Jess could feel the question in the air before Chris asked it. It was impatient, and irksome, and Jess savoured all the time he had before Chris finally spoke the words aloud. He closed his eyes, relishing the sounds of the stereo, the sounds of the rumbling tyres on the uneven road surface.

Inevitably, of course, Chris huffed. Jess opened his eyes, and sighed, silently saying goodbye to his last, non-irate moments in the car. "What?" he asked, resigning himself to the fact that this was happening.

Chris steamed a little longer, before saying, "If I ask, you're going to tell me nothing, right?"

"Right," Jess answered easily, drawling.

Chris shook his head at him. "Can you at least tell me if this was a positive meeting, or did you spend the night in someone else's apartment?"

"I'm glad you view me as the playboy of the group," Jess replied, drawling again. Honestly, the question was rather ridiculous.

"Jess, hell, give me something."

Jess rolled his eyes, turning slightly to the man in the drivers' seat. "Why does it matter to you?"

"Because it's important," Chris said, shooting him a look. He was serious. And, annoyingly, he was of course right. It was important. Jess just could never be comfortable with people knowing too much about him – he liked being aloof, because it protected him … pretending not to care when he really cared was Jess' speciality. He couldn't just let go of that.

Jess shrugged, playing it off as nothing. Chris rolled his eyes, knowing his game.

"You don't need to pour your heart or anything, Mariano. I just want to know if you're okay." Chris was genuine, Jess knew. He grimaced.

"Sort of half-and-half."

"Care to elaborate on that a little?" Chris asked gently.

"Not really, Christopher. Thanks," Jess bit, turning in his seat and leaning his knee on the glove-box, folding his arms over himself.

"Is she okay?" Chris asked, and Jess squeezed his eyes shut, knowing the answer all too well.

"No, I don't think she is."

"And that's making you not okay, huh?"

Jess glared at him some. "Stop talking to me like I'm four years old."

"Well, to be fair …" Chris joked, smirking at him, before turning his attention back to the road. "C'mon, man. I'm just trying to understand this whole thing. I get that she's important. I get that you love her. I just don't understand why you willingly destroy yourself over and over for her."

Jess stared at his knee for a while, picking at the fabric with his nail. "It's … not that I destroy myself for her. It's that I'd be nothing without her. Everything I am is thanks to her."

Chris' brows had pulled down in consternation. "That's not true, Jess."

Jess shook his head, closing his eyes. "It is, Chris. I swear."

"That's … unhealthy, thinking that way."

"Maybe," Jess agreed. "But it's how I think."

Chris sighed, shaking his head, changing his grip on the steering wheel of Jess' car. "Can you tell me one more thing?" Chris asked, glancing at his friend in the neighbouring seat. Jess stayed quiet, waiting. "She doesn't think that way, does she?"

Jess laughed once, shaking his head. "She always told me when we were kids that I could do more … that if I just tried at something, that I could do it. I didn't believe that for a long time. I always thought I was just this fucked up jerk. But she always believed that there was more to me. That I was capable of anything if I wanted it. Then she made me want to want something. Want to do more. Want to be better. So … well, I wrote." Jess paused for a second, before continuing. "Without her, god knows what would have happened to my life … I'd probably have worked in Walmart the rest of my days."

"You worked in Walmart?" Chris asked incredulously, laughing.

"That's what you took from that monologue? That's telling," Jess muttered.

"You are the least 'Walmart' person I know. Seriously. That's hilarious," Chris tittered, ignoring his snide comment. Jess rolled his eyes. It was an old joke. Luke had teased him in every way possible about it. He eventually settled, still slightly teasing. "I'm glad you realised eventually that you were awesome, Jess. With and without the little blue vest."

Jess laughed, shaking his head at his friend. "You're an ass."

-break-

Jess didn't hear from Rory for a while after that. He texted her the night after they'd seen each other and fallen asleep …

It was strange that after all this time, something so normal could happen, like that. She fell asleep on his chest. He just … he couldn't feel that it had happened as he looked down where her head had been. When they weren't together, she just felt so far from him. He wondered if it was the same for her. That that night seemed like a story that someone else had written, rather than one he'd actively participated in. He asked her to hug him. He wrapped his arms around her. He'd smelled the soft scent of her hair – god, that smell was like rapture.

He rolled his eyes at the thought. She hadn't answered his text. He thought they'd left things on good terms, but of course he'd been mistaken.

Instead of focussing on it, he threw himself into his work. He'd started another book – one he was almost positive wasn't good enough to publish, because he really wasn't in the place he wanted to be to write his third book. He wanted progression from his writing – a definite timeline with every book he wrote. He wanted to feel better with every time he published something – from his low point with The Subsect, right up to his best self. He wrote to improve, otherwise there was no point in writing. It was basically therapy.

The prose he was writing now, it was self-serving. It wasn't a story-telling as such, rather a cross-section of his life. It wasn't about Rory – and that was why he hated it.

-break-

A few more weeks passed, and Jess' life became too busy to think much of Rory. Things were moving quickly with Truncheon's move to New York, and training his replacements took up a lot of his time. There were two new graduates from the English Literature degree from the University of Pennsylvania – Freya and Richie. Freya, a young, very blonde, mousey sort of girl, who spoke incredibly softly was probably the most passionate person for poetry, even more so than Matt, and had tears in her eyes whenever she caught sight of a Neruda book. Richie was probably the exact opposite of Freya. He was bold and loud, and thought himself quite the comedian. He loved the comedic prose of Hunter S. Thompson and the ilk. The were really like yin and yang, and were already firm friends, having taken their degree together. The third employee was a high school drop-out, like himself. Sometimes Jess felt like Chris and Matt liked to employ people like him like it was some sort of outreach programme. Because not only was she a drop-out, she was also a runaway.

Her name was Lia. She was Italian-American, from Chicago. She was sarcastic, cutting and reminded Jess a little too much of himself. She irritated him. He was glad he was moving to New York.

"You're glaring at her again."

Jess' face twisted a little in admittance and looked down at his book, before turning his rueful gaze on both Chris and Matt, who were watching him. "I don't like her," he said, artlessly.

Chris rolled his eyes, while Matt narrowed his. "She's you," he whispered as she skimmed by, grabbing another box from the storeroom silently.

"Exactly."

"Are you sure," Chris said when she was safely back across the room, "that what you're feeling isn't attraction?"

Jess' face screwed up in incredulity. "What am I, twelve? I know when I'm attracted to someone, jackass."

"She's hot," Chris mentioned, smirking a bit.

"Too hot," Matt added, frowning.

Jess scoffed. "You don't even know her."

It was Chris' turn to be incredulous. "And you do?"

"No. But I'd have to to know whether or not I find her attractive. Hotness is moot."

Matt was laughing. "That's very progressive of you and everything, but … I really don't believe you. I think you know she's hot. And I think you're trying to reject it."

Jess inhaled deeply, wishing for strength. "She's our employee. If all you're going to do is objectify her, you should fire her, then ask her out. Then re-evaluate your role in the patriarchy." Matt's face twisted, guilty. Jess shook his head at him.

In honesty, yes, she was a very beautiful woman, and Jess found her aesthetically passable. She was clever, and a talented artist. But she had the worst attitude ever, and that made everything else about her ugly. It was likely, of course, that Lia had adopted this attitude as a defence mechanism, much like he had as a teenager, but he didn't care enough, really, so make this discernment. Matt sighed. "She wouldn't go out with me, anyway," and left Jess to read at the counter, Chris already helping a customer. After a few moments of being lost back in the John Niven novel he was reading, he felt eyes on him. He glanced up, and there she was, leaning on the counter in front of him.

Jess ignored her for a few more minutes, his eyes returning to the pages of his book, before he gave in, sighing. "Shouldn't you be restocking?" he asked, annoyed.

Her fiery dark eyes turned on him, and she smirked. "There's too many of us. We finished." Jess huffed a little, shifting in his seat and moving his book up to part the two of them, finished with her.

She laughed acerbically. "You don't like me, huh?" She scrunched her short, dark hair a little while he turned his gaze back to her.

"You're stand-offish. Isn't that the point in being that way? To have people dislike you?" he answered defensively.

"Touché." She was still smirking. She stayed quiet, remaining beside him. After a few more minutes, she spoke again. "I heard you before."

"Heard what?" Jess asked boredly, training his eyes on the novel in front of him.

"'Re-evaluate your role in the patriarchy'. Well put."

Jess turned his eyes on her again. "Matt likes you. Don't make him suffer."

She started laughing with real humour, which made Jess' eyebrows to raise. "You don't even know me. Why are you being so judgemental?"

"I'm not," Jess told her. "I know people like you, is all."

"Meaning?" Lia laughed, leaning on her elbows across from Jess, her eyes fixing onto his intensely.

"Meaning when I was your age, I acted like this. Sardonic. It's irritating."

"So it's not exactly irritation at me, as it is irritation at your past self? That's fucked up," she grinned. "I like it."

"Well – don't."

She laughed again, watching him closely. "You're very interesting, Jess. Anyone ever tell you that?"

"Nope," he stated, brushing her interest off.

She was quiet for a while longer, her green eyes sweeping the tabletop a few times, blinking, before saying, "You know as well as anyone that the way I behave is an act, then."

Jess closed his eyes in annoyance, finally shutting his book and placing it on the counter. "I know as well as anyone that it's stupid. It doesn't get you anywhere – seriously."

She smiled bitterly, before fixing him with a penetrative stare. "Who says there's anywhere I want to be?"

Insufferable woman. Jess clenched his teeth. He closed his eyes to avoid rolling them at her, running a hand through his hair to make it all stand on end. He sounded like this – when he was seventeen and living in Stars Hollow, this is what he sounded like to people. No wonder they hated him. That whiny, 'no-one understands me', Kurt Cobain-y …

He laughed to himself when he heard Rory's words from an age ago – a car crash ago … "You could do more." Lia had obviously never met anyone like Rory. No-one she wanted to be a better, more together person for. No-one she wanted to prove right.

"What?" she snapped, and Jess opened his eyes to look at her in a new light. Her eyebrows were drawn together in annoyance.

"Nothing," he said, shaking his head, trying to piece together the glints of that conversation before the crash again. Rory had mocked him, his self-depreciation. Believed in him without question. How time had changed things.

Lia rolled her eyes and left him at the counter, weaving gracefully between customers to the back, not making eye contact with anyone.

-break-

A few weeks later, and it seemed to Jess as though the new recruits would work out. Richie was helping Matt with the Poetry Slams and open mic nights that always stressed him out so much, so Richie's comedic view made the whole process a lot more enjoyable for them all. Freya was coming out of her shell, and had taken over the Philadelphia e-'zine from Chris, and he was planning to start another from the New York store.

And Lia was still Lia.

It was all falling into place, and as his and Chris' leaving date grew nearer, they knew they'd be leaving the place in good hands.

It was his books (understandably) that was taking the time to pack up, as Jess didn't have much else by way of possessions. The books and his CDs were barely able to fit in his car, and he'd had to borrow some room from Chris so as to not overload. It was a sorry, and by and large, proud moment in Jess' life.

"You read too much," Chris told him as he hauled yet another box of books into the back seat of his car.

Jess smirked, leaning on his Equinox with his arms crossed over his chest. "What is 'much'?"

Chris huffed, rolling his eyes at his friend, shutting the door to his own car and leaning against it, too, facing Jess. "Ready to go back to living in the Big Apple?"

Jess snorted, then started laughing. "Okay, from that I guess that the people who live there don't call it that?" Chris smirked, before starting to laugh too.

"They do not, no. You'll get accustomed eventually."

Chris nodded, smiling, before looking up at Truncheon. "We did good here, huh?"

Chris was being sentimental, and if he were honest, Jess felt a little sentimental, too. "Yeah, we did. I owe you guys big for giving me a chance to be part of it."

Chris laughed a little, "Jess, your books are the reason we have enough money to branch out."

Jess cocked his eyebrow. "Yeah, right. It was nothing to do with all the extra work we've been putting into the Open Houses and Open Mics."

"It's a lot thanks to you, Jess. Take the credit if it's given," he smirked. Jess bit his lip, trying not to laugh at that. "We'll do good in New York, too, I think."

"Yeah, I think so, too." They both smiled as they looked up at the sign to Truncheon, before Jess broke the moment, saying, "We better go and … do the goodbye bit." Chris nodded, before making for the door. Jess, following him, said "What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies."

Chris turned and shot him a look of confusion mixed with amusement. Jess shrugged and said, "It's from On the Road."

Chris shook his head, laughing and saying, "You read way too much, man."

-break-

A/N: Is there any point in apologising for how long this one took? Anyone who's been following this story knows how God-awful I am at updating. For what little it's worth, I am sorry. I don't even have a real excuse except lack of inspiration and lack of motivation. I promise to try harder, guys …

Thank you for your continued interest – I sincerely hope I still have that.

xx