June 13, 2008
A heat wave has draped itself around the city for the last two days and he's already sick of it. The apartment is baking. Its size and weird crooked shape, the amount of closed doors makes it next to impossible to create a satisfying draft. He's in the smaller common room, books spread across the table, trying to concentrate. The apartment is empty, everybody's at work but it still doesn't help.
He gets up and walks into the kitchen. He pours a glass of the refrigerated water and wets a towel under the running faucet, squeezes most of the water out and puts it around his neck. When he gets back to the common room he actually manages to focus for a good few minutes. The towel helps, and the draft increases- shit, that's the door. Muttered words pour in from the corridor.
Rory. The realization is enough to send uncomfortable waves of heat through him.
The odds are astronomical; The phrase has echoed in him every time he thought of her since she came here, like it can't possibly be real. It's been a week. A week of awkward smiles and polite kindnesses. Not completely authentic to them, but he's scared of getting too familiar with her. There's a loud bang as she kicks the front door closed. Seconds later she passes the door to the common room, stops, and takes a few steps backwards, peeking in.
"Hi."
"Hey."
She's in a navy blue skirt, a sleeveless blouse, and sandals. It seems airy enough, but her cheeks are pink, and her hair darker at her temples. In her hand is some kind of brochure, probably handed to her on the street, which she uses to fan herself. She sticks her tongue out and pants theatrically.
"It's just, so warm."
"Summer in the city." He confirms. "No work?"
She's gotten a job at this online zine and from what he has picked up she seems to have the combined tasks of an assistant and junior editor, he has no doubt that she aces it, she's been busy with it the last few days, leaving early and getting back late, but now-
"The office is in a horrible state," she says, "Charlie told us to run for any available AC-unit."
"Hate to break it to ya but you're in the wrong place."
She laughs.
"I panicked! I had to get home before I wound up tearing off my clothes in the middle of the street." She pauses, a bit pinker. "I feel like my insides are dissolving. I gotta take a shower."
He clears his throat.
"Good thinking. Getting ahead of the rush."
"I would be willing to fight any rival for it right about now." She lowers her fan and squints at him. "You're not a rival, are you?"
"Got my own tricks." He gestures at his towel.
"Good. Keep it that way. You know I could take you."
He smiles.
"Are you gonna trash talk all day or-?"
"Going!"
She disappears and he sits, staring vacantly for a bit, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. It's not just the idea of her, he recognizes his own voice inside his head. Shit.
The shower starts running, it's audible in the entire apartment, old pipes. He gets up and heads back to the kitchen for more cold water. When he walks back he sees the door to her room is open. He looks inside. Empty walls but books and records up, pictures of her family in frames, her bed made with her linen, he vaguely recognizes them, and her clothes on top of it. He spots The Subsect in the bookshelf, but the cover is partly obscured by a handwritten note. He squints in a vain attempt to read it without moving.
The pipes wail, and he realizes he might be overstepping, just looking into her space. When he grew up he had no space to himself, he was used to being up close and personal with everyone, regardless of how he felt about them. That's why he doesn't mind being intimate with someone a mere thin wall away from roommates, usually. That's why he never understood Luke's desperate need for space in the apartment above the diner, he already had all the space he needed built into himself. But apparently that's not normal, people react when you get within a certain proximity of them or their stuff, and especially when you act all distant about it. He's worked on that since a while back, but apparently slipped this time.
The water stops running and he stiffens, walks briskly back into the common room. She appears in the doorway again a couple of minutes later, wrapped in a robe, hair bunned up into a towel. She weighs between her feet. He tries not to look at her, and fails miserably. She smiles.
"This is a good place. You almost got a bit of a natural AC going here."
He gets up.
"This is nothing, let me show you." He walks back to her room. "I'm just gonna-"
He walks inside, opening the door all the way, then the window next to the fire escape. The air through the apartment immediately changes course and gains speed. He turns to her with a small smile, she returns it and follows him when he heads back to the common room.
"Wow."
He shrugs, sits back down on the couch.
"You have the best room for days like these."
"Good to know." Her eyes fall to the books. "Are you studying?"
Her smile is ridiculous, he can't not return it.
"Yes." He admits.
"What subject?"
"Math."
"Poor thing."
"It's just for a practice test."
"That you're taking to practice so you'll get good grades because you're studying." She sing-songs, half bouncing where she stands.
He has to fight to keep his voice level.
"I think my ship has sailed on grades, I get points."
"Because you're studying." She claps her hands.
"Jeez."
The floorboards creak when she takes a few steps closer. He watches her warily. She sits down at the edge of the couch.
"Can I help?"
"I'm fine."
"I wanna help. Please."
Her enthusiasm is making her glow. He can't keep having these reactions, maybe he has to stop avoiding her, it's done nothing so far. He reminds himself of what she deserves from him, and thinks that this is exposure therapy.
"Fine, weirdo."
"Yay!"
"But let's sit in your room," he says.
She reaches for the books but he stops her.
"Go change, I'll get this."
She complies and he takes his time marking the pages and gathering the books. Her voice comes through the wall.
"I'm ready!"
He walks into her room. She's in shorts, and the same sleeveless blouse as before. Her hair is still wet, the water pools into small stains on her shirt, making it cling to her skin. He has to look elsewhere, and remembers the book.
"You have your own bookstore going." He nods at the shelf.
"Told you I was gonna do it." She smiles.
He walks closer to the shelf and eyes the note. Words like unique, beautiful, true, makes him uncomfortably warm again and he can't bring himself to read it properly. He smiles awkwardly at her, places the books on the small table by the armchair and goes to get another seat from the common room. When he gets back she's sitting down and has opened the books.
"Algebra, huh? What can I do?"
He snorts.
"I don't know." He sits down in the other chair. "I don't even know how to ask for help. Teach me that and you're tutor of the year."
She wags her finger at him.
"That's behavioural sciences, mister, think I'm cut out for that?"
"I think you could do anything you set your mind to." He says, honestly.
"Look who's talking!"
She smiles widely at him, and he thinks about exposure therapy, and maybe they do that thing they do sometimes, a kind of telepathy, because her smile fades some, and she looks back at the books.
"Well…" She starts. "Let's be like math club. Let's talk about math, the properties of math."
"Demented and sad, but okay."
She asks him to explain a problem to her and he complies. She explains another one to him, and it actually helps.
"Algebra was my weakness." She says. "All unknown factors severely hinder my capacity for clear thought."
"I couldn't even say which mine was. It probably helps to participate in class if you're gonna rank your favorites."
She finds a bunch of theoretical questions that she juggles with, a few equations they perform timing themselves and comparing solutions. He's not bad, but knows he really could use a lot more practice than what he'll be able to motivate himself to get. He looks at her, she's engrossed in her own equation. If she insists on doing more sessions he'll have plenty of motivation, plenty of practice. Couldn't he have figured this out at seventeen? She tucks still wet hair behind her ear, squints at her paper. He decides to allow himself this, to have her stir this in him, at least for the time being, it's for his education after all, she'd approve, he's sure.
"All this tutoring is making me hungry." She says after a while.
"Get something in the kitchen, mine's the second shelf, right side in the fridge."
"Oh, you don't have to- I have-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know you got your own pop-tart-stash, I just figured you-" He gets up. "Nevermind, we'll make something together."
She follows him into the kitchen and he picks out ingredients for a BLT.
"Sit down, it'll just take a sec."
He hears her pull out a chair and sit down. He pours her a glass of water and places it in front of her. She smiles.
"I'm sort of getting flashbacks to college here."
He raises an eyebrow at her.
"Cramming sessions, getting food to keep going." She explains.
"Sorry."
"No, it's nice. Logan would buy food, anything quick with extra caffeine, and toss questions at me at any given moment."
Not distract her with card tricks, ice cream or car accidents. That idiot might actually have been better for her, and that hurts, but of course he would be, Jess Mariano is hardly any contest in the constructive department. And now she's helping him study. Not that he needs it, but that's not the point. It's that she does it even after everything. At least he can make her a sandwich.
He makes one for himself too, hasn't eaten anything since last night, it's been too warm, still is, but she devours hers anyway, and he tries to keep up.
"That is delicious." She says, mouth still full of food.
He used to think she was hard to please, now he thinks maybe as long as you keep her well-fed, caffeinated, in books, and tries not to piss off her mother she might be very happy. The two first are things he can manage, do well really, the last one… he's gotten better at it. Too bad it's too late for any of that.
"I worked at the diner, I know my way around a sandwich." He adds.
"I only know my way through one."
He laughs.
They put their plates in the sink and go back to studying. She seems to genuinely enjoy herself, but he's distracted. He looks around the room, the empty walls, the somewhat worn furniture, the fact that she's trying to help him with High School math, one year after graduating Yale. Something is off.
"Do you miss him, Logan?"
Why would he start there? Even the name feels wrong in his mouth. She tilts her head and looks at him.
"You mean Porsche guy."
He chuckles, she falls silent, seemingly thinking about it.
"I miss school."
His chuckle becomes genuine laughter.
"I'm not even kidding," she goes on, "the structure, the goals, the purpose-" She stops and looks at him, sort of apologetic, serious. "I know it's all pretend but- Sometimes I feel really lost without it."
He stops smiling. He should've just let it be, sometimes that really is for the best, now he has to try and be helpful.
"Well, school's still there. I mean, you wouldn't have to go as a student. You could teach, you obviously like it."
She smiles crookedly.
"I probably wouldn't be very good at it, look at my track record."
"What about it?"
"You liked me and I still couldn't teach you a thing. Imagine me in front of a classroom of hostile students."
"You can't use me as an example!" The words come easily, seems he's been waiting to say this. "I was stalling to spend time with you. And, you may not have taught me any grammar but you taught me plenty."
"Like what?"
She laughs, self-deprecating, but plenty vulnerable anyway, so he has to answer, even if he doesn't know how. He chews on his lip for a moment, then looks up at her, shooting her a smile.
"Behavioral sciences."
She laughs, genuine this time.
"I guess I might be having some sort of identity crisis, I don't really feel like myself." She admits.
"Understandable. This is a big change from living in a tour bus and motel 6's."
She's quiet.
"Did you feel like yourself on the trail?" He asks.
"I don't really felt much at all, to be honest. It was super interesting and all, but I was just, so busy all the time. I managed fine, it suited me, but then mom called about grandpa and it was like I remembered that I was a person, like I hadn't thought about myself in months." She sighs. "But enough of me, I'm sick of me. What about you, Kurt?"
His chest aches from the reference, but it's a good ache.
"I'm fine. I got a few more people I care about these days-"
She smiles in recognition.
"That's right, you're a big brother now. What's that like?"
She shoves him lightly and he pushes back.
"You have a sister too, don't you?"
"Yeah." She shrugs. "But I kinda missed that from the get go. Even when my parents were married, she was living with her mother and-" She stops abruptly.
"And?"
She takes a breath and looks at him flatly, matter-of-factly.
"I still can't think about her without thinking about how angry I was with him, so…" She swallows. "It's not her fault, but I don't really see how to start anything there."
They look at each other and he's reminded how similar some parts of their lives truly are, even if he doesn't want them to be. She smiles.
"And I asked you first."
He clears his throat.
"Uhm… terrifying, but not terrible. I've only met her like four times in total, but she makes an impression." He smiles. "Makes me think about what I'll do a year from now, where I'll be when she's a teenager, and I never used to think like that, at all."
"Has Nicks met her?"
Her voice is low, but he blinks at the question anyway, didn't see it coming. Then he shakes his head.
"I don't think Stars Hollow would agree with her."
"Right."
"And, that's a part of me, I haven't-" He sighs. "Seems too complicated."
Possibly modified as far as truths go, now that he thinks about it. It's just, easy being with someone who has so much going on, so much baggage, and who likes to talk about it. It makes his shit seem insignificant for once, like it doesn't matter, like it doesn't have to.
"She's not exactly from a traditional background herself." Rory says. "And I'm sure Luke could tell you a thing or two about the dangers of compartmentalizing."
It's too much to think about right now.
"Yeah, well, we're not there yet."
He tries to put an end to the conversation. She doesn't let him.
"You in love with her?"
"I don't know." He hears how that sounds, smiles, and tries again. "Not yet at least. I like her, I genuinely care about her."
She doesn't respond, just sits there and looks at him, so he keeps filling the silence.
"We don't talk about love, it's not our thing."
I love you. His own desperate words echo in him, and the feeling of needing to say them, or he would die. It's not just the idea of her, the changes she inspired in him, it wasn't then and it isn't now. He keeps talking, tone louder to drown out knowing that.
"Maybe it's not the kind of love people write songs about, but it's there. I don't wanna hurt her."
She looks at him for a beat, then nods. He has no idea what expression he's wearing. He's free falling, and grasps for something to hold onto.
"I've been thinking that you're meant to learn about love from your parents and mine were kinda useless like that so-"
"So you had to figure it out yourself, how to show someone you cared about them." She fills in, with some haste.
"Right." He pauses. "And I'm sorry you had to-"
She interrupts.
"It's fine."
"It's not." He looks at her. "But you should know I- It was my first try so-"
She takes a slow breath.
"You've gotten better."
"I hope so."
She nods and smiles, lips pressed together. She turns her attention back to the books. She browses a few pages, seemingly at random, then looks up:
"About that log-"
He laughs, relieved.
"-Have you read The Kite Runner?"
"No. But I did read A Thousand Splendid Suns."
"Darn."
"You'd like mine."
"And you should read mine." She smiles. "But we should probably just start our own book club. To save time."
To keep thinking about the oddity of the odds of them being connected in more ways than they already are just seems like another form of denial. What's the use in talking about odds when something's meant to be? She is here, and books is the thing they can always come back to. The thing that always offers solid ground.
"Bring it." He says.
June 18, 2008
Next week the wind has picked up, cooling the city some. He's been able to study a bit more efficiently at the library, and just imagined her silly enthusiasm when he's been about to lose motivation. It's for his education. He's heading up the stairs. The neighboring door is open, loud music echoes up and down the walls of the staircase. When he picks out his keys, Adam walks out into the hall, a bowl of cereal in his hand.
"I thought I heard someone."
"Yeah." Jess sticks the key in the lock before remembering his manners. "Hey, thanks for the tickets to that show."
Adam has friends studying drama and a steady stream of theater tickets available.
"No problem."
"Nicks really digged it." Jess adds.
"Knew she would."
Adam leans on the wall next to the door, shoveling a spoon of cereal into his mouth, obviously not ready to let Jess go. Jess stifles a sigh, he's gotten better on the whole etiquette thing but he has a long way to go. Adam speaks again.
"So, you got a new roommate?"
Oh-oh. He braces himself.
"Yup."
"She's cute, huh?"
Rory Gilmore. Cute. He'd laugh if he could catch his breath.
"I mean, nothing like Nicks obviously, but cute nonetheless."
He's all physical reaction, can't produce a clear thought, only absurd, mute rage.
"She got a boyfriend?"
Shit. He bites the inside of his cheek.
"Not to my knowledge."
"'Kay, thanks man."
Adam pats him on the shoulder and heads back into his apartment. Jess stands still for a few moments staring at his key in the lock before breaking the paralysis and opening the door.
He meets Rory in the hallway. She waves a tool box in greeting.
"Hi," he says, smiling more than he should. "Maintenance work?"
"I'm just dropping this off at Adams's."
His stomach churns from the conversation out on the stairs, Adam's going to ask her out. He thinks about exposure therapy, distraction tactics and the fact that she would willingly spend an afternoon studying math with him. He stops her before she opens the door.
"Listen, what are you up to this weekend? We're all going out if you want to come."
She smiles brightly.
"I'd love to."
He takes the tool box from her.
"Let me get that." He says and steps back out into the hallway again.