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Chapter 8

Valentine's Day, 2011

The Valentine's decorations in the hospital were drab and halfhearted. Red cut out hearts were taped haphazardly to the walls, and a bunch of partially deflated red and pink balloons bobbed wearily at the nurse's desk. Rory wrinkled her nose at all of it with distaste. She was no fan of Hallmark holidays, particularly in such a sterile, perfunctory setting. Nurses bore cupid pins and heart barrettes in the way that mall employees begrudgingly wore Santa hats during the holidays - another thing to do, another week to pass.

She was in New York, at a hospital uptown. Her grandpa had been moved there shortly after his Christmas Eve heart attack to be under the care and supervision of a renowned heart specialist. (Emily, of course, had insisted on only the best medical professionals.) After nearly two long months Rory was used to the hospital, with its motel watercolor art and waiting room chairs upholstered in scratchy, generic prints. She had even gotten used to the coffee, which was admittedly terrible, even though she had the option of braving the icy New York winter and walking a few blocks to a nearby coffee shop.

Rory avoided thinking about the night that it had happened because it made her heart clench and her palms sweat. But sometimes, when she dozed off in the chair in her grandpa's room, she'd be jerked awake by nurses running a stretcher outside the hall, or the far off sounds of sirens bringing in new patients and new emergencies, and it would all come flooding back to her.

She remembered the look on Jess' face, and how she turned around with her heart in her throat. Richard fell in the span of half a heartbeat, but it felt like it lasted ages.

Then, everyone had started shouting at once. Emily had screamed and hurried around the table to where Richard lay, followed quickly by Luke and Lorelai. Lane, who was always the godsend of common sense, reached immediately for the phone to call 911. Jackson darted to shepherd the kids upstairs. And Rory had just stood there, mouth open, rooted to the floor, shock coursing through her. It wasn't until Jess gently grasped her shoulders, to move her to one side so that he could get by her to help Luke move the table, that she realized time was still ticking.

The night had been a long one. The ambulance rushed Richard to the nearest Connecticut hospital, but by morning he was being airlifted to Hartford. Rory stayed curled up in a hospital waiting room chair, wide-eyed, as the night dragged on and they waited for news. Luke tried to calm both Lorelai and Emily - an impossible task - and eventually just gave up and let the two women wring their hands and harass every hospital employee that had the misfortune to walk by.

In the early hours of Christmas morning, when the sky was beginning to lighten, snowflakes whirling against the glass, Jess appeared silently in the waiting room. He handed each of them a large, steaming coffee, placed a box of pastries on the low table in front of them, and settled inconspicuously into the chair next to Rory, pulling a battered book from his back pocket. She had wrapped her fingers around the hot coffee and closed her eyes.

It those first few days, when the doctors spoke in cautious platitudes and wary statistics, Rory felt oddly disconnected to reality. It was lucky, really, that it happened over the holiday break because she didn't remember that she had a tutoring job to tend to until a week later, when Richard was being transferred to New York anyways. In the Hartford hospital Rory alternately let her mother jabber her ear off - Lorelai never handled hospitals or emergencies very well - and sat quietly next to her grandmother, who was very stoic except for occasionally snapping off demands to hospital staff. They could go in and see Richard, after a while, but he stayed in a deep slumber.

When the transfer to New York happened, Emily promptly reserved a long term hotel room uptown. Lorelai, however, couldn't leave the inn for too long and couldn't afford to stay in the city. The three Gilmore women resolved to reinstate Friday night dinners, though 'dinner' really meant sharing a take-out vigil in Richard's hospital room and then Lorelai sleeping on the pull out couch in Emily's hotel room before returning to Stars Hollow the next morning. Every once in a while Luke came along, and then drove Lorelai home in the dark late hours of the night.

So it went, as the weeks dragged through January, and then February. It was a bitter, icy winter, and Rory felt uncomfortable with the normalcy of it all. She would go to tutoring appointments on the Upper East Side and then drop by the hospital, as casually as she would stop to pick up milk or return a book to the library. Her grandmother was nearly always there, and they would sit and talk for a few minutes, or Rory would read while Emily continued to run Hartford's aristocratic social scene through long, scolding phone calls. The pattern began to feel natural, although Rory would sometimes glance at her grandfather, peaceful in his bed, and feel a pang of sadness at the absence of his booming laugh. The room felt smaller without him in it.

She picked up Anna Karenina, because something about winter and sadness reminded her of Tolstoy and his tragedies. The wintry Russian landscapes, which turned to spring and summer and back to ice once more, wrapped her alternatively in anguish and frivolity.

There are no conditions to which a person cannot grow accustomed, especially if he sees that everyone around him lives in the same way. Rory quite agreed.

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On the Friday afternoon after Valentine's Day, Rory found herself alone in the hospital waiting room with Anna Karenina. It was 3pm. She sighed, and checked her phone.

A fierce blizzard raged outside, the winds howling against the towering hospital building. According to the news reports, it was a "historic storm." The nor'easter had begun threatening the city in the morning, the wind screeching down the Hudson and flying down the wind tunnels that stretched down the avenues. By late morning it was snowing in thick, blinding swirls, and at noon the city shut down the subways and ordered its millions of residents to take shelter and to please not call restaurants for delivery.

Rory, whether she liked it or not, was stuck in Manhattan. She had an Upper East Side tutoring appointment in the morning, and had stuck around for Friday night dinner. But with the tunnels closed, the subways shut down, and the roads blocked by snow plows, there was no way she was getting to Brooklyn anytime soon.

Her phone rang. It was Lorelai. "Hey mom."

"Hey kid," Lorelai sounded harried and exhausted, "I got as far as Milford, but I don't think they're going to let me go any further. They've blocked off the highway. I think Connecticut might be calling it a state wide emergency."

"It's just a little snow," Rory protested. "Come on, where's that famous Connecticut grit? It's like the wild west in Milford, practically."

Lorelai snorted. "They seem to have lost all their spunk. The traffic cops are wearing mittens. I'm half expecting them to start handing out hot chocolate to all of us stranded drivers."

"Are you stranded?" Rory asked. She felt a twinge of concern.

"No, it takes more than a little snow to strand a jeep," Lorelai said. Rory imagined her patting the steering wheel fondly. "I'll make it back to Stars Hollow okay, but I can't make Friday night dinner kid. I'm so sorry, you're going to be stuck with Grandma."

"Grandma can't make it either," Rory said gloomily, "She went back to Hartford for a charity event last night and the airport won't even let her congressman friend fly her here on his private plane."

"Are you kidding me?" Lorelai said with mock outrage. "The state is such a pansy that they've shut down private planes? How are the rich and powerful going to travel? Who do they think they are, not allowing Connecticut pseudo celebrities to fly in hurricane-force winds?"

"I know," Rory agreed, "it's a travesty. A true violation of personal and privileged freedom."

"Emily Gilmore will not stand for this," Lorelai said, "there will be complaints. And an inquiry. And maybe a yelp review."

"A yelp review for the airport? Or the state? Or the Governor?"

"For all of it," Lorelai said decisively. "Unconscionable. Jeeps can't have access to the road and planes can't have access to the sky. What is the world coming to?"

"It's a mess," Rory glanced at the window. "I'm stuck in Manhattan alone now."

"You can't get back to your apartment?" Lorelai's tone immediately shifted to one of concern.

Rory kept her voice light. "They shut down the subway and the tunnels. I might be able to bribe a cab driver, but I'm not too optimistic. Currently planning on sleeping on the chair in Grandpa's room."

"You're at the hospital now?" Lorelai sounded relieved, "Oh good. If I want my kid to be anywhere during a state emergency, it's preemptively at the hospital. "

"I don't want to sleep here," Rory said, annoyed.

"Ah, you'll be fine," Lorelai shrugged her off. "Keep Dad company, tell him how terrible me and Mom are for not coming to visit during a crisis."

"Will do."

"Oh, and actually," Lorelai paused. Rory could hear her turn signal blinking. Lorelai swore and fumbled the phone. "Crap, sorry, trying to turn around this is a mess. Anyways, I think Jess is in the city too."

"Jess is here?" Rory felt her voice get higher. She frowned and pulled on a stray thread on her sweater sleeve.

"Yeah some book signing or conference or Barnes and Noble fight club, I don't know what hotshot authors do," Lorelai fumbled the phone again and swore. "Alright kid, I gotta go, I feel like a cop is about to yell at me for talking and driving in hazardous conditions."

"You are probably a hazard right now," Rory nodded.

"Goodbye, love you, be safe, let me know if you end up faking sick to snag a hospital bed to sleep on - I'm not paying the insurance deductible, but if you make up a fake identity, I won't be mad."

"Bye," Rory laughed, "drive safe. Let me know when you're home."

Lorelai blew her a kiss through the phone.

Rory hit end and then stared at her phone, cradled in her hands. She was alone and stranded in a blizzard in Manhattan. Her grandfather wasn't very good company at the moment. And apparently, Jess was buried on the snow-covered island with her.

She exhaled, eyes unfocused. Jess had been on her mind a lot lately. Rory didn't like to think about it all that much, or acknowledge it at all really, because she felt enormously guilty whenever she was sitting vigil at her grandfather's bedside and her thoughts wandered unaccountably and repeatedly to Jess.

Perhaps it was Tolstoy's fault - Anna Karenina was certainly never one to shy away from her own internal drama. Or maybe it was Jess' fault. More specifically, his damn book's fault.

He continued to send her chapters, and she still consumed them like a wildfire, like a madness, like an addict. Jess had always been a bit old school, a man who appreciated such antiquated things as record players and printed books and the romanticism of the post office, so he mailed them to her, manila envelopes thick with the musings and rantings of a talented poet. Sometimes he would send her a one-word text when he dropped one in the mailbox - incoming - and she would wait impatiently for the couple days it took to show up crammed in her mail slot at her Brooklyn apartment. Worst were the days when she was heading to work, or to the hospital, and she couldn't immediately hurry to one of her favorite bars or coffee shops to rip the thing open.

But there was no greater feeling then getting home at the end of a long day and finding an envelope with her name on it in his small, slanted scrawl. Rory usually dropped her tutoring books, grabbed her coat, and flew to the pub on her street. She'd tuck herself into a corner of the bar, order a whiskey because nothing else felt appropriate for Jess Mariano's work, and let herself dissolve into the tortured, tender contours of his novel. She wrote lines upon lines of hastily scribbled notes, gently pulling apart the strands of his work, questioning, fixating, speculating, and suggesting. It felt like a high - like the greatest possible rush. And when she reached the last page, and felt her heart nearly yanking itself to pieces for more, she tended to order another whiskey and firmly tell herself not to call him.

Rory liked to tell herself that this was why she couldn't keep her mind off of Jess, because he was the literary heroin dealer to her hopeless addict. But Tolstoy raised his eyebrows at her. Rummaging in our souls, we often dig up something that ought to have lain there unnoticed.

She hesitated, thinking, listening to the wind howl. The windows in the waiting room were completely white, blown out with snow.

Her natural instinct to rationalize kicked in, and the familiar stream of moments and memories blossomed in her mind. Maybe it all started with the first manuscript Jess had let her edit. But even then, she had been able to separate the man and the literature. Jess was Jess - a problematic, probably unresolved ex boyfriend that she had long ago resigned to the archives of her history. But Jess was also an author that twisted her heart strings around his fist and pulled, twisting, drawing her deeper into the recesses of her heart and her mind that she usually skimmed over. Those were dark waters, full of heartbreak and teenage anguish and guilt.

She remembered him on Halloween, his calm confidence, removed and recovered from the storm of depression he had faced after his cheating ex. Something deep in her abdomen felt tight. Rory, despite her calm, logical insistence that she was only attracted to Jess' literature, was beginning to suspect that there might be something more. Those dark waters that concealed her Jess baggage roiled, restless.

Tolstoy tended to make her musings worse. Sometimes she did not know what she feared, what she desired: whether she feared or desired what had been or what would be, and precisely what she desired, she did not know.

Against her will she remembered the sharp line of his jaw, the way he carelessly rolled his sleeves up his forearms, those dark, inscrutable eyes that observed the world with detached curiosity. Sometimes, unbidden, she would flash back to her seventeen-year-old self, breathless as he pressed his body against hers outside of Luke's diner late at night. She remembered laughing, giggling, even as his lips blazed against her neck, occasionally nipping her with exasperation at her inability to handle it seriously. But she couldn't handle it then. She could never handle Jess - he burned with passion, with desperation, with a raw yearning for connection that she now recognized in the lines of his prose. And back then, at seventeen, it was all she could do to grasp his hands and kiss him back, trying to communicate as fiercely as she could that she got it, she understood, she felt the depths within him and wanted to do everything she could to be enough, to fill his soul.

Rory sighed and rubbed her eyes. These were dark and dangerous thoughts, and it was all entirely unhelpful anyway. Best she could tell, Jess didn't think about her at all except to appreciate her editing. All of her wandering and rationalizing thoughts of Jess - when she should be worrying for her grandfather, or trying to find a career - were confusing and pointless.

But at the same time, they were both in the city, and it was a historic storm, and Rory couldn't really think of a reason why she shouldn't text him. They were old friends, after all. And they talked regularly, if occasional book recommendations and pages of literary correspondence every week counted as talking.

Rory looked down at her phone. It was turning into a bad habit, spontaneously springing herself on Jess. This would make it one too many times in a row that she texted him to meet her out of the blue, or just showed up. But - she felt her abdomen squeeze a little tighter - he always said yes.

Ignoring both her reasonable instincts and the gossiping giggles of Tolstoy's nineteenth century Russian ladies, she picked up her phone and typed Jess a quick text. I hear you're also stranded in Manhattan?

Before she could set her phone down, it buzzed with Jess' response. Correct.

Rory glanced at the harried nurse at the counter. She felt her heart beating a little more quickly. She plowed ahead anyways. I'm on the UES. Care to join me?

This time his response took longer. She chewed on one of her nails and watched the exhausted balloons sink a little closer to the desk. Maybe this would be the time he said no, that he was busy, that it would be idiotic and dangerous to go out in this weather.

But after a few, long, ambiguous minutes, her phone vibrated. Sure. Are you at the hospital?

Rory smiled and typed back, Yes.

She waited a moment, and then set her phone on the armrest of her chair and reached into her bag to pull out Anna Karenina. She didn't expect Jess to respond, or say when he would get there, or how far away he was. He was never one to communicate when he could leave people in suspense instead.

Tolstoy teased her immediately. It's like scarlet fever: one has to get it over.

Maybe that was what was wrong with her, Rory mused. Scarlet fever.

She left the book open but felt her eyes glazing, surrendering to her idling, stream-of-consciousness thoughts once more. It wasn't that she hadn't been trying to live a life outside of being Jess' editor - she enjoyed her job and her students, she made a habit of applying to a job or two every week, she spent hours at the hospital caring for her grandmother. After Lorelai had nearly collapsed with laughter on hearing how long it had been since Rory had been on a date, she even tried to meet a guy or two, finally accepting her cute barista's offer to "grab a drink some time." Predictably, it had been boring. Or maybe she had been boring. Jess' latest manuscript arrived as she was heading out the door to meet barista boy at the bar, and she'd spent nearly the entire night with the unread chapter tantalizing her in the back of her mind. After the third time that she forgot what they were talking about, he had smiled in that pained sort of way and offered to walk her home.

Although that date had been a fiasco - and Rory now felt she could never go into that coffee shop ever again - she had since recovered her dating reputation. On Valentine's Day, earlier in the week, Rory had been curled up on a bar stool, reading Jess' most recent chapter, when a handsome Brooklyn guy with square glasses sat next to her and asked lightly if she ever snapped her pen in half from writing so hard.

It was fortunate for him, really, that Rory had just finished editing and was in that aching, moody place that made her want to be reckless and call Jess and demand more. She laughed, let the Brooklyn guy buy her a drink, and found herself rather charmed. She invited him up to her apartment to watch a movie - something indie and hipster that he said did great at Sundance - and felt rather proud of herself when they ended up kissing on the couch. Rory was never one to be too reckless though. When the credits rolled she hit the brakes and said that she had an early tutoring job the next morning and needed to get to bed. He flashed her a grin and wrote his phone number on a crumpled receipt in his wallet before bundling into his coat and disappearing into the cold night.

Lorelai didn't believe Rory when she told her about it. "Daughter, you made it up. It was Valentine's Day. No lonely woman ever meets a halfway decent guy alone at a bar on Valentine's Day. Maybe you even dreamed it! I heard those drugstore assorted chocolates can have dangerous hallucinogens. And those candy hearts might not even be approved by the FDA . . ." But when Rory texted her a photo of the receipt - and a screenshot of the ensuing text - Lorelai begrudgingly gave her credit for manifesting a lonely hearts impossibility on February 14th.

Rory was tangentially proud of her own nerve - she was in her twenties after all, it was about time she picked up guys at bars - but she couldn't say she cared at all about Brooklyn guy. If she thought about him, she eventually ended up returning her mind to Jess, and by the time she started remembering her aching teenage self, she would push all thoughts determinedly out of her mind.

One of the alarms went off at the nursing station, startling Rory from her reverie. The nurse sighed and hurried off towards whichever patient pressed a call button.

She shook her head, firmly, as if to clear her mind of all the treacherous directions it was intent on going. Instead, she forced herself to read. Sentence by sentence, she slowly forgot her own priorities, and lost herself somewhere on a train in the Russian countryside.

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A hand gently pulled Rory's book out of her hands. She started, and looked up, her shock melting into a smile when she saw Jess, eyebrows crinkled as he read the title. He looked windswept and frostbitten, his coat covered in snow, a wet beanie pulled low over his ears.

"Anna, really?"

Rory shrugged. "All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."

"Anna because of the family drama?" He glanced around at the hospital waiting room.

She half shrugged. "Family drama. Blizzards. A healthy dose of obsessing and whining over love and happiness."

Jess handed the book back to her. "You know I love obsessing over love and happiness."

Rory laughed. "No, you don't."

"Not with other people," he amended. "But to my keyboard, sure. Tolstoy isn't a leap from Hemingway. Just a little less gritty."

She supposed the comparison wasn't too far off. "Alright, fair." She put her book back in her bag and stood up, grabbing the pile of her coats and scarves that she had tossed in the chair beside her.

"Where are we going?" Jess looked at the window, wary. "It's hell out there." His coat was already dripping water on the floor.

"I know a place," she winked.

She led him to the elevator, and took it a few flights down. Jess snorted when they entered the hospital cafeteria. It was nearly empty - apparently the hospital didn't get many visitors when the city shut down - and looked even more depressing than usual without the usual clumps of chatty interns in scrubs and families poking doubtfully at trays of gray food. The room was dimmer than usual with the snow built up against the windows.

"I might prefer the storm," Jess said honestly, standing in the doorway and looking at the cafeteria with heavy skepticism.

"Oh trust me, I'm a regular." Rory led him to the far counter where a thirty year old coffee maker steamed in a forlorn sort of way. She poured each of them a styrofoam cup of bitter, black coffee and then led Jess to a table by the window.

They set their things down across from each other. Rory held the cup, enjoying the warmth in her fingers, and watched as Jess unbuttoned his coat and laid it out over a nearby table to try to dry out. He pulled off his hat and shook his head, wet droplets flying. "I don't really recommend it out there right now," he said casually.

"You don't say?" Rory said, amused. He sat across from her, and she pushed his coffee towards him.

Jess tasted it and wrinkled his nose. "This is what you drink now?"

"Well, it's here and it's free."

"And you're Rory Gilmore. Didn't your mother have you shooting espresso as soon as you could eat solid foods?"

"Before, actually. Coffee's a liquid, it comes before solid foods."

"And you're drinking this?" Jess peered into his cup.

Rory grinned. "Beggars can't be choosers. Caffeine is an addictive substance, you know. I'll get a fix wherever I can take it." Internally, she recognized that her words probably held a dual meaning, but she chose to ignore that particular sidebar.

"Be bad, but at least don't be a liar, a deceiver!" Jess quoted Tolstoy. "There is no way this is okay with you."

"Well . . . no," Rory surrendered. "But the last part was no lie. I take what I can get. And last I checked, it's a statewide emergency, I'm assuming coffee shops are closed."

Jess nodded. "Everything but churches and liquor stores. The essentials."

Rory hummed appreciatively and sipped her coffee. Jess was still trying to get one of his frozen gloves off. She noticed a few snowflakes caught in his dark eyelashes, and then immediately tried to un-notice them.

"So to recap, your plan, in getting me to come meet you, was to hang out in a hospital cafeteria and choke on bad coffee while we wait for the glaciers to move down Fifth Avenue and block our routes home?"

"My route home is already blocked," Rory pointed out. "You want to try to get across the river right now?"

"Not really," Jess said. He reached for his bulky backpack. "You're lucky I came prepared."

Rory watched, delighted, as he pulled out take out containers of Thai food. When he reached in for napkins and utensils, she saw the glint of what may have been a wine bottle too. He offered her a pair of chopsticks. "Have at it."

"Have I mentioned, lately, that you're wonderful?" She opened a container of green coconut curry, and nearly whined in appreciation at the rich, spicy scents that overpowered the cafeteria's usual odor of greasy fries and antiseptics and bitter coffee. She could have melted with gratitude.

"Not lately, no, but as a chronic narcissist I'm always glad to hear it."

"You're wonderful," she said emphatically. Another container was filled with spicy beef and noodles, and a third held spring rolls. "a hero among mortal men. How did you find this? I thought everywhere was closed."

"The Thai place below my friend's apartment was about to close but I sweet talked them into giving me whatever they had left," Jess unwrapped his chopsticks.

"You're staying with a friend?"

Jess nodded. He didn't elaborate. For a brief second, Rory felt what may have been a small twinge of curiosity coupled with a dash of jealousy.

"I also happen to have a fold out couch," she offered, conversationally, "you're welcome to it whenever you need a place to crash for your fancy New York author events."

He tipped his shoulders. "Might take you up on that some day. My friend's place is a little too . . . Woodstock for my taste."

Rory laughed, "Come on, Jess, embrace the Woodstock. Release your inner flower child." She took a bite out of a spring roll. "Wow, this is good."

"My 'inner flower child?'" Jess raised his eyebrows at her, disgusted. Rory grinned.

They continued bantering, steadily working their way through enough Thai food to probably satisfy a family of six. Jess gave her a usual amount of grief for eating like her life depended on it, but Rory just gestured outside and said she may as well pack on the calories in case they were trapped sheltering from the arctic tundra for weeks.

The conversation flowed easily, naturally, as the window grew darker and colder. The storm seemed to get worse as night gathered upon the city. The wind shrieked as it barreled around the skyscrapers, slamming gusts of snow against the windows of the dingy cafeteria. Every once in a while Jess or Rory would glance at the window, concerned when a particularly fierce blast threatened to crack the glass. But, when the structural integrity of the building seemed to recover, they would return to their dialogue, building on their flow of references and jokes and comments.

Rory felt as if she was becoming unzipped in two. One part of her - the rational, logical, valedictorian, careful, bullet pointed list side - enjoyed the conversation with an old friend but stayed back, relaxed in her seat, keeping her attention focused firmly on the topic at hand. But that other part of her - the part that didn't seem to give a damn about what she wanted to focus on, the part that focused on everything treasonous and couldn't keep herself from looking at Jess - wanted to learn forward, ask mischievous questions, draw the conversation down those dark, flirtatious roads that always lead to a more fun type of banter.

What was wrong with her? Rory shook her head again, like she was trying to forget something.

Jess paused mid sentence, amused. "You okay?"

"Sorry," she felt heat rise in her cheeks. "Lost my thoughts for a second there."

"Need to get your head checked out? We are at a hospital right now," he suggested.

She laughed weakly. "No, I'm good."

He dropped his smile and examined her in that familiar, uncomfortable way, like he was evaluating her. "How's Richard doing?"

Rory's cheeks burned a little brighter. Her grandfather would have been a much more appropriate and respectable subject for her wandering mind. "Uh, no progress. They're optimistic, but they say we just have to be patient, wait it out while his body heals itself."

Jess seemed to contemplate this. "I'm sorry," he said, after a pause, "I really like him. Man has his priorities straight."

Rory appreciated his use of the present tense. She caught herself, sometimes, using past-tense verbs, and always jerked with shock and horror when she noticed it.

"He'll wake up soon," she said, more or less confidently. "He's too stubborn not to. And besides, my grandmother will kill him if he doesn't."

Jess chuckled, "Not surprising."

Rory watched him. He was looking out the window, which was dark and plastered with snow, apparently lost in thought. She felt that inner twist of her abdomen warm, ever so slightly. She'd never admit it, especially not to Jess, or her nosy mother, but she really loved how Jess and her grandfather always seemed to get along like old friends. That night, on Christmas Eve, she had certainly been thinking all kinds of precarious things about Jess, but watching him effortlessly gain her grandfather's friendship had melted her.

"Do you want to go up and see him?" She offered.

Jess looked at her. His dark eyes were faintly surprised. "Shouldn't it just be family?"

Rory shrugged. "He likes you. And besides, he's used to a crowd of Gilmore women on Friday nights. I'm sure it's far too quiet in there for his tastes."

Jess cracked a smile. "Undoubtedly." He stood and began clearing the empty take out containers.

Smiling to herself, Rory tossed their chopsticks in the trash and gathered her pile of outerwear. She led Jess to the elevator, up a few floors, and through the maze of hallways to a room that felt a bit like her second home at this point.

Rory always knocked, even though she knew no one would tell her to enter. She pushed open the door, "Grandpa?"

The room was silent except for the whirring and occasional beeping of the many machines and monitors. Her grandfather lay in his bed, peaceful in sleep. Tubes and cords tangled around the bed, like a multi-colored web, disappearing under the bed covers and behind the hulking machines. But Richard looked calm, as if he was merely napping in a lawn chair in July in the Hamptons.

Rory assumed her usual perch in one of the chairs by his bed. She watched as Jess stood, his hands clasped behind his back, glancing at the machinery and Richard.

"He looks good," Jess said. His voice was a little lower than usual, affected by the solemnity of the room.

"He does," Rory agreed. "He's gotten some color back. I swear he's gained weight."

Jess chuckled. "Think if I offer him a scotch and a cigar he'll wake up?"

"Maybe," Rory replied, seriously, "when Grandma joked about selling the house I swear he looked angry for two days."

Although he didn't look uncomfortable, Jess still hung back by the door. Rory could tell he didn't want to stay there. She stood. "Waiting room?"

They trooped back to the waiting room. It was completely empty at this point. The nurse's station was dark. Rory knew that late at night the nurse's station on the other side of the building took over for the whole floor.

Jess dropped his stuff on a chair. "Be right back."

She sat in a chair, curling her legs up underneath her. The wind howled and raged against the building. She couldn't see outside through the snow-sealed windows, but she could imagine the thick flurries of snow battering the buildings, the wind whipping the street lights and sculpting story-high drifts against the street corners. The streets would be dark and empty, the city ghostly in the raging storm.

When Jess returned, he held two styrofoam cups. Rory watched, amused, as he pulled the bottle of wine out of his backpack, poured each of them a cup, and returned the bottle to his bag. He was unbothered by hospital protocol. "If the nurses show up, they won't know. And if they know, they won't care."

Rory took her cup. She felt warmth in her entire body, from Thai food or immense gratitude or treacherous thoughts, she didn't know.

"I don't know what I'd do without you," she said. "I mean, actually, I know exactly what I'd be doing without you. I would have had coffee and vending machine snacks for dinner and fallen asleep in this chair reading Anna Karenina, waiting for the hospital generator to go out so I could freeze a slow, painful death."

Jess tapped his cup against hers. "Well, I'd be fine without you, but this is fun too."

Rory laughed. She didn't doubt the truth of his statement.

He pulled Anna Karenina from where she was peeking out of Rory's bag. "Alright Gilmore. Convince me to read this again."

She sipped her wine - Jess had bought some kind of wonderful, dry red that made Rory's mouth tingle and her heart skip a few beats - and then exhaled and quoted Tolstoy. "I often think that men don't understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it."

Jess smiled despite himself. He often did that, Rory noticed, when she said something particularly witty or literary or both. She resolved to do that more often.

His retort didn't disappoint. "God forgive me everything!"

"Nice," she appreciated his quote. "But really, Jess, it's a classic."

"A classic that makes me want to throw myself in front of the L train," Jess quipped.

"Oh, haha," she rolled her eyes. "That was cliché and you know it."

He drank his wine. "That was a cliché. We both know it."

Rory couldn't help herself from grinning. It was like a disease. Her thoughts were perilous, scattered, reaching. His messy dark hair looked so impossibly good.

"But really," Jess continued. "How do you deal with the endless monologues?"

Rory shook her head again - less noticeably this time, she hoped - and launched into a passionate defense of Anna Karenina.

They spent at least an hour on Anna. Jess, unsurprisingly, was well-versed in Tolstoy, even as he forced her to defend it. When Rory felt that she had substantially won that battle - when he agreed to re-read her copy as soon as she finished with it - they moved on to Jess' book, which, despite Rory's inner denial, was nearing an end. He seemed a little detached from it, cautious, careful. When she chided him for his reticence, he drained his cup and poured himself another.

"This might be the best thing I've written - credit to you of course," he filled her cup on the you in his sentence. "But I'm worried I'll fuck it up."

"How could you do that?" she demanded.

He shrugged. "I don't trust anything."

Rory rolled her eyes, and this time embarked on a zealous defense of Jess' own work. He laughed and tried to wave her off - "I'm not looking for a confidence boost" - but she ignored him and built her case anyways.

The wind continued to howl and the night grew later. Occasionally a nurse would pass by, shooting displeased looks at their loud conversation and probably suspicious styrofoam cups. But Rory didn't care. She spun higher, enjoying her wine, enjoying being close to Jess, enjoying not resisting the illicit and risky thoughts that threw her headfirst into those dark waters. The later it got, and the more she felt herself irresistibly drawing closer to him, drowning in those waters, the more she knew she was in trouble. If she was unzipped, she had left her rational half down in the cafeteria.

The wine was empty, the room was dark and quiet, and the conversation slowed, languid, easy. Rory was exhausted and pleased. Something about being in a deserted public space in a winter storm made the whole world seem a little disjointed. And lord knew she was disjointed. She gave up on her thoughts. She let them run free. She watched Jess with abandon and let herself say risky, bantering things that her logical half wouldn't have dared let escape her mouth.

After a while, when it was very late and she was resting her head in her hand, listening quietly, she felt herself becoming drowsy. She rubbed her eyes, trying to shake her sleepiness, but Jess saw it. "Tired?" he assessed.

Rory yawned. "A little bit."

He half-smiled and looked out the window. If he was tired, she couldn't tell.

She felt her eyes closing, her body pulling her gently into sleep. She nodded off again. The room was warm and quiet, as the storm howled.

Without thinking about it, without really caring at all what her unzipped rational side would think, she shifted sideways, curling her legs up underneath her, and let her head rest against Jess' shoulder, her eyes closed. She felt him tense a little bit.

The wind shrieked outside. Time felt liquid. He paused, and then shifted her, moving his arm to wrap it around her shoulders, securing her in place.

She cracked her eyes open, just slightly, and saw his right hand flip open her copy of Anna Karenina. Despite herself, she smiled as she drifted away.

I think that to find out what love is really like, one must first make a mistake and then put it right.

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