A/N: I'm sorry to anyone who got a notification yesterday, or perhaps even read the Chapter Four that was here for a few hours. I decided that I wanted to take the story in a different direction, and thus, have revised my previous Chapter Four into this. Hope you enjoy it.
By some stroke of luck, summer had come and gone without incident. She and Lane had avoided the entire town's eyes and ears on their constant coverings for Rory's trips out to New York and Hartford to meet Jess. The tradition was always the same. Rory would slip out of the window in her room if she heard her mother was in the kitchen, or if she was still awake during the night, and she would slip out the back door if her mother was in a different part of the house.
Occasionally she'd be seen by Babette going out the back door, and every so often she'd meet her mother on the way out of the house, but the suspicions had never actually bloomed into anything solid. Her luck had run out last week when Babette caught her sneaking out of the window and, unknown to Rory, told her mother. So when the clock struck ten that evening and she heard her mother in the house, she'd taken off out the window only to find her mom waiting for her on the porch.
That had been over half an hour ago, and since then, the silence in the kitchen had been numbing. She'd been half-catatonic with her guilt the entire time, but her mother didn't seem to want to break the silence. Rory was on a different wavelength, though, and after so many silent moments with Jess, decided that she didn't want to have the same silence with her mother.
"Mom, I-," Rory started, but she was cut off quickly by her mother, with a sharp hand in her direction.
"No, don't. Is this what's been going on? Is this why I haven't been seeing you at all lately?" Lorelei asked, although she knew the answer to both the questions.
"Mom, I'm sorry, but-," Rory attempted to begin again, but she was cut off with, yet another, shushing motion.
"Stop it! Rory, are you at least using protection?" Lorelei demanded, and from the sound of it, getting the complete wrong idea.
"Huh?" Rory asked, stunned and confused.
"You and Dean?" she asked, as though it should have been completely obvious.
"Wait, you think that I'm…?" Rory asked, thinking about the situation and biting her lip a little bit.
"Well, aren't you?" Lorelei demanded, and Rory looked away, pondering the accusation.
"We've been careful," Rory said, almost unable to say the words. In a way, it was unbelievable that she was continuing to tell lies, and now she was implicating Dean in the process.
"I can't believe you didn't tell me!" Lorelei shouted at her, and Rory cringed away from her, hurt showing on her face.
"I'm sorry…" she said, more tears falling down her face.
"How long has it been going on?" Lorelei demanded again, towering over her sitting daughter.
"I-I don't remember," Rory replied, wiping the tears forcefully from her eyes.
"What do you mean you don't remember?" Lorelei asked, standing in front of her with her hands on her hips.
"I don't remember… it wasn't as though I wrote it down," she muttered, suddenly feeling that rebellious streak that had been growing since she'd started seeing Jess.
"Wrote it down?! Rory, this is supposed to be the most magical moment of your life!" Lorelei stated, almost yelled.
"I'm leaving," Rory told her, standing up and storming over to the door.
"No you're not, we're not finished yet!" Lorelei shouted, rushing after her daughter to the door.
"Unless you're planning on hurting me, I'm not staying. It's none of your business what I do with… Dean," Rory said, the strong voice at the beginning dwindling off when it came to her declaration of independence involving 'Dean'.
"Yes it is my business. You're not even eighteen, Rory! You have so much ahead of you, getting pregnant is going to ruin everything we've worked for! Please, don't be me. I made those mistakes so that you wouldn't," Lorelei begged.
"If you want me to open up to you... mom then leave me alone," Rory hissed, opening the door and slamming it on her way out.
After she got outside and heard the slamming of the door, she froze. What the hell was she doing? Shaking her head, she stepped down the porch and started running. Tears were streaming down her face and she was desperately attempting to keep pushing herself until she got to the bus station.
When she finally sat down, she put her face in her hands and just cried for a good ten minutes. She'd never really gotten in a fight with her mother, or at least not like this. She'd have to tell her soon… but that would hurt her so much; especially now after what her mother thought that she'd been doing for the past few months.
"Hey, Rory," said a voice to her left. The voice made every muscle in her body tense up, as she was unprepared for the confrontation that would come with his arrival.
"Dean… hi," Rory said, her voice still clogged with tears. She glanced up at him for a second and then diverted her eyes back to the ground.
"Are you okay?" he asked, sitting down beside her. He put a hand on her back, and even the hand made her want to run away. Still, to preserve some sort of normalcy within their relationship, she allowed him to do it.
"Yeah, I just got in a little bit of a fight with my mom," she said, closing her eyes and thinking about the fight itself. There were only a few words exchanged, but she felt as though she should start packing her bags.
"What's happened?" he asked her, and she suddenly realized how awkward this was.
"Nothing, it's nothing," she said, pulling, yet another, 'Jess'.
"Come on, Rory, it can't be nothing if you two were fighting about it," he said, shaking his head and pulling his hand back. He clasped them in front of him and looked over at her from beneath his hair. Looking at him, she realized that she was missing seeing eyes without hair blocking them. In fact, she was missing gelled hair to run her hands through and missed kissing the lips beneath the hair, maybe that's why she was taking the late-night bus into New York to see him. After all, if she really needed someone to talk to, she could have just gone to Lane.
"Rory?" Dean asked, hoping to capture her attention again.
"Huh?" she asked, realizing that she'd completely spaced out.
"What's going on? I haven't seen you at all this summer, and you've been fighting with everyone. No one sees you anymore. You're always in Hartford at prayer rallies and meeting with school friends. You don't spend any time with your 'boyfriend' anymore," he told her, frustration obvious in every movement.
Despite herself, she couldn't help but smile at his comment. The tears ruined the look so she turned away from him, thinking that he probably wouldn't understand her grinning at his blatant attempt to tell her that she'd been negligent.
"I'm sorry, Dean… it's just, these things are important to Lane, and I don't want to hurt her," she said. She'd been getting so good at these lies that the sincerity in her voice almost sounded real and she, herself, could barely tell that she was lying.
"Rory, what about me? What about us?" he asked her, confusion and desperation on his face.
"Tomorrow, we can spend the day together tomorrow, okay?" she asked, attempting to appease him.
"Are you sure you don't have another prayer rally or paper meeting to go to?" he asked her, his voice taunting and hurt.
"Look, I know that I've been gone a lot lately, but… I'm going to stay home this week. School's starting next week so I'll stay and we can go out all week, okay?" she half-begged him, not sure why she was trying so hard to keep the relationship alive. Fortunately for her reasoning skills, the bus came around the corner. She stood up and smiled down at Dean.
"Alright," he said, standing up a few seconds after her, when she smiled at him.
When the bus arrived, Rory saw that it was her favorite bus driver. She was getting to know them fairly well thanks to her late night and early morning trips. There were only a few different bus drivers who actually took those routes. That meant that she knew them all by name.
"Hey, Rory, who's this?" said the man, looking at Dean curiously. He was frowning a little bit, as though attempting to connect this guy to Jess, who he'd been accustomed to see her making out with at regular intervals.
"Uh… this is Dean, he's my boyfriend," she said, hopping into the bus and paying the fee.
"Boyfriend, but what about-," he began but she turned back to him and put a finger across her lips.
"What about what?" Dean asked.
"Nothing," Rory said, turning back to him with a smile, which she hoped looked sincere enough and gave him a kiss on the cheek. "Bye!"
She then turned back to the bus driver, who gave her a look that said he didn't approve, before nodding at Dean and closing the door. Rory didn't move back to the bus, where she normally perched, but looked at the bus driver in hopes of explaining.
"Are you alright?" he asked her, noting the tears streaking down her face.
"Look, that probably looked really bad, but Jess and I are… we're close. Dean… he's just there so my mother doesn't ask," she said, guiltily wringing her hands and tugging on her skirt, which was short again.
"Your mother doesn't know?" he bus driver asked, frowning at her out of the corner of his eye.
"I want Jess, but she doesn't," she said, leaning back against the railing and crossing her arms across her chest so that she'd stop fidgeting.
"Ah, so it's a family feud, is that why…?" he asked, motioning with one of his hands to his face, as though to show tears.
"Yeah… she saw me sneaking out," she told him, her voice almost dead.
"Sneaking?" he asked, raising an eyebrow. "You don't look like the type of girl to be sneaking…"
"I wouldn't be, but I don't want her to find out… because then I won't be allowed to see him… and I… I love him," she said, the last part was very, very quiet.
"Lying is no way to get through life, Rory. That's how I ended up breaking it off with my wife… You should tell them," he said with a look.
"Yeah, I know… can I have your manual?" she asked him, and he handed her his bus manual at the next bus stop, and the conversation was officially over.
The words were constantly getting blurred by tears that kept gathering in her eyes. She was brushing them away as quickly as she could, but they weren't behaving. With a sigh, she closed the book and took to staring out the window. By the time she reached New York, she was happy just to get out of the repressive silence that had been the ride. Maybe with Jess she'd be able to forget about the terrible day she'd had.
An hour ago, Jess probably would have been right there to catch her when she got off, but she was very, very late. Sighing, she moved carefully into the streets. She looked around, hoping to avoid the low-lives of New York. Out of the corner of her eye, she noticed a shadow moving around the building. Freaking out a little bit, she ran down the nearest subway stairs, catching the emptiest train she could find to Washington Square Park.
She glanced nervously around the train, making sure no one was coming towards her. The coast appeared to be clear. Despite her apparent 'safety', her breathing was still irregular and her hands kept on attempting to pull her short skirt down and tugging her shirt up. The clothes had been worn in the event of her and Jess going to a party, which would probably be a completely ruined plan now.
The second that she reached the stop, she got out of the train and looked around. Making sure that no one was around. The coast appeared clear, so she walked very, very quickly to the stairs entering the city. She forgot her jacket in the fight with her mother, so the cold air hit her harder than she was expecting. Self consciously, she wrapped her arms around her waist and quickened her pace again.
She knew how to spot Jess's place from miles around. It had gotten easier every time she'd accidentally come an hour early and had to find her own way to his house. Now, however, her body was on autopilot as her mind was scanning every shadow and second-guessing every noise. Turning a corner, she saw Jess's building and took the last stretch at a run. When she got inside, she saw another shadow just outside the door and bolted to the stairs. For the first five floors she continued her pace, running as fast as she possibly could.
After she finally discovered that there was no one there, she sighed, angry with herself, and stormed up the last ten stories. At the fifteenth floor, she realized that she wasn't panting anymore. The constant walking up and down had gotten her body into shape, and she was grateful for it. The heels that she'd taken to wearing also helped with her balance. In the past two months, she'd come to understand why Jess was as strong as he was.
Walking the last few steps to Jess's apartment, she sighed and reached out a hand hesitantly. Her hand hovered inches away from the door and she bit her lip again. Finally she gained up her courage and knocked. There was shouting from inside and the sound of something being shoved against a wall. She frowned and backed up a few paces as she felt the vibrations of something moving to the door. It was yanked open by a fairly large, very drunk man.
"Who the hell are you?" he asked, eyeing her and leering.
"Uh… is Jess here?" she asked him, looking past the man and attempting to find her boyfriend.
"Jess? What the hell are you doing with Jess, Sweetheart?" he asked her, frowning as though she'd just insulted his manliness.
The word, "Move," was spoken before the large man was shoved aside. Jess stood behind him with an ice pack to his head, which was bleeding. When she saw him, she forgot all about the big man and had went directly into 'concerned girlfriend' mode, checking to make sure that the injury, or injuries, weren't too bad.
"No time," he told her, then grabbed her hand and started running down the hallway.
"What's going on?" she asked, not used to having to run away from things. Normally Jess took fights whenever he could get them, and she'd just gotten used to it.
"I'll tell you in a minute, save your breath," he told her as he yanked her into the stairwell.
Seconds after their departure, she could hear footsteps thundering down the stairs. It meant that, whoever that guy was, he was giving chase. Rory was scared, she didn't know if she needed to be, but she could feel the fear pouring off of Jess and it scared her too.
When they hit the bottom floor, which Rory was immensely glad about, Jess didn't stop. Somewhere along the way he'd lost his ice pack, but he kept running all the way into the streets and down to Washington Square Park. Once there, he pulled them both under some bushes and waited, occasionally looking over his shoulder.
"Jess?" she asked in a whisper.
"He's my step-dad," he told her under his breath, and looked over his shoulder again, as if just talking about him would bring him to them.
"I didn't know you had one," she said, and it occurred to her that she didn't really know anything about him. The only thing that he'd let out in the past few months was that he lived with his mother and that her name was Liz.
"He's not exactly someone I brag about," he told her with a shrug as he pulled out a cigarette and flicked it between his fingers.
"That's not going to help," she told him, glaring at the smoke. He knew that she didn't like it, and normally he wouldn't have even pulled one out in front of her, but it was obvious he was under stress.
"It'll help just fine," he told her, half glaring at her himself as he lit it up and took a drag then threw it out again. "No, your right, it's not going to help." At first she was a bit stunned by his admission, until she noticed the hulking man coming directly towards them. He'd seen the smoke randomly rising from a bush.
"Jess?" she whispered to him, but he just grabbed her hand and watched the man continue to come closer. When it was obvious that they'd been spotted, he stood up. Rory followed him, a little slower and more cautious.
"Go back home, Brent. We don't want you here," Jess hissed at him, and let her hand go. There was a slight tremor to his body, but other than that, no way to tell that he wasn't completely confident in his claims.
"Yeah, right, that's why your mother keeps bringing me back all the time, huh?" 'Brent' demanded and laughed a little bit.
"She takes you back because you beat her if she doesn't, and she keeps you because you'll kill her if she tells you to go to hell. I don't think that you can kill me, so 'Fuck off'," Jess stated, his voice even and his body ready for the attack that was, almost unquestionably, headed his way.
Naturally, the man was not happy at being told these nasty words, so he lunged. Jess was ready for it and, thanks to his smaller size, ducked out of the way of the lunge. One of his arms wrapped around the guy's waist, making sure that he wasn't getting away that easily, and the other one proceeded to punch him in the head multiple times.
Rory had seen Jess fight, but she'd never seen him fight someone when it was actually dangerous. Mostly of the time it had just been defending her 'honor' when someone would mistake her for a prostitute, which had happened quite often thanks to her clothes. This fight, however, was stunning. She backed up after the first hit was thrown and her back hit a tree a few meters away. Watching in silence, she observed Jess as he took the man, who was almost a full foot taller than him, down to the ground and beat him senseless.
"Let's go," he told her, grabbing her hand and running, this time back to the apartment. "I have to check on Liz, and then we can go."
"Where?" she asked him, wondering if they were still going to go to that party.
"Somewhere, anywhere. Just, away from here," he told her as they got to the building. He swung open the doors and ran to the stairwell. By this time, the run up the stairs was tiring. Her body was exhausted. It had already run these stairs twice and the adrenaline leaving her system told her that it didn't want to run them again.
"Okay," she told him at his declaration, even though it sounded crazy. Could she actually do that? Uproot herself and just… leave with him?
She didn't really get to think about it, though, as he kept running until he got to the apartment. His mother was crumpled on the ground, but she was still conscious, attempting to get to the door.
"Jess?" she asked when she saw him come in, and gave Rory a look.
"Liz? Are you okay?" Jess asked, letting go of Rory's hand so he could crouch beside his mother.
"Where's Brent? What the hell did you do to Brent?" his mother demanded, tears of anger rolling down her cheeks.
"Nothing, Liz… he attacked me, so I defended myself," Jess told her, but his voice was dead, no emotion what so ever.
"Bullshit, he didn't attack you. You attacked him, you always attack them!" she accused as she attempted to get to her feet.
"Yeah, that's exactly what I did," Jess said in a bare whisper, before turning and starting outside again.
Rory didn't bother to ask questions, she just followed him as he walked down the stairs, very slowly. She grabbed his hand to comfort him and he looked over at her with eyes that she didn't really like. They were eyes that were attempting to hide everything that had happened today, eyes that didn't want to tell anyone anything, because it just hurt too much.
"It's okay, Jess," she told him, attempting a smile.
"How can you say that?" he asked her, shaking his head. "That's my mother in there, Rory, my 'mother'."
"I know," she admitted and looked down to the ground, keeping a firm hold of his hand. "But your mother doesn't always know what's best."
"Yeah, I know that from experience," he muttered, more to himself than to her.
"How long has… he been around?" she asked.
"Brent? Usually she dates them at least three months before she marries them," he said with a shrug. "I think he's been around about five, one of the longer lasting relationships."
"Oh," Rory replied. She could hear the waves of bitterness pouring off of him, and she realized that she would have never heard about this if she hadn't actually seen it with her own eyes. "Hey Jess?"
"Yeah?" he asked her, looking at her from beneath his hair, which was still firmly gelled into place. She'd seen him gel his hair once, it was a very, very long process.
"Take me to your school," she requested, although her voice didn't really leave much for argument.
"Okay," he said with a nod, and when they hit the bottom floor, he started walking in the opposite direction from Washington Square Park.
He didn't catch the subway, although she noted that they easily could have, to get to their destination. Instead, they walked a full half an hour, until it was almost three in the morning, and got there as most of the junkies had already cleared out, or passed out.
"This is it," he told her, showing her a campus that looked like it had seen better days. It was much like all the schools that she'd heard about in the papers, but never really believed existed. It was more of a prison than a school. The entire area was fenced in, there was almost no room at all to wonder around, and a sign on the gate stated that it was a closed campus, and that anyone wanting to get had to sign into the office.
"Wow," Rory breathed, not quite sure what to make of it all. Why was Jess going to a school like this when he was so smart?
"Yeah… there're metal detectors just inside and they run you up and down with a wand before you get into class. Some kid always gets shot, every year, so they keep upping security," he told her, looking from his school to her and then back again.
"It's so…" she began, trying to find the right words.
"Trashy?" he suggested with a shrug, and laced his fingers into the fence surrounding the property.
"…not you," she finished, finally looking from the school back to him again.
"I've gone here all my life," he told her with another shrug, and leaned his shoulder against the fence. He pulled her against him and she smiled up at him, although there was a touch of sadness around the corners. Going here probably explained how he learnt all the tricks he did, including how to take on guys who were almost twice his size.
"Do you fight a lot in school?" she asked him, leaning against him and wrapping her arms around his waist.
"Only when I need to," he told her as he wrapped his arms around her upper back.
"Hmm," Rory replied and kissed him. The kiss was something that she'd never really had with him before, not passionate, but sweet, warm. She hesitated to even think it, but it was almost loving. The kiss was saying what neither of them would dare.
"Come on, let's get out of here," he told her when they broke the kiss, and he led her away from his school.
"Where?" she asked him again. The one thing that she noticed set them apart most was their inclination of direction. She knew where she was going at all times, but he seemed like he was still trying to find himself. He never knew exactly where he was going, like there was a plan, but there were just too many ways to go about it.
"Let's go to Hartford, get out of this hellhole," he suggested, actually coming up with a place to go. It was more than he'd done on almost all of their other interactions.
"Okay," she said with a smile and they started off towards the bus depot. It was a lot nearer thanks to their half an hour of walking. Normally she would have to take the subway to get there, but Jess knew shorter ways on foot. He didn't seem to want to take the subway.
"Now we wait," he muttered, checking the times and seeing that the next bus didn't come for another hour or at least a bus that was headed to Connecticut. Somewhere in her mind she wondered if her mother was worried about her, but it was a fleeting thought. Jess was here, and he'd already proved that he wasn't going to let anyone hurt her.
"Is your mom going to be alright?" she asked him curiously, wondering about the blond-haired woman they'd seen at his apartment.
"Yeah, she'll be fine," he said, sitting down on one of the benches that were provided.
"I want you to tell me about your life," she told him, sitting down beside him and taking his hand.
"There's not much to tell. I was born, here in New York, and we already lived in the apartment. When I was a few months old, my dad left me and Liz alone. My uncle came to help, but he went back to wherever the hell he's from before I could even walk. Then I went to school," he said with a shrug, and leaned back in his bench.
"What about your mom's boyfriends?" she asked, hesitating with the question.
"Most of them aren't as bad as Brent. Normally they're just drunks, or druggies, and they get her into it, and then they leave her and she goes into withdrawal for a few weeks, promises not to do it again and then finds another one," he told her. If she would have asked him a year ago, she probably would have gotten a more impassioned answer, but this one was just a story. It was just something that happened. There was nothing to be done about it.
"You have an uncle?" she asked him.
"Yeah, but I don't even know what his name is," Jess answered. There was an edge to his voice, one that was telling her to be careful where she stepped because he wasn't up to answering questions all night.
"Alright," she said, stopping her questioning in favor of not getting on his bad side. He'd had a bad night, she could pester him when he didn't have a goose-egg on the back of his neck, or dried blood on the side of his face.
She gave him a smile as she leaned against him, feeling at home when she was with him. One of his arms wrapped around her and she knew that she would be safe, nothing would happen to her when she was with him. With those thoughts, she closed her eyes, happy to be able to just relax with someone, it didn't happen very often. Normally she felt the tensions of having to talk, to make conversation, or to act a certain way, but there was none of that with Jess. You didn't have to talk if you didn't want to, you could dress however you wanted to, and you could do whatever you pleased. Being with him made her feel free from everything, from life, from obligation, it was as though the strings that attached her to the world were gone. It was a dangerous thought and she knew it, but she loved it.
"Rory?" Jess asked, nudging her a little bit. She'd fallen asleep on the bench.
"Huh?" she asked, blinking a little bit and looking around.
"You fell asleep. The bus is here," he told her, smirking.
"Oh, right," she said, but she really didn't feel like moving. Sometime during the past hour, she'd crawled onto his lap and he was holding her tightly against him.
"Don't want to stand up?" he asked her, then proceeded to pick her up and carry her into the bus. The driver smiled at them, although there was still a look to his eyes that told her to be careful.
"Good evening Rory, Jess," the driver said, nodding at them. They were his normal customers at this hour. Not many others would be catching the buses at four in the morning.
"Hey, I'll pay you when we get off, alright?" Jess asked, taking Rory to the back of the bus when the driver nodded his head. He knew that Jess was good for the money, and the look in his eye said that the moment was too amusing to break.
Once they got to the back, Jess sat her back on his lap and wrapped her in his arms again.
"You can go back to sleep, if you want," he told her.
"Mhm," she mumbled, kissing him again and threading her hands through his hair.
The kissing lasted a good half hour. Again, it was the strange kissing from before. Slow and soft, like they were both trying to say something but couldn't. When she was almost positive that there was no way she could keep her eyes open any longer, she put her head on his shoulder and felt her world swim into the blackness of sleep.
When she woke up, the sun was shining brightly through a window onto her. She frowned and looked around, trying to orient herself. There was the sound of someone in the shower in another room, and the décor in the one she was in screamed 'Motel'. So Jess hadn't bothered to wake her up after their trip. She felt beside her and noted that his place on the bed was still warm. Smiling, she snuggled into the covers to wait for him to get back.
When she heard the bathroom door open, she crawled out of the bed and over to Jess, who was already fully dressed and hair-gelled. He smiled at her and she kissed him, still feeling tired.
"G'morning," she murmured, wrapping her arms around his waist and leaning against him.
"Afternoon," he told her and walked her back to the bed, where he sat her down. "Is your mom…?"
"She's going to kill me," Rory admitted with a small, goofy smile, like it didn't matter.
"We need to get you home," he told her, kissing her again and grabbing his jacket. "Wait here, I'm going to go return the keys and then we can go."
"Okay," she said with a nod, although her sleep-fogged mind barely registered what he said. Blearily she got up to go to the washroom and to wash the mascara out from underneath her eyes. Once she was positive that she wasn't going to terrify anyone, she went back into the room to wait for Jess.
He appeared a few seconds after she sat down, so she had to stand back up again. Her legs were sore from all the running that she'd done yesterday, so it was awkward to be walking around in the boots.
"Let's go," he said, offering her a hand, which she took, and walked them out of the room. "The bus station's just a block away."
"Okay," she replied again, not really able to think up anything better to say.
"So, last night was interesting," he started, and she eyed him warily.
"Yeah…" she agreed, waiting to hear his point.
"I'm sorry the first time you saw Liz was when she was like that," he told her honestly. His mother could be a good person, but only if you caught her when she was happily drunk or had been sober for a few days. All other times she was miserable.
"It doesn't matter. She's not you," Rory told him with a smile and leaned against his shoulder.
The rest of the walk was made in a comfortable silence. When they got to the bus stop, the buses were just arriving. At first it looked like Jess was going to go back to New York, but then he turned to look at her.
"I'll ride home with you," he told her, and they went to Rory's normal bus, which took them to Stars Hollow.
"Thanks," she replied and stepped onto the bus. He paid for both of them again and led them to the very back of the bus.
"It's too early for sunlight," Rory whined, hiding her face against his shoulder.
"It's past three in the afternoon," he told her with another smirk.
"Wait… three?" she said, her body suddenly rigid as she remembered her promise to Dean.
"Yeah, why?" he asked, suspicion written over all his features.
"I was supposed to go out to do something with Dean today," she told him, smacking her head lightly against his shoulder.
"Oh well, screw Dean. Seeing as how I'm coming to Stars Hollow anyway, why don't we have that meeting with your mother?" he suggested, and she pulled herself away from his shoulder to give him a look that stated he was insane.
"Jess, you look like you were hit with a ton of bricks last night," she told him, motioning to the bruises.
"Right," he said with a shrug, and sat back in the seat. She knew that she'd offended him. He wanted to be her only boyfriend, he didn't want her to be running around with Dean, but what choice did he have?
"Jess-," she began, but was abruptly cut off.
"It doesn't matter. I know, you're keeping him so that your mom doesn't get suspicious," he remarked angrily, dismissing the issue.
Sighing, she got off his lap and went to sit on the other side, away from him. He didn't understand, as much as he tried. It frustrated her that she had to do this, but she knew that her mother would slaughter her if she knew that her daughter was going to New York every weekend to see a boyfriend that most women would get their daughters vaccinated before allowing them to even talk to.
"Rory?" Jess asked, having stood up to stand over by her. "I'm sorry. I know that you have to do this… I just… I don't like it."
Rory looked up at him, half glaring. She'd sacrificed a lot for this relationship, but she was tired of the lies just as much as he was. She shook her head and turned away from him, trying to keep herself from crying.
"I don't want to be 'the other guy', Rory. You can at least understand that," he asked her, kneeling down in front of her.
Rory looked at him and nodded. She grabbed the collar of his jacket and pulled him up so she could kiss him. He raised himself with her pulling, so that he was half-crouching in front of her. His arms were on either side of her shoulders, bracing him so that he could lean over her. They were attracting quite a bit of attention, especially when she stood up with him and they started kissing passionately, none of the slow kisses of the night before, although the feelings that were behind those were definitely there as well.
"Are we okay?" he asked her when they broke apart, and she nodded at him, placing her head on his shoulder and wrapping her arms around his waist. He did the same, turned them around, and sat with her on top of him.
They stayed like that for the rest of the trip, not talking or kissing, just sitting and enjoying each other's presence. When Stars Hollow finally came around the corner, they broke apart, but continued to hold hands. As the stop arrived, she stood up and walked them to the front of the bus. Before they got out, she looked around, making sure that no one was there. She then proceeded to pull him off the bus and yank him into the bushes surrounding the town, the same ones that she and Lane had taken months previously on her first time back from New York.
"You could swear that I was dangerous," he muttered as he got hit in the face with a plant of some sort.
"I just… don't want them finding out yet," she told him, and took him around the back alleys until she reached her house.
"So that's your place?" Jess asked. He was still angry about being smacked in the face with a plant.
"Yup," she said with a nod, and kissed him. "I have to go."
"I know… I'll see you later," he told her, kissing her again before taking off into the trees.
Rory watched him for a few seconds, until he disappeared, and then walked back to the house. A quick snatch-look to the driveway told her that her mother wasn't home. Her car, the one that Dean had made for her, was sitting there. It was shiny and new… but she hadn't used it since she'd first gotten it and taken it out with him.
She crawled inside and into her room, where she sat on her bed with the phone in her lap. After a few minutes of this, she put the phone on her bed and grabbed a book. Hours later, her mother came in and marched right into her room.
"Where the hell did you go last night?" she half-screamed at her. It looked like she'd been up all night.
"Out," Rory told her, not looking up from the book.
"Out where, Rory? No one knew where the hell you were. Dean didn't, Lane didn't. Dean said he saw you getting on a bus," Lorelei accused her. Her eyes were blazing with anger.
"Yeah, so?" Rory asked with a shrug, looking up from her book to glare at her mother.
"So? Rory, what are you doing? No one knows where you are anymore, you're always gone and no one can ever find you. Where do you keep going?" she demanded. Obviously this question had been attacking her all night.
"What does it matter? I keep coming back," Rory replied with another shrug and went back to her book.
"Rory!" her mother shouted as she grabbed the book and threw it across the room.
Rory was about to start screaming back when the phone rang. She picked it up instinctively, not even noticing it, and pressed the 'talk' button.
"Hello?" she asked, her voice tinted with anger.
"Hey," Jess's voice said from the other line. Glaring at her mother, Rory jumped off her bed and ran into the washroom, where she locked the door and sat on the edge of the bathtub.
"Is this a bad time?" he asked her, concern in his voice.
"No, it's alright. Lorelei's just yelling," Rory said, and then froze. Lorelei? Since when had she started calling her mother by her first name?
"Yeah… are you at home?" he asked her, and something occurred to her.
"You haven't left, have you?" she asked him, ignoring his previous question.
"I'm still around. I looked around a bit, but I avoided as many people as I could," he promised her.
"Jess!" Rory scolded, pressing a hand to her forehead.
"Make sure your room's empty in ten minutes," he told her, and she nodded to the air.
"Okay," she promised, and pressed the 'talk' button.
Getting off her perch, she opened the door and looked around. Her mother didn't appear to be there. Sighing, she tip-toed back into her room, but her mother was waiting there on the bed.
"Who's Jess?" she asked, and Rory blinked.
"Huh?" she asked, and then realized that she'd practically shouted his name on the phone.
"You were listening to my phone call?" Rory demanded.
"I heard you shout it, and besides, how else am I supposed to find out about what's going on?" she asked. Rory could see that this separation between them was making her miserable.
"Get out of my room," Rory hissed, pointing at the door.
"Who's Jess?" she asked again, ignoring the demand.
"Jessica, it's a girl from school," Rory lied, and she didn't even feel bad about it anymore. That was not a good sign.
"Why were you yelling at her?" her mother demanded, rising from the bed. Rory could feel another blaze of shouting about to boil, but she knew that her mother had to be out of here in ten minutes, before Jess came.
"Because she screwed up her article for the first Franklin paper," Rory blurted, it was the first thing that came to her mind.
"The Franklin?" her mother asked, doubting it, but not really having anything else to go on.
"Yeah, that's it," Rory snapped, and pointed to the door again. "Can you please leave, I'm tired."
"Fine," her mother shouted and stormed out of the room. She slammed the door on her way out and knocked down a few of her books. Angrily, Rory shoved them back onto the shelf and sat down on her bed. Even while she was going through the angry motion, she heard tapping on the window. Turning, she saw Jess there.
"Hey," she said to him as she pushed open the window.
"You ready?" he asked her.
"Let me get my purse," she told him, grabbing the handle and then hopping out the window with him. Seconds later they were in the woods and two hours later they were in New York again.
"Rory, look, I'm sorry," Lorelei said, opening her daughter's door half an hour after their fight, only to find the window open and her daughter gone. Tears stung her eyes and she closed the door softly. Crying, she dragged herself back up to her room. Inside, all she could think about was how she'd lost her baby. After seventeen great years, Rory had finally claimed independence.