A/N- Hello! Here is your first chapter directly from London, UK (ahhh! You natives are so lucky...I'm falling in love here). I'm actually off to a pub as soon as I post this, but I wrote tons on the plane and am now in the unfortunate place of wanting to continue writing while knowing that I really, really, really need to live outside my computer screen while I'm here. Best problems in the world to have. Anyway, I love you all, my wondrous incredible dedicated readers, and hope you enjoy this bit, and especially what's coming up. Please continue reading and reviewing (more on that later, but thank you all so much for your incredible feedback!), and please don't hesitate to tell your friends about it if you think they'd like it. Our little family here can always grow. As always, I don't own Gilmore Girls or any of its characters or concepts, but I do in fact own the bottle of wine I just purchased (gotta love this city). Happy reading!
Chapter 32
An evening three days later, Jess was packing up his things to go home. Lorelai had sent him with road trip candy (apparently a necessary phenomenon he'd been missing out on) and attempted to give him her Bangles CD, which is where he drew the line.
"No," Jess said flatly.
"But it's the Bangles, Jess! The eighties! Don't you have any appreciation…"
"Of good music? Yes. Of eighties music? Only when it's good eighties music," he said, "Look, the Bangles are much better than what's around today, but in the car I listen to the Ramones, ACDC. Highway to Hell. It's called theme."
"How is Blitzkrieg Bop transportation themed?"
"Well, I Want to Be Sedated would be theme right now."
"That's enough, you two," Luke cut in, grumbling, "Jess, we'll see you soon, okay? Don't be a stranger."
"Thanks," Jess answered his uncle, "But I really got to get back to work. Matt and Chris already are waiting to get my ass on a platter for being gone so much."
"Well maybe we'll come see you again," Lorelai smiled, "If that's okay, I mean."
"Always okay," Jess affirmed, "Thanks for the tooth-rotting goodness."
"Thanks for…well…" Jess nodded at her in understanding. He hugged Luke, and awkwardly half-hugged Lorelai (she leaned), and then got in the car. Time for another long drive.
An hour later he was listening to Metallica, feeling reminiscent, and thinking about J.D. Salinger. Franny and Zooey, more specifically. It was one of the two books he had left in his glove compartment, that he'd meant to let Rory borrow before everything fell off the rails. Ironic.
He hoped Rory would come to her senses, but he didn't want to push her. Especially since the more he thought about it, the more he realized that people pushing her was probably a lot of her problem. And her pushing herself was the rest of it.
Maybe Rory wasn't lying when she said she didn't know what was wrong. Maybe all she knew was that she was unhappy, and that she was supposed to be happy. And perfect. And the angel of all the people she'd ever met. That was how she'd been raised to believe it should be, and what she was to everything.
Rory had been and would always be a lot of things to him, but she was never an angel. She was completely, irrevocably, touchingly human. Flawed, just as much as any other person, but more intricately and gorgeously so. Every part of her had stunned him, but it wasn't the halo that everyone else saw that made him fall as hard as he did. It was the doubt.
In his mind, one of the times he remembered her as the most beautiful he'd ever seen was when she was in the car with him on the way back from getting ice cream and she started to doubt her ambition, whether or not she could do it. It wasn't that he liked to see her doubt herself or concerned or anything like that. He just loved the moments that were uncertain with her, when she didn't have all the answers, when she wasn't completely together and in line like everyone knew her to be and expected her to be. The moments of free fall.
But there were the moments of free fall and then there were things like this. Actual phases of denial, times when she refused to let herself doubt her choices or what was expected of her or whatever it was that she was doubting, times when she was trying so hard to force herself to meet everyone's expectations, including her own, that she started to break, become angry, even mean. It wasn't pretty. All that pressure had to go somewhere and it would weigh on her so strongly that her incomparable smiles became rare. The beauty in the moments of doubt was when she would allow herself to fall, admit that maybe she didn't know what she was doing or what she wanted. When she came to New York, everything about her that afternoon was effervescent and Jess knew it wasn't just from the time and distance. It was the fact that she was following only her instinct, didn't have it all planned and worked out and was going from nothing, no list or rules or anything, just floating. A mess, a perfect one, entropy in its purest form.
It was really rare for Rory to let herself get to that place. He'd seen it a few times when they'd first met, when she was still involved with someone else, in the glances they'd stolen at that insane Bracebridge dinner or the candidness of their picnic on the bridge and subsequent evening of unexpected diversion. The way she'd been before the car crashed. Her eyes when he showed up at her grandparent's house with his book. Those moments were the ones he'd call to mind every time he wrote about her, about feeling, about anything really that meant he needed to draw on infinity.
As he pulled toward Truncheon around ten that evening, he smiled gratefully, thinking of Lorelai. The road trip candy would now be an inexorable part of his routine. He'd finished all the Red Vines (something that during his time in California, he'd realized Rory and her mother had always been right about) and the Sour Patch Kids (which of course Lorelai had to make a joke about, for christsake), though the half of the Snickers left had melted. Still, it was a nice thought, and the rest of the nonperishable candy was stuffed in his glove compartment for the next time he decided to head down there. He'd have to call her and thank her later this week. He grabbed his books and his bag and headed inside the closed building.
Heading up to the apartment, he continued his ruminations. Maybe he'd make some coffee and revisit Franny and Zooey again. It could provide some more insight into what the hell was going on.
He opened the door to his apartment. Well. Maybe he wouldn't need to after all.
