A/N: Wow. 17 reviews on the first chapter of my wacky AU! You all rock - thank you :) Now, on with the show...

(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)

Chapter 2

Jess sat at the desk, tapping his pencil against the legal pad. Usually he had no problem with English assignments. He didn't always enjoy them, but they'd never been difficult for him. Words were his life. Books were practically his best friends. Any normal day, he could write a thousand words in less time than it took most to write a hundred, but today, it just wasn't happening.

The Summer break was twelve weeks long. Jess had sat down on the first day of his freedom, determined to bust out this essay and be done so he could forget about it. Unfortunately, it hadn't happened that day, or in the days and weeks that followed. Now here he was well into week nine and still nothing.

Miss Stein decided she wanted her upcoming twelfth grade class to write about either their earliest memory or just something meaningful from their childhood. Jess wasn't sure where to begin. He wasn't absolutely certain what his earliest memory was, but he had a feeling it was standing on a cold train station platform, just outside of Minneapolis, listening to his dad yell at some guy for not being able to get them a cab into town at whatever ungodly hour it was.

Jess had another story in mind from when they lived in Maine and Jimmy worked on a lobster boat, but somehow a tale about how much his father stank when he worked that job probably wasn't quite what Miss Stein had in mind. Jess smirked and shook his head. He had to think of something better.

There were plenty of happy stories from his childhood, and a bunch of unhappy ones too. He guessed any of the tales in his mind right now would make a interesting essay, but Jess wasn't exactly the kind to share his personal life with anyone, least of all his English teacher. Plus there was the chance she would make any number of them read their essay aloud to the class. Jess really didn't want to do that.

Throwing down his pencil, he got up and paced his bedroom. There wasn't much room for the pacing between so many piles of books, records and CDs, and that was just the overspill from the shelves that lined three of his walls. If Jess didn't need to have a bed in here, he could easily fill the fourth wall in similar fashion. There was no room for posters like some seventeen year olds would have, no rock bands, no pin ups. Jess had never been that guy. He was Jimmy Mariano's son in more ways than it was possible to count, and his room had looked very much like this ever since they moved into the house when Jess was twelve.

Walking around the room, his finger ran along this shelf and then that one. His mind wandered, but not to where it should. Blue eyes haunted him every time he closed his eyes to do more than blink. Laughter like a bell rang in his ears, and the smile that played at his lips was nothing compared to the one in his mind's eye. Jess would love to show Rory his room, and not at all for the reasons that a teenage boy would usually want to get a girl in such close proximity to their bed. Not that Jess was a stranger to those feelings in the least, but right now, it wasn't his first thought.

Heading back to his desk, he moved around it and hung out of the window, breathing deeply the salty air, letting the sun beat down on his face. He kind of loved this place, even though it was quite literally thousands of miles away from where he thought he belonged.

New York born, but not raised, Jess still couldn't shake the feeling that he ought to be on the east coast, in the grey drizzle, down by the East River, within spitting distance of CBGBs. Amongst the hustle and bustle of the city that never slept, that was where Jess often thought he ought to be. Venice Beach was literally on the other side of the country, just about as far from New York as a person could get without leaving the continental US. It had been home for more than five years now, this particular house for over four. He liked it. Jess would go so far to say as he loved it, if he was the kind to drop four letter words into random conversation, which he was not. Strange to think that Rory lived so close to what ought to be his hometown. The irony wasn't lost on him that she would be the one going home there soon, maybe that same day. It had been three days since they met at the bookstore and though he had been back there on each of the days since, Jess hadn't seen her again. Clearly he was right the first time, assuming she was a one time deal. For all Jess knew, Rory was a figment of his imagination. She may as well had been.

The knock on the door startled Jess from his thoughts.

"Come in," he called without even thinking about it. His eyes were on the view from the window a while longer until he realised Lily was stood in the now open doorway, looking sad. "Hey, munchkin. You okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay," she said, though she was clearly far from it.

"You sure about that?" Jess frowned, turning to face her. "Hey, c'mere," he gestured for her and she ran into his arms for a hug. "What's up, Lil?" he asked, smoothing her hair.

"Beth died," she mumbled into his shoulder.

Jess' eyes closed as he hugged her. He really should've seen this coming.

"I knew she was sick," Lily continued, "and back then they didn't had the medicine they have now. I was pretty sure it was going to happen but still... now she's gone, and everybody is so upset. I don't know how they'll get over it."

He could hear the tears in her voice and dreaded seeing her crying when she pulled away. It always broke him to see the girl who had so easily taken the role of little sister in his life be anything but happy. Jess never thought much about loving people until he met Sasha and Lily, now he didn't know how to do anything but love them like family. They all should've known that Lily, for all her grown up ways sometimes, was just too young to handle Little Women yet. There had a sensitive soul inside of her, and a very big heart.

"Hey, how 'bout we go out and get some pizza for dinner?" he offered, gently wiping a stray tear from her cheek with his hand. "Maybe we could even swing by the bookstore on the way and find you something new. Something happier?"

Lily's smile returned like the sun on a cloudy day. It made Jess smile too.

"That'd be cool," she said happily.

"Go on, go put on your shoes," he urged her, happy to see her happy.

She could run to her mom or Jimmy when she had a problem, and sometimes she did, but Jess was her go to guy for most things and happy to be so. Big brother wasn't a role he ever thought to have as a kid, but now it was one of his favourite things to be. Not that he told anybody stuff like that, not even Lil.

Shoving his pad and pencil in the desk drawer, Jess made sure he had his wallet, keys, and cell before leaving the house. The essay wasn't getting done today, and Jess was hungry, so he may as well go out and get food with Lily. Besides, he could take her to the bookstore, find her something happier to read, as promised, and maybe pick up a new book or two for himself also. There was a vague chance he might run across a familiar face there too. It was unlikely that familiar face would belong to a girl named Rory, but that didn't stop Jess from hoping. He would never admit to that either.

"Who are you looking for?"

Lily had always been a switched on kid. If she were anything else, Jess wasn't sure he could love her quite as easily as he did. Teenage boys rarely buddied up with girls her age, but she was definitely smarter than the average ten year old, and had always been way more observant than she ought to be.

"No-one," he told her, an abject lie and they both knew it - the look on her face spoke volumes. "I thought maybe I'd see someone I met the other day, that's all."

"Is it a girl?" Lily asked, face aglow with wonder.

She liked a good romance, even though she was way too young to know anything about dating. She had read all the fairy tales, the kinds of love stories that were suitable for her age, and a few that probably weren't. Since she was far away from her own dating days, she hoped to live vicariously through Jess and had told him so already. Jess didn't date much, not because he couldn't get a girl to go out with him, moreover because he had met very few girls that he would want to spend that much time with.

"She was female, as far as I could tell," he said, deliberately cryptic and smirking because he couldn't help it, "but she's probably long gone by now."

"Don't say that," Lily argued. "Maybe you're supposed to see her again. Maybe she's your destiny, the one you've been waiting for."

"Maybe you should spend more time looking for a book and less writing me a love story I didn't ask for," he told her, ruffling her hair.

Lily pushed his hand away but she was smiling as she went back to perusing the shelves. Jess checked his watch. They would be out of there in the next ten minutes, then they could hit the pizza parlour and be home by seven, just like he promised Sasha. Even if he had run across Rory here, he wouldn't have had time to really talk to her. Somehow that didn't matter, somehow he was still disappointed.

"This one," Lily suddenly said, pulling on his sleeve when he didn't pay immediate attention. "Please?"

Jess nodded his head, walking up to the counter to buy the book she selected without even really looking at it. His mind was wandering and everything was on automatic until they got outside. Then across the boardwalk he saw her. Lily hadn't noticed, she was too busy talking about her new book and how much she loved Jess for buying it for her, though she was determined to finish Little Women in time. Jess only saw her, the blue eyed girl named Rory. She was not alone this time. Walking and talking with another woman, maybe an older sister or a really young mom. The resemblance was too much to be coincidence, they had to be related. Jess missed the turning to the pizza place and Lilly called to him, looking at him like a science project when he paid attention again.

"What's wrong?" she checked, a smile breaking out on her face in the next moment. "Did you see her? The girl from before?"

She hurried to look in all directions, as if she would know Rory if she did see her, which of course she wouldn't. Jess turned, thinking he may as well point her out, but she was already gone, lost in the crowd.

"C'mon," he told his sister, reaching for her arm and tugging her onward. "Pizza's this way."

She went because pizza was one of her favourite things in the whole world, and Jess knew it. He got her talking about that, ranking the toppings in order of preference and such. It kept her from asking more questions about Rory that he probably couldn't answer anyway.

The romantic in Jess wanted to believe that Lily was right, that this angelic being who knew books as well as he did might be his destiny in some way, but the more practical side was sure that was way too fairy-tale to be true. She would probably be gone by tomorrow and he would never see her again, but then he thought that a few days ago and once again she had crossed his path.

It was weird how she was on his mind so much. No girl ever really caught his attention like that before. Jess had dated, kind of. He had been out with girls, and he had stayed in with girls. Jimmy said the Mariano charm never failed, and Jess had to agree it did come pretty easy to get in the good books of women of any age actually, but it was something rare for a girl to really get his attention, to stick in his head like Rory had these past few days.

"Jess!" Lily called, shoving him enough to make him look.

He shook his head to clear it and gave the guy behind the counter his order.

"You're not going to say anything about Rory in front of the parents, okay, munchkin?" he warned her. "Promise?"

"Promise," she agreed, offering him her pinky finger.

"Thank you," he said seriously as they shook on it in such a ridiculous way.

He couldn't have Jimmy and Sasha asking him about some girl he barely knew, making a big deal when the chances were he would never see her again. Jess really hoped he was wrong about that, and yet, he didn't really know what he was going to do if he was.

To Be Continued...