Disclaimer: Anyone you may recognize from the show does not belong to me. Jess, Tim, and Sam, do though.

A/N: Sequel to Jessie, this has not been beta'd so please be gentle (and if you find something that needs a correction, please let me know), many thanks to Lindsay for all the convos on teenagers. Reviews are adored and cherished.

xoxox

Chapter One

It was a Monday in late September; one of those crisp and orange autumn days that Connecticut is so famous for, and Luke Danes found himself where he always found himself on the last Monday of the month: Sports Authority, shopping for toe shoes. Jess Danes, she refused to answer to Jessie anymore (had been refusing since she turned thirteen three years ago) led the familiar way to the back of the store and found the same pair of pink satin toe shoes she'd been buying since she'd graduated to toe shoes two years ago.

Luke had picked her up from Stars Hollow High at 2:30 as he always did on the last Monday of the month and they'd driven to the Hartford Sports Authority in silence. The silence between them was a relatively new development.

How things have changed, he thought, watching her efficiently tuck the shoebox under one arm. She was almost as tall as he was and it seemed sometimes, like now, that her long body with its natural dancer's grace was doing battle with the awkward and hunched posture of your average teenager.

Now, Jessica Elizabeth Danes arched one perfectly plucked eyebrow at him – thank you, Lorelai – and said with matter-of-fact poise, "This really sucks. You wouldn't make Will pay for shoes he needs."

"Language," he answered with his usual calm, knee-jerk automation. "And Will is only five, with no way of making money. You're sixteen and you have a job and you need to be more responsible. Besides, you're only paying for half. These things are expensive and you go through them like candy." If she still ate candy anymore.

Jess scoffed with indignation, her small frame straight as arrow, her shoulders stiff with controlled irritation. He hated it when she pouted like this. It reminded him of when she'd been eight and full of sound and fury. Now she was the painfully shy teenager he remembered so well from his own growing-up years. Unsure of herself and unwilling to lose her control, but always just on the edge.

"You don't have to like it," he said trying to be unmoved by her display. Jess had turned sixteen the previous month and he'd informed her that now that she was getting older, she'd have to start helping to support her extracurricular activities.

William Gilmore Danes, Will, was the product of his first year of marriage to Lorelai Gilmore Danes, the woman whom Jess had proposed to seven years ago. He was lucky that they got along so well, not all families as complicated as theirs did. Of course, no family was perfect and each day was an adventure.

Luke sighed and tossed an arm around her long neck. At sixteen she was the consummate dancer. She always wore her long dark curls in a knot at the crown of her head, she lived in a leotard and she watched her food intake like a hawk. This last one worried Luke a bit but she ate all the fruits and vegetables he could throw at her so he guessed she was okay. That was another change. As a child she'd lived on junk food, now the mere mention of French fries made her shiver dramatically. That was one thing that had not changed – her sense of humor and her penchant for drama had definitely remained intact.

Jess relaxed under his arm and ducked her head, surreptitiously looking around, trying to make sure that there was no one whom she knew in the store. Luke noticed that she did this often, especially in Stars Hollow.

As she looked around, tense and alert as new fawn, she saw him and stopped dead in her tracks. Tim Zachary. Uncle Luke pulled up short and gave her a quizzical look, trying to figure out why she'd stopped. When she didn't say anything he followed her gaze and saw a boy, about her age, checking out at the registers. When he looked back at his niece, she was gone, hidden behind a rack of sports bras staring at the blonde kid.

Tim was the boy. Her boy. If he only knew she was alive. If she could only string a sentence together when he was around. If only she were popular enough to hang out with his crowd.

Luke put his hands on his jean-clad hips and waited while she watched the kid check out and leave. When she straightened behind the rack and looked up at him, the look they exchanged was saturated in their history. He was impatient but amused, his head tilted to one side, lips clamped together tight as a drum to keep from laughing; she looked apologetic, defensive and a little forlorn.

"That was a guy at my school. Tim," she explained awkwardly as they walked to the register he'd just vacated.

"Oh, yeah?"

"He's in my grade."

"And."

"And what?" she asked, putting the box of toe shoes on the counter.

They each forked over twenty dollars for the shoes and as they headed for the door Luke said, "And why the disappearing act?" Sometimes she was the old Jessie again, the tough little girl who could take on the world. And sometimes she was this fragile new creature who looked ready to cry over a silly boy. Sometimes he had no idea what to say to her.

Jess shifted her backpack on her shoulders and struggled to shrug, embarrassed that he'd caught her out in liking a boy who was so far out of her league.

They walked to his old green truck in silence and when they got in Luke hesitated in turning the engine over. "Jessie?" he asked, virtually the only one in the world still allowed to use this nickname. When she'd turned thirteen she'd gone hell-bent over the edge in making people use the more grown-up 'Jess'.

"Yeah," she asked staring out the windshield.

"Are you getting…involved with…boys?" Luke's face turned a desperate shade of scarlet as he spoke and he hoped she wouldn't notice.

"Ew!" she squeaked, looking at him sharply in mortification.

"Well, it's a natural thing…I mean…when you get to be your age…it's something I'm sure you're…curious about," he stammered miserably.

"Oh, God," she moaned with one hand over her eyes.

"Look," Luke said. Lorelai had taken care of the 'where babies come from talk' but this was different and he wasn't sure it had been covered it. "I just want you to be careful. Sex can be complicated…and…and…messy - "

"Stop!" she said, hands over her ears, her face bright pink in the sunlight. "I don't want to hear any more!"

"But it's something we should be able to talk about," he soldiered on, clearly not wanting to talk about it either, but thinking that this was what parents everywhere did. "I mean I don't like the idea of you being with boys that way but you're getting older and you're…becoming a woman and things happen. I just want you to be safe and happy."

With her head in her hands Jess mumbled, "Can we go home please?"

Luke sighed. It was like talking to a brick wall. Still, to the best of his knowledge she'd never been out on a date so it was possible that she was telling the truth. It rankled, though. Their relationship had changed in the last few years. "We used to tell each other everything," he reproached quietly, shifting his focus to the dark green hood of the truck.

Jess lifted her head and he saw how earnest she looked. "There's nothing to tell. I go to school, I go to dance, I work at the diner, we go to Friday dinners, I study, I sleep, I get up. I have one friend and she works for you. You know everything." Something in her voice told him that she wished she had some secrets, even if they were the most immaterial in nature.

"Okay," he said. "But you know that you can always talk to me, right? About…" he almost choked, "boys…or anything."

Jess nodded and looked back out the window. How could she tell her well-meaning uncle how much she liked Tim Zachary? Not only was it silly, but what could he possible do about it? As she put her seatbelt on, she tried to shrug off her funk.

Luke pointed the truck toward Stars Hollow and they spent the next five miles in their own thoughts. Then, Luke nudged her arms and pointed at an old junker in the next lane. The license plate read, RLN 463. "Well?" he said, a hopeful smile tugging at his features.

With a tiny smile Jess looked at her uncle. His two-day stubble, the backwards baseball hat, the flannel shirt; it was as if time had stopped for him when she'd arrived. There were more lines around his eyes than before but other than that, he was the same as ever. And now he was trying to get her to play their game. "Um," she said, "Ralph Lauren Nautica."

"Is that a hint that you want to go shopping more often?"

Giggling, she lifted her finger and pointed out another car with a license plate that read, HTR 556. "Your turn."

Without hesitation, Luke answered, "Hate Taylor Right." This made Jess laugh, of course. Her uncle's relationship with Taylor Doose had not improved with age.

"Okay now you," Luke told her pointing to another car with a license that read, NLV 214.

Jess thought about it for a second and then said, "Nice Little Voice."

"Good job."

They were approaching Stars Hollow and she said, "Last one." The car ahead of them now had a license that read, DEF 889.

"Deliriously Eager Fart," Luke replied. She belted out a laugh so hard she had to grab her stomach and he smiled, too. This was his thing. Ever since she'd become this morose teenage stranger it had become a personal challenge to get her to laugh whenever possible. Resorting to scatological humor didn't bother him if it did the trick.

"Gross!" she exclaimed, pretended to be offended.

Luke pulled up outside the diner and they got out of the truck still smiling at each other.