AN: It's been a long time since I've updated this story. (Sorry about that!) Part of the problem was I loved the first chapter so much I was afraid I'd ruin the story if I wrote more. But I've been plugging along with it for years and I think it's finally ready. I hope you like it.
Rory quietly snickered, shaking her head. His response was classic.
"But you couldn't possibly love me," she said simply, keeping her gaze on the dash in front of her. "Do you have any idea how ridiculous it sounds? After a full day of abrupt disappearing acts every time our paths happened to cross? After your monumental disappearing act last year? You never loved me."
She sat still in the near-darkness, stewing over her ever-thickening thoughts. Finally growing angry, she stopped dragging her thumbnail along the lines of the grimy dash and ineffectually pounded on it with a loose fist. Her hand bounced off of it and flopped childishly onto her lap. Raising her voice towards the dash which had just inflicted the second injury to her wrist of the night, she lamented her actions, wishing she hadn't gotten herself tangled again in this web, "This whole thing is ridiculous. And I'm ridiculous. I can't believe I'm sitting in this car with you. You of all people!"
"Look, I didn't ask you to get in the car. You got in on your own." It was vague echo of one of the last things Jess had ever said to her. Her sudden recollection of Kyle's party brought bitter tears to the precipice. Meanwhile, Jess continued, his own voice suddenly harsh and loud, "You're free to get out at any time."
"Excuse me! Why are you mad?" Rory huffed, her voice raising an octave and a decibel more than she'd intended. "If anyone should be mad here, it's me!"
"I told you I loved you and then you yelled at me. Seemed like a good enough reason."
"I didn't yell at you for telling me you loved me!" Rory tried to think back. What exactly had the yelling been about? "I yelled at you for leaving—again! For the bombshell followed by the leaving!"
"Right. It's just a coincidence that the yelling started right after I told you."
She couldn't believe his gall. His words ignited a fire.
"Well it had to start then, didn't it?" She was shouting again, suddenly feeling completely unhinged. And yet, on some level, it occurred to her to feel very proud of how powerful her voice sounded, given the very profound feeling of sadness constricting her throat. "It couldn't have started any sooner! You never gave me the chance!"
Surprise registered on Jess's face (for just a moment before his features hardened again) and the vision of it filled her with the warm, slithery tendrils of evil spite. He needed some sense driven into him. Perhaps miraculously, she managed not to pummel him. Instead, she twisted in her seat to face him head-on, pushing off the dash to assist her in pivoting.
"I didn't even know where you were!" she seethed, leaning forward. "Believe me! If I had've known where you were, we would've had this out a long time ago! If had've known where you were, the yelling would've started a split second after I'd realized what a crappy thing you were doing, just leaving like that! Not even having the courtesy to say, 'Sorry. It's not working out.'
"And on the bus," she continued, "I was still too scared to talk to you, like an idiot, and still clinging to the idea that we weren't over, like a bigger idiot. But if I'd known then that we were over whether I spoke up or not, well then the yelling might've even started right then and there! It was a crappy, crappy thing you were doing!
"But no," she went on bitterly. "I thought we were still together, or that we had a chance to still be together, and I didn't want to rock the boat. So I didn't say anything and I overlooked the fact that it was so weird to find you on a bus to Hartford. I held my tongue, like I always do, tip-toeing around your little egg-shell temper, until it was too late.
"And then, when I realized we were finished, I didn't get the chance to yell at you 'cause I didn't know where you were! You were leaving, heading off to the stupid places you were just dying to go to—without me—and I was here, completely oblivious to the fact that you weren't coming back until after you were already gone!"
Her throat tightened. Blinking desperately, she turned away from Jess's silent stare and hoped her pain hadn't become too visible upon her face. Gone. The word echoed in her mind. Jess had left. He'd taken a good chunk of her self-esteem with him as well. And as he'd done so, he'd left her wondering pointlessly how she could've prevented the decay of their relationship, wondering which things she could've done differently to have made him stay. (Wondering when she'd become the girl who endlessly wondered these things, letting so much of her esteem hinge on having a boy love her.)
But now she was looking back with the benefit of hindsight. She knew now there had been nothing she could have done to make him stay. If a person didn't love you, then there was nothing to cling to, nothing to work on, nothing to fix. And, clearly, he hadn't loved her and... her feelings had just been... ridiculous. Rory vigorously swiped at the corner of her eye and turned her head away from him.
The car was quiet again, once she'd run out of words. She focussed and re-focussed on the darkened dashboard in front of her, two seconds from boring holes into it with her angry, watery eyes. She was shaking, perhaps from the cold, perhaps from something more. She was still trying to process—there was a lot that needed to be said—yet, for once, the words just wouldn't come to her. Into the void of sound was merely a steady stream of angry respiration and her memory of this latest, moronic, pointless diatribe that she was sure he hadn't even really heard anyway. She crossed her arms tighter around her middle and waited impatiently for her next onslaught.
"California, first," he said quietly.
Startled by the sound of his voice, Rory snapped towards him. Her stunned eyes, two lasers sputtering out, followed the confusing and unexpected contours of his solemn expression. She'd expected an angry scowl, a self-righteous grimace, a closed-off wall. She hadn't expected him to speak, let alone offer any unsolicited information. She hadn't expected the sadness so apparent in his eyes.
Jess spoke in a quiet, steady voice. He slouched in the driver's seat and stared at the steering wheel. "My dad lives in Venice Beach…" He blinked for a good long second. While drawing a shaky breath, he reopened his eyes. "You know, in LA?… and I stayed with him for a few months. With him and his family."
Goosebumps made prickly trails along her arms and all she could say was, "Oh."