Title- On The Same Page
Author- Victoria
Rating- T
Summary- Sequel to Clearing The Air. A year after the conversation that took place in CTA, Jess comes back, The Subsect in hand, ready to fulfill his promise to Rory.
A/N- Yes, you really do need to read Clearing The Air first. It's not long, okay? Go to my profile, read it, leave a review (wink) then come back and enjoy this.
Also, I am very mean to both Dean and Logan (especially Logan) in this chapter, so if you're tremendous fans of either of them, don't say I didn't warn you! See, here's the thing. I like Logan in S7. He's charming, he's fun, he's interesting. He's just not a good match for Rory and he can be kind of a dick sometimes. So I'm taking pains to point out that, back in S6, he was still pretty much a douche.
Over One Year Ago...
Rory flipped through her CD collection almost absentmindedly, her thoughts somewhere far away as she reflected on the events of that morning. Jess coming to see her... Jess letting her see behind his armor at last... Jess actually apologizing and explaining why he'd abandoned her... Jess telling her, at long last, that he loved her (and not fleeing immediately afterward)... It all swirled around and through her until she had no idea what to think or feel anymore.
Until they had talked it out today, Rory had been confused about where she stood with regards to him. She'd known all too well (painfully so) that she wasn't over him. Actually, she hadn't been able to even think his name because it hurt too much. But it hadn't been until today that she'd realized the full extent of it: not only was she not over him, she had never fallen out of love with him.
So... that was it, then? She was in love with Jess Mariano? A small smile crossed her lips. Yeah, she could live with that.
The back door opened, and Rory emerged from her bedroom and looked at the intruder with a bemused expression on her face. "Dean?" she asked. "What are you doing here?"
He chewed uncomfortably on his lower lip, hands pushed uncomfortably into his jeans pockets. "Rory, I had a good time talking to you last night," he said after a loaded silence. "And I thought... when we got to your dorm, I kind of thought that maybe... if Paris hadn't showed up, maybe something would have... happened. With us."
Yes, she had kind of thought so, too. "Dean, I--" she began.
He seemed not to hear her. He had built up steam now, and suddenly there was no stopping his explosion of words. Vaguely she wondered if this was the way he must feel around her sometimes.
"We were good together, Rory. We could be good again, couldn't we? And I know what you're gonna say. I know, I'm married. But that's falling apart. It was a mistake, and I know that now, and we're gonna split up. Rory, please, I--"
At that point, his emotions seemed to overwhelm him. Seizing her shoulders in his hands (hands that felt too large against her body, she noticed), he kissed her forcefully.
His lips were familiar against hers, but there was nothing to provoke any kind of response in her. Instantly, she was transported back to this morning, to a kiss she had shared as the sun rose around them. That kiss had been brief and bittersweet and beautiful. That kiss had made her toes curl and moved her to tears. That kiss had been full of passion and tentative promises of something in the uncertain future.
This, though? This left her cold and unmoved. She placed her hands against his chest and pushed him away. "No, Dean," she said tiredly. "Don't do this to us. There's nothing there anymore, not for me."
"This is about him, isn't it?" Dean hissed, wrenching away from her. "You're still not over that skinny bastard, are you?"
Now that was going too far. Rory felt a surge of deep, slow-simmering anger. "What's between me and Jess is none of your business. We've spoken, and we know where we stand, and it doesn't pertain to you at all," she said coolly. "I think you should leave now."
His greenish-brown eyes, which she had once found so comforting, were full of shock and betrayal. He took a stumbling step back, then turned and stormed out without a word.
Rory returned to her bedroom, staring numbly at her CDs. A few seconds later, she sank down onto her bed, shaking from the sudden assault of nervous adrenaline on her system. That had been awful, to say the least. But it had laid to rest for good the flash of nostalgia she'd been feeling when they'd talked the night before. She and Dean were done. For good.
That still didn't resolve what she was going to do about the Jess Situation. She loved him. He loved her. He had made a promise to her, that he would come back to her someday if (when, she assured herself, when) he got his life sorted out. That didn't change the fact that he had hurt her deeply, even if it had been unintentional and even if her heartbreak had, in the end, been founded on a misunderstanding and a lack of communication, he had hurt her, and as much as she wanted to, she couldn't forget that easily. But neither did she want to give up on him completely. It might break her to do that.
After several minutes of debating with herself, Rory settled on what she decided to be the most tenable solution: she wasn't going to actively look for someone, but she probably wouldn't pass up the opportunity if someone found her on his own. Nothing serious, though, she resolved. She had been serious (more so than she'd even realized until after he was gone) about Jess. Her feelings for him were still very serious. She wasn't looking for serious with anyone else.
The sound of the front door banging open evicted her from her reverie.
"Rory, oh my god, you're missing everything!" Her mother's excited voice floated through the house, and Rory could hear the distinctive sound of high heels clicking against the stairs. "Grab those CDs and head back to the Inn before you miss the cross-dressing midgets! That's where the night is heading! Things are happening. Big things, wow things. I have so much to tell you!" The sound of Lorelai's shoes echoed on the stairs again, this time descending. "Let me just open with this little tidbit: Kirk running naked through the square. Of course, with all my careful planning and preparation, I forgot to bring Band-aids and a camera. I have got to learn that, always, without fail, Kirk equals camera."
Rory appeared in the kitchen to meet her. "A very good rule of thumb," she agreed.
"What's been taking you so long?" Lorelai questioned.
A small smile crossed Rory's face. "Nothing," she said. "Just... getting rid of some old things I didn't need anymore."
The confusion was evident in her mother's expression, but Rory chose not to explain. The events of the last twenty-four hours had finally given her the opportunity to get her feet back beneath her. She could breathe again for the first time since Jess had left. This was good. She would be alright now.
Today...
Her cell phone buzzed, and she reached into her pocket to extract it. A little smile crossed her face when she read Logan's text message.
Hey, Ace! Want to get dinner with me tonight?
Immediately, she responded:
Can't. Prior commitment.
There was a long pause before his next text, and Rory could almost imagine the jealousy that was surely clear in his blue eyes. It wasn't like they were exclusive, though, so he had no right to be so. Not only that, he had no reason to be. She wasn't a cheater, even in a relationship that certainly wasn't exclusive on his end.
Found a more interesting guy to take you out for drinks, huh?
Not that she drank when she went out with him. She was the designated driver for Logan and his mates.
Nope. Going back to Stars Hollow for the week of Thanksgiving, remember?
Oh. Okay then. See you around.
She didn't respond to his last message. She and Logan had been dating (nothing serious, they had agreed, no strings attached) for about four months now. They had actually hit it off at a party her grandmother had thrown, but Rory had resisted getting involved with him initially, both because of his womanizing reputation, and for... other reasons. Reason, actually. Singular. A reason with warm brown eyes and a perpetual paperback in his back pocket...
Rory shook her head, trying to clear that imagine out of her head. He was gone, she hadn't seen him or heard from him in over a year (wasn't that always his way?). Logan, despite all his very obvious flaws, could be depended upon to call when he said he would. She was silly for still clinging to his memory, and she knew it. Sometimes, though, she couldn't help herself, and it was what had prevented her from committing to Logan, even when Yale's very own "town bicycle" had decided he wanted exclusivity. She wondered if it irked him that for once he wasn't getting exactly what he wanted.
She turned off the highway when she spotted the green sign directing her to Stars Hollow. Only ten minutes later, she pulled up in front of the Crap Shack.
Lorelai was waiting for her on the front porch. "Offspring!" she exclaimed when Rory parked the car. "Thank god you're home! Paul Anka has been weird."
"What am I supposed to do about that?" Rory asked, amused.
"Well, you're the hot-shot Ivy League student. Shouldn't they be teaching you vital life skills, like how to heal beloved family pets or... or something?"
Rory grinned. "I'm in the school of communications, not medicine. And definitely not veterinary medicine. Do you know what that job entails?"
"Remind me why I keep you around if you're so useless."
Because you love me and because I occasionally have the ability, if not the impetus, to make something besides Pop-tarts and toaster waffles."
"Ooh, 'impetus', fancy word!" Lorelai replied with a teasing look on her face. "I guess they are teaching you something, huh."
"I suppose so."
"And speaking of food, it's getting late. Suppertime?"
Rory laughed. "It's only four-thirty," she pointed out.
Lorelai shrugged. "Never too early for supper, never too late for breakfast."
"I like the way your mind works. Luke's?"
All of a sudden, her mother's expression froze, and she went still. "Um, Rory?" she said in that tone she developed when she really didn't want to say something but felt she had to. "There's something you should know. Um... Jess is back in town."
Rory felt a chill of trepidation even as her heart surged in wholly disproportionate elation. "W-what?" she gasped. "How long has he been here? How long is he staying?"
"He's only been here a few days," Lorelai assured her. "He's staying above the diner. I'm actually not sure how long he'll be around. Couple of weeks, Luke said, but they were both pretty vague."
She nodded. A couple of weeks she could handle, especially since she would only be around Stars Hollow for half of that. She could take seeing him occasionally about the town and being civil to him. She could do that without letting on how much she still missed him.
That was something that, despite having had a full year to acquaint herself with the idea, was still surprisingly difficult to admit, and it grew more difficult with each day that passed. She knew it was more because of the time gap than anything- shouldn't it be getting easier to be apart from him, rather than remaining that dull, constant throb that she could only partially ignore?- that she had such a hard time allowing for the depth of her feelings for him. She was Rory Gilmore, complete- as her mother had always assured her- in and of herself. She didn't need a man to make her whole. So why did it sometimes feel like there was a piece of her physically missing, even still?
But she would never say she loved him. That, at least, she could deny honestly. She wasn't over him, but time had at least given her a chance to dilute the feeling. She wouldn't say she loved him; she would be able to be merely cordial and to treat him like the relative-through-marriage he would be in January. It should be easy.
"Rory?"
Her mother's voice broke through the maelstrom in her head.
"Hm?" she questioned hazily.
"You've been staring at the box-elder bushes for a whole minute. Now, I know they're really pretty and smell like cat pee, but they're not that interesting. You wanna talk about it?"
"Talk about what?" Rory questioned defensively.
Lorelai shrugged. "You know what."
"No, I don't. Let's just go get supper."
Her mother gave an inaudible sigh, but fell into step beside her as Rory set off at a brisk walk in the direction of Luke's. When they arrived a few minutes later, the uncomfortable silence between them had thawed and they were chatting animatedly about piglets and the probability of Paul Anka turning out to be the reincarnated spirit of Johnny Carson. As the bell over the door jingled brightly to announce their arrival, Rory looked across the small diner and saw Jess Mariano bearing a coffee pot and serving the inhabitants of Stars Hollow as if he'd never left...
I originally wanted to wait to post this until after I finished the last couple chapters of IIWII, but I just couldn't wait. I hate leaving a document sitting there unposted. As with Kismet and PM, do not expect frequent updates just yet. I will continue to work on it, but it is not my primary focus.
And with regards to my other stories, I *will* be updating SS, Dawn, and IIWII soon, but I'm going through a very hectic period in my life right now, so my FF work is going to be on the back-burner for a bit.