Chapter 4 Notes: Jess and Jeremy settle in with each other and do some bonding. Thanks so much to everyone who is reading, following and especially reviewing this story. I really appreciate you guys. :)

Disclaimer: I own nothing except my own obsession with Gilmore Girls.

Trigger Warning: Brief mention of past child abuse.

"I'm sorry. You can just leave them up if it's too much work to get them off. Seriously. I'll be fine. I'll get used to them." Jeremy knew he shouldn't have said anything. This was far from the worst place he had slept in his life. He knew he would adjust eventually. But, Jess had asked…and now Jess was getting frustrated, and it was all because of Jeremy.

Jeremy watched Jess sigh on his perch on the stepladder and felt worse knowing that he had annoyed the man further, when Jess was already putting in so much effort to do something for him. Jess kept his hands at the ceiling where he was working with an exacto knife to loosen a glow in the dark star and looked over his shoulder to where Jeremy was kneeling on the floor by the wall, frozen mid-peel as he pulled one of the jungle decals off the wall. "Jeremy, what did we say about apologizing?"

Jeremy felt himself reddening with embarrassment. "Um, uh, that I shouldn't do it unless whatever happened was actually my fault?"

"Hey, he does listen to me! What do you know!" Jeremy was relieved to hear the playfulness in Jess' voice. "And, is it your fault that the glow in the dark milky way up here is keeping you up at night?"

"Uh….I guess not."

Jess smiled down at the boy. "Good guess. I should have taken these things down when you first got here. I kept forgetting about them. I wouldn't want them in my room either." "And, they're coming off easier now with the knife. The rest won't take me as long and will involve a lot less swearing."

Jeremy went back to carefully peeling off the decal of the cartoon tiger he was working on. He laid it neatly on the floor next to him, smoothing it out, then added it to the pile of decals he had already removed.

"Hey, you don't have to be so careful with those, you know. It's not like I'm going to reuse them in my room or anything."

Jeremy looked up to see Jess chuckling to himself, his attention back on the star above his head. Jeremy had been with Jess for two weeks now and no one had mentioned the fact that Jeremy hadn't been what Jess had wanted or expected, but it still weighed heavily on Jeremy's mind. The boy shrugged. "Oh, ok, I was going to save them in case you wanted to keep them for the next kid."

"What next kid?" Jess pulled another star off the ceiling, dropped it on the floor below him and started digging under the edge of the next one with the knife blade.

Jeremy kept his own eyes focused on the wall in front of him, and started peeling off another decal, a laughing monkey. "The next foster kid you get."

"Um, do you see a third bedroom around here? I think one kid is about all I can handle. So, you can just toss those decals."

"I know that you wanted a younger kid when you decided to foster. And you probably still do, so I figured you might want to get one after me, as your next kid." Jeremy focused on keeping his voice neutral, and idly curious. "So, what did you want, anyway? I'd guess a twelve or thirteen-year-old from the books, but the jungle stickers and the stars seem like they're for someone even younger than that."

Jeremy could feel Jess staring at him. He glanced up for a second. Jess was giving him his full attention now, looking down at him with one hand resting on the top step of the ladder, and the other arm holding the knife down by his side. Jeremy looked down as he laid the monkey on the floor in front of him, feeling uncomfortable and regretting he had brought this up. Jess didn't need to justify himself to Jeremy. He wanted a younger kid because it was more age appropriate for him. It was obvious. "Jeremy." Jess' voice was serious and Jeremy stared intently at the monkey, worried he might have annoyed his foster parent for real this time. "I'm not thinking about any next kid. You're right, I did ask for a younger kid. I can't even really explain why. I guess it had something to do with me thinking that a younger kid wouldn't notice it as much if I wasn't good at this. At being a parent. And, they gave me you instead and I'm glad they did. I like having you here. A lot. You're much better than a twelve-year-old. You're this whole real person that I can talk to like an adult." Jess paused. "I'm sorry about the little kid room. I'm sorry about the expectations it conveyed to you from the moment you got here. That you were too old, or that you weren't wanted." "You're wanted, Jeremy." "I want you here. I don't ever want you to think I don't. ok?"

Jeremy nodded silently, his head still down, the monkey mocking his naivety as he felt a swell of emotion. What Jess said sounded so good. But, Jeremy knew you couldn't always trust what foster parents said, especially this early in the placement, when everything still felt new and right and hopeful, and he hadn't fucked everything up yet. He had a flash of memory to some of the foster parents over the years that he had wanted to stay with. The ones who had justified their decisions to give him back to Ms. Garcia by saying that Jeremy was too quiet, that he never seemed to smile or open up to them, that he hadn't seemed to attach to them, or he didn't seem to want to be part of their family. All the opportunities to be part of a family that he had missed out on because his natural shyness accompanied by his insecurities had made him seem stand-offish or uninterested in what he had wanted more than anything. He had to remind himself that nothing was settled. There was still so much room for error here, too. But, he didn't want to repeat the same mistake. He knew he should say something here, something honest. "I like being here, too. This is the best place I've lived in a long time." He said it quietly and he directed it at the laughing monkey, but at least he had said it.

"That's good to hear." Jess looked away for a moment, then back at Jeremy. "So, I guess to answer your original question, I wanted a seventeen-and-a-half-year-old the whole time, I just hadn't realized it yet when I was filling out my paperwork."

Jess was grinning broadly when Jeremy looked back up at him. "Ok, that was pretty cheesy, but the sentiment is true, my friend. I'm happy with what DCFS gave me and I have no plans to trade you in for this 'next kid' you keep talking about." The playfulness was back in Jess' voice now. "I don't think I'd even like this 'next kid'. He sounds like a real jerk." Jess chuckled softly, pleased with his own joke, and it struck Jeremy as such a dad thing to do. He thought about how differently he had come to look at Jess in just two weeks, and about how harsh his first impression had been. Sometimes it felt good to be wrong.

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Around half an hour later, Jess was working on the last corner of the ceiling, with only a small batch of stars left to go. Taking the stars off was grueling work and not just because they were sticking to the ceiling like living things whose lives depended on it. As he removed another star, he couldn't help but picture Charisse putting each one up, with love in her heart for a child she hadn't even met yet. He remembered Charisse telling him that decorating the bedroom by herself had been her breaking point, and he realized things were already falling apart when she had been in the same position he was in now, even though it took her until a while after to actually end things. He reflected on the pain she must have felt when she finally let herself acknowledge that they were not going to start a family together. He tried to picture how she would have fit into his current situation, and how amazing it would have felt to have been able to give Charisse a child and Jeremy a mom. He would always look back at that last year they were together with regret. He looked down at Jeremy. The boy had finished taking down the jungle decals and had started boxing up the young adult books, when he had gotten sidetracked by one of the Walter Dean Myers novels that he said had been one of his favorites when he was in middle school. Jess watched the boy sitting on the floor, flipping through Fallen Angels, his crossed ankles in front of him and the concentration on his face making him look like a much younger child. As much to distract himself from his memories as anything else, he started talking. "So, my uncle wants to know if we want to go visit him in Connecticut for Columbus Day weekend. You get that Monday off school, right?"

Jess watched Jeremy out of the corner of his eye as the kid looked up from his book. "Oh, uh…" He sounded caught off guard by the question. "It's Indigenous Peoples Day now."

"Huh?" The comment reminded Jess of April, and the way she had of talking that was just a beat or two off the cadence of normal conversation.

"Oh, sorry, uh Columbus Day. They call it Indigenous Peoples Day now at school. But, yeah, we get the Monday off."

"Oh, yeah, I think I heard something about that. So, what do you think? Should I tell him we'll come? I think you'll have a good time. He lives in this small, weird, little town. I'm talking Mayberry small, and there's always some crazy small-town event going on. And my cousin is going to be in town that weekend, too. She graduated from MIT this spring and spent the summer in Alaska as a research assistant to one of her old professors…...I forget what they were researching…something to do with mating habits, I think, but I can't remember which animal was supposed to be doing the mating." Jess shrugged, going for nonchalance. "Anyway, do you think you want to go?"

"Ok. If you're sure. I mean, I don't want to be in the way if you wanted to see your family by yourself."

"You won't be in the way. My uncle is dying to meet you. I'm pretty sure I'd be in all kinds of trouble if I went home without you."

Jeremy had a small smile on his face. "Well, I don't want you to get in trouble on my account, so I guess I better go, huh?"

Jess smiled at Jeremy, thinking that the conversation had gone easier than he had expected. At seventeen he hadn't wanted to do anything that Liz or Luke asked of him. He especially wouldn't have wanted to be dragged to another state for a family weekend. He had put off asking until the week before because he had been worried about Jeremy shrugging it off without interest. He hated that everything always felt so big between them, as if he were setting himself up for a rejection he wasn't sure if he could handle with every question. "That's right. You'll save me a lot of hassle that way. And I think you'll like them. They're good people. And sometimes it's nice to just get out of the city for a little bit."

"Do your parents live in Connecticut, too? Is that where you grew up?"

Jess returned to loosening the next star. "My parents? No. Well actually, that's not true. My mother and her husband live in the same town as my uncle. With my half-sister. But, I never lived there with my mother, only with my uncle." Jess could tell from Jeremy's expression that he was making this more confusing than it needed to be. "My mother, Liz, and my uncle grew up in Stars Hollow, this tiny little town in Connecticut. Liz moved to New York with my dad, Jimmy, when she was eighteen. That's where I was born. Jimmy left soon after that and now he lives in Los Angeles. I didn't meet him until I was eighteen. I grew up with Liz in New York. Sometimes it was just me and her, but usually she had a boyfriend or a husband living with us. Then when I was seventeen and starting my junior year of high school, she sent me to live with my uncle in Stars Hollow."

Jeremy was frowning slightly. "Why did your mom send you to live with your uncle?'

"I think she just got tired of having a kid. She was married to a guy that I really did not get along with. He was always yelling at me and telling me how useless I was. Sometimes I'd yell back at him and tell him what an asshole he was. He hit me a bunch of times. And, dealing with it was too much for her, so she chose him, I guess, and I got sent away."

The look of earnest sympathy on Jeremy's face made Jess want to laugh and reassure the kid that he was ok at the same time, but he did neither, not wanting to come across as condescending or dismissive of Jeremy's feelings.

"I'm sorry. That must have been really hard."

"It wasn't fun, starting over and having to make new friends. But, it was nothing compared to how many times you've had to go through that."

"I guess, but my mom never sent me away. I can't imagine her being alive and not wanting me with her." "Did you like living with your uncle?"

Jess smirked. "Not at first. I mean, he was good to me and everything. And living with him ended up being the best thing for me back then. But, I hadn't seen him in years. I didn't really know him. And I was leaving New York to live in this ridiculous little town. And I was used to my mom not really caring about where I went or what I was doing, and then all of a sudden, I had this guy I barely knew on my case all the time, telling me I had to go to school, and what time to be home and to eat my vegetables." Jess laughed at that one. "It was a lot to adjust to."

"But, you're close now? Things worked out, right? I mean they must have, if you still see him and talk to him and stuff."

"Oh, definitely. We're good now. He's kind of like a parent to me. But, I was a little shithead as a teenager. I don't think I realized how good I had it when I lived with him. I didn't really appreciate him until a year or so after I moved out."

"I know what you mean. I feel like that about some of my placements. There are things that bugged me when I was staying with certain people that I missed when I didn't have them anymore. I guess, sometimes it's hard for people to appreciate what they have when it's right in front of them."

"I think you're right. I like to think I've gotten better about that, though. About appreciating what I have when I have it." Jess knew he hadn't done that with Charisse, but he was committed to not taking this new relationship with Jeremy for granted. It was still early enough that he hadn't done anything unforgiveable yet. There was still hope for this to work.

"Did you stay with your uncle until you left for college?"

Jess could feel the flutter of shame he always got when he had to explain his lack of education to a new person. And this felt important. He didn't want to withhold information from Jeremy in a way that the boy could look back on as dishonesty, but he felt embarrassed by what he was about to say. "I didn't go to college. I actually didn't make it through high school."

Jess glanced toward Jeremy and then back at the ceiling after registering the boy's look of surprise. Jess wasn't sure if it was him projecting, but he believed he had seen disappointment there, as well. "You dropped out of high school?"

"Well, technically, they kicked me out. I skipped too many days. They wouldn't let me graduate without repeating my senior year and, of course, I thought I was way too cool for that."

"Was your uncle pissed?"

Jess laughed. "He most definitely was. It was not a fun night when he found out, I can tell you that much. It was the angriest I've ever seen him, before or since."

"Did he hit you?" Jess heard the concern in Jeremy's voice for his teenage self and it tugged at his heart.

"No." Jess shook his head. "He didn't hit me. He's not like that. He just yelled a lot. Told me I was throwing my future away. I got up in his face, told him he couldn't tell me what to do, that I wasn't going back to school. It got pretty intense, but it was all verbal, nothing physical. He told me that if I wouldn't go back to school and finish my senior year then I had to leave."

"What did you do?" Jeremy had a nervous look on his face, as though he was scared of what he was going to hear next. Jess thought back to Jeremy's case file and how the boy had been AWOL from a group home for two days and nights. He wondered how that time had gone for Jeremy.

"What could I do? He told me to leave, so I left."

"You could have gone back and finished school."

"Wow, you haven't even met my uncle yet and you're already on his side! Not cool." Jess said, his tone light, with no real accusation.

Jeremy felt an instant pang of regret and worried that he had gone too far. "Sorry, I just…...I don't know. I guess, it's hard for me to understand running away from your family because your uncle gave you rules and wanted you to finish school."

"Hey, I agree with you now. Hindsight's twenty-twenty and all that. It was pretty stupid of me."

"I'm sorry. I wasn't calling you stupid. I didn't mean it like that, I swear-"

"It's ok, Jeremy. It's not something I'm proud of. My life has turned out ok, anyway, but I know I got lucky with my job. I was lucky that Chris and Matthew were cool enough." Jess laughed. "or maybe unwise enough to give a high school drop-out a job. But, I'm embarrassed that I never finished high school, and sometimes I wish I had gone to college, too. It took me all through my twenties to get that chip off my shoulder. To be able to be friends with guys, or date women, who had gone to college and had professional jobs without feeling like I wasn't as good as them and usually acting like a jerk or keeping a wall up because of it. I would definitely not recommend the whole dropping out of high school route."

"Where did you go when you ran away? Did you go back to your mom's?"

"No. I didn't even really consider that. We weren't in a very good place then. I took a bus to California to go see my father. Jimmy had come to Connecticut to meet me. He talked to me for about ten minutes, and that might be a generous estimate, before he got freaked and ran off. So, of course I thought that taking a bus to California to surprise a man who could barely stand to be in the same room with me and asking to stay with him made perfect sense." Jess smiled. "I was a pretty smart kid, like that. I hope you're picking up on that from this story."

Jeremy huffed out a disbelieving laugh. "Your life is like a movie. What happened in California?"

Jess laughed. "I'm not sure if that's a compliment or not, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. What happened in California? Let me see…did Jimmy greet his long-lost son with open arms and welcome me into his home so that we could get to know each other? Did he beg for forgiveness for abandoning me with my crazy mother when I was only three days old? No, he did not. He didn't want me there. He let me stay for a couple of weeks, but he wasn't exactly welcoming, so I left and headed back to New York."

"Then you went back to your mom's?"

"Nope. I never went back to Liz's. I hooked up with some old friends and ended up sharing a one room apartment with four other guys."

"But, you made up with your uncle? He forgave you?"

"Yep. He did. We didn't talk for a few months, but I ended up back in Stars Hollow and, yeah, we made up… without the actual making up, I guess."

Jeremy's brow furrowed in confusion. "What does that mean?"

"Just that he never made me apologize. We got into another fight the first time we saw each other again, even though I know we were both happy to see each other even if we wouldn't admit it. I never really said I was sorry. He just accepted me back and we were ok after that."

"You never even apologized for getting kicked out of high school and running away to California?" Jeremy was incredulous. "He must have been so worried about you! I thought the rule was to apologize when something is actually your fault. It definitely sounds like that was your fault."

"What can I say, I wasn't as mature then as I am now. You're right, I did owe him an apology. Running off like that was a pretty shitty thing to do. Even when he told me I had to leave if I didn't go back to school, he was mad when he said it, and I believed he meant it, but I still knew he wasn't going to actually put me on the street if I didn't have anywhere to go. I knew I was the one being stubborn by taking off like that. I was trying to prove I didn't need him. That I could take care of myself." "And, I guess, if I'm being honest here, I was trying to get back at him for not understanding my side of things."

"What the hell was your side? Cause I don't get it either. Your side seems pretty messed up to me."

"Wow, it's like you want to be grounded until your eighteenth birthday!" Jess playful tone took the edge off the threat.

Jeremy reddened, both at how rude he had been without meaning to be and at the idea of Jess punishing him for it, even though he realized Jess was only joking and not issuing an actual warning. "I'm sorry. I'm being a jerk. I didn't mean to sound so judgmental."

"It's ok, Jeremy. My side doesn't really make a lot of sense to me now, either. I was skipping school to work at Walmart. I wanted to make as much money as I could. I think earning my own money made my feel safer and more independent, like I had options and more control over my life."

"But, that's such short-term thinking." Jeremy spoke quickly, urgently. "Finishing school and going to college would have done that for you so much more."

Jess laughed lightly at the intensity in the boy's voice, as though he was trying to talk Jess out of throwing his life away in the present instead of analyzing a decision long past. "You're not wrong. I guess I didn't always see things that logically when I was your age. But, I'm much luckier than my uncle was in that respect. I've got a kid with a good head on his shoulders." Jess smiled warmly at Jeremy, as he descended the ladder and stepped off onto the floor, stretching his arms to loosen the tension in his shoulders from holding his arms above his head for so long. "All right. That was the last star. Let's go out for dinner. I'm too tired and hungry to cook. I think it's your turn to pick a restaurant."

Jeremy got to his feet to follow Jess out of the bedroom. "Hey, Jess?"

"Yeah?"

"What's a Mayberry anyway?"

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Jess had just finished a call with one of Truncheon's new authors. This guy needed a lot of hand holding through the rewrites, and Jess was tired from the conversation, from having to play the part of both editor and cheerleader. He wasn't that good at the cheerleader aspect of his job. He had too much on his mind these days to make himself really care about an author who needed so much encouragement to get through work he had already committed to doing. This book was taking forever, and Jess was tired of it. He wondered, not for the first time, if he would spend his whole career as a senior editor at Truncheon. It wasn't that he didn't like his job. He did. Most aspects of it at least. And working for Chris and Matthew was great. They were two of his favorite people, really. And he had been their first employee, with them almost from the beginning, and they had rewarded that loyalty. He knew there was an unspoken understanding that he ranked higher than the two other senior editors. He got the best assignments and was sometimes the only editor involved in planning meetings with Chris and Matthew. He knew a few of the associate editors who had come and gone over the years had thought he was a partner for the first few weeks because of how he was treated. One young associate had given her parents a tour of the office one day when they had come in from out of town to take her to lunch. After Jess had been introduced and told them what a great job their daughter was doing, he had heard Mika whispering as she led her parents away, that Jess wasn't technically a partner, but he might as well be. Jess had liked that.

In truth, Chris and Matthew had given Jess the opportunity to buy in as a partner a couple of years back, and Jess had declined. At that point, he had still been with Charisse. Still in love. And her mother had been going through a health scare back in Baltimore. Breast cancer. Charisse had spent the better part of that summer back in Maryland, taking care of her mother, and fighting with her sister, who claimed she was too busy at the law firm she worked at to help as much as Charisse wanted her to. Jess and Charisse had been throwing around the possibility of moving to Baltimore before school started up that fall, or having Charisse take a semester off from teaching to take care of her mother. Jess hadn't had a lot in the way of savings to begin with, barely enough to cover the buy in when Charisse was working and covering half of their bills, and he hadn't wanted to ask Luke for a loan, even though he knew he could have. Luke already had April in college at that point, and it hadn't seemed right to hit him up for money. He had thanked Chris and Matthew but told them that this wasn't a good time for him. The topic never came up again, and now Jess wondered if he had made a mistake, giving up something he wanted for himself to benefit someone who no longer wanted him. He started thinking about the idea more after Charisse left, as if having nothing to show for his personal life gave him more incentive to prove himself professionally. He had thought about approaching Chris and Matthew to see if the offer was still good. But, then he had gotten Jeremy, and he again became nervous to have his savings tied up in the company, in case he needed it for Jeremy. For college, or unexpected medical bills. You never knew what a kid was going to need, and Jess was the person who was supposed to provide for Jeremy now. The only person. It was a lot of pressure, but he wanted to do it right. In the back of his mind, he hoped he wasn't repeating the same mistake, putting his wants second to the needs of someone who may not be in his life in a year or two. He sighed and shut down his laptop for the day, getting ready to head home.

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Jeremy walked home from school thinking about the coming weekend. They were leaving for Stars Hollow tomorrow to visit Jess' family, and Jeremy was getting more and more nervous as their departure grew closer. Jess was such a nice guy that Jeremy was sure his family would be nice people, too. But, he was worried about making a good impression. In his experience, the families of people who fostered weren't always on board with the idea and sometimes treated him like he was in the way, an unwelcome interloper they had to put up with when they really just wanted to spend time with their own family. Jess had said that his uncle was dying to meet Jeremy. But, sometimes people just said things because they wanted to believe them. Especially nice people, like Jess.

Jeremy reflected on how his time with Jess had gone so far. He thought about the night before when they had made veggie pizza from scratch together for dinner, following a recipe Jess had found on his Ipad and making the crust out of cauliflower and broccoli. Jess pushing Jeremy's hair off his forehead and comforting him at the Red Cross after he had passed out. How they had started volunteering together at an animal shelter on Saturday mornings. Jess buying Jeremy a phone and putting him on his family plan and telling Jeremy not to worry about the money, making a joke that being able to reach Jeremy whenever he wanted was priceless, when he had balked at the amount Jess was spending on him. The way Jess had told him not to worry about it, when none of the stores or restaurants that he had applied to had called him, telling Jeremy that he should focus on school and let Jess take care of paying for things. When Jess had enrolled him in school and Jeremy had sat nervously next to him as Jess let Principal Khan know about his peanut allergy, and turned down the free lunch program, insisting on making Jeremy's lunch himself every day to make sure he was safe, even after they had been assured that the cafeteria was a peanut free zone. He had told Jeremy later that he would have wanted to make his lunch anyway. That he remembered the kind of crap that had passed for school lunches when he had been a kid and Jeremy was not going to be living off chicken nuggets, fish sticks and French fries, no sir, not on his watch. Jeremy had liked the idea of Jess packing his lunch. He had never had that in a placement before and the idea made Jeremy feel very cared for in a way that seemed unique to kids in real families, so he had kept quiet about the salad bar at his last school and not pointed out that Jess' memories of school lunches were pre-Michelle Obama.

Jeremy felt an anxious tightening in his stomach. He knew he was getting attached, that he had bonded to Jess despite his best efforts early on to protect himself from getting hurt this time. He thought maybe Jess had attached to him a little, too. He could never be sure. Sometimes foster parents were just being nice in the moment because they were good people and cared about any kid in the system. It wasn't a promise that they would be in his life in the future. Jeremy had begun researching all the eligibility requirements and available benefits from the DCFS independent living program about a year ago, when his social worker had introduced the material to him. He knew there were options for transitional housing and money for college that would be available to him as someone who aged out of foster care without an adoptive parent or legal guardian, but he didn't want to go that route. He wanted to turn eighteen with a family to love him and support him and people who cared about how his days went and how his life was going to go. Even if that family was just two people, him and Jess, he would be grateful to have that for the rest of his life. He knew there were only a limited number of beds in the county for transitional housing and that most kids who stayed in the system past eighteen lived in a type of extended foster care where they stayed with a foster parent or a relative while qualifying for money toward housing and college expenses. That was where Jeremy wanted to be after he turned eighteen. He wasn't sure if Jess even knew about these programs. He would wait for Ms. Garcia's visit next month to see if she brought these options up to Jess. If not, he would wait until it got closer to his birthday in December and approach Jess about them himself. He got a nauseous feeling in his stomach just thinking about that conversation. Every choice felt so important this year. He knew he had a lot hinging on his relationship with Jess. He kept trying to tell himself that he still had some time. That he could wait and see how things developed. That it was too early to feel desperate. But, he couldn't stop thinking that this was his last chance for so many things that he wanted. He really hoped it wasn't too late.