Thank you for your reviews – they really motivate me to keep writing! And I love getting to know your opinions about the stuff I write!
It might seems like Jess' thoughts about Rory are jumping back and forth – but that's the way I intended it, to show the conflicting emotions inside of him that he's probably not even aware of himself. Tell me if you think it's too confusing and I'll try to keep them more coherent in the future.
Jess sighed as he picked up his menu. This had all been a mistake. He shouldn't have agreed to this dinner. He should have known better.
So far they had discussed the weather, she had talked about the charity event where they had met and she had asked if he had published any new material. All in a polite tone and without touching any subjects that might make either of them feel uneasy. She had even managed to talk about the charity event without mentioning his departure.
They were like two strangers and now that they had covered the weather and work there was nothing left to say. Maybe if he asked how her mother was doing or if she talked to Lane lately… He decided that that was probably a bad idea and that he should at least wait until dessert to ask about that.
"The salmon's really good here" Rory looked up from behind her menu and shot him a smile that didn't have the slightest resemblance to a real Rory-smile, but that was still genuine enough to make his knees feel weak. He was glad he was sitting down.
He nodded. "You look trustworthy" With that he closed his menu and smirked in her direction. She, on the other hand, had gone back to looking at hers and hadn't seemed to notice his reference to their very first meeting – or his smirk. He repressed a sigh and opened his menu again.
After a few more minutes of silently studying their menus, a waiter appeared next to them and they placed their orders. He ordered chicken and she didn't even flinch when he didn't follow her advice about the salmon.
"So why did you leave Philadelphia?" Her tone was still polite in a small-talk kind of way. He wanted to tell her to cut the bullshit and get to the explaining part of their conversation, but he was afraid she would leave without explaining anything if he pushed her.
He shrugged his shoulders. "I needed to get away and focus on my writing"
"Oh" She looked down at the table as if gathering courage before she looked up again. "About the…" she trailed off, searching for the right word "…misunderstanding…" She smiled, satisfied with her choice of words. "…the other night…"
Jess looked at her without saying a word, waiting for her to continue.
"I didn't mean to assume that you had kept publishing your own stuff" She nodded slowly and gracefully as if she were a queen, talking to her court. "It was wrong of me and I apologize"
He had to clench his jaws together to stop them from dropping open. She thought that was why he left? Because she had assumed he had written more than one book? She thought he was offended or ashamed over that?
"Huh" He said, too much in shock to be able to come up with an actual word.
"And I forgive you for being rude to Charlotte and embarrassing me like that" Jess could literally feel his eyes widen as she spoke. "Under the circumstances I understand your course of action"
Without thinking Jess stood up from the table, not wanting to hear another word of her so called explanation.
"What?" She furrowed her eyebrows. "What are you doing?"
"I–" He ran a hand through his hair. Yeah, what was he doing really? Wasn't this what he wanted – to see if the change was for real? "I need to use the bathroom" He excused himself and headed in the direction of the restrooms.
Jess was glad to see the bathroom empty as he stepped inside and let out a deep sigh. Why couldn't he just have listened to Luke when he told him to stay away? This was torture.
He should excuse himself and leave. He should go home and forget he ever ran into her. If he couldn't forget, he would remember this dinner. He would remember her forgiving him and apologizing for the wrong things.
Hell – he didn't care about the apology: she was explaining the wrong things. He slammed his fist against the wall. It was harder than he had anticipated and he nursed his fist with his other hand.
He took a deep breath to calm himself down. This wasn't Rory, he told himself. He couldn't let the woman at the table out there get to him – she wasn't Rory.
He shook his head. He really should be leaving. There was no point in sitting through dinner and dessert with this stranger that couldn't even give him the explanations she had promised.
He sighed again, knowing he could tell himself he should leave all he wanted – but he wouldn't. She might be a completely different person, and the sparkle in her eyes that he used to love might be gone – but he knew there was no way he could look into those eyes and not stay and hope for the sparkle to come back.
"You see, Charlotte is married to Colin – a friend of Logan's, and we actually went to Chilton together, without even taking notice of one another. Isn't that strange?" Rory asked rhetorically and Jess nodded.
All the way through dinner she had told anecdotes about her friends or things that had happened at different events she'd either been attending or planning. He couldn't keep track of the names she kept dropping as if they were names he should recognize.
She had given up on any further attempt to apologize or explain – if she had even had any further apologizes or explanations planned for that was.
Jess studied her face as she kept talking. She looked so different – but still the same somehow. The natural beauty of her face that he had always admired and loved was disguised under heavy layers of make-up.
He pondered over whether she had lost the ability to apply make-up in that natural way or if she had changed her preferences in make-up. He suspected the latter.
He wanted her to let her hair down and wash the make-up off her face. He wanted to see if his Rory, the Rory he remembered, was still there beneath it all.
Her eyes were the same big, blue eyes despite the heavy make-up around them. She couldn't hide those even if she wanted to. They didn't sparkle like they used to though and he wanted desperately to know what had erased the sparkle in her eyes. But he didn't know how to ask.
Her lips were different. It wasn't only the color that was applied on them that made them different. They looked tense, as if she was constantly trying to repress any emotion that wanted to show itself through a tug at her lips. It made them look stern, as you would imagine an old, conservative teacher's lips to look like.
Even if the sparkle in her eyes were gone, the diamonds hanging from her earlobes sparkled bright enough. But it was a superficial sparkle that couldn't ever make up for the lost one in her eyes. The diamonds were too big for Jess' taste and he couldn't help but wonder if they were a forgive-me-for-fucking-my-secretary gift from her husband.
He looked back up to her eyes to find them staring at him in a demanding, waiting-for-an-answer, kind of way. He hadn't been paying any attention to her words.
"Right?" she asked and tilted her head to the side.
He tried to remember what the conversation, or rather her monologue, had been about. Something about her friend and…that's where he had tuned out.
"Sorry" He tried to smile. "Could you repeat that?"
She rolled her eyes. "I said that I explained to Charlotte that you are my step-cousin and that we haven't met in years and it was probably the shock of running into each other that made you say those things"
He looked back at her, still confused. "What was the question?"
She sighed. "It was a good thing that I didn't mention our history together, right?"
"Right" He sighed as well. Where were the explanations she had promised him? This wasn't it. This wasn't an explanation for him – this was an explanation for her friends. Where was his explanation?
There were so many things he wanted to ask her.
What happened between you and Lane? Between you and Lorelai? What made you change? Made you stop reading? Where did the sparkle go? What about the gardener? And Logan's secretary? Is this what you wanted? Is this why you chose him over me?
Despite all the bad he's done, I can't help it. I'm in love with him.
Is that it? Is that why you're willing to make affairs and cheating a part of your marriage? Is that why you let him change you? Because you still love him, despite everything he's done?
All of his questions remained inside his mind. He didn't know if it was because he was afraid to ask her of it was because he was afraid of the answers he might get. He took a sip of his beer and watched her take a sip of her wine as she looked around the restaurant.
"Read anything good lately?" He asked when the silence between them started to get uncomfortable. He almost held his breath while he waited for her answer; this was one of the questions that would help him determine how deep this change went.
She smiled and for a second a vain hope fluttered in the pit of his stomach. Before she opened her mouth and effectively put that to rest. "You know, I really don't have that much time to read these days"
He looked at her, trying to see if there was something in her eyes or her posture contradicting her words. But why would she lie? It wasn't as if he asked her whether she still loved her husband or whether she was happy or not.
"You don't?" He asked and she shook her head slightly. "Work's taking up all of your time?" He continued asking, even though he was fairly sure that Mrs. Huntzberger didn't work.
"No, silly" She giggled, and there it was again; that weird feeling of her not being Rory. He could see her, sitting right in front of him – but that giggle. No. It wasn't her. "I don't work" She said, sounding as if he must be crazy for even suggesting it.
"Of course" He muttered sarcastically. "So, what is it then that takes up all of your time?"
She smiled, pretending not to hear the sarcasm in his voice. "Planning charity events and dinner parties, entertaining Logan's business associates. You know, I'm on the board of the DAR Educational Program"
"Really" He stated, not the least bit interested in what she did with her time; he was more interested in what made her prefer doing that instead of working or even reading.
"Yes" She answered, not taking any notice of Jess' obvious disinterest as she started to explain what the DAR Educational Program was working towards this year.
Dessert had been served with a lecture about the Connecticut DAR chapter. Jess had been bored out of his mind but had tried to nod in the right places. On the inside a thousand questions had been screaming at him, but he had let none of them out. He had decided that it didn't matter.
It didn't matter why she had changed. She was changed, and the less he knew about it the better. The questions would become silent sooner or later if he just kept ignoring them. If he asked them, that would mean he would get involved and for once in his life he had decided to take Luke's advice and stay away.
"So…" She turned around to face him as they entered the street. "It was nice catching up with you"
"Yeah" He nodded even though he didn't agree.
She smiled and hooked her arm around his. "You wanna go out for drinks…or something?"
Her 'or something' was said with a thousand unspoken promises and Jess couldn't help but get the image of the gardener being fired for not sleeping with her into his mind. It couldn't be. He shook the image away and decided that it was nothing but evil gossip. Evil, made-up gossip.
"Nah" He pulled his arm away. "I think should head home"
"Oh" She stopped and he did the same a few feet away. "At least let me give you a ride home"
He was just about to decline her offer when she pulled her phone up and dialed a number to what he assumed was her driver.
Jess looked up into the sky as he tried to decide whether to insist on walking home or letting her give him a ride. She probably wouldn't take no for an answer and he would end up with letting her drive him home anyway, so he decided not to fight it to begin with.
It wasn't long before the driver showed up with the limo and Jess wondered if he had been sitting around the corner just waiting for her to finish her dinner.
"We should do this again sometime" Rory said and smiled at him from her seat in the limo, opposite from his as they approached Jess' neighborhood.
"Sure" He offered and made a mental note to have the strength to say no the next time she called and tried to talk him into dinner with promises of explanations.
"You know…" Rory said in a low voice as she slowly switched her seat to his side of the car. "…Logan's out of town tonight, if you feel like continuing this evening…" She slid inches closer and ran a soft hand up his sleeve. "…at your place maybe."
Her voice was tempting and suggestive and Jess had to close his eyes to the questioning look in her blue eyes when yanked his arm back and answered. "You're married Rory."
"I know" She looked offended, but that only lasted a second before she fixated his eyes with hers and smiled slightly at the corner of her mouth. "…but you never been one to follow the rules before, have you?"
"I never cheated on anyone" His voice was stern and determined. He needed this car to stop now, before he did anything he would regret later. He looked out the window and recognized his street.
She moved even closer to him and her lips were just inches away when the limo came to a stop outside Jess' apartment building. "Well, technically, I'll be the one doing the cheating…"
He wanted to kiss her. He wanted it so badly. He wanted to close his eyes and forget everything he learned about her over the last week and just let his lips feel the taste of hers once again.
He cleared his throat and pushed her away. "Yeah, but with me, and I don't do that either." He took one last look at her before he opened the door and stepped out onto the street.
Dazzled by this last, ultimate proof of her change, Jess took a few steps down the sidewalk before he turned around and went back to the limo and leaned inside the still open door.
"This isn't you Rory!" He shouted, too angry to realize he was repeating his own words from another, similar time. That time it was Logan and his family that had changed her and he had seen the dawning of a realization in her eyes when he left.
This time he wasn't sure if it was Logan that had changed her or if there was something else, but there was no realization dawning in her eyes when she pointed her finger at him and yelled back. "You don't know me! You can't say that this isn't me, 'cause you don't know me!"
He sighed, feeling all anger leaving his body. She was right, he didn't know her. He had no idea who Rory Huntzberger was; all he could say was that she was nothing like Rory Gilmore.
"You're right" His voice was calmer now and no longer shouting. "I don't know you"
She looked surprised and disconcerted at his statement. "Right" She nodded and there it was, in that quick glance to her side: a nervous flicker with the eyes that sent him back in time and made him wonder why on earth he had refused to let her come up to the apartment with him.
Maybe they had a connection that went beyond everything explainable. Maybe Rory Gilmore wasn't gone. Maybe all hope wasn't lost.
He saw her looking for something in her purse and he wondered if maybe he should invite her in, maybe they could talk and he could get her to remember who she was; who Rory Gilmore really was.
She took a card out of her purse and held it in her hand. "Logan is away on business a lot" She handed him the card in her hand, which had her name and phone number on it. "If you change your mind"
He sighed. No. It had been nothing but wishful thinking on his part. Rory Gilmore was definitely gone – she didn't exist anymore.
The next chapter is almost done, since I started writing that a long time ago, I just need to add a few things and I could probably post it by tomorrow. I would still like to hear your opinions about this chapter though...:)