A/N: Thanks for all the feedback, folks. It's great to be back with you :) Nobody has much confidence in Rory to be faithful to Jess, now do they? lol Well, he can be quite charming, but we're all Lit shippers here, right? So, let's have some confidence in Rory/Jess - you know I will give them a happy ending... eventually ;)
(For disclaimer, etc. - see chapter 1)
Chapter 10
"No offence, Paris, but the last person I need relationship advice from is you," said Jess definitely.
"I'm warning you, Mariano. Rory has started noticing other guys exist, and we're not talking about losers like her ex or your simple room-mate."
"Hey, sitting right here!" said Marty from the couch.
Paris rolled her eyes. "Logan Huntzberger, Jess. You do know his reputation?"
"The newspaper guy's son? Yeah, I heard," he agreed, nodding his head.
"Also rumoured to have slept with at least half the university," said Marty around a mouthful of cornflakes, earning himself twin glares from Paris and Jess. "Sorry," he apologised immediately.
"The man has a point," Paris declared anyway. "Huntzberger will stop at nothing to get what, or rather who, he wants."
"And what makes you so sure he wants Rory?" Jess asked Paris, pushing past her to get to his watch on the table. "And even if he did," he continued without letting her answer, "what makes you so sure she would let him get his own way? I don't know about you, but I actually trust my girlfriend."
"Then you're a fool," said Paris definitely, getting in his way again. "As much as I like Rory, and you know I do, the girl is easily led. It wouldn't be the first time she left the guy she's dating for someone else."
She met Jess' eyes and they both knew he well understood her meaning. He was the guy that Rory left Dean for. In fact, she kissed him before she had officially broken up with Jolly Green. Jess didn't want to believe that she would do the same to him, especially with someone like Logan, but she did have form. Besides, it wasn't as if Jess hadn't noticed the blond dick trying to put the moves on Rory.
"We need to go," he said then, looking at his watch now it was firmly fastened on his wrist. "Marty, we're out."
"See you later!" he called behind them as they left.
"I'm not about to let you-" Paris began, only to be summarily ignored and cut off in her prime by Jess.
"Hey, man!" he called to someone who was coming out of a door down the hall. "We're waiting on my girlfriend, but we'll be there. Don't start without us."
"No problem, Jess, but don't expect me to bend the rules for you. We start at eight sharp."
"We'll be there," he promised, raising his hand in a brief wave.
"Who was that?" asked Paris, frowning at the retreating form of a guy she was sure she had never seen before in her life.
"That's Doyle, our RA," Jess explained. "He's also the editor for the paper."
"That guy?" she checked, eyes wide. "He's so... short."
Jess smiled and shook his head, not even bothering to get into that particular conversation. Thankfully, he was saved from having to as Rory walked up to join them.
"Hey. Sorry, guys. Mom was having a crisis of the outfit kind."
"Figured it was something pretty important," said Jess, completely dead-pan, as he moved to kiss her hello.
"Nothing is more embarrassing than showing up for work in a sweater that doesn't match your pants," she said equally as seriously when they parted. "Shall we?"
"Yes, we shall," said Paris, before Jess could, pushing between them unnecessarily to head on down the hallway.
Rory gave Jess a questioning look. He rolled his eyes and shook his head, reaching to take her hand in his. They followed Paris to the Yale Daily News office. Naturally, Doyle was already there, along with way too many other people for Jess' liking. It was loud and busy, as you might expect a newspaper office to be, and Rory and Paris had so many friends here already.
Jess sat on the edge of the desk nearest the door and planned to stay there. It was cool just to sit back and watch everybody else for a while, including Rory and Paris, as one mingled with her friends and the other networked for all she was worth. Jess sighed and barely noticed he had done it. This really wasn't his scene. With each day that passed, he wondered more and more if he ever would feel like he really fit at Yale. He was smart enough, that was a given, as he had been for Chilton, but that didn't mean he ought to be in either place.
The classes in college were okay, the ones he got to choose anyway. Anything to do with English usually held his attention, and since this was further education, his fellow students were both smart and had chosen to be here. Jess didn't have the annoyance of idiots calling out stupid comments or screwing around when he wanted to concentrate. It was the other courses, the requirements that held no interest for Jess, that had him itching to skip out all the time. That and the push to be social a not small part of the time. Thankfully, two of his room-mates were usually absent from the dorm, and he and Marty did get along, but Mike and Dan had brought the party home twice already in the last couple of weeks, and Jess could live without it.
"You okay?" asked Rory, returning to his side.
"Sure, yeah," he told her, forcing a smile. "Just waiting for the fun to start."
"Looks like your wait is over," said Rory, smiling more genuinely as Doyle called for everyone's rapt attention.
Jess listened and looked interested. Actually, he didn't hate the idea of working for the paper, even if he didn't want to be a reporter of any kind. It couldn't hurt to get a little more writing into his life, but he had a feeling he was going to hate being in this room with all the chatter and excitement.
"Oh, you have got to be kidding me," he muttered when he turned and saw a familiar figure in the opposite corner.
It wasn't as if it didn't make sense for Huntzberger to work on the paper. His father owned real newspapers all over the place, so naturally, his son would be encouraged to sign up for the college paper. That didn't explain why Logan was here now, at a meeting specifically for Freshman hoping to join the ranks of the Yale Daily News. Of course, Jess was well aware that he wouldn't give a damn about the guy hanging around whenever and wherever if he hadn't already shown an interest in Rory. For all that he tried to keep Paris from yammering about a potential connection between Rory and Logan, Jess knew it was there and he hated it.
As the crowd of new recruits applauded Doyle's opening speech and each other, Jess snapped back into the room and clapped his hands together all of twice before the moment was over.
"This is so exciting!" said Rory, bouncing up and down beside him. "Writing for an actual paper. Getting published where people are actually going to see it."
"That is the notion," said Jess, smiling at her enthusiasm because it was impossible not to. "You and Paris are going to be running this place by senior year, aren't you?"
"No. Well, maybe." Rory grinned. "You know Paris, she will not be denied, and I cannot say that one day I wouldn't want to run this place."
"Wow, first day here, and she's already planning her run for editor," said Doyle from behind her. "You did say she was a go-getter."
"I didn't lie," said Jess, nodding his head, "but it's still Paris you gotta watch out for. Rory has ambition, but Paris? She takes no prisoners. Ever."
"Duly noted." Doyle nodded, looking over at Jess' sister. "So, you got an idea for your first piece? We don't assign for that, you just have to impress."
"I have a few ideas," said Jess, eyes narrowing at Logan without his hardly realising he was doing it.
Nobody else spotted it either, since Rory was already glancing in the general direction of the rich boy wonder.
"I was actually planning something pretty big," she admitted to Doyle. "Have you ever heard of the Life and Death Brigade?"
When Rory and Paris went to Stars Hollow for the Festival of Living Art, Jess refused to go with them. He had no interest in the crazy mess that particular town event was going to be, and he was happy enough to be left behind in solitude. For one thing, he had to come up with an actual idea for his article for the paper, since he had lied his ass off to Doyle about having several.
He figured between that, a couple of good books, and Marty to talk to if he wanted, he would get through Saturday and Sunday just fine. Of course, that all changed with a knock on the door sometime Saturday afternoon when Jess was the only one home. He thought about ignoring whoever wanted attention, but that seemed like a bad idea. It could be an emergency, it could be Rory or Paris, it could even be Marty having forgotten his keys (again!), so Jess did the decent thing and got off his ass to go open the door. The second he saw who was there, he wished he hadn't bothered.
"Hey," said the blond, with a huge grin that Jess would just love to wipe off with his fist. "Is Marty around?"
"Nope," said Jess shortly, moving to close the door in Logan's face.
Unfortunately, he moved his foot into the gap too quickly and prevented the manoeuvre.
"That's it, just no?" he asked. "You can't tell me where I could find him?"
"Don't know, don't care," Jess said with a fake smile of his own. "Now, get your foot out of my door."
"Hey, I know you," said Logan then, still not moving that foot. "You were at the paper the other day. You were with Rory. Oh my God, are you Jess?"
Jess wasn't sure whether to be glad or not that Logan knew his name. If he heard it from Rory that meant that she mentioned him, which meant that Logan's 'love only me' powers didn't work on her at all. At the same time, Jess dreaded to think what else Logan knew about him. Rory had a horrible habit of describing Jess as sweet and other less than manly adjectives. That was not the picture Jess wanted Logan to have of him, especially not right now.
"You know, the other night, Rory would not stop talking about you," said Logan then. "She doesn't hold her alcohol too well, does she?"
If he was trying to wind up Jess, he was doing a great job. For one thing, Jess would very much like to know how Rory and Logan came to be drunk in each other's company 'the other night'. That aside, he considered, Logan probably didn't mean to be an ass. Jess was pretty sure guys like him just couldn't help themselves, they were born with a natural state of assness. Jess caught himself making up ridiculous words like 'assness' and realised that maybe he spent just a little too much time with the Gilmore girls.
"Look, man, Marty's not here, Rory's not here, and I have better things to do than this, so..." Jess made an 'off you go' gesture with his hand and then moved to close the door.
"Hey, you're not very friendly, man," said Logan, his foot still blocking the door and his hand pushing it open some more again. "What is your problem?"
"My problem is standing in my door, pissing me off," said Jess, just now starting to really lose his cool. "You wanna talk to my room-mate, go look for him. You wanna talk to my girlfriend, you can't," he said, realising when Logan's eyes-widened just how caveman that really sounded, "because she went home for the weekend," he added quickly.
"That's a real shame," said Logan, nodding his head. "I thought Marty would want to tend bar at a party tonight, and hey, if Rory had been here, I might've invited her along. Rory's a fun girl to have at a party, at least, she was last weekend. She tell you about that? Me, her, a bunch of my friends, in her grandparent's pool-house?" he asked, eyes sparkling. "Yes, sir, we had a very good time."
Jess should've known better. In a clear-headed moment, he was smart enough to realise that Logan was doing it on purpose, pushing his buttons, making what was doubtless an innocent evening at the Gilmore mansion sound like abject debauchery with his girlfriend at the centre. Unfortunately, Jess wasn't feeling all that stable and calm right now, which was how he came to lose his temper, draw back his arm, and clock Logan right in the face.
To Be Continued...
