Jess closed the door behind him, leaving Rory alone in the lounge. She stood up and went to the bathroom, checking her hair in the mirror, making sure her eyes were not red from the tears earlier in the night. She had a sudden urge to call her mother, but she resisted, knowing how late it was. Jess had been so perfect, even when she had been unreasonable. He hadn't even pushed her to answer his totally reasonable questions. Surely, that meant he would be reasonable about Dean as well?

'Jess, I slept with Dean,' she said to the mirror, and then added, 'I'm so so sorry.'

She meant it in that moment, but thinking about it, it rang false. Why be sorry, really? Her and Jess had been broken up – for almost a year. Jess had left without saying goodbye. They had been over. But Dean, Dean was still there. Even married, he had been there. What could Jess expect, her to do nothing, to wait for him? She was getting angry and she frowned into the mirror, before letting the expression drop. Jess had said none of these things, at least not yet, and there was no point in running through them in her head. What she really had to do was to tell him, whatever his reaction might be, he deserved her honesty – especially after putting her up like this.

She didn't need to apologise to Jess, but she hoped he would understand that it was a mistake, the product of a long, fond history between her and Dean and an error of judgement. She so hoped that he would be reasonable. It was vitally important to her that he thought well of her. Because she loved him. She looked at the mirror and nodded slightly to her own reflection, realising it was true. She loved Jess. Even after all this time, the person she dreamed about most often, the person who took her mind off her tutorials every other day –– was Jess. She didn't think she'd ever really gotten over him, and each time Luke would mention him and what he was up to, Rory's heart would suddenly beat faster and her stomach would fill again with teenage butterflies. And he had written a book! The book!

Rory returned to the couch and pulled her loot from the day out, the novel of Dawn Powell's and Jess' book – or, the book with Jess in it. It was called Semblance, Resemblance. She ran her fingers over the cover, the embossed letters, and then eagerly opened it, her heart doing a small flip when she saw 'Jess Mariano' written on the title page.

Just when she was scouring the table of contents for his name, the door to Jess' room opened and he walked in, looking sheepish.

'Gotta brush my teeth,' he said.

In the crazed second when the door opened, Rory had hidden the book under her backpack, pretending to just be sitting there thoughtfully. But she ended up blushing fiercely, for no good reason.

'You alright?' He asked, probably looking at her redness.

'Yes, fine.'

Jess walked to the bathroom. He was wearing a pair of old trackpants which hung weightlessly from his hips, and a tight-fitting shirt that she recognised. On one of the first times she'd met Jess, he had worn that top, long-sleeved, slightly blue, it hugged the lines of his chest, and it made her blush again now, as it had back then.

'Isn't that the top when you were wearing when Luke pushed you into the lake?' Rory asked, trying to suppress a smile and to distract from her blush.

'Yeah,' Jess barked, 'and it's never been the same since.'

'Looks alright to me,' Rory said, intending the comment to be neutral, but ending up sounding pitchy and nervous.

Jess looked at her:

'Oh yeah?'

Rory shrugged, trying to look nonchalant.

Jess picked up a pink toothbrush, layered on some toothpaste and proceeded to brush away, staring at himself in the mirror. Rory watched this ritual with interest, feeling (somewhat absurdly) like she was getting a secret glimpse into his character. He was a hard brusher. She thought to herself: his gums won't thank him, and this thought was so ridiculous, so completely removed from anything she had been thinking or feeling that she laughed out-loud.

'What?' Jess asked, in a persecuted voice.

'Sorry! It's nothing. I've just never seen you brush your teeth before.'

'Geez, what's that supposed to mean?'

'No, no,' Rory said, grinning, 'it's just funny, watching you.'

'So you're telling me I brush my teeth funny? Damn, Rory, is there anything you don't know how to do better than me?'

'You brush your teeth fine. A little hard, but fine. Well, actually, you're going to waste a lot of money on toothbrushes. And you know, with that toothbrush inflation, that could really turn into a bit of a financial headache.'

Jess raised an eyebrow:

'Anything else.'

'Nope, I'm out.'

'Still don't see what's so funny about it,' he said, half-muffled by foam.

'I've just never seen you do it. It's all very domestic.'

'Get used to it, roomie,' he said.

He spat in the bowl, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and then lent under the sink to drink some water from the tap. He looked at her, accusingly, waiting for her to make some comment. Rory feigned disinterest. He crossed the room and just as he was about to return to his room, Rory said:

'Hold up, Mister. Did you brush your tongue?'

'What–you want me to say Ah?'

Rory shrugged:

'You're alright. This time. But next time, I'll be making sure'

'Glad to have the supervision,' Jess said, and his lips twisted into a smile, 'goodnight, again.'

'Night.'

As soon as the door was closed, Rory retrieved the book from under her bag and started to read.

It was amazing. Only thirty pages, she read it in ten minutes and then immediately read it a second time. She didn't know what to think of it, knowing only that she loved it. It surprised her, but it also felt – in some obscure way – familiarly Jess, recognisably him. She was not sure what she had expected, perhaps something resembling the Beat generation that Jess seemed to read and re-read most thoroughly, but the story seemed deliberately to turn against all the Beat conventions, to acknowledge them and move away. It had their blunt matter-of-factness, but the prose would suddenly rise up and seem to turn into poetry, the sounds of the words flowing together until it felt like she was reading a kind of chant, or a lyric poem. The dialogue was typically Jess. The characters rounded on each other, circling, analysing, holding back, only occasionally throwing out a few neatly-chosen words – like little bombs, and then stepping back to watch the reaction.

But it was the story that moved her most. It was the story of a son going to meet his estranged father for the first time, but after a while it occurred to Rory that it could be autobiographical. It was with this thought in mind that she re-read it, and after a few pages, she was almost in tears again. It was rare that a book moved her so dramatically, and short stories never did, but taking the protagonist's voice for a proxy of Jess' own, every word came into focus, and felt like a confession – all the things that Jess himself had never been able to say out loud, what he'd never confided in her but perhaps had always wanted to. His resentment towards his mother, his alienation from his upbringing, his hopeful, hesitant thoughts of his father, nurtured in secret all these years, which suddenly were tested by his father's belated arrival in his life. His confusion, his regrets. In the story, he left his beloved sister behind to go and see his father, and Rory wondered, hoping she was not being narcissistic, that this sister perhaps alluded also to her. She had a doll's blue eyes, she was smart as a whip. The protagonist, leaving for Oregon on a bus, had watched his sister out the window and felt her eyes boring into him, felt himself splitting in two. Was that how Jess had felt about leaving her?What had he said? It's the biggest regret of my life.

Rory felt her own pulse in her neck, and felt faintly dizzy. She knew, already, what she was about to do, and adrenalin filled her veins – the decision was made. She didn't know whether it was the right one, but she wanted it. She closed the book with trembling hands and stood up. Carefully, she opened the door to Jess' room, the light from the lounge falling in a rectangle over where Jess was asleep on the floor. His eyes twitched in the light, but he didn't wake. His lips were slightly open.

'Jess,' she whispered, entering the room and closing the door behind him.

There was no response, just the rise-and-fall sound of his breathing. Rory felt her way across the room, her heart beating so hard that it filled her head and she wondered if it would wake him up. Her eyes quickly adjusted to the darkness of the room, and out the small window she could see the moon, blue-tinged and large above the city. She lay down behind Jess, the floorboards cold to her touch.

'Jess?' she whispered again, drawing herself closer to him and then, tentatively, putting an arm around his chest from behind. He was warm, firm.

She felt him stir.

'Rory? Are you OK?' he turned his head blearily to look at her.

'I'm fine,' she replied, and seeing his eyes dart down to look at her arm around him, 'I'm good.'

There was a pause, and Rory wondered for a harrowing second whether she'd made a mistake. Then, he raised his hand to hers, his fingers running one-by-one over her own. Rory shivered. They both stared at their hands, their hesitant meeting, as though it would decide something for both of them. Jess slipped his fingers between hers and he smiled. He turned his head to look at her. He was grinning mischievously.

'Are you big-spooning me, Gilmore?'

She laughed.

'So what if I am. This is the 21st century.'

'We'll see about that,' Jess growled, turning over to his side to face her.

They stared at each other for a while, smiling dumbly, their hands still tangled together.

'I wanted this so long,' Jess said.

'Me too.'

They were whispering. Anything louder would have broken something, the delicate contact between them, their hands, their eyes.

'Really?' Jess asked.

'Yes. Ever since you wrote on the margins of my copy of Howl.'

'The secret way into Rory Gilmore's heart – literary vandalism.'

She smiled, and then suddenly Jess leant in to kiss her. Their lips pressed together, just for a second, and Rory felt like she was aware of every part of her body at once. She pulled him closer and Jess responded, curling an arm around her back which pushed their bodies tightly together. They kissed again, less chastely now, less like the teenagers they had been, more like the adults they had become. Rory felt like she would be happy to stay there, tucked into him, forever.

She ran a hand under his clothes, to the skin of his back and felt him breathe in suddenly and then bring her closer still, their lips drawing back and immediately meeting again as though they couldn't bear to be separated. And they couldn't. Jess kissed the line of her jaw and around to her neck, and there he whispered.

'I love you, Rory. You don't need to say anything, but I love you, alright?'

'I love you, too, Jess. Don't you know? I love you too.'

His chest heaved, and Rory thought for a moment that he was about to cry. Instead his face broke into the broadest, most genuine smile she had ever seen on his face. He laughed, happily. There wasn't even a hint of his usual irony, not a shadow of sarcasm. He looked at her like an article of faith, and then he pulled her legs around his hips and (with only a small grunt of effort, Rory noted appreciatively), lifted them both up from the ground, so that they were standing, Rory's back against the wall, and Jess kissed her: her lips, her jaw, her collarbone. Rory felt dazed. She felt like she was in a book, a book she probably wouldn't read.

'Take off those stupid sweatshirts,' Rory said, as he worked on her neck.

Jess pulled back,

'What are you calling stupid?'

Rory shrugged, and, raising her chin commandingly, repeated:

'Off!'

'Yes, ma'am,' Jess said, pulling two of his hoodies off at once to leave only the famous lake-shirt. Rory ran her hands over his chest, from his hips, to his shoulders and then kissed him again.

'You're – uh,' Rory started, unsure what to say, and then gushed, 'you're really really hot.'

'Hot?' Jess laughed.

'I don't know! Handsome? Sexy? What am I meant to say?' Rory protested.

'Hot works,' Jess said, with his twisting smile, and kissed her, 'But you're beautiful, Rory.'

'How come everything sounds better when you say it?' Rory asked, smiling.

'I'm just cooler than you,' he said.

'Right. That's it. Take off that shirt.'

'What, this shirt?' Jess asked, with mock outrage, 'this has a lot of sentimental value, Gilmore.'

'Do it.'

Jess pulled it up over his head, revealing the slim muscular frame of his torso, before the shirt got stuck around his ears.

'You're right. You are cooler, aren't you?' Rory asked, helping him pull it over his head.

Finally, it came off, and she used her hand to flatten his hair.

'Thanks,' he said when she had finished, and he moved in to kiss her again.

'Wait,' Rory said, holding up a hand.

'What?'

'I want to look at you.'

Jess half-smiled, and stood back slightly.

At first, Rory pretended to be appraising him seriously, as one might a piece of art, with an expression of concentration. Soon, though, she forgot the joke and really was staring. She put her hands on his chest, the swell of his pecs, the soft black hairs.

'You're beautiful, Jess,' she said, and this time she didn't feel ridiculous and Jess didn't smile.

They kissed again, and this time Rory was conscious of the moon, its light casting shadow over Jess' body, dappling him with light. His outline seemed to glow. Jess' hands ran down to the buttons of her shirt but again, Rory stopped him. She whispered:

'You're not done yet.'

Jess looked at her questioningly, and Rory put her hands on his hips in answer.

'Really?' He asked.

'Can I still surprise you, Mariano?' she teased.

'Never stopped.'

He pulled down his trackpants and stepped out of them, before kicking them away across the floor. Rory looked at him naked before her, touched him, and then Jess pressed her once more against the wall, kissing her hair, her forehead, his cheeks, her neck – and this time Rory felt not only every part of her body, but every part of his as well – and for the first time in her life, she seemed to stop thinking entirely. The voice in her head, the analytical, cautious woman that lived in her mind, seemed to disappear, and Rory was just there, in her body and a part of everything, moving with Jess towards the bed.