Spark

She had woken slowly that morning, hot and languid, tangled in her sheets. The tantalizing tendrils of a dream were still reaching out for her like a new vine. She kept her eyes closed, hoping to find sleep again. Confusing images flashed behind her eyelids, but she couldn't piece them together. She had been in a dark room. It had felt so familiar in the dream, like her bedroom, comfortable and warm and lived in, but it hadn't looked like her room, even though she had recognized the blanket on the bed. It had been late, evening, and she had been with someone. She saw the barest flicker of a pair of dark umber eyes, ablaze and searching her own for the answer to a question that she had been asked. An unfamiliar sensation burned low and deep. Her legs felt suddenly heavy as she remembered a wool-lined jacket fall to the ground and the smell and weight of the color blue. She felt her eyebrows knit together then as though it were happening to someone else. Her mind was split in two; one half, nerve endings and philosophy, transcendent, still dreaming, had smelled and felt the color blue, and the other, logical and dubious, scoffed.

Though she tried to sink back into the dream to remember what about it had set her skin on fire and made her feel so restless and heavy and unsatisfied, sunlight was pouring resolutely into her bedroom. The memory of the confrontation she'd had with Jess the previous evening came rushing back, and she opened her eyes, squinting against the bright. She pulled the covers off of her body and sighed. As she lay there, she took time to relish the slight September chill and looked around her room.

Some mornings, particularly in the fall, it felt nice to take stock of her things, the small pieces of her life and memories, from the safety and warmth of her bed. Her eyes, aquamarine tidepools in the morning sun, flitted to the right. The Harvard board, her green and white dresser, the Bauhaus t-shirt that hung out of one of the drawers...everything was where it had been the night before, but it looked all different somehow. Clearer, sharper...more significant. Her books were all in their places on the bookshelf, and her stereo waited patiently next to a stack of favorite CDs. There were a few knickknacks here and there, childhood toys, souvenirs from life with her mother. The corners of her mouth twitched into a small smile, and her gaze continued slowly along the wall. Her bedroom door was shut, and her small wardrobe stood beside it. The wardrobe was closed, too, but she knew which dresses hung inside and in what order. But it would be too cold for a dress today, surely. Those fiery eyes floated into her mind's eye again, subliminal and unnoticed, and she began to think about what to wear once she got up. No dress, but her favorite jeans and softest sweater were in the sturdy oak dresser that stood where it always did, in front of her bed. Her hair ties and jewelry were strewn across the top, haphazardly it would seem to anyone else, but she knew exactly where to look for each necklace, each pair of earrings, just like she knew which bracelet was lying at the far corner of the dresser. Her eyes tripped over the clumsy leather and metal circles quickly as she turned her head to look at her desk. Her computer, crowded with notebooks and textbooks, sat in front of the wooden chair where she had left her annotated and now very worn copy of Howl, upside down and open to the page she had been reading last night. She closed her eyes, remembering the handwriting in the margins and the pieces that had been underlined in the introduction.

"We are blind and live our blind lives out in blindness.
Poets are damned but they are not blind, they see with the eyes of the angels."

When she opened her eyes again, she focused on each of the windows to her immediate left. She enjoyed the way the lace curtains were playing in the sunlight, making shadows, moving slowly in the cool air that creeped past the thin panes of glass. Almost the entire far wall of her room was made up of windows. She had always loved that. Her room glowed beautiful and mellow in the evening as the sun went down. She wanted to show it to…someone. She wanted to see them soft in the amber light. She tried to imagine her tall, gangling boyfriend in this room at that time of day, but lost interest quickly. The strange ardor she had felt in her limbs cooled, so she sat up, slid her feet into her grey slippers and got out of bed. She walked toward her bedroom door, grabbed the pink robe off of the trunk that sat at the foot of her bed and put it on.

As she opened her door and walked into the kitchen, she noticed that the house was unusually silent. She glanced at the coffee pot to check the time and saw that it was a little past eight in the morning. Her mother must already have gone to work. Rory breathed a sigh of relief. She was glad for the peace. Saturday mornings should always be so peaceful. She was glad not to have to explain her mood, mostly because she wasn't sure she could explain it to herself. She felt subdued and quiet but also, oddly, slightly exhilarated at the same time.

She made herself a pot of coffee and took a cup outside on the back porch, enjoying as she always did in cool weather the curling steam rising and disappearing in the air. She glanced around the porch, and the extra water bottles that sat by the door caught her eye. She clenched her teeth. When she spotted the bucket with gloves and a wide spackle knife inside, she looked quickly back at her cup of coffee and then out at the yard. Maple, birch and oak saplings grew at the edge of the yard, and their leaves were all turning, changing and falling. She let her mind wander back to Dean, as it had been doing so often lately, and the same loop of related images played in her imagination. Baseball, skeet shooting, Leave It to Beaver, white picket fences, Donna Reed. Her cheeks started to burn. The thought of herself in that orange dress, making mashed potatoes and scrambling to find a redeeming quality to Dean's fantasy, always made her uncomfortable. But she had pushed it down, ignoring what was, to her, an enormous, flashing, neon red sign in favor of how well he got along with her mother and how harmless he was otherwise.

But then the blow-up fights, the incessant calls...She mulled over the worst fights she'd had with Dean when he'd gotten jealous. One had ended in earnest pleading, the other in irate yelling. That time, when he'd screamed at her in front of Paris, she remembered the sensation that something inside had snapped. She'd spent a long time digging around inside, trying to find what had broken and fix it, like she'd been able to do before. Unsuccessful, she had gritted her teeth and borne her frustration, burying it, pushing her own feelings aside, convincing herself she deserved it. Now, standing outside in the crisp air, she couldn't remember why.

As she looked at the trees and thought about the arriving fall, she decided, for the first time, to face the situation head-on. She had been in Washington all summer. Dean had sent her letter after letter, and she'd been unable to answer them. She considered that for a moment and then corrected herself. Not unable. Uninterested. Instead, she'd started and abandoned several drafts of a letter to...someone else.

She took a sip of coffee and thought back even farther. About the beginning, and the first end, the flour and nervousness. She felt years away from who she'd been then. The things she had liked about Dean in the beginning no longer excited her, and she admitted to herself that she had begun to feel bored, even annoyed by him sometimes. She did not like standing on her tiptoes to hug or kiss him. In fact, she had been avoiding doing either of those things for a while. She had never liked Battle Bots or monster trucks and after the tenth time seeing it, she had even begun to dislike The Lord of the Rings. These things she'd been able to wave away before, too, because she'd faulted herself. But now, looking at the immediate present and farther into the middle distance, she felt differently. The baggage of their relationship was getting heavier every day, and the strain of carrying it around with her everywhere had made her question why she bothered. But it wasn't until that morning that she had realized there was nothing she could do to make herself look at him the way she used to.

She glanced down at her coffee again and frowned. It had gone cold while she stood outside. She tossed what remained in the mug out into the yard and went back inside to get a fresh cup. This time she took it to her desk and grabbed a notebook. As she outlined her main thoughts and formulated what she would say to Dean that afternoon, she also tried to pay attention to her own reaction. It was a new exercise, and she was unfamiliar with it, but she was determined not to bow to the opinion of anyone else this time. The thought of her mother's reaction gave her pause, and her pen hovered briefly over the page. She knew what her mother would say, but she couldn't force herself to stay with Dean any longer. The tip of her pen found the page again, and she continued. There was a twinge of sadness, but she wasn't surprised. It felt like looking out of the rearview mirror or looking at an old, much-loved t-shirt that she'd outgrown. As she wrote, she hovered mostly between relief, surprise and anticipation.

When she finished, she sat for a few minutes and allowed her mind to wander freely for the first time in months. Immediately, she pictured Jess, warm and smiling like the day on the bridge. Then she remembered how hurt and frustrated he'd been the day before in the market, his face cloudy and dark. She tapped her pencil on the notebook in front of her for a minute, lost in thought. Finally, knots growing in her stomach, she left to find Dean.

Later that evening, after it was done, she told her mother and weathered the torrent of concern and something else that seemed like regret.

"But, Rory, why? I thought you guys smoothed it over."

"I tried...he tried, but I just...I don't feel the same anymore. I haven't, not for a while. Too much has happened, and today it just felt...done."

"Honey, why didn't you say anything before?"

"I didn't want to say anything until I was sure."

"Well...okay, so...there's no more Dean. Wow."

"Yeah."

"So...how did it go?"

"Um...it was okay. He seemed like he knew it was coming."

"And you? You're okay?"

"Yeah, I'm okay."

"Huh. Well, uh, it's gonna be weird around town for a little while, I guess."

"Yeah...but, mom, I...I feel better."

Her mom looked at her for a long moment, concern etched on her face.

"Well. Okay then. If you're sure. What now?"

Rory considered the question. What now?

"I don't know." After a few seconds, she said "I think I'm going to go for a walk."

She went to her room to grab a sweater and spotted her binder sitting on her desk where she'd left it before. She stared at it indecisively for a moment, then quickly crossed the floor, grabbed the unfinished letters, and shoved them into her pocket before leaving the house.

After Jess finished his shift at the diner that evening, he went upstairs to shower. Instead of immediately reaching for the soap, he let his head hang under the stream of hot water and tried unsuccessfully to turn off his brain. He had gone over and over what he had said to Rory the evening before, and though he felt he was in the right, he also wished it had gone differently. So many things had happened that he wished had gone differently.

By the time he finally walked out of the bathroom, Luke was already watching some sport or another on TV, and Jess realized suddenly that he didn't want to be inside. It wasn't possible to run away from the incessant stream of negativity in his own head, but he could at least be outside, alone. So, he pulled on his gray sweats and a thermal, told Luke he was going out and grabbed his jean jacket that hung by the door. He walked out of the door downstairs, pointing himself automatically towards the bridge. The moon was bright and almost full, and the wind sighed softly in the trees around him. He gritted his teeth. Everything was so pretty here, but it was also lonely and disingenuous. He missed the noise of the city, the anonymity that didn't interfere with a sense of gruff camaraderie. The quiet here made it so much harder to ignore his own thoughts.

He was frustrated about Rory, and that frustration snowballed in with the rest...the abandonment, the move, the separation from everything he knew and liked, the weirdly busy nothingness of this town. He hid it behind a flimsy mask of sarcasm and apathy, but the deep chasm of sadness and anger inside constantly threatened to overwhelm him. Fixing his gaze on the distant horizon, he tried again to concentrate on the sound of his footsteps.

After his third lap to and from the bridge, he finally decided he was tired enough to fall asleep. As he passed the market this time, though, he noticed Rory pacing in front of Luke's. He hadn't seen her since the market the previous evening and he wasn't sure he had the energy for another argument.

Jess took a deep breath and headed towards her.

"Rory?"

She jumped.

"Oh, h–uh, hi," she stammered.

She had clearly assumed that he would be upstairs and was confused and flustered at his having snuck up on her.

"What are you doing here?" he asked, more sharply than he'd intended.

"I, well…"

She looked down at her hands, and Jess noticed that she was holding a bunch of folded pieces of paper.

"What's that?"

"It's…" She took a deep breath and looked at him, her expression now frustrated and anxious. He kept his face impassive, and she seemed to steel herself for something.

"You asked me earlier if I wrote you any letters, and I…well, I did but I didn't send them. I didn't even finish writing them because I didn't know what to say, which is not something I'm used to, you know, because, unlike you, I usually don't have trouble with the verbal thing, or, written thing, in this case, I guess, but the point is, I spent a lot of time in Washington thinking about Sookie's wedding and…you...and why I was thinking about you, but I just, I got stuck and all I have are these," and she shook the papers in front of her, "...ten pages that are basically all blank. They just have "Dear Jess", comma, written at the top, and then mostly nothing. It was weird and it's never happened to me before. Each page just kept filling up with a bunch of stuff I couldn't say, so I kept trying to start over, but–"

"Rory-" Jess tried to interrupt, but she kept talking.

"I just…I thought that we could talk when I got back, and I could figure out what to do about…you know…but the first thing I saw when I got back was you and Shane," Rory spat out the name derisively before continuing lamely. "So, yeah, yesterday, I was…mad and I didn't know how to-...what to say."

"Yeah, well. Put yourself in my shoes," Jess said.

"I know. I—"

"What was it?" he interrupted.

"I–what?"

"The stuff that you couldn't write down. What was it?"

Rory ducked her head and stared at her feet. After a few moments, she looked up at him, her expression pained and reluctant.

"Well?" he asked.

She straightened her shoulders and fixed her eyes on his. "Well, in one of them, I wanted to tell you that I've reread your Howl notes fifteen times. And in another I wanted to tell you how unfair this has all been to Dean. And in this one," she paused, leafing through the pages in her hands, "in this one, I wanted to tell you that you-your smile..." She hesitated. Her eyes fell to the ground, and she ducked her head. Her voice was so quiet when she continued that he almost didn't catch what she said. He stepped closer to her. "Your smile feels... it's like a secret or when someone leaves the porch light on for you or..." She trailed off before looking up at him again. "Well, I never found the right metaphor, but...this one, oh, well, this one, I was going to tell you how annoying and frustrating you are. And in this one, I wanted to ask you what you meant in New York when you said you'd been hurt before. I was going to ask you about your mom and why you can't trust anyone and then I was going to tell you that I'd break it off with Dean when I got home, but..."

She tried to take a deep breath to calm her nerves as he took another step closer, but the air didn't reach all the way to her lungs. She thought frantically, nonsensically, that he smelled like morning snow, salt air, midnight.

"But what, Rory?" His voice was low, his tone forceful, and she felt an unfamiliar spark, something hot and glowing, that made her shift her weight from one foot to another and back again.

"I couldn't get past your name. There was...it was too much."

"And now?"

She looked at him, and the words she wanted to say got caught in her throat. His eyes in the darkness were no longer brown but inky black and blazing. The tension of the unanswered question hung in the air between them, and he raised his eyebrows insistently. A memory from the morning flickered at the edge of her consciousness. She held his gaze for a moment then let her eyes fall to her feet.

"I don't know. I don't know how to do any of this."

Jess stared at her for a moment, his eyes now cool and his jaw set. He took a step back.

"Let me know when you figure it out, then, will ya?" he said dispassionately and walked to the diner door.

Rory looked up as Jess was turning the key to open the diner door. She was confused. She'd imagined this going differently.

"I broke up with Dean!" she said. Her voice rang out clear and sharp in the air around him.

Jess turned around slowly, key forgotten in the door, as Rory continued.

"I...this morning, when I woke up, something was...different. Broken. It'd been broken for a while already, and I'd just been ignoring it, but it's something I couldn't-don't want to fix. So I...I ended it," she finished quietly.

Jess walked slowly back to the sidewalk where Rory stood and tried to focus on her through the confusing kaleidoscope of his emotions.

"Jess?" Rory asked hesitantly.

"What does that mean?" he asked. His voice sounded far away, even to him.

"What does what mean?"

"That you broke up with him. What does that mean?"

"Well, I...wh-? I don't-"

"Why did you do it? Why did you break up with him?"

"Jess..."

"Answer me, Rory."

"Well..." She trailed off, considering how to explain. "Dean asked me if I was going to run straight here. I told him that it was more than that, that it had been over for a long time for me, and I didn't feel the same anymore. And that's all true. But..."

She trailed off and crossed her arms tightly.

"But?" Jess pressed.

She made a short, sharp sound of annoyance and snapped her arms to her side.

"But...you are part of it! Okay? I like you. I've liked you for a long time, probably ever since you vandalized my book. And then everything else happened, my basket, the accident, New York, you know, but I still tried so hard to do everything right, make everyone happy. I shoved it all away and pretended I wasn't feeling what I was feeling, but it didn't work. Dean got hurt, and you got hurt, and I haven't been happy, either." Her brow furrowed as she continued to talk. "The only person who was really happy I was with Dean was my mom, actually, and so, when I woke up this morning from a really weird dream, I thought about it and thought about it and just realized that I was done."

She paused to take a deep breath. She had been talking very quickly and when she stopped, she realized she had also been pacing back and forth, leaving her winded. She came to stand in front of him and, after a moment, when she felt more in control of her breathing, she looked him in the eye.

"There's also...something else. I um...I wanted to tell you that I'm sorry. About the wedding."

"You are, huh?"

"Well...I don't regret the kiss," she said quickly, remembering the electricity she had felt before the guilt set in. "But it shouldn't have happened then. Not like that. I'm sorry."

She looked at him, eyes wide and earnest and anxious. He met her gaze, his face impassive.

"So...what, um...ho-how do you feel?", she asked awkwardly.

"About what?"

"About...this. About what I just told you."

"How should I feel?"

"Well, I...I...I'm confused. I thought this is what you-what we wanted."

"It is."

"Then...?"

"I don't know, Rory."

"You don't know?"

"No, I don't. How do I know you're not going to regret this in the morning and go running back to Dean, leaving me stuck in the mud again?"

"I know. I know. I did this all wrong. But...I've made up my mind and...and I wanna make it up to you." She reached out to take his hand as he stared at her, guarded and hesitant. She repeated, more forcefully this time, "I've made up my mind."

After a long moment, he finally squeezed her hand gently and said, "Okay."

"Okay?"

"Well, you said you'd make it up to me for The Fountainhead too, and now with this, I have to know how you're going to make it up to me twice."

His words were teasing, but there was still something hard in his voice. She reached for his other hand and laced her fingers with his, wishing he would touch her, kiss her.

"I've got something I need to take care of," he said, pulling his hand away.

"Now?"

He nodded. "I could walk you home though if you want."

"Yeah, that'd be good," she said softly.

They turned and started to walk together. Jess replayed the whole scene in his head, and after a minute, he looked at her and smiled mischievously.

"What?" she asked with a nervous laugh.

"Fifteen times, huh?"

Rory groaned quietly. Still, she couldn't help but smile.

"I knew you wouldn't let that go."

"You were right."

"And yet I said it anyway."

They both smiled and looked at their shoes.

"So do I get to keep those letters you wrote?" Jess asked after a moment. He was only half joking. She heard the sincerity in his voice, so she reached into her pocket for them.

"If by 'letters' you mean the blank pieces of paper with your name and a few words scrawled at the top, sure," she said, handing them over. She watched, smiling, as he put them in the inside pocket of his jacket.

Eventually they came to a stop in front of her house. They looked at each other, unsure of how to behave in this brief limbo they were stuck in.

"So...", started Rory.

"So...I'll call you tomorrow."

"Okay. Tomorrow."

Jess smiled, and Rory tried yet again to figure out what it reminded her of. Something incongruous but true, strange but possible, like Jane Austen enjoying Bukowski or something bright and dark at the same time, the crackling line where a sunny day runs head long into a thunderstorm.

"Good night, Rory," he said softly.

She met his eyes, reluctant to see him go.

"Good night, Jess."