Life: 2.0

Chapter 9: Check the Box

Author: knowhere

Rating: (very light) R

Disclaimer: Nothing.

AN: Thanks to everyone who reviewed! To those in the States, I hope you've enjoyed your holiday weekend and I thought this would be a good way to jump start this week.

Summary: Literati. Life doesn't always turn out like you expect. Jess and Rory meet as adults when their lives are at a transition period. Life, love, and everything else: Version 2.0. AU.

The ringing of her phone jolted her awake. Rory fumbled for the offensive object on her nightstand and flipped it open. "Hello?"

"Hey Rory!"

She smiled. "Hi Mom."

"Whatcha doing?"

Rory glanced over and saw that the blankets and pillows still held the bodily impression of Jess. She heard the water running in the other room and figured that he must be taking a shower. She smiled, reliving the vivid memories of last night. "Nothing. Just woke up."

"Oh, sorry. I've had four cups of coffee this morning."

She chuckled. "You must be going out of your mind."

"I am! I've already been grocery shopping, I sorted my laundry, and I'm thinking of doing laps in the pond."

"Why isn't someone regulating your coffee consumption?"

"I've been to C.A. but they couldn't handle me. They had to let me go."

"What's that? California?"

"Coffee Anonymous."

Rory laughed. Her mom could always be counted on to make her laugh. "Right. So what's up? Besides you?"

"I wanted to make sure you were coming home for Thanksgiving. Don't worry, I told my parents that we couldn't make it this year, so it's going to be only you and me! Or you can add Bram to the mix if he doesn't want to go home, or if he wants to actually eat real meat not tofu. Yuck!"

"Well," she started but her voice died off when she saw her bathroom door open and Jess exit with a billow of steam. He smiled at seeing her awake. His hair was damp and he was rubbing it furiously with a towel. A larger cheery yellow bath towel was wrapped around his lean hips and Rory licked her lips at the sight of a bead of water trailing down his flat stomach.

Jess caught her look and tilted his head. "What?" he mouthed.

She bit her lip and shook her head. No matter how many times she saw him naked, she still got flushed just thinking about him. And he always had the ability to render her stupid at the sight of him.

He narrowed his eyes and wagged his eyebrows playfully. Without warning, he dropped both towels and slid into bed with her. She couldn't contain her small shriek when he shook his wet head.

"Rory?" her mother sounded worried. "You okay?"

"Oh, yeah! Just dandy."

Jess chuckled low into her ear. He nibbled the earlobe, nuzzling her hair and breathing her in.

"What were you saying?" her mom reminded her.

"I'm not quite sure what my plans for Thanksgiving are yet," Rory hedged. She wanted to ask what Jess was doing but couldn't in front of her mother. And she had secretly wanted to ask him to go home and meet her mom but she couldn't do that either! Not when they were both present. "Can I call you back mom? I have another call."

"Okay," she agreed cheerfully. "But please don't bail on me. I haven't seen you in a while."

"Alright. Love you."

"You too!"

Jess kissed her as soon as she hung up the phone. "Another call, huh?" His clever fingers traced the curve of her breast, tingling her from the inside out.

"Jess?" She could barely speak but she wanted to ask before he distracted her fully.

"Hmm," he hummed against her.

With a deep breath, she took the plunge. "What are you doing for Thanksgiving?"

He looked up from his position against her belly and shrugged. "Probably making dinner for me and Gabe while he stands around and tells me that I'm not doing it like Mom." He chuckled.

Disappointment flared hot within her. "Oh."

"You wanna join us?" He scooted up to rest on the pillow next to her.

The disappointment burned out quickly as pleasure flowed through her once again. "I'd love to," she spoke softly and laid her palm against his shadowed jaw. Her brain ticked away as she thought about how she could fit in two Thanksgiving dinners. Maybe she could have Thanksgiving with Jess and then rush down to have dinner with her mom. If she ate an early lunch with Jess, she could convince Mom that it'd be better for them to have a late Thanksgiving meal.

A hand threading through her tangled hair brought her out of her ruminations. "Where did you disappear to?" He smiled softly.

"Oh, nowhere. Sorry." She stirred and went forward to snuggle against him, facing him with their noses almost touching. "It's just that…well, I'm sort of obligated to go and have Thanksgiving with my mom. It's always been a tradition for us."

He kissed the tip of her nose affectionately. "Okay. No big."

Her heart sunk. "But I want to have Thanksgiving with you too."

"Oh yeah?" He smiled.

She wondered if it seemed too serious or girlfriend-y to admit that. Though they'd been together for a little over a month, she noticed that they were careful not to label their relationship. She never called him her boyfriend and tried to no toe that 'casual relationship' line.

"Well…I don't have to make Thanksgiving dinner," he leaned forward.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Gabe's going to complain whatever I make, no matter how I make it. It'll never be as good as Mom's," he chuckled. "But I can't leave him alone."

"No!" she hurried to clear the air. "I want to invite the both of you! Of course I'd never ask you to leave Gabe at Thanksgiving. That's horrible."

He grinned. "Are you asking us to come with you?"

"Yes," she smiled shyly.

"Is that okay with your mom?"

If it weren't, then she'd make it okay. "Of course."

He paused as if contemplating something. "Does she know about me?"

She hesitated. Truthfully, she hadn't told her mom. The many times she'd spoken to her mom, she had wanted to tell her all about man she was seeing. But something held her back. In a way, she wanted to keep Jess to herself. If she told her mom, she'd have to tell her that the relationship with Jess wasn't serious. And then if she admitted it to her mom, it would be true, and a part of her didn't want it to be true. She wanted something more with him.

"No, it's okay," he assured her. "It's not like we're serious." He stopped. "Right?"

She didn't know if he was asking her to confirm, deny, or admit. She just nodded.

He looked disappointed. "We're not." It didn't sound like a statement. But it didn't sound like a question either.

"Right?" she prodded.

The tension was so thick that he suddenly burst into laughter. "God, we're worse than a pair of teenagers! Check the box if you like me. Yes or No."

She giggled. "Those kinds of notes actually exist. I've confiscated a few in class!"

He laughed and then grasped her face between his large hands, his face going somber. "Rory. I like you. You know that. And I've really enjoyed being with you. I would like to call you my girlfriend. Is that okay?"

She smiled broadly. Her heart was just about to beat right out of her chest. Could he hear the thundering? "Only if I can introduce you as my boyfriend."

"Deal." He sealed the bargain with a kiss.

Jess watched as Gabe scribbled in his notebook, glancing up at his textbook every once in a while. Gabe flipped to the back again, erasing his answer and filling in something new.

"Why do you keep looking in the back?" Jess diced up a tomato.

"The answers are there."

"Why?" Jess threw in the ingredients into the small pan.

Gabe wrote something else. "So you can check your work."

"But you're not checking your work. You're copying the answers."

Gabe looked up and scowled. "What are you the homework police? Gonna tattle?"

Jess chuckled. His brother was so damn moody sometimes. Besides, what the hell was the point of homework when the answers were just a flip of a page away? "Well, one of your teachers is right next door."

"That was so lame. And in any case, Rory makes up her own homework. She doesn't use the textbook. Her assignments are all original and insightful. Whatever," Gabe grumbled.

"Smart girl." Jess paused and pushed around the stir-fry with a wooden spoon. "Speaking of Rory," Jess didn't know exactly how Gabe was going to take the idea of going with Rory for Thanksgiving. "You have break coming up, right?"

"Yeah, a week. I can't wait." Gabe got up and went to the fridge, pulled back the carton of milk and brought it to his lips.

"Right. A week." Without looking, Jess grabbed a glass and handed it to Gabe. "You're not an animal."

"You do it."

"Only when I can finish whatever is left in the carton and throw it away afterwards."

Gabe frowned. "How did you know I wasn't doing exactly that?"

"There's half a carton left!" Jess shot his brother an incredulous look.

"What if I were really thirsty?"

I'm so not having this conversation. "Whatever. Listen, Thanksgiving."

"What about it?"

Jess paused, considering his words. "Rory's invited us."

"You."

"No. Us."

Gabe puttered back to sit down at the table. "I thought she couldn't cook. She's always over here for dinner."

"Because I invite her." Jess paused. "What? You don't like having her over?"

"No, that's fine. I like having her over," Gabe quirked a smile. "She brought some papers with her the other day, and I accidentally snuck a peek when I was moving them out of the way as I was setting the table, and I caught some of the answers that were on a pop quiz the next day."

"Sneaky bastard." Jess grinned and felt inexplicably proud of his brother. He would've done the same were he in Gabe's shoes. "So what do you think? Thanksgiving with Rory? And I don't think she's cooking. She's invited us to go home with her to eat with her mom."

Gabe nibbled on his bottom lip. "You're not cooking?"

"I didn't think you'd mind. You always complain that I do it wrong." Jess plated the stir-fry and sat down, placing a dish in front of Gabe.

"Still," Gabe looked worried. "We always have Thanksgiving."

"I'm not canceling Thanksgiving." Jess hesitated and tried to consider things from Gabe's perspective. "It's okay if you don't want to go. It's not a big deal. It's just that Rory invited us and I thought it sounded nice."

"What if…they make it differently?"

Jess forked in a mouthful of stir-fry, crunching on the veggies. "What do you mean?"

"We've always had scalloped potatoes instead of mashed."

"We can bring our own potatoes."

"Yeah?" For the first time since bringing up the topic, Gabe looked interested and lighthearted.

Sometimes Gabriel hit Jess's heart hard. He was a pain in the ass most of the time, and Jess knew without a doubt that he had fumbled a lot in the past, and would continue to fuck up in the future, but he couldn't imagine life without his brother anymore. "Anything else?"

"Maybe you can make that cranberry sauce too. Just in case they used the canned kind."

He slanted his brother a confused look. "Are you sure?" Last year, Gabe had done nothing but exclaim that the cranberries were too runny and that Mom's never tasted so sour.

"Yeah."

"Then we'll go with Rory's to her mom's for Thanksgiving?"

Gabe shrugged and tucked into his dinner with relish. "I guess."

Rory said her goodbyes to Wesley, assuring the wiggly pup that she'd be back by nighttime and locked the front door behind her. She stopped when she felt Jess circle her waist from behind, nuzzling that sensitive spot behind her ear. "What are you doing?"

"Taking my opportunity to touch you before I jump into a car with you and my brother for a long drive."

Her lips curved up at the edges. "What do you call what you did this morning?" To her disappointment, he hadn't come over to her place last night, but she awoke this morning finding him in bed with her, his body spooned tight behind. Later, when she nudged him awake, he proceeded to explore her body with kisses, charting the territory as his with tender lips, hands, and sex.

"Very adult touching."

She rolled her eyes. "Come on; let's go. I'm sure Gabe is getting an eyeful right now."

"No he isn't," Jess shook his head. "He can't see from this angle."

"Really?" she asked, worried and a little embarrassed.

"Want to be sure?" he wagged his brows. "We could make out and see if he says anything."

She laughed. "Oh grow up!" Taking his hand into hers, she dragged him as best she could over to his car. He opened her car door for her and she inclined her head at the show of manners.

"What?" he grinned. "I'm not a total moron."

"I never said you were."

When Jess was buckled in, he reached into his pocket, pulled out zip-lock baggie, and handed Gabe a little round pill. "Here, take it."

Rory screwed up her face, her teacher instincts kicking in without warning. "What are you doing? Are you giving Gabe drugs?"

"Uh," Gabe plucked the pill from Jess's fingers, sounding confused, "I get car sick."

"Oh." Thoroughly shamefaced, Rory nodded her head. "Right. Sorry."

Jess laughed at her and it only added to her embarrassment. "Unless you want Gabe throwing up out the window and onto the car, you're going to thank me for those little miracle Dramamines."

She tossed Jess a dirty look. "Are you done making fun of me now?"

Jess leaned over the center console and before she could protest on account of Gabe being present, he dropped a short kiss on her lips and then lingered for a moment longer than necessary for a peck. "You're cute when you blush," he muttered under his breath.

She didn't know how to respond. Under her fiery flush and the prickly exterior she tried to adopt, his single touch affected her more than she wanted to admit.

Behind them, she heard a groan and then, "You're not going to make out all the time, are you?"

Before she could reply, Jess jumped in, his usual sarcasm at hand. "Don't worry, you won't be awake to see. I gave you the original formula, not the non-drowsy kind." He winked at her and she couldn't help but grin at the look on his face.

"Tell me about your first kiss." He kept one eye on the road while the other reached for her hand. Her fingers felt warm and delicate, making him want to protect her from everything big and bad in the world, even though the rational part of his brain told him he was being a caveman and that he had no real claim on her.

But he did have some claim. She was his girlfriend now. And that had to count for something, right?

"He was this boy I dated for a while in high school. He lived in the same town."

"Gee, don't fall all over yourself with spilling the details."

She huffed. "Well, it's not like you're a wealth of information, mister."

He chuckled. "My first kiss was a neighbor. She was selling lemonade in her driveway and I wanted some. She wouldn't give me a cup. I told her it probably wasn't worth the fifty cents anyways. She got upset and hit me. Somehow or another, I ended up kissing her instead. I think she kicked me in the crotch afterwards."

Rory laughed. "How old were you?"

"Seven."

"When was your first real kiss?"

He thought for a moment. It felt like a lifetime ago. How did it feel like to be that innocent? To get a thrill just by kissing? He snuck a look at Rory. He'd gotten a thrill when he kissed her for the first time. "Jr. High. Lucy Wilson. We dated for two weeks. And by that, I mean we ate lunch together and talked on the phone after school. I took her to the bathrooms around the corner from the main quad one day at lunch and kissed her."

"Just like that?"

"I think I fed her some B.S. about how everyone else was doing it and she fell for it."

"Romantic."

"Hey, I was a kid. Okay, your turn."

She stayed quiet briefly. "His name was Dean. He was the new kid in school. I thought he was so cute and the way that he paid attention to me made me feel special. He was walking me home one day and when we got to my house, he handed me my backpack and kissed me."

"He carried your backpack?"

She turned to look at him. "Yeah. Why?"

"Sounds like he was looking to get further than just a kiss."

Rory scowled. "What does that mean?"

"It means that no teenaged boy does something like that without trying to score."

"Are you speaking from personal experience?"

"Yeah."

"And Gabe? He's a teenager, you know?"

Jess peeked in the rearview mirror and saw his brother conked out, fast asleep his head bent back at an odd angle. "No. He's a good kid."

"Good kids don't have sex?" She was laughing silently at him.

He recoiled suddenly, the moments snapping away at the thought of his little brother. "God, I don't want to think about him sneaking out of the house and all that."

Rory laughed, glancing back at Gabe. "Like you do?"

"Yeah, like me." He shot her a smirk. He took a turn off the main road that led to Stars Hollow. "I'll be honest, I'm kinda nervous right now."

"Why?"

"Meeting a girlfriend's mom is a big deal. What if she doesn't like me?"

"Then I'm just going to have to break up with you right away. I'm sorry, but I don't know how to make decision on my own." She gave him a mocking look of sympathy.

He chuckled. "Alright, I get it."

"I'm just kidding," she kissed his hand. "I'd be nervous too if I were meeting your parents." Her mouth dropped open, and her face predictably flamed. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that."

"It's okay." And it was. His parents weren't here anymore and he was getting to the point of truly accepting it. "It was a slip. No problem."

She got quiet. "Tell me about them."

"What about them?"

"How did they meet?"

He heaved a sigh. "They met in college." Jess's smile widened, remembering the story his parents used to tell him. "Dad had a one night stand with Mom's roommate. When he was sneaking out the next morning, Mom caught him and got mad at him. She said he should at least at the decency to at least throw away his trash."

Rory laughed.

"Dad said that he fell in love with her when she threw that condom wrapper at his head." He gestured with his free hand that wasn't holding the steering wheel, remembering how Dad's eyes would go soft when he told the story. "But let's just say that for Mom, it wasn't exactly love at first sight. But eventually, it happened. They became friends and one day she was sick and Dad came by her dorm room with soup and he stayed up with her when she couldn't sleep. And that was it. Around the time of graduation, they got married. A year later, they had me. They wanted more kids but were never able to. But when I was a senior in high school, all of a sudden Mom got pregnant again."

"And then Gabe came along." Rory finished in a soft voice.

"Yup. Gabe. The baby of the family."

"How was that for you? Being so much older?"

Jess shrugged. "It wasn't really that big of a deal. I was headed off to college and so I wasn't home much."

"So you guys weren't that close, right?"

Jess shook his head. "Not really. I was eighteen; he was a baby. What did I know about babies, right? We were as close as we could get, I suppose. After college it was a little better. I moved back home for a while, looking for jobs and all that. I spent some time with Gabe. He was walking and talking and potty-trained." Jess laughed, recalling how he found out the hard way when one day he was left to baby-sit and Gabe told him that he had an 'accident.' "I was the cooler older brother by then. I could drive him around and buy him stuff."

"But you moved out to New York?"

Jess nodded. "Got an entry level job at the paper and worked my way up."

"And then the accident happened."

Jess's chest clenched in that familiar telltale way. He could still remember the phone call from the hospital. The social worker phoned him while he was at work. At first, Jess had been scared that something had happened to Gabe, but then found out it was his parents instead. Gabe had been practically catatonic by the time Jess hopped on the first flight out to California. Gabe wouldn't talk to anyone, didn't even seem to register that Jess was there with him. "Gabe had been in the car with them in the backseat. The head-on collision demolished the entire front end while Gabe walked away with a mild concussion and a broken arm."

"My god…"

Jess tightened his knuckles on the steering wheels. He hadn't spoken about the details of the accident since it happened. And even when he called various family members and friends, he'd given them the condensed version. Some reason or another, he felt compelled to give the entire story to Rory. Lay it all out there. "I didn't handle it very well." He wasn't proud of that. "Gabe needed to stay in the hospital for a few days and I went out and got drunk after I identified my parents."

Her soft hand landed on his shoulder. "You were in shock."

"But Gabe needed me and I wasn't there. I couldn't even look at him for the first few days. Every time I saw him, I saw Dad. I didn't give Gabe a choice. I didn't even talk to him about it. I just made the arrangements, packed up his things, and moved him out to New York with me. I sold the house without thinking twice. I didn't want to see it anymore."

"You did what you thought best."

He looked in the rearview mirror again, unconsciously. "I didn't give him a choice."

"What choice could you give him, Jess? Realistically? He was just twelve. It wasn't like he could stay out in California by himself."

"But I never considered moving back home for him."

"Your life was in New York."

Jess shook his head. "No. My job was there."

There was silence. And then a hesitant, "You feel guilty, don't you? Why?"

Jess couldn't speak for a solid five minutes. This was what he never told anyone. "They were driving out to see me."

"What?"

"I couldn't make it out there for Christmas. Dad thought it'd be fun to drive across country to bring the holidays to me so that we could spend it together as a family." Jess's mouth filled with a horrible metallic taste, the tang of it overpowering his senses. "They never made it out of Los Angeles."

"Wow," Rory breathed out next to him. "I…I don't even know what to say. Saying 'I'm sorry' sounds too trite. I know nothing I can say will make things better but if you ever need to talk, or not, we could sit and do nothing, but I'm here. If you want."

And that made him feel better. He didn't want to talk. He didn't want to hear another person tell him they're sorry for him, as if they could ever begin to understand. But he did want her. And he wanted her with him. "Thanks."

Jess made a right turn down a residential street and Rory gestured for him to stop at the house at the end. "We're here."

As he placed the car in park, a woman came out of the house, bouncing up and down. "Is that your mother?" Jess asked, his eyes wide, bewildered.

"Yeah," Rory said. "She's probably all hopped up on caffeine."

"Oh."

"Come on, let's go have Thanksgiving."

AN: Read? Please review. Chapter Notes will talk about why this chapter (and the next) didn't exist during the first draft and why they needed to be added after the fact. Indeed, it was at readers' questioning that I decided to add two chapters 9 and 10 (which are really a pair of chapters). Get the notes to read the details. Sign-in your reviews for Notes.

What are these Notes I keep talking about? They're my thoughts on the chapter regarding character development, plot, and the little in-betweens that happen during writing. For those concerned there is nothing spoiled for further chapters; only the current chapter (and maybe what has already occurred) will be discussed.