The next couple of weeks just crawl by, an endless parade of blurred-together nights and days so long and arduous that every second feels like an hour. Luke heals slowly, haltingly, and Rory's arrival the following week only makes it all feel that much worse. It's a horrible reason to see her in person again, and they all are acutely aware of it.
"I can't believe this," Rory keeps saying sadly, over cups and cups and cups of coffee. "He's fixed that gutter a million times. He's fixed a million gutters! He's never fallen before. Ever."
"Because he's careful," Jess says, and that's the other thing he can't stop thinking about. Luke's the most cautious bastard anyone's ever met. He reads safety manuals, wears hardhats and gloves, has emergency phone numbers on laminated cards on the refrigerator. The first thing he did when he got a smartphone was put a list of everyone's allergies in it, for God's sake. And now, this. "But accidents happen to careful people too, sometimes."
"Why was he trying to do that so early in the morning, anyway?"
"He wanted to get it done before going in to open the diner," Jess says. "He was worried about the rainstorm clogging up the pipes, apparently."
Rory shakes her head, her face pinched. "He always worried about that stuff," she says thickly. "One of my earliest memories is of him redoing the waterproof sealing on the deck. I couldn't have been more than six or seven? I remember watching him work from my bedroom window."
Jess reaches out and touches her elbow. Rory leans into it silently.
"He told me it was because he didn't want my mom to slip," she says softly.
Jess nudges at her arm, and nods towards her coffee. Rory smiles weakly, and buries her face in it again, which seems to help. At least a little.
Luke himself is in and out over the first few days, the concussion pulling double duty of keeping him in pain and pretty disoriented, most of the time. The doctors rule out brain damage fairly quickly, which is a relief, and by the following Monday, Luke is cognizant enough to hold actual conversations - and bitch loudly at anyone in his immediate vicinity - which is what they needed, apparently, to get him on pain meds for his leg and back. Then after that, he just sleeps a lot.
Lorelai splits her time back and forth between the hospital and the Inn, and Jess tries to arrange his time so that he can cover the slots when she's not there. Chris and Matt have been reorganizing their usual workload at the publishing house, sending Jess a majority of the paperwork stuff so they can take over the in-person meetings and consultations, so Jess can get most of it done on his laptop, next to Luke's bed or the patient lounge or wherever it is that he needs to be. The rest of the time he spends at the diner, helping Lane cover the empty shifts, or running interference for Lorelai with Liz and T.J., who keep showing up to pick hysterical fights with each other in the waiting room and stress everybody out.
Rory spends just as much time at the hospital herself, but she has to go back to California fairly quickly, not being able to take much time off of work. Lorelai spends a solid hour talking her out of quitting, the afternoon that she's due to leave.
"He's out of the woods now, okay? We're still waiting to see about his spine, but we expected that, and everything else is healing. You can fly back out to see him again after you film the next batch of segments."
"I just feel so awful, I should be here," Rory says, stricken. Jess tries not to eavesdrop, but there's no way not to. They haven't exactly made much effort to hide these conversations from him, anyway. "I don't know what I was thinking, taking a job so far away! This is my home, I belong here."
"You were thinking that it's your dream job, that it would open a billion and one doors for you, which it has," Lorelai urges. "You were thinking about traveling the world and doing important things, which is what you're doing! Honey, you know that Luke would kill you if you sacrificed all that for him. He wouldn't have even wanted you to take time off."
"Yeah but that's just Luke," Rory says. "He never asks for stuff that he wants."
Jess can't stop himself from inhaling sharply at that, jerking his hands back from his laptop like they've been stung. Neither Rory nor Lorelai seem to notice.
"Listen to me," Lorelai says intently, "there's nothing you can do here. And I know how that sounds, and believe me, it's not that I don't want you here, because God, babe, the second you walked through that door was the first second since this happened that I didn't feel like I was falling to pieces. But, practically speaking - you need to keep your job, you want to keep your job, and the only thing we're going to be doing over the next few days is sitting here and watching him sleep. We can call you every night - and I will, trust me you will rue the day that you decided to allow me to have your phone number - and if anything changes we will tell you the second it does, and you can work things out with Kara so you can fly back and see him again soon. Okay? We'll work it out. But you've gotta keep living your life. That's what Luke would tell you."
Rory's nodding, Jess can see out of the corner of his eye. "I just - God, Mom - "
"I know, honey. It's okay."
Jess watches them fold together like puzzle pieces, Rory's head fitting into the space between Lorelai's neck and shoulder like it belongs there. Which it does, really. Jess turns his gaze back to his laptop and tries very hard not to think about Willa.
Luke seems almost normal, the morning she takes off, managing to stay awake for a longer stretch of time than he's managed so far. Rory sits with him for a long time, talking with him quietly, and Jess and Lorelai both find other places to be. By the time he makes his way back, Luke is asleep again, but Rory is smiling, tears on her cheeks but looking steadier than she has in days.
"He told me get my ass back to L.A.," she tells Jess, and laughs. "Mom was right."
"I hate it when Moms do that," Jess says, and nudges her with his elbow. Rory nudges him back, a shaky grin spreading across her face.
Jess doesn't actually know what's more exhausting - being at the hospital, or covering for Luke at the diner. It's all exhausting, really - the ugliest business of being hurt is all the real world complications that nobody thinks about until it happens, like insurance paperwork and carpooling and bank account passwords that nobody but Luke remembers. Still, Jess could do without the crowd of mourners that congregate at the front counter every day.
"He's not paralyzed, is he?" Taylor asks. "That's a real risk with spinal injuries. I read about it."
"No, Taylor," Jess says.
"Because if he's going to need special accommodation, then there are some options that I've been looking into - "
"He's not paralyzed, Taylor," Jess says.
" - that crosswalk for certain needs revamping, and while it is written into the town bylaws that all legal businesses must have a wheelchair accessible entrance, the legal rules on what constitutes 'wheelchair accessible' are woefully vague - "
"His spine is fine, Taylor, they're just being cautious now," Jess says, raising his voice.
" - willing to attend the town meeting tonight, perhaps as Luke's official advocate? I want to make sure his needs are being met, and I know Lorelai is very distraught, and understandably so - "
"I have to go, Taylor," Jess says, and refills the guy's coffee in as definitive a manner as possible.
"Well, let me know," Taylor says, and Jess escapes quickly into the kitchen. Maybe 'mourners' isn't quite the right word.
The other problem is that the daily upkeep of the diner is a hell of a lot more complicated than Jess - or anyone, really - ever thought. Having run the business almost singlehandedly for over twenty years, Luke hadn't exactly needed to make to-do lists anymore, and Jess quickly figures out that there's a whole lot of shit that he did every day that nobody else really knew about. Jess accidentally ruins an entire shipment of yogurt when it gets dropped off one morning at the back door while he's at the hospital, for instance. He gets back a few hours later to find four boxes of spoiled Greek vanilla with honey, because apparently Luke gets some kind of bargain bin deal with a local grocery supplier, the caveat being that he keep it top secret.
"Who does this?!" Jess asks Lane, who is frantically Googling yogurt prices, trying to find a reasonable way to replace the lost food before tomorrow's breakfast service, "who buys yogurt from some guy in an alleyway? Seriously?"
"Don't look at me, I always thought he was going out there to sneak cigarettes or something," Lane says. Jess raises an incredulous eyebrow at her. "What? It's possible. His whole eat-healthy thing always seemed a little too emphatic to me. Like he's compensating for something, you know?"
Jess snorts and collapses at the table next to her, stealing his laptop back. "Never mind. Look, we can just hit up the Sam's Club in New Britain. I'll put it on my credit card, it's fine."
"No, I'll do it." Lane points at him threateningly, before he can protest. "Shut up. It's mostly my fault, okay? I'm the one who actually works here, I should've known there was something up when our ex-dairy guy left us that passive-aggressive voicemail."
"Lane, come on. You don't have to."
"Well, neither do you," Lane points out imperiously. Jess concedes the point with a laugh. "Maybe we can do something to cut consumption. The smoothies aren't that popular in the fall and winter, anyway, and that's mostly what we use yogurt for. There aren't that many people who order the breakfast parfait, either."
"We can't take them off the menu entirely. All those kids who come in after school will riot."
"No, but we can...put a time restriction on them or something. Ooh!" Lane perks up. "Secret smoothies. We'll take them off the chalkboard, but if someone orders one, we'll still make it."
"That'll have to do." Jess sighs, clicking through to Luke's business account, which he's only just started to make sense of. "Do you know what he spends fourteen eighty-six on every second Thursday? Because in the books he's just labeled it as 'bullshit,' which is a little worrying."
"Oh, that's the town surcharge for including the diner's name and phone number in the phone book every month," Lane says, and winces. "Crap, yesterday was the second Thursday, wasn't it? We gotta remember to give that to Kirk before Monday, if you're more than four days late Taylor takes you out of the directory for two months as a penalty."
"Jesus Christ, that can't be legal."
"It is when Kirk prints them in his garage," Lane says wryly. "I think Taylor wrote him a special law so he could get a tax break on the printing machine."
Jess groans, covering his face with his hands.
"Buck up, comrade. It'll get easier," Lane says sympathetically, patting his shoulder.
"Really? Because I have like four different places I need to be tomorrow, and two of them involve my mother." Jess sighs. "I still don't know how to handle this festival thing he signed up for. Fifty pizzas? Really? He doesn't even serve pizza here."
"I suppose this would be a bad time to tell you that I have another ultrasound tomorrow afternoon," Lane says apologetically. Jess blinks at her stupidly. "I'm so sorry! The doctor's insisting. She's worried about my blood pressure."
"It's okay," Jess says, through gritted teeth. "Your health comes first. And the baby."
Lane shoots a resentful look at her stomach, which has only barely begun to show. "I could reschedule. Try and get an appointment in the morning, so I can still cover lunch - "
"Lane. No. Go to the doctor. I'll figure it out." Jess waves his hand at her vaguely. "And, you know. Good luck, or whatever."
"I think I used up all my good luck with Dylan," Lane says sadly. "This one is giving me backaches and making me puke every time I smell Chinese food. Already making my life difficult."
"It's probably gonna be a girl then," Jess says, and winces as Lane punches him.
He finds a groove eventually, even if the juggling means that things keep getting dropped. Chris and Matt keeping Willa safe and entertained helps Jess immensely, but her absence is still an intense, low-level ache that never really goes away. It doesn't help that she's clearly upset about Jess being gone, either. As much fun as she's having on her vacation at Aunt Chris and Uncle Matt's house, her nightly phone calls with Jess always end in tears.
He wants to tell her what's going on, but he wants her to hear it from him, and he wants to do it in person. There's no way he can drop everything for an entire weekend, though, and the drive is too long to do twice in one day. So he sticks with the uncomfortable status quo, not really knowing what else to do.
"She needs to feel safe, and she obviously doesn't, staying with Chris and Matt and not knowing what's going on," Lorelai advises one night, after witnessing one of these painful phone calls. "You should go back home, Jess. She needs you more than Luke does right now."
"No," Jess says.
"Jess - "
"Are you going to give me the same speech you gave Rory?" Jess interrupts. "That I have to keep living my life? Because you know, the difference is, I wouldn't have a life, if it weren't for Luke."
That shuts Lorelai up.
"She's fine for now. She gets upset on the phone because it reminds her that she misses me, but most of the time she's having a blast. You should see the pictures Chris keeps sending." Jess runs one hand through his hair tiredly. "And I'm in a kind of unique position here, to be able to help - which you still need," Jess reminds her, waving one hand at his laptop. "I really can work from anywhere. That's the benefit to being a founding member of your own publishing house. The office is just for parties and stuff, you know. We don't actually need to be there every day, and Matthew's way better at the face to face meetings, anyway."
"Man," Lorelai quips, "sounds a lot better than the inn gig. Maybe I should've gone into the book business instead."
"Nah. Print is dying," Jess tells her. "But people will always need places to sleep."
Lorelai laughs, shaking her head. They've been kicked out of Luke's room for the night, but neither of them have made a move to leave, yet. They're both making brand new homes on this couch, at this point.
"I'll bring her here," Jess decides out loud. "It's not like there isn't room for us both, at the apartment. And I can figure out the rest. Daycare, and all that."
"Oh jeez, don't worry about that," Lorelai says, rolling her eyes. "There's an entire town full of dubiously-qualified people who'd jump at the chance to babysit. And hey, I've got some experience in that area, too."
"I guess," Jess says, huffing out a laugh.
"Just," Lorelai says, "if...you're sure. I know you want more time with him, and God, don't get me wrong, you've been such a life saver the past couple weeks. I don't know how we would've kept the diner running without you. But...you don't have to do any of this, you know that, right? You don't owe him anything just for...you know, being your uncle."
"Well you're wrong about that, but that's not the point," Jess tells her. "You need my help, Lorelai. Luke's not gonna be in shape to go back to work for awhile, and besides - I'm not ready to leave yet."
Lorelai peers at him for a second, and then nods. "Okay." She smiles at him gently. "Thank you."
"Ah, look - don't make it weird or anything."
"What? I was just gonna say that I remembered the quote from The Sopranos," Lorelai says, eyes sparkling. "Well - I Googled it, and - here, hold on." She digs into her purse, pulling out her phone. "Okay, are you ready? Because I was thinking you should memorize it, so I can film it for Rory. Reading from a script will kind of ruin the dramatic effect."
"Oh my God," Jess says, and lets his head fall back against the couch.
"Okay. And, three, two - " Lorelai swipes one hand through the air dramatically, before affecting the worst wise-guy impression that Jess has ever heard, including Rory's. Which is pretty bad. "'We're soldiers. Soldiers don't go to hell. It's war. Soldiers kill other soldiers - "
"Please stop."
" - a situation where everyone involved knows the stakes and if you're gonna accept those stakes, you gotta do certain things. It's bidness.'" Lorelai waves her hand again. "Scene."
"You're not nearly as funny as you think you are, you know," Jess tells her, getting up to leave.
"Yes I am," Lorelai says, rolling her eyes. "Do you need me to read it one more time, or would you rather do a dry run now and then work out the kinks later?"
"Goodnight," Jess says pointedly. Lorelai just laughs at him again.
Jess himself doesn't get a whole lot of time with Luke, at least not one-on-one. They'd had a few conversations in the beginning, when Luke first started waking up, but after Rory left, things got a little hectic, and anyway, he was still pretty out of it then. He's doing a lot better now, but he's still pretty tired most of the time, falling asleep unexpectedly and drifting off into a sort of sleepy, half-aware state sometimes even when he is awake. So Jess tries to let Lorelai have as much time with him as possible - not to mention the daily Skype calls with April, who is hysterically upset about her mom's refusal to let her miss school to fly back. Luke gets worn out pretty quickly by those. Plus - with the diner, and his own work, and coordinating with Matt and the Chrises back home for Willa stuff, Jess is lucky he's got time to sleep.
Which is what he does sometimes at the hospital, although not on purpose. There's an armchair in Luke's room that's more comfortable than most beds Jess has owned in his life, and well. Sometimes shit just happens.
Luke, when he's awake, tends to enjoy this immensely. Usually he wakes Jess up by throwing stuff at him.
"What the fuck," Jess says, jerking away. There's a croissant in his lap, which he blearily lobs back in the general direction of the bed. "Quit it, asshole."
"Morning, sunshine," Luke says cheerfully. He's graduated to solid food and sitting up, although he still has to wear the neck brace, and his leg is in a full cast now, which looks annoying as hell, too. At least they ruled out the possibility of spinal cord damage fairly quickly - although Luke probably has a lot of back and neck problems in his future. Still - better than the alternative. Way, way better. "You were talking in your sleep. Figured I'd wake you up before you embarrassed yourself."
"I was not," Jess grumbles, sitting up and rubbing his eyes. "Willa doesn't even throw food anymore, you know."
Luke makes the face he makes whenever he wants to shrug, or move his neck at all, and is remembering how annoying it is that he can't. "You look like shit, you know."
"Thanks," Jess says dryly. He sits up, rubbing his eyes, checks his watch. Only nine AM - he's not late, yet. Lane's covering breakfast today.
"Lorelai says that Willa's coming this weekend," Luke says, all faux-nonchalant, his gaze buried in his oatmeal.
"Yeah, Christine's going to take her to work with her on Saturday, so I can meet them in New York. Figured that'd be easier than driving all the way to Philly and back."
"You should," Luke says seriously. "Spend a few days at home, get some rest."
"Don't have time," Jess says evenly. "That stupid festival thing is on Monday, remember? I've got pizzas to make."
"Yeah, about that," Luke says, voice gruff, and Jess knows what's coming before he even says the first word. "Listen, I don't know how to...thank you for everything you've done here. You really went above and beyond, and I'm - "
"Yeah," Jess cuts him off, "look, it's way too early in the morning for this, so let's...not and say we did. Okay? I get it."
Luke rolls his eyes at him. "Mature."
Jess shrugs, unrepentant.
"So this is the part where I tell you to get back to your real life," Luke continues, still gruff, avoiding Jess' eyes. "Because I know you've got one. I've seen it."
How is this not my real life? Jess thinks, but doesn't say. "That's sort of the idea behind bringing Willa here," he says carefully. "And do you have a better idea for how to handle the diner? Because I don't."
Luke makes the face again, and shoves some oatmeal in his mouth resentfully.
Jess takes a breath, and goes for broke. "Look, you need help, Luke," he says. "Lorelai's got the Inn, she can't cover for you at the diner. Lane's pregnant again, she's going to have to cut back her shifts, go on maternity leave soon. And why don't you look me in the eye and tell me you can afford to hire someone else. Go on."
"We'll figure something out," Luke says stubbornly, a thread of anger making itself known.
"I've been doing your job for the better part of a month, I've seen your books. I know about the mortgage on the building. And I don't know how much Lorelai makes, but I know it can't be enough to carry two businesses, not to mention whatever you guys still owe on the house. And now you've got these medical bills...Luke. Come on."
"We will figure something out," Luke says again, insistently. "It's not your responsibility, Jess, it's ours. And I'm the one who got myself into this goddamn situation in the first place!"
"Is that what this is about, you feel guilty or something?" Jess scoffs. "Save it for Oprah, Luke. I've got better things to do."
"Damn right you do!" Luke says, throwing his spoon aside. "Your daughter, your job, your life. Those are the things you need to concentrate on, not me. It's not your obligation to fix my problems."
Jess feels a burst of anger and resentment so strong he has to stand up, turning away to the window so he doesn't say something he'll regret later. Even when he's doing the right thing, it's still not enough. Even with something like this, he can't manage to make Luke happy. Fucking figures.
"Look," Luke says, after a tense second, "I appreciate it, okay? I do. I really, really do. But come on, Jess, this isn't what you should be doing."
Jess has to count to ten before he responds. "I figure that's my decision to make, not yours, don't you think?"
He turns around just in time to catch Luke's scowl. "So what? What's the plan? You bring Willa here, keep staying at the diner, holding me up, and then what? I'm not gonna be back on my feet for awhile, Jess, you realize that? At least two months with this leg, and they're tellin' me I won't be able to spend as much time on my feet as before, not with my back. Then there's physical therapy and shit, that's another couple months at least, and by then it'll be summer, and then what? There'll never be a time when I'll stop needing help - for God's sake, I've always needed help! But I got by on my own! I figured it out! And Willa will be starting school before you know it. You gonna enroll her at Stars Hollow Elementary?"
"I was thinking about it," Jess says honestly, and Luke glares at him so hard that Jess is actually surprised he doesn't set off any medical alarms.
"Oh, go to hell," Luke says. "No. Don't even think about it."
"What? You just said it yourself, you're gonna be laid up for awhile."
"You cannot be serious," Luke says. "Jess - "
"No, listen to me. Shut up," Jess says seriously, and miraculously, Luke listens. "I've been talking to Matt and Christopher, and they're on board with making this a more permanent thing, me handling the bulk of the submissions and editing, and handing over the financials and face-to-face stuff to them. That's what we should've been doing from the start - it plays to our strengths. My lease is up in two months, and I wasn't planning on staying there anyway - the landlord's hiking up rent prices, and that stupid construction site next door is going to be there for at least a year - and Willa will need her own room eventually. And look, I don't know about school, that's still a good year away from now, but - for the time being, this makes sense. And it's not just because of you."
"Jess," Luke says incredulously, "you hate Stars Hollow. You couldn't wait to leave. Every time you visit, it's like nails on a chalkboard for you, I can tell."
"And you hate the city," Jess shoots back, feeling reckless and wild, like the words are flying out before he can think about them too closely. "But if something like this happened to me, and I needed help with Willa, where would you be?"
Luke clears his throat, looking down at his lap.
"Because I think I know," Jess continues, "and I sure as hell don't think you'd refer to it as a fucking obligation."
"That's different," Luke says.
"It's really not." Jess turns back to the window for a second, tries to get his face under control. If Luke thinks he's upset, his credibility will be shot, and he'll be dealing with enough grief about all of this as it is. "Look, it's not completely selfless or anything, alright? Money's been tight lately, and it's not like I'm gonna pay you rent while I'm running your business for you. Things are cheaper up here than in the city, and I've got my pick of free babysitters."
"Jess," Luke says heavily, letting it hang in the air, an unfinished sentence.
"I'm not talking about forever. I'm talking about for now, and then we'll see how it goes. Okay?"
Luke doesn't reply, and Jess turns around to look. He looks tired, and older than he's ever looked, his skin pale and dark circles drawing heavily beneath his eyes. And he always looks kind of weird without his hat on, even when he hasn't been lying in traction for three and a half weeks. Jess' stomach lurches like it always does, with that twist of secondhand pain at seeing vulnerability in someone that Jess could always, always depend on to be an unshakable, fixed point.
"I never expected my life to be perfect, you know," Jess tells him. "I never expected to get everything I wanted, either. Usually it was the opposite." He swallows, thickly, and watches Luke lift his eyes slowly to Jess' face. "But I look at where I am now, with this amazing job with all these batshit amazing people, my beautiful, amazing daughter, and I'm so goddamn lucky, Luke. I don't know what I did to deserve all this, but somehow I've got it, and you know, in comparison, living in a town I don't like seems like a pretty stupid thing to complain about, don't you think?"
Luke gapes at him for a second before he seems to gather his wits enough to reply, his voice gravelly. "You deserve better than that, is what I'm saying," he says. "You deserve to have everything you want. Just like Rory does, and April. You deserve the same, Jess."
Jess closes his eyes for a second. "Life doesn't work like that. At least not for guys like you and me." He shrugs. "You work with what you've got. And I've got more than enough, Luke. I really do."
Luke doesn't say anything, and Jess goes to sit back down. He feels exhausted, again.
"If you're gonna be in that apartment full time," Luke says after a long moment, "you'll need to take a look at the pipes. Some of them will need replacing by now, and the sealant on the kitchen window probably needs to be redone, too."
Jess rolls his eyes at him. "Okay. Sure. I'll find some time in-between the billion other things I gotta do this weekend to double check the fucking window glue."
"Don't cuss at me. I'm injured."
"I'll cuss at you as much as I like while I'm doing your job for you, old man."
Luke grumbles something, and picks up his spoon. "Oh, this is gonna be real fun. I'm not gonna regret this at all."
Jess grins.
If Jess had any anxious thoughts about grudges and temper tantrums and abandonment complexes, they're all gone within the first two seconds of Willa's exuberant hug. She clings to his neck for a full five minutes, babbling excitedly in his ear about all the cool, awesome, amazing stuff she's done, and he should've been there because it was so cool, Daddy, honestly.
"I wish I had been there," Jess tells her, holding onto her just as tightly, content to let her hang from his neck for the rest of her life, if that's what she wants. "So you had fun, huh?"
"I had so much fun but I'm so happy you're here Daddy can we have pizza for lunch?" Willa says.
"We had pizza for breakfast, FYI," Christine says. Jess glares at her, and she snaps her gum at him. "What? It was breakfast pizza."
"It had bacon and I liked that but I made Uncle Matt take off the eggs because I don't like eggs," Willa rambles.
Jess laughs. "We can have pizza if you want, baby. But I've gotta talk to you for a minute first."
"Okay," Willa says cheerfully, still squeezing his neck.
Jess pulls at her arms gently. "So...can you sit back for a second, or...?"
Willa lets go of him reluctantly, settling down into his lap. Jess keeps one arm around her back, his heart tugging itself into pieces at the look on her face.
"I'll leave you guys alone for a bit," Chris says, smiling at Willa softly. It's the only time she ever actually does that - her resting face sort of reminds Jess of Nick Nolte's mugshot. "If you can stick around for another half an hour, I can come to lunch with you if you want."
"Sure," Jess says, settling down contently with Willa. "We can stick around, right Wills?"
"Stick around, up and down," Willa says in a sing-song voice, a quote from some kid's song album that Matt is always playing for her. Chris and Jess both laugh.
"Great." Chris grins, and mouths 'good luck,' before disappearing into the mass of people in the museum's lobby, her garish apron quickly blending into the bright colors of the crowd.
"So," Jess says, leaning his head against the crown of Willa's for another moment, reveling in the familiar smell of her hair, the warmth of hands in his. "You had fun, huh?" Willa nods. "I'm glad. I'm sorry I had to stay away for so long."
"It's okay," Willa says, picking at a button hole in Jess' jacket. Her face is a bit more closed down now, the excitement having faded a bit, and the memory of being left probably returning. Jess breathes through it; he deserves it.
"I'm sorry I didn't tell you why I left, too," Jess says, pausing long enough to give her a chance to say something else, if she wants. She doesn't. "It was because of Grandpa. He needed some help, so I had to go stay with him for awhile, and I couldn't take you with me because everyone was really busy."
Willa frowns, her fingers still tangled in Jess' jacket. "Why did he need help?"
"Because he had an accident, Willa. He fell and hurt himself." Jess smooths her hair back with one hand, watching her face carefully. "He's okay now, but he hurt his leg, and he can't walk for a little bit. And Aunt Lorelai needed some help right away, which is why I went."
Willa darts a quick look up at him, then quickly looks down at her hands, focused intently on Jess' jacket. She doesn't say anything.
"Honey," Jess says helplessly, his stomach twisting, "it's - it's alright to be upset. But I want you to know that Grandpa is fine, okay? He's absolutely fine. His leg is hurt, but it's going to get better."
Willa nods, rubbing her cheek against her upper arm. Her forehead is twisted tight, deep lines etched between her eyebrows.
"If it's alright with you," Jess says slowly, "we'll go and see him tonight, when we get to Stars Hollow. He's been asking about you, he can't wait to see you."
"I wanna see Granpa," Willa says quietly.
"Then we'll go see him. I'll take you straight there." Jess runs his hand through her hair again. Her shoulders are so tense. "You'll have plenty of chances to spend time with him. We'll be in Stars Hollow for awhile, so we can go visit him whenever you want."
"With Aunt Lorelai?"
"She'll be there a lot, yeah. But you and me are staying above the diner."
"Okay," Willa says, and goes quiet again. Jess sighs and gathers her up against his chest. She curls up instantly, tucking her head beneath his chin and shoving her hands underneath Jess' collar.
"Look," Jess says, and falters, unsure of how to say what he wants to say in a way that she'll actually understand. "Willa, I know that...it's scary sometimes, when things change really fast. You don't always know what's going to happen, because everything seems really different, out of nowhere, right?"
Willa shrugs, picking at Jess' collar fastidiously. Jess squeezes her shoulder affectionately.
"But I want you to know that I'm never gonna change, okay? No matter what happens, where we live or work, where you go to school, or your friends, or even my friends...all of that stuff is going to change a lot, as we get older. But I'm always gonna be with you, and I'm always going to be your dad. You know that, right?"
"Uh hum," Willa says.
"I love you right now, and I'll love you tomorrow, and the day after that, and it's only gonna get bigger, the bigger you get," Jess says. "And one day I'm going to love you so much that we'll both explode into tiny little pieces all over the sidewalk, and people will walk by and say, 'wow. That's a whole lotta love right there.'"
Willa laughs. "Love doesn't make you explode."
"Really? I always thought it did."
"Love makes you go like this," Willa says, and shakes her head back and forth quickly, whipping her hair against Jess' face. Jess laughs in surprise.
"Okay, then we'll do that until we explode."
"Boom," Willa says happily, and settles back down against his shoulder.
Jess kisses her forehead again, his heart full. "Boom," he agrees.
okay so finally, here it is! the point i've been working towards for 50k+ words! i got a little sidetracked i admit, but my big dark secret for this story is that it actually came about because i was thinking about how jess might get to a point where he would willingly move back to stars hollow. surprise!
i love you all and thank you so much for sticking with me, i've had a blast. i'm writing an epilogue, so you'll hear from me at least one more time, but i'm always open to prompts. i might not fill them right away, but hit me up on tumblr if you want (jaegermighty). :)