Chapter 8

A week later, Jess was shoving the last couple of shirts in his duffel bag. Luke was right, although most of his life was pretty together, his organizational skills were nearly as abysmal as they'd been when he was a teenager. At least the shirts weren't as terrifying. He finally finished and zipped up the bag, pulling it over his shoulder and walking out the door.

"I'm out guys. See you on Monday," Jess called to Matt and Chris as they continued closing up behind him.

"See you then. Don't forget to finish processing the rest of Colby's. We want to get it to print next week. Oh, and try calling up Grayson if you can."

"He's your poet!"

"Maybe, but that still doesn't mean I can reason with him. I think he needs a firmer hand."

"I don't know if I'd call on Jess for that. More the brooding artiste…"

"I gotta hit the road before dawn if I don't plan on getting carjacked driving out of here," Jess said curtly, "Don't let the place go to shit."

Jess slammed the door behind him and sighed. He knew he was being a dick, but he was starting to get a little bit on edge about going back to Star's Hollow. He hadn't wanted to go in the first place. That's not why he had agreed so quickly. He just knew that it was time to put in more of an effort with Luke and that this was a step in that more selfless direction.

He got in the car and dumped his bag behind him and drove off, still thinking through why the hell he was doing this. Although most of it was Luke, he hated to admit that he might have at least some peripheral ulterior motive.

It wasn't Rory. Maybe it would have been related to that if Jess thought she'd be there, but he knew she wouldn't. There was way too much going on in terms of newsworthy events in New York this time of year that he knew she could not possibly be away from work. But just because it was not Rory did not mean he wanted to admit to it.

Almost instinctively he grabbed the bag of Doritos sitting on the ground near the passenger seat. Ironic, he thought, that he would grab junk food when he was trying not to think about Lorelai. Yes, that was the real reason he was going.

He could not really place why it was so important to him that she think well of him. On some level, of course, his younger self wanted to prove her wrong and shove the success in her face. Another more mature side knew that part of the reason Luke had not become more serious about their future was because he was doubtful about the animosity between them, and he knew Luke really wanted and needed to be with Lorelai. Permanently.

But even deeper, some part of him actually wanted her to like him. He remembered back when Rory had told him, if he cared about her at all, to just try to get along with Lorelai. And on a smaller scale, he'd seen a glint of something possible there. In the banter and the understanding, that is, prior to the boyfriend-bracelet-screaming debacle, there had been a short moment where it had almost seemed like she got it. Not just why he was right for Rory, why they made sense, so much more sense than she made with that clown she dated back then. It was more than that, though at the time that was a huge part of it. She seemed to see him, what he was, what he could be, almost like Rory did. She just got him, if only for a second. At least she seemed like she might be able to, given time.

Jess gripped the wheel more tightly. Two hours to go. He'd thought about a Gilmore girl for hours many times before, but never this one. Jeez. Maybe he was going soft. Why did it matter if she knew who he was now? He knew. Luke knew. Rory knew.

But the most important person to both of them did not, and as much as he still could not stand Star's Hollow, it was about time that she did.

Jess pulled in around 11 PM. He felt around the top of the door until he found the spare key and then opened the door and walked in the diner. He hadn't seen Luke's truck out front, and the explanation was written on a post-it note in pink, with bubbly letters- "At Lorelai's". Below, in a script far more familiar to him, "I'll open. Lorelai's coming for breakfast at 10 if you want to come down."

Jess crumbled up the note and threw it in the garbage. He grabbed a donut from the display (one left, he knew his uncle well enough to know it wasn't a coincidence) and walked up the stairs. Biting into it, he opened the door and found himself surprised for the first time in his memory.

He was surrounded by books. Hundreds, it looked like. Jess furrowed his eyebrows, completely lost. They were classics , Henry Miller to Machiavelli. And they looked awfully familiar.

Naturally, they were in alphabetical order, and he found what he'd been looking for quickly. He opened it and, upon seeing his own barely legible scrawl, picked up the phone.

"You in?" Luke grumbled, clearly mid-sleep.

"Yeah. In the library," Jess replied, his voice even.

"Oh, sh…" he heard Luke standing up and moving out of the room, "I completely forgot. They've just been there so long…"

"Why?" Jess asked, flipping through the slim volume now on his lap, "Seems unlike her to leave them."

"Well she's traveling so much, and her apartment isn't in the best area, and it's tiny, so she wanted to leave them at home, but Lorelai didn't want them to be around while the painters were doing the remodel, and being Lorelai she hadn't really brought them back yet. When she's in town and wants them she'll usually just come grab a stack. You know how they are about manual labor. But I just completely forgot and…"

"Don't worry about it. Just curious," Jess sighed at his uncle's overreaction, "Saw a book I'd read and figured there was no way you'd have heard of it."

"And on that note, I'll see you at breakfast," Luke retorted, hanging up the phone as Jess smirked on the other end.

Jess grabbed a pen off the cup on the table and exchanged the book in his hand for one on the shelf. What a beautiful night to vandalize art.