Author's Note: Well, here it is! I was going to wait stubbornly for 15 reviews but you guys were taking too long :( Please give me 10 reviews and I'll give you chapter 3! Thanks to everyone that's reviewed so far!

Chapter 2:

"GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHH!" Rory screamed into her pillow to muffle the noise, but Lorelai heard it anyway.

"Huh?" Lorelai walked into her daughter's room and sat down on the edge of the bed. "Rory, what's wrong?"

"Jess. Jess is wrong," she said, trying to hide the fact that she was crying from her mother.

"Jess?!" Lorelai was shocked. Never once had her daughter cried because of Jess. He had been nothing but the sweetest and most devoted friend in the world. She had never heard tell of the two fighting, or even arguing over anything.

"Yes, Jess," Rory said, and when Lorelai chuckled at the rhyme, Rory's head shot up and she glared so seriously that Lorelai's expression changed to one of concern as she asked, "What happened?"

"That's just it, I don't know! On the surface, everything is fine, but for about a week, he hasn't said anything to me of substance. I've invited him out for lunch or looking around the book store three times this week and every time he turned me down, except for today, when he said yes this morning and called me just now to cancel."

"Aw hun," she said, pulling Rory close as she started sobbing about half-way through her rant.

Rory was beyond confused. Never once had Jess ditched her for anything. It was always Rory first, Zach and Brian second, homework last, if ever. And now… it was: "Sorry, I have homework," or "Sorry, I promised Zach and Brian I would hang with them." And every time he said no, she saw a look of pain etched on his face. It was like saying these things was causing him so much guilt and torture, but yet he couldn't stop.

"Mom, I'm going for a walk, I'll meet you for dinner at 6," she said. She needed to clear her head, maybe head to the bridge.

"Luke's?" Lorelai asked.

Rory hesitated- she would inevitably run into Jess there- but then smiled weakly and said "Sure."

It hadn't happened on purpose. He was given so many opportunities to tell her what was going on in the past week, and every time, he backed down at the last second. Shane seemed to monopolize all of his time, as he continued to try to convince himself that he actually enjoyed spending time with her half as much as he enjoyed being with Rory. It hadn't happened on purpose. Shane wanted to be 'alone' with him, and there was no way Jess was letting his girlfriend of one week into his bedroom. The gazebo was taken by Kirk, trying to sell something completely unnecessary to innocent passerby, and he couldn't think of anywhere where they could be alone.

The next thing he knew, Shane was dragging him in a sickeningly familiar direction. "I found this really ugly bridge over in that little wooded area? It's falling down and completely and totally hideous. No one will bother us there, Jessie."

Jess felt his stomach drop. Only Rory was allowed to call him Jessie, and only on very rare occasions. That pet name combined with her Bambi eyes could get Jess do anything in the world for her. Not that he wouldn't already. Thoughts of Rory only made him even more upset, so he pushed her out of his head, and allowed Shane to lead him to the bridge. They sat down, their feet dangling over the edge, in the same position that him and Rory frequently sat in.

She leaned over and kissed him. It quickly escalated into something more, and Jess tried to push her off. She persisted, however, and that's how it came to be that Rory Gilmore walked in on her best friend French kissing someone on their bridge. It hadn't happened on purpose.

"Jess?!"

"Rory! Rory, wait! Please, hold on," he cried, desperately grasping at her arm, which she jerked away from him angrily.

"How could you?!" she spat out at him, tears flowing down her face after she gave up the attempt to wipe them away. "I mean… you have a girlfriend, you brought her here?! You promised! Jess, did that mean nothing to you?"

"Of course it meant something to me. Look, Rory, I was going to tell you, I just didn't know…"

"How long?" she demanded, folding her arms across her chest.

"I- um, a week," he said, his head down.

Rory opened her mouth as if to yell at him some more, but she only turned on her heels and marched away.

After seeing the look of one who has been betrayed by someone they love on her face, Jess reflected that he would have preferred the yelling.

She hadn't left her room for anything but school in almost four weeks. It was a hard thing to do, getting up just early enough to make it to school with only minutes to spare, coming straight home off of the bus and locking herself in the house, doing her homework and then usually staring at the ceiling. She had tried reading, but had quickly abandoned that. In almost every single one of her books, Jess's familiar scrawl lined the margins, making notes about the book, and more often than not, underlining parts and writing notes about how a character or a situation would remind him of her. Each stroke of the pen across the paper was like a stab to her heart. She hadn't spoken to Jess in the past four weeks since her discovery of the relationship between him and Shane.

Rory knew that while what she was mad about was that Jess had betrayed her, that wasn't necessarily the only reason she was upset. It seemed to her that the fact that he had used the bridge as a spot to bring his girlfriend was what upset her the most. It just proved to her how well she really knew her supposed best friend. That was supposed to be a spot for the two of them, only. And she was jealous. There was no point in hiding it. She was insanely jealous of this new girl in Jess's life, who seemed to be so much more important that she was.

He had tried to come to her house at least 20 times, but she always had Lorelai answer if she was home, or she ignored it until he went away. If Lorelai did answer, she turned him away with a sad shake of her head. She hadn't been able to get anything out of Rory about what had happened, but she knew it must have been really bad if she wasn't willing to try to work things out.

Jess was in even worse shape than her, if possible. He had to live with the inescapable guilt that he had caused a lot of pain to someone who meant more to him than anyone- anything else, including his own well-being. After a miserable night knowing that Rory was upset, he left bright and early on Saturday morning, the day after the incident, talking himself in to believing that if he just apologized, everything would go back to the way it was. Shane- well, he could worry about her later. She had disappeared last night when Rory and Jess were talking, and she hadn't called.

He stepped up to the front door and knocked, nervously going over what he could say to her in his head.

The door was thrown open and he had come face to face with a very angry Lorelai.

"What the hell did you do to my daugher?" she screeched. And then she immediately backed down when she saw his red-rimmed eyes and dark circles. "Jess, what happened?" she asked.

"Can I- can I just talk to her? I have to make this right," he said, his voice breaking.

"She's pretty upset..." she started. His eyes darkened. "I'll go ask."

Jess waited just inside the door. He strained his hearing to make out what they were saying in Rory's room.

"Jess is here, baby. He wants to talk to you," he heard Lorelai ask.

Rory sniffed and Jess's eyes snapped shut tightly. He hated that she was crying. "Mom, I can't talk to him. Can you tell him to go?"

"Rory, you know I support you no matter what you do, but he looks... well, he looks aweful. Maybe you should try to work things out. He's really upset."

"Well he should be!" she lashed out, and a fresh wave of tears came over her. "Just tell him to go."

Lorelai crept out of the room and shut it slowly behind her. Jess was leaning against the doorframe, breathing heavily, trying to block the tears that were threatening to escape.

"You have to go," Lorelai said to him.

He nodded and turned away, letting the tears fall.

Since then, he had come back several times, and written letter after letter to her, but whether or not she even read them, he got no response.

There were notes, too. Rory would wake up with envelopes taped to her window. She read them all, and then promptly disposed of them afterwards. They all said similar things: I'm sorry, I know I should have told you, and other generic apologies. The letter she had just received however, from her mother, was different. Jess had come to the house in one last attempt, and when Lorelai answered the door and started to say "Go away," he simply handed her a folded piece of paper and walked away. He looked so dejected that Lorelai couldn't help but wonder for the millionth time what had happened between them.

"Rory? Honey? It's another letter."

Rory sighed and took it from her mom's hand. She opened it up after Lorelai had left her alone and her eyes widened. All the other letters had been typed, but this one was hand written in pen, and seemed to be smeared and smudged all over the place. She saw blotched sections that could only be the results of tears falling onto the page.

Rory,

I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you I miss you.

I know you hate me for what I did. And I don't have an excuse. There could be no excuse for something so terrible. You trusted me, and I broke that. We had a promise. I can't even imagine how upset I would be if you hid something like this from me.

I love you, you know? I'll never stop loving you. It's impossible. And why you would want to spend time with me is totally a mystery. All I'm ever going to do is hold you back. I don't deserve someone like you.

I've been thinking a lot over the past few weeks, and it's clear that you aren't going to forgive me. And with good reason. I don't deserve to be forgiven. My mom called last week. And I wanted to call you and tell you, when I remembered that I couldn't. She wants me to move to New York to live with her.

This is killing me, Rory. Being here in this town, having everything remind me of you. The only reason I have for staying here besides you is Luke, and while he says he'll miss me, he thinks it might be good for me and Liz if I go to live with her.

I think I'm going.

Jess

I know, I know. But please don't hate me. You'll see. It'll all work out for them :) Please review! And here's something kinda cool: I don't really enjoy reading reviews that say "good job" or "cute", which I'm sure any other writer out there can sympathise with. So. From now on when you review, pick a quote from the chapter you just read that you really liked and tell me that. :) I like that sort of thing. Thanks!