Disclaimer: Not mine. Of course
A/N: Thanks to gracie for the beta, and for reading it in the first place, even though this chapter smells a little bit like Rory. :o)
Jess cranks the music, letting the bass shake the car as he drove away. Funny how the words that were supposed to be the most tender could turn into such a strong impetus for leaving.
He drives with one hand on the wheel, zig zagging his way out of Stars Hollow, subconsciously mimicking Rory's erratic run from minutes earlier. As he drives past the diner and then the ice cream... i shoppe /i , he silently mocks, he can see Taylor's eyes widen and the door open just as he drives past. In his rearview mirror, he sees Taylor standing on the sidewalk, shaking his fist.
Laughing--he knows that Taylor can't see him--Jess turns the music up louder as he exits onto the freeway, but even that doesn't drown out the cadence beating in his head.
I love you. I love you. I love you. Iloveyou. Iloveyou. iloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyouiloveyou.
Who says that and then just drives away? Who just breathes into the phone, and then hangs up when someone else says it? For that matter, though, who says it to an anonymous presence on the other end of the line? "Only us", he thinks. "Only we are screwed up enough to miss by a mile when it comes to what matters most."
He hears Luke's voice echoing in his head. "Stay away from her, Jess." Well, she found him instead. He hadn't gone looking. That's gotta count for something--earn him some brownie points, right? Technically, not that it mattered any more anyways, he had listened to Luke and taken his advice. And even though he was letting himself off on a technicality, Jess was surprised to discover that it actually mattered. Mattered that he was finally listening to Luke, that is.
"I just thought you should know," he says to the empty car. "You probably don't feel the same way--not anymore--but now you know that I loved you back."
Unbidden, a memory surfaces. A Bible verse that some distant Catholic relative--one of the more traditional Marianos, most likely--had sent on a birthday card, or had on a wall hanging, or something like that. Jess isn't sure where it comes from, but he hears the words as if in a poem.
Love is patient, love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
"Oh, shut up," he says out loud, letting his voice drown out the litany of ways that he had failed her.
Words he had read and memorized flood back to taunt him, turning his literary obsession into a recitation of failure. Why can't he remember anything other than passages about love? Passages that describe all the ways in which they weren't really in love? All he wants is to think of something that reassures him that he loves her. He came back! That's enough, right? Everyone is always telling him how unreliable he is; how he's the one to leave and break hearts, but this time, he was the one who came back.
The Rory that has been living in his head answers in perfect iambic pentameter, superimposing her voice onto the words of Shakespeare that seem to be rattling around his brain.
Do I entice you? Do I speak you fair?
Or rather do I not in plainest truth
Tell you I do not nor I cannot love you
Great. Now she's rejecting him in his imagination. And she's not finished, he thinks bitterly. Trust the pretend, Bard-spouting Rory to be just as verbose as the real one.
In companions
That do converse and waste the time together,
Whose souls do bear an equal yoke of love,
There must be needs a like proportion
Of lineaments, of manners, and of spirit.
"But we are!" he yells. "We do, I mean! I know you! We've got something that you've never had with anyone else. You can't run away from that."
"Yeah, Jess," he mocks himself. "You can't run away from that."
He wants to stay away. He always leaves with every intention of never returning, but she draws him back. Every time, there's something about her that makes him temporarily forget how much he hates the town, and he comes back. Again.
He slams his hand on the steering wheel, becoming increasingly angry with himself. "I love her. I don't need her to love me back. I stopped needing her a long time ago. And now..." he pauses, realizing that his voice is getting louder and louder in the small car, "now I'm talking to myself. The craziness in that town is contagious."
Jess clamps his mouth shut, continuing his argument with himself in his head. "Fine, Luke. I'll stay away. That's what you and everyone else in that town think I should do? Well, that's what I'll do. Princess Rory doesn't need a screw-up like me loving her, anyways, right? Right. You've all been right all along. She needs someone better."
The wave of courage that Jess had been riding on ever since he blurted out those three words comes crashing down, and he finds himself at the bottom of the emotional roller coaster, drained and empty yet again. In its place lies only a deeper, more acute awareness of the loneliness that has plagued him ever since he left Stars Hollow for good.
Jess drives the rest of the way back to New York in a foul mood, cursing everything that dares to cross his path--the rain that slows his progress on the highway, the tour bus that cuts him off, the bird that flies too close to his windshield, the radio station that melts into static in the middle of a good song, the astronomical charges at the parking garage. Nothing is safe from the ire of Jess Mariano tonight, and by the time he arrives home, all he wants to do is forget.
He stumbles into the apartment, cracks open a beer, and sits on his filthy mattress, downing one beer after another until, finally, he's sated enough to sleep. And in the drunken oblivion of the half-conscious, his mind can still only wrap itself around one thought. One face.