She is downing another flute of champagne, listening to the clink of glasses and the piano playing somewhere in another room. The laughter roaring through the hall, echoing off of the high ceilings. That fake kind of laughter, too loud, too sudden. She closes her eyes and tries to place herself somewhere else. At home with her mother, watching late night TV. A bucket of ice cream in her lap. Wearing pajamas, not this stifling cocktail dress or these painful heels.
Her eyes snap open again when someone touches her elbow. She turns to face Logan with a warm smile. "Hey." He's been gone for almost two hours. She doesn't mention it. He always disappears and leaves her in some corner until he needs her to meet someone.
"Hey, Ace." He kisses her on the cheek. He begins to steer her in the direction of whoever it is she has to make an impression on. "Have you met the Goldstein's?"
She finds herself placed in front of an older couple. She smiles and shakes her head, turning slightly towards Logan. "No, I don't believe I have, Logan." This is all rehearsed, carefully choreographed. She makes sure she positions her feet the right way and smiles enough to show her top row of teeth but not the bottom. That would be excessive, he told her once. She has learned that body language is key in this world.
For instance, right now she doesn't put her hand out. She waits until Logan has said the first syllable of her last name. At that moment, her hand is there for them to shake. And she smiles and says, "It's so nice to meet you." Then, she makes an excuse to leave. This time it's, "Would you excuse me? I have to go freshen up." Generic and she hates it. But her creativity is shot after three hours of this.
She's about to climb the stairs and find someplace quiet and secluded. She is thinking about calling him, her phone weighing heavy in her small handbag. Before she can do any of this, Logan is grabbing her and kissing her fiercely on the mouth. She forgets about the monotony of these parties, that nagging feeling that she is on display, his knack for disappearing at the most inopportune time and when he tells her that he loves her, she says it back.
He wakes up at least two times during the night, every night. He assumes it is linked to his childhood. When he was always waiting for his mother to come home or waiting for her boyfriend to leave. And so, he finds himself staring at the ceiling at two in the morning. He finds himself listening to her heavy breathing next to him. She breathes with her mouth, lips parted, soft snores coming every once in a while. The long waves of her hair are strewn across the pillow and he reaches out for a piece of it, fingering the ends. He isn't thinking of her at all though.
He drops her hair back onto the pillow and turns on his other side. He watches the wall, the clock, the phone. Anything to stop the twisting of his stomach at the thought of where he will be tomorrow. Tomorrow, those hundreds of miles of distance, that buffer space, will be taken from him. He will be within miles of her, two or three. At the most twenty-three or so.
He tries to close his eyes and coax himself to sleep. He tries to breathe evenly, but his heart won't stop beating so rapidly. He turns over again to look at Annalise, to let her presence put him at ease. However, she is only another reminder. Tomorrow, she won't be there. She will be here and that buffer space will be placed between them instead.
A sort of nervous energy fills him and he gets out of bed. Slowly pulling his legs from beneath the sheets, not wanting to wake Annalise. He grabs the phone on his way out of the bedroom. The door closes behind him softly and he finds himself standing at the kitchen sink with a glass of water in his hand. He lets the cool liquid slide down his throat and then dials her number. He shouldn't be calling her. He doesn't want to call her, but he has always worked on instinct and his fingers are telling him this is what he should do. They are telling him this is the only thing that will calm him.
As the phone is ringing, he wonders where she is. He wonders if she's in bed with Logan. Maybe he's interrupting their foreplay. Or maybe she's in the midst of her climax and the ringing of the phone will cause it to end prematurely. Or maybe she's at home, sleeping soundly in her childhood bedroom with a book left open next to her. He likes this last scenario best and tries to imagine her eyes fluttering open at the sound of her phone. He can see her disheveled hair and her weary eyes as she searches for the phone on her cluttered nightstand.
"Hello?" She doesn't sound like she's been asleep. She sounds surprisingly alert.
"Hey." He is trying to sound casual. But there is hardly anything casual about a phone call at two in the morning.
"Jess? It's late. I'm usually the one to call this late at night."
He opens the window in the living room, letting the cold winter air into the apartment. "You should see the city at this time of night." His is whispering, trying not to wake up Annalise.
"Oh yeah?" And at the sound of her smile, he feels calm for a second.
"It never got like this in New York. Quiet, peaceful, still. It only lasts for about half a second and then a car alarm will go off or someone will yell or sirens will sound. But for this half a second, there's nothing. And you can hear your own heart beating and…." He pauses. "I just like to be awake for this."
"It sounds nice."
He wishes he could reach inside the phone and pull out her voice, let it keep him sane for a while. Let it wrap itself around the inner workings of his ear. Let it take up residence in his brain for a while. This is the problem with phone calls; they end and that's it. The feeling goes as the dial tone comes.
"It is."
"But, that's not why you're awake." She says it like a fact.
"It's not?"
"You can't sleep through an entire night. Not since you were what? Eight? You wake up at least once or twice."
He doesn't remember telling her that, but maybe he did, in one of his weaker moments as a teenager. Maybe in one of those moments when he was so overwhelmed by her beauty that he felt her eyes should have his secrets. He had probably told her then.
"So…Tomorrow." She is the one to segue into this discussion and this surprises him.
"Rory…" His fingers start to twitch against the window sill and he wishes he hadn't run out of cigarettes yesterday.
"I won't see you. I will avoid you. I won't go to Luke's. I won't go anywhere in Stars Hollow besides my house and the inn." She pauses, taking a breath. "I think it's probably for the best." But her voice isn't strong enough to convince him.
"Rory…" He wishes he could think of something to say besides her name. He wishes it wasn't the only word that made any sense in his mind, the only one that wasn't just a jumble of letters.
He hears the floorboards creak and turns his head to find Annalise leaning against the doorjamb, watching him. She is halfway across the room, but he can see her eyes clearly, emerald slowly dimming as she turns away from him. And for the first time, he feels guilty. For the first time, this has hurt her.
The silence must have lasted for longer than he thought, because she is saying into the phone, "Jess? Are you still there?"
He falters. "Yeah. Yeah, look, I have to go."
"Oh, okay. Bye."
In the bedroom, she is hurriedly pulling her clothes on. He sits down next to her on the edge of the bed while she pushes her long legs through her jeans. Her hair falls and blocks his view of her face. When he reaches out to correct this, she moves her head away from him.
She stands in front of him with her hands on her hips. He knows something should be said, but that name is still the only word floating around in his head. And that isn't what needs to be said right now. She sighs and shakes her head, walking out of the bedroom.
He stops her at the front door. His hand gripping her elbow, causing her to drop her keys. "We had an understanding."
Her eyes move over his face before she bends over to pick up her keys. "We did. We did have an understanding, but at some point, I crossed the line and I thought you were going to follow me. I guess I thought wrong." She grabs her coat and gives him another look. "We were just supposed to be placeholders for each other. Until the real thing came back to us, until we were ready for that. But…I don't want to be a placeholder anymore. I want to be…It doesn't matter. You won't ever not be in love with her. I'm leaving."
But she doesn't move away right away. She lingers in front of him, close enough for him to touch her face. There is nothing he can tell her. He can't contest anything she's said. It's true. He opens his mouth, hoping words will just come to him. They do, "Anna, don't go. She isn't anything to me anymore. That call? She was just assuring me that she wouldn't try to see me when I was in town. I want…."
Of course he can't finish that sentence, because all of it is a lie. Every word coming out of his lips is untrue. But, right now, he is tired of letting the past, the ghosts of his history, ruin things for him. He won't let one of the few real things in his life slip between his fingers again. Not again.
He likes the long stretches of road where it all seems endless, like he won't ever reach that point in the distance. He likes the feeling of being so close to something unattainable. And he can find solace in the hypnotic hold the lines of the road have on him. The intermittent dotting of white in his periphery. There, he feels immortal. He feels as though nothing will touch him, nothing can touch him. He is free, speeding along the black pavement. Free until he reaches the end. Until that unattainable point is suddenly all he has in his hands. But, for those few moments when there is nothing in front of him but road and air, he can smile without hesitance or reluctance.
It takes three hours to get there from Philadelphia. And this is three hours of rare happiness for him. Untainted happiness. He tries to keep his mind from where he will end up at the end of these three hours. But it is there, screaming inside his mind. He will be right back in the middle of everything he has been trying to get away from these past three years. He will be suddenly back where he started. This is a time warp to the beginning of everything.
Only for four days, he tells himself. And then it is back to reality, his real life. Back to Philadelphia and Annalise and books and writing and trying to keep his heart beating every day. It is a life of getting by, of heavy, staggered breathing. It is a life of making the most of what is handed to him. Settling, he thinks. The word causes pressure to build behind his eyes and he shuts them tightly for a second before refocusing on the road in front of him. That endless road, that boundless sense of freedom. He gulps the air like it's never been sweeter. He smiles.
Has still hasn't stopped calling her, despite everything. Part of him needs it, the stability in the fact that she will always pick up the phone. And that she will always love him. She will say it over and over if he asks and sometimes he does. Just to hear the sound of her voice when she hits that crucial V in the midst of the phrase. Just to close his eyes and pretend that this is okay and that it isn't breaking him down.
At eleven that morning, something shifts in her world. The air becomes strange and heavy. Her balance seems to falter. Her eyes become foggy. And she knows that he's driving into town at that moment. She can feel him as the distance between them gets smaller and smaller. She doesn't know if she can take this feeling for an entire four days. It gets harder to breathe and harder to keep walking. Maybe this is fear or maybe this is something that hasn't been named yet. She isn't sure.
She is going to break her promise. She is going to see him. She doesn't think she has a choice. And if nothing else, she just wants to stand next to him for a second and listen to his body working to keep him alive. She wonders if he'll allow her that. She guesses he won't.
At one, she finds herself walking towards the diner. Thinking, Mistake, mistake, mistake. Repeatedly in her mind. There is a strong wind pushing her as she walks down the street and she thinks it might be a sign. She ignores it and presses on.
He isn't there though. She walks in and looks around quickly. Not behind the counter, not making his way around the tables, not in any of his usual places. She walks casually up to the counter and sits down.
"Coffee, please." She says automatically when Luke approaches her.
"He isn't here." He says as he pours it for her.
"I noticed." She gulps the hot liquid quickly. And the heat of it flowing through her body starts to make her sweat.
"He's at his mom's."
She nods slowly, waiting for him to say more. Give her more information about his whereabouts. Where he'll be at six this evening. If she could find him beneath a streetlight in the middle of the square. Or if she can find him with his feet dangling over the edge of the bridge, blowing his breath into the dark air.
Luke begins to fidget nervously and she knows there's more. He reaches into his pocket and brings out a piece of paper, a small yellow scrap. "He, uh, told me to give you this if I saw you."
She takes it greedily from his hands. It is folded meticulously over and over with the sharpest of creases. She clutches it in her hand as she drops money on the counter and heads out of the door. She feels like this shouldn't be read in private, but she can't stop herself. She stands in the middle of the sidewalk and opens it, tearing it a bit with her eagerness.
It read, "Seven. Anywhere. I'll find you."
He does find her, sitting in the gazebo with her arms folded across her chest and her mouth twisting nervously. He stands across the street, watching the white Christmas lights hung on the trees bounce off of her hair, getting lost in its soft curls. And then with his hands shoved deeply in his pockets, he approaches her, crossing the street and climbing the short set of stairs.
She is look the other way and jumps when he says her name. She quickly pulls herself together. "Jess, hey." She moves over so he can sit next to her on the bench. He sits close and this surprises her. His leg touches hers and she holds her breath for a second before whispering, "Isn't the town beautiful?"
He smiles gently. "Like a snow globe."
She enjoys the sound of his voice, undistorted by miles and miles of telephone lines. When she turns to him, he doesn't move and her knee knocks into his causing something to well up inside her. And all she wants is to absorb the warmth of his body.
"This is weird, Jess."
He looks at her. "I know it is."
"I…Why did you…I thought you didn't want to see me."
He still has his hands in his jacket pockets and he feels the corners of a pack of cigarettes. He takes it out of his pocket and looks at her. "Do you mind if I…?" He gestures to the box and the lighter.
She shakes her head. She finds something comforting and familiar in the smell and the way he holds the cigarette in his mouth and the graceful length of his fingers.
He takes a long initial drag and blows it out along with his words, "I didn't want to see you. But, I have to. There are things you should know. Things we should talk about."
Her heart starts up again, beating rapidly against her ribs. "Oh, okay. Like what?"
She watches the ashes falling onto the ground. He is watching the side of her face, his eyes suddenly filled with concern. Because he knows what this will do to her. He takes another drag, holding it for a second. "I'm seeing someone."
Her face is still except for her mouth slowly forming an O. The word doesn't actually ever leave her mouth. Her face falls and then she says, "Do you, uh…Do you love her?"
"Maybe."
And that O is back again. "Is that why you wanted to see me? To rub it in my face that you love someone new? What do you want me to say? That I'm happy, that you deserve this? You do deserve it. You deserve everything. After all that you've been through, you deserve love, yes. But, I won't be happy. It's supposed to be me and you know it."
She is on the brink of hysterics and he places a hand on her shoulder gently which she quickly jerks away from. "You cannot seriously be mad at me. You always had someone else. Before, it was Dean. Now, it's Logan. What, am I just supposed to be lonely while you always have someone to fall back on? I can't love someone else while still being completely torn apart by you? I guess that's your role, huh?"
He throws his cigarette onto the ground as he stands up. As he walks away, he thinks he hears her say his name. He knows it doesn't matter.
A/N: This chapter was long and painful for me. But, it was finally finished (and twice as long as my usual chapters). I still don't feel completely satisfied with it, but I made a goal to have it up before the system goes down tomorrow. And I have reached that goal. Just kidding, I didn't. I went and tried to add this to the story and I was denied. Anyway, tell me what you think. Who knows if Rory and Jess will ever be. Even I'm not sure. We'll just have to see where the characters go. Thanks so much to everyone who's been reading this. You are all fantastic. : )