A/N: I have this obsession with warmth, it seems. I mean, I mention warmth often in this chapter. I also turn up the angst. Maybe too much. But, I like it. I like this story. I have ideas for this story. So. Anyway. Here is the second installment. I hope you enjoy it. Reviews make great stocking stuffers. Or email box stuffers.

He hasn't felt empty in two years. An accomplishment that plasters a smug grin on his face in the mornings. Not since that night has he felt empty. As he walked away from her then, he made a promise to himself. Hadn't he always believed that he was in charge of his happiness? Yes, until he met her. Until his happiness fell into the hands of something else, love. He promised he wouldn't love her anymore. That's what he told himself as he was walking to his car. This was the last night that he would spend in love with her. After this, he was done.

And it had worked. It was painful at first, like pulling a bullet out with his bare hands. Soon her memory was not followed by stomach acid and stifled breathing. Bitterness faded and when he thought of her, he smiled at the happiness she had brought to him. Not the year he had spent killing himself. Not the impending doom he had felt every time her lips grazed his three years ago. He felt light when he thought of her. And he thought that was how love should have felt then, like he was weightless.

So why now was he bringing himself back into this mess?

Because her voice stirs something within him, something in the center of him.

Because he has never met anyone with as much beauty as she holds in her eyes.

Because sometimes, in the later hours when day and night are indistinguishable from one another, she makes him feel weightless.

Because her voice, perhaps distorted from the miles of traveling on phone lines, sounds so achingly desperate.

Because.

The phone calls become painful for him. And sometimes he can't find the strength or energy to dial her number. Not until he sees her projected on the bare walls of his apartment, sitting by the phone and waiting for him, her lip being pulled between her teeth, her hands pushing through her hair, her eyes moistening as she reaches for his book. Then, he calls her. And her image disappears from the wall and he can close his eyes without fear. (Clairvoyance and guilt compliment each other so well.)

She asks him suddenly, the request coming abruptly from her mouth, shattering the protective glass of their silence. "If you don't love me, just tell me."

He stops. His entire being stops. Freezes, ceases to function. He is sure that he died for just a split second, after those words left her mouth. His mouth turns unbearably dry and any words he might say are coming out as nothingness, silence.

"Just tell me so I can…"

He finds his voice. "What? So you can marry him? So you can move on?" This is the opposite of what he had formulated in his head, that sentence read something more along the lines of, "I don't love you. Not anymore." But, these words were swallowed back down inside of him.

"No. Tell me so I can…I'm not going to marry him."

"Tell you so you can what? What's going to change if I tell you I don't love you?"

"Nothing! I just….I needed proof that-"

He cuts her off and with a tired whisper and a hand dragged across his face, "I don't love you."

"Li-" And with a click, she is gone before she can finish that thought.

He laughs. At how ridiculous this whole thing is. He doesn't stop laughing until he feels wetness on his face. He wipes it away quickly with the heel of his hand.

He doesn't look in the mirror. And he doesn't think of anything as he closes his eyes that night. He crawls into bed, pulling the covers tightly around him to lock in the warmth. He turns out the light and allows himself to fall into the darkness of it. For the first time in two years, he is empty.

And he hates her for it.

She's read the book, his book. She is closing in on her 43rd time now as she turns to the final page. No longer needing to read it for plot or character development, she is reading it now to be reminded of his face, his mind, his essence. She runs her fingers lightly over the printed words; he is seeping out of every vowel and consonant. With each syllable, she feels herself being brought closer to him. And she closes her eyes for just a brief second.

And her dreams are crisp, clear, and cutting. Filled with flashes of images. Filled with snippets of feelings and memories strewn randomly across her mind. They are bits and pieces. The colors of love: White, purity. Green, envy. Red, the blood spilling from her veins, the flush of her cheeks as his fingers brush against her skin. Blue, a bottomless ocean which she is stuck in the middle of, arms tiring, legs aching.

The smell of his skin is warm and clean. And the whiteness of everything (that purity) is blinding when he enters the room. When she wakes, she will only remember the warmth that emanated from him. She will only remember the feeling of longing, yearning to be near him, to bask in that warmth. The undying need to have him near her, to press her forehead into his neck, to breathe him. She will wake and be left with a lingering contentment that will suffocate her as reality comes into focus.

The darkness of night becomes a welcome friend. Her subconscious becomes the home she returns to every night. The soft haze of her dreamscape tingeing her waking world.

She eats breakfast with her mother who watches her from across the table. She watches her because she hasn't moved her hand from the book. She leaves her thumb resting against the corner of its cover and the pages held within. In thirty minutes, her hand has stayed there on that book, her palm flat against the cover, her fingers curling against the smoothness of it.

Lorelai stops picking at her pancakes and lets her fork drop onto her plate. It clatters loudly against the porcelain, forcing Rory's eyes upward.

"Who have you been talking to on the phone so late?" The question is direct with a hint of anger, because she doesn't know. About Jess, about the book, about the phone calls, about any of it. She hasn't been told. This has been kept from her.

"Uh, Jess. I've been talking to Jess."

"Jess? That's who you've been talking to? I thought I heard you say…" A hand flies to her mouth. "Oh, my God.." She lands her eyes on the book still resting beneath Rory's hand, still being fingered idly with affection. "You're in love with him."

And this is a truth that burns you if you deny it, so she finds herself nodding and telling her, "Yes."

Lorelai nods her heard towards the book. "What's with that?"

Her fingers turn stiff against it, protective almost. "He wrote it."

"Jess wrote a book?"

"Yes." She takes it in both of her hands, flipping it open. A page she has already committed to memory. The words come easily to her mind without even looking at them. She turns to the dedication page and holds it out to her mother.

Lorelai reads it out loud, "You know who you are." She frowns. "I assume he means you."

She nods and quickly places the book in her bag, painting a smile on her face before she turns back to her mother. It is her secret to keep, how painful it was to just put the book away. As if it were him in some form, as if he is gone from her in more ways than one. Her mother doesn't need to know about the dreams or the content of the phone calls. The way his voice penetrates her skin, pours into her bloodstream, siphons air from her lungs. She wonders what his voice could possibly need with all of that air.

Now, though, her face is bright and cheerful. And her mother is none the wiser as the subject changes to something else.

Something else. The idea seems so foreign to her anymore. Before, there might have been something else. But, now. Now, there seems to be only one thing. No, two. There is him. And there is the entity that separates from him and travels the 214 miles to be her shadow. Besides these things, there is nothing else. Her surroundings are simply a blur of movement, the end of a song playing in a room somewhere down the hall.

The tea kettle's scream is loud as it announces itself to him. He is out on the fire escape, watching the ash of a cigarette drift slowly down to the street. It is the sort of winter day that never takes off, that stays in an early morning lull for all of its twenty-four hours. The sun doesn't move. And the cold air leaves him feeling heavy and stiff.

He watches the steam curl in the air as he pours the boiling water into a mug. He gently pulls at the string, lifting the teabag up and down, watching the flavor diffuse into the water. He anticipates its comforting warmth as he brings the mug to his lips.

Walking to the couch, he sees the phone sitting on an end table. It is Thursday and the usual day for calling her. He thinks about the last call he made to her. The lie he had spit out because he thought it would help. Her or him, he isn't so sure anymore. Neither, it seems. He is slowly reverting back to his old self, the self he had abandoned two years ago. The self who imagined her face constantly. Strange, that after he tells her he doesn't love her, he thinks that the only truth is the exact opposite of that.

He tells himself it is impossible, loving her now. Too much time has passed. He has done too much waiting. Because that's really what he had been doing these past two years, both getting her out of his system and waiting, hoping she would come around and find him. She didn't find him, not until now.

Of course, one could argue that everything he has been doing has ultimately been for her. He tries to push this thought into a darker corner of his mind. But, the book, the job, the relocation, the sudden visit to see her. It seems so painfully obvious to him. That she is everything. Has always been everything. His life hadn't even begun until he saw her face.

He has been reborn twice because of her. Once, in the doorway of her bedroom. When he saw her and knew that they would destroy each other. And again, in the doorway of her dorm room. When he turned himself inside out for her and she had turned away in horror.

Still, this cannot happen. Despite their changing demeanors, their love is something potent and destructive. Something neither of them is able to handle properly. And should they merge, they will surely be left mangled.

This is his reasoning.

He takes a large gulp of the hot tea, letting it burn him as it goes down. His hand falls onto the phone, the cool plastic beckoning him. He picks it up and listens to the dial tone. Before he realizes it, his fingers are dialing those ten digits and the ringing in his ears gives way to her voice. He lets her greeting peel back his skin.

This cannot happen.