Disclaimer: I own nothing.

A/N: Thanks for the reviews on the last chapter, it was a ton of fun to write! Excuse the absence. Not only have I been working two jobs this summer (NYC is expensive!), I got sucked into another fandom, and my computer has eaten this chapter three times. I've also re-written it about five times, because words are hard.

Omission

If Lorelai had to choose her ideal way to way up in the morning, hearing the words "It's done" and having a stack of paper shoved at her at an ungodly early hour in the morning wouldn't even crack the bottom ten. She scrambled to get un-caffeinated limbs to catch up with reality as she caught the stack deftly—If "deftly" equated to "flailing wildly like a drowning person," but hey, she couldn't be held responsible for any motor function prior to coffee—and blinked. Blinked again. Hugged the stack to her chest and stared at the creature standing before her. This. This is what she got for being a concerned mother. A mother who, after noticing during a midnight Mallowmar run, that her eight-months-pregnant daughter's light was still on and the sounds of furious typing could be heard muffled through the closed door, thought that a quick, early-morning check in would ease her anxiety that said daughter had at least passed out over her keyboard or tumbled sideways onto her bed. Super-mom senses tingling, she vowed to pop in after her early-bird husband left to open the diner (and wasn't it morbidly ironic she'd married a morning person?) and crawl back beneath the warm, welcoming covers of her bed after maybe covering her beloved daughter with a quilt or at least encouraging her to move to a position that wouldn't kill her back later in the day. Certainly, she would not come down to the kitchen to find that said daughter had transformed into some kind of manic Gollum who went around throwing tomes at her coffee-less mother at—Lorelai glanced at the wall clock in the kitchen and glared at it—quarter of six in the morning.

She looked away from the clock and towards the nervous ball of energy that had replaced her only child. Rory looked at her expectantly, clutching the sleeves of the ancient bathrobe she'd thrown over an equally ancient Harvard t-shirt, the last of her pre-maternity wardrobe that accommodated her growing baby bump. The super-mom sense tingling again, some part of Lorelai's brain registered that Rory had been wearing that outfit for the last three days. Before she could open her mouth to comment or demand coffee or say anything, the words "It's done" and the stack she was cuddling like a teddy bear finally clicked. Lorelai leaned the stack away from her to read the familiar title. It's done. The manuscript. Rory's memoir. It was done.

"Oh. Oh."

"Yeah," Rory bit her lip and bounced on the balls of her feet.

"And you want…"

"I want you to be the first. To read it, I mean."

"Wow. Uh, really?" Sure, she'd been on the short list to read the first three chapters, but this somehow seemed a million times more personal.

"Definitely. You were right. It isn't just my life in those pages. It's your life, too. Our life together."

"We were a team, you and me." Lorelai gave a half-smile that was tiredly returned.

"And I want us to do this together. As a team." Maybe it was the sleep deprivation talking, but Lorelai was touched. She reached around the manuscript to pull Rory into a one-armed hug, which turned into a fit of giggles as they both cracked up. The angle was all wrong; between manuscript and baby, Lorelai could do little more than put her hand on Rory's shoulder. It did well to break the tension that had settled over the room. Settled over the entire house, in the previous seven months that Rory had secretly typed out her life's story in her laptop while Lorelai pretended not to agonize over to what extent she'd be ripped to shreds by the tell-all. It had become a non-subject in the house, mentioned only in passing and never by its title; the vague appellation of "it" had overtaken the entire project and "it" was never discussed in detail. Only that Rory was working on "it" and that it was occasionally going well.

Lorelai pulled away first, wiping tears away with the sleeve of her bathrobe and shifting the manuscript so it was no longer being bent out of shape from the awkward way it had been caught.

"Okay." Lorelai no longer cared that it was only six in the morning. "First, coffee."

"Already done." Rory gestured to the coffee maker, standing at attention with a full carafe and its power light obvious in the predawn sunrise. In front it was a plate with a pair of untoasted Pop-Tarts resting on it. Sugar and caffeine, a winning combination.

"You blessed, blessed child," Lorelai reached automatically for the largest mugs, now kept on a higher shelf, Luke's attempt at dissuading her from replacing her entire blood volume with coffee. She was halfway through pouring her first cup when she stopped. "Exactly how long have you been waiting for me to come downstairs?"

"When did I finish the manuscript or when did I make the coffee? Because that pot's fresh."

"That's not what I meant and you know it," Lorelai took her first sip and sighed. Ah, coffee. Her second love.

"I dozed a little after I finished it at about three. Honestly, I'm so wired right now."

"I bet." Lorelai moved both coffee and manuscript to the kitchen table and pulled out a chair. For a moment, both mother and daughter stared at the stack of paper. "So, how do you want to do this? Do you want me to read it now-?"

"Oh. Uh, no. Definitely not." Rory reached up to scrub her face with her hands. "I definitely can't be here, knowing you're also here and reading…it." Her cheeks tinged red as she looked away. "I think I'll head out for a while. I need to call Jess, anyway. I told him I would when it was done."

"Jess? I didn't know you guys were talking."

"I kind of guilted him into being my front-line editor," Rory was sheepish, and chewed on a thumbnail. "I figured since he was the one to give me the idea to write it in the first place, he could be the one to give me feedback."

"Oh. Okay." Lorelai didn't know how to feel about Jess being the one to inspire the manuscript in front of her. It seemed so incongruous that her first reaction had been shock and anger. Oh, great. I'm looking forward to Jess' take on me. That's terrific. And confusion. Rory and Jess didn't have a relationship. Before the wedding, they hadn't seen each other in years. And it wasn't like Jess had been hanging around Stars Hollow after the wedding. Rory hadn't mentioned the "J word" since college. And yet…he exerted such an influence on Rory that she had not only taken his advice but drawn him into the process. "Why don't you head to the diner? I'm sure Luke would be happy to make you something."

Rory wrinkled her nose and huffed a sigh. Yeah, no translation needed there. Luke had upped his attempts to convert them from a steady diet of fat, sugar, and caffeine after Rory announced her pregnancy. He could make her something, but the chances of it actually being something palatable was pretty low. He'd been on an egg-white omelet kick recently, which Rory had confided to Lorelai tasted like rubber covered in butter. Still, Lorelai saw her grab her sneakers by the back door and reach for the key on the hook for the apartment above the diner, now being used mostly for storage and occasional place for Jess or April to crash when they came into town. Good, Lorelai nodded. Maybe she'd get some more sleep. Eat something. Get out of her own head for a while. Rory leaned over to kiss her mother on the cheek. Lorelai reciprocated and tugged on the bathrobe that had been forgotten about. Rory rolled her eyes, clearly annoyed with her own foggy brain—"Pregnancy," Lorelai reminded her—and tossed it in the general direction of her bedroom before slipping out the door.

And then, there was nothing in the house but Lorelai, coffee, and it.

She prided herself on being a perceptive person. Able to ferret out nefarious intents and ulterior motives within a few minutes of knowing a person. In general, she liked to think she used this power for good—pestering her cranky, cantankerous diner owner into giving her more coffee than was strictly healthy by pushing his buttons notwithstanding—and she felt the ability hovered somewhere between "cool party trick" and "human lie detector." While it provided hours of entertainment, it had also staved off the harsher, grittier aspects of being a young, single mother with a daughter. There were men that prey on women like her, prey on little girls like Rory had been; it had kept them safe. It had made her a good mother; Rory had always been an open book (no pun intended). Most mothers could tell when their baby was hungry or wet from a cry. She could tell when Rory's inflection changed on a statically international call and that the inflection meant turmoil and heartbreak.

She would not be afraid of a stack of paper. There wasn't anything she should be afraid of, anyway. Or so she told herself. Over and over while her daughter, feeling directionless and desperate, typed out her childhood from her point of view. Rory had spent her formative years in a one-room potting shed. It was never designed to house people. Rory spent their whole first winter there sick because the temperature in the room, even with four electric space heaters, hovered only a dozen or so degrees above freezing. She and Rory had shared a bed until Rory started school. Their bathroom had no door, wasn't even a separate room, and they relied on the inn for food. She had always told herself that she was building a life for the two of them and it was better than being stifled in Emily and Richard's house. Rory would not grow up feeling unloved or like she was being smothered in expectations, even if that meant she didn't have her own room until she was eleven years old and wore clothes sewn by her mother that bunched in weird places because the sewing machine was ancient. Rory had never complained or given any indication that this way of life bothered her, but now she couldn't be so sure.

And it wasn't like everything magically got better once they bought the Crap Shack. A 20-something on a maid's wages couldn't exactly put a down payment on the best house. Rory's bedroom had become Rory's bedroom only because it was the only remotely habitable room in the house. And then there had been all of the oh-so-fun tidbits that came along with parenting a teenager, which she hadn't been ready to admit she was not prepared for. Boys. College. Estrangement. Therapy. A freaking felony on Rory's record. Little kids, little problems. Big kids, big problems. Big feelings, big fallout. Big rift in their relationship that even ten years later, still smarted when she thought about it. Now laid out in Times New Roman on inkjet paper. Forever, if it got published. Maybe she'd add a shot of Jack Daniels to that coffee before reading.

The skittering of dog claws on hardwood interrupted her brooding and she turned to see Paul Anka slide to a stop in front of the kitchen table, tongue out and eyeing her Pop-Tarts with a hopeful expression. She snapped back to reality and gave him a smile. She tossed him one of the pastries and took a bite of the other one, smoothing the cover of the manuscript with her free hand. She contemplated reading it at the kitchen table, where the coffee was easily accessible, but her lower back—the first casualty of middle age, though she would not admit that—protested that idea. She poured out her now lukewarm coffee, fixed another cup, and settled herself on the couch. Paul Anka, hoping that she had more treats smuggled in the pockets of her pajama pants, hopped up on the end and covered her feet like a giant, fuzzy slipper. She reached over to pat his head, and reached for the manuscript.

She took a deep breath and opened to the first page.

She jumped out of her skin when her phone buzzed on the coffee table. Paul Anka, not pleased with her impression of a jack-in-the-box, harrumphed and relocated himself to an armchair across the room. She opened her phone to a voicemail message from Luke, saying that Rory had come to the diner just before the morning rush and he'd fed her pancakes and fruit (which, he added, she'd traded with Kirk for non-decaf coffee before he caught her) and she'd been asleep ever since. She texted a string of affectionate emojis back at him, both to express her gratitude and to get his hackles up, since she knew he'd spend the next ten minutes trying to decipher it and she'd get a call and a speech about technology and it leading the demise of society and interpersonal communication. A glance at the clock on the mantel showed she'd been reading for nearly four hours. Good God.

Four hours of reading had brought her through Rory's childhood and through her first year at Chilton and her relationship with Dean. So far, so good. Nothing shocking, nothing overly insulting (except maybe to her cooking, but that was no big secret), nothing she hadn't heard or seen before. The sappy, saccharine, first-love vibes were clear throughout her memories of Dean, and she was brought back to the days in which Rory's biggest concern was failing her finals and whether her uniform skirt was clean. Little kids, little problems.

But as she turned the page and read the opening scene to Rory's second year at Chilton, she noticed a distinct shift in tone. Crisper sentences, darker wordings. She couldn't help but tuck her bathrobe tighter around herself; it was as if someone had opened a window and it had caused a draft. She couldn't remember what happened during Rory's second year at Chilton that caused such an abrupt change in maturity. And then, suddenly, a scene. A welcome wagon, hastily assembled, creating chaos in her kitchen while Rory feverishly worked on a homework assignment. A dark, snarky stranger taking up space in Rory's doorway. A modern-day James Dean, Rory described him. Jess had arrived. She had to snort at the description. He'll be flattered but make her change it, she bet herself.

It was fascinating to read about Rory, her friendships, and her relationships from her point of view, but as of yet, nothing had come as a surprise. As they entered the era of the "J-word," as she had continued to refer to him until only recently (old habits die hard), that had abruptly changed. It was weird. It was unsettling. He's got a good side, you just haven't seen it yet. She remembered those words, said over and over again. Rory had been seventeen, of course she thought he was a good guy. But Rory did not have the benefit of having dated guys like Jess, of knowing the hurt and trouble they cause. Rory had to find out first hand.

But the Jess on the page and the Jess in her memory were not aligning, and the cognitive dissonance was dizzying. Her first memory of this kid was a complete dressing-down while he tried to smuggle beer from her fridge—and, she'd found out later, sneak her impressionable teenage daughter out her bedroom window. And it had all gone downhill from there. Seventeen-year-old Jess used dirty glares in place of actual conversation; if forced to actually say anything, he acted like each and every word was being tortured out of him by the Spanish Inquisition. He inserted himself where he didn't belong and wasn't welcome. He played Rory hot and cold, had no regard for her feelings or those of anyone else. If she had to name someone who was going to show up on America's Most Wanted, Jess Mariano would top the list. Oh, right, Jess is the antichrist, I forgot. She could count on one hand the number of times Rory had taken that tone with her, and at least one of them was about Jess. She'd been so confident, so sure in her conviction that Jess was bad news. And, unfortunately, she was right. It wasn't something she'd wanted to be right about.

He's has a good side. He's a good guy. You just haven't seen it yet. The Jess on the page was different. The attraction was immediate and exactly what she'd expected: Jess was new, mysterious, and her small-town girl was completely drawn in by it. But it went beyond the bad boy aesthetic. Jess-on-the-page was witty, smart, and flirty, knowing exactly which buttons to push to wind Rory up. Gentle nudges outside her comfort zone. Long conversations (Conversations! As in words, multiple, in a row! Amazing!) about literature, music, politics. Support—strange, but true—for her sheltered girl's ambitions, unwavering belief that despite her rampant self-doubt, she'd succeed. Tomorrow, I'll drive straight towards you, screaming at you in a foreign language. She'd laughed before she realized she'd done it, causing Paul Anka to raise his head and eye her curiously from his place in the armchair. A terrifying, impulsive trip to Manhattan that took them both by surprise. Rory's Jess was soft around the edges, a desire to be close to others but lacking the skills to do so without completely self-destructing.

Jess left the narrative as quickly as he'd entered, a summer storm that built and crashed before dissipating in the morning light. There was something stilted in their ending, she noticed, as though Rory had started to write about the experience but thought better of it. She wondered what Jess would think of that, when he read it. She ghosted over Jess's abrupt love confession and his leaving again, which she wasn't sure what to make of.

The story moved swiftly along, and re-enter Dean. Oh, dear Lord. Dean still popped up around town every once in awhile, since his family still lived in the area, and she tried desperately to separate the now-adult Dean from the boy who'd made her baby the other woman, but it was so hard. The entire situation was just as awful to read on the page as it had been to experience first-hand. It was like trying to read through peanut butter, as weird a metaphor as that was.

Then, suddenly, Jess again. Um, what? Jess at Yale. Jess didn't go to Yale. He barely even came back to Stars Hollow. Jess in town for Liz's wedding. He'd left to go back to California right after. So said Luke, who'd revealed to her that he and Jess had finally laid some issues to rest after that trip. Now Jess was in Rory's dorm room?

Come with me.

Are you crazy?

Probably. Do it. Come with me. Don't think about it.

She choked on the sip of coffee she'd taken, and narrowly avoided spraying it onto Rory's manuscript. I'm sorry, you want to run that by me again?

He'd asked Rory to run away with him. Run away with him.

As in leave-everything-behind, be-with-me-forever, you've-got-a-fast-car-I-want -a-ticket-to-anywhere kind of deal.

The boy who'd left her, broken her heart, and cast her aside like it was nothing had come back for her. He'd shown all his cards and overplayed his hand. Rory had rightly turned him away, but dear Lord, how had that never been brought up in conversation? Hey, Mom, by the way, my ex-boyfriend stopped by my dorm and asked me to leave behind my entire life to be with him. Just thought you'd want to know.

Her eyes darted back to the top of the page, re-read the exchange. Her heart gave a lurch and tumbled. Come with me, he'd pleaded. Where? She'd asked. The first thing out of Rory's mouth, besides an incredulous What had been Where? As though for half a second, her response depended on whether he meant it. Whether this was a legitimate offer, heart on his sleeve, destination in mind and her with it. New York, I don't know. We'll start over. And that had clinched it. You can count on me. Too little, too late. Desperate pleading met with forceful no's were just too much. He was gone again.

Come with me. Don't think about it. Rory hadn't told her. She took a sip of lukewarm coffee to ease the sting.

She was so distracted that she all but skimmed through the next part of the story, though she had to admit that unlike Rory's Jess-on-the-page, Rory's Logan-on-the-page did little to redeem himself and only further confirmed that her instincts about him, at least, had been correct. She learned some things she felt she'd rather not know about Rory's time with Logan away from Yale, their estrangement making it feel as though she was reading about a different Rory, a Rory unlike the daughter she'd raised.

And then, Jess again. Jess in Hartford. He wrote a book. The pride evident in Rory's writing. Jess and Logan, head to head, reminiscent yet different than Dean and Jess head to head. What is going on with you? Jess giving voice to all of her worries for Rory during that time. What are you doing? Why did you drop out of Yale?! Rory admitting to him—the first—that she had lost her way. Rory back on track. Back on track because Jess had given her the reality check of her life. Jess had gotten through to her. Jess.

Months later. Philadelphia. She remembered this. But not this way. God, I didn't know you were seeing Jess. A pause. I'm not seeing Jess, we're just friends. Logan hadn't known she'd gone to see him. She didn't tell anyone she'd gone to see him. I swear nothing happened. Nothing. A brief connection. Nothing. An unexpected kiss, written in the same strange, stilted, emotionless tone that had permeated Jess' leaving. Nothing. Confusion, rejection, hurt, pain. Nothing. Nothing happened. A nothing that required an apology epitaph at the end of the chapter, ten years after the fact. A nothing that she clearly hadn't felt comfortable talking to her mother about. Nothing. We're just friends. Nothing happened.

Rory wouldn't lie. The words, a dusty artifact from a conversation with Dean, came unbidden to the forefront of her mind. And it was true. Rory wouldn't lie. Not outright, and not usually even by omission; their relationship was defined by the unusual level of openness that other mothers could only dream about. Rory wasn't one for keeping secrets from her. They'd lost contact with each other for awhile, but nothing that Rory had written about her time at Yale had come as a surprise…some of it had been shared—shouted, yelled, screamed, argued—during and the rest discussed after. For crying out loud, they'd had conversations about her becoming a mistress (ugh!) not once but twice in her romantic career, but this…this was new. Rory had never, in her memory, lied to her face.

She put a finger in the manuscript to mark her place and looked out the window instead. She wanted, badly, to brush this off, finish the book. She remembered, vividly, Rory's return from Manhattan after skipping school to see Jess. Rory didn't do anything without a reason, conscious—or more often, subconsciously. That doesn't mean nothing, she'd told Rory. That means something. Rory had secreted away an entire portion of her life, hiding it behind a façade of nonchalance and a blank expression. That doesn't mean nothing; that means something.

The writing—the words Rory had chosen to describe this relationship were halting, as though they had been typed and re-typed and she couldn't get the wording just right. They lacked the depth and color of the other chapters, a pebble bouncing on the surface of a still pond, off and gone again before it had a chance to sink. She called him a modern-day James Dean with affection but written about his leaving like it was the weather. She'd written ten pages about an amusing childhood anecdote, but Philadelphia and her apology took up less than two. As though these moments were of little consequence. Or of too much consequence.

Come with me. Jess had asked her to run away with him. Rory hadn't told her.

Why did you drop out of Yale? One conversation with Jess had done more than six months of conversations with anyone else. Rory hadn't told her.

I didn't know you were seeing Jess.

I'm not. Nothing happened.

The inspiration to write the book. I was frustrated, I was talking to Jess.

I made Jess my front-line editor. I need to call him.

That doesn't mean nothing. That means something.

She threw off her bathrobe and tossed it onto the couch behind her. Still in her pajamas (at what was now about two in the afternoon), she grabbed the keys to the Jeep and shoved on a pair of worn house slippers. She all but flew out of the driveway and yanked the steering wheel in the direction of Luke's.

Maybe, honey, you are falling for Jess. Maybe, just maybe, she'd never really stopped.

A/N: The first in a two or three part one-shot series I may eventually pull out to stand on its own. This was inspired by a headcanon I had months ago about Lorelai pointing out the suspiciously small amount of time between Jess asking Rory to come with him and sleeping with Dean. Except when I started writing it, I realized that Rory told Lane about that, but there's nothing (that I could find) that suggests she ever told Lorelai about it. And it struck me that after Jess tells her he loves her, Rory becomes increasingly protective over that relationship and stops telling Lorelai about it, even when the interactions are completely innocuous. Which is interesting, to say the least. Next up, Lorelai confronts Rory.