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Chapter 4
New Years Eve, 2009
Rory slammed the door to her favorite Brooklyn coffee shop a little too hard behind her, trying to block out the icy wind that caused goose bumps on her legs through three layers of leggings and jeans. The crash jarred the tiny, empty shop, and the male barista threw her a haughty glance. She sighed as she approached the counter.
"Happy end of the year." The barista didn't even bother to look at her as he swept coffee grinds off of the counter. "What do you want?"
"Coffee. Large."
"Room for cream?"
"God, no." Rory, struggling with frozen fingers, pulled her wallet out of her purse and handed him a five.
He gave her change and looked pointedly at the tip jar. Rory, disliking his judgment, dropped part of it in the jar but pocketed the rest. She picked up her mug of coffee and went to her usual rickety table by the window.
The glass was frosted, hazy from the snowflakes that whipped the glass and stayed there, frozen. Rory wrapped her fingers around the hot mug of coffee and willed the heat to warm her numb skin. It was only a five minute walk from her apartment, but the day was a brutal, icy snowstorm.
Her book was in her bag (The Grapes of Wrath, because maybe the Dust Bowl could make her feel better about being stuck in the New York polar landscape) but she couldn't quite wrestle it out until her fingers regained feeling. She sipped the black coffee, relishing the heat and the bitter, dark roast.
She felt the urge to check her phone, but knew that it would include about a dozen missed text messages from her mother and probably a few from her grandmother as well, the digital vestiges of a blow up fight that Rory knew was coming and yet still could not believe had finally happened in the late hours of last night. She felt like crap after yelling at her mother, violently hanging up, and crying herself to sleep, but it wasn't shell-shock, rather more of a long-expected, tension-building nausea that twisted around her rib cage and made her want to throw up in her coffee.
When she quit her job over the summer her mother had been disappointed. Rory knew she would be, but she also could no longer bring herself to be a glorified coffee runner and photocopier. She knew she was meant for more than that, and even though her mother and her grandparents promised her that the grunt work would end and that one day she would be editing articles of her own, she felt like she was wasting valuable hours of her youth and her talents. It didn't make sense – Austen did not wait until she was old and withered to begin writing, but rather started as a child and continued through her youth, building her craft and developing her talents and making pieces and progress towards her adult masterpieces. Rory was an adult who was neither nurturing her craft nor building her talents – she was great at carrying hot coffee across Tribeca without spilling the majority of it.
Funnily enough, it was Jess' manuscript that started her on this plunge towards unemployment. She did not blame him for her lack of income, but rather felt grateful to him for forcing her to feel what she should feel every day – that purity of enthusiasm and determination, of seeing a block of visionary writing in its unpolished entirety and giving it all of the love and attention and feedback it deserved. Rory had taken his manuscript and devoured it, clutching the pages into the late hours of the night, taking a personal day from work in order to continue to scribble next to the neat typeface, pausing only to make coffee and gulp it down, unable to tear her eyes or attention away from the riveting and devastating narrative that he wove so expertly in his dry, sensitive prose. If she was meant for editorship, Jess was meant for artistry. He tortured his characters, wringing out their hearts, and patched them up just enough to tear them to pieces again. His writing was simultaneously thoughtful and blunt, heartbreaking and bitter. When Rory finally reached the ending (which was a beautiful catastrophe but a true writing catastrophe nonetheless) she did not try to push it towards eucatastrophe, but rather gently led it towards that slamming disaster that it so needed. Instead of encouraging him to let his two messed up characters come together again, she gave him the permission to allow them to wither apart.
The heaving torrents of emotion that Rory felt when she held the manuscript in her two hands, after a bleary twenty hours straight of editing, sowed the seed of doubt in her mind about her job. Yes, it was New York Magazine. It was also everything she shouldn't be doing.
She let her mother wheedle her into staying through the spring and early summer, listening patiently to her words of health insurance and résumé experience and references. But when she saw the press release for Jess Mariano's new novel, heralding a young Hemingway, something in her snapped. In July, she gave her boss her two weeks notice and told Lorelai that not even a 401k could keep her tied to a job that prevented her from doing what she loved.
Fall came and went, and Rory quickly ran out of money. She met her grandparents for lunch and pleaded for help with her lease until she found another job, promising to pay them back every cent. Emily allowed it, with the condition that Rory find a true career this time, something that she could invest herself into. When Rory promised she would find an editing position, Emily just sighed. "You had that already, dear. And it didn't work out."
Nothing Rory said could convince her mom or her grandparents that her job for New York Magazine was not an editing job. She sent out résumés, went to interviews, and read books in the quiet of her apartment, restless, unhappy.
The spark for the long-awaited blow up with her mother arrived last week on Christmas Eve at her grandparents' house, when Richard accidentally made a reference to funding Rory's unemployment. Lorelai nearly shattered her glass, but managed to maintain her composure at Emily's immaculate dining room table among all of their high society friends and colleagues. Rory caught the earliest train to New York, and avoided her mother's phone calls until she had the courage and the stamina to deal with the blowback that she knew she deserved.
"They can't bail you out of something like this, Rory. You need to, I don't know, really feel the consequences of your decisions. You need to lose your apartment, to move home, to figure things out. You can't continue to live this fantasy New York life and think that everything will turn out okay because it won't, kid, not without hard work and sacrifice and all of those things that you shouldn't have to deal with but you do because you chose to."
Rory tried to interrupt, but Lorelai was insistent. "Your grandparents will give you money until they are no longer here, and then give you whatever is left in a beautiful, gift-wrapped trust fund account, but that isn't the point, Rory. The point is that you are a strong, educated, successful young woman and you have to make things work out for yourself. You have to be independent! I didn't raise you to live off of their money, to take advantage of people you love to try to become what you think you should be. You can become an editor without this, Rory. You can find the job you love and the career you want without this -"
In the dark hours of the cold December night, hating herself and feeling like a proper screw up, Rory hung up on her mom and allowed herself to cry and eat ice cream and watch bad reruns of terrible reality TV shows.
Now, sitting at her usual table in the cramped Brooklyn coffee shop, watching the flurries of the storm and finally feeling the warmth in her fingertips, Rory cringed at the memories of last night and pushed the snatches of conversation out of her mind. She reached into her bag for the familiar pages of Steinbeck, and dove into the lines of literature like her sanity depended on it.
The depressed narrative drew her in to the struggles of the Joad family and made her feel extra terrible about spending her grandparent's money on the overpriced coffee that she was currently sipping in a neighborhood that she had no economic right to live in. But, determined, she continued to gulp down her coffee and read as the Joads struggled toward California, toward that false paradise that awaited them.
How can we live without our lives? How will we know it's us without our past? Steinbeck asked, pointing the words quite deliberately towards Rory.
She sipped her coffee, reading and rereading the line, pondering.
As if she had remembered an important meeting, she reached for her phone and screwed up her vision in order to avoid reading the long list of text messages on her home screen. Quickly, she typed in her passcode, hit new text message, and typed 'J' as the recipient.
Are you in the city?
Rory reread the message once after she wrote it, then hit send, put her phone next to her coffee, and tried to rebury herself in Steinbeck.
Her phone buzzed almost immediately. His reply was short. Unfortunately, yes.
She thought briefly about asking why it was unfortunate that he should be in New York, since he loved this city, his home, more than nearly anything he knew, but she honestly didn't care much. She typed back. Meet me later?
This time he took longer to respond. Rory made it through nearly three pages of Steinbeck until her phone vibrated. She snatched it up and read the glowing screen.
Webster Hall. 8pm.
She read the message, and then put her phone back on the table. The nauseous tendrils wrapped around her rib cage pulsed.
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Long after evening fell, and the streets of Brooklyn became black and icy, Rory left her apartment bundled in her warmest coat and hurried towards the subway, slipping on the treacherous sidewalks. It was New Years Eve and the subway was crowded with groups of friends, joyfully chattering on their way to wherever the end of their year would happen, with champagne toasts or fancy dinners or god knows what else. Rory avoided the groups of laughing young people, glimpses of gold and sequins beneath their typical New Yorker black pea coats, their high heels and dress shoes at odds with the icy pavement. She felt like an outcast among them, a charity case that did not deserve to be getting on a train to go to a New Years Eve party in the village.
The Q dropped her off at Union Square, and Rory pushed her way through the throngs of people enjoying the bitter Manhattan night. Briefly, she thought of the thousands of wretched people stuck in Times Square, but quickly shook her head and wound her way towards Fourth Avenue. Those people would get their "life experience" and promptly regret it in these subzero temperatures with no bathroom access.
Webster Hall was the typical East Village music venue, a dancy club frequented by NYU freshmen that wanted to drink underage (and couldn't) and older NYC residents that sought that grungy vibe so desperately held on to by all Village establishments. Sometimes it had concerts that Rory thought would be legitimately amazing. Sometimes it had club nights that looked awful.
She leaned against the stone wall, shivering, avoiding the long line of glitzy young people in their New Years Eve finest that were hoping to get in.
Rory lost focus, watching the crowds, feeling disconnected and disinterested in the New Years revelry around her. She had no feeling in her toes or her fingers, but found she didn't care much. She was out of her apartment, observing the madness of the city, listening to the shouts of laughter that echoed through the old, dark streets.
"Hey." Rory felt a squeeze on her arm and warm breath in her ear.
She turned her head, recognizing the familiar scent of pine trees and whiskey, and saw Jess looking distastefully at the line of people waiting to get into Webster Hall. "Thank god we're not going here," he said shortly, and pulled her away from the wall, briskly walking past the throng.
"Where are we going?" she asked, unperturbed by his sudden arrival and his pushiness.
"Another venue – it doesn't have a published name so there was no point in giving you the address. This is close enough."
Rory bit back an eye roll. Of course Jess would go to some nameless, grungy basement music venue, too hipster to have anything as reputable as a website or an address.
He shoved his hands in his pockets and picked up the pace, weaving around the crowds and heading east. Rory glanced at him sideways. His familiar profile seemed tense, withdrawn, as if he was clenching his fists in his pockets. She looked back to her shoes and focused on keeping up with him, shivering in the icy wind tunnels of the avenues.
Finally, he stopped at a building on First Avenue with boarded up windows. Like a regular, he stepped quickly down to a door set below street level and opened it for Rory, beckoning her in.
Rory stepped inside and was immediately overwhelmed by the sticky, heady smell of alcohol and the deep, throbbing, bone-shaking beats of something that was both electronic and punk. The place was low-ceilinged and packed with people that looked like a typical grunge crowd: hair dyed various bright colors and sporting inches of dark roots, ripped band t-shirts, tattoos that were meant to be both serious and satirical, various piercings, and layers upon layers of black clothing. Jess, in black skinny jeans, an old black leather jacket, and looking like he hadn't slept in about a month, fit in perfectly. Rory, who was wearing her black pea coat but had a slouchy and possibly coffee-stained gray work sweater underneath, felt out of place.
She felt Jess place a hand on the small of her back and steer her towards two empty low stools set by the window to the street. Wordlessly, she sat. He unzipped his jacket, threw it on the stool next to her, and disappeared into the crowd.
Without him, Rory felt like she could get her bearings. If she craned her neck she could see glimpses of the band, back against the far wall, illuminated by red and purple lights. The crowd ebbed and flowed, pushing towards and away from the small bar, getting rowdier the closer it got to the music. The space was quite small – smaller than a tennis court – but somehow it did not feel completely compressed by the crowd within it. Chatters of conversation were drowned out by the steady electronic beats.
Rory took off her coat and ran her fingers through her unwashed hair, wishing she had brought lipstick or something to match the vibe and the night better.
Jess reappeared holding two short glasses filled nearly to the brim with dark liquor. He handed her one, sat on the stool next to her, and chimed his glass against hers. "Cheers." He said flatly.
She drank, obligingly. The whiskey burned her throat and made her wince. She indicated the height of the pour. "Did you bribe the bartender?"
"He's a friend," Jess replied. He took another drink and watched the crowd.
Rory observed him carefully. He had bags under his eyes, and he looked both pale and slightly ill. His dark wavy hair was a bit of a mess, as though he hadn't bothered to get a trim in a couple months, or really comb it at all, and beneath the sweep of dark waves his eyes were dark and inscrutable. One of his shoes tapped insistently on the floor. He hunched his shoulders and held his glass with white knuckles, as though he were trying to break it.
She took a sip of her too-full drink and let it burn her. Maybe she wasn't the only person having a terrible New Years Eve.
"What happened?" She asked.
He shot her a glance. "You first. Why did you text me?"
She made a face. "It's a long, embarrassing story. I'm a failure. I'm fighting with my mom. This year should have ended months ago."
Jess appraised her. His dark eyes were still hard, fiery, as though he was fighting something internally even as he composed himself enough to have a conversation. "Sounds like you fucked up."
Rory choked on her whiskey. She couldn't disagree. She tipped her glass to him.
They had only been sitting together a few minutes, but already Jess' glass was empty and hers was nearly there. He disappeared into the crowd again.
Rory bit her lip and watched as the people around her swayed and moved, couples weaving their arms around each other, friends shouting conversations over the music, groups ebbing and flowing with the beat. Jess seemed like he was a mess. And she knew that she was a mess. Perhaps this was a bad idea.
He returned, this time with another too-full glass of whiskey and something lighter for her. She took it gratefully. She could drink whiskey, but she couldn't drink it like Jess could, like he was trying to kill himself. She sipped the beer and sighed, heavily.
"What happened?" She asked, again.
Jess swilled his whiskey thoughtfully, his face stony.
She waited, patiently. The music and the alcohol were beginning to make her head pound.
"If two people love each other, there can be no happy end to it," he quoted Hemingway.
With a jolt, Rory remembered the 'Em' in Jess' life, the woman who had been flitting around the corners of their interactions over the last year or two. She watched him with a renewed sense of understanding and empathy. "No happy ending for you then?"
He shrugged, staring out at the crowd. "She's been cheating on me for a month, took up with some idiot at her work. Claims she didn't mean for it to happen, I'm gone too much, writing in New York, whatever."
Rory felt her heart wince for him. She looked away, out towards the band. The beat of the music caused her glass to vibrate and her head to begin to pound.
They sat in temporary silence. Rory sank back into her thoughts, haphazardly turning Jess' sentences over in her mind and trying to avoid the echoing snippets of her mother's voice from their conversation last night. They were both a sight for sore eyes, her and Jess. She was drowning in the depths of her own disappointment and incompetence, and he was suffocating in a tender, bitter, furious rejection that Rory knew only all too well from her gut-wrenching experience with Logan.
"You've cheated on people before," Jess said, as if stating a fact.
Rory felt as if she had been punched in the gut. "Thanks. Yeah."
"Why?" He looked at her. His eyes were still guarded, still dark and angry, but somewhere in them Rory sensed the devastation that he was grappling with. It quelled the anger rising in her stomach.
"He cheated first, so I felt justified. I wanted to hurt him like he hurt me."
Jess nodded slowly, and sipped his whiskey. "Sounds like a healthy relationship."
"It had its moments," she sighed.
He leaned back, tapping his glass. After a moment he looked directly at her, "Sorry, didn't mean to be an asshole there."
She shrugged it off. "I've been cheated on too. I know the feeling. It sucks. I wouldn't blame you for much right now."
Jess emptied his glass. Feeling like it was her turn, Rory stood, tugged the glass out of his hand, and pushed her way through a crowd of chattering people towards the small bar. She reached the counter by squeezing around a couple, and set the glass on the scuffed bar-top.
"He needs another one of whatever this is," she said, nearly yelling over the volume of the music.
The bartender, who was wearing a bleach-stained black t-shirt and had two full sleeves of colorful tattoos, glanced up at her. "Who?"
"Angry James Dean in the corner over there," Rory gestured towards where her and Jess were sitting.
The bartender nodded and grabbed a bottle of dark liquor. He pulled a fresh glass from underneath the counter and filled it halfway. "He needs to slow down or he's going to do something stupid."
"He'll listen to you more than he'll listen to me," Rory said.
"Anything more for you?"
Rory glanced at her own half-empty glass. "Sure. Why not."
It was a bit trickier maneuvering through the crowd with two full glasses, but Rory managed it with a few apologies and some minor stumbling. When she wound her way around the last large group, she caught sight of Jess, sitting alone, eyes unfocused and staring at the floor. She paused. He had his elbows resting on his knees, feet tapping, hands gripped together. It was as if she could almost see the weight, the gravity, of the maelstrom of hurt happening in the tension of his shoulder blades. Her heart broke a little for him.
She handed him his glass and squeezed his shoulder, giving him a little Hemingway in return. "Life isn't hard to manage when you've got nothing to lose."
"True."
Rory crossed her legs and sipped her drink, beginning to feel the heady influence of the alcohol coursing through her veins, making her vision blurrier and her reactions slower. She welcomed the slow burn. Normally she did not like to feel drunk, to feel out of control, but tonight she was perfectly happy to use Jess' coping methods to forget the mess that she had made out of her professional and her personal life.
"Your turn," Jess cleared his throat, pivoting towards her. "Why did you text me? Why did you fuck up?"
It was so Jess, not to ask her how she messed up, but why. He was the only person she knew that had always given her that room, to acknowledge that Rory Gilmore was perfectly capable of screwing up and generally deserved the blame for doing so.
"I had a pretty massive fight with my mom last night. It's been long coming. I'm a disaster of an adult."
"Disaster?" He raised his eyebrows.
"I quit my job over the summer and haven't found another one yet. I asked my grandparents to help me out until I could get stable again, but its been months and they're still paying my rent. My mom didn't know that they were helping me."
"You're living off your grandparents? Again?"
Rory avoided his gaze. "I don't feel like I'm not trying hard enough – I'm applying every day, I'm searching for that next position. I've actually turned down a couple of jobs because they weren't what I want. I feel like I'm being a stupid idealist, searching for that life-calling, and I know I need to suck it up and just get something that pays the bills, but I already had that kind of soul-sucking job at the magazine and I felt like a bigger failure there, fetching coffee and making copies and doing all of those things that I know I shouldn't be -"
"Rory." Jess interrupted her. She paused, still avoiding his eye contact.
He spoke deliberately, "It's not a bad thing to want to find a job that speaks to you. Hell, I spend half my time as a broke artist, so I get that. The difference – what I think Lorelai is trying to say – is that most people do that searching and also work somewhere that pays the rent in the meantime."
His logic – her mother's logic – was clear. But Rory still could not explain why she wasn't doing that, why she didn't have a job as a waitress or something to pay the bills while she searched for her career.
"What do you want to be doing, anyway? Do you still want to be an editor?"
She nodded. "You'll hate this, but you actually inspired me to quit my job."
Jess snorted. "I'm glad my vagabond ways are an inspiration for your unemployment."
"No," she rolled her eyes, "not your Kerouac fantasies, your manuscript."
"Ah," he took a sip of his whiskey. "Right."
"I'm serious Jess," she looked at him, insistent, "I haven't felt anything like what it was like to be absorbed in that manuscript, to be so involved and invested in a work of literature. It was like breathing again, to tear through a narrative and ask questions and pose suggestions and give feedback. You're a gifted writer, and it felt like nothing else to be one of the first to read something that poetic and write a dialogue that I knew, or I guess hoped, that the author would read."
Jess cracked a half-smile. "It was a disaster. You're the one that turned it around."
"It was not a disaster," Rory shot him a look, "it was incredible, Jess."
"Yeah, well," he swilled his whiskey, looking into the glass, "I guess it is poetic, or prophetic. Who knew I was looking into the future when I wrote that."
"You're not your character, Jess," Rory said softly.
He shrugged. "So you read my manuscript, felt something resembling passion about your work, and quit your job that would have eventually led you to that exact editing career that you realized you wanted?"
"But it wasn't that career," Rory shook her head, "it wasn't going anywhere. And even if one day I did become a senior editor, after developing all of my coffee-fetching skills, I wouldn't have been editing the kind of literature that I want to. Short stories and articles and interviews? I'm interested in your kind of editing, Jess, that great literature, high artistry, grasping, aching kind of editing. I've spent my whole life reading every great book I could get my hands on – I want to continue doing that, to dive into that process and work with authors and influence those novels."
Jess tilted his head. "I guess it does seem much more you to be on the book side of things, rather than the monthly publication side."
Rory sighed, collapsing back into her seat. "I'm not sure what that looks like, or how the hell I'm going to get paid, but I know now what I should be doing. And I'm just not willing to compromise."
The loud, steady beats of the music filled in the pause in their conversation. Jess finished his third glass, and weighed his words, unflinching. "I'd say not compromising on your life purpose is fine. It's compromising on taking responsibility for your livelihood, for your rent, that is the problem."
His words were harsh. Rory flinched, and shot him an angry look. She took a large swallow of her drink.
Jess watched her, then stood. "I'll be right back." He disappeared into the crowd.
Rory nursed her drink and tried to ignore both her mother's and now Jess' words that floated through her mind. She felt both ridiculous and inebriated. Jess had offered her whiskey and sympathy, in that note months before, and she had taken him up on it with an inconsistent stream of back-and-forth texts, exchanges of literary quotes, music recommendations, and book reviews. But Jess never really was one for sympathy. If she sent him a quote referencing her self-isolation in Brooklyn, he responded with Virginia Woolf's plaintive stream-of-consciousness. If she sent him a music recommendation that could have betrayed her sense of personal tragedy, he responded with something that reeked of sarcasm and teenage angst. Tonight, he gave her whiskey, but he was not sympathetic to her story. In typical Jess fashion, he preferred to tell her how the world actually was, not how she wanted it to be.
He returned, stumbling ever so slightly on an uneven floorboard, and shrugged on his leather jacket. Beneath his composed exterior, Rory could begin to tell that he was drinking too much too fast. He held another glass of dark liquor in his hand. It was steady, but if Rory really focused, she could see a slight tremble in his grip.
"A new band is about to start," he told her, "they're better – we might actually want to listen to them."
"Great," Rory said. She meant it. Talking wasn't doing her any good.
He offered her his hand and pulled her up to standing. She followed him through the crowd, closer to the dimly lit stage. He found a small spot by the wall to lean against, and watched the new group check their amps and connections with blank, unfocused eyes.
Rory felt her normal, responsible self suddenly reappear. "Where are you staying right now? How are you getting home?"
"With a friend," he replied. "Walking distance."
"How far is walking distance?" she asked.
He rolled his eyes, "4th and Avenue A."
Rory sipped her drink, satisfied. It was only a couple blocks. Jess would be able to get there, even in the icy storm.
He gestured towards the bartender, and before she knew it Rory was holding yet another drink in her hand. "You're not taking the night seriously," Jess warned her.
"Seriously? What do you mean seriously?"
"I mean that clearly, Rory Gilmore, you and I have both royally ruined 2009. And if I have any say in the matter, I'd really like to forget the year ever happened, and fast-forward- " he checked his watch – "96 minutes to 2010, which will hopefully be less of a train wreck."
"Fast-forward by drinking?"
He clinked his glass against hers, "Cheers to that."
Bemused, she sipped her drink and let her inner responsible self be quenched by the alcohol. Jess had a point. Perhaps he could not give her sympathy, but he could give her whiskey. Maybe that was what she needed.
The band struck up their first song, and Rory found herself drawn into their eclectic beats, certain chords reminiscing of the eighties and nineties greats that she and her mother loved, mixed with an intangible futuristic sound made up of something electronic and deep. Jess stayed dark, still, and silent against the wall, his attention focused on the band, his hand gripping his glass. She closed her eyes and let herself feel it.
The night began to pass by in a whirlwind of music and crowds and raucous celebration that she ignored because it felt disruptive to the band. Before she knew it, Rory was having trouble standing upright, and took Jess' place leaning against the wall. She heard the countdown to New Years, and watched various couples kiss and celebrate 2010. She watched Jess down a shot of whiskey and nearly break it when he set it down, hard. She felt a detached sympathy for him, but she pushed it gently out of her mind.
"Ready to go?" he asked after the band finished their last song, leaning close to her ear. His voice was flat, controlled, as if he were suppressing the anger that she could see in the tension of his posture.
She nodded. He reached for her hand and began to pull her through the crowd of loud and inebriated people, keeping a firm grip on her even as she stumbled and tripped. She struggled to keep up, but he did not let her go.
The blast of icy winter wind was a rude awakening, and Rory blinked, bleary-eyed, at the sudden cold. Jess moved his arm to her waist, guiding her up the stairs, strong and steady. She leaned on him too much, but she couldn't help it. The city was spinning. The night was spinning.
"Taxi!" She heard him yell, gesturing at a car moving up the street.
"Jess," she mumbled. She held on to him. He smelled familiar, like pine trees and whiskey and libraries.
"Here's your ride," he tightened his grip on her waist as she slipped on a patch of ice, "what's your address? Brooklyn, right? Where's your phone?"
"In my bag," Rory said, yawning. She remembered most of her address. She told it to Jess.
"Rory, you're a mess," he sighed.
"How are you not a mess?" she retorted. Her head was spinning.
He held her at arm's length, looking into her eyes. Rory stared back, swaying. He looked furious, but it was not directed at her. He was angry at the world, again. Angry at everything.
Unable to stop herself, she reached up to brush his cheekbone with her hand, feeling the hurt that emanated from him in dark, choking waves. Jess sighed. He pulled her close, wrapping his arms around her and resting his forehead against hers, his eyes closed. "Thanks for the whiskey and sympathy," he said, his voice low.
"You're welcome," she said, her voice cracking and barely audible, overwhelmed by his closeness. "You too."
Jess stayed there for a moment, his nose lightly brushing against hers, his arms strong around her frame. Then he pushed away, turned her around, and slid her into the cab, careful not to hurt her against the doorframe. He repeated the address to the cab driver. "Rory, you text me when you're back in your apartment," he said, like a warning.
"Will do," she said. She closed her eyes and leaned her head back.
"Can you make sure she gets in okay?" he asked the cab driver. Rory blinked and saw him hand the driver a wad of bills.
The next time she blinked, she was back in Brooklyn, outside her apartment. Jess, and his familiar scent of pine trees, was long gone. The cab driver waited while she struggled to unlock her door.
When she got into her room she collapsed on her bed, reaching with grasping fingers for her phone. With great effort, she texted him. Made it.
Jess' reply was immediate. Good.
She reread it a few times, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips despite the misery she could feel aching in her stomach. Then she closed her eyes and wished the last year away.
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Back again after a long break, with some momentum and some inspiration. Thank you readers - the email notifications of reviews and favorites were what kept this alive even as winter and spring came and went. I hope you enjoy this!
