled apart. She cried, but, she thinks helplessly, anyone would have cried.
She doesn't want to be okay with all of this.
"Do you know why?" he asks brusquely, suddenly. Sunlight sears the corners of his eyes as he sits up.
"Why?" She is already ashamed of relenting so fast, but at least he's telling her something.
"Because you're damn beautiful," he tells her, trying to disintegrate his building regret. He knew he shouldn't have done that.
It's exactly what she needed to hear. "Thank you."
-
He always intended this, as a goodbye. It wasn't as if he could just let all this go. Why does he constantly feel the need to say goodbye so soon?
"Because you always want to say it again," she tells him softly.
"Rory!"
"You said that aloud," she explains, trying to be embarrassed for him. At least she's making the effort, he thinks grudgingly.
"Sorry."
"No, don't be. Please talk to me," she begs once again. "I want to hear what you have to say." She has this insatiable hunger for the truth. Maybe everything was better back when the truth didn't matter. While she was still in school, their entire relationship was built on lies.
"You know what, Rory?"
"What?" She reaches into the backseat for his button-down shirt and pulls it over hers. She sniffs the sleeve, smelling him, and it makes her feel better. He is comforting. Deep down, he is always the same.
"I don't owe you anything."
"I never said you did," she says defiantly, wrapping the shirt closer around her. The unbuttoned cuffs look ridiculous on her thin wrists; she rolls them over her fingertips, clutching the shirt to her.
The road before them is still empty, a stark crisp line tapering into the distance. She wonders why they are continually so alone. It is hard to believe how few days it's been. Sometimes it feels like he just woke up a few hours ago, woke up in that motel room and watched Rory breathe evenly into the sheets. Sometimes it feels like that was years ago; after all this time, he does not care to remember it.
She would not know if he were taking the back roads. She would not know, she realizes, if he were not taking her home at all, and she is hoping. She has given up insisting on any modicum of control. He has her tortured and pinned, has her holding "uncle" on the tip of her tongue.
"But—" he glances aside, then back—"after that, even, you think I do owe you. I can see it."
"Maybe." She avoids his gaze. "Maybe you do."
"Even if you wanted…" He struggles with his decision to say it this way. "Even if you wanted…this, you always pretended that you didn't. For a damn long time. You were embarrassed you had anything to do with me. I think you still are. You never wanted it for real and you don't comprehend this. You want to run away so you can get what you want where no one can see it." He does not let her respond. "That is what it is, to string someone along. I put up with you for years."
"I know," she tells him sheepishly. "I really am sorry." She expects he knows this. She says it for formality.
"I didn't see until too late how ridiculous it is."
"No!"
"Not done."
"Well, excuse me." She swallows.
"You thought it was all beginning when you graduated; you were wrong. You had your chances and chances, and you were never brave enough. It was ending. You continue refusing to get it, Rory: we can't do this." He takes a deep breath. "You aren't that special. Rory," he says, making sure he still has her attention. "I'm taking you back home, exactly like you wanted."
"I didn't want it," Rory answers. "You made me."
There is a long, unbroken, nails-on-chalkboard silence. "Never say that again."
He has never really scared her before this instant. She is sorry. It's not true: he never made her do anything. She loved him for that, but she won't admit it. It sounds too passive, even for her.
"You need it in the simple terms? How do I make this any simpler? You know you wanted another chance all along. You keep hoping I will give you one, and when I do, you won't accept it. You're practically begging for redemption, Rory. Look, you got it!"
"I'm not," she protests softly, feeling caught. "I'm not… That's not what I want. I've had too much redemption, chance, it's not what I'm good at!"
"You can't stand being nowhere, you said that yourself. I live in nowhere. Y'ought to know that by now."
"I want something new, Jess," she pleads.
He agrees. "You can't have both that and me, and I can't have you."
There is another long pause, long enough to believe the conversation is over.
"You know," he tells her, "the second you got into this car, I promised myself I wouldn't touch you again just because you didn't deserve it." This is mostly a lie. He muddles the reasons and blame in his mind until it comes out sounding usefully angry.
"Oh."
"But I don't deserve that," he continues. "I'm done trying, you know. It never fucking works."
"You say it took you till that—that night to get…to get that we won't…work. To think that we won't be together. It took till then?" She stares at her feet.
He nods to her, acknowledging.
"I disagree," she enunciates. "I still disagree… But if that's true, then…god, when did you realize that? What did I do?"
He shakes his head. "You didn't—"
"I know it was something in particular," Rory interrupts. "If not, why wouldn't you have just hightailed out of there when I went home to Stars Hollow after my freshman year? I know you hate Connecticut. And yet you waited. It's not like the one night was that different…not in theory. Was it really? It was a big deal for me…it can't have been so big for you. You'd done that stuff before." She pauses, thoughtfully, her breath shaky with waiting tears. "You waited for me. Three summers, you waited for me. And now that I'm free, and I was scared but brave enough to call you, and you could have calmed me down and woken up with me in the room we had, and we could have gone to breakfast, and we could have stopped hiding, or we could have hid together, and everything would have been okay—and you just tried to run away alone. Why'd you do it?"
"I wouldn't label that call to me bravery," he tells her.
"Wouldn't you? You think it was easy to call you like that? I was so upset, I had no idea what you would say."
"Rory, I have always been your easy way out."
"I gave up so much for you!"
"No. You gave up that much for yourself. It was entirely self-serving. You were terrified. You always still have that second chance, free blank slate. We're getting closer by the fucking minute."
"So you could have been without me just fine, you're saying." Again, she swallows.
He is feeling truthful. "I didn't say that."
"You made me act brave," she says. "I did things I would never have done. It was hard to stay with you, but I always wanted to anyway."
"You're scared of the whole world." It is a harsh accusation, it is telling her he was right all along. Reality is too tough for a girl like her. The statement is pulling all the false assumptions she has always lived on out from under her feet; there is evidence of this in her face. Still, he drops the guillotine: "You're not afraid of me."
-
She doesn't want to speak to him.
What he said was fiercely honest, absolute truth and she is furious at him for it.
She has no idea what she could say, and he is slowly forcing himself past caring. Didn't he do what he'd meant to do? Hadn't he convinced her, shown her that he was right? Being angry, this kind of cold anger, fury at ignorance of the obvious: sometimes it works. Still he stares at the mile markers, uselessly willing them farther apart. She closes her eyes now and then, pretends to sleep, but she watches them too.
Cold sweat creeps across her body, her face, and again she shifts in her seat, uncomfortable.
They must all nearly hate her, back at home, even Lorelai. How do you forgive this, what was meant to be a forever escape? With anyone she knew, it will be disappointment or pure irritation, even invented betrayal. No matter what form it takes, this now-hypothetical dislike is a positive, a given. She believes she lost everything, lost everything the moment she tossed her graduation cap into the air two weeks ago just for the hell of it.
A blank slate, a blank slate is what he said she'd have? That's bullshit.
"I hate you," she whispers, very quietly, trembling, trying it out. "I hate you. I hate this.
"It's not fair," she tries again, moving her lips without making a sound. "It's not fair. What's wrong with me?
"I hate this," she repeats, a little louder, feeling childish and silly.
"That makes two," Jess tells her in a low voice, and he jams the cruise control with his index finger, daring her to comment.